No Title

[Asharad Graush]

War meant that Graush wouldn't be around on Dosuun. His lover, [member="Lily Kuhn"], knew that, and recently he had spent much of his time ignoring her. Purposely. Whether it was the war, his duties as a Moff, the government, it didn't matter. Whatever came up, it took priority over her and his growing child. But in this early morning, his Infiltrator touched down outside his estate as silently as it was meant to.

Rare to spot outside of his armour, A'sharad's form walked through the awakening foyer of his home. Servants were already moving about, preparing for the day's activities, whatever form they took. Training, sparring, or cooking and cleaning, he paid them little mind beyond that first glance. Stealing up the steps to the upper levels, he took multiple steps at a time until he was cracking the door to his chambers open.

She's in there. Neglected.

Garbed simply, in merely two black pieces of clothing, the door opened and Graush entered.

Her presence in the Force... Dormant, but it's there.

Tentatively, his hand rose to the sleeping woman in his bed, slowly traveling the distance before it brushed over her face. Opening his mouth, the Force intoned in his words. She would hear them in her mind, at least, that's what he thought would happen.

"Wake up."

 

[Ellie Mors]

Be it today or tomorrow - yesterday or six months from now - there was no denying that Lily was infinitely more content with where she was with the relationship she had now than she was a year ago, despite how little she might have seen [member="Asharad Graush"] in the preceding weeks. She had acquiesced in his desire to try and make things work again knowing full well that she'd be seeing nearly as much of him as she had in their initial secret fling. It bothered her a little every day when she was given another reason that she couldn't see him, how couldn't it? But she understood, she accepted it - she did, really. There wasn't much in life she really had a firm grasp on, she'd hardly even come to terms with the fact that she was quickly approaching parenthood, but she held on tight to the hope that she'd make this work. She loved him too much not to.

She'd fallen asleep the night before on top of the covers, now sprawled unevenly along her side of the bed with one arm stretched out over towards the empty side and her other hand resting along her hip, lost quickly in a night full of dreams. 'Wake up.' The two words pierced through her slumber and reverberated through her mind as she slept, like an echo in the distance that slowly grew closer in proximity and louder in volume in her dreams. Her eyes opened, groggily, and she looked across the bed with an expression that showed her confusion openly. She stirred again, now shifting her position to lie on her back, and came face-to-face with the looming figure of her lover. Understandably she was startled, sitting up in bed in an attempt to shake off the lingering fatigue of sleep. "Ash? I didn't realize you were coming home today." Lily said, making a conscious effort to not sound too tired. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes, suddenly wishing she'd had the time necessary to at least appear decent - disheveled red hair framed her face and there wasn't a stitch of makeup on her face.

 

[Asharad Graush]

Letting his hand fall from her face, it collected one of hers in his much larger palm and he cradled it for a few moments. The crimson orbs embedded into his skull stared into her own emeralds and he bobbed his head in response to her words. "It was meant to be a surprise," raising her hand up to his lips and softly kissing her knuckles as he stared up at her.

Graush's mind was set. When he had received the message that she was pregnant, there was no customary elation to the news. It was filed in the back of his conscious and had only recently been brought to the forefront in the last few days, which is why she was surprised to his presence in their home. In place of the happiness, there was a... curiosity. Of course she would give birth to a Force user, for its presence manifested in the both of their bloodlines. The Sith Lord that was crouched before her didn't care about an unborn child yet, he merely cared for the vessel that carried it.

"I need your help with something," his tone strangely suggestive.

Guiding the hand that encapsulated her own, it pressed onto her belly and his head tilted while he searched her mesmerizing gaze.

Scientist he was not, but a hypothesis had since been formed.

"I need you to fight me... As if your life depended on it."

[member="Lily Kuhn"]

 

[Ellie Mors]

Her confusion was still evident by the expression on her face, one which only shifted after he kissed her hand upon giving her his answer. It was a little out of character for such niceties, but it was certainly something she could get used to - almost all of her efforts since her arrival here had been to encourage something like this, or at least to persuade him from keeping her locked in solitary confinement again. Despite the way he had acted in the past, and perhaps in spite of the bravado he'd given her when she'd upset him before, she could feel his care was a little more involved then the sense of ownership she thought had spurred him on.

She gave him a smile as he looked into her eyes, though her confusion was renewed when he asked for her help - what in the nine Corellian hells could she possibly help him with?

"What do you need?" She asked, her smile faltering slightly as he put their hands to her stomach. In all twenty-nine years of her life, the thing slowly growing inside of her was one of two things she loved more than herself. Partially because it was something she shared with A'sharad, but also because it was her child.

"I need you to fight me... as if your life depended on it."

At this her face fell.

'He wants me to.. what?'

Perhaps she misheard him - or maybe she was sleeping. Or maybe he was drunk or delirious and didn't recall she was pregnant with their unborn child. He couldn't be serious, could he? And even if she wasn't pregnant, what in the world could her fighting him help him with in the first place?

"Hold on - what?" She asked, her voice an octave higher than she'd intended - not that she noticed, her cheeks reddening slightly. "How is that - how am I - A'sharad I am pregnant with our child." She said, forcefully, and started to stand. "How can I possibly help you by fighting with you, and how can I possibly do that knowing that I'm carrying a child inside of me?" If she sounded confused or stressed - well, she was. She had half a mind to slap him, but didn't want him to take than as her agreement to his request, nor did she particularly feel keen on doing what he asked until he explained at least part of how it'd be helping him - or at least as long as she knew that the child wasn't going to be hurt.

[member="Asharad Graush"]

 

[Asharad Graush]

There was a brief pause where he nodded his head for he knew what her reaction would be. Not everyone would see his ideas the way that he had. So he'd make them.

"I'm not asking."

Releasing her hand and rising up to his full height, his hands brushed down the length of his clothes and a smile that was short lived crossed his features before his features hardened.

"You have the Force at your disposal, and it is not being put to use with you being idle here." His tongue snuck out past his lips, wetting them before he walked the length of the bed, around it. She still wouldn't understand, he knew that much. "A child grows within you. But I am certain your power will grow naturally the closer you get to child birth." His nose flared and his is cybernetic dragged itself across a wall before settling onto his high.

"It is our duty to cultivate and nurture the strength of our child before they are born. A powerful being they will be, like its father and mother."

Stopping, he finally got to the closet and he opened it with his back to her. Turning back to her, he walked around the length of the bed again and towards the door.

"Get dressed."

[member="Lily Kuhn"]

 

[Ellie Mors]

She shook her head, expression as twisted and bitter as she felt at his response. He wasn't asking. She knew what that meant, knew that she never should have woken up for him the moment he let go of her hand. None of the words that left his lips made it to her ears after he stood up and put on his intimidating display - as he replaced his proverbial carrot with the stick.

That's fine.

She had thought she'd spoken the words until she realized her jaw was clenched painfully tight, though not nearly as tight as the fist balled in her lap as she stood. The muscles in her jaw relaxed as she arched her brow and tilted her head - perplexed at his line of thought.

Perplexed, yes.

But pissed.

"I am not becoming my mother."

It wasn't something she wanted to say, it wasn't even something that ran through her mind before she blurted it out - her tone scathing, enraged, but firm and controlled. Icy. Her eyes, contrasting with that frosty declaration, burned like embers in her skull - she didn't sleep with the contacts that let her pretend she hadn't changed, that her emerald eyes weren't a dull, glowing, amber. Every fiber of her being wanted to be different than her parents - not that she held enmity for them, they had tried their damnedest to raise her and her sibling right. But she wasn't going to become a woman deranged by the trauma of her past - she wasn't going to leave her child behind and die like a whisper in the wind. She'd seen what that had done to her father, felt firsthand what it felt like to lose the parent she'd resented for something as petty as doting over her twin just a little more than her.

"You want to fight, A'sharad?" She asked, pulling a shirt over her head in the most aggressive and upset display of body language she could muster. "Then we'll fight." Lily spat, kicking heels out of her way as she stormed towards a pair of pants she'd reserved for her walks through the grounds outside for their utility rather than looks.

"But if you hurt our child then know that I will slit your throat - force or no."

[member="Asharad Graush"]

 

[Asharad Graush]

Graush didn't hear all of what she had to say, but he got the jist of it.

Good.

His hand tapping his thigh before he marched out the room and descended the steps, his long strides brought him to his relatively unused training room rather quickly. Crossing the room, his hands trailed over the assortment of weapons. Blades, spears, staffs, until they got to the less lethal collections. Shields, training hilts, even simple kendo sticks.

And the last were his choice.

Non lethal for the most part... But painful enough he figured.

Drawing one off the stand, he awaited [member="Lily Kuhn"]'s arrival, and when she came in, he'd wave off to the kendo sticks silently while he waited in the centre of the room.

"Understand... This is necessary."

The corner of his mouth threatening to curve upwards, his next words were muted of emotion.

"Now attack me."

 

[Ellie Mors]

Necessary.. Sometimes she couldn't understand him, how he rationalized his motives with his decisions. But at the very least, judging by their choice of weaponry, she had much less to be concerned over than he had led her to believe. Fight for her life with a wooden stick? She had half expected him to retrieve a lightsaber and attempt to rekindle some of her older training from her youth. But a stick? She didn't quite see why he'd made such an ominous reference to mortality if he was just going to have her spar with him using such rudimentary tools.

On the other hand it had been almost a decade since she'd decided to discontinue her saber training with Vrag. Whatever skill she had obtained then was all but lost - she knew the basics, like how to hold the damned thing, but she was very much aware that it was going to be like watching a toddler try to strike an adult in any meaningful way.

A momentary sigh followed hesitation, and then she moved towards him quickly to strike - bringing the stick over her head and down towards the Sith lord.

[member="Asharad Graush"]

 

[Asharad Graush]

Graush's eyes closed, longer than usual when she moved to him, and in that time, he was caught up in his own thoughts.

How can I be questioned? Have I ever been wrong? No. Victory, success... My legacy is unmatched and still my motives are...

Opening his eyes, the glowing crimson of his gaze took in the approaching redhead, and he felt almost... Offended by her reckless attack, as if she didn't care, as if she wasn't taking it... Taking him, seriously...

Everything I've done is measured and calculated.

His wrist flicked, and the wooden stick leapt upwards to swat the attack out of its downward strike and to pass harmlessly by him.

"You have a child to protect. Is this how you're going to protect it?"

He raised the stick while he stepped away from her, taunting. Sure she'd understand what he was doing there, she wasn't stupid, but the words... The words would trigger something. That's what he hoped anyway.

[member="Lily Kuhn"]

 

[Ellie Mors]

She wasn't fazed by the apparent lack of will on her part to strike him - no one could blame her for holding back in such a situation, particularly with whom she found herself up against - but she visibly flinched at his words. Is that what this was about? Did he think she wasn't a suitable mother because she couldn't best him? The very thought could've sent her into a rage if she was as proud as he was - if she wasn't aware of her own shortcomings. She felt her grip on the weapon in her hand loosen, her eyes widening while her mind ran wild. The chapter of her life where she'd been an initiate in the ranks of the One Sith were far behind her, the days where she was in the prime of her youth long gone - as was any combat prowess she'd had with any kind of a weapon.

She should have felt defeated, crushed - and deep down, beneath all of the anxiety and the determination to not lose what she'd put herself through hell and more to get back all over again, she did. But it was that layer of anxiety, that desire to keep the future she had tried so hard to make for herself, that instead pushed her to persevere, not because she had confidence in herself but because she knew the alternative was a future that was simply unacceptable. Maybe what he was saying was little more than a taunt, but there was always meaning behind the things people said, even those masked in jest - or used as provocation.

"You have a child to raise, is this how you're going to father it?" She spat back, sliding her feet closer together as she took a stride towards him.

She pointed the stick towards the ground, held across her body at an angle, and furrowed her brow in frustration - her eyes darting to and fro across his form, sizing him up.

"Abandon it - like me?"

She made a half-step towards him again, trying to remember how she'd been taught self-defense as a child, and aimed a jab at his center mass - her face a mask of hurt. If he wanted to play games with her head, she'd make it a war of attrition.

[member="Asharad Graush"]

 

[Asharad Graush]

Graush had little feelings these days. For his... Consort, [member="Lily Kuhn"], there was something different, he knew that much. It extended past lust. Far and between, she had seen him when he was vulnerable. But they were rare. Graush himself still had yet to admit he had felt... Vulnerable aloud. The Supreme Commander... Weak. That is not an image I am going to portray to my armies. Stalking back and forth, the stick was swatted against the flooring and cracked loudly in the enclosed space.

Her next words didn't bring pause to him, but they brought about the raising of an inquisitive brow. She's not listening to me. His jawline tightening as his upper and lower row of teeth came together and grated against each other. "Well I'm not going to let this child go through life unprepared." The hand holding the stick tightened. The metal in the cybernetic hand clenched the wood, straining it. He felt the receptors in his arm, but he ignored them. "This is a galaxy where Jidai can't decide whether they fight for or against the civilians they're meant to protect!" Not that he particularly cared. Death was death to him. But if there was any point he could use to prove his point, he would. Why am I even explaining this to her? She's unfit to raise a child, let alone rule.

Still, her next words were able to freeze him on the spot.

"Is that the lie you tell yourself?"

He hadn't been angry before. Not enough to actually want to strike her. But he was Sith Lord. A powerful one. Who was going to stop him? In what form would the consequences come? No form that could stop me. The Force washed through him, likely on instinct, perhaps not. He hadn't reached mastery of his body by acting on impulse. Regardless, his stick came up to swat her jab to the side, even as he side stepped her and glided the edge of the stick across her own - right for her face before it stopped. "You walked away and abandoned me."

This wasn't no emotional dance he was playing. The game didn't work when the other person cheated.

"And then you thought you could take up arms against the Order... Against me..."

 

[Ellie Mors]

Her stomach lurched the moment she realized she had stepped over the line, wincing visibly at his reaction to her words of provocation. The darkness that spread over him was like a tidal wave, making her feel like little more than a pebble on the seashore against the incoming tide at the peak of a storm - loose, unstable, and certainly vulnerable. The sudden whistling of his weapon as it raced for the side of her head put the instinctive fear of pain in her chest and she stiffened in preparation for a blow that would've hurt more than just physically. For all of the self pity and the hurt, she never considered that he'd felt a pain somewhat similar to her own - he made it clear he was superior, he domineered and leered over her like she was beneath him every chance he got. She'd seen glimpses into what he was like when he let his guard down, but she had started to feel like it was all manufactured - long before she had tried to make their fling more than what had started out as.

She ran away from him, sure. Maybe he didn't understand - or maybe she hadn't. It didn't matter. He felt abandoned because she'd physically walked away from a man that had refused to even acknowledge that there might have been a closer connection between them than a physical one, but did he even consider why she had? Besides the obvious - the stupid expression on her face when she had went beet-red and realized he hadn't even put an iota of consideration into the idea of love, the sheer embarrassment of saying something that garnered a physical reaction to create space between the two and the silence that immediately followed - did he really think their relationship had even existed anymore by the time she walked away?

The muscles in her arms tensed and she felt a twitch of her nerves in her ankles as she impulsively swung the stick in her hand to crack against the one he'd stopped just short of striking her. She had paled, though she was sure he would chalk it up to fear, and her eyes stung despite the lack of tears.

"At least I know why you treat me like human garbage, A'sharad." Lily said slowly, quietly. Her pupils dilated, and her shoulders and jawline tensed. "I regret it, okay? If I had the chance to do it all over, I wouldn't have done it - is that what you want to hear? I'd apologize to you again if you'd even care what I had to say - but that's what you don't get, isn't it, A'sharad?" She seethed, her voice steadily climbing from her quiet rasp to something a little closer to a shout with each passing word. She swung at him again, not close enough at actually hit him - were that even possible - but with enough force to have broken the stick in her hand had she swung at something sufficiently sturdy. "I'm not you - I'm not perfect, I'm not unstoppable. I'm insecure and I'm vulnerable, and every time you belittle me you make me feel like I shouldn't even try."

"You treat me like I'm inadequate, like I'm never going to be good enough for you. I ran away because I thought you wanted me to leave - I put on a uniform because I was forced to show loyalty to a government that took over my home and made me little more than you're making me feel like right now."

"I don't know why I bother telling you any of this, it isn't like you care - if you even know how to."

[member="Asharad Graush"]

 

[Asharad Graush]

Graush was unshakable, his resolve stronger than the toughest armours in the Galaxy. She had left a hole in him when she had walked away from him years ago, a part of him that wanted to love, that wanted to feel anything more than hate and rage. But he was conditioned to be that way. His entire life formed around the concept of fighting, of war, of expunging anything that stood in your way. The only reason why she was still alive was because he had rejected his upbringing to make an attempt. Perhaps it was a mistake. It wasn't the first time the thought had crossed his mind, but it resurfaced in this instance when she put it all out there. Instead of fighting for her in the moment, he let her walk away, and instead, he filled the gap she left in him with more war. More death. More killing. Truly it is all I know. She swung at him, but he knew it was too far, and he let it pass by harmlessly as he stared at her.

"It wasn't about me back then. It was about you." A heavy step followed his words as he stepped closer to the redhead. "Your position, your feelings, your love." Every little thing he mentioned was followed by a metal finger raising, the cybernetic hand a reminder to him, and likely her too of his previous limb's destruction. "I know you understand that our relationship was a threat to me as well, but I don't think it mattered to you as much." There was a pause as he went around her flank, letting the stick drag across the floor in his wake. "You never tried to help me understand. You didn't want to believe that we were different. Didn't want to help me grow."

"You say I treat you like you'll never be good enough," his back was turned to her at this point. "But I went into the hostile Alliance for you over and over again for... Visits." It was a time when he snuck off, to do it. They both had understood the dangers of doing that way back when, but even then he was young and cocky, thought himself untouchable, and besides the lack of an arm, that belief was still true. But it hadn't been just his superiors who were a danger, he was a Dark Sider hiding in the embrace of the Alliance. In that time, there was nothing more dangerous. "I got you off that ship." His face contorted as he fought with himself internally, his fist clenching and unclenching as he regained his composure through his pause. "If doing that wasn't enough to prove that to me, you were worth losing everything for, I don't know what will."

[member="Lily Kuhn"]

 

[Ellie Mors]

'Why does this have to be so difficult?'
'This isn't what I want.'
'I don't want this to be over - he doesn't want this to be over.'
'I just want to be normal - for us, for all of this to be normal.'
'Why do I keep doing this?'

If he was her rock, she was the tide - rising up until she drew too close, only to pull further away. She always came back to him - and he never ventured very far from the place in life he had made for himself. But it was by that very nature that, regardless of how hard she tried and how much he made his efforts to pull her back in, their relationship constantly eroded. It wasn't his fault - he wasn't at fault for how she felt, and it wasn't fair for her to keep doing this to him, either. "Back then - A'sharad - I was so in love with you I was going to leave everything behind to be with you. You didn't realize it then - and I don't blame you for that - that I was going to give up my home and everything I grew up and knew as long as I knew you wanted what I wanted, too." She interjected, her face a contorted mess of hurt and pleading. No, she was hardly even an adult then - that he'd even consider that she would have cared any less for his safety, given the scrutiny she was under for merely being who and what she was, felt like a punch to the gut.

But he was right - she hadn't done anything to make him understand. She wasn't mature enough, then, and maybe what had hurt her had an equally profound impact on him for different reasons. She took a half-step back, and she felt the grip on the stick in her hand slipping - she didn't do anything to keep it from falling when it did, either. She stood silent as he railed against her for what she'd used him as in their first try at a relationship - had he thought he was just a fling to her? He could have brought up any of her shortcomings then and she would have conceded further, but instead he moved closer to the present - to something she still was deeply uncomfortable with.

That ship.

It wasn't the way he had mercilessly killed the man she'd tried to force him to spare that had touched her to the core - it wasn't even that he had forced her into his custody that had made it harder to look at him anymore. "Don't you dare." Lily said testily, feeling sick to her stomach just for recalling that moment. "I don't care how I made you feel, A'sharad, what you did was tantamount to.. you took away my ability to.. you will never, ever, understand what you did to me and how that felt. That I am even here, now, speaking with you, has taken all of my willpower and all of my love to forgive you - don't you dare act like kidnapping me and robbing me of my freedom, no matter how long it lasted, was something you did for me." She seethed. That she hadn't made a big a deal of this earlier as she should have wasn't quite for either reason - rather she had understood, with maturity that came with age, that A'sharad hadn't - or she hoped he hadn't - understood what the difference between what he had done and what love was had been.

"I didn't know how to explain it to you then, and you probably don't want to hear it from me now, but I thought long and hard how I could explain to you what you wanted to learn so much."

"A boy wandering through a meadow stumbles across a beautiful flower - a flower that looks like, smells like, no other in the entire world. The boy has never seen something quite like it before, so he plucks it from the earth and takes it home. He places the flower in a vase so he can marvel at its beauty like a trophy until the day it withers and dies." She explained, taking special care to put an emphasis on the cause and effect of the allegorical boy's actions. "But if the boy had let that flower be, and instead came back to it rather than taking it for his own, the flower - the love - would have lasted so much longer."

"I'm the flower in the vase, A'sharad, and I don't think you understand - you don't see it - but I wake up every morning and I tell our child how wonderful their father is, I tell them how you're going to keep them safe and you're only gone for a little while to do that. I lay under the stars at night and I pick one and I wonder what you might be doing, where you might be and with whom."

"I don't fight it because I've realized this is the extent of what I am, but I am telling you this now so you don't treat our child the same way. You don't have to be here for me, but please don't make our child think their father doesn't want to be around them. If I can't make you understand, they will."

[member="Asharad Graush"]