Of Life and Death

[Rosa Gunn]

Rosa Gunn allowed herself to be led away from the terror, legs moving automatically, numb to the chaos around her. She didn't recall the trip from ground into space, a juddering voyage that took them between wreckage and stray laser fire. She slipped into a trance, drawing inwards, drawing away from the carnage and pain still ringing in her ears. She recalled the hours before, watching his ship fade into the distance leaving her on Arda's sandy beaches. She recalled the feel of the sand beneath her feet as she pacced torn with worry for Seydon and for herself.

Should she have stayed behind? Would things have been different? Would he have been safer? How was she ever going to get passed this? A hundred questions whirled through her mind, chased by the fading cried of the spirits latched to her soul. Darth Isolda and Odium had broken Rosa, but Layil, the woman she had become, her alter ego had utterly destroyed her. She would have given a thousand lives to go back in time and change something...maybe everything that had happened in the last few years.

She woke among feather pillows and beneath silk sheets, stripped down to her underclothes. She lay still for a moment listening to the soft rumble of the ship's engines, watching the patterns the blue of hyperspace bathed their room in. Eventually she rolled over, fingers reaching out to touch his side of the bed. It was slightly warm and brought a little comfort to her heart. Sliding from between the sheets she donned a silk robe and padded barefoot along the halls to the bridge.

A slender hand squeezed Seydon's shoulder before she slid round and into his lap, head moving to rest on his shoulder. Fingers idly stroked his head and she sat their quietly for a time, simply content to be in his arms again. When she spoke finally, it was softly.

"I am so sorry, love."

[member="Seydon of Arda"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

Putting Rosa to bed, she'd extracted a promise that she'd catch her rest, only if he kept her company. Navigation and various secondary vessel systems tripped onto automatic function, his body climbing into darkened, cool sheets. The filtration system kicked on and replaced their scratchy bedroom air with a moist and refreshing coolness. Rolling to get comfortable, Seydon suddenly came eye to eye with her. His wife's expression parted, blinking tears into the pillowcase. His reply, his immediate instinct, was pushing his frame atop her belly and cradled her with calloused hands set over her cheeks. They kissed until she wrapped him up with ankle and wrist locks, finally blinking and fluttering into rest. Even Seydon gave over, snoring lowly under her chin.

He had risen a half hour before and trudged half-dressed back to the cockpit bridge, settling against into the control pit. Hyperspace navigation required no flight corrections, until they dropped to realspace and banked onto a new trajectory. Rosa found him putting in tension adjustments for the steering yokes; blank eyed and staring out into nothing, wandering in thought. Seydon came to when her weight settled against his waist and trailed fingernails across his hair.

“We're alive, aren't we?” He grunted and forced on a smile. “Don't gotta be sorry, Rose. Turns out you might have been onto something after all...”

[member="Rosa Gunn"]

 

[Rosa Gunn]

Rosa blew a sigh out her nose as he brushed the matter aside like it was nothing. He should have been at least a touch annoyed she'd followed him when he knew, better than she did herself that exposure to a battle like that would have and did prove to be too much for her. Whatever he felt about her coming, he was not going to vocalise it, and as much as she wanted to hear some chastising, she didn't press the matter because it would be wasted words.

"Aye, we did. But Rave didn't. I'm sorry for that too." She sat up slightly, brushing his forehead lightly with a kiss. She could almost hear the cogs at work in Seydon's mind, ticking away, focused elsewhere. She let him slip back into that faraway place, watched his eyes glaze over again, pursing her lips slightly before she prodded him mentally.

"What is it?"

[member="Seydon of Arda"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

Cat-eyes blinked out of their fugue, and Seydon tore his glance from the long viewscreen back to his wife. She'd put on an insistent frown... Not a frown, but a thin-lined pout. She'd taken him out of a thought-retreat, prodding him back into their conversation, waiting on him to proffer his soul on his own. He held her stare for a while, then sighed, running a hand over his beard.

“I dunno,” He tried deflecting her enquiry, only to feel her lance of psychic probing try and jar his reluctance. “Alright! Stop that. ...It was just a rotten day, Rose. I'm tired. I'm pissed off at a lot of shrink-faced clods that slew thousands of survivors. Tried taking away hundreds more. And forced a friend who I believed was mending her ways into sacrificing herself to stop them. Nearly made you lose your mind. Came this close to losing the little world I have. We should have stayed away but I don't know if... I dunno... Just angry, Rose. And I can't even vent it out into the void.”

[member="Rosa Gunn"]

 

[Rosa Gunn]

"So vent at me." she told him sharply. "Don't bottle it up and try and hide it away, I know you too well empathy or no, you can't and you shouldn't be hiding it. Not from me."

She kissed him on each cheek. "Never from me." she reiterated before sliding off his lap and padding to the door. "I'm going to make breakfast." It was more of a threat than an offer of food. Rosa's skills in the kitchen we utterly nonexistent. Even the simplest of dishes offered her nothing but trouble. She was offering distraction more than anything else. She couldn't bring Rave back, couldn't take away his pain nor offer a sensible solution to his anger so this was her next best option.

"Pretty sure I stocked you up with ingredients for pancakes." she called as she moved down the hall, hoping he would follow.

[member="Seydon of Arda"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

“You're going to cook,” Seydon repeated, more than a little incredulously. He caught the woman's potently devious smirk on her exit down out of the cockpit roost, shutting the hatchway behind her. He growled, reaching for and tugging on an old work shirt deposited in the co-pilot seat beside him, dressing hurriedly.

They caught up in the small galley hall on the second deck, sheltered between the rationed pantry closets and the workshop garage leading further on to the engine housing. The fusion stove had three heat elements already warming, as Rosa picked out the seasoned pans off their hanging storage racks. Dantooine flour, milk, bulbous juvenile acklay eggs, Nabooian vanilla extract, 'Wookie' cinnamon, and a tub of thawing ice-cream waited on the counter space. Seydon's warm, heavy hands took her by the wrists and tugged her away when she tried consulting a stained, short-hand scribbled recipe sheet.

“Ah-ah,” He said. “You get the caff going, I'll get us something decent to eat. ...If you wanted to make me quit pouting, you didn't have to scare the hell out of me.”

[member="Rosa Gunn"]

 

[Rosa Gunn]

Rosa leaned forward and kissed the end of his nose, eyes glittering with childlike mischief, still caught in his grip. "Pout all you want," she countered, "but we both need feeding, so it's either you or me that has to cook." She nuzzled the crook of his neck, wriggling her wrists free of his grasp and wrapping her arms around his neck.

"It's not my fault I'm a terrible cook." Her voice muffled she lifted her head, showering his face with kisses before drawing away and heading for the caff machine. She fell silent as the clatter of cooking began, watching her husband whisk together the mixture out of the corner of her eye, while wondering about the rest of the Merrill's. No doubt Jorus and his daughter would have felt Rave's passing, and knowing the Merrill's as she did, she expected there would be repercussions of some description. They were certain people in this galaxy, certain families, you did not anger.

"Do you think we should contact Jorus?" She asked quietly.

[member="Seydon of Arda"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

“You know him,” Seydon said, spooning flour into their old ceramic mix-bowl, measuring the next helping of baking soda against a cracked and tape-repaired pouring cup. “Got the weight of star systems on his shoulders. Probably has a hundred sympathy messages waiting on his comm-piece, while he flies for Dromund Kaas. If he's not there already. ...Best let him have conversation with just himself, until he's come to terms with Rave.”

He paused, replacing the cup with the tea-spoon, about to drizzle a few brackish plops of vanilla extract into the mixture. “Besides... Not a lot of love lost between those two, as I knew it. But kin's a funny thing. Rather let Jorus try and contact us, if he needs to.”

“...I wouldn't know what to say anyway,” Seydon pursed down on his lips and tended to whisking the batter.

Between them, brunch was a paired serving of stacked cinnamon flapjacks topped with a melting butter square, ready for a dousing of syrup. Accompanying as a side, either bacon, eggs, both if their appetite allowed it, and tall glasses of squeezed orange juice taken from the pantry refresher. And instead of the Ardan sun pouring in warm morning light, coldly photonic patterns rushed trails of strange shadow and incandescent outside the kitchen viewport, the Relentless still shuttling its way through Hyperspace.

He had taken just a handful of bites, listlessly sipping at his drink. All he could taste through the meal was a lingering sting of ice fog and mangrove ash. Phantoms of ember soot marred his smell, self-inflicted than any true malignant trace still stuck up his nose. The silence between Rosa's chews kept drawing his thoughts away into maudlin, and unnerved tension wracked up shudders over his corded shoulders. The way his wife had screamed...

[member="Rosa Gunn"]

 

[Rosa Gunn]

Rosa watched him carefully out of the corner of her eyes as he slowly stopped eating and slipped back into that dangerous place. She set down her own fork and let out a soft sigh. However brief, at least she had occupied him for time. She could think of a multitude of ways to keep him otherwise occupied but one way or another, it would come back to this.

She couldn't blame him, not really, not only had a friend died, but Rosa herself had lost control. She had expected death, but not like that, not so close to home. She was broken, her sleep often disturbed by nightmares and no matter how much she put on a brave face, Seydon would worry, and now she had given him far greater reason to.

"What can I do, love?" She asked him softly "what do you need?"

[member="Seydon of Arda"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

What did he need...? The dunaan blinked the swimming dark out of his eyes rapidly and looked at Rosa. She'd caught him wandering lost through hypothetical 'what-ifs', his conscience trying to cheerily wash out the fear with cliche adages and self-fooling exercises. ...It had all been a deathly close call. Crushed from debris fall, vaporized by orbital fire, or swarmed and gunned down by chattering, wriggling things hiding atop their armoured repulsor chairs. Seydon expected to perish ignominiously, adrift and bleeding out in a backwater mangrove, surrounded by the dead he'd cut down himself. No Dunaan had ever died in his own bed. But Rosa...

“I just want you to be safe,” He said. And she smiled. A simple, spousal desire, but futile in their line of work. Safety was a mirage feeling between gunfights. Unless they locked themselves up in a lost vault far and away from any space lane, holed up on a forgotten, barren rock, bald of anything interesting or worthwhile, trouble and all its friends would find them. It wasn't possibility. It was inevitable. Both had seen it in their shared dreams. So, what did he need now, still...? Some adolescent succour? ...Was it that simple for him?

“And I wanna disappear with you somewhere. Hide away in a port somewhere, lock out the door for a week, and go nowhere but into each others arms,” Seydon went on, looking back into her lilac gaze. “I want you. I want you to feel how much I do, Rosa. I don't want you dying on some backwater world, for something you don't have a stake in. I want you to live. Forever...”

His hand reached, pressing knuckle and thumb down her cheek, wreathing his fingers into her raven locks. “I need impossibilities...”

[member="Rosa Gunn"]

 

[Rosa Gunn]

Rosa offered a sad smile, and caught his hand, pressing her lips to his palm. She almost turned his words back on him, almost reminded him that it was he that had left her on occasions and disappeared without a trace for a year. That it was her who was left worrying whether he was still alive. Even the small jobs, the ones she knew he would come back from would leave her restless. Safety was a luxury they didn't have in abundance. Safety was found in moments like this, caught between one battle or another when it was just the two of them. Sweet and blissful moments that were all too short.

"We live in a galaxy constantly overshadowed by war, by hook or by crook one of us will always wind up in the middle of it, whether we have a stake in it or not. We could lock ourselves away permanently, cast aside the key, just the two of us..."

She let his hand go and slid from her stool, moving closer to him. "But, in doing so we would lose a part of ourselves. We would not be happy and I think more likely to get divorced than if you or I disappeared for another year again. We will never be safe, Seydon, because we are not meant to be. We knew that long before this began, before you took the name Seydon." She pulled his hands to her waist and rested her own on his shoulders, pressing her forehead to his.

"I cannot give you impossibilities, Seroth. But I can most certainty, give you a week." She kissed him gently.



[member="Seydon of Arda"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

“No time like the present...” Came his steely whisper, spoke over the velvet of her tongue.

Dishes and the after-lunch clean up could wait for when they bothered. The pile of pans, cutlery, plates, the lingering aromas of cinnamon batter, milk, and fruit juice lingered as the pair stood from their chairs and became absent. Hyperspace contortions of light followed them from porthole to porthole, bare footpads sounding off the deck, beside Rosa's breathless giggles and Seydon's steady breaths. He could hear a chime go off in the steerage pit up towards the bridge deck: an incoming call. Whomever was set on making the call connect would have to wait and bother with a recorded comm-message, if their business was urgent and if they had any business at all.

They paused at the door jamb to their shared quarters. Past the hatch, cool darkness swam with currents threaded from running nightstand fans, churning the recycled air into something close to a fresh breeze. A wall bed, dressed in black coverlets and almost too many pillows, invited their weight. Before Rosa could take the first step, Seydon's arms had her up and cradled across his torso. He passed them under the hatch, as it closed, locked, and let the shadow briefly swallow them. Warm, cinnamon breath swept down her throat. A rough touch took away her nightgown, hands that swept the length and breadth of her body with more than carnal familiarity. Vessel systems ticked over on an internal chrono-meter as the Relentless slipped away through lightspeed, ventilation ducts and electrical cabling rattling as cries rent through the vessel...

[member="Rosa Gunn"]

 

[Rosa Gunn]

...There was comfort in the calm that followed a storm. Rosa's dark hair trailed across her husband's chest as she lay listening to the powerful beat of his heart. A smile playing on her lips as she recalled breathless moments, fingernails dragging across skin...

She opened her hers, turning her head slightly to kiss his chest. "I should make you angry more often." she murmured, nipping him gently and rolling so her chest was on his, chin resting on her hands. She drank in every detail of his face, trying to recall a young Seroth on a beach in Spira. There were frown lines, lightly etched on his forhead, old scars that told tales of the live he'd led. He was a far-cry from the polite boy she'd taken as her apprentice so long ago. The galaxy had hardened him, hardened them both ageing them beyond their years. She still felt young though, when he hoisted her off her feet and drew in into hot kisses, she remembered what it was like to be careless.

But she wasn't young.

Rosa snorted suddenly and loudly at her own melancholy and lay her head back down. "I'd never thought I'd say this," she said quietly and with a smile on her face "but its suddenly occured to me that I'm getting old."

[member="Seydon of Arda"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

He ached wonderfully. Everywhere. The Dunaan let out a sigh and rolled the meat and bone in his arms and shoulder blades, ribs swelling out with the next breath. A fleshly musk clung to the bulkhead steel, condensation peeling down the bedroom porthole armourglass, the pair lying in the half dark, as kaleidoscope hues poured in from the porthole from the hyperspace tunnel roiling beyond the hulling. He could scent the trace emissions of her sweat, perfume, the shampoo she favoured, that slight spritz of raspberry-ice she loved dabbing behind her ears. Seydon only smiled at her small admission, massaging his knuckles down the soft of her venus-dimples.

“So?” He said. “I watched you moving, Rose. Could have given any young girl a hard run for their money. If it's any consolation, you'll come out looking better than me still. Besides. Modern medicine. Rejuvenat procedures and such. You'll last as long as any Dunaan, with nary the wrinkles I'll be carrying.”

[member="Rosa Gunn"]

 

[Rosa Gunn]

"Oh I'm not so vain as to worry about wrinkles, or whether I can move with the best of them. I married a younger man for a reason, you know." She rose slightly, kissing him softly before slipping from his arms. She padded barefoot across the room, scooping a datapad off the dresser before flopping back onto the bed with him. She was more concerned about other things that came with age. Like the inability to have children. She never voiced this matter, it was a topic that did not need discussing.

"Besides which, at the rate we're going we will both perish in a fight long before age damages the worst of our good looks." She paused as the datapad in her hand connected to the ships communication system and ticked off the list of friends that had perished in battle. Darron, Boolon, Qae and now Rave. Jaxton had dropped off the grid too, though Rosa was certain that they would know if something had happened. She blinked and shook her head. There was no sadness, as much as she missed old friends, death had become a regular occurrence in their lives.

"We are a dying breed," she muttered before hanging him the datapad. "the message is for you." She didn't even look at it, but no one contacted them anymore unless it was for help. Or for a contract, more often then not, the message was for him.


[member="Seydon of Arda"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

Reflection glazed down his eyes. Seydon remembered then, his eighteenth year in the Jedi fraternity, a fresh petitioner made apprentice made knight. A matter of months, bounced between increasingly busy teachers, lost in the fire and sound of another great war. He had first met Rosa Mazhar during a warm Tython autumn morning, introduced through a mutual acquaintance. Darron Wraith, her lover at the time, and the one most predicted would be the man she'd agree in marrying if not upholding a long term commitment. What with a child on the way and rumours that the venerable 'Paddy Poker' was serious with the former political student turned Jedi operative. The war caught up with them weeks later. Seydon departed on a sojourn following the 'illustrious' Cato Neimoidia pacification. Rosa endured the cauldron of Roche and swallowed the agony of feeling her dignity and future break between her fingers.

He spun and minimized the datasleet screen, pushing the 'pad aside, to face Rosa as she reclined on the pillows. The coverlets fell as she posed with a raised knee, sheets just pooled about her calves. Seydon didn't miss that little smirk as he drew his touch down her knee to the flesh of a bosom, cradling her around until they had little choice but kiss and make it last. 'Dying breed', he thought, 'but like all good things, we endure.'

“I know what you're thinking,” He whispered. “But I'm just glad we've come as far as we have. If we played the 'game', we'd have ended up like Halcyon, Dragonsflame, be the poster faces of broken, failed effort. We've done what we can, for as many as we could, and continue to do so. We didn't need to burn worlds to make our point.”

[member="Rosa Gunn"]

 

[Rosa Gunn]

Rosa managed a small smile, though there was still a hint of worry in her eyes. "We've come through hell to get here, losing each other more than once." she lifted her hand, gently stroking his cheek. She was eternally grateful to have him, here and now, and for all the times he found his way back to her. Seydon had tracked her down when she was so far astray, she wasn't Rosa, so damaged by the One Sith that her mind had created another personality, one that hadn't surfaced since the day he'd driven a sword into her chest. Rosa could feel Layil, prowling the back of her mind, aware of the fractures in Rosa's psyche.

"I worry for what lies ahead, Seydon. For what terrors the galaxy has yet to throw at us. We may think we've seen the worst of it, but..." she trailed off. The force had a way of testing them in ways they couldn't imagine, she had believed after Roche that the worst was over, but she'd been so very wrong. "I don't want to die on a battlefield having never seen my friends again, feeling like there was more that I could have done, because there is more. I'm capable of more than I have already achieved, I--"

Rosa stopped herself, feeling a burning in her chest and laughter in the back of her mind. Horror crossed her expression and she scrambled rapidly from beneath Seydon, sickened by the words that almost fell from her lips. She moved away from the bed, her back to Seydon and came to rest on a stool before her dresser. She stared at her face in the mirror, noticed the discolouration in her lilac eyes. "Black gods." she muttered. She could see Layil's smirk in her mind's eye as she waved at her.

"Layil isn't dead."

[member="Seydon of Arda"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

A palpable shadow, like the weight of a lead cape, had fallen across her shoulders. He watched Rosa bent in under her own reflection, rocking in her own arms, staring between her heels and holding out against the sudden, moribund episode. Trying to touch her scattered her from the bed. Foreign hands, any hands, were like tapers of acid. Across her naked back, old scars looked swollen and puffed, sorely agitated. Seydon half-expected her to round him as he strolled up to her, eyes crossed out with yellow and hissing like a feline.

He touched her neck, with care. When she didn't bolt or struggle to go running back under the covers, the touch swept up to her cheek as his other arm wrapped around her bosom. Through her skin, agony and ecstasy. The joyed feeling of being wanted and held as such, the terror of an invisible adder scaling its way up through her gorge, threatening to overcome her better senses. Threatening to take it all. Layil should know better. Dunaan didn't only slay monsters. They cast them out too.

It was a genteel prodding at the back of her black thoughts. She ought to recognize the sensation, given it was her own habit when she wanted or required Seydon's blunt mind to relax and accept her thoughts. The witcher wasn't nuanced in the art at all. It was a fumbling attempt, feeling like a stuttered creek-stone trying to skip its way clumsily across a pond. He managed. A thought buttoned down and wove in through Layil's sibilant taunts.

-Cold armour glass. Stars slowly panning along, to the left. Leaking recycler filters overhead. Passing foot traffic through an outer observation corridor. More cold. Poor insulation. Upkeep and renovation required. Hoarfrost riming along the armour glass viewport. Fogging. Her backside sweating through her shirt from the touch of heat and chill. Hands bound up over her head. A young man. Fresh, scarred. Making her close her eyes. Making her surrender. Kisses that tasted like gunmetal and spice. His touch, everywhere. She should say no. But he invites his hand up beneath her underweave and touches across her belly in such a way, that it's right. Oh, how did he grow up so fast?-

“Stay with me,” Seydon said against the back of her skull. “It's okay... She's just rage and guilt and other bad things they tried inculcating in you. Because they were angry, and guilty, and more scared themselves then they'd ever admit. You're Rosa. You are Rosa. And you are wanted and needed, more than little... creature. Stay with me, Rose, c'mon...”

[member="Rosa Gunn"]

 

[Rosa Gunn]

Rosa eyes fluttered closed, her breathing shallow as she leant against Seydon, allowing herself to relax in his arms as she fell into her own mind, slipping into meditation, his words granting her strength...


She was knelt on the floor of a temple all to familiar to her, smoke rose lazily from burners dotted about the room. This was the sith temple. This was Isolda's little playground. She pushed her self to her feet and casts glance over her shoulder before calling out.

"Layil!"

"Shhh not so loud, Rosa, sounds carries in your own mind, you know?"

"Didn't I kill you already?"

"No, he did. You used him to break my will over you and then you left me, thinking I would simply crumble and die. I might have done if not for your little episode. Felt good didn't it? All that raw power. You could so so much more with your-"

"Ugh, enough. Hearing those words in my head is bad enough, let alone in my own voice." She cast a glance about her. "Why here? Why this memory?"

"Because it was where I was born, where our psyche shattered. I took control so you could survive. I got you away from the One Sith because I knew the truth that you will forever deny. We cannot rely on our husband."

"Yes we can."

"Don't kid yourself, how many times has he disappeared on us-"

"He always came back."

"A stranger. He came back a stranger. Did we not learn your lesson after Roche? Did Darron not teach us not to rely on others when we're suffering?"

Rosa could feel anger burning in her chest, and Layil closed her eyes and smiled revelling in the power in gave her. "How do I get rid of you?"

"I am you, so you don't. We are one and the same. Two sides of the same coin. Sisters, twins. I could go on."

"Please don't."

"You want to remain in control, Rosa, then I suggest you learn control. But know this, our goals are one and the same, survival and protection of those we care about."

"Charnel was not survival!"

"No, but look at what it gave us." She smiled, like it was a gift, like she'd done something so wonderful. "Those souls give us power."

"Enough!" The temple crumbled around them, the bricks enclosed about Layil sealing her in a windowless tomb.

"You can't lock me up forever!" She called from behind the bricks but offered no other protest.

"Yes I can."

Rosa drew a deep breath shuddering breath, unwilling to open her eyes, so comfortable leaning against him. When she finally did, she felt the weight of the world settle on her shoulders as fatigue washed over her. She reached a hand up to stroke the soft stubble on Seydon's face. "I'll never leave you." She murmured in response to his words "Not truly." She felt sick, whether it be from exhaustion or from the words still lingering in her mind she couldn't decide, covered from head to toe in a cold sweat she shivered. Rosa forced herself to sit up, to detach from the warmth of her husband and shuffled round on the stool to face him.

"This cannot go on." She told him with determination. "I cannot live in fear of myself. A manifestation of all things terrible in me, Layil might be, but she is still me."

[member="Seydon of Arda"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

“You want her gone,” He said. An understatement. Holding her upright from tumbling onto the deck, Rosa had went pale as wax and dripped ice from her pores. She mumbled terror in her half-daze while wrestling across her mindscape, contending with that... thing. It was a bitter afterglow to cap off their evening, after spending hours taking away his wife's troubles, stroke by stroke. She was still beautiful, even with hair matted, darkness circling her eyes, still wan in her pallor as warmth returned to her face.

“What are our options? Do we have any?” He asked. “This isn't possession. Not some phantom I can exorcise with a bit of chanting and herbs. She's a response to a long episode of disassociation, a living illness, inside your thoughts. Not exactly easy getting in there and taking a scourge to her.”

[member="Rosa Gunn"]