Old and New [Seydon]

[Rosa Gunn]

Rosa trembled in his embrace, eyes wide and flickering madly, searching the shadows for signs of the queen, for trails that she may have left behind, her breathing uneven, face wet with tears she'd spent. When the shadows offered nothing, she coiled her arms about Seydon and buried her face into his neck, breathing slowing down. Fear slipped away from her as did the darkness that had weighed so heavily on her heart. The first steady lungfuls of air felt cool and refreshing, like she was remembering what it was like to breath easy.

"It's done." she choked, still trembling. She was spent, her energy having gone on sustaining her for the last days, and holding the force meld in place. Her limbs felt like lead, too heavy to move. Fresh tears of joy flooded forward, as a small laugh escaped her. "She's gone."

With great effort, Rosa lifted her head, taking Seydon's face in her hands she peppered every inch with tearful kisses, smiling widely. "We did it..." sh pressed her forehead against his, thumbs caressing his cheeks, still clinging tightly to his face. Another tearful laugh gurgled forwards. "You were wonderful." My saviour and guardian, my strength, my love, my husband. My Dunaan. How lost I would be without you.

[member="Seydon"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

She was a doll weight in his arms, when the last reserves eked out her fingertips and warmed the scruff bristling his chin. Light didn’t leave her gaze, but grew hooded under a dim of exhaustion. Rosa’s pallor reminded him of mixed wax and clay, her sweat like loose gelatin rolling in soapy globules down her cheek and arms. Her husband raised several fingertips, checking circulation, listening closely. Seydon could her individual bubbles of avleoli swelling and compressing inside the film of her lungs, drawing deepening, slow chestfuls. Dared to softly pull up on an eyelid and watch for dilation. ...Light response was there, but Rosa was gone. Drifting in a dead sleep.

Seydon carried her to the bed and wrapped her in thick quilt roles and braced her skull against a cradle of placed pillows. The balcony was closed off, shutters bound back into place, half a dozen candle holders lit to provide a glow in the dying evening twilight. Light pooled under his bare feet, wandered in the cracks of the cobble floor, painting shines on the long grey walls absent of decoration. The Dunaan wasn’t yet ready to retire. Anxious energies wracked his nervous system and ran his blood hot, cued to a danger response, reaching and holding tightly to Winterfang in its scabbard by one hand. He closed his portion of the meld through sheer effort, willing the thread to unwind and give Rosa Gunn peace to sleep unburdened by his mood.

He strode into the single bathroom. Shut the door in behind him, sliding the old iron-cast lock into place. He seated himself on the edge of the toilet, for a moment alone to his thoughts. Winterfang carried his weight, arms strung over the cross-guard, cats eyes settled on a point in the wall but peering beyond. Lost in his own realm of fear and variables, where he couldn’t stop running through the many what-ifs of their confrontation with Layil. They had succeeded, just. It was all Seydon had sought after since bringing Rosa home: kill that last shackle chaining her back to the ghosts of the One Sith. They were shattered, but it brought nothing like the comfort he presumed it would.

So the Dunaan waited, eventually seated on the stone tiling. Sword propped up against his side, lost all the while fighting that ingrained inclination to keep... running. One task finished, more to tackle and overcome, but... Rosa was healed now. Nowhere left to pack up and travel out to. Gradually, Winterfang slipped past his fingers, and clattered against the floor.

[member="Rosa Gunn"]

 

[Rosa Gunn]

Rosa's sleep was blissfully empty. The nightmares that had plagued her since her return from the One Sith were long dead and the effort of the battle had left her mind without the ability to forge fresh dreams for her. So she slept deep, waking only when she rolled into the late morning sun the filtered through the shutters, casting slivers of golden light across the room, dust dancing in them. The space next to her as empty and cold, it took several moments for Rosa to put two and two together. Seydon wasn't there, he hadn't been all night.

She sat up slowly, extending her reach in the force, searching for him. Lilac eyes slid slowly to the bathroom door a frown creasing her brow. She prodded him gently in the force, seeking to stir him from his slumber before getting up, leaving the blankets behind her and trying the door. Her frown deepened when she realised he had locked himself in. At first she felt rising panic, had she damaged him? had their meld and the fight with Layil harmed him in a way she'd been too exhausted to see? She searched him in the force, looking for fresh scars, looking for something changed.

"Seydon?" she called softly, careful to keep worry from her voice. She cast a look around the room, her lightsaber resting on the bedside table she snatched it up, and was about to cut her way no the bathroom when reason trickled through the panic. This was what he used used to. The dark nights alone in space after a hunt, as much as it tormented him, solitude was familiar. It was routine.

Biting her lower lip, she turned the silver cylinder over in her hands before coming to her decision. The orange blade hissed into life and she thrust the point through the lock, deactivating it as soon as the door inched open. Her feet padded softly across the tiled floor as she crouched before him, a hand reaching to stroke his face. "Come to bed love." she whispered.

[member="Seydon"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

“I can’t...” Seydon whispered.

Clinically instilled disciplines at times contrived paranoia in a Dunaan. Seydon understood the phenomenon, knew it was an endorphin complication arising from a still imperfect mutagenic process from the Trial of the Waters. Three out of twenty survived from an induction batch; Ajax told him, listened to the Lodge of Shade nearby plying skeletal hands over arrangements of archaic but well cared instruments. His nervous system, musculature, organs, circulatory system, down to gene structure, were enough to make him compatible to the poisons and mutagens necessary for the change. ...It still left him strung as a bare wire at times. Riding it out took an age, ‘specially after a rotten hunt.

Bad spells on Kuat, dredging through labyrinthine septic tunnels buried under rich, interconnected rural estates. Killing drowners and necromant in the dark. Cleaved a screaming, near-see through body apart, reversed Winterfang in his hands and drove the point back under his armpit, poking through another one’s skull. Sloshing forward, managing a riposte against flying, clawed hands, stabbing through a bared throat and taking the jaw off its sinew hinges in the same gesture. Seydon shuddered, eyes open and bloodshot. But his hand managed to still and loosen, knuckles unlocked for Rosa’s touch to slid in. Her hold prodded him to get off the floor.

Winterfang was laid at the foot of their bed on an old leather chest neither of them recalled putting there. She’d crossed over to the balcony and had undone the curtains and cedar shudders. Breezes wafted in, distilled from a starry sky above. Pale light flowed down and followed Rosa’s shoulders, returned and now tugging him back onto the bed. For a very long moment, they stood on bare knees, swaying mildly, holding one another for balance.

“...She’s gone,” He whispered. Her eyes were so very bright in the dark. Dark curls of hair resting in elegant tucks behind her ears. Possibility and impossibility opened up for him. The Dunaan’s kiss filled her mouth, followed by a voice like running blood and hot steel. “She’s gone, Rose. She’s gone... You’re free... Free... We can... We can do anything now. No more fear. No more... I’m staying. Right here. Feth it. Know what I’ve wanted, with you? ...Family...”

[member="Rosa Gunn"]

 

[Rosa Gunn]

It was surprising how a word could change everything. A single word comprised of three syllables that had the ability to knock Rosa sideways to bring a rush of conflicting emotion. She bowed her head slightly, avoiding his gaze. Family. Children. Motherhood. All things she wanted and all things she couldn't have. Not by any natural means. Had she been able to, she'd have given birth a dozen times over by now. Roche had broken her, long before the Trials had broken him, and even then, they did not know for sure if it had broken him. She could not bring herself to say anything, for nothing she could say would have done anything to help, not in his fragile state.

He was staying. They could conquer the rest of it another time and in another place, now? She lifted her head again, lilac eyes blazing. He was staying. Layil was gone and he was staying. By conquering one, she'd claimed victory over the other. A thumb slid over his cheek, over white stubble and old scars. A smile tugged at the corner of her lips and she lifted her chin to place a kiss on his brow before drawing him closer, lips brushing his, skin tingling everywhere they were touching.

"Family." she agreed in a whisper, kissing him gently. He was her family, he was all she needed. She cast aside her want and accepted what she had, her kiss becoming fiercer as she pushed him down into the blankets and the soft mattress beneath. Hot breaths, soft whispers and a burning desire forced all further conversation aside.

He was staying.

[member="Seydon"]