One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

[Darth Empyrean]

Bastion
Undisclosed Military Hospital

[member="Dr. Vain Jar'He"]
_______________________________

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlvUepMa31o​

The ever present hum of machinery, droids moving about as regiments of soldiers walked past, the buzzing of the repulsorlifts that carried The Slave, strapped to the durasteel slab he was on now; a force neutralizing collar strapped around his neck, while his mouth was covered with a caged mask and his limbs were held viciously tight; all to prevent him from having even the chance to fight back. The metal clasps around his wrists and ankles had worn away the skin weeks prior, leaving nothing but disgustingly infected sores that oozed and scabbed.

Nothing but the occasional blinding light of an overhead fixture met him, his head unable to move as his pupils dilated in a subtle pain. It had been almost two months of this, non stop torture, interrogation by the Saaraishash, and the occasional visit by the cruel and indignant to tear him down further than he was already. The man had been crucified once, by that of another Sith on Bastion, again by a nameless clan that sought him for his connection to the Darkforge, yet all paled when the reality set in.

What really tortured the caricature of sin was himself; the ever dominant epiphany that his ambition brought him time and time again to his knees, the endless cycle of someone with no guidance. He failed at every turn, and it was time reality caught up to him; he only wished it was quicker, quieter.

As so many other times, he wanted it to end.

“Prisoner 8354A is ready, Sir.”, a disembodied voice spoke out as he was brought into a small processing area.

“Good. The doctor will be in, in a moment.”

It seemed his time was coming to a close.

 

[Irajah Ven]

Perhaps he was expecting a tall, towering Zambrano. Or a white haired, severe looking older sentient, that would gaze down at him with interest at the prospect of what work they were about to do. Even a wild eyed zealot, more mad than scientist, peering at him like some sort of fascinating bacterium, ready to be molded into the glorious works of a fracturing mind.

Instead, the figure that scurried in was short, covered in heavy robes, and a strange, beaked mask. Human or alien, male or female, impossible to tell. The diminutive being waved one of the aids out of its way, and when they didn't move fast enough, added a second hand and a voice buzzing through a vocoder, distorted though the annoyance shone through clearly enough.

"Move, shoo." Came the voice, almost insectoid and buzzing, as if the physical indication wasn't enough.

Considering he'd been too slow to move, apparently as far as Vain was concerned, it wasn't.

The beaked face leaned over the form on the table. The mask swept slightly, the figure clearly looking him over impassively.

"Not sure why they want you, but that's not my business." The tone was clipped, dismissive, as if this whole thing was beneath her. Which it was. But when [member="Darth Carnifex"] told her he expected her attention on a project, well.

Do what needs doing, get back to the more interesting work.

"You. Yes you. Whatever your name is. I don't care. Yes you, are you stupid?" All of that addressed to the aid. "50cc of the Aux-Val, the thinnest needle, I'm afraid his veins will collapse with anything bigger. Scrawny. Screening showed long term drug and alcohol abuse," the figure shook its head, tutting slightly.

"Don't know why they want you," the voice repeated, clearly unimpressed by the specimen before it.

[member="Darth Maliphant"]

 

[Darth Empyrean]

_______________________________

The buzzing of the doctor offered little comfort, though his eyes followed the outlines of the mask as the seemingly androgynous individual looks him over. Although his eyes followed, rationale thought had begun to slip from the torture; flashing between incoherent thoughts and ramblings as she sat quiet. The needle pressed into his vein, as the tone took a darker nature.

“Scum.”, he said from behind the mask, his eyes heavier than usual.

His muscles flexed in resistance, blood rushing through his body as he desperately tried to break one of the numerous restraints that held him even now. It wasn’t for freedom, but perhaps to receive some final repent as a murderer; to be gunned down in his element than to be strapped to a table waiting execution. He groaned slightly as he began to relax once more, his poor attempt at escape meeting nothing but the silence of the metal clamps.

After a moment, his voice went soft, tired and hoarse. He’d already spent so long screaming, that the small sentences he could manage were scratchy and broken, tearing at his throat with every syllable.

“I was tortured on Bastion before…”, he said as his gaze fell far past the ceiling he looked at now.

“Crucified by a man named Ignus.”, his tone coming through more broken as he spoke. Not in the direction of the doctor, so much as to some unknown entity far beyond them both.

“He didn’t even know who I was.”

He repressed a cough as it threatened to breach his already sundered his throat, soreness pulsing with every undulation of his heart. Beneath the mask, he cringed, annoyed the doctor was taking far longer than needed to kill him. His voice quit out as he tried to pressure them on the pace, mouthing the words instead of speaking them;

“Hurry up.”

[member="Dr. Vain Jar'He"]

 

[Irajah Ven]

The buzzing of the masked doctor wasn't meant to be comforting. In truth, Vain didn't care much, one way or the other, about how she came across. She did not aim to cause discomfort (usually) but the idea of doing anything outside of what she felt like in order to make someone else comfortable was entirely alien. Why? Just why bother such a thing? To waste energy simply to offer comfort when it gained her nothing. She would have snorted. Her ability to put others as ease and her willingness to do so were entirely separate.

She listened with half an ear to his ramblings. Not because she was particularly interested but because it was more effort to block it out than it was worth. The buzzing of a trapped insect. Irritating but ultimately harmless once the bee has already stung and ripped themselves apart in order to fly away only far enough to die somewhere else.

She imagined this 'Ignus' cared as little about 'who he was' as she did.

Vain had just turned to check something, catching the mouthed words more accidentally than anything else. She didn't realize he assumed they were here to kill him.

"You are in such a hurry to have your mind blanked and rewritten?" A snort. A cruel person might have deliberately delayed. A kind person might have hurried it along, to ease him into what was to come sooner, so he could forget the suffering he had endured.

Vain was neither of those things.

She kept her pace at where it suited her. The buzzing of insects would not change her methods.

"I'd say relax but that seems unlikely. I could paralyze your vocal chords if you'd like."

It was a selfish offer, with no attempt to hide it. It wasn't 'if he liked' it was because then he'd stop talking.

"Might be best, you won't be able to scream yourself hoarse again."

Again, for her sake, not his. A series of syringes were brought over and she worked slowly, methodically. This one to relax the muscles, that one to lower stress hormones, this other to light up the active portions of his brain when she started the scan. THIS one, now.... this one to dull the pain of the overly large needle she would be inserting at the base of his neck.

[member="Darth Maliphant"]

 

[Darth Empyrean]

“Might be best, you won’t be able to scream yourself hoarse again.”

As some semblance of thought came back to him, past the inane ramblings of a man far too deep in a nervous breakdown to realize how crude they were; The Slave looked upon the mask of Vain with a dead, apathetic stare, but one that held a contrived anger founded somewhere outside the doctor’s actions. He could not move, the restraints having proved this time and time again through the wounds, but his eyes began to never leave the doctor as they moved.

“You’re all the same, you know…”, he said with what hoarse emotion he could muster.

“Take and reform, break and conquer.”

His mouth dried as he spoke, but his attention stayed transfixed as he struggled to get the words on his mind out between the two. He shook slightly as the largest of the needs was pierced through his skin, quietly breaching the cerebrospinal superstructure that controlled most of his body. Exhaling heavily through his nose, he quieted for a moment to conquer what mental hurdle struck out at him in the form of pain, before speaking once more;

“How far can you drive a single person, while feeling nothing?”, the idle, mostly one sided conversation continued.

“Does that mask make you feel secure, Doctor? Powerful, even?”

Silence, only for him to whisper over the churn of machines and the monitors attached to him.

“There is power in ambiguity. We both know this.”

[member="Dr. Vain Jar'He"]

 

[Irajah Ven]

"I am interested in pushing the boundaries of science," came the clipped reply. "This? Is not that. The only reason I am working on you is because one does not say no to the Emperor."

The way she said 'you' might equate to the way someone else would say 'insect'.

Beyond the general wisdom in this, there was the added loyalty hard coded into the clone, writ clear in the baseline genetics. Vain had suggested that the same process be applied here- clone the man and work with that instead. Much like how her own template had been unsuitable for similar reasons of spirit. 'A hot mess' Jain might have called them both.

"At the basic level, however, yes. Everyone is the same." She worked as she talked, falling in the natural cadence of her actions. Injections, checking levels, another. Adjusting. Finding the perfect place, seeking just the right pattern of neural activity. "We live. We die. In between we eat, excrete." It was difficult to tell with how heavy the robes were, but the figure might have shrugged. "Knowledge elevates, but only for a time. Only until the mind fails us. Yours, I might add, will be failing you sooner than most."

She saw no harm in talking to him. Gained no particular enjoyment from it, but it cost her nothing either. She answered only what interested her in answering, ignoring the rest.

"The mask is not for my sake. Powerful? Please. Power is nothing I have ever sought."

It was an echo of the original. Vain was an exaggeration of certain features, what it might have looked like if certain factors had been removed. Cut out stem and root, rather than simply suppressed.

"Where you are driven is of little interest to me. You will be, in the end, much the same as you are. With the same capacity for foolishness or greatness. Now if Carnifex had given me permission to truly work on you...." there was a pause, a deep breath in and then let it out again.

"I could make you something beautiful. But no." A touch of disgust. "They prefer you intact. Their prerogative."

The beak of the mask tilted up, the next addressed to the assistant that had been hovering. "I need additional setafan, his system is oddly resistant.... all the drug use I suspect." It irritated her that she had miscalculated the dose based on his slight size- she had adjusted for the drugs similarity to some of the traces left in his system, but apparently the drug use was greater than she had judged. A waste.

[member="Darth Maliphant"]

 

[Darth Empyrean]

“Flat.”, he said as the good doctor worked through the operation.

“The puppet of another.”

Maliphant struggled against the bindings once more, only breaking open one of the strained wounds of his wrist, blood slowly trickling down and pooling near his hip before he ceased; his muscles barely making a dent in the restraints, obviously lessened by malnutrition and being kept completely still for far too long. His gaze eventually fell back on the doctor, monitoring them as they monitored his brain activity.

“For someone so smart, Doctor, I’d of thought you’d of understood. Even manifested a bit of intelligence to realize what ‘Power’ is, but no…”, he coo’ed in the sickly tones of a man on the verge of death.

“You’re more of a disappointment than I am, Good Doctor.”

He went quiet, if not for a moment however, as he himself thought on the Doctor’s words. Up until now, he assumed very much so that he was to be killed, executed for his crimes against a sprawling Empire, yet the doctor before him spoke of mercy, if one could call it such a thing. Letting him live, though a slave of another once more, was… cruel, in its own way; forcing him back to subjugation, even if he knew not he was conquered. It bothered him, faintly, as the freedom he had up until this point had been enjoyable, if not useless.

Had he truly made something of himself, or only spread the disease that made him the monster he was? No, that was too much to think about, too much right now.

“Do you dream, doctor?”

[member="Dr. Vain Jar'He"]

 

[Irajah Ven]

"Hmm, well, it's a good thing I don't value your opinion then, isn't it?" Was there a smile in the voice? It was difficult to tell, and certainly the mask gave nothing away.

She didn't tell him to stop struggling. She didn't really care if he hurt himself. Those sorts of injuries would be dealt with by others. Not her problem. Boring, honestly. Tch, the whole thing was boring however.

"Considering how much of a disappointment your life has been to everyone around you, really, I'm not sure why you think I'd take your thoughts on it seriously."

She'd read his file. It had been full of unnecessary data. Very unnecessary. She tched again.

"Most sentient beings do. It's an incredibly necessary aspect of sanity, not that you have exhibited great familiarity with that." A sniff, audible even through the mask.

From behind her, she heard a clatter, a soft swear.

"Just bring it here then you great oaf, I swear they would be better off giving me mynocks as assistants. It couldn't be any worse at least. Should ask Taeli for some flying monkeys or something."

As he approached, she turned- Doctor Vain was not merely short, but positively diminutive. And sitting on the stool, this put the beak of the mask squarely at elbow level.

Up went the tray, up when his hands, and up went the doctor's mask. The line that kept it snug around the back of her head kept it from getting knocked completely off, just askew, hanging off the side of her face as the assistant started gushing apologies and dropping to his knees to start cleaning up the shards and liquid from the shattered vial. It was only a moment- the familiar face a glimpse before gloved hands set it back to rights.

"Get out get OUT!" She shooed him with her free hand, jumping off of the stool and putting her back to the man on the table. The voice was familiar until the last word, as she re-secured the mask. "I will do it myself! OUT!"

[member="Darth Maliphant"]

 

[Darth Empyrean]

“And what does a Doctor like you dream about?”, he said idly.

That was, until the situation unfolded; resulting in the anger of the doctor, and a familiar tone gracing his ears. He saw only a portion of their face before it was corrected, but it was enough to flood his consciousness with memories of a bygone era; learning to play the piano, formal writing and reading, the long nights spent talking. It formed a lump in his throat, as the thought of death came closer.

“I suppose it makes sense you’d be the one to do this…”, he said in a far more hushed tone than he had said anything up till this point.

“I… You’re so cold. I suppose I deserve that, don’t I?”, he said with the smallest of forced laughs, staring at the empty eyes of the beaked mask. The Slave’s voice filled with something far different than it had; no longer the insane ramblings of a suicidal man hoping for death, but for the first time in years, the weakness of a life that always fell short.

“I don’t expect mercy, Irajah… But I didn’t mean it. I never meant it.”, The Slave said with a lump fighting every word. “You had a life to live, a life I could never follow… I just wish it was easier…”

“Are you happy? Has life done you well?”, he asked in an almost sudden desperation.


[member="Dr. Vain Jar'He"]

 

[Irajah Ven]

He couldn't see it, but the eyes behind the mask squinted at him. It took a second for her to realize what he was talking about. What he did see was the figure drawing still for a moment, regarding him.

"Ah, you knew the original," came the dry reply. "My condolences."

In truth, Vain rarely thought about her progenitor. She had met her, very briefly, once. And she knew what she had been told by the Zambrano's. The news of her death had been deeply disinteresting to the clone, and after that it was a topic that rarely came up for any reason.

"I'm not sure what you did to her to deserve mercy, but." The robbed figure shrugged as she continued to work. "I wouldn't feel too sorry for it. Such a waste of potential."

The way she spoke it was very clearly in the past tense.

As far as the Zambrano's were aware, Irajah Ven was dead, and had been for almost two years.

"I am not the Galaxy's touch of personalized revenge for whatever petty wrongs you believe you wrought," the buzzing voice continued. "Which may be disappointing, but you aren't that important."

The change in him, the level of regret was vaguely interesting, given what she knew of the man beneath her hands. It was also deeply obnoxious because it was directed entirely the wrong direction. The original had been the one who would have been fascinated by the power of regret and pain. The copy was far less intrigued.

[member="Darth Maliphant"]

 

[Darth Empyrean]

“Your… condolences?”, he said in a hushed, questioning manner.

It didn’t mean anything to him, not yet, but the confusion in his mind permeated his voice; the way it cantered and swung between vowels ripped from their even hoarsely charismatic manner to something almost childlike, bruised and beaten beyond recognition of what it was coming from. Not to say he was much more than that now, the massive amounts of stress hormone running rampant through his body combined with withdrawls and who knows what other circumstances; the man what was ‘The Slave’ was little more than a husk of an individual, but it had been that way for far longer than he had been on the slab.

“What do you mean, waste of potential?”, he said with a bit more urgency, small neurons firing at a lighting quick pace to make some sort of conclusion, some sort of answer to all that wasn’t making sense.

Once upon a time, The Slave had attempted his own murder of Irajah Ven, that which was his closest friend and lover. After his disappearance, and the months of torture he endured in a rogue elements search for The Dark Forge, his mind was a mere memory of what it once was, the shriveled husk of a once gentle soul, if not slightly misunderstood. Though, even as he had fallen to The Darkstaff’s intent to kill his anchor, that which was gentle in his heart held true in the face of death and resisted even harming her; despite all that he knew would come of it. His hope, all along was to ensure her survival above all else, to allow her to live a life he felt he never could; so many times he had been sought after, caught and tortured, maimed and crucified all for actions that were not his own, and it broke the child.

That which was left seemed to shatter in his chest as he realized everything that the Doctor meant, knowing that despite his meager efforts; she had been killed at some unknown point in the past, at least in his warped timeline. The Slave never understood her resurrection, never grounded the facts during his departure from regular society; only letting the emotion of a ‘death’ be realized that he never got to mourn. Though, as taught his emotions were, and as strained as he was against his shackles, there was nothing to be done; and no tears would come of the child turned cold by the brutality of the galaxy.

Nor did he whimper as the drugs began to take him, nor tears left his eyes; his ducts had long since dried. He simply swallowed and went quiet, likely much to the Doctor’s delight; leaving the air stagnant for the first time since he had entered the room. If death were ever to come, it would have been most welcome in those quiet moments before the darkness.

[member="Dr. Vain Jar'He"]

 

[Irajah Ven]

The masked figure didn't answer right away. She was, as anticipated, frankly delighted that he had for even a short time, stopped talking.

The last syringe emptied into his system. It would be so much more convenient to have simply cloned him and hard wired in what they wanted. Vain would know. No risk of regression, no risk of the terror of discovery. No haunting nightmares of the life before he would inevitably have. It made for more useful tools (and in this Vain had no illusions, but that acceptance was also hard wired in, simply proof of concept). But no, they had to keep him intact.

What a hassle.

If it came back to bite them all in the rear, Vain would look directly at [member="Darth Carnifex"] and inform him that she had told him so.

In truth, her comment about condolences had been because she hadn't thought highly of Doctor Irajah Ven. She didn't see the appeal of bothering with her at all, beyond as the template for herself and her sister. Much better suited to the needs of the Zambranos than that flawed creature ever could have been.

She hadn't fully registered the tone in his voice. It took a moment to percolate through the details she actually gave a damn about. And then-

The masked head cocked slightly to the side.

"A waste of potential." She repeated. "Someone who could have been more, and then ended up useless. The Zambranos have learned.... mostly.... against playing too much with their food." She gave him a pointed look, not that he could see it. "They went too far with that one. Ended up dead and broken."

From the tone it was clear that she spoke about it as easily and carelessly as someone might discuss the dead body of a mouse in a trap.

It wasn't as simple as that. The Zambranos hadn't even killed her. But Vain wasn't interested in the details and because of this she didn't elaborate.

"I know the mind she had," after all, it was her own. "Such a waste."

The mixture of drugs would be taking effect. How long it took varied largely from patient to patient, but she'd already dosed him more heavily than she had expected she'd need to. The beak shifted, letting her glance at the read outs. Once certain brain patterns hit the correct frequencies, she could turn this whole messy business over to the machine.

[member="Darth Maliphant"]

 

[Darth Empyrean]

The cocktail in his bloodstream began to eat away at the light that kept what meager sight he had working, eating away at the edges bit by bit as the startling mask that presided over him blurred and lost its inanimate sense. It was the face of a demon, that which consumed his love, the very nature of his soul, and even his physical form. He wouldn’t remember these last moments, lost to the effects of just another drug in his system; but the emotions drove something deep inside of him.

Between the artifacts he held in his body, and the astonishing natural affinity of The Force within The Slave; a single echo through the force rushed out from him, only to leave him drained and broken. He slipped into unconsciousness, unbeknownst to him that he would never again wake up as the man he was. A blessing in disguise, truly, but one that wouldn’t be seen for many months, perhaps even years; but the echo that he had created would be the last utterance he had ever made to the world.

It ripped through the abyss of space along the ley lines of The Force, through the metaphysical world The Force seemed to exist in, even through The Netherworld; though it was not a message bound for any of those souls trapped between. The long distance call was not for help, nor anything conventional; only the blurred image of The Slave, smiling, and the soft words spoken through his pale lips,

“I’m sorry.”, bound for its source.

Far from where he stood, the message would slip to [member="Irajah Ven"], and it would be the last thing The Slave ever thought of before his spiritual death.

[member="Dr. Vain Jar'He"]