Pearl on a String (Metus)

[Ahani Najwa-Zambrano]

The Isdihar hung in space like a pearl threaded on a lonely wire. Devoid of companions, it sunk across the yellowing string of its’ wake, the engines cut to conserve power. It floated, as listless as the occupants inside. All but two remained in the ship, which once was a gift of [member="Darth Metus"].

All but two had fled.

Pasha folded her elderly hands in her lap, as she watched the vacuum of space beyond the transparisteel. She was silent, as was the Echani way. Her Matron was far from so.

Ahani Najwa had yet to stop babbling since packing up and leaving Okyaab. The woman seemed to float, as if every law, every rule of nature denied her, including gravity. She touched a slim piece of metal laying prostrate on the bed.

“Stop. Aran, you’re dead.” Ahani’s silver eyes flashed to the helm she’d taken from her husband’s gravestone, “I said stop! I’ll do it if I want!”

Her hand lashed out, knocking the helmet off the bedside table. Ahani gasped out a horrified groan and dove for the beskar buy’ce, clutching and pulling it to her chest. For some time, she hung in a ball on the floor, clinging to the helm.

“Sorry! Sorry, Aran, sorry…. I know you’re just… you’re dead. You’re dead and this is fiction and I’m talking to a metal bucket, but I don’t know what to do now… and Anandi looks, she’s a tempting beast.” To a memory passed. When one remained alive for ages of the galactic circle, what did they have left but ghosts?

“I’m talking to a bucket... frak! Rrgh, Ahani you're older than this! It's just a... a... maybe one little knick wouldn't be so bad...”

Quiet as the grave she was soon, for age’s days, to enter, Pasha clicked a distress beacon, which went out to only select comms. Little did Pasha know this distress beacon did not reach [member="Manu Xextos"]. Oh no, for that was too simple a thing.

It went to the original gifter of the ship in question, and the sword which Ahani hungered to feel in her hand.

 

[Malok]

Running: Diagnostic.exe
Progress: 62%

When the average soldier looked upon a Mandalorian, they would only see the barrel baring down upon them. What they would not ever consider was the tremendous sum of time that the average vod spent ensuring that his beskar'gam functioned properly. And, though he had long since entered into Exile from his people, Darth Metus was no exception. It was during the lull between political meetings and battle planning that he sat before his crimson armor, busily going over every piece. Clutched within his dominant hand was a rag slick with polish, which he currently worked in circles upon the breastplate.

All the while, his buy'ce looked down from atop the armor - displaying an azure progress bar upon the HUD. Every so often, the Sith would cast a glance up in order to see how much longer the system scan would take...but soon, a different notification rang out. A shrill chime erupted from the helm - a frantic alert that a priority vessel was calling for aide. Metus craned his neck, setting his sulfuric gaze upon the notification which slowly loaded upon the glasteel.

And when he saw it, the rag slipped from his fingers.

His heart caught within his throat.

Ahani... The word fell from his lips as a whisper. So much as uttering her name saw sweet memories play before his mind's eye. It was so long ago that he had seen her last...just before the first Confederacy erupted if memory served. And now...now she was in trouble? He bolted to his feet. The stool upon which he sat toppled over as he scrambled forward within the Scimitar-class Star Courier, abandoning his quarters in favor of the Captain's chair. His fingers danced upon the console - interfacing the missive to his navicomputer before he placed his hand upon the Hyperdrive throttle.

It primed.

He...hesitated.

The majority of him wanted to throw the lever and dive into Hyperspace after her. That part of him that clung to the past...that remembered how happy he was when they were together...that man wanted to throw all caution to the wind and run as fast as he could to her side. But one small shred of logic yelled in protest. Darth Metus was no fool. He did not allow the weeks to turn into years without thinking about his former beloved; he knew that she had moved on. He did not know the intimate details of her relationship or even the name of her late spouse - what he did know was that she found happiness in another.

What he did know was that he was not the same broken man who spent hours with her in the Forge, either...

A heavy exhale escaped him. His fingers yet lingered upon the throttle...before shoving into action. His vessel shuddered and thundered into the blur of starlight, slicing through the Lane which would bring him to her. In his mind, right now, it didn't matter that she had moved on. It didn't matter that they weren't the same and so many years had passed since they had last spoken. What mattered was Ahani was in trouble. What mattered was she was calling for him. And despite his better judgment, he would run to her side.

In but the span of minutes, the blurs ceased and his vessel dipped into Realspace. His scanners showed the ship before him: Isdahar - the gift from so long ago. Ah...he remembered how her eyes lit up when she first saw that obnoxious bow upon the stern. For me?! she had exclaimed, all smiles.

He shook his head. Memory lane would have to wait. His finger tapped upon the comm, and a hasty message flew from his lips.

"Ahani, it's Metus. I'm coming aboard."

And if her Matron didn't mind opening the door, the broken Echani would soon be greeted to the sight of the Sith striding aboard her vessel. No longer a voice in her head. No longer a memory. But flesh and bone.

[member="Ahani Najwa"]

 

[Ahani Najwa-Zambrano]

Pasha indeed opened the coiling hatches to allow [member="Darth Metus"] entry to the Isdihar. This same woman was with Ahani in the Confederacy, and travelled from Chandaar as a refugee. She had aged almost to expiration, her face a worn relic of Ahani’s bloodline.

“Like looking in a foggy mirror.” Ahani said, often and without the irony of many races, whose genomes dictated visible difference between progeny and ancestral lines. Pasha remained silent, bowing her aging head to give Metus passage into the ship. She didn’t point, or show the way.

There was no need.

Upon the floor of her quarters, Ahani hugged her deceased husband’s helmet, turning the T-Visored helm over and over in her hands. A mark here, a ding there. An adventure, a bounty, a hunt. Aran Ordo’s lifetime peppered across the buy’ce he wore with pride and fear in tandem, a man overcome by battle fatigue and desirous of a simpler life.

A voice echoed across the chamber. Not ‘a’ but ‘the’ voice. Ahani’s eyebrows worked, her nose sniffing at the air. “Wh…”

Bootprints thundered along the corridor of the ship. Ahani checked her hands, waving the skin of her bare arms back and forth to find the knick, the mark of the Sith blade Isley made her.

But there was none. “I’m not…. I’ve been good, I’m not hallucinating.”

Footsteps became the flesh and bone spectacle of an armour-less Darth Metus rushing into her room. “Wh…”

The woman curled on the floor with a Mando’ad’s helmet was no slim skin and bone transplant from time’s forgetful bounty. She was hale and wholesome, well dressed in new linen trousers and a sleeveless grey shirt. Anandi sat on the far side of the bed, unsheathed and unsullied. Although the blade was unsullied, the woman before the Dark Mandalorian was all but starved in one respect: To please her Force-Hating husband, Ahani had attempted to seize herself off from the very Force which extended her unnatural life. All but a trickle laid waste to her considerable barriers.

“Metus…” Ahani’s lungs staggered. She rolled to a knee, her bare foot pressed against the carpet. The helmet clung in her hands. Ahani pulled it closer. “You can’t have it. It’s all I have left… he’s… it wasn’t my fault! I didn’t know Mandalore was going to crumble! He was supposed to be safe! Him and the pups! They… they were supposed to be safe there! I was only gone a week! I was gone and… and…. that xar’chath hutuun… she… you Mandalorians and your blood!! Where were you, when Mandalore was nuked, Metus!? Where were you when my husband died choking on volcanic ash!? Where were you!? I know where I was! Two days from Mandalore, returning home! Why couldn’t I just make it home!? Force’s beard, I’m talking to a shadow. I swear I didn’t cut myself, did I? Didn’t I?”

Ahani began to search her hands, her arms, tracing her skin for a mark which would lead to such a vivid hallucination. “No… no I’ve been good… I’ve… I… I need to close my eyes. I need to stop. Breathe, me. Breathe and think. No. No, it’s the grief conjuring an image. Okay… okay it’s just…. I probably fell asleep. Wake up, Ahani! Wake up! Wake up!!”

Where previously, Ahani would have struck her own head to get a response, the years had done the woman credit. Ahani rubbed at her cheek with a palm, sliding against the far wall and pushing upward with her feet in the carpet. She breathed deep, hugging the helmet close.

“I tried to hate you… to hate all of you for frakking up Mandalore, and killing my husband… didn’t help…. gosh this must be another of Manu’s ‘stages of grieving’ he keeps nattering on about. I’m hallucinating to get it out of the way. Kark. Kark frakking kark it.”

 

[Malok]

This is what it felt like...when a man’s heart breaks.

Ahani Najwa was always...teetering on the edge. Her stability was never in question - for there was none truly to be found. All those years ago, a young and broken Mandalorian found in her the means to be whole. And all those years ago, an ancient and broke Echani, found in him the stability to be whole. Now...literal years after they had gone their separate ways, the Sith looked upon the woman who once held his heart in her hands. And she was so much more worse than when he had first laid eyes on her. The blame? Who to blame? Who did this?

She was shouting and clutching a buy’ce - screaming about a lost love. The destruction of Mandalore...she had lost her lover there. Gone to the ash. Gone to the fire. He knew that Hell all too well. And she couldn’t save him. No one could have saved him. It cost the Sith his life to give his Clan a fighting chance to escape the destruction...but her Ordo did not have a Darth Metus in his corner. And his Ahani just couldn’t get there in time.

And now she was broken.

Now she frantically rubbed her cheeks and challenged his standing there as being an illusion. She checked herself over and over for something, and cast frantic glances at the gift he had made for her - Anandi...Heat. Where was this heat coming from? Why did his face feel like it was on fire? Why could he not see? Why...Why did the room go blurry all of a sudden. A ragged sob escaped him. His offhand clutched his mouth, his nails dug into his flesh to steel himself. Why? Why did it hurt so much to see her like this?

”Ahani.” he breathed. ”I’m no illusion. I’m no dream.” He bridged the gap between them in but a few paces, lowering himself to a knee. ”I was there. I died, with your love. Died, choking on the same ash. I managed to claw my way back to the living but..I’m real Ahani, by Kad I’m real.” He reached out, daring to place a hand upon her shoulder. ”Anandi has not stung you. I am really and truly here for you.”

And with those words, two streaks escaped down his cheek.

[member="Ahani Najwa"]

 

[Ahani Najwa-Zambrano]

“I’ve become too old to die.”

Her throat barely bore the warble spreading out of it. Silver eyes searched the body of an illusion, which cast an aurora of heat at the palest skin. Curled against the wall, the woman whom Metus loved shuddered under the searing pain lancing into the room.

Fire. Ash and smoke. A world’s worth of choking esophagi. A man ripping the fabric of reality to give his family one slim chance.

“You were there… you were on Mandalore.” The gaunt vibration of death scissored across his clothing, hair and skin, sending Ahani’s senses reeling with the smoke of flames and terrors she remained ignorant of.

In all her years, she’d never died.

In all her centuries, death was all Ahani had left to fear. [member="Darth Metus"] became that horror, bundled in new flesh and returned at the single push of a button to resurrect the protective barriers they erected not between each other, but around their love.

Love. It remained, where once it crumbled to the prison of a sane woman’s restructured mind. Ahani moved her life forward, but never moved ON from the addiction she held to Metus’ touch, to his ability to see the shattered statue which was her soul.

The buy’ce drifted to the ground, bouncing once to roll into the bed. “You died like Aran… why do I have to linger in a galaxy with nothing else left, Metus? Why am I still here?”

His hand touched her skin, and in the touch was the answer. Ahani’s time was not yet finished. Her work was not yet done. Caustic tears poured from Ahani’s eyelids, as slender arms wove around his chest.

“I’d lost you. I lost both of you… how did you find m-oh… ooh, oooh oooh.” One of Ahani’s hands left his chest to run her thumb along the tears on Metus’ cheeks. Without pausing to think of her actions, Ahani kissed the tears off his face, then hugged into his chest. She hiccupped, fighting the urge to break down further.

His arms were hot as his forge had been when he created Anandi. The hiccups became open sobs as she gripped at Metus’ back, curling up in the heat of Metus’ body to hold and be held.

To hold and be held… “Metus… I’m sorry. I’m sorry I didn’t get there in time. I’m sorry I shut off from the Force and couldn’t hear you. I would have come… I could have come for you. I could have…”