The Death of Mikhail Shorn

[Lord Ghoul]

A pale figure stumbled through the forest, hand clutched to his side. The heavy fall of rain beat against the canopy. Wet, tousled, raven hair was matted to his head. Gold eyes rimmed with red faded slowly back to their usual icy blue. He was alone... and lost.

Mikhail Shorn stumbled over a root and fell face first. He pushed himself up to his knees with one hand, the other still clutched to his side, and spat out dirt. Sitting in the middle of the forest, Shorn leaned back and stared up into the rain, brows drawn together like bolts of jagged black lightning, lips twisted in pain.

A deep sorrow twisted inside him, the pressure of it building like volcanic flame, but he found his fires of vengeance had all but run out.

Memories came back to him slowly. They'd come to take it back, just the two of them. More than enough to conquer a city. What had happened? A short fight. She'd driven them mad. He'd swept them away. They won. And then....

Fingers curled into a trembling fist.

A crack in the air, sudden and violent. He remembered it vividly, though the rest grew hazy now. That sound haunted him. It'd been so fast. A single shot, right through her head. And he couldn't do anything to stop it. The helplessness of his situation, that was what had really burned him. Sitting there, cradling her dead body, looking wildly around for the killer. The city was full of towering structures. The sniper could have been hiding in any one of them. So Mikhail had leveled them all.

Rage and power had filled him, a miasma of energy in the Dark Side stronger than anything he'd ever unleashed before. He remembered his vision rimmed with black and red spots... and he remembered a pure wave of telekinetic energy rippling from him. It had hit with a strength of a tsunami.

The rest of the memory was the crumbling groan of toppled structures followed by a billowing cloud of choking, blinding dust.

 

[Lord Ghoul]

The rain continued, careless of the grief that welled in a beaten man. Pitter-patter, pitter-patter. Ceaseless. A powerful, hard rain that seemed like it would last forever.

Shorn's knees squelched in the mud. He tried to stand, but fell again, hands caked with dirt. The blue-eyed Sith Lord pulled himself back beneath the shelter of the tree whose roots he'd tripped on. Beneath its branches the rain seemed less. Mikhail leaned back against the unyielding bark and closed his eyes. Just for a moment. Just to rest.

He slipped back into the memories.

The cloud of dust was settling. He was hacking up a lung. They felt the death of so many and they came. Came to revenge themselves on a man who only lived for vengeance. The ring had held against their assault and he'd beaten them back. Alone, he'd crushed their attacks and sent them smashing through walls, brought buildings down on their heads and surrounded them with tornadoes of rubble. The lust of fury had burned like a dark star in his heart, for she was dead. He didn't have any cute quips or one liners. No snarky responses. His soul had been emptied of humor. All he had left to give them was venom and death. One last bite.

Consequences had never mattered to him. Why would they have then? He'd fought with the abandon of a man with nothing to lose and the crazed intensity of a man focused on a single goal. Paradoxes and dichotomies. Contradictions. That was who he was, at his core. Just a contradicted, conflicted human being......

.... A human being who could topple a skyscraper with a thought.

They'd hurt him. The ring had healed him. Surprised, they'd fallen back. More wounds, but they fell one by one. He hadn't known or cared if they died. He'd just wanted them to feel his pain. At last, there was just one left. The old, familiar enemy. Their exchanges had brought the city to its knees 'til at last, as Shorn hurled his foe through wall after wall of duracrete, he himself had been hurled clear of the city.

He remembered a long flight amid the rain and landing roughly at the edge of the forest that loomed near the city, a reminder of the power nature still had. When all their structures faded. When that city was an uninhabited ruin, the forest would creep back in. Nature was patient. That was why she always won.

 

[Lord Ghoul]

Water streamed down Mikhail's pale, angular face. Blue eyes fluttered open. He inhaled a shuddering breath. Pain trembled through him, reminding him that he still lived. Shorn's lips twisted into a disgusted sneer.

"Still?"

He glanced up at the branches shielding him, trying to peer through them to the overcast sky above. There were so many times in his life when he should have died, but the galaxy had to let him play on like a broken record, a cruel joke that prolonged his misery. Mikhail moved the hand he'd held clutched to his side. Beneath it was a mass of red, torn flesh that pumped out the deep red of arterial blood. Shorn closed his eyes and swallowed hard, letting his head fall back against the bark of the tree.

"Nng. Well, finally. Me, my misery and no escape."

The Sith Lord chuckled, exposing crimson-stained teeth. He coughed violently.

"Yes."

Mikhail turned his head and saw Alexis standing in the rain.

"How many times do I have to kill you..." The words might have been menacing, but they were spoken with the weakness of a dying man.

"Just one."

"What, so you're here to torture me in my final moments?"

She looked at him with captivating eyes of hazel. "How many people do you think you killed?"

Shorn closed his eyes and shook his head, coughing lightly. "I don't know. A lot. What's it matter."

"Do any of those deaths haunt you?"

Ice-blue eyes opened slowly and stared straight at her, Alexis. He remembered the smoking hole in her chest, the sort a lightsaber left in a corpse. His lightsaber. There'd been an expression of hatred in her dead eyes as they stared up at him.

"Yes."
His hand wasn't the only thing that trembled.

"But it's not like I can... wave a magic wand and take it all back." He glared at her. "What are you trying to do, redeem me? Now?" Sardonic laughter. He spat out a wad of blood. "I made my choices."

So many choices. So many decisions. Almost all of them 'bad', whatever that meant. He did what he wanted to, when he wanted to, because nobody could tell him otherwise. Sorrow, anger and regret were all just part of those decisions. Maybe Andra had been bringing out the good in him, but he'd never fooled himself. Never told himself that he could cheat death or consequences. He had always known what was coming, he just didn't care.

"Fine, Mikhail. You win." She said, hate in her eyes, form fading in the rain.

"This is winning? I want a refund."

She was gone.

Shorn sighed and looked again at his blood-soaked side. Without Andra what was there left for him? Newly born twins he'd never seen? No, they would be better off without him. A Sith Lord for a father, hunted by all and beholden to none. Their lives would be in constant danger. And it wasn't just that. He would've been a terrible dad, if his father was anything to judge by. That was one death he did not regret.

No. Let them grow up hating me, with only that damn holocron and what people tell them to know me by. Stories about the murderous Thronebreaker will be better than anything I could ever give them. Stories don't lead to disappointment... but I would. No matter what I'd do I'd fail. I'd be too loving, or too distant. I'd give them too much money, or not enough. Strong enough to kill people in front of them... or not strong enough to save them. I'd always fail. Checkmate.

Who knows? Maybe they won't remember me all bad. Maybe they'll get some of their mother's memories. But who am I kidding? I'd hate me.

He laughed again. It devolved into a hacking cough.

Eyelids fluttered, struggling to stay open. His breath was shallow. Mikhail stared ahead, lips quirking up in a smirk at something only he could see.

"Well... what do you kn...."

His head lolled forward and his breath stopped then, like it should have on Ossus, so long ago.

The hard pitter-patter of the rain came to a sudden a halt, not so eternal after all. Sunlight peeked through the trees. It almost looked like he was sleeping, alone in the forest.

* * *​

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They found the wreckage the Thronebreaker left behind, but no one ever found the body of Mikhail Shorn, though many Fringe sources reported he'd been mortally wounded.

While his death remains suspect, his legacy continues with his children, Katya and Lucien Shorn. It is their story to which we now turn. They are shrouded in the shadow of their father, but perhaps by contrast they will shine all the brighter.

Fin.​

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pMBxv7PTs4​

 

[Lord Ghoul]

Tribute to the Original Version​

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of​

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My Ripoff Character​

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOpNVgZ_EQ0​