Darth Gyaumchem
"You profess your love for her but shrink away? You will watch as your wife demands, or your love is cheap. Put on your bravery and see the situations you hate for how complex they are, not how simple you view them." It might seem harsh to overwhelm the girl, but I see the hate within her as a roiling physical thing. It will either eat her alive, or worse, the family. There can be no trust in this slip of a woman if she forces herself to view the galaxy in so mired a lens. I squeeze
Stardust Solus Skirae
hand, this moment will burn not through its' pain, but its' stilted joy. "The ones we choose to hate hold the most power over us of all. Is He the one you want to control you so utterly?"Before the dawn around Panatha assuages us, first comes the comforting wind.
The warm tropical air off the ocean fluttered at Yasha's raven curls. She pulled on a loose robe of silk so soft her fingers fumbled. Night clung in its last seconds before dawn, the haze of the sun enough for Yasha to know her light-blind eyes would prevent her from truly seeing the city of Her People. Yasha leaned on the marble railing of the monumental palace's terrace, her first view not bathed in Ssi'rruk blood. Nobody down below was visible in armour, a dignified perseverance held the Panathan people as they cleaned up their city and went about early business. Deacons and mages lifted rubble with telekinesis, how strange! Such open use of the cantankerous Force! Yasha saw House Fitz-Kierke was part of the diligent nobility tending to the whole below. Eyes so often severe or hidden in her armour widened in an innocent wonder. "What's it like? To see Panatha with the sunlight in your own eyes?"
"It is beautiful," answered Koe, looking up to Yasha as the first rays of the morning sun streaked across the skin and silhouetted her in a brilliant sparkling halo. "The most beautiful thing in the universe."
"Our people, Koe. They fought more bravely than…" She tried to picture it, no zoom in her HUD, or informational upload. Neither were there targets, or a single worry on this paradisiacal world now the battles concluded. Weathered with a collective warrior-pride. Yasha turned to see Koe's perilous body covered in fine linens on the borrowed royal bed.
"My love, such good eyesight to see the city from beyond my ample frame." She stretched and winced at a pain in her shoulder and thigh from the battles the previous day. As the sun peeked beyond the horizon, the sea sparkled with a searing pink and orange light.
"Let's play a game." Yasha recoiled, padded barefoot to ease onto the bed. Kaine opened the blankets to swathe her, his hand stroked along her side and she welcomed it.
"Today, we are not Mand'alor the Infernal and the Emperor, but Ghada and Koemi. Two proper Panathan Nobles, back home. We will visit the street gardens, walk the artist's district without seventy kilos of armour, arm in arm no reason to hide. I'll pretend I was born here, raised visiting the Temple with my mother and grandfathers, a childhood spent hunting in the jungles or dancing on stage. Think of all the botanicals I could create with enough space in my day to experiment, or the planets I could terraform! What prevents us?" A wild hope sprouted in open amber eyes, face flushed with a rare and honest smile.
"Maybe in this beautiful game my family will see my smile, Noa'ik and Ale'ika will recognize… They'll see you almost as I do. Gigi and Maggi will every day know the disciplined affections of their beloved parents. In this… beautiful fiction… I can raise my babies, stop working to death. I won't feel guilt and shame for carrying my children, because it will be a celebration and not something to hide behind beskar plate. An inconvenience unbefitting a Mand'alor." Yasha slid her hand to her flat stomach, amber eyes found a wide electricity in the dim shadow of the suite, lip between her teeth as she watched the impenetrable stone-like face in the bed. Kaine's muscles softened, lips twitched up in a smile as he guided her to his chest to keep her warm. A hand settled on her flat stomach, hemmed her in with its' diligence. Black hair slid along hers, as Kaine leaned down to kiss her forehead. She wrapped her arm around his shoulder, sighed and shut her eyes in the birdsong quiet of the morning.
"I love Mandalore. I will serve my adopted people with the duty they demand, until they release my soul… but today? For this game, we are allowed to celebrate our baby without concern or plot, I can plan the birth as any Panathan woman. Speak to the Temple of Nussyn and imagine I could be there when the time comes, you by my side. Not hidden away in a sea of mumbles and weapon's fire. We can walk the beach and challenge the ocean's waves to dislodge us, hunt a beast the size of a building and no harm or hardship can reach us, because for this beautiful game, we are invincible.
I can pretend I was dedicated to Nussyn at the Temple, educated in botany from the earliest possible age. My family and siblings would be here, where so little could touch us. In my fiction our lives are uncomplicated, dedicated to our peoples, as my Panathan family wanted. You and I would battle side by side and I would terraform broken worlds into gorgeous jewels. Fill my mind with every possible fiction, my love; for a day it can be true. Ghada and Koemi, each with spouses of their own and with each other. We could get married, at the Temple my family helped save. Your sister is here, she could marry us. We could… I could… "
My heart crushes in the spatial remains of my chest, as I watch the cheerful hope of impending motherhood fade. Yasha's fiction crumbles. A tilt of the cosmic cloud, and
Cynthia Solus
has no escape from the sight, nowhere else to look but the way Kaine cups her cheek and brushes a kiss on her lips, his voice husky with rare but full emotion. "I will have illusions constructed, we may walk as others do and shall have our day… Yasha… it is not my intention you hide what gives you joy, my beloved." "It's not frivolous to have one day? To live in this beautiful fiction? It would be a perfect life…"
The rumble of his basso voice washed over us, his grip on her chin firm but tender. He turned her back to his chest, both arms gravitated to stroke along her stomach draped in thin silk. Nose nuzzled by her ear, he shut his eyes and breathed with her as they gently rocked together, the warmth of the morning brushing olive skin. How she clung to him, a monstrous salvage. "But first, you should eat. I commanded the creation of meals to keep you and our baby strong."
"So you did make demands while I slept. Of course you did. My Koe, taking care of me, the others of your household will get jealous..." The images fade to the vast incalculable bank of stars and I let the silhouette linger: two monsters in comfort.
"She married him that day, they feasted at the Fitz-Kierke Villa and later back to the Palace to rest. By the next morning, he helped her into her armour and I thought he would break her helm, his muscles were so tense to see her and little Viggo go. Return to Mandalore she did, stolen moments a day here, week there were all they got. Months passed before Yasha laid down her Mantle and moved to Alderaan to be with Noah and Alexandra. The Mandalorians no longer held her… he thought she'd stay away from the battles, then. No longer willing to hold back the onslaught the Sith craved to enact upon those, who massacred Dromund Kaas. Sith never forget a slight, and Mandalorian antagonizers were too virile to ignore upon their Southern border. When she died, her soul was in tatters. Damaged by the priests. There wasn't enough of her left, Cynthia, but the core of her desires. He created her beautiful fiction to fill in her soul's confusions, and gave her the chance to have the life she longed for since she was a child killing to survive."
The universe breathes around us, scale upon scale until the Galaxy is the size of my palm. Thousands of galaxies spin, their dance a prismatic lull to the cosmic chorus filled with our voices. Some recede as others grow, more collide into each other. "Kaine Zambrano is a destroyer. That is his function."
"Without destroyers, there can be no cycle of life and as unfortunate as it is for those caught in his path." The universe spins, nothing but growth until the inevitable stagnation clatters and breaks the beautiful dance to a cold, terrifying death. "When one sees the flow of the Universe, the way Galaxies are made and die and remade, I can see his value for what it is. In its' horrific necessity."
Once more, I flick my wrist and the universe breaks its stillness by an echo of darkness, which purges the stuck-rot and releases the galaxy to another swirling dance. "But think of how the man would change, if he lost her now? If he lost the only entity in the entire Galaxy who shocked us all by bringing love into the Dark Lord's soul? I would rather live in the Galaxy with a fraction of him softening, than in one where he's lost what he's found."
