Private The Warm Winter

[Corazona von Ascania]

I stand as one of the Triumvirate now.

The realization struck her like lightning. Even after landing, sparks still trawled their way up and down her spine.

The triumvirate. He’s a triumvir.

Marcel lasted only a few precious moments. The Viscount’s harsh bearing faded from his daughter in little increments, waning in the wake of his son’s admissions.

Cora drifted back towards the surface, watching the band of scar tissue shift and stretch across Lysander’s cheek as he spoke. Ultimately, he was a man who was responsible for his own decisions. It still hurt to see pain inflicted upon him, even if he’d sought it out. She remembered watching him fall from the Wroshyr tree. She'd never forget it as long as she lived.

“It all hurts me, Lysander,” she admitted. Slowly, Cora extended a hand. Cupped his jaw, if he allowed it, and brushed her thumb of the mark that mirrored her own.

“That is was what generations Ukatian women are made to do - bear pain. Silent and solemn. I did it to shield you and Fatine growing up, and I’d do it again in a heartbeat. It's just..." she trailed, worrying her bottom lip with her teeth "....you won't let me shield you from the galaxy anymore. And it's been hard for me to come to terms with that."

Lucy wouldn’t have the same life; Cora’s daughter wouldn’t be used as marriage fodder or a pawn to secure alliances. Her parents would love and protect her, not use her. Cora murmured, soft and slow. Her touch never left his face.

“If my brother had truly died on Ruusan, then he would not have come here to speak with me, to hold his niece like she was the most precious thing in the galaxy.”

Something in Lysander, she realized, wanted her to know his journey. His reasons, and perhaps, the emotion behind them. That boy wasn’t dead, not by a long shot. Traces of him lingered enough for Cora to recognize who she was looking at.

Her hand slipped beneath his chin in a gentle cradle, angling his gaze into her own. She spoke softly now, reverently. Carefully, but with conviction that had been tempered by every victory and every loss she had ever known. Lysander was a man now, and she wouldn’t do him the disservice of trying to talk around things.

“I find your intentions to protect Ukatis truly noble, but I think you’re more comfortable in the Dark. And I think that’s why you chose to cultivate power among the Sith, rather than find a way to protect Ukatis that doesn’t rely on strength fueled by hate and greed and fear.”

Cora inhaled slowly through her nose. Lucy wrapped her fingers around her uncle’s thumb, eagerly tugging on the digit in an attempt to draw it closer to her mouth.

“Sith turn on each other more easily than any other group.” She frowned, pensive, recalling the complicated web of alliances and enemies she’d once been privy to. Before the Blackwall. "I have walked on that side. I have seen it. It isn’t a stable power structure - it’s a gamble. If they know what’s precious to you, they will use it against you.”

She let her voice fall away, Lucy’s little grunts and coos filling the space between them. Cora inhaled slowly, breath rising behind her ribs.

“How did you become a triumvir so shortly after being knighted? Which one did you kill? And who-" her voice lowered here, and it lost some of that softness as she traced over his scar with the pad of one finger, "did this to you?"

Lysander von Ascania

 

[Lysander von Ascania]

Corazona von Ascania​

At first, Lysander looked puzzled, as if he couldn't quite believe she was close enough to touch. It was displayed in the sudden iron grey of his gaze, brows knitting. Then came recognition with a stab of something raw. Grief followed, wide as a chasm. Those old Covenant drills, Korriban forged punishments, the Core's cold arithmetic, Lysander's body remembered each and every one. That was why he flinched inwardly, even when his mind forced him to stand strong.

The Sith's shoulders dropped, chin sagging into her palm, followed by an inhale that dared to pull him back toward something gentler.. but not without further resistance. While he may have allowed the touch, every fiber of his being remained alert. She always could see right through him, but she didn't know the whole truth.

"I know the Dark scares you. But believe me, I don't carry it to harm you or Lucy. I do it to protect you both."

Under his skin, a chilly echo of Sith treacheries ran its course. He'd witnessed greed being weaponized, covenants broken in avarice. "It was never meant to be a betrayal of you. It was a desperate gamble in the beginning.. one I lost the moment I first drew blood."

Lucy gurgled happily, unaware of the storm that'd been gathering in her uncle's heart.

An ancient sorrow passed across his youthful features, like shadows over water. "You speak like there are other paths that wouldn't have led to more graves." He swallowed, Adam's apple bobbing against the collar of his tunic. A question he'd carried for years finally surfaced. "What if I'm not corrupted by the Dark, Cora? What if this is just who I am?"

Lysander's gaze dropped to Lucy, whose fingers were now exploring the calluses on his palm. "You're right," he conceded. "Ukatis taught me how to play the game before I could even name it. Risks, verbal sparring, weighing lives. The Sith just gave me better pieces to move across the board. They affirmed that power is the only currency that actually matters.. and they offer the best exchange rates."

"I'm good at it. Too good, maybe. And there's freedom in that, terrible as it may sound."

A toothless mouth found his knuckle, interrupting his racing thoughts. "Who told you I was knighted?" The question wasn't meant to be accusatory. "Interesting, the stories that reach you here."

Looking away, muscle worked in his cheek. "It wasn't I who murdered one of the triumvirate." Perhaps not the answer she wanted, but the truth.. was too complex to articulate in the moment.

He didn't want the walls to rise, but they came anyway. One invisible brick at a time. "One of your friends," the words caught like thorns in his throat. "Jonyna. But it was a small price to pay for destroying Edic Bar."

Fatine's name tore open another unhealed wound. How long had it been since he'd seen his other sister? The face in his memory was frozen in time. The Dark had given him everything he'd asked for, but it had taken things he hadn't offered.

"Tell Fatine.." he began, searching for words that wouldn't sound like begging. "If she ever wanted to see me again, I would make time. Always."

There was also the topic of Acier and that particular Ascania. How could he make the other blonde understand that some Sith would have stood loyal to the end, while those claiming the Light would have quickly turned away? He didn't believe he couldn't reshape his sister's perception of these brethren, especially when her views were shaped solely by the past.

 

[Corazona von Ascania]

"What if I'm not corrupted by the Dark, Cora? What if this is just who I am?"

Something stirred beneath the steel and ice. Something always had - at least, what Cora could see. They’d occupied the same space for years, after all. She could practically feel the weight on his soul when Lysander’s question wrapped around her.

“I believe that you believe that.”

Cora let her words hang, a thread without a knot. Her lips parted, lingering a hair’s breadth apart before she spoke again: “But I know how difficult it can be to see the forest through the trees. I was too arrogant to see it when the Dark was corrupting me.”

Lysander had surrounded himself, intentionally or not, with enablers. Would that be enough to propel the Sith into total galactic dominance, or would it become an Achilles’ heel?

"Who told you I was knighted?"

“You just did.” The line of Cora’s lips pulled into a sad smile for just a moment. It quickly fell away. Still, the gentle warmth of her hand didn’t pull back, afraid that if she let go, he’d drift too far for her to ever reach again. “Acolytes aren’t named Triumvirs.”

The Covenant sat outside of the Blackwall, out from under the cryptic shadows that shielded the Sith Order. Information flowed a little more freely out here.

The way Cora fell quiet was a response on its own. It filled the space between them, perhaps heavier than any words she could share. She cast her mind back to his Padawan days, having always envisioned his knighting as a Jedi.

Then, her eyes grew wide. Breath stilled in her lungs.

“Jo-“

Jonyna Si had inflicted that scar upon her brother. More than a fellow Jedi, a friend. Why had Jonyna not told her? When had this happened? A deep, righteous anger swelled within her, and there was a momentary flicker of shadow across her face. High above the siblings and their oak tree, the wings of a bird clipped the sun as it flew past.

Cora swallowed down her anger, let it tangle in complicated knots in her gut. Her hand slipped from Lysander’s face with all the energy of a corpse.

“You don’t have to be a Jedi. You don’t even have to live in the Light - Ashla knows there were years where I didn’t. But why does who you are have to come at the cost of so many lives?”

Lysander von Ascania

 

[Lysander von Ascania]

Corazona von Ascania​

Cora's words fell like frost creeping at the nape of his neck. He'd stood beneath this oak a thousand times, Lucy's soft coos mingling with the sigh of the wind's whisper through the leaves, but never had a single sentence dug so deeply in his thoughts. His heart pounded against the invisible chains the Dark had spent years forging around him. After so many solitary nights in those depths, almost anyone could learn to tame their fears, though..

"I'm not certain I can answer that," admitted slowly, tinted with a sorrow usually kept hidden. "There are some elements of the Dark that.. feel true. Not cruel or corrupting, but essential. A place where the galaxy's chaos can be shaped into order.. where power is not just taken, but earned."

A still fragile corner of Lysander longed for her approval, even as he clenched his jaw and furrowed his brow against her judgement.

Slowly, lids closed for a breath, trying to still the thousand voices clamoring in his skull. The Dark's temptations, the Core's demands of loyalty, the yearning for a simplicity he abandoned long ago. He couldn't help the questions that rose in his chest: Could he ever be the brother she deserves when every choice he's made echoed with the Sith?

When he opened his eyes, they met his sister's. Throat tightening, he swallowed, daring to let words chisel away at the wall. A slow exhale left him. "I don't know if the galaxy will ever permit my return. But if any part of me still hopes, it's right here."

Lysander whispered so soft she might not hear him. "I want to come home, Cora. I want to believe that will be possible someday." Lips pressed into a thin line. "But until then.. this path, as dangerous as it is, is the only one I know." He too wanted to confess his secret prayers for redemption, words never shared with anyone, but they remained unspoken.. lost in the galaxy' s cruel twists.

"For you, I think the Light was always a doorway.. a promise of hope. For me it became a mirror, and I did not like what it showed me. But.. I'm not so different from you, Cora. Maybe that is my greatest struggle.. not against the enemies outside, but the battles within. I don't want to lose you, or the part of myself that remembers who I was before I let it take hold."

He could have explained it to Cora, all of it, the slow erosion of one self into another, but where would he even begin? Golden boy, they had called him a few times. Other things, too. They were oblivious to his journey through the nether. There had been one good stretch, Life Day festivities somewhere, a Togruta who made him forget the shape of what he'd become. But that was one season against years.

The child shifted against his chest and something in Lysander's expression broke open, the way ice does in spring. A soft sigh slipped, lost to the rustle of leaves once more. "I may never fully escape what I've become, but I want you to know.. despite everything.. I carry this place, this family, with me wherever I go."

 

[Corazona von Ascania]

Cora let Lysander’s words fill the ambient space between them. When he closed his eyes, trying to quiet a thousand competing thoughts, she kept her gaze fixed onto his face. Despite how he’d grown, a touch of boyishness still lingered in his features.

No small part of her yearned to protect her brother, even from himself. From an early age, she’d been his guardian against the cold reality of their station in Ukatian society. But Lysander was smart - a year with the Jedi was enough for him to pick up on the way that the galaxy worked.

It had driven him to seek out cruelty, to immerse himself in the violence of the galaxy until he could temper it and make it into his own. A way to shape his surroundings.

Cora’s brow pinched in thought. “The Dark can be just as natural as the Light,” she murmured. “Anger and greed and hatred are all part of the human experience, and we wouldn’t be whole without them. But when we let them take hold, they can lead to all kinds of suffering. Not just ourselves,” she inhaled, slowly through her nose, “but others, too. When the Dark breathes, the galaxy pays the price.”

Quiet settled between them again, Lysander’s voice so soft that it could’ve been a whisper on the wind.

In her interpretation, the Light was honest, but not always comfortable. It reflected back insecurities and fear. What a person did with that information often set the stepping stones for their path, and that path didn’t have to be linear.

Cora’s hand drifted forward again, this time a little heavier. She fixed his collar, then skimmed a stray blonde lock back from his forehead - anything to anchor herself to him, for fear he might disappear otherwise.

“You’re right,” she said gently. “You and I aren’t that different. And I,” she added with a tired little smile, “Am not particularly special.”

He wanted too much; to keep his family whole while embracing the Darkness that had hurt them. Cora wanted too much, too. She’d selfishly looked past all of the lives he’d uprooted for a chance to offer him something gentle.

There were missing pieces in their relationship she’d been too late to fill, but this was likely the most honest conversation they’d ever had.

“When you left," she whispered, "did you want me to come after you?”

Lysander von Ascania

 

[Lysander von Ascania]

Corazona von Ascania​

Lysander shifted slightly under the ancient oak’s broad canopy, a dance of mottled sunlight tracing patterns on his features. Here, torn between the love for his family and the pull of his darker nature, once more he felt the fracture that cleaved his being in two.. caught in the middle like a dying star collapsing inward. In some ways, it was nice, and reassuring even, to know there was still some life untainted by the writhing torment beneath flesh.

Meeting his sister’s gaze, the soft rustling of leaves was the only chorus once she finished speaking. Then, for a moment, lashes lowered to the ground between them; her words didn't land as a lecture, but that didn't make them any less painful. “..I know,” murmured thoughtfully. “I aware of what it does. I've watched it hollow out men who were far better than me. I wish.. I could tell you I was capable of walking away from it. I wish I could see the galaxy's stars through your eyes.”

The secret confession was heavy upon him; he swallowed against the ache. “Part of me prayed you would. I think I would’ve been happy if anyone had come. Someone to drag me out of isolation and remind me that I wasn’t entirely lost. But no one did. I fought so many monsters that no one else saw.” A slow exhale escaped. “And part of me also hoped you wouldn’t see what I was becoming. How could I ask for help when I didn’t even understand what I needed? I didn’t know how to ask back then. Or maybe I was too proud. It’s a little late now, isn’t it?”

Fingers tightened as Luciana's tiny breaths pressed against his chest. “Forgive me, Cora,” the words fell heavy with regret. "For not being the brother you deserve. That failure haunts me deeper than any foe I’ve faced. I thought that embracing the Dark might make me stronger, might protect those I care for. In many ways it has served me so, and in others, it has made me stranger, more distant.. even more alone.”

His niece stirred and without thought, he pulled her a little closer to his heart; mayhaps, he was foolish enough to believe himself capable of shielding her from the darkness that seeped through his veins.

“There’s so much unraveling in the Core and beyond. I try my best to navigate them, to find meaning in this.. chaos. I treasure moments such as this.. because one day, they will be last."

Luciana slept nestled into him. Beneath that creeping sorrow lay what he was sworn to protect. Family; the sacred hearthfire of his existence. That was why, the words poised on his lips now felt small. Whatever sacrifice remained ahead was nothing compared to what she represented in the storm of the emissary’s world. “Coruscant is where I was always destined to fall.”

His gaze drifted upward, once more tracing the lattice of light slipping through branches overhead, searching for those whispers on the wind. “I’ve heard the prophecy.. a son of dawn and dusk, a child born to unsettle the stars. A thread woven into fate that binds us all. I can not escape it, so I carry it forward with me as Nightstar.”

And in the depths of twin emerald flames were the memories of both comrades and ghosts. The honorable Varin, the austere Acier, the faithful Naniti, the innocent Bel that was far too kind when he didn't deserve. The acolytes of Korriban were forever at the edges of memory. There were the Marrs, their stories cut short before Alvaria’s skies turned to glass.

The blonde’s loyalty was no small thing; such bonds were the lifeblood of the Covenant.

“Like fire, I am.. destructive and necessary. But fire demands a price. And that price.. I too must pay in ashes.”

To protect them all..

He allowed a small smile to grace his youthful visage. “I was forged for this path. Now, I must walk it well. I only pray my family remembers me kindly.”