Private The World Between Worlds

[Darth Malum of House Marr]

A gasp of fresh air resounded along ancient pillars, as the water, inky, in its quotidian depths passed along. Ripples emerging from the figure born from its clutches, travelling along until they met the sides of the dark basin from which it was all held. Red eyes gazed high above to the ceiling, eyes that had been closed for many a moon, dead to the world at large, finally now... emergent. His chest, ever lean, rippled in the muscles born of a battlefield, scars trailed along torso and heart, born of a lifetime of war, resisting the shivers instinct of a body resisting the freezing temperature of the water pressed against it. Red eyes gazed forth, dead and dulling, once glimmering, once brilliant, brought low by the confines of the mind.

The first step was hesitant.

The second was less so.

Every step had the waters swell, every step cascaded off of his form, the ripples of irrigate desperate to be waves passing along to reach the vessel's edge.

Everything was familiar, everything was unfamiliar. It was cold. His nostrils flared in annoyance at the liquid seeping within, his ears ringing in drums long since clogged. Every breath was felt, travelling down his form, filling his lungs, his ribs veritably shifting with every gasp. He had been drowning for... gods knew how long, the first breaths were as acrid as they were fullsome. The Force was strong here, that could be sensed even before the coolness of the air, the darkness of the room, the dryness of his tongue. He tilted his head. Immediately, he let out a low groan, his knees begging to fall as they contracted, only held in place by the weight of the ground that kept the water still. His hair was sopping wet, the raven black locks that were his pride, shone as they fell straight down his neck, past his shoulders, to his back. He felt an itch on his face. Blinking, he gazed into the depths underneath.

He was older.

Not too much older... but... older.

Black hairs had settled both above and below his lips, a moustache, along with a beard, meeting on either side, wild and unkept, and of course, as with the pattern of all things, wet. He brought his hand to caress it gently, caress his whole face, it was recognisably him, indeed, it was him. He had little reasonable doubt that it was not. Yet, it was different. The same aristocratic face that he had known so well, that he stared into the mirror and saw so many times, that which made him ever guilty and forlorn in equal measure, was it any surprise that it was so... worn? That aquiline nose, that had framed it all in a manner that held sense, that which had been broken and bruised in many a fight, why would it surprise him that it had healed? That thin-lipped smile, that had broken as many hearts as had taken them, that which had given speech as resounding as they had been... pointless, that had snarled, that had grinned, that had snarked, that had laughed.

They did neither now.

Thin-lipped was all that they were.

At the end, it came to all that which he had prided himself upon, all that which had been his identity all his life.

Those red eyes, those Marr red eyes, stared down into the depths, searching, looking, gazing, for something in their own reflection, something familiar.

Something...

...Of him.

They found it, eyes once glimmering, shining in the air of majesty and victory. Ones which had held in moment the grace of rubies, and in the next, the bloodthirst of a red moon. They were dull and heavy now. Dull, and dulling still. The fire that had burned once with the providence to turn whole worlds to cinders had been subdued; the descendant of the Lord of Duty, the echo of Vulcanus, stood still. Unnaturally still.

He felt the hammerblows in his chest, the muted dread.

He stepped out of the water.

All his possessions lay as he remembered. His armour, his blades; sword, blade, and shikkars, the mask.

As he remembered.

The descent of the first, emerging upon a wasteland, as subjects of red gazed all unto them in awe.

As he remembered.

An explosion was no small thing; an explosion the size of a sun was certainly not. Its rays whipped along the solar system, its flares impacting the planets of the system with the intensity to turn all uninhabitable, as if the absence of the star from which they all orbited would not already achieve that. As any, who stared into a lonely light, if they were impossibly perceptive enough to notice, that a whole light, amongst the impossibly immutable number, had been blinked out of existence.

As he remembered.

The great green world, tranquil in its nature, beheld its heights; two great fleets emerged in battle. A war's final battle. As all came to an end, with one activation, one which saw both fleets sit utterly annihilated.

Yet, a victory, still claimed.

The world below... nought but energy and ash.

As he remembered.

A figure sat in darkness, standing in orbit over a world that beheld its mastery. Through the transparisteel a masked gaze revealed nought, as they lifted their arms and in mere moments. The world below was still, greens had turned grey.

Life itself had given succour to death.

As he remembered.

A figure stared in accusation at the broken glass of the window, red eyes brimming in tears, fingers bleeding as a younger form, a familiar form with red eyes, black hair, and an aristocratic face, heaved in the weight of all that had come. All that would come. A double, a clone, another life lived, another life wrought. He remembered the Temple, he remembered the burning, the inferno and the victory.

He remembered the parasite lingering in the back of his mind.

As he remembered.

The annihilation of his people upon Ruusan.

The rise of another Empire in the ashes of a Jedi Temple upon Coruscant.

As he remembered.

How...

...He had fallen between worlds.

A blackened figure, cloaked in the darkness of his make, stumbled out of the ancient architecture of a temple born of an Order that was not his own. The sky abounded ever higher with the orange hue of a sun approaching its descent, and its twin moons making for their rise. Every step was limp and awkward, careening on a course for self-immolation. The mask was heavy upon his face, as he pushed away from the strange architecture that once... moments? Years? Ago had so intrigued him. His brain was heavy, filled with blood, viscous in its weight, threatening to pull him down onto the ground, as it ached in a pain demanding relief.

And yet, even as every step forth sent pulse that wrought his skull in fracture.

He pushed forward.

He pushed forward as breath became caustic, and the muscles, atrophied in their once frozen nature, were forced into movement compelled by a mind that was fast-moving, faster than a body could move.

The claxions aboard the fleshy construct were awake with wild red anger, blaring in a manner that brought the pinpricks of tears into his eyes.

They were gone.

Something was missing; he could not tell what, he could only express the same thought over and over again.

They were gone.
They were gone.
They were gone.

Something innate, something profound and utterly necessary to all his being was... missing. He hitched his breath, as his gloved hands continued to palm his own form, palming along plate and robe, looking, searching, for something that no longer was there. He reached out further still, the invisible hand of a power that was wrought to his command, that even in his absence, bent, and eventually, broke against his will. Whispering nothings throughout the air, he cast the net wide, and still...

...Even in the immense power of this place...

...The immense wrongness of this place...

Something was gone.

He stopped.

His gaze looked to the moons. Gazed upon them, as their white shimmer turned...

...Turned.

It was small at first, beyond notice, beyond the remit of notice. Plucking out of the shell, as if it were some egg... the shards were invisible as they fell, leaving no obvious sign nor deformation. No creature emerged from them, nothing that should have caused his entranced step back. No... instead, as the wind bearing down upon this desolate place ceased away to a nothingness that precluded nature's gaze.

It was upon something unnatural which he found himself gazing upon the moons.

As the cracks fell.

And blood poured out.

Twin moons, both alike in majesty, shimmering in a white luminence that brought all to eer. Replaced in a moment by twin moons, of the shade that represented all the blood that had been spilt across the galaxy. He stilled himself. His breath stilled. The sun had long since given away, and yet, the moons burned with a ferocity to make the sky itself follow its hue. He had stood upon the precipice of giants; he had stood in the moments on which the galaxy itself had turned. It all felt of sallow in this moment.

He thought back to those days.

Those early days.

Legacy, pride, rise.

Where had it all gone?

He had risen, risen far quicker and far higher than anyone had expected.

But what had it mattered? One mistake.

One fall into those quotidian depths.

Lifetimes passed.

And a galaxy that had not noticed his absence.

The leather of his gloves was taut as the grip was heavy, nails digging into the cloth, begging to be cut through, and make for the flesh. Begging to bite flesh and reap for this ancient soil the blood of a Sith that still stood.

He was back.

The Raven Lord, the Scion of Darth Marr, the Apprentice of the Queen of Shadows.

The pulse was sent out of him, with the gravity that sailed across the galaxy. A pact born of all those that joined the Tsis'Kaar, a pact rendered moot they thought, by the fall of the Ouroboros, not once, but twice. Yet the tattoos engraved upon flesh, engraved in the manner of Sith magics and sorcery, are not so easily undone, not so easily silenced. Worlds across the materium, those who once gave their fealty to the Lord of the Tsis'Kaar stood ever so slightly taller, gave out shuddering breaths, and knew in their hearts of hearts that a figure thought dead.

A cause thought fraught.

Had returned.

Agents who had long ago infiltrated and made their peace in new lives, informants who acted as if nothing had changed, warlords who had been left directionless, fighting an infinite battle against an enemy that would never be defeated, even by a hundred thousand pinpricks. All simultaneously felt the pinpricks upon their flesh, a call to summons, a call that had not been made since Fiviune, so long ago, when the hydra had been first felled.

And two heads had emerged.

He allowed a breath to pass his lips. His mask tilted upwards to gaze upon those moons once more. Gazing, as at first, the air itself stilled in open question at the answer to his call, seconds turning to moments, as the doubt that the call would be answered. Only to give way to silent relief, as the first vessels began to arrive, old vessels that he knew well, old ships that had served him in a hundred battles, and tens of campaigns. Sleek, chiselled, and black, their hulls hummed with a power that had been silent for far too long, their engines burning fuel that they had no guarantee they would replace. As far above them, gliding into the gap between two moons.

A sight that bid him smile, a sad sort of smile.

The Dar-Itah, the great colossus, the ancient drake of a vessel, took its rightful place, the battleship, his flagship.

Welcomed its master home.

Srina Talon

 

[Srina Talon]

LOCATION: Lothal
TAG: Darth Malum of House Marr

The reflected light between the two moons changed, seeming to wane, while the sky lost definition and distant stars blurred into nothingness. The purest night echoed achingly from the velvet vastness of space, and something new crept into the sector without a sound. There was no disturbance in the Force or wormholes ringed with electricity, no ripple in the air, nothing but the sensation of something cold rolling down the spine. One moment the darkness belonged to the stone beneath the Dar-Itah…And the next it bloomed outward like algae beneath black water.

She stepped free of those shadows as though she had always been. Standing there, in plain sight, but obscured because the eye struggled to follow. Ivory hair caught what little illumination remained, and black fabric fell in severe lines from narrow shoulders, forming what appeared to be a traveling dress built of smoke and mirrors. Practical, but ornate, untouched by the wind that moved across the grounds. She did not belong here. They did not belong.

Her hands remained loosely at her sides while she remained silent, still, full of Echani discipline and unbreakable will. She stayed several paces away from the mysterious man who felt like Darth Malum of House Marr but could not be. Her eyes settled on his back, not his face, while she looked for the telltale signs that would prove or disprove his returned existence.

His posture had changed…Or perhaps her memory was failing.

She could feel him for the first time in what felt like forever, the little flame, the boy who would be King—Except that the Kingdom was all but lost. Her eyes closed and blocked out the form of the Sith Lord she had protected, guided, and angered on more than one occasion. Srina had learned a great many things in his absence, but nothing so poignant as the truth about life and death. The dead rarely stayed dead…And when they returned?

It was inconvenient.

Ghosts became flesh when the wound had finally scarred over. When their memory stopped causing pain, just in time, to rip open the skin and rub salt in the damage. The first pulse of recognition that had woken her had been dismissed because to think the red-eyed Sith Lord alive was…Foolish. There were echoes in the Force. Residue. Memories that lingered so deeply in certain places that they developed weight. Malum had been many things in his relatively short existence, and subtle had never truly been one of them.

Even absent, he left pieces of himself everywhere.

It made sense that she would sense something. Not…That she would actually track him across the void and find that he was no spirit, but flesh and bone, pulling on old threads. The Blackwall Empress did not look toward the vessels filling pitch-dark heavens; she had seen fleets before. She had seen far larger ships and far greater spectacles than a warship returning to its master.

It was a distraction.

"…Malum…"

Just that, just his name, carried on the wind before it crashed down with the scent of ozone and jasmine barreling outward. Perhaps he could still sense her regardless of the clouding runes that threaded her clothing. Perhaps he would recognize her voice before he turned around. Perhaps instinct would kick in, and he would sense danger, draw his sword, and swing for her head.

Her eyes closed.

So be it.

Every second in his presence brought remembrance that conflicted with reality. There were conversations they had never finished, wars he had missed entirely. Names he would know that now belonged to the grave and names he had never heard of who commanded legions. Alisteri had returned; his brother lived well, while his family suffered his absence.

His House had changed.

And Srina…Srina had become precisely the thing so many had once feared she might.

An Empress in truth…Not merely the wife of the Dead God, not the buffer, between her husband and their people, but a driving force that kept the Sith from devouring each other. A cold tyrant, destroyer, and the monster behind the wall. "…You are older.", she murmured, knowing it wasn't the greeting most would have chosen. She hadn't even seen his face yet…

But it was the truth.

"I thought you were dead."

She had reached out for him time and time again…Long after logic said there was no point. The only thing that ever greeted her was an empty space where he should have been. Even in the wake of the Silence of Alvaria…Nothing.

She had called and called...

He hadn't answered.

He never answered.

 

[Darth Malum of House Marr]

The hairs on the back of his neck stood to attention, tiny pinpricks that alerted him to the fact that he was no longer alone. No doubt there would be landing parties that would be descending upon the world, scouts leading out front to confirm with their own eyes, and inform their crews that their master had returned.

This was different.

No matter how much time had passed, no matter how long he was gone, no matter how much they had become strangers, they would never register as threats to him. Not because they were incapable, no, never that.

Because they were his.

This presence was not. Yet, it was exceedingly familiar, one which he had known, one which he had felt, one which... a masked gaze tilted towards the moons above, staring once more upon the colossal drake that was the Dar Itah, that ship which he had conquered to take, and the ship from which he had conquered. Its engines roared in the vacuum of space between blood red moons. It should have been all that his red eyes had registered, a vessel that imposed its will upon whole systems; what else could take his attention?

Its hull was turning.

Twisting.

Curving inwards and outwards, in a manner impossible with the strength and certainty of steel, as if rubber had been its carapace, and as if his very vision was failing him.

Eyes were upon him; he knew the sensation well. For one who had been trained to remain in shadows, to blend into their black nothingness, to veritably become their darkened likeness. To be seen, to be exposed, to have strangers' eyes upon him.

There was no other sensation that brought him more ill.

However, they were not strangers' eyes. The realisation is all that stayed his blade; held within the sheath at his side, even as the hilt remained at the ready for unpracticed and yet still calloused hands, the pommel a heavy pact for any who deserved its dark promise.

"…Malum…"

He stood ever taller, a resumption of the posture of his younger self... his... self, one which was all too natural to him, and yet... in this body, felt foreign. The voice was behind him, directly behind him, within swinging distance if his instincts held.

And yet, he did nothing.

Familiar. All too familiar.

A voice he had heard only a week ago.

His stomach turned again; it did that often. An innate wrongness that his body had seemed to conclude would only be solved by exhausting his stomach of its contents. Not that he imagined there were any contents to be exhausted. Nothing but blood and acid, by his measure.

It was not a week ago.

It smelled of rain. Yet there was no storm.

It smelled of jasmine...

...The first tear trailed down his cheek.

"…You are older."

He turned then, and for the first time, for the first time since he had emerged from the pools, from which only confusion and frustration had burned upon his brow, for the first time, he felt another emotion.

Hope.

She looked exactly as he remembered. Wearing apparel that held recognisable elements, yet never assembled in his presence, the form she took now. Black cloth woven atop her skin seemed to shift every moment, as if not truly worn, and yet simply atop, never revealing what lay beneath, even as every motion seemed to threaten to. Very freeing, and yet, leaving little to the imagination. The contrast of black cloth and white skin made it all the more apparent. Even still, his eyes struggled to make purchase, as if light itself seemed to reflect, as if her very presence was an anathema, as if he could see himself immortalised in her weave.

She was as beautiful as ever, breathtaking, ethereal, in a way only she ever seemed to be.

Pale, white hair cascaded down from her head, silken locks handcrafted by the gods themselves, framing a face that he knew all too well. Golden eyes gleamed in dangerous light, yet they did not feel like danger to him. Instead, it was as if two stars were made to succour an emotionless face that had always beheld him with kindness...

...Their warmth was felt even by the distance they were apart.

She looked exactly as he remembered. Not aged a day.

Instinct answered the call, the hiss of steel released from its sheath sang in the air, as it found purchase point first upon the ground. Armoured knees groaning as they followed suit, as he tilted his gaze down to the dirt.

Familiarity bloomed in his heart, and his veins and arteries seemed to take it all across his body.

He said the words he had said a thousand times before.

"...Your Imperial Majesty."

"I thought you were dead."

He swallowed the protrusion in his throat, his chest heavy, as he felt all desire to wipe away the rogue tear at his cheek.

He held no answer to that.

Srina Talon

 

[Srina Talon]

LOCATION: Lothal
TAG: Darth Malum of House Marr

Hawkish eyes followed his movements while Malum drew his weapon and, rather than swing, planted the sword in the stone and dirt. He dropped to bended knee, and her head tilted while memory swelled once more. Replacing the image of this raven-haired wanderer with the youthful warrior who had often stayed at her bedside after the Destruction of Echnos. The phobis had drained her, and he had been so surprised to find her pale and withdrawn. It was perhaps the first time he had witnessed her mortality.

The only time she had let him see that, regardless of the power she held, her existence was still full of transience. She could still lose, even if the Sith Order won. She could still die.

For one strange moment Srina only stared at him while the tip of his sword settled in the earth between them. The sight should not have been unusual. She had seen him kneel before the throne, before powers greater than his own, and occasionally, when his sense of self-preservation managed to outweigh pride. This was…Different.

Srina had not asked for it, nor had she ever. There was no audience present to impress, no courtiers to sell the lie, no reason for such formality, except for the time that had passed in his absence. Had he forgotten her so swiftly? Entirely?

"...Your Imperial Majesty."

Her expression tightened.

It would have been barely noticeable…Just the slightest narrowing at the corners of metallic yellow-gold eyes while something between offense and disbelief settled across pale features. Of all the things he could have said…Of all the things he could have done after vanishing into the dark and returning half-drowned, half-made, and several years too old—He knelt.

And called her…That.

“Don’t.”

The word was quiet. It carried no threat, though with Srina, the distinction was often negligible. Her eyes dropped to the sword, and in that silence, she found it familiar. He tended to collect things that were broken, sharp, cursed, historically questionable, or some irritating combination of all of the above. She remembered it because it belonged with him. Much like a certain mask that she had taken to ripping off, refusing to have a conversation blind. He would find that the mask he currently wore was gone to that end. Simply there, then not, as if she had erased it with a thought...Such a thing went hand in hand with a pop of raven-black hair and the stubborn tilt of his jaw when he had already decided to do something particularly foolish—And merely wanted everyone else to agree. The sight of it should have helped.

Her memories should have reconciled the differences she saw in this man and the boy-king she had known. It didn’t. It just reminded her of the hole that had been left behind. The knowledge that one more of her children had been stolen from her and that she was powerless to do anything about it. How could she bend the galaxy to her whim, and yet, not know whether one of her own was alive or dead?

There was something wrong with the way he looked at her. Not because it was actually wrong…But because it hadn’t changed. It was the same open expression he had always tried and failed to hide whenever she caught him feeling too much. He was changed. He was older—But she could still see him beneath it all. The tear on his face caught the light…

“…Why do you cry?”

The darkness around the edges of her form shifted, and the outline of her body flickered hard enough that the muted stars beyond could be seen through the black material of her sleeve. Her image skipped once, twice, like a damaged transmission struggling to come through.

Then…She wasn’t several paces away.

Srina’s fingers wrapped around the hilt of his sword, and before the weight even settled against her palm, she let the weapon fall. It struck stone with a hard, ugly sound, but both of her hands were suddenly closing around his face. Neither gentle nor cruel, her thumb moved to brush the tear away while a soft trill rose in the back of her throat. It was succor and sadness, soothing, because that was what she had always been. She was not his tyrant, not his enemy…But that was only true if this really was Malum of House Marr.

The Force had lied to her before. Between visions, ghosts, and technology…The presence of a doppelganger was not out of the question. Things wearing familiar faces were the sharpest weapons. This could be another Imperial trick, like the one from Atrisia, and a breath caught somewhere in her chest and refused to leave. Her hands tightened.

He didn’t feel impermanent. He didn’t feel…Wrong. He had grown a beard of all things, but he didn’t have the same sense of falseness that the Galactic Empire had employed to deceive her with a ghost from her past. Echani eyes moved over every part of him, but her touch would draw his gaze upward, and something inside gave way by a fraction.

It was him.

“I called you…I felt you disappear.”, she murmured, not unkind, nor was there any anger in her. There was something else, unfathomable, on winsome features that were too delicate to belong to such a monster. “…I searched for you. There was…Nothing.”

Srina’s hands remained where they were. He could probably feel the tension in her, the pressure that bordered on painful without ever becoming so. Careful hands drew him closer until his face pressed against her midsection and pale arms draped about his shoulders. She didn’t say anything, but the soft, half embrace to part of her that was inherently vulnerable was answer enough. She had not mistaken someone else for a memory.

One hand came up to brush back his hair as she had a thousand times before.

“I thought you were dead.”​

The same phrase, repeated again, but…It was different. Most thought she felt nothing at all. That she lacked the capacity to express emotion because there was nothing there to express. They were incorrect. Srina felt things deeply…She had just never learned the value of sharing that freely with others. It gave her a sharpness no one else had, clarity of mind, and kept her grounded. But between layers of ice…There was something raw. Something…

That could never come to the surface. It could never bring her to tears, never make her stand any less tall. Nothing could shake the monolith, the force of nature, she had become.

But for a moment…

Srina stayed where she was, still as stone, shielding him from that which he did not know. Pure power pulled from her core, and the scent of jasmine became stronger, laced with petrichor, while it spilled from her being. It mimicked a warm summer night to perfection with thunder rolling in the distance. Ozone, creeping in. It would be familiar to him while it closed down around them like a metaphysical lock and blocked all else.

It spared him from the truth of all that had transpired in his absence.

If only, for a few moments more. Reality would crash in, and the tears he shed would turn from clear to roses. His softness would shift; he would adapt, and the storm would come. She knew him. Or perhaps, she had once. Whatever remained beyond this fragile silence…

It could wait.

 

[Darth Malum of House Marr]

Malum was not so foolish that pattern recognition was beyond him. As soon as his blade broke the ground, as soon as his knees had bent, as soon as his masked face had tilted their gaze to the ground, he knew very well the possibility that lingered in the back of his mind. S- The Empress-consort had made it very readily apparent her opinion of him showing his fealty to her by this method. The Empress-consort had also made it very clear her opinion of him facing her while concealing his face.

He had idly wondered why he continued still.

Perhaps it was his form of rebellion, bowing when she wished him not to. If it was, he had never known rebellion to begin with men on their knees. It might have been the most asinine form of dissent, one which may have made an alter self hit him in the head with his blade for falling what the most nakedly obvious attempt at reverse psychology that anyone had ever witnessed.

That was, of course, if that was the Empress-consort's objective...

...No, he had spent enough time with the woman to know full well that she did genuinely dislike that form of subordination.

Perhaps it was instinct. The Sith had been ruled by Emperors and Empresses for more time than they had not, and it was customary enough to show one's fealty to their betters. Betters, if not by strength, then by the consensus they had built to bring about the majority of Sith who were naturally inclined to feuding, under a singular banner. That person, regardless of who they were, what they had done, and whatever else was worthy of respect. Then, combined with the formation of Sith bloodlines who held notions of nobility, working across generations for the goal of Sith domination in the galaxy, serving to uplift their lessers to the illumination and enlightenment they knew well. It led to etiquette, it led to clarity, it led to cleanness.

Many across the galaxy saw the pomp and circumstance of their reign as a sign of their decadence. No doubt for many amongst his class, that was the case. Yet, beneath the wealth, the sneers, and the air of superiority.

Theirs was the members of society who... built civilisations.

Battles to the death between offended Sith had become ritualised into Kaggaths that all knew to avoid.

Sith had been organised to face outwards with blades of steel or plasma, rather than have shikkars pointed inwards.

Even the aristocrats knew to bow to their Emperors, in knowledge of their superiority, to bite their tongues in favour of... not peace, but unity.

Perhaps the ritual and ceremony had become too much, perhaps intentions had slipped away when actioned, perhaps somewhere along the generations, the systems and institutions that had long worked had rusted and slipped. Yet, they had worked. Now, it was simply the question of ever-needed reform.

Or if they had failed so harshly, the call to revolution.

He blinked the thoughts away. The ground provided him a canvas of nothingness for his mind to fill with complexity. A mind that had been rung in water for so long, even experiencing all it had, even with the pounding of a headache that was more like a hammer to his skull, even now it remained as ever the organ that overran and overthought.

“Don’t.”

The word crashed into him with the weight of a wave upon the sandbanks. Held within a providence that had his neck straighten, and his gaze snap to attention. Red eyes, even through the mask, found purchase upon her gaze of gold. The shift was subtle, subtle enough that not many would have noticed, yet as easily as his eyes had been his pride, so had his perception been a gift. One honed after years of trial and error, and there had certainly been enough error that had led the cogs in his mind turning far too much...

...However, it had been enough to see this.

Her face tightened, it became sharper, her eyes narrowed.

He knew it would, perhaps it was not upon the forefront of his mind, but they had played out this exact song and dance so many times, in the back of his mind, he had to know the outcome.

And yet, he did it again anyway.

Why?

Perhaps...

...Perhaps because they had done it so many times before.

...Perhaps it was in search of a certainty that, even stable upon the ground below him, he did not quite have. He blinked as the air rushed onto his face, a shiver passing his spine, as his breathing became ever slightly unobstructed. He blinked again, as his sight was... full, without the obstruction of the mask in front of him.

That was new.

She usually grabbed it straight from his face.

And as ever, with red eyes brimming in light, framed by long raven locks, an aristocratic face as beautiful as it was handsome, the rogue tear was all too apparent.

“…Why do you cry?”

Why indeed. How could he confess his weakness? How could he reveal his fear? How could he explain the contradictions that existed so fervently upon his brow? He swallowed again, the protrusion by his throat bobbing like an apple at summer's fair. His lips were dry, his throat was parched. Despite having been drowning for who knew how long...

As it was, he would not have the opportunity to answer.

He blinked once, and his blade had fallen upon the ground with a clang that made him resist flinching.

He blinked twice, and he felt his face being pulled up, staring into the visage of, as ever, one of the most enchanting women he had ever been blessed with the eyes to gaze upon.

...It was... impossibly fast.

And yet, she had done it anyway.

Her gaze was scorching, even as a long nail pressed along her cheek, finger clearing away the tear, and with discerning golden eyes, she looked, and looked, and looked. The panic should have set in, the rebellion against this amount of vulnerability, and yet... no, even as his breath hitched, even as her grip was tight upon his chin.

He simply stared up into her orbs.

And eventually, she seemed to find whatever it was she was looking for.

“I called you…I felt you disappear.”, she murmured, not unkind, nor was there any anger in her. There was something else, unfathomable, on winsome features that were too delicate to belong to such a monster. “…I searched for you. There was…Nothing.”

Once, he might have been alarmed at such a revelation, once he might have been frozen solid at the possibilities it represented, once...

...He went slack in her grip.

He was tired. That was the truth; he was exhausted. He did not wish to think through the calamity that it represented; he did not want to confront all that it made true. It had not been weeks; she would not have shown this level of scrutiny and concern if it had been mere weeks. He let out a shuddering breath as the weakness filled him. Something had gone wrong.

Something had gone horrendously wrong.

And he had indeed lost something, something as finite as it was precious.

And in this moment, he could not confront what it was.

If she expected resistance, the same resistance he put up every other instance, she was to be blithely disappointed. His face was pressed against her dress, as her arms wrapped around him, and he felt her hands parsing the knots in his locks, a massage for his scalp that promised to bring him under. His lip quivered, pressed against her clothed skin, he felt the heaviness in his lips, felt the heaviness across every inch of his form.

The tears should have let slip.

He was too tired for even that.

“I thought you were dead.”​

He choked back the sob.

As ever, his eyelids remained dry.

He knew she was in a similar place. He would not fault her for that. He had never been able to fault her for much of anything, no matter how much she stood in the way, or at least represented every obstacle in his path.

All he could smell was her, the familiar scents of jasmine and rain, accompanied by the lesser elements, and yet no less important, the petrichor and the ozone. He breathed in, and he breathed in deeply and greedily, grasping for the familiarity, desperate for all that she was, as a balm against all that he felt.

He knew.

He knew.

And he would give everything not to know.

"...I have lived and died a thousand lifetimes..." He whispered, a voice that in his own ears was pathetic, as his head was shaking as his body followed suit.

Admitting it to himself.

Did not bring him any relief.

Srina Talon

 

[Srina Talon]

LOCATION: Lothal
TAG: Darth Malum of House Marr

A thousand lifetimes.

The hand moving through his hair slowed.

Srina did not understand what he meant, but she understood enough. She had been so concerned with the years he had lost that it had not occurred to her that time might have taken something entirely different from him. His body had aged. His mind…Had it fractured during this experience? Her shoulders lifted slightly while she breathed in before falling into the unnatural stillness that he would well remember. It meant she was lost in thought.

Hawkish eyes lowered to the dark crown pressed against her stomach while the tremor in the young man began to spread. He was exhausted. More than exhausted. The way he had gone slack against her, the confusion, radiated from him in waves. He couldn't hide behind his mask anymore, and even tears seemed to have abandoned him now.

Was that why he wept at the sight of her?

Not with relief or succor but…Pain. Perhaps, his return was not the gift she selfishly thought it to be. Her chest tightened, and her fingers slipped from his hair to settle on the back of his neck. She wanted to ask him where he had been, what he had seen, and about the thousand lifetimes that left him so raw in the waking world. She wanted answers.

But…Malum had only just opened his eyes, akin to a newborn, and everything was harsh and overwhelming. Those questions could wait, and so could the sadness she carried. She had grown exceedingly adept at putting pain somewhere else. "Malum…", she spoke, finally, seeming to have decided how to approach this unsolvable question. Srina didn't even know what planet she was on. His fire had flickered to life, and she had simply…Reacted.

She shifted her hold on him so that when another tremor passed through, she might support more of his weight without drawing attention to the fact that she had done so. Pride was a ridiculous thing, but she remembered his, even if he had temporarily misplaced it. He wouldn't want anyone else to see him this way. "Does it hurt?"

There was no demand for an explanation. Her thumb moved against the nape of his neck before settling. Comforting, because for such small hands she was capable of endless destruction. Yet…She chose to be the opposite for him. It had always been that way, from the first time she beheld him, standing against Darth Empyrean , to the last.

He had always been a lost boy.

"Does it hurt…being here?"

Srina did not ask…What happened? Where were you? Why didn't you come home?

Those were inquiries of someone who demanded something of him, who demanded an explanation, but it was not, at the end of the day, hers to demand. She was his Empress in more truth than he knew, but Srina had never used that as a crutch. She waited several heartbeats before speaking again, gold-hewn eyes settling somewhere beyond his shoulder. The false summer she created kept the rest of the galaxy out. "You don't have to explain…"

Her soft hand did not leave the back of his neck. Instead, it settled more firmly. If anyone knew what it was like to have alternative worlds creeping in when she wasn't paying attention—it was her. The pale woman had been battling that sensation ever since losing her life on Coruscant. Ever since Darth Carnifex and Mercy refused to let her go. She tried to anchor him as others often anchored her, through touch alone, but he had always been…Unique. What helped her may not help him.

Srina's gaze lowered, not to study him any longer, but to listen in a way that had nothing to do with sound. There were things she could not name in words, but she had always been able to feel what others tried to bury. Malum wasn't burying his pain, his experience, but he was most definitely drowning in the wake of it. Another breath left her, slow and deliberate.

The coldness in her could never melt, not fully, and the distance between her and everyone but perhaps her husband could scarcely be bridged. But she tried for a moment to lower that barrier. To let the ache in him rest. To take a fraction of his exhaustion…To hold a weight for him that did not belong to a single body or a single lifetime. It pressed against her awareness like a storm trapped in a silent sky, full of pressure, ready to burst.

But she held it.

Not all of it…But the sharpest edges of what he had been through would soften as it passed through her instead of pulling him down. The tremor in his frame met an unfailing steadiness that would bring down the magnitude of the moment to manageable levels. When she breathed again, it was as if the planet breathed with her, wind fluttering while her eyes fell closed. They were exposed… But she would never be caught unaware.

"You don't have to hold it alone…I am here. I have always been…Here."

 

[Darth Malum of House Marr]

His eyes snapped wide suddenly at the slowing of our hands coursing through his locks. His heart hammered in his chest as she pulled her shoulders upwards. Exhaustion gave way to desperation, as the doubt began to creep into the deepest recesses of his mind; the last presence keeping him from drowning was abandoning him.

A drowning man would sooner drown the others around him than be abandoned.

The precept held. His breath was heavy, as the anguish funnelled across his entire form; his hands grasped the clothened petite form before him, gripping tight, as his head shook, as red eyes spluttered in sight that was as confused as it was burning. Even like this, something of the etiquette that had been honed into him held, his grip firm, but gentle, providing give as if a compromise to the emotion wellspring, its locations upon the most innocent of locations, one her arm, the other her back.

The wind whipped along the frontiers of the protective shield that she had made manifest about them, the elements themselves growing imbalanced in the face of a figure who, even in this stage of instability, could still bend and break the Force to his chaotic command. The shiver crept along his spine as he buried his face even further into the only certainty he had left.

"Please." He begged, he begged. What - who - he begged to a mystery, but he begged in a voice that was as much whisper as it was tortured. Scratchy and deep, it might have been a command if the situation was not so wholly... this.

He paused, as her fingers crept to the back of his neck.

His grip loosened as harsh, heated breaths passed his nostrils.

"Malum…"

His neck tilted in recognition, his ears flicking; it was an animalistic, instinctive action. A familiar order of sounds patched together so that it registered something in the confines of a mind that was pulled in a thousand different directions. He should have answered... his lips were dry, his tongue was drier... his mind knew he should have said something.

But the words failed him.

He did not deliver protest as she shifted, even as the momentary claxions shot red and loud in his mind for the barest instant. He took in a new gulp of air into his lungs through his nose, passing it through his lips. His heart lessened in the intensity and rate of its quakes. His shaking lessened in its magnitude. His eyes stopped shaking, as clarity returned to the orbs.

"Does it hurt?"

"Does it hurt…being here?"

He blinked at the questions.

And then his body began shaking again. It was a different shake than from before. That had been wholly involuntary; it had been contractions that had emerged from every inch of his skin, as his muscles all uniformly took action; it had no rhyme or purpose that he could easily identify. This... this...

It emerged from his chest.

And he knew exactly why it was occurring.

The laughter was as vibrant as it was dark. Muted as it was by the placement of his jaw against her form, the laughter grew in resounding sound; the amusement was as black as it was telling.

The sob broke it again.

The sob where once more, not a single tear fell.

"You don't have to explain…"

The laughter giving way to sobbing gave way to shuddering breaths. His breath was growing heavier; it was growing tighter; it was growing desperate. The rhythm of exhalation grew swifter still, as his mind was pounding again with linkages that moments before did not exist, that were coralling together into a mess that even for these moments silenced the parasite at the back of his mind. It was too much for a human mind.

So the mind did its utmost to compress.

"Ah-h-h-h!" There was a wetness around his lips as the spontaneous sound emerged low and prolonged. His tongue tasted the copper, his eyes registered the red.

He fell deeper into her embrace. Her hand's presence upon the back of his neck was a true relief, rather than the vice that could end him in one stroke. It was addictive. He burrowed deeper, his grip tightened, the copper gave way to jasmine, his breathing strummed to the beat of her heart.

He...

...She...

"You don't have to hold it alone…I am here. I have always been…Here."

...She was.

The realisation was startling, the realisation was stark. She had been there... too many times, so many instances from which his chestnuts were upon the fire, and it had been her to pull them out. So many times, it had been her that he had gone to for advice. It had been her that told him to burn, not as the inferno, but as the hearthfire.

It had been her who had trusted him with her secrets.

All... when she had no need to.

Why?

The word strummed across his mind with the tune of a harp that brought all his focus to singular attention.

He blinked. Distrust, paranoia, doubt all whirled about him.

Why?

It strummed again, and wiped away all the darkness that hung heavy over his head and heart. He desperately clawed through the confines of his mind, looking, searching, for some offering he had made, some benefit he provided, some rational, logical reason for this magnitude of support that he had consistently and constantly received from the woman before him.

He found none.

She had called him the hearthfire, that which would tend to the Order rather than burning it down... potential? Potential? Was that the answer?

He remembered the introduction she had made between himself and Quinn? Was it that?

Neither felt right; neither struck the cord that made the puzzle pieces fit.

And how desperately he needed them to fit in this of all moments.

"...Why?" It strummed again. His voice was a barest whisper.

Srina Talon

 

[Srina Talon]

LOCATION: Lothal
TAG: Darth Malum of House Marr

"...Why?"

The question was so small that she almost missed it.

Her attention had been elsewhere. On the harshness of his breathing and the scent of coppery iron that slipped through the jasmine before getting lost in the aroma of summer rain. On the way he burrowed closer when her hand settled against his neck, instinctively seeking whatever warmth and familiarity remained while his mind seemed determined to tear itself apart.

She felt his grip tighten around her body. Not….Suffocating. Not too tight. It didn't hurt, but it was beyond desperate. As if she were the only real thing in his world, the only solid thing.

Srina let him.

It was strange to feel someone cling to her this way, almost as her children had. She knew what to do because she had held them when the night grew teeth, claws, and thoughts wandered into darkness. She had stroked their hair and kept them safe, close, so that the monsters wouldn't find them. Malum needed her, now. He had always been proud, even when wounded. Especially, when wounded.

He would bleed emotionally and physically while insisting he was perfectly fine.

Srina had extended her hand time and time again, and he had refused her unless there was no other choice in the matter. As if she were poison, no matter how carefully she approached. Some things, apparently, a thousand lifetimes could change.

Her fingers moved from the back of his neck to thread partially into the damp ebony hair at the nape of his neck. The movement was grounding, providing an anchor, and her eyes closed for a moment while that question rang in her mind. It was almost bewildering.

"...Why?"

At first, she thought he meant why she remained. Why she had come…Why she had searched.

Then she felt the churn beneath it. Suspicion, confusion, the frantic search for some missing piece that would make her behavior reasonable. A debt unpaid, a favor owed, something that she must have wanted from him—Although she had never asked for anything. Her lips parted, but no sound came out. For all that she had lived…

She found herself without an immediate answer. Not because she didn't have one but because she had never considered the question in this way. Her eyes fluttered open and golden hues took in the sight of a warrior while he buried himself against her as if she might disappear. The answer seemed so obvious that she wondered if she had misunderstood.

"You are mine to protect."

Her expression shifted. That…Didn't sound quite right. It sounded possessive in a way that she did not intend. As if Malum were a thing to be kept beneath glass, just, one more piece of the Sith Order she guarded because responsibility demanded it. "No…", a soft correction, and her hand stilled in his hair once more. Still, her other arm cradled him carefully.

"I could give you a hundred reasons. You have potential. You are capable. You are loyal to those that are important to you when loyalty is inconvenient. I have watched you fail…And try again."

She had watched the boy beneath all that ambition struggle to become the man he thought he needed to be. But…None of those things explained why she always stepped in to save and guide him when it would have been equally as simple to ignore his suffering and let him fail. Why did she answer when he called and when he didn't? Why had his absence left a wound?

"Because you, were you. You are you, Malum."

Srina kept him near while her words fell around him and another shudder rolled through him that felt like it might break his bones. Her arms tightened by degrees. "You did not need to earn that.", she offered, her brow knitting together for a moment. Perhaps that was the part he had never understood. Perhaps…She should have tried to explain sooner.

Would it have changed anything? His disappearance? Alvaria?

She returned to smoothing his hair down while slowly drawing on the raw pain that was in him. It lingered, and she willed his breathing to even out, to make it match her own. Her pulse was slow and certain despite the enormity of what had happened. She left something metaphysical for him to follow until the thousand lives beating against his brain became quieter.

"You were always worthy…Not as King, or Lord of Tsis'kaar. Just the boy who needed somewhere safe to put down his sword. To rest…Even, for a little while."

 

[Darth Malum of House Marr]

She continued to touch him. He would have leered away from that once, frozen and flinched from that affection that was entirely foreign to him. No... that was not exactly right; touch was very familiar to him, intimacy even more so, yet this... vulnerability in such a manner, wherein his weakness was not provided in trust, but because he had no other option. That was... that was worse than sin to him. He had been taught at an early age to never allow them to see the mask crack. He had seen such opinion vindicated time and time again; the entire Order was a pit of vipers that at times could only be held at bay by a stoic gaze.

A real mask became easier then. A real mask became easier, for as easily as he bent the Force around his fingertips, so had his emotions so visibly worn themselves on his sleeves. They had all used such against him, his relative youth a weapon that they turned on him as easily as they had breathed. The spoken mockery, the silent ridicule, the scoffs and the sneers.

How it had so...

...Had so grated upon him.

They had their own failures, those moments when the mask had cracked, and yet... they judged him.

His grip tightened on her dress, as the mask cracked, and it had certainly cracked by now, so did all propriety. He was very conscious of the fact that only a thin layer of cloth seperated his touch from what lay underneath, and yet... the desperation too seemed wholly different. He knew the desperation that spawned in moments like this, the hunger that was felt in his chest rather than his stomach, the hammering beat that was rhythmic as much as it was wild. The passing of blood from one's head to... another head. This was not that. He allowed another breath to pass through his nostrils, settling his mind was an ever evolving annoyance of an exercise.

It was not that the woman before him was not beautiful.

To even consider the idea was near impossible.

It was more...

...There was a familarity to her.

A familiarity he had known only amongst two other beings in the whole galaxy.

His mother had never been one for such displays of affection, it was not reflective of one of the House of Marr.

Mia Monroe ... and he swallowed then, reminded then of the dryness of his throat. She had held no compulsion to show such affections, pressed as his face had been against her beskar plate. It was cold, shiveringly cold, and yet... he had never doubted her affection. Bogan... did she still live? His breath hissed as it was released from his lips. A fresh possible tragedy threatened to overwhelm him.

He cordened it off with all the might of one frenzied in his denial.

She would have been his mother too, once, in a different time, a different place...

...An old tragedy seared through his heart, as the sob broke across his lips.

A sob, again. He so hated, that the tears that should have come, still did not emerge out from their ducts. Hated, he said in one moment, proud the next. He... was better than to allow himself to show such weakness. That part of his pride that still sung strong and drew high, despite all the humiliations that he was now settled with.

His own mother, and a woman that would have been his mother... that he had called mother.

This woman before him, that which held him tightly, that held her hand softly around him, and through his long hair. That whom allowed him to grasp so desperately to her as his own lifeline. What was she to him?

"You are mine to protect."

He stilled, as his heart missed a beat.

She answered the question for herself, without even being aware it was asked. A coincidence or not, and likely it was simply coincidence, he stilled. He repeated the answer in his head, he twirled it around his tongue, he tasted it as if it was some foreign language.

And then he pulled away.

"No…"

He tried to pull away. Yet, then again he stilled. Her words, and too, the firmness of her hands upon both his head and form. He swallowed again, he swallowed nothing for that was how dry his mouth was, even still, as the protrustion by his throat bobbed, every inch of his form screamed a dull and quiet scream to escape. That the trap had been laid, and that he had fallen straight into it.

"I could give you a hundred reasons. You have potential. You are capable. You are loyal to those that are important to you when loyalty is inconvenient. I have watched you fail…And try again."

His breathing was growing heavier once again, growing quicker too. The lies clouded his vision, the answers she gave applying to hundreds, nay, thousands. A hidden manipulation had to be in play, a sinister purpose was all but required to exist. That he sensed none, that he desperately, weakly, felt none, only threw his mind into the rancours of emotions and memories that pulled him in innumberable directions.

"Stop." He begged.

And how he so hated that he begged.

His teeth threatened to ground themselves into a fine powder, as a cloudiness covered his eyes, and despite all that which he resisted it was by instinct alone that he found himself burrowing his face deeper into her shroud.

"Because you, were you. You are you, Malum."

He shivered now, shivers turning into the contractions that shook his entire body. The words filtered through his ears straight to his head, and they strummed a bedeviling tune that filled him with wrong and anguish in equal measure. Lies, why was it always lies. He grit down on his teeth, as she shuttered his eyes from the world, burrowing himself deeper, seeking warmth as the coldness empowered his environs. What was he? A question so simple, and yet he had never found an answer that satisfied him.

And now she dared...

She dared.

Dared imply that she knew what he himself did not.

He had killed for less.

Even worse - that he - he who had disappeared. He, who had failed all those that had meant the entire galaxy to him. He, who had meant to be the successor of a Sith'ari. That he alone, by virtue of who he was, was worthy of... this? That he, who despite all measure and attempt otherwise, that who had been destined by the blood in his very veins to achieve greatness...

...Had fallen short - every - single - time.

The guilt was back.

The guilt and the disappointment and the tears that refused to fall.

She might have said such words to any living soul that walked the materium. It would have had as much weight and truth to them as it did him. Of course he was himself.

...For all the pain and suffering it had brought himself, and every single person he had ever touched.

"You did not need to earn that."

He needed to leave. He needed to leave. He needed to leave.

The mantra repeated itself with increasing urgency. The truth of it self-evident, yet, even as mind provided command to body, it refused to obey. Enraptured in the air of jasmine and rain. Enraptured in the air of scents all too familiar, and comforting to a soul whose whole form burned in a fire unseen. Enraptured in a touch that was as gentle as it was firm, that communicated an intention that he was free to go...

...But only once he was free from all that which tormented him.

His breath hitched.

His gaze opened.

His neck tilted.

He made silent moan at her fingers parting through his raven locks. His breathing slowly returned to a pace that was welcomed by his station, a breath evenly complemented the breath of the woman before him. His mind's intention to burn itself down to ashes, gave way, as if a vacuum was opened, as if the oxygen was removed in instant, and dull thud gave way to the essence of being, the essence of an existence without the pain that he was so accustomed.

He gazed into golden eyes, as molten as a star's core.

Red eyes wavering, and yet somehow renewed stared into a gaze that was as familiar, as it was as ever... sublime.

Her lips were moving.

As he strained to hear her.

"You were always worthy…Not as King, or Lord of Tsis'kaar. Just the boy who needed somewhere safe to put down his sword. To rest…Even, for a little while."

His why had not been answered.

...Perhaps it never would be answered.

And yet still.

He needed to know.

"Why..." He whispered again, a whisper that was as much desperate as it was so utterly pained.

Yet, there was more too. Another question, one which he had never willingly considered, one which he had resisted for all the time that he had ever known the woman. Yet, that now, as his shoulders slumped, as his breathing betrayed exactly how exhausted he truly was... that he could not help but express.

"...How long do I have under your shade?"

In the end.

That may have been everything.

Srina Talon