Private Unanswered (Jairdain)

[Darth Carnifex]

Commenor, former Sith-Imperial Occupation Zone

Four great gears churned as the lift began its descent, one at each corner of the huge metal contraption. Once upon a time, it had been used to transport copious amounts of stone and ore from deep below Commenor's surface. Sith mining rigs had once wormed their way through the crust, exposing millions and millions of tonnes of rare earth minerals and other valuable raw material. Legions of slaves had been set to extract it by pain of the lash, and most of them remained buried there.

Now the lift bore not the spoils of exploit, but the architect of a new order. Darth Carnifex's eyes stared solemnly ahead as the lift careening down deeper into the earth, hundreds of feet of hewn rock passing by in the blink of an eye. Gradually, the lift slowed its descent and clanged loudly to a rest at the bottom of the vertical mine shaft. A reinforced blast door had been set into the excavated wall, the partition dividing into four segments as the Dark Lord approached. Sterile white light spilled out to greet Him, swallowing Him in its luminescence before the door shut tight behind Him.

Beyond was an exceedingly modern facility, common to any civilized world beyond the margins of Commenor's skies. This hadn't existed when the occupation was at its height, this had once all been unearthed tunnels and pits back then. Now it was sleek walls and bright lights. Many rooms branched away from the central corridor, children within each room undergoing various degrees of instruction from cold, emotionless automatons. Each child seemed to suffer the same malady, glassy-eyes and vacant expressions; their minds were sharp but it was clear that they weren't entirely themselves.

This was part of His grand vision. Generations of children raised in isolation, indoctrinated into loyal soldiers that would day be turned against their birth-worlds. When their time here had come to an end, they would be dispersed back into the wider galaxy to assume new lives. When the time came, they would heed their Master's call.

But that was not why He'd come here.

He'd come for a personal reason.

At the end of the hall was an isolated room, guarded by a pair of Dread Sentinels. The hulking horror's muscular bodies were concealed beneath flowing robes interwoven with metal plating, with heavy faceless masks to obscured their ghastly features. In each hand they bore aloft an axe imbued with ancient Sith magics. They stood silent as the grave as the Dark Lord approached, the door opening and closing as He passed through it. Inside was a state of the art medical chamber, the walls lined with advanced equipment, while at the center was a single bed.

In that bed was the pregnant Jairdain Ismet-Thio.

Darth Carnifex walked towards the bed, stopping only a few feet away from it. Jairdain had been restrained enough to prevent her from leaving the bed, but not enough to prevent her from moving on it. Whatever garment she'd worn had been taken away and replaced with a nondescript medical gown. All of the machines in the room beeped and hummed quietly, all of her vitals and those of the child within her constantly monitored.

"Settling in?" asked the Dark Lord, His tone even-keeled but nonetheless mocking in light of her situation.

Jairdain Ismet-Thio ​

 

[Jairdain Ismet-Thio]

Jairdain had been awake long before the door opened.

Sleep had come only in fragments since they brought her here, drifting in and out like shallow tides rather than settling into anything restorative. It was not the restraints or the sterile quiet of the room that kept her from rest, but the way the Force itself felt beneath the surface of Commenor. The weight of what had been done in these tunnels lingered like an old wound carved into the earth, and even through the thick walls of the chamber, she could feel the echo of it pressing faintly against her senses.

She lay slightly propped against the bed's incline, the thin medical gown gathered loosely around her frame. One hand rested instinctively across the curve of her stomach, her fingers spread in a quiet, protective gesture as she breathed slowly and evenly, grounding herself in the steady rhythm beneath her palm.

The restraints were firm, but not cruel.

He had taken care with that.

And that, perhaps more than anything else, unsettled her.

When the door finally opened, she felt him enter long before the sound reached her ears. The Force tightened around the threshold with the unmistakable gravity of his presence, a pressure that shifted the air itself. Darth Carnifex did not simply walk into a room; the space acknowledged him, reshaping its balance around the weight he carried.

Jairdain did not turn her head. She did not need to. His presence was a vast, cold shape in the Force, impossible to mistake and impossible to ignore.

His question came, calm and edged with mockery, settling into the room like a blade laid gently on a table.

For a moment, she simply breathed, letting the air move in and out of her lungs until her voice could follow it.

"I have known worse accommodations," she said at last, her tone steady and quiet, carrying the exhaustion of someone who had been holding herself together for far too long. It was not the voice of a broken prisoner, nor one attempting defiance. It was simply honest.

She turned her face slightly toward the sound of him, orienting herself by presence rather than sight.

"You did not bring me here for comfort," she continued, her voice soft but unwavering. "So I assume you are satisfied with the arrangements."

A faint thread of dry humor touched the words, though it faded almost immediately, swallowed by the sterile hum of the machines beside her bed. Their steady rhythm marked the pattern of two heartbeats: hers and the smaller, faster one beneath her hand.

Jairdain shifted slightly against the restraints, careful not to pull against them. The child moved beneath her palm, a small restless stir that she soothed with a gentle adjustment of her hand, her thumb brushing lightly across her abdomen.

"You have gone to considerable effort to keep us alive," she said after a moment, her tone neither accusing nor grateful, simply stating what she knew to be true.

Her blind eyes lifted toward the shape of his presence, unfocused but directed with intention.

"That suggests this is not simply cruelty."

She exhaled slowly, the breath carrying a quiet resignation.

"Which means you want something."

There was no demand for answers, no attempt to bargain or threaten. She simply acknowledged the truth with the calm, unflinching awareness of someone who had survived too much to waste energy on theatrics.

"Settling in is not really the question," Jairdain said softly, her voice steady even as something fragile moved beneath it.

"What matters is why you brought me here at all."

Her hand remained still over her abdomen, fingers curved protectively.

And beneath the discipline in her voice, beneath the composure she held with such deliberate care, something else lived quietly in the spaces between her words.

Fear. Not for herself. For the life she carried, and for the man she loved who would inevitably come looking for her, no matter the cost. She did not show that fear. But it was there, steady and sharp as a blade held close to the skin, hidden only by the strength of her will.

Darth Carnifex

 

[Darth Carnifex]

"Of course I want something, everyone does. When I have what I want, I'll let you go without further discomfort. You'll be free to run back into the arms of my son, for as much comfort as that might bring you." Even as He spoke, the ceiling above Jairdain opened like a cavernous maw. From its shadowy confines emerged a spindly, spider-like apparatus with half a dozen manipulator arms, each ending with a different modular medical instrument.

One specific arm whirred to face the trapped woman, the tip cycling through multiple tools before finally settling on a long, narrow syringe. The other arms became further restraints as the whole device lowered itself down over the medical bed, a bright red scan-light enveloping Jairdain's pregnant belly in slow, roving pulses, mapping the shape of the womb, the position of the placenta, and the faint, steady motion of the child within. After a moment, the syringe descended and punctured through her abdominal wall, passing through into the uterus and into the amniotic sac with mechanical precision, guided by the machine's unblinking sensors.

As the needle withdrew, a small vial at the base had been filled with roughly twenty milliliters of amniotic fluid, the pale golden liquid swirling faintly as microscopic flecks of fetal cells drifted within it. It disappeared into the machine as a second needle, one far shorter in length, was swapped in. This one slipped cleanly into a vein in her arm, and drew forth blood before also retreating. When both samples had been acquired, the whole apparatus disappeared back into the ceiling, the chamber returning to its sterile quiet as if nothing at all had occurred.

Carnifex had watched the whole thing in total silence, arms crossed over His broad chest as the machine did its work. The only movement from Him had been the slow rise and fall of His breathing, His gaze fixed not on Jairdain herself, but on the shifting holographic scan that had briefly revealed the small form within her womb. After it had disappeared, He stepped forward to stand right beside the bed. For a moment His shadow fell across her abdomen where the scanner's light had moments before roamed.

"The child has enormous potential, I sensed it on Moorja. Even then it shone in the Force like a star trapped behind a veil. It would be a crime to allow such talent to pass into the hands of those unwilling and unable to envision it." His voice remained calm, almost thoughtful, as if discussing a rare artifact rather than a living life.

"As the child's grandfather, I will be seizing custody of the child upon birth." The words were spoken without threat or anger, merely as a statement of inevitability. In Carnifex's mind, the decision had already been made long before she had ever been brought to this room.

Jairdain Ismet-Thio ​

 

[Jairdain Ismet-Thio]

Jairdain remained still when the ceiling opened.

She had sensed the mechanism long before the panels separated, felt the faint stirring of machinery through the Force the way one might feel a storm gathering behind distant mountains. Even dulled as her senses were in this place, muted as though wrapped in thick cloth, she could still perceive the shift of metal and intention above her. The spindled apparatus descended with clinical precision, its segmented limbs unfolding like the legs of some cold, mechanical insect.

Her breathing slowed, controlled.

She did not struggle when the additional restraints settled into place. There was nowhere to go, and she knew it. Panic would only tighten the machines and make what followed sharper, deeper, more punishing.

The red scanning light swept across her abdomen in slow, deliberate pulses. She felt the child shift beneath her hand as the unfamiliar energy washed over them, a small, restless motion that made her thumb brush gently across her stomach in quiet reassurance. Even with the Force muffled around her, that tiny presence remained a steady ember, warm and bright against the cold.

"It's all right," she murmured, the words slipping out on instinct rather than intention.

Then the first needle descended.

The longer syringe pierced through skin and muscle with mechanical indifference. The pain was immediate, sharp enough to steal the air from her lungs in a sudden, involuntary breath. Her fingers curled against the sheet beneath her as the instrument pushed deeper, threading through layers of tissue with a precision that made the violation feel somehow worse.

She did not cry out.

But a small, involuntary sound escaped her throat when the needle breached deeper structures, her body tensing beneath the restraints while the machine harvested what it had come for. The Force around her flickered, thin and distant, but she clung to the one thread she could still feel clearly, the faint, unwavering bond that tied her to Jax. It pulsed softly at the edge of her awareness, a reminder that she was not entirely alone, even here.

When the needle finally withdrew, the tightness in her chest eased by degrees, and her breathing steadied again.

The second needle entered her arm moments later. Compared to the first, the sensation was almost trivial. She flinched slightly when the blood draw began, more reflex than pain, and then it was over.

The apparatus retracted into the ceiling with the same efficient indifference with which it had arrived.

Silence returned.

For several seconds, Jairdain simply breathed, letting the tremor in her muscles fade while the lingering ache in her abdomen dulled into something heavy and deep. Her hand returned to the gentle curve of her stomach, grounding herself in the small, steady presence there.

The child was still bright in the Force, still steady, still unmistakably alive beneath her palm.

Only then did she turn her head slightly toward Carnifex as he stepped closer, his shadow falling across her like a second restraint. She listened to him without interrupting, letting his words settle fully before responding. There was no anger in his tone, no heat, only the calm certainty of someone who had already decided the outcome of the conversation long before it began.

Jairdain let out a slow breath before speaking.

"Yes," she said quietly, her hand remaining where it was over the curve of her stomach. "The child does have enormous potential. Anyone with even the faintest sensitivity to the Force would have felt it on Moorja."

There was no pride in her voice, only acknowledgment of what he had already sensed for himself.

Her lips curved faintly, though the expression held little humor.

"If you are so interested in potential," she continued, her voice calm and steady despite the ache still lingering through her body, "you might examine mine and tell me what you see."

The words were not a challenge so much as an invitation he could not easily ignore. She shifted slightly against the restraints, careful of the soreness in her abdomen where the needle had passed moments earlier, then continued speaking with quiet certainty.

"If I am able to prevent you from taking your grandchild, I will."

There was no dramatic emphasis in the statement. No attempt to make it sound grander than it was. It was simply the truth, spoken plainly.

Her blind eyes turned fully toward him now, unflinching despite the exhaustion beginning to settle into her bones.

"And even if I could not," she added softly, "you should understand something about your son. Jax will never stop looking for me. You know that as well as I do."

A small breath passed through her before she continued.

"You say that once you have what you want, you will let me go," she said, the faintest trace of skepticism touching her expression as she lay there restrained beneath the sterile lights. "But you must understand why that is difficult for me to believe."

Her fingers brushed lightly across the fabric covering her stomach, instinctively protective even now.

"How do I know," she asked quietly, "that you would let me go at all?"

She did not raise her voice. She did not plead.

She simply lay there beneath the bright lights and the watchful machines, restrained and aching but still composed, one hand resting protectively over the life inside her while the muted Force pressed around her like fog.

Only one thread remained clear within it. The distant, steady connection to Jax. And she held onto it.

Darth Carnifex

 

[Darth Carnifex]

"I am counting on it," countered the Dark Lord, His eyes flashing with dark malice in the moments He spoke aloud. He leaned in further, practically peering down over Jairdain from above. The sheer wrongness which emanated from His intimate presence was a wound in the Force all unto itself, every piece of His existence was an affront to the natural order the Force imposed. More than just His physical menace, the Dark Lord was resplendent in the unrelenting darkness of the vilest evil, the blackest veil drawn forth across creation.

He should not exist, but He does.

"That foolish boy will do everything in his power to set you free, even now he toils tirelessly to see it done. He's calling upon all those who might hearken to his cry, assembling them for your very sake. As he does, he sows the seeds of his own undoing." A shadow fell across the Dark Lord's face, and only His baleful eyes could be seen piercing the ethereal gloom. "My word is my bond, regardless of what you may believe. When I say you shall be freed once the child is mine I will not fail to uphold this bargain. Yet you and I know that he will not subject himself to the agony of such separation, he cannot help but run headlong into the fire. He will come to this place in due time, and before he does the child will be born."

His hand reached out to caress her chin, holding her gaze steady with His own. "With your aid or not. Withholding the child's birth will force my hand to take more drastic measures, and I cannot promise that you will survive unscathed." He released her chin, withdrawing His hand back to His side.

"The choice is yours on how much suffering you will endure."

Jairdain Ismet-Thio ​

 

[Jairdain Ismet-Thio]

Jairdain did not pull away when he leaned closer. There was nowhere meaningful to retreat to, not truly, and even if there had been space to withdraw, she would never have given him the satisfaction of watching her shrink from his presence. The weight of him pressed against her senses like a distortion in the Force, thick, unnatural, suffocating, but she held her ground within that pressure as best she could, refusing to let it dictate the shape of her posture or her breath.

Her breathing remained steady, measured with deliberate care. Her hand stayed resting over her abdomen, a quiet point of contact that anchored her more effectively than any outward show of strength.

And she listened.

Every word he spoke only confirmed what she had already felt through the thin, distant thread that still connected her to Jax. He was coming. Of course he was coming. There had never been a version of this where he did anything else, and the certainty of that truth brought with it a warmth that cut through the cold edges of fear pressing at her ribs.

When Carnifex's hand touched her chin, guiding her face upward, she did not resist the motion. Her blind eyes remained fixed in his direction, unflinching despite the proximity, despite the wrongness that seemed to bleed from him into the air itself. She endured the closeness without yielding to it.

When he finished speaking, she let a slow breath pass through her before she answered.

"Why do you want Jax so badly?"

Her voice was calm, not sharp, not accusatory, just steady, as though the question mattered more than the threat wrapped around it. She spoke as if she were asking something simple, something factual, something she intended to understand rather than challenge.

"What is it you actually see when you look at him?"

Her fingers shifted slightly against the fabric over her stomach, a small grounding motion she allowed herself before continuing.

"And what does our child offer you that you believe you cannot take for yourself?"

There was no defiance in the question, no raised voice or dramatic edge. Only quiet insistence, the kind that refused to be dismissed.

She tilted her head slightly, the movement subtle but intentional.

"You speak of inevitability," she said, her tone even. "Of outcomes already decided." A faint exhale followed, soft but controlled. "And yet you are still asking for cooperation."

Her lips curved, not in humor, but in a quiet, almost weary understanding.

"That means there is still something here you cannot fully control."

The ache in her body remained, the memory of the machine's intrusion lingering beneath her skin, but she did not allow any of it to reach her voice. She held herself with the same composure she always had, even now.

"He will be born naturally," she said, her tone steady and grounded in something deeper than the fear pressing at the edges of her composure. "When he is ready to come."

The words settled between them with a firmness that did not need to rise in volume to be unyielding.

For a brief moment, her hand pressed more firmly against her abdomen, a protective instinct she could not fully hide.

"My son is not a tool to be forced into the world on your schedule."

The realization of what she had revealed came a heartbeat too late. A flicker of something crossed her expression, subtle, contained, but undeniably real.

She did not take the words back. She did not attempt to soften them.

Instead, she lifted her chin slightly, reclaiming what she had exposed through sheer composure alone.

"You may believe you can control how this ends," she continued, her voice soft but unwavering, "but not everything bends to force."

Her blind gaze remained steady on him, unbroken despite the darkness pressing in around her.

"And not everything that is born into this galaxy will belong to you."

Darth Carnifex

 

[Darth Carnifex]

"Do not mistake my offer for compromise, woman. Cooperation is only an extended courtesy, one I offer freely but can revoke if you seek to obstruct me. You will not find me a hospitable host if that is the path you take." The threat in His tone was explicit, and there was no room for doubt that He'd waste little time in following up on it. The darkest rumors and myths about the Butcher King were all rooted in objective truth, many of which were not too far removed from any level of exaggeration they might've accrued.

One did not come to be called the Black Iron Tyrant by lacking teeth.

"All that exist in this galaxy exist to serve my will. Ornery creations such as Jax require discipline, correction. If that fails, then destruction. I have sired many children, all of whom have been tested. Whenever one fails its purpose, it is discarded, and another is made in its place. Jax is not the first, nor will he be the last, of his kind that I bring into being. The child that he sired upon you will be another experiment in a long line of experiments. I will raise it in accordance with my will."

Then His eyes flashed danger, bright and hot. "And if you will not relinquish him in due order, then I will induce your labor. If even still you deny me, then I will rip him out of you and salvage what's left. That will be your only warning, Jairdain. Remember that."

With that, the Dark Lord turned and left without another word. His threat hung heavy in the air, the truth of it a bitter tonic. She was entirely at His mercy in this place, and the only reason she was still alive was because of what He coveted from her. That was the only thing that stayed His cruel hand.

For now, she would remain in that chamber, and would not see the Dark Lord for several days.

Jairdain Ismet-Thio ​

 

[Jairdain Ismet-Thio]

Jairdain did not answer him while he spoke. There was no point in trying to interrupt, not with the weight of his certainty pressing into the space between them with the slow, suffocating heaviness of something already decided. His words were not offered for discussion or debate. They were meant to be endured, absorbed, and carried whether she wished to or not.

So she endured them.

Her breathing stayed steady, though it required more effort now than she wanted to acknowledge. Her hand remained where it had been, resting over the curve of her abdomen, fingers splayed slightly as though she could shield the life beneath her from the meaning behind his voice. She did not flinch when his tone sharpened, did not recoil when the threat became unmistakable, even as something deep in her chest tightened in quiet, instinctive protest that she refused to let show.

She listened. Not because she accepted what he said, but because she needed to understand its full shape, to know precisely what she was facing.

When he spoke of Jax, of children discarded and remade, of purpose defined only by obedience, a coldness settled through her. It was not shock or disbelief, because those emotions had burned out long ago. This was recognition, the quiet understanding of a truth she had always known but rarely heard spoken so plainly. This was the shape of him without pretense, without the veneer of civility he sometimes wore.

And when the threat turned fully toward the child, when the words shifted from ideology to intent, from control to violation, something inside her tightened further, sharper now, closer to the surface. Her fingers pressed more firmly against her stomach, a reflex she could not suppress, no matter how carefully she held herself still.

Yet she did not speak. Not while he remained in the room. Not while his presence filled the air like a shadow that swallowed every other sound. She let him finish, let the weight of his warning settle into the sterile air, and allowed him to turn and leave without giving him anything he could twist or claim as victory.

Only when the door sealed behind him did the room truly change.

The silence that followed was not empty. It was heavy, thick enough to press against her skin. Jairdain remained where she was, her body still and her breathing measured, but the stillness was no longer simply a matter of control. It had become containment, a deliberate holding of herself in place so she did not fracture under the pressure of everything she could not allow herself to feel.

Her fingers curled slightly against her abdomen as she drew in a slow breath, then another. The ache in her body lingered, a dull, persistent reminder of what had already been done, of how little control she truly had within these walls.

She knew this kind of silence.

The realization came quietly, but it settled deep. Not this room, not these machines, not the cold precision of the environment around her. The silence itself. The isolation. The way time stretched when there was nothing to mark its passing except the rhythm of breath and the slow turning of thought inward.

Memory stirred before she could stop it.

Another place. Another kind of captivity. Not the same, but close enough that her mind recognized the pattern instantly. Long stretches without voices. Without grounding. Without anything to hold onto except the Force, and even that had been denied to her, cut off so completely that she had been left alone inside her own mind with nothing but the echo of her thoughts. She remembered what that had done to her, the slow unraveling, the way certainty slipped and was replaced by something sharper and more consuming, the way the Dark had crept in through the cracks left by deprivation and fear.

She had lost herself there. Not completely, but enough.

Her breathing faltered for the first time since he had left, a small break in the rhythm she had been holding so tightly. She forced it to steady again.

No. Not again.

Her hand pressed more firmly against her abdomen, grounding herself in the present, in something real and alive. The child's presence was still there, steady and bright despite everything, a quiet pulse of life that cut through the memory like light through fog. She focused on that, not the room, not the silence, not the past.

Here. Now. Alive.

"You are not his," she murmured softly, the words barely more than breath, spoken not for anyone else but for the small life beneath her hand. It was not a declaration meant to be heard beyond this space. It was a promise.

Her other hand tightened slightly against the surface beneath her, anchoring herself physically as much as she could. "I will not let him take you."

The fear remained. It had not gone anywhere. It pressed at the edges of her composure, sharp and insistent, fueled not only by the threat he had spoken but by the memory of what isolation could do if she let it take hold. But she did not let it rise. She had faced that darkness once before. She knew its shape now. And she refused to fall into it again.

Jairdain drew in another slow breath, centering herself in the quiet, not fighting it, not letting it consume her, but holding her place within it with deliberate, practiced strength.

Waiting. Holding. Enduring.

Darth Carnifex

 

[Darth Carnifex]

In the span of time since the Dark Lord withdrew, the only interaction Jairdain would have with others would be with the medical personnel that routinely monitored her. It was never the same individual each time, and sometimes it was just a medical droid instead of an organic. They did not speak to her, they rarely even looked at her face except when performing ocular examinations. Mainly they recorded the process of her pregnancy, drawing blood and scanning her body.

It was difficult to parse out the passage of time, even though she was blind there was nothing else to help indicate when one day turned over to another. They kept the lights on at all times as well, bathing her bed in a steady off-white glow. Beyond her room was unknown, though she could hear indistinct voices conversing just beyond her prison. The room might not have been soundproof, but the amount of medical equipment built into the walls created a steady hum that distorted all noise beyond.

Soon enough, however, the interim would be broken by the Dark Lord's return. He was not alone this time, following behind Him were two children in blank military fatigues - one boy and one girl. Their vacant expressionless stares looked at little in particular, but always faced directly ahead of them at all times.

There were no pleasantries exchanged this time, the Dark Lord got right to the heart of it. "They inform me your pregnancy is proceeding well. It won't be long until you can leave this place."

Jairdain Ismet-Thio ​

 

[Jairdain Ismet-Thio]

Jairdain did not move when he entered.

She had felt him long before the door slid open, the shift in the atmosphere announcing him with the same inevitability as a pressure drop before a storm. His presence pressed into the room in that cold, immense way that never needed to declare itself to be understood. The two smaller signatures behind him registered just as clearly. However, they lingered at the edges of her awareness in a way that felt wrong, not muted, not shielded, but hollowed, as though something essential had been carved out rather than concealed.

Her breathing remained steady. Her posture did not change. But her attention had settled fully on Carnifex now, sharp and unwavering.

"You keep your word," she said at last, her voice calm, even, unstrained despite the weight of the moment. "At least in part. That is…something." There was no gratitude in the words. Only acknowledgment, offered with the same measured precision she applied to everything else. She turned her head slightly toward him, aligning herself with where he stood rather than searching for him, the motion deliberate and unhurried.

"They have been thorough," she continued, her tone almost clinical in its clarity. "Whatever it is you intend, you have ensured nothing interferes with it." Her fingers shifted lightly against the bedding, not in discomfort, but as a small grounding gesture, a reminder of her own presence within a space designed to strip it away. "But you did not come here to discuss their work."

The pause that followed was not hesitation. It was a choice, the quiet, deliberate kind that carried more weight than any raised voice could.

"You never answered me," she said, letting the words settle between them with the same calm certainty she had held since the beginning. "When you first brought me here…whether you saw anything in me at all." Her head tilted a fraction, the movement subtle but unmistakably intentional. "Or if I was only ever a means to something else."

There was no bitterness in the question, no sharpness meant to provoke. But there was weight, the kind that came from someone who had endured enough to stop softening the truth for anyone's comfort.

"You speak of what is coming," she went on, her voice steady, "and of what I carry, as though that is the only thing of value in this room." Something firmer threaded through her tone now, not defiance, but a quiet, unyielding clarity. "So I will ask you plainly." Another pause, measured, giving the question room to breathe. "Do you see potential in me…or only in your grandson?" The words lingered, not as an accusation, but as an expectation, a demand for truth spoken without raising her voice.

Only then did her attention shift, brushing again against the two presences behind him. She did not flinch, but something in her expression stilled further, a subtle tightening that suggested recognition of something she did not like, something she understood too well.

"And if your plans extend beyond him," she said, her tone quieter now but no longer neutral, "then they extend beyond me as well." Her chin lifted a fraction, not in challenge, but in certainty, in the quiet assertion of someone who refused to be reduced to a vessel or a variable. "What do you intend for Jax?"

This time, the question carried something deeper beneath it. Not fear. Not pleading. But a grounded, immovable expectation, the kind that came from a mother, a Jedi, and a woman who had already survived more than he understood.

She did not press further.

She remained where she was, composed and still, allowing the silence to return on her terms rather than his, waiting not as a captive seeking permission, but as someone who had chosen to ask, and fully intended to hear the answer.

Darth Carnifex

 

[Darth Carnifex]

"An amusing thought. Others would not give voice to the implications such a question might bring, but you show no fear in posing it." He stalked closer, His shadow drawing long across her face as He loomed over her. "And what do you believe the answer is? What is it that you hope to hear me say? That I stole you away because I think you're pretty? That I did so because I am lustful? That I did it only for the life which grows in your belly, and nothing more? Which answer do you actually seek?"

He laughed, arrogant and biting. "I don't think I will tell you the truth of it, Jairdain. You are in a position to ask questions of me, but are not deserving of answers if I do not deign to grant them. For now, be content with the knowledge that all I need of you is your pregnancy." His hand reached out, rubbing the tips of His fingers against the soft skin of her stomach, sensing the life that was sequestered within. It might have been a comforting gesture, were His touch not repulsive to her every sense.

"Jax has always been a curiosity, an interesting variable. How would a child of my lineage adapt to an environment that goes against their nature? Even if he turns out to be a disappointment as a son, he still has value as an experiment. I think that when my patience for him has run its course, I will disassemble him. Maybe the child in your belly will be present, armed with the might of darkness that I have bestowed."

"Unless you think I should let him be? What would you give for such an assurance, Jairdain?"

Jairdain Ismet-Thio ​

 

[Jairdain Ismet-Thio]

Jairdain did not recoil when he moved closer, though every instinct in her body urged distance with a force that bordered on physical pain. She remained exactly where she was, still, upright, composed, refusing to give him even the smallest satisfaction of seeing her flinch. Fear lived in her muscles, in the tightening of her breath, in the way her pulse pressed against her throat, but she did not let it reach her face.

When he asked what answer she hoped to hear, she let the silence stretch for a moment. Not because she faltered, but because some questions deserved to be met with the weight of truth rather than reflex.

Then she lifted her chin slightly toward the sound of his voice, the gesture small but unmistakably deliberate.

"The truth."

A faint pause followed, and when she continued, there was the slightest dry edge to her calm.

"And I am not so egotistic as to imagine you carried me here because you found me pretty."

Nothing more needed to be added. No pleading. No performance. Only the clarity of someone who had long since grown tired of masks, his, hers, the galaxy's.

When he denied her even that and reduced her worth to the life within her, something in her expression did not break so much as settle, cooling into a sharper, quieter understanding. She gave the faintest nod, a motion that carried resignation and recognition in equal measure.

"I thought as much."

Then his hand touched her stomach.

She could not pull away. The room, the restraints of circumstance, the vulnerability of her own body, all of it held her in place. But revulsion surged through her instantly, a cold, electric shudder that rippled beneath her skin. Gooseflesh rose along her arms. Her muscles tightened in a silent, instinctive recoil she refused to let become visible.

She drew one slow, steadying breath through the wave of it and denied him anything more.

As he spoke of Jax, of bloodline, experiment, disappointment, disassembly, the quiet around her did not fracture. It deepened. Her anger did not flare outward in heat or volume; it condensed inward, becoming something denser, steadier, more dangerous than outrage. A core of iron forming beneath her ribs.

"How is Jax a disappointment?"

Her voice was calm, but every trace of softness had been burned away.

"He has given you two grandchildren."

The words were not praise. They were indictments, measured, precise, and aimed directly at the hypocrisy he had revealed. By his own values, even his cruelty lacked coherence.

She turned her face slightly more toward him, though her blind eyes could not see him. The gesture was not for sight. It was for presence. For defiance.

"What can I offer you to leave him alone?"

There was no tremor in the question. No desperation. It was not bargaining from weakness but cutting directly to the center of what mattered, stripping away every distraction until only the essential remained.

Then, after the briefest pause, her mouth curved into something too controlled to be called a smile, more a recognition of the truth she had just laid bare.

"That is the better question."

She let the silence stretch after that, not to fill it for him, not to soften the edges, not to diminish herself into pleading. She held the space with the same quiet, immovable strength she had held her ground.

If he wanted to feel power in the room, he would have to feel the shape of hers first.

Darth Carnifex

 

[Darth Carnifex]

"My other children have begot more than a mere two, but children are easily fashioned and in abundance. Once, when their number grew too numerous and unruly for my designs, I culled the weakest among them and cast them into the flame. Life's value is weighed by the worth I give it, Jairdain. If it has no worth, then its severance is no great calamity."

He spoke so openly and casually of filicide that He might have well have been reading from a technical manual, for there was no malice in His words. The cruelty of His actions came entirely from the perception of others, in His eyes it was detached and clinical.

Just as one would crush an insect, so did the Eternal Father drag His own children to the wolves.

His eyes found hers, and the blazing darkness in them were hard to weather. "You know the price, it is one I intend to extract regardless. A child for a husband. Relinquish this unborn babe and you will have my guarantee that I will haunt Jax Thio 's life no longer. You can make more of them, I am certain."

Both eyes narrowed ever slightly, "Then again, perhaps a demonstration of my capabilities is in order."

Jairdain Ismet-Thio ​

 

[Jairdain Ismet-Thio]

Jairdain listened to him speak of his children the way another person might speak of flawed tools or failed experiments, and something inside her finally shifted, not abruptly, not explosively, but with the slow, irrevocable movement of a fault line giving way beneath the weight of too many accumulated pressures. Until now, she had held herself together through discipline and restraint, through the hard-earned calm that had carried her through war and loss and corruption and grief and captivity; she had endured his presence with composure because showing him fear felt like surrender, and she refused to give him anything that resembled victory. But this was different. This struck somewhere deeper than fear could reach, deeper than the instinct to protect herself, deeper even than the instinct to protect the child she carried.

Disgust curled through her so sharply it almost burned.

Not because he had killed. Not because he threatened. She had seen death before, had faced cruelty, had stood in the presence of monsters who reveled in their own violence. But he spoke of his own children with such absolute detachment that it hollowed the act into procedure, stripping it of even the twisted logic that cruelty sometimes carried. There was no grief in him. No rage. No justification born from pain or desperation. He described dragging his children to their deaths with the same cold indifference another man might use to describe clearing rot from a garden, and somehow that absence of emotion made it monstrous in a way open cruelty never could.

Her hands tightened slowly against the bedding beneath her, fingers curling into the fabric as she fought to keep the anger from erupting outward all at once. Gooseflesh still lingered along her arms from his touch, revulsion crawling beneath her skin like something infected, but now it mixed with something hotter, denser, something that settled behind her ribs like molten iron, heavy and impossible to ignore.

"Children are not disposable to me," she said, and though her voice remained controlled, the softness that usually lived within it was gone entirely, replaced by something sharper and heavier, carrying a depth of anger she rarely allowed herself to show. "They are not tools. They are not experiments. They are not numbers to be counted and discarded when they become inconvenient to you."

She lifted her chin toward him, blind eyes steady despite the oppressive darkness pressing in on the room, her posture refusing to yield even as her body trembled faintly under the strain of holding herself together.

"Not one of them is interchangeable."

The words came stronger now, emotion threading visibly through the restraint she still fought to maintain. "Not Jax. Not this child. Not the others you threw away because they failed to fit whatever design you imagined for them."

A slow breath moved through her, uneven despite her efforts to steady it. "Each life is different. Each person carries their own strengths, failures, choices, fears, and hopes." Her jaw tightened, the line of her mouth hardening with conviction. "The fact that you cannot see that does not make them worthless. It makes you incapable of understanding what life actually is."

The room felt suffocating with him standing over her, saturated by that terrible presence of his, but she refused to retreat from it. Even now, vulnerable, trapped, carrying the child he valued more than her own existence, she found the fear inside her losing ground to anger. Real anger. The kind born not from wounded pride or self-preservation, but from hearing a father speak of murdering his children as though extinguishing them meant nothing at all.

When he spoke of demonstrations, when that subtle threat settled into the room like poison spreading through water, something in her expression hardened further, her voice dropping into a steadier, colder register.

"Who are you to decide who deserves to live or die?" she asked, the hatred beneath the words no longer hidden, no longer softened by diplomacy or caution. "Who gave you the right to weigh lives against your own convenience and call it judgment?"

Her breathing had quickened slightly now, not from fear, but from the sheer effort it took to contain what she was feeling, to keep the fury from spilling out in a way that would give him satisfaction.

"You speak about worth as though it belongs solely to you to grant, as though existence itself must justify itself before your approval," she said, a bitter edge entering her voice, the closest she had come to open contempt since he entered the room. "But power does not make you righteous. It does not make you wise. And it certainly does not make you a god."

Her fingers loosened from the bedding only to curl again moments later, the motion small but telling.

"You call children weak because they do not become what you wanted them to be," she continued, her voice dropping quieter but somehow becoming even more cutting because of it. "What kind of father destroys his own children simply because they failed to reflect himself back at him properly?"

The silence that followed felt heavy enough to crack stone.

Jairdain held herself upright through it anyway, trembling faintly now, not from fear but from fury forced into restraint. She would not scream. She would not beg. She would not give him the satisfaction of watching her lose herself completely to outrage. But for the first time since his arrival, the hatred she felt for him was no longer something politely hidden behind calm words and measured tones.

It was real. And he was meant to feel every ounce of it.

Darth Carnifex

 

[Darth Carnifex]

The Dark Lord didn't respond, not at first. Instead, His eyes bore into her with an intensity that had been strangely absent until now. She wouldn't feel any emotion from Him, not even anger or annoyance. Even the sensation of amusement was tempered, kept at an even keel. Then, without saying a single word, the Dark Lord reached into the confines of His robes.

And pulled out a lightsaber.

Not one He would have used, nor one an adult like Jairdain would have used, but one specifically built to easily fit into the hand of a child. In the Dark Lord's grasp, it looked almost like a toy - a replica someone might have made for a child who loved to pretend to be a Jedi.

He handed it to the quiet child to His left, the boy, who took it without a word. For the first time, the young boy's eyes cast downwards towards the lightsaber now resting in his hand. Fingers curled one by one around the hilt, until the knuckles whitened from exertion. Whatever natural instinct might have arisen in him was quashed as quickly as it came, pressed down and flattened by a far stronger impulse. One planted by the Dark God that loomed over him at this very moment.

The voice in his mind, one that had only existed briefly but felt as if it had been there all his short life, whispered the same phrase to him again and again. And he knew that he could not disobey, no matter how violently his own voice screamed from beneath the waters which suffocated all reason.

He pressed the emitter of the lightsaber up against the underside of his jaw, right behind his chin.

And activated it.

The beam stayed on for only a second, two at the most. Then it snapped quiet, and the lightsaber tumbled from slack fingers. It bounced across the floor once, twice, before rolling against the wall. The dull thud of the child's body soon joined it, and the acrid stench of burning flesh filled the room.

Whatever Jairdain's reaction paled in comparison to the Dark Lord's. He hadn't even looked at the child, didn't even witness that moment. His eyes remained fixed on Jairdain, weighing her with a dark, imperious glare. Then, He spoke. And His voice flattened all other wave-forms of sound in the room, so that only His words could be heard cleanly and concisely.

"Are you quite finished?"

Jairdain Ismet-Thio ​

 

[Jairdain Ismet-Thio]

For one terrible instant, Jairdain could not make sense of what she was feeling. The shift in the Force reached her before anything else did, a sudden eruption of panic and helplessness from the child so sharp and raw it tore through the room like shattered glass. Beneath it came something even worse: the unmistakable sensation of resistance, small and terrified and instinctive, pressed beneath a presence so overwhelming it crushed the boy's will the way deep water crushes anything fragile caught beneath its weight.

Then came the ignition.

The sound hit her before the smell ever could, ripping through her with such brutal clarity that she flinched violently, the reaction torn from her before discipline had any chance of restraining it. Her breath caught hard in her throat as horror surged through her body with a force that left her cold from the inside out, the Force recoiling around her in jagged, uneven waves while grief, revulsion, fury, and disbelief collided so violently inside her chest that her hands began trembling against the bedding beneath them.

The child's body struck the floor. The lightsaber clattered away. And Carnifex never even looked at him.

That was the moment something inside her finally broke loose, not because of the death itself, for she had seen death before, had stood on battlefields soaked with it, had watched good people die frightened and broken and grieving. She had endured cruelty, imprisonment, corruption, and loss. But this was something colder than cruelty, something so devoid of humanity that it struck her harder than the violence ever could: the absolute indifference of a man who could stand over a dying child and feel nothing at all.

Jairdain turned instinctively toward the sound, blind eyes wide despite their inability to see, every breath uneven as the acrid stench of burned flesh filled the room. For one awful moment, she could not speak, because rage swelled inside her with such overwhelming force she thought it might physically tear its way out of her chest. The Force responded with it, not in attack, not recklessly, but in a tightening pressure that seemed to draw the room inward, the air growing heavier as fury and grief pressed outward against the limits of her restraint.

When he finally spoke, when that terrible voice flattened every other sound in the room and calmly asked if she was finished, something inside her settled into a terrible, burning clarity.

"No," she said, the single word trembling not with fear but with hatred so profound it shook on its way out of her throat. "No, I do not think I am."

She dragged in a sharp breath through lungs that felt too tight to hold air.

"You murdered a child to prove a point," she said, the words coming harder now, emotion bleeding openly through whatever composure she still possessed. "A frightened child who could not even fight you, and you stood there listening to him die as though his life meant so little you could not spare him even a glance."

Disgust twisted across her face, raw and unhidden.

"I asked you who you were to decide who lives and dies," she continued, her voice rising, not into shouting, but into something sharper, wounded, and infinitely more furious. "And this is your answer? A child dead at your feet because you needed to prove that no one around you is allowed the choice to resist you?"

The room trembled faintly beneath the force of what she was barely containing.

"You did not kill him because he threatened you," she said, her breathing shaking despite her efforts to steady it. "You killed him because you cannot tolerate anything around you possessing a will you do not control. That child was alive. He was afraid. Somewhere inside himself, he was fighting you, and you crushed him simply because you could."

Her head turned slightly toward where the boy had fallen, grief cutting through the fury for one brief, unbearable moment.

"He was a person," she whispered, the words devastating in their softness. "A child."

Then she turned back toward Carnifex, and whatever fear had once existed inside her burned away completely beneath the sheer magnitude of what she felt for him now.

"And you looked at that," she said, her voice raw with grief and disgust alike, "and saw nothing."

Silence followed, heavy enough to suffocate. Jairdain sat rigid within it, tears standing in her blind eyes though she refused to let them fall, every inch of her body trembling beneath the weight of fury forced into restraint.

"If this is what you call strength," she said at last, her voice low, uneven, and filled with open contempt, "then I pity every soul that has ever mistaken you for a god."

Darth Carnifex

 

[Darth Carnifex]

"Yes, he was alive. He had a family, hopes, dreams, and little fears that only seemed large in the mind of a child. All that he was, all that he could have been, led to this moment. To die ignobly, the spark of life utterly spent, without even the respect of his murderer to look him in the eye as he died. All of that amounts to nothing. Life has no worth, no purpose, unless it is given it by those with the power to take it."

The young girl then stepped forward, and the Dark Lord's hands came to rest upon her shoulders. Her expression was likewise lackluster, stripped of emotion. There was only a gasping light in her eyes, almost entirely snuffed out. Beneath that glutinous miasma, she was much like the boy.

Frightened and confused.

"I have another child with me, and many more beyond these walls. Given the opportunity, I could snuff the life out of each and every one of them without elation. I feel nothing for these mongrels, the galaxy has plenty of children to offer me as replacements. As always, the choice is yours, Jairdain. I may be the instrument of their destruction, but you hold the trigger. The boy's death was wrought by all the decisions you took leading to that exact moment, and this girl's fate will be the same."

"You cannot persuade me, Jairdain, you cannot change what I think or how I feel. I do not experience remorse or pity or grief. The life of a child is as worthless to me as a mote of dust, and just as easily swept away. Their only worth comes from servitude."

As if on cue, the girl finally spoke, and it would have been the only voice Jairdain would have heard besides Carnifex's for days.

"We live to serve the Eternal Father, we gleefully die for His glory. We have no purpose in life, only in death are we worthwhile."

Jairdain Ismet-Thio ​

 

[Jairdain Ismet-Thio]

Jairdain listened to him speak about the boy's life as though it had been nothing more than fuel burned inside some vast, indifferent machine, and the horror of it did not strike her all at once so much as it settled slowly and relentlessly into her chest, invasive and impossible to escape. It spread through her thoughts like poison dissolving into clear water, until every part of her felt contaminated. The cruelty itself was no longer the sharpest wound. It was the certainty behind it, the absolute and unshakable conviction with which he stripped meaning from another living being and called the resulting emptiness wisdom. That was what made her breath catch unevenly in her chest and what made the grief and fury pressing against her ribs feel almost too immense to contain without shattering something inside her.

Still, she forced herself to remain motionless as the girl stepped forward.

The moment Carnifex's hands settled upon the child's shoulders, Jairdain felt it again, even through exhaustion, grief, and the suffocating weight of his presence pressing against the room like a storm refusing to break. Fear lingered there, quiet and buried deep beneath layers of conditioning, while confusion drifted beneath it in fractured pieces that no longer seemed capable of fully surfacing. Yet what struck Jairdain hardest was how dim the child felt within the Force, not absent, not dead, but hollowed out to such a degree that it was like standing before someone already buried while their body still breathed.

The girl spoke, and every word carried sincerity. That sincerity hurt more than the death had.

There was no deception in her voice, no hidden resistance trembling beneath the surface, no desperate part of her clawing upward toward freedom. Whatever had once lived inside her had been carved away so thoroughly that obedience was no longer a prison she suffered beneath. It had become the only shape left to her.

She believed every word she said.

The realization struck Jairdain with such force that, for a brief moment, she had to close her eyes against it, not in surrender, but in grief so profound that it physically ached.

When she finally spoke again, her voice had quieted, but the anger within it had not diminished. If anything, it had condensed into something colder and sharper, something steadier and infinitely more dangerous than open rage.

"I never attempted to change what you think or feel, father-in-law," she said, the title stripped of every trace of warmth until it sounded almost clinical in its precision. A faint shake of her head followed, disbelief and contempt woven tightly through the motion. "Did you truly think I would waste my time trying?"

She drew a slow, deliberate breath through lungs that still felt too tight from the pressure of everything she was fighting to contain.

"You speak as though your inability to feel remorse is proof of superiority, but all I hear is limitation. You cannot understand the value of life, so you reduce it to ownership and utility because those are the only measures you are capable of comprehending."

Her blind gaze shifted toward the girl again, toward that dim and hollow place where a child still existed and yet somehow no longer truly remained.

"And this," she said softly, her voice trembling now with grief she could no longer entirely force back down, "this is not devotion. It is mutilation."

The Force shivered faintly around her as sorrow and fury strained hard against the fragile restraint she still possessed.

"You did not teach them purpose or loyalty or faith. You carved away everything inside them until obedience was all they had left, and now you stand there calling the emptiness you created virtue."

Her jaw tightened visibly as anger surged hotter beneath the grief.

"You keep speaking about choice, but there is no choice here. Not for them. A child cannot meaningfully choose servitude when every part of them has been broken down until submission is the only thing they remember how to be."

Then she turned fully back toward him, and the room itself seemed to tighten beneath the weight of what she refused to unleash.

"And blaming me for that boy's death is a fallacy," she said, the words landing with calm, cutting precision. "You chose to place that lightsaber in his hands. You chose to command him. You chose to stand there while he died." Her breathing shook faintly now despite every effort to steady it, fury threading visibly through each word. "The fact that I refused to bow to you does not make me responsible for your actions any more than refusing to hand someone a blade makes you guilty when they decide to murder with another."

A brief silence followed before she continued, quieter now, but in a way that somehow cut deeper.

"Unless you would like to explain your reasoning to me."

The challenge remained controlled, but only by the thinnest margin. She was no longer restraining herself out of fear of him. She restrained herself because she refused to allow him to dictate the shape of her anger or turn her grief into something ugly enough to resemble him.

Her attention drifted once more toward the little girl, and something inside her twisted painfully at the sound of that hollow voice repeating doctrine with the sincerity only children possessed.

For the first time since Carnifex had entered the room, the fury inside her gave way briefly to something heavier and infinitely sadder.

Pity. Not for him. For every child who had ever stood before him long enough to believe they only mattered once they stopped being themselves.

Darth Carnifex