Private Under The Skin

[Arris Windrun]

CORUSCANT // THE EMPTY
Kirie
​

Click. Close. Click. Close.

Arris held a lighter in her hand. An old thing. A scuffed replacement for the one she lost on Abregado-rae. The nature of that battle... that war... she hadn't yet given herself time to process it. Hell, did anyone? It was a mess - and yet, that itself was a gross understatement.

The cybernetic Sith Lord retreated, naturally, to her lair in the Empty. A solitary tower of light amidst a dark forest of durasteel abandon. The Force, too, congregated there. Arris had changed. Her energy rolled out like a quiet, seething hatred rather than the unbridled rage or self-loathing bite of her past. She could sense things, too. Not with particular skill or detail, but it was as if the world had new color. It was no longer just the noise of machinery and technology. People. Emotions. Threats. She saw them all around her, even when her eyes were blind to it.

The way up to her penthouse lacked any kind of barrier at all. No security safeguarded the lift. It would ascend past one abandoned floor after the next. Until finally, it reached the summit. Doors parted to reveal - likely to no one's surprise - something more akin to a hideout than a home. There were workstations scattered about the open space, including a medical center with inactive droids and synthflesh vats. There were tables overloaded with implants, each one methodically categorized and cataloged. Another table held weapons. A far wall was covered with dusty trophies from days as a fighter, or her days in the Black Sun.

Few of the old Arris Windrun diagrams were left. But she couldn't help but leave the original up. Hand-drawn by Arris herself. Revealing the talent of a sketch artist, actually, if the woman had done something with her life that wasn't violent. The new diagrams were hand-drawn, too, but different. A glimpse - foreshadowing - of the woman Kirie was about to meet for the first time. Save maybe for the holophoto that stood out in a pathetic shrine to a memory. Of her, and of Rox. Impossible to say if Kirie would connect the dots, but they were there.

The holo-photo contained a message, too, which read...

To Arris: I wanted you to have a copy. - Rox​

The cyborg rose from her chair, cigarette in mouth, turning to face the trespasser.

"Oh. It's you."

 

[Kirie]

Arris Windrun​

At the top of the tower in the abandoned quiet of The Empty, Kirie stepped out of the turbolift, her footsteps echoing across the durasteel flooring. A figure rose, indistinct in the diffuse light of the penthouse, a presence she recognised.

"Oh. It's you."

'It's me.' Kirie signed back. As she drew closer, the figure became clearer, its features growing sharp- and different from what she was expecting. She didn't know this woman, though a strange sense of recognition tugged at her brain. Kirie's brow furrowed, pieces of the picture fitting together, but not the whole story.

'Arris?'

And, on confirmation.

'That's a different look for you.'

Kirie had undergone her own change, albeit less drastic. The last time she'd seen Arris she had been reeling from the invasion of Coruscant, from almost, so very nearly escaping. That moment running down the hallways of the building that had then been the Jedi Temple, that was the apex of her climb out and away from the Sith. The closest she had gotten to true freedom since she had first stepped foot on Jutrand. Probably it was the closest she would ever get. Ever since that moment that Anet's fingers had enclosed around her again, Kirie had been sliding, then tumbling, then free-falling downward. Now her eyes shone with gold, her face was pale and haggard, eyes heavy with bags and dark rings. Arris would not miss these signs, and for some reason it made Kirie feel ashamed.

She blinked a few times to get her bearings. It always left her a little dazed when she wiped away her feelings. Nowadays more than ever, she navigated the Galaxy in a sort of constant flux between hapless confusion, numb acceptance, and miserable clarity.

After a moment looking around without moving, her brain kicked into gear again and her gaze returned to the woman- to Arris, perfectly balanced and neutral again.

'Suits you.' Kirie signed, giving a little shrug.

'I know it has been a while.' she began, still maintaining quite a distance from Arris, as if a little wary to get close. 'But, I need your help with something.'

 

[Arris Windrun]

Kirie
​

"Yeah," was the closet thing to verbal confirmation that Kirie would get.

The cyborg sauntered lazily across the room, taking a slow drag in the process as she noted every detail of the acolyte's appearance.

The last Arris knew, Kirie served 'her time' and fell in with some other acolyte. The cyborg didn't really care for the details of it, but she kept tabs on Kirie. The reports from the Temple were a little disturbing. Kirie was reserved, yet kind. Diligent, but never one to fall into the same ugly choices as the other, darker students. That changed. People grew afraid or indifferent or even jealous of the young woman. There were whispers that she could drain the life out of you just by making eye contact, so some of the more pathetic acolytes avoided it altogether. Avoided her if entirely possible in the days since she returned from Jutrand.

"It's my look," she answered. "Or... The closest to an honest one, anyway."

There was a hint of shame in that. She knew their conversation would've been different if Kirie had connected the dots completely.

She stopped a short distance away, letting the cigarette idly burn between her fingers. When Kirie suggested that the new look suited her, Arris chuckled dryly - a bit of self depreciation, maybe.

And she responded dryly, too.

"And you look like shit."

Another drag.

"Suits you."

It had been a while.

Seeing Kirie this way was kind of a gut punch. The Sith Lord had been so busy purging Jedi Enclaves or going to war that she felt she had neglected her... Well, friend just didn't feel like the truth. A false path to absolution. That was closer to it.

But as soon as Kirie asked for help. It was as if a switch flipped inside her skull. That part of Arris still existed. Whether or not Kirie knew, she could still take advantage of the Sith Lord. Her shame might've been gone - or at least buried - but her promise to be there for Kirie, her need to help this young woman, was still there. No matter how they might've changed.

"Okay..."

It was that easy.

"Whatever you need."

But she couldn't ignore her thoughts, however. "But you're gonna tell me what the hell happened to you, Kirie."

 

[Kirie]

Arris Windrun
​

Under normal circumstances, Arris' quip about how her new haggard vibe suited Kirie would have made the girl’s lips quirk up into a soft smile, a single dimple appearing on the cheek, maybe even a bashful glance down at the floor. This time, Kirie didn't even seem to register the comment. She strode into the room at a measured pace, as if a spectre finally given permission to enter. Kirie stopped at a metal benchtop in the centre of the space, leaned against it, and took up a position opposite where Arris had been standing when she'd walked in.

"Whatever you need."

A slow nod. No smile, no show of relief on her face, no relaxation of the shoulders. She acknowledged what Arris said, but seemed unwilling or unable to do more, to say more. The condition of her offer hung in the air unanswered for a long, drawn out moment. A distant part of her wondered what her reaction would have been had this conversation happened a week, a month earlier. Another disparate part of her knew. Probably something embarrassing, like blushing, or giving Arris a hug, stars forbid it. Or, something weak, like weeping as she told her sad tale, or the hugging thing again, come to think of it.

Instead, Kirie stood still and stony, and slowly shook her head.

'No.'

She looked into Arris' eyes, for all the Galaxy as inscrutable to her own self as she must have been for her once-tormentor. They were a sorry pair, the two of them. The Covenant's finest kark-ups.


'You remember what I told you they did to me, to my voice?' She had no doubt the details of it had been seared into Arris' memory. She was the guilt-ridden type. She wouldn't forget.

'Can you fix it?'

 

[Arris Windrun]

Kirie
​

'No.'

She lacked... well, anything to push back against it. Arris merely nodded.

The cyborg walked past Kirie, practically brushing shoulders. Her hand extended to leave the cigarette on the flat surface Kirie leaned against. A quiet offer, maybe, as Arris didn't usually let go of her cigarettes until there was barely anything left.

She continued into her workstation (the boundary of which was unclear with the rest of the open apartment) and approached her table of implants. She ran through her mental catalog, recognizing each one with expert familiarity.

"Yeah... I can."

Well, it wasn't a certainty, but in her experience, there was little cybernetics couldn't accomplish. The Dark Horse of Ruusan was a near-total convert. Very little of her organic matter remained, to the point that even other Sith Lords wondered if she was an HRD.

She grabbed an implant from the bunch. The same as the one buried in her throat. It was quite small, all things considered. Attached to the vocal cords, with a synthetic neural link that connected directly to the brain. The surrounding tissue - both nervous and otherwise - would have to be partially reconstructed, but what was one little implant compared to the reconstruction of an entire person, as had happened to Arris?

With the device in her hand, she circled back. "This will take some time getting used to," and she already began to show it off, seamlessly switching from one voice to the next. Starting with Lily Rhodes. "You have to think about how you sound - talk from your head, as well as your throat." Her voice had moved across a gradient from Lily to Vess, Vess to Quinn, Quinn to Mercy, and finally settling upon the voice of that dethroned Emperor, the one she impersonated to purge the core. "But with practice... You can find yours again, as I have."

She settled back into her own voice, a touch calmer than before... or maybe just... emptier.

"There's a blanket by the operating table. I can give you privacy."

Arris looked down at her own feet.

"But you're sure you want me to do this?"

She didn't doubt her ability, but something told Arris that this was personal, and in a way that made her feel small. The way Kirie was now... Every urge in the Sith Lord felt threatened. As if this was no longer a friend (were they ever that?), but more likely a competitor. A threat. A Sith.

 

[Kirie]

Arris' ability to mimic was impressive. Of the voices she recognised, the impression was flawless. The only thing was, Kirie didn't want a perfect copy of somebody else's voice. She wanted her own, and through fading memory and her time spent in silence, that had been lost.

Still, the implant's range and quality was apparent, and that was enough to send a little thrill through Kirie's body, running down her arms and escaping out her fingertips. She'd never minded signing, really, but ever since she'd learned that it was Lirka's experimentation that had left her voiceless, she had begun to see the silence inflicted as aberrant, wrong.

"But with practice... You can find yours again, as I have."

'I will.' Kirie signed, then nodded. 'Nobody wants this more than I do.' She shifted from foot to foot and went on.

'Is that your voice, Arris? Or someone else's?'

At Arris' instruction, Kirie waited for the woman to turn around then stripped down, leaving her dark clothing in a pile next to the table. Arris' penthouse wasn't warm, and she felt cold and exposed with her breasts and privates out in the air, gooseflesh prickling across her arms and legs. Kirie chastised herself for being so childish and padded over to the operating table, trying to not gasp too loudly as the cold metal contacted bare skin. Finally, she pulled the blanket over herself, providing relief from both the chill and the slightly hysterical sense of embarrassment of being naked in close proximity to Arris Windrun.

Kirie snapped her fingers to indicate she was ready.

'I'm sure.' Then, as if that could be construed as too personal, she continued. 'Everyone says you're the best.'

 

[Arris Windrun]

Kirie
​

When Kirie asked her if it was her own voice she spoke with. Arris paused a moment.

She actually had to think about it... Arris was pretty sure it was hers. It sounded like the voice in her head, alright, but could that have changed, too? A small part of her wondered, maybe even feared, that what Kirie - and everyone else - really heard was a chimera between the sounds of two people. Didn't take a genius to know who the second party was.

Arris turned around and waited for Kirie to finish. For a second, she almost thought to look back, just to ask: 'How will I know?' But the sudden snapping of fingers answered that question.

She turned back around.

Arris smiled at her last remark, laughing a little. "The best? I think it's been a long, long time since anyone's said anything nice about Arris Windrun."

The cyborg walked over to the operating table. Kirie might've felt it - how her mind extended immediately to the droids and the machines. All coming to life. All working in tandem, with imperceptible latency.

"Y'know... normally I'm doing this shit to myself." She gestured with her head to the droids. "Through their eyes. It's a little weird, actually."

She gently ran her fingers along the front of Kirie's throat.

Contrary to the table, Arris ran hot, and her fingers might have loomed a little too close to the opposite end of uncomfortable temperatures.

"We're going to start you out with a numbing agent. You won't actually be unconscious, so if you'd like, you can close your eyes. Or I can find a blindfold if you don't trust yourself."

She paused, deciding to elaborate. "I uh... I can't sleep. Or be unconscious, actually. I'll slip into a probably irreversible coma if I do. Chalk it up to half a decade of combat stims, running through my bloodstream every hour of the day."

 

[Kirie]

"The best? I think it's been a long, long time since anyone's said anything nice about Arris Windrun."

'Don't get used to it.'

Kirie was just raising a hand to affirm Arris' statement that yeah, actually, that was weird as chit, but the sensation of the woman's too-warm fingers around her neck shattered her train of thought. Kirie went ramrod straight, all her muscles stiffening at once. To her credit, she didn't move even a hair, and after a moment she relaxed and just let the woman work. She wanted this over with.

'Blindfold.' Kirie confirmed. It would be just like her to open her eyes halfway through. Even the thought of getting a glimpse of Arris cutting into her, maybe even splattered with Kirie's own gore was enough to make her feel queasy. The whole thing was kind of messed up. After this little home surgery, she would make a recommendation that Arris invest in some proper anaesthesia, should anyone else require her services. Right now. though, she wasn't trying to start an argument.

"I uh... I can't sleep. Or be unconscious, actually. I'll slip into a probably irreversible coma if I do. Chalk it up to half a decade of combat stims, running through my bloodstream every hour of the day."

It was no wonder, saying such things, that most people Kirie talked to considered Arris more as a killing machine than a woman. Kirie thought different, but it was always strange to be confronted with just how inhuman she could be sometimes.

'When was the last time you slept?' Kirie's hands kept moving for the moment, but she knew she'd have to be still once Arris actually started. 'You're missing out.'

 

[Arris Windrun]

Kirie
​

The numbing injection would act very quickly. As soon as it did one circulation, Kirie wouldn't feel a thing. As if she were weightless consciousness. Arris wasn't sure how to figure a blindfold in all this mess, since it was a passing thought. So, she undid her gunbelt, dropping the holsters to the floor with a slam for each, one split second after the last, followed by the clattering of shells.

She placed the belt over Kirie's eyes and strapped it around the back of the operating table. In a way it held her down, too, which was entirely unnecessary. 'Shit, I hope that ain't scary.' She realized after she had done so.

"You're just gonna have to follow my voice for this part. Sorry if I suck at one-way conversations," she chuckled dryly.

"Oh, and to answer your question... The last time I slept? I dunno. Seven years ago. Maybe more. I only remember the dreams I had after Rox died, though." It wasn't what Kirie asked, but it was the one thing Arris really missed about sleep. More than the peace.

Next, Arris grabbed an injector filled with a thick substance. "I don't have an oxygen tube, so this'll be what you get. It's a gel that'll fill your lungs. It'll feel like you're drowning, but let it pass, okay? This is what's inside my lungs. I don't need it, but it helps me. I kinda forgot what drowning feels like."

Or did she forget what it was like to breathe, to really have an honest deep breath?

She stuck the needle into Kirie's neck, not that she'd feel it, until it reached her trachea, and slowly expelled the gel into her lungs.

"Okay. Now for the procedure. It'll just be a few minutes. Try to think of something. I'll unblind you when it's done, and give you a stimulant to kick the numbness and shit."

 

[Kirie]

She had died and been transported to some eternally punishing afterlife in the Netherworld. It was the only explanation. She couldn't help but flinch when the belt was pulled tight, covering her eyes and securing her head. It reminded her ever so much of the last time she'd lay on an operating table. Lirka had used head straps too. Kirie tried to stop herself from hyperventilating. They were just getting started. No backing out now. She clenched her fists tightly.

Thinking about Arris never sleeping, never stopping kept Kirie distracted for a few moments, as did idly wondering about what her life had been with her old paramour. She was probably the kind of person Kirie would have liked, back then. They could have been good friends before the two of them got so dark and twisty.

"I don't have an oxygen tube, so this'll be what you get. It's a gel that'll fill your lungs. It'll feel like you're drowning, but let it pass, okay? This is what's inside my lungs. I don't need it, but it helps me. I kinda forgot what drowning feels like."

No no no no no no nononononononononononononononononono. Was she crazy, was she stupid, could she not see that this was karking torture? This was the type of thing ISB agents did to you, not people who were supposed to be helping you. Kirie shook her head, panicked, but there was nothing else to be done, no other way, so eventually she had to nod her head to continue, to unclench the fists she couldn't even sense and acquiesce.

She didn't feel the tube when it went in, could only imagine the sensation of the sludge filling, coating her lungs. It was for that reason that the feeling of drowning hit all at once. She heard herself gurgling, brain screaming at her to make a body she couldn't even feel take in breath. A light show began to play inside her eyelids. Starburst and shimmering neon lines dancing about her periphery as she died and died and died without relief. Desperately, Kirie took a sledgehammer to her brain, wielding the darkness to destroy every thinking waking feeling centre until her consciousness was as blank and intangible as her body. Finally, there was relief, and she blacked out.

 

[Arris Windrun]

Kirie
​

"Hey? Kirie?"

Arris gently shook her. "Are you there?"

This was starting to concern her. "Kirie?"

It had been a minute or two since the stimulant went in. Surgery was over. The implant successfully embedded into her voice box. Well, it kind of just was her voice box now.

There was another gentle shake. The belt had been off her for a moment now, too. So Kirie could open her eyes and look around. Worried and unaware that Kirie had blacked out of her own accord, Arris scrambled to her drawer and sifted through the various stimulants she kept. Not all of them were for regular use. There were a few she had for emergencies. Expired. Expired. No. That'll kill her. Why do I have this - this is for a --

She looked back over her shoulder. "Shit, Kirie. Wake up. Please?"

Arris sucked at panicking. Her voice remained strangely calm despite the horrible anxiety that played out in her head.

She threw a vial into her injector and slowly walked on over. Ready to give her a second dose...

 

[Kirie]

A dead woman awoke on an operating table.

No, that wasn't quite right.

A ghost slipped into a corpse, taking it for herself.

No...

Someone familiar was standing over her, chattering, moving things around frantically, making a frightful racket. The sound was grating against her ears, which she guess she had. Maybe then she had eyes, too?

Wide and gold-flecked eyes flickered open, darting around the workshop, squinting against the harshness of the overhead lamp. The woman looked familiar too. She knew her. Resented her, admired her? Felt... Complicated. Said woman was hovering over her, wearing her own mess of complicated feelings. Maybe I should say something, thought the ghost, who had no idea what to say at all.

The woman rolled over and vomited blue gunk all over herself, and the table, and the other woman. There were streaks of blood, and something foul and unrecognisable.

"Ughhhfg." Sandpaper syllables spilled from pale lips. She struggled to sit up, wiping the mess from her face, before looking down to find she was naked. Familiar snippets of memory tugged at the ghost's mind, and she touched her fingertips together, watching in fascination as her skin made contact without a shred of feeling. She tore her eyes away and tried to focus, think back to the words. She had been hearing.

"Shit, Kirie. Wake up. Please?"

Kirie... Wake up...

...

Arris.

"Ar-ghhg- Arrissss?" An unpleasant trickle of blue tinged drool spilled from her mouth and she- Kirie- wiped it away.

"It... work-gh-d?"

 

[Arris Windrun]

Kirie
​

She paused as the gunk splashed over her. Luckily, Arris wasn't unsettled by that kind of stuff anymore, but it did give her pause.

"Hey," she answered. "Just... try not to move too much, okay?"

Frantically, Arris grabbed a second blanket... Or was it a towel? Either way, she wrapped it around Kirie. "It's working... You're doing great. Just remember what I said. Think about your voice. About what you want to say. It's okay if it doesn't come out right away. It took me a bit."

She swung a bucket over with her foot, setting it just in front of Kirie's feet, in case she needed to vomit more.

Then, Arris went about collecting the woman's clothes, setting them atop a nearby medical tray. "I'll let you get dressed, okay?" She took a few steps back. "I'm going to be outside," she gestured the way. "Feel free to find me when you're ready, yeah?"

Without another word, the cyborg grabbed her smokes and stepped out onto the porch. As soon as the door closed behind her, Arris fell forward onto her hands and knees and held in a scream of all that pent-up panic. It was weird. When she was in the moment, it was easy as putting a bullet between the eyes, but now that she was alone for a moment? It felt as if there was no running from her feelings. As if she was never in control at all. Arris wanted to cry, but she couldn't, so she took a deep breath and sat with her back against the wall of her penthouse balcony.

The cool, Coruscanit night air blew across her as she lit her cigarette and took a slow, unsteady drag.

She wondered if Kirie would do the smart thing and just leave now that the job was done.