Syd Celsius
The Reflection
Nathan didn't react to the smirk
Starlin Rand
sported on his face. His own grim and dour expression refused to leave his.
"I can only shut her out part of the way. Not fully. The Bond is too intense to fully block her..." Nathan explained calmly to the Master.
"I literally can't help seeing small snippets like that. As for tormenting your master on such a petty level, I don't. I wouldn't get anything from it. And what petty torment could I conceive of that's even a fraction of the Hell a permanent bond to my wife's killer is? It'd be like tossing a pebble at a mountain, hoping the mountain will crack out of spite."
His gaze hardened very slightly. The love of his new family drowned the worst of the bond out. But could never fully silence it. Syd had tried to make the best of it at first, only to withdraw in failure as much as she could. Nathan's feelings to her had not changed a single iota.
"The bond is a constant, ceaseless psychological torture from which I cannot escape." he admitted grimly, utterly humorless. Stories of him were quite notorious by this point. No smiles. No laughter. No joking. Silent unless spoken to. He didn't even seem angry in his tone. Or even mildly annoyed.
"It's my own fault, really. But it was either that or let Elaine consume her and rebirth Darth Phyre fully. There was no way I could have permitted that second option. No matter the personal inconvenience."
Even Korriban had shown him he was still paying for what he had done to Elaine.
He didn't go into where it would end. Where it had to end for one of them.
"There's really nothing I could do in terms of finding new ways to torment her. Nothing that would come anywhere close to the needle like pain of our memories sloshing into each other. Hearing those voices in her subconscious gibbering at me incoherently..."
His expression remained stone like. Unfeeling as Starlin asked about the stronghold.
"A number of murders bearing characteristics of Cult practices led me to an enclave in the underworks. That's bad because it indicates a hive, which is much much larger. And I have not fully traced it yet. Someone smuggled them there. Someone connected."
Zabka folded his arms. "I hope you're not accusing Syd--"
"--I would know if it was her. There is no way I couldn't know if it was her doing it. This is someone else..." Nathan said. "Usually...nests of this sort are preludes to attempts at massive slaughters. Any easy victim within reach is preferable but what concerns me is the enclave I purged was very close to the temple. My guess is the much larger nest is gearing up to target the Padawans nearby."
Syd finally phased through her ship in her 90 Suit, and Nathan's eye visibly twitched like Dreyfuss in Pink Panther style without looking at her. It was the only display of genuine emotion from him. A sliver of the pain he always felt from having his bond to Lysandra severed permanently escaped him but he clamped down desperately at it.
"How close was the Enclave to the temple itself?" she asked, trying to be business like. She had long since given up trying to reach him emotionally, to try and find some way of trying to wipe away at least some of the insanely bad blood between them: He might as well have been a million parsecs away from her, despite the fact he was right in front of her.
"Two kilometers. Southwest."
Syd raised her eyebrows. "They are directly underneath the temple, in one of the extremely deep levels of the underworks..."
"What makes you so sure?" Nathan asked, tone level. This was precisely what had come to terrify her about Nathan. She had seen him at his worst, when his raw, boiling hatred of her had allowed him to nearly kill her twice.
To see him so calm and placid, when she could still feel how much he absolutely despised her, told her he would delay his revenge as long as he needed to in order to wipe out the evil Cult first, along with their evil Spirit that they worshipped.
But she was under no illusions. Once that was over, only one of them could walk away, Highlander-Style.
(Christopher Lambert: There can be only one!)
"It's a Cult tactic. Make an enclave very close to a Jedi temple to test alertness. If they smoke it out, that usually means the Jedi thinks they won. But they are right underneath you, building..." Syd explained.
"We'll need to organize a purge unit immediately..." Nathan said, all business. No sniping. No barbs. No obvious attempt at antagonizing her or her student. It would have been less unsettling to Syd if Nathan had been an obvious, constant jerk always trying to get a rise from her or Starlin and his Father.
But when they both understood each other as well as they did there was no need to. She always knew his thoughts on the matter.
What the Bryn'adul had been for Laertia, Syd and the Cult was to him. Their obsessions and flaws mirrored each other. He even had a lost arm like she had at the start. He even wore black biker gear like she often had before encountering the Cult.
"I can help in the search on the lower levels. The entrance will be hidden with magic." Syd explained.
"It'll begin tonight. The longer we wait, the more they can dig in..." Nathan said emotionlessly before turning to Zabka. "Are you set to conduct such a purge?"
Zabka nodded.
"Then I shall be on my way..." Nathan replied, not wanting to be in Syd's presence unless he had no option.
Without a further word to Syd he turned to Starlin.
"You might want to look for signs of Cultist infiltrators in the temple. Nullification Resin is a good way to test for them."
That was it. No ominous warnings. Just advice. No barbs because he was Syd's apprentice. He had too much on his plate to engage in pointless back and forth. Even his initial statements to Starlin came off as soulless and empty in the aftermath of his exchange with Syd and Zabka, less an attempt to get under Rand's skin and coming off more as a long, extended version of 'Oh. You're here too. Whatevs.'
Nathan turned from them all and departed without a word back to his TIE/SRRET. The crimson ship flew off without fanfare.
Syd looked at the parting shuttle, trying to hide her fear of the man. He had WAY more motive to win now than ever. He had a new family, and his grandson Percival had been slain by the Cult. He was better at killing Force Spawn. He knew their weaknesses.
And Khemost told her Nathan would not stand on ceremony with a duel. That was what had caught Elaine off guard in the end. Part of her had so wanted a cathartic final duel to quiet old demons, and had thought he would want the same, only to realize too late Nathan hadn't cared about catharsis in the slightest. Only winning. Only ending it.
He had ironically caught her off guard by being too much like his daughter.
The horror of it was, that in every other respect, Nathan was doing a lot of good for a lot of people. Nathan went out if his way to rescue innocents. He even spared a common Sith or two every once in a blue moon.
Syd didn't view him as evil, and did not think him just as bad as any Cultist at the end of the day, just a man who made a terrible, selfish mistake once when pushed to his limit while literally at Death's Door, and he had paid for it with his death and beyond, forced to come back to a daughter driven terminally insane.
He had come back to a world where his last living descendant had married the corrupted remains of the woman who had murdered his mother and father before his eyes, whose army had dealt him wounds severe enough that he had needed emergency transformation into a Deputy to survive, leading to years of being a zombie-like killing machine.
Though she didn't want to die, she completely understood why he was going to try to kill her. Why he had to try to kill her. Even though with how connected they were, he would likely die himself.
This went beyond grudges. It was exactly as Nathan described it:
This was primal. It was so primal codes and morality had no authority over him where Syd was concerned. He would avenge Lysandra's death, his failed attempt to protect Julia Crownwraithe, even if it killed him in the end, or he died trying. No matter what obstacles stood in his way where she was concerned, Nathan just did not care. His riches, his new marriage...Nathan had no choice but to risk it in direct combat with her. To withdraw his vendetta would be, for him, tantamount to saying Lysandra had meant nothing to him. That all his mental wounds were gone just because he had hooked up with a hot sorceress vampire waifu and had trillions of credits and a large family. Even his new wife understood why he had to do this. THAT is how messed up the situation was: A creature that had been itself a murderous beast absolutely understood where Nathan was coming from with his vendetta as much as Syd herself did. Even his Android daughter slowly was understanding just how personal this was, just how fundamentally Lysandra being murdered the way she had been had permanently traumatized him.
He relived the murder in his sleep. His dreams were constant torment. All the riches in the Galaxy, all the replacement family he could gather could not erase what happened to Lysandra. OR Laertia.
"We can't escape each other..." Syd said softly, face wriggling disgustingly between her and the Battalion's for a split second before reverting to hers.
"Who made who first?" She asked in The Battalion's voice without realizing it before floating back to her ship to be alone for a while.
Zabka turned to Starlin.
"Just a absolute delight, isn't he?" Zabka muttered.
Then he sighed.
"I once asked him, y'know. Whether he was ever sorry about Elaine. She beheaded his mother and impaled his father while he watched. Part of him was sorry...sorry for what it led to. That innocent people that he never intended to get hurt were hurt because of his decision. That it was essentially one of the biggest backfires of all time, hoping she would die in combat against the Cult. That they would do what his own indoctrination would not permit him to do directly, even at the end of his first life."
Zabka's gaze hardened.
"The rest of him is sorry that he couldn't just suck it up and do it himself. I think that's what fuels part of it. The idea that if he does it personally that this time instead of chickening out like before, THIS time, it won't turn into a snowball rolling down the hill. That this time, it will end with him."
He looked at the sky, still able to see Nathan's ship streaking away as a tiny red dot.
"He was a great Jedi, once. Like you are. He once saved the surface of Csilla from nuclear bombardment. Freed the world of Meniliss 7 from the Digital Tyrants. Put out the great fires of Johor City before they could kill the inhabitants. Now...I dunno what he is, really. But I pity him. You might not, but you weren't there in the Plague, Starlin. You didn't see how that crisis could drive even great Jedi to the edge of sanity and past it. You didn't see Elaine at her worst. Or Darth Phyre at her worst. I did. Whatever you think of him...you were not there. He drew the chit straw from the beginning and kept drawing it. And for a long time he rose above it. Lysandra was pretty much the only emotional anchor he had during the plague. When he realized they were both destined to die horrible and painful deaths...he snapped..."
The red dot was finally too far away to see.
"The pieces might have new glue to keep them together...but that doesn't change the fact that he is no longer what he was before...and might never be again." Zabka added, his face going grim as he partly relived the Gulag Era's horrors in that instant.
"He was almost a friend once. Almost." Zabka finished.
Starlin Rand
sported on his face. His own grim and dour expression refused to leave his."I can only shut her out part of the way. Not fully. The Bond is too intense to fully block her..." Nathan explained calmly to the Master.
"I literally can't help seeing small snippets like that. As for tormenting your master on such a petty level, I don't. I wouldn't get anything from it. And what petty torment could I conceive of that's even a fraction of the Hell a permanent bond to my wife's killer is? It'd be like tossing a pebble at a mountain, hoping the mountain will crack out of spite."
His gaze hardened very slightly. The love of his new family drowned the worst of the bond out. But could never fully silence it. Syd had tried to make the best of it at first, only to withdraw in failure as much as she could. Nathan's feelings to her had not changed a single iota.
"The bond is a constant, ceaseless psychological torture from which I cannot escape." he admitted grimly, utterly humorless. Stories of him were quite notorious by this point. No smiles. No laughter. No joking. Silent unless spoken to. He didn't even seem angry in his tone. Or even mildly annoyed.
"It's my own fault, really. But it was either that or let Elaine consume her and rebirth Darth Phyre fully. There was no way I could have permitted that second option. No matter the personal inconvenience."
Even Korriban had shown him he was still paying for what he had done to Elaine.
He didn't go into where it would end. Where it had to end for one of them.
"There's really nothing I could do in terms of finding new ways to torment her. Nothing that would come anywhere close to the needle like pain of our memories sloshing into each other. Hearing those voices in her subconscious gibbering at me incoherently..."
His expression remained stone like. Unfeeling as Starlin asked about the stronghold.
"A number of murders bearing characteristics of Cult practices led me to an enclave in the underworks. That's bad because it indicates a hive, which is much much larger. And I have not fully traced it yet. Someone smuggled them there. Someone connected."
Zabka folded his arms. "I hope you're not accusing Syd--"
"--I would know if it was her. There is no way I couldn't know if it was her doing it. This is someone else..." Nathan said. "Usually...nests of this sort are preludes to attempts at massive slaughters. Any easy victim within reach is preferable but what concerns me is the enclave I purged was very close to the temple. My guess is the much larger nest is gearing up to target the Padawans nearby."
Syd finally phased through her ship in her 90 Suit, and Nathan's eye visibly twitched like Dreyfuss in Pink Panther style without looking at her. It was the only display of genuine emotion from him. A sliver of the pain he always felt from having his bond to Lysandra severed permanently escaped him but he clamped down desperately at it.
"How close was the Enclave to the temple itself?" she asked, trying to be business like. She had long since given up trying to reach him emotionally, to try and find some way of trying to wipe away at least some of the insanely bad blood between them: He might as well have been a million parsecs away from her, despite the fact he was right in front of her.
"Two kilometers. Southwest."
Syd raised her eyebrows. "They are directly underneath the temple, in one of the extremely deep levels of the underworks..."
"What makes you so sure?" Nathan asked, tone level. This was precisely what had come to terrify her about Nathan. She had seen him at his worst, when his raw, boiling hatred of her had allowed him to nearly kill her twice.
To see him so calm and placid, when she could still feel how much he absolutely despised her, told her he would delay his revenge as long as he needed to in order to wipe out the evil Cult first, along with their evil Spirit that they worshipped.
But she was under no illusions. Once that was over, only one of them could walk away, Highlander-Style.
(Christopher Lambert: There can be only one!)
"It's a Cult tactic. Make an enclave very close to a Jedi temple to test alertness. If they smoke it out, that usually means the Jedi thinks they won. But they are right underneath you, building..." Syd explained.
"We'll need to organize a purge unit immediately..." Nathan said, all business. No sniping. No barbs. No obvious attempt at antagonizing her or her student. It would have been less unsettling to Syd if Nathan had been an obvious, constant jerk always trying to get a rise from her or Starlin and his Father.
But when they both understood each other as well as they did there was no need to. She always knew his thoughts on the matter.
What the Bryn'adul had been for Laertia, Syd and the Cult was to him. Their obsessions and flaws mirrored each other. He even had a lost arm like she had at the start. He even wore black biker gear like she often had before encountering the Cult.
"I can help in the search on the lower levels. The entrance will be hidden with magic." Syd explained.
"It'll begin tonight. The longer we wait, the more they can dig in..." Nathan said emotionlessly before turning to Zabka. "Are you set to conduct such a purge?"
Zabka nodded.
"Then I shall be on my way..." Nathan replied, not wanting to be in Syd's presence unless he had no option.
Without a further word to Syd he turned to Starlin.
"You might want to look for signs of Cultist infiltrators in the temple. Nullification Resin is a good way to test for them."
That was it. No ominous warnings. Just advice. No barbs because he was Syd's apprentice. He had too much on his plate to engage in pointless back and forth. Even his initial statements to Starlin came off as soulless and empty in the aftermath of his exchange with Syd and Zabka, less an attempt to get under Rand's skin and coming off more as a long, extended version of 'Oh. You're here too. Whatevs.'
Nathan turned from them all and departed without a word back to his TIE/SRRET. The crimson ship flew off without fanfare.
Syd looked at the parting shuttle, trying to hide her fear of the man. He had WAY more motive to win now than ever. He had a new family, and his grandson Percival had been slain by the Cult. He was better at killing Force Spawn. He knew their weaknesses.
And Khemost told her Nathan would not stand on ceremony with a duel. That was what had caught Elaine off guard in the end. Part of her had so wanted a cathartic final duel to quiet old demons, and had thought he would want the same, only to realize too late Nathan hadn't cared about catharsis in the slightest. Only winning. Only ending it.
He had ironically caught her off guard by being too much like his daughter.
The horror of it was, that in every other respect, Nathan was doing a lot of good for a lot of people. Nathan went out if his way to rescue innocents. He even spared a common Sith or two every once in a blue moon.
Syd didn't view him as evil, and did not think him just as bad as any Cultist at the end of the day, just a man who made a terrible, selfish mistake once when pushed to his limit while literally at Death's Door, and he had paid for it with his death and beyond, forced to come back to a daughter driven terminally insane.
He had come back to a world where his last living descendant had married the corrupted remains of the woman who had murdered his mother and father before his eyes, whose army had dealt him wounds severe enough that he had needed emergency transformation into a Deputy to survive, leading to years of being a zombie-like killing machine.
Though she didn't want to die, she completely understood why he was going to try to kill her. Why he had to try to kill her. Even though with how connected they were, he would likely die himself.
This went beyond grudges. It was exactly as Nathan described it:
This was primal. It was so primal codes and morality had no authority over him where Syd was concerned. He would avenge Lysandra's death, his failed attempt to protect Julia Crownwraithe, even if it killed him in the end, or he died trying. No matter what obstacles stood in his way where she was concerned, Nathan just did not care. His riches, his new marriage...Nathan had no choice but to risk it in direct combat with her. To withdraw his vendetta would be, for him, tantamount to saying Lysandra had meant nothing to him. That all his mental wounds were gone just because he had hooked up with a hot sorceress vampire waifu and had trillions of credits and a large family. Even his new wife understood why he had to do this. THAT is how messed up the situation was: A creature that had been itself a murderous beast absolutely understood where Nathan was coming from with his vendetta as much as Syd herself did. Even his Android daughter slowly was understanding just how personal this was, just how fundamentally Lysandra being murdered the way she had been had permanently traumatized him.
He relived the murder in his sleep. His dreams were constant torment. All the riches in the Galaxy, all the replacement family he could gather could not erase what happened to Lysandra. OR Laertia.
"We can't escape each other..." Syd said softly, face wriggling disgustingly between her and the Battalion's for a split second before reverting to hers.
"Who made who first?" She asked in The Battalion's voice without realizing it before floating back to her ship to be alone for a while.
Zabka turned to Starlin.
"Just a absolute delight, isn't he?" Zabka muttered.
Then he sighed.
"I once asked him, y'know. Whether he was ever sorry about Elaine. She beheaded his mother and impaled his father while he watched. Part of him was sorry...sorry for what it led to. That innocent people that he never intended to get hurt were hurt because of his decision. That it was essentially one of the biggest backfires of all time, hoping she would die in combat against the Cult. That they would do what his own indoctrination would not permit him to do directly, even at the end of his first life."
Zabka's gaze hardened.
"The rest of him is sorry that he couldn't just suck it up and do it himself. I think that's what fuels part of it. The idea that if he does it personally that this time instead of chickening out like before, THIS time, it won't turn into a snowball rolling down the hill. That this time, it will end with him."
He looked at the sky, still able to see Nathan's ship streaking away as a tiny red dot.
"He was a great Jedi, once. Like you are. He once saved the surface of Csilla from nuclear bombardment. Freed the world of Meniliss 7 from the Digital Tyrants. Put out the great fires of Johor City before they could kill the inhabitants. Now...I dunno what he is, really. But I pity him. You might not, but you weren't there in the Plague, Starlin. You didn't see how that crisis could drive even great Jedi to the edge of sanity and past it. You didn't see Elaine at her worst. Or Darth Phyre at her worst. I did. Whatever you think of him...you were not there. He drew the chit straw from the beginning and kept drawing it. And for a long time he rose above it. Lysandra was pretty much the only emotional anchor he had during the plague. When he realized they were both destined to die horrible and painful deaths...he snapped..."
The red dot was finally too far away to see.
"The pieces might have new glue to keep them together...but that doesn't change the fact that he is no longer what he was before...and might never be again." Zabka added, his face going grim as he partly relived the Gulag Era's horrors in that instant.
"He was almost a friend once. Almost." Zabka finished.
Last edited:
