The First Breath |:| Stories of Strosius 0.5

It wasn't until the door had slid closed and locked behind Him that Darth Strosius allowed some of the tension in His shoulders to leave with a deep exhale. The bright lights of the bathroom compared to the rest of the palace, that He had seen thus far at least, weren't the most pleasant but the solitude was more than enough to make up for the slight squint that He had to do at first before His eyes adjusted. As one might expect what was usually a stark functional room for most was in this instance far more ornate than it had any right to be, the details and ornamentation of the room making Him scowl in disgust. Even the towels looked to be worth more credits than a decent speeder.

Doing His best to ignore the opulence of the room for His own sanity, He trudged over to the mirror and sink counter and leaned against it by all but slamming His palms against the surface of it. Normally His regeneration extended to His vitality and energy as well but with the extensive internal damage still in the process of healing He felt exhausted. Having to put on a brave face against Malum's incessant remarks did little to aid in His stamina recovery either. His reflection exemplified His state of lacking composure, dark strands of hair falling from the mess atop His head as the circles beneath His eyes were all the more prominent and sunken even whilst concealed by His tattoos.

The golden glow of His pupils were similarly diminished and pale, matching the tone of His ashen complexion in their dimmed state. A shower, a very long and hot one, was sorely needed to help shake off some of His grogginess and more importantly restore His appearance to a more presentable level. Not to mention that the telltale, at least in His experience, coating of Bacta which had seeped through His robes and onto His skin was irritating Him with each movement He made. It was not unlike the feeling after leaving a swim in salt water, and similarly only a good scrubbing would remove that sensation from Him.

Normally He wasn't much one for vanity but at the moment His own reflection was all that He could focus on, aside from the Bacta coating on His skin of course. Typically He steered clear of looking at Himself any more than was necessary, His face a potent reminder of who he once was. Of what He once was. His mask was far more preferable as a visage, one that He had chosen and made for Himself rather than one He had simply been saddled with at birth. And yet even He had to admit that His face was indeed quite departed from what it had once been so many years ago. His skin and complexion made Him seem more akin to a corpse than anything living, His eyes glowed like a burning fire, and of course His young features were very much still intact despite decades of struggle and aging. Each and every wound He had accrued over the years were nonexistent now, leaving His face and body unblemished aside from the tattoos. Yet while the scars might not be there physically, He knew that they remained still.

He looked even more haggard than usual as one might expect but there was a certain almost drained look to Him at the moment, His gaze narrowing at the few colored aspects of His visage which stood out in stark contrast to His pallor tone. The veins around His eyes were prominent, not too surprising given the circumstances, but it was their prominence that drew His gaze to the tattoos which swooped beneath His sockets like the curving blade of a dagger.

They had grown larger.

A slightly wheezed inhale reminded Him that He was still only working with one and a half of His lungs but that thought barely crept into His mind as He reached up to touch the tattoos on His face. Normally they only grew after His...self experimentation sessions, but never any other time. So why now? The answer could lie in the flickering movement from His back, His pale lips receding to reveal ivory fangs as He shot the tendrils swaying from His back a look of disdain and frustration. They were sort of like a tongue in their movement, able to be controlled just like any other muscle and yet often spasming or moving on their own without His conscious input.

It seemed that His death would have more physical consequences than just the immediate ones, as the tendrils seemed fairly attached at the moment and if His tattoos had grown on His face then undoubtedly they had grown elsewhere as well. His gaze slid down to His gloved hands and He silently cursed the slight shiver of hesitation He felt when looking at them. He had to see the extent of the growth and He had to disrobe for a shower anyway. Two birds with one stone as it were. He slowly raised up His left hand and slid the glove off of it, revealing the wrappings that comprised His covering beneath His robes. With another wheezed sigh He began unwrapping the cloth, slowly unwinding it from His arm to reveal more pale skin beneath it. Until the wrapping was removed entirely and revealed His hand.

The pallor tone of His arm carried on to His hand but when His gaze followed to the digits adorning His hand He saw the pale skin gradually darken into the almost pitch black color that comprised the tattoos on His face. His fingers themselves were long and thin, sloping into points that more resembled claws than fingertips. Before the tattoo had only been slightly past His fingertips, but now it stretched all the way down to the knuckles on each finger. Turning His hand over to reveal His palm hadn't changed much, each digit's tattoo still led in a thin line to the center of the palm before carrying on down into a thicker line at His wrist which in turn ran back up the underside of His arm. He stared at His wrist for a long moment before closing His fingers into a fist and letting out another breath. Some scars still remained indeed. Without further ado He quickly, after turning away from the mirror, disrobed fully and turned on the shower.

Only when the water had reached the hottest temperature did He step into it, rolling His shoulders with a small wince before sighing in relief as the hot water cascaded down His body. His skin was cold to the touch normally but with the water as it was His body temperature almost felt alive again when He ran His hands down His arms. A brief indulgence that He rarely allowed Himself, but one that nonetheless was well worth it. The shower didn't quite get as warm as He'd prefer, as it didn't start steaming until a minute into it, but it was good enough.

His mind swam with thoughts as He scrubbed and washed Himself, the task keeping His body just as occupied physically as He was mentally. Primarily He was wracking His mind with what had become of His powerbase. His cult and a fair portion of the Inquisition would no doubt reject Malum's authority over them granted to him by his victory in the Kaggath, and that was what scared Him. Would they simply hold up on Faldos and await the inevitable coming of Malum or other Sith forces seeking to claim His people for themselves? Would they lash out and get themselves killed in a blaze of glory as He had always cautioned them not to? Would they lose faith and fall into damnation because they had seen Him fail them? His scrubbing stopped for a moment at that thought.

He had failed them, hadn't he?

His mind flashed back to the Kaggath itself, when he had been empowered by their belief. When their belief had been just as much of a weakness as it had been a boon when Malum targeted a few of his cultists and cut them down. Each and every one of his followers' deaths weighed on him but this time had been all the more apparent and real, for when they died they were connected to him in a sense. He felt their devotion, their faith, in him as they died. As pain and fear crept into their hearts shortly before they vanished entirely, their agony feeding back into his mind just as easily as their faith had done.

He felt his eye twitch as his hands shook, a shuddering breath leaving him as he felt warm tears slip out of the corners of his eyes. He looked down at his hands, unrecognizable from what they had been so many years ago now. All the sacrifice that he had done, all the long nights of work and experimentation, all the pain that came when his tools and alchemical mixtures brought them to fruition. All of it and for what? In the end he had still not been strong enough to protect his followers. In the end all he had done was make them even greater targets by using their belief in him to try and account for His own lacking power. Not even his closest and strongest followers were safe from his failings either, Revna's capture being the most evident.

He felt his back hit the slick wall of the shower and slowly slide down it as he sat down, covering his shame-filled expression with his hands as he hacked out another sob.

Each time he thought that he was shaking off his incapability and finally making up lost ground it all came tumbling down. The fall of the Sith Empire, the unexpected outcome of the Ouroboros Crisis, the loss of Formos, and now his failure to secure victory in the Kaggath. He doubted that it would have mattered even if he had won, the powers that be simply would have put him down if they felt the need to do so. Having his entire cult there to empower him would have only gotten him so far. The tendrils were already a constant inescapable reminder of his most recent failure, of how he had flown too close to the sun and been cast back down because of it. To writhe and suffer as he was destined to do since birth.

Black pointed fingers dug at the tattoos on his face, scratching as much as they could in order to provide some distraction from the memories clouding His thoughts. Of the faces and cries and corpses left in the wake of his failures. Of the families broken by conflict and the youth robbed of their innocence by hardship. Of all that he had sought to bring about and improve yet of how the reality never matched his ambitions. Screams and lifeless faces from battlefields long past intermingled with those from the Kaggath as he shut his eyes and gritted his fangs in a desperate yet futile attempt to silence them. To grant himself the respite he knew he didn't deserve. For they were the faces and cries of those that he had failed. Their deaths a sickening chain of sin that only grew tighter by the day it seemed. And he couldn't just banish them away like he wished to. He wasn't strong enough for that either.

A part of him knew it wouldn't have done him any good even if he did succeed in those efforts, they always came back. The sensation of his fingers digging into his skin enough to break through the first few layers and bringing about a stinging sensation as hot water ran into newly exposed and very sensitive flesh was starting to pull his mind back from the depths it had slipped to. The stinging combined with the ache whenever he breathed were anchors that would bring him back to his senses, a rather pathetic indulgence but one that he couldn't ignore this time. It was all too much and the situation was tenuous enough already without him being in a decent state of mind as well.

He heaved a breath of frustration as he tore his fingers away from his face to glare at the tattoos running down his arms and to his hands, resisting the urge to scratch and bite at his own wrists in order to mar the perfect and unblemished skin there. To make it look like he knew it should. Instead he laid his head back against the wall and simply savored the hot water running down his reddened and torn cheeks before they quickly healed without delay and left cold flawless skin in their place. Just like nothing had ever happened. Just like always. The one constant that he could always trust to deliver, eventually. He always returned to a suitable state, those around him did not.

He sat and soaked and abused the palace's hot water supply for a good long while before he finally got back to scrubbing and washing himself off. A rather muted and dull affair, one made with slow and disheartened movements that were hardly efficient. In the end he was clean and that was all that mattered for the moment. The bathroom was too steamy to see his reflection in the mirror as he dried himself off and gradually redonned his robes, a small blessing that he muttered a prayer in thanks for as he pulled his hood back over his barely dry hair. If nothing else then he at least felt somewhat refreshed.

He rested his hand on the door's handle for a long moment as he blankly stared down at his newly rewrapped and concealed hand. He was a failure to be sure, unworthy of the blessings of the Force and even less so the admiration and devotion of his followers. If they even still thought of him in such a way. He wouldn't blame them if their faith in him had faltered entirely, it would be fitting. His grip on the handle tightened as a flash of the pale face from his vision came over his senses and briefly cast aside his dour thoughts. The Force still had some use for him it seemed, although to what extent and end he wasn't sure.

For the moment he was only certain of one thing, that one soul above all else could still be salvaged from his incessant failures. Revna would be saved. Of that he had to be sure.