Act I: Invidia

[Hal Terrano]

“I don't want to be here!” came the quick response, shouted much in the same vein. Hal might have been unwilling to strike another being with a blade but he wasn't against releasing any verbal frustration he might have held.

Progression? Or regression?

He saw the blades, still hungry for his flesh, the girl's chest heaving in such a violent manner he thought that a physical manifestation of the Dark Side might have actually burst out of there. Funnily enough the former Jedi found himself lifting his head somewhat, giving the tainted creature sight of a little more flesh to rend and enough defiance to feed her savage rage.

If he died right now it would be easier, for everyone. The man couldn't deny it and in his time upon Prakith Hal had seriously considered such final solutions.

He'd been a coward right up until there in the face of vibroblades.

Unfortunately it was not to be, the intervention of [member="Vrag"] preventing any end that might have been too premature with a wallop to the back of the creature's head. His brow furrowed, pained expression coming across his chiselled features as he was ordered to pick up the blade once more. However, he'd found a streak of courage in that moment.

“I won't.”

The man shook his head slowly, he was still fearful, that much was shown in his eyes but there was defiance there.

“I will not do harm to anybody.”

 

[Vrag]

Again with the whining. His whole spiel was getting rather tiring, and you wouldn't like Vrag when she was bored. You really, really wouldn't. The woman would go out of her way to entertain herself in such cases, and she was amused by the strangest of things. Often bloody, as it so happened, and she presumed that was the part that people frowned upon. Oh, well. A good thing, then, that she was surrounded by more or less like-minded individuals. Granted, many of the Acolytes would have slain the former Jedi long ago and wandered off to seek other thrills in life.

The firrerreo was rather stubborn like that, however. She had made the man out of blood and screams and damned if she gave up now. The body was the easiest thing to mold, in the end, and she had known that his psyche would prove much more resilient. It didn't mean she was any less frustrated, though.

"Really," she deadpanned in a dry voice, an eyebrow arching to look at him with a mix of pity and mockery. "How… funny, that you would say that, Hal."

Her red lips quirked up for a moment, flashing him a smile that was as far away from kindness as humanly possible. There was not a shred of softness in that glint of teeth, nor was there a hint of mercy in the curve of her mouth. It was gone in an instant, however, and her tongue moved again to fashion words out of air.

"You've done harm already," she continued after the brief pause, her piercing eyes founding the traitorous yellow of the Vong biots. "Was Avalore not pained, wasn't she hurt when you professed your love… then ran away?"

A choir of jeers erupted from the crowd, reminding both of them that they weren't alone in the room; that this wasn't their own little personal arena down in the bowels of Prakith, but a public one, where every wretched facet of their souls would be laid bare for others to see.

"Did you not... harm the one person that means the most to you, Hal?"


[member="Hal Terrano"]

 

[Hal Terrano]

Shoulders stiffened immediately at her tone of voice.

Caught in an ever-literal box he considered all notions of harm to be physical. Hurt feelings were a notion beyond the man's current comprehension, a comprehension that was in the process of being stretched and stressed, holes beginning to peek through the already-worn fabric.

The brief pause left him considering what he might have done, who he might have harmed. The man couldn't think what her implications meant, in his recently shattered Jedi convictions he had always sought a non-violent solution to every problem presented, even in the face of devastating circumstance.

Avalore.

Eyes found themselves widening upon instinct's demand. He'd been trying to purge her existence from his mind, for the sake of his own guilty conscience. Not even in deepest nightmares would Hal have even considered hurting the Healer. Inconceivable. He found at times that all he wished to do in life was shield her from all the horrors of the galaxy. In an instant his captor's question had caused him to regress.

“...I didn't...”

Hurt her?

Mean to?

The vicious cries of the Acolytes at his back descended into a blur, their cruel jibes and taunts becoming nothing more than hazy background noise. They would always draw more blood through his head than through his flesh.

“...that's not...”

True?

Fair?

Freeze frame. It was like a gizka caught in the headlights of a speeder, caught unaware and unprepared. In that moment, in the face of that accusation the man seemed smaller, shrunken, as all semblance of defiant courage left his punctured soul at the thought of what he had done.

Eyes that were immediately flooded with guilt poured downwards to avoid the stare of anybody in that room. Instead Terrano focused upon the gash, as blood still trickled openly and without remorse. He would have taken a thousand cuts like that one over the one that [member="Vrag"] had just delivered.

“...I don't...”

...know.

 

[Vrag]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzX-fkAtIQ0​

The jeering of the crowd was swept into the background in an instant, their loud shouting dimmed as if a thick curtain had been drawn around the two stone statues in the middle of the ring. One proud and tall, the other crumbling and weak.

A smile blossomed on her lips as she looked down on him, piercing blue eyes scouring every inch of cracking rock. His voice, thin and weightless, stumbled over every syllable as he struggled vainly to convince himself that it wasn't true. Another wall torn down with efficient brutality, another lie unveiled.

How many more are there?​

She listened to his pitiful, unfinished sentences like a patient hunter watches a dying animal twitch in the throes of death. A futile fight as light left the terrified, widened eyes, and then the sigh of relief escaping tired lips. Admission. Confession. Defeat.

Her guard relaxed somewhat as the former Jedi deflated before her, and she let the tip angle down towards the mat. She crossed the distance between them with a few long strides, her naked feet smeared with blood as they trod upon the stained mat. The tall figure stopped close, too close to the man, and then Vrag reached out with her free hand, cupping his chin with a gentleness that felt out of place in the hostility steeping the air.

"Hal," the firrerreo asked for his broken attention, fingers kissing the skin they had known in different, intimate ways. "Pain can be… liberating." She would meet his guilt-blackened eyes, open and expressive even if he wished it weren't so.

"Let me give you what you crave," she leaned closer, lips barely moving as her voice fell to a whisper.

"Let me free you."


[member="Hal Terrano"]

 

[Hal Terrano]

Her touch, no matter how gentle still caused him to flinch. His tormentor had the tendency to disregard all notions of personal space and get too close, too intimate. Likely because it was the most simple method to render him fearful.

Like a wild animal under the glare of a flashlight he would freeze, except his own fight or flight mechanisms were broken and useless. Every time he blinked he remembered that caress upon his cheek, lips whispering hot breath into his ear, armoured arms around his waist. He could feel his chest compress when under the cover of eyelids he remembered the way she had straddled him upon the rack, when she had leant forward and crushed her lips upon his.

Every time the woman touched him, Hal Terrano was reminded and it rendered him almost helpless. His own personal chains of intimacy denied, pulling him taut.

"Let me free you."

Freedom.

Often a focal point in Sith mantra. My chains are broken. The Force shall free me. When engaged in the typical Jedi and Sith war of words it came down to that. Freedom. They were liberated, they felt and it was that which gave them power! While Jedi remained restrained, bound by duty and supposed-tranquillity. Hal had taken pride in that very fact once upon a time. His discipline and restraint was head and shoulders above the rest and he had believed that it made him better.

However was no longer a Jedi.

The circle of Acolytes around them, the girl upon the floor. They all excreted emotion, they were wild and untamed and most importantly of all, they were free. Hal Terrano had never been free, and….and he found himself almost resentful. Would he be free? Could he be free?

Was that what he wanted?

Perhaps it was that thought that motivated his lips, when with shame-filled eyes he looked to [member="Vrag"] and muttered a single word:

“How?”

 

[Vrag]

No room, no Acolytes, no air, just the two of them sharing the same breath with each exchanged word. It was like with everything that she took from him, the man gave back in turn, unwilling but pliant despite himself. It was an odd contradiction she was beginning to see in his patterns, as if he wanted to be changed even as parts of him still resisted.

In the end, it only served to make the whole experience that much sweeter, that much more exquisite, it kept her interested and grinning where others would have long outlived their use and earned a quick shiak through the heart.

Not Hal.

There was peculiar sort of stubbornness to the line of his jaw, a defiance that she could appreciate. A tool that broke as soon as you gripped it a little too hard was no use at all, and Vrag didn't like useless things. The Galaxy was already too full of them in her opinion, and she did her best to rid it of such waste of space whenever she got the chance. There were people out there who could make much better use of that spot occupied by Force knows what piece of crap that like to call itself a person, and the woman was, honestly, doing everyone a favor when she culled such chitstains from the face of the universe.

"How?" she echoed his weak question,, voice ringing across the room.

"HOW?" she shouted, turning around to bare her teeth at the audience as she bellowed again.

"How are we free?!"

"The Force shall free us!"

As one, the crowd chanted, eyes flickering with flecks of gold and red as the Dark side pulsed through them, vivid and demanding and greedy. Vrag's lips remained sealed even as the Acolytes repeated the whole code of the Sith, her blue eyes fixated on the fleshy shame of the Vong biots.

"You take power into your own hands, Hal," she murmured into his ear, a gravelly alto sailing far below the manic choir of the Acolytes. "You dictate your own life. You take control."


[member="Hal Terrano"]

 

[Hal Terrano]

Another flinch.

With ease the woman whipped the crowd back into his consciousness one again, ears open to the roaring unison of the Code of the Sith. One could scarcely imagine Hal Terrano trumpeting any words, never mind his own former Code with such vigour.

It cemented that contrast further within his mind. That they were free…

...and he was not.

The man found it strange. Their Code was not new to him, he was an Archivist and studied all facets of the Force in the simple pursuit of knowledge but this, this was different. In the archives of Cato Neimoidia he could review these things with an impassive eye, but in the archives of Cato Neimoidia he was still a Jedi, he was still stalwart and steadfast with unwavering beliefs.

In the archives of Cato Neimoidia he wasn't clad in their robes, surrounded by them as they so fiercely recited their mantra with an intensity that felt emotionally deafening.

If he was no longer a Jedi, could he be free?

Terrano looked physically pained as she spoke intimately into his ear. This idea of taking power into his own hands. Unthinkable. How could he dictate his own life? Such a concept was foreign! He had never set out who he was and why he was. There was no sense of control there. Hal Terrano had been nothing more than a droid in Jedi robes, set with rigid protocol and stiff parameters.

“I can't...”

It was more than obvious that he was confused, as well as conflicted. Subconsciously he knew full well what path was laid before him and yet the man did not baulk at the notion as he once would have.

There was a part of them that really, truly wanted what they had.

“I don't know how...to take control. I've never...never...”

---

[member="Vrag"]

 

[Vrag]

Eyelids swept over the piercing blue of her eyes for but a few moments as her nostrils flared in a bout of tightly-reined anger and frustration at his hapless mewling, that grating, thin voice of his; oh, how she would reach down his throat and tear out those vocal cords, replace then with another Vong maybe, if only it would make him stronger somehow… but she didn't.

The ice snapped open again, and she leveled the former Jedi with a stare he wouldn't soon forget, even by her standards.

"The first step, Hal," she growled into his ear, digging her fingers into his right arm, "is to stop saying no."

"Don't stumble on every fething stone on your path," she circled around the statuesque man, her grip growing ever firmer as she lifted his arm in the air. "Kick it away, step over it, I don't care! Just. Don't. Stop." With that, the Hand of the Dark Lord closed his fingers around the handle of her own vibroblade, leading him ever closer to the incapacitated Acolyte lying on the floor.

"She was a stone, and you stumbled, Hal. Was it worth it? Would you see your life end for someone so insignificant?" The firrerreo kept whispering into his ear as the two of them stood above the prone body of the girl, her pale chest rising and falling slowly with shallow breath.

"Take that power, Hal, not bow before it!"


[member="Hal Terrano"]

 

[Hal Terrano]

To the rest of the Galaxy her frustration was understandable.

How could a man not know how to take control, take the reigns of his own damn life? It was his own brain, wasn't it? There were no implants in his body. There were no chips in his brain. So how could he possibly not be capable of directing his own thoughts, his own life? How could it pain Hal Terrano to try and think outside of those four white lines set before him of what was right and what was wrong?

The Jedi Order, the true masters of indoctrination and brainwashing, above the tortures of the Sith and past the biots of the Yuuzhan Vong.

Her stare pierced his own fleshy gaze, while fingers did much the same to the skin upon his arm. Her words weren't exactly sinister. Out of context it could have came out the mouth of a Jedi, or, well anybody, perhaps not that final sentence mind you. Power very much belonged in the Sith's avenue of thought.

Before the man knew what had happened they stood there over the girl, a vibroblade now in his grip once again, a grip that was far too tense and near trembling. What did he want her to do? Strike the girl while she was already down? Kill her? Hal had never killed in his life! Such a thought was near unthinkable! Even if he was no longer a Jedi.

His brow still covered by a sheen of sweat furrowed. Was that really what she wanted? Or was this some test that he was too obtuse, and too stuck in his ways to even comprehend.

“I don't...I don't want to kill her.”

---

[member="Vrag"]

 

[Vrag]

The woman closed her piercing blue eyes again, nostrils flaring as she drew in deep, calming breaths. Nobody had told her that remolding a Jedi would be this much work. Now, generally speaking, Vrag didn't mind putting effort in her creations, but joy quickly turned to annoyance and then to hate when barely any progress could be seen despite all the energy she'd poured into this little side-project of hers.

Sharp teeth sank into her lower lip as she resisted the urge to break the man again, and Hal had only her willpower to thank that a knee wasn't buried in the small of his back at that very moment. She was so fething close to doing it, though.

"Hal," the Hand of the Dark Lord spoke in a low, restrained tone that whispered of the unuttered thoughts running through her mind. Her fingers dug painfully deep into the flesh of his forearm, and she knew there would be bruises left in her wake. Vrag didn't care.

"I."

"Want."

"You," her hot breath hitched against his ear, "to do something! Stop feeling sorry for yourself, stop whining, stop being so fething unsure of EVERYTHING!" Her voice was still a whisper, but an angry one, dragged forth through ground teeth as her features contorted in barely suppressed ire.

"I did not make you just so you could stand about and mop about your fate!"

With that, Vrag pushed the former Jedi towards the unconscious girl on the floor, a snarl tearing out of her chest like a caged animal. Her head whipped around to stare at the silent, gaping Acolytes, her voice surprisingly level as she ordered them all to leave with her tone as crisp and curt as they come. "Out. Now."

"Did you really think I would let you take a life undeserved, Hal?" the woman looked back at him, half-pitying, half-mocking as she shook her head slowly. "You'll have to earn it."


[member="Hal Terrano"]

 

[Hal Terrano]

Not satisfactory.

Her grip was like a vice now, but physical pain was no great barrier of Hal Terrano. It was the words that cut him, her voice low and ominous in his ear. Force! The hot breath against his ear! Even in her restraint she felt so alive and he, so hollow….so cold.

It was hard to do something.

To stop being so fething unsure.

Living life under his own volition seemed like a concept that was beyond his grasp. Day in, day out it was the same routine, his life for The Order. Everything he did was motivated by the Jedi, all those routines that he had clung onto, they weren't for him. Nothing Hal did was for himself, how could he just so suddenly change all of that! Easier said than done, or at least it was to him. He was open to the concept of change, however.

Baby steps.

For a moment his face shifted as the woman conceded that she made him. A flicker that was so swift it was hard to tell what the expression actually was. Had [member="Vrag"] made him? Well, she had unmade him, that was for certain.

Finally, however, came a shred of resistance. Taking lives, no, not just taking them but earning the right to? Hal Terrano wasn't that far gone. Not yet.

“I don't want to take a life,” he said with a shred more conviction, perhaps the absence of the Acolytes taking away that oppressive feeling across his chest. “I'll….never want to take a life.”

The man grimaced, the weight of the vibroblade feeling heavy in his hand.

“There must be freedom without killing,” he said it as if she might have appeased him, as if he wasn't so sure that such was true.

“Surely.”

 

[Vrag]

The horde of apprentices filed out the many doors of the training chamber, muttering their resentment loud enough to be heard, and on another day, Vrag might have reprimanded some of them, with harsh words of discipline and respect; but her focus, perhaps overly so, was solely on Hal, the Jedi that she had broken — how many months ago was it already? — and was dead-set on rebuilding, even if it took years. The Hand of the Dark Lord was sometimes stubborn to a fault, but it was still unclear if her fixation with… remaking this man would bear any fruits at all.

Her grip on his arm relaxed then, fingers withdrawing to leave red marks upon his pale flesh. She took a step backwards, wondering briefly if the man would collapse now that there was no body behind him to offer support any more, no hands to hold him as he stood shuddering above the unconscious Acolyte. Would he fall?

Blue eyes traced the patterns crisscrossing the expanse of his muscular back, thin lines telling stories of the battles the man had fought, but only one caught her gaze in particular. She ignored his pathetic whining for a moment and ran her finger along the length of the scar between his shoulder blades.

"Who gave you this, Hal?" her tone was quiet in his ear — they were all alone now — but it bore a certain… possessive quality to it that wasn't exactly hidden.

"Blood is the price of freedom," she added, almost as an afterthought, "and you will bleed from a thousand cuts, received and inflicted, before you will know liberation."

"And you will want it."


[member="Hal Terrano"]

 

[Hal Terrano]

Thankfully, he did not fall.

The man could feel her gaze on his back, could feel her scrutiny burning his flesh and it turned his posture rigid and stiff, shoulders hunching as her was visually probed. No matter how stiff, however, his armed hand still trembled as if it was trying to resist the very feel of a weapon in his grasp.

He was going to insist once more that he had absolutely no desire to ever take a life when there was a touch upon his back.

A touch that caused the man to flinch, his body trying to lean away from the woman's caress. Hal knew what she was touching. How could he forget? They had travelled across the galaxy to try and rid him of his Dark Mark, ending up in the realm of the unknown, turning to obscure Masters in the hope of purging that hideous blackness.

Who gave him that scar?

Was it Darth Mierin? The Sith Pureblood who had found him abandoned and forgotten? Who took the despondent man under her wing and turned him into least effective would-be Sith in the realms of recent history? The one who gave him his Dark Mark?

Or was it Hal Terrano? The man who in guilt-infused redemption took a knife to his own back to try and desperately cut out his tainted flesh. He still couldn't disperse that moment of Avalore's horror when she found him self-mutilating in such a manner. Never before had he been scolded in such a manner.

He looked down, expression still firmly knotted, sparing a glance to the large gash on his left arm. If blood was truly the price of freedom then the former Jedi was well on his way. Of course, his mind, as per standard was lodged firmly in the realm of the literal.

How much blood?

“I did,” Hal finally replied stiffly to her question, a severe lack of emotion in those two blunt words.

---

[member="Vrag"]

 

[Vrag]

As a fighter, Vrag knew bodies well, but she knew Hal even better than most, and though barely perceptible, the stiffness was there; in the coil of his spine, in the tautness of his muscles, in the whitening of his knuckles and in the hard line of his jaw. A small smile tugged at the corners of her lips, sharp teeth gleaming in the darkness as she leaned forward, placing her chin on his broad shoulder. Her finger pressed deeper into the fissure in his skin, a permanent signature to mark him as someone else's. Someone that wasn't her.

Her nostrils flared again as she dragged her teeth along the exposed flesh of his pale neck, like a predator toying with her prey.

"You did?" Surprise colored her voice with a slightly higher tone, inching it out of its gravelly depths. Her blue eyes flickered downward, and the woman took a step back to gaze at the scar again. "Why?"

There could be many reasons why, of course, but for one who used to be a Jedi of such stout, staid demeanor, the firrerreo had a hard time imagining why he'd go carving at his own muscle. Were he a Sith, Vrag wouldn't even bat an eye at such an admission, but Hal was decidedly not one. There was a myriad of things setting him apart from the typical member of the order, and the Hand of the Dark Lord was, quite frankly, happy it was so. For someone so high up in the hierarchy, the woman didn't much care for the religious aspects of the code, taking those words at face value instead and using them as she saw fit.

"Why did you choose to do harm, Hal?"


[member="Hal Terrano"]

 

[Hal Terrano]

His pace of breathing quickened. Too close, too close. She kept touching him, prodding at his scar with her chin resting upon his shoulder, the heat of his slick flesh against hers, oh Force, it filled him with so much dread. He wanted her to stop but no words left his lips, the man simply closed his eyes and tried to no avail to find some form of calm.

All that did was return him to the dungeon, causing Hal's form to clench even further.

An involuntary whimper was uttered from the back of his throat as sharp teeth grazed along his naked flesh, it was more that evident that it would take the man a long time to become accustomed to such physicality, if that could ever even be achieved.

When his tormentor finally pulled away a wavering sigh of relief escaped his lips, as if pressure had been building up in the former-Jedi's chest for the entire duration of their sustained and unwanted physical contact. There was nothing that made him feel weaker.

Her surprise was to be expected, Terrano not being the type of person who you would expect self-harm from. Not with a hideous scar like that.

“I...had the Dark Mark,” he admitted reluctantly, his voice thankfully not capable of holding any more shame. There was no point in hiding that fact, it wasn't as if he was unknown, there were Sith out there who knew who he was after all, there would be databases with his name on it, likely filed beneath TRAITORS.

“I attempted to cut it out of my flesh with a blade.”

---

[member="Vrag"]

 

[Vrag]

If Vrag was surprised before, true disbelief painted her expression now, open and truthful in its reflection of her inner world for once. There was a strange sort of bond between the tormentor and the victim now, like an umbilical cord that had never been severed upon creation of the New man. It made her far more comfortable in his presence than she would be in a similar situation with someone else, however fethed up their whole relationship was. Instead of holding the reaction in, the firrerreo allowed it to spill upon her features, twisting them into a mask of something that could almost be labeled as shock. Almost.

"You… had the Dark Mark?" in that moment, the woman would look almost stupefied, but it only lasted a second before the Hand of the Dark Lord finally collected herself again.

"Then you know how it feels to spill blood and feel pain in turn, Hal," she said, a peculiar sort of softness to her voice as her tongue peeked out to wet her lips. She could see it, brimming under the surface, a hint of passion coloring the ever-present fear despite the shivers running down the length of his body. While the two shared the same height, Vrag never felt it, for there was no proud stature to the curve of his spine, no confidence to help him carry himself the way he deserved to.

She snaked her fingers along his forearm then, a ghost of a touch as she extracted the vibroblade from his sweaty grip. "Another day, perhaps," she added as she sank the tip of the sword into the sensitive flesh at the back of the Acolyte's neck, rousing her from her short trip to dreamland with the sharp edge.

"But you will want to do it, Hal. You already know how, and you will again."


[member="Hal Terrano"]