Deranged Like Me

[Cassandra Paige]

The place was huge. And both of them were so busy that there were parts of the sky hook that neither went to- there wasn't really reason to. That was why Cass discovered the room for the first time nearly a month after they had moved in together, it took that long to work through the entire place in detail. And even then at the time, she hadn't really paid much attention, she had been busy looking for a few odds and ends that had been misplaced during the move.

A storage room full of crates- since she hadn't packed any of her own things (a great source of annoyance), it seemed like a reasonable place to look.

Of course, the first crate was full.... but not of anything Cassandra recognized.

She'd closed it with a frown, looking over her shoulder because for a moment she could have sworn she heard the sound of a half remembered whisper. But it was gone again, and she shrugged, moving on to the next crate. Again, nothing of hers, just.... random junk. Carefully stored and wrapped and nestled, but random junk nonetheless. Oh, she recognized it all as not merely old but antique certainly. It obviously had value or Itash wouldn't have kept it. It just seemed like such a motley assortment, really.

Cass paused, fingers hovering over a small sphere. Grey eyes just watched it for a moment. It had, she'd been sure, moved. But it lay still now. Not really thinking about it, not really sure even of the why beyond a nearly compulsion like want, she picked it up. Her fingers slid lightly over the surface, brow knitting slightly- it looked textured but felt perfectly smooth. Beyond that, it was warm to the touch.

Hello Cassandra Paige. I'd been hoping to talk to you.

*****

When Tash came home that evening, Cass wasn't there.

That in and of itself wasn't that strange. They often worked different schedules, after all.

Cass however, wasn't the only thing that was missing. Two other items, from that room, were gone. Easy to go unnoticed, if one wasn't looking for them really. The sphere, small enough to fit in the palm of a child's hand....

And a staff.

The problem wasn't that she wasn't home when he arrived.... but when he reached out that mental connection to the Didact guards that should have been her shadows?

Something was very wrong indeed.

*****

Below, in the capital city of Mondder, Cass strode with an easy gait. The sphere was in her pocket, the staff held loosely in her right hand. The left reached up, casually trailing along the wall of the alley as she walked, a river of blue fire left behind in its wake.

Together, we will do beautiful things.

[member="Itash Mecetti"]

 

[Itash Mecetti]

[member="Cassandra Paige"]

Anyone else might have panicked.

But there was a reason why Itash hadn't locked that room or otherwise told her not to go there -- though, granted, the latter of which might have only spurred her on more. The point was simple, Tash didn't mind Cassandra being drawn further into his world.

In fact? He welcomed it.

Of course, it could all have been done a little bit more neat, just a bit more controlled, but Tash supposed that beggars couldn't be choosers. He surveyed the damage to the room, tried once more to tap through to the mental connection of the two shadows he had assigned to her. They were still muted. There, but also covered by some kind of fog that made it difficult to read their minds much less give influence. That was the only thing that truly did annoy Tash.

"Hmpf." Tash murmured, before tapping his connection towards the others. "Stay clear, but find her. I want to know where she is and what she is doing."

Had it been only the scepter this would all have been fine.

But somehow... Cass had gotten hold of the apple.

That apple could prove to be a more difficult proposition. Even for someone like him it was a tricky... nut to crack and Paige was even less skilled in the mystical arts. Somehow it only served to excite him a little bit, he had not been able to see the apple in action yet.

Just what Vaneesh had been willing to divulge.

Around it... fear rules.

He began armoring himself, snatching some of the artifacts up and into his pocket, arms, neck - just the ones Tash knew the function of. Then the Tapani would descend down to Etti.

To find his bride.

 

[Cassandra Paige]

[float right]

[/float]

Cass sauntered through the city.

Above, lightening split the sky and thunder rolled, but below it was far worse.

The rain plastered her hair to her face, but she didn't care. Everything seemed clearer. The detail, the sensations, it was all heightened to the very edge of discomfort but never crossing over that line. She had never been so aware. She knew in the back of her mind that she was high on whatever the staff and orb had offered, but she didn't particularly care. Power, the Force-

She breathed in deeply, almost tasting the pulse of the city itself.

The Force.

In her heart of hearts, never uttered to anyone, Cassandra had always been jealous of those who could wield it. It expressed as derision, as a knowing that they thought they were better but they clearly could not be. Hubris to hold oneself so high over such a trivial thing. It was good as a defense.

But she knew then that it was no trivial detail.

The Force was power.

And now she knew what it tasted like.

Cassandra licked her lips, tasting the rain. But more than that, the fear around her.

Do you like it?

The voice from the orb sounded in her head and she laughed.

"It's more than I ever dreamed," she murmured.

Even in the darkness of the city, grey eyes were almost black with pupils blown wide. Every movement was caught, every gasp, every footstep hitched. She didn't know the full extent, or just how it worked, but she could feel the fear that the orb was causing in a radius around her. The way a heart beat faster, the tightening of lips, the catch of a gasping breath. All of those details she could almost lay her teeth against, feel them pulse there against her tongue. People moved, terrified and not knowing why.

Their fear makes me.... and by proxy, you.... stronger. But you will need to use that strength.

There was a caution in the voice as it coached her.

If you do not, it will devour you from the inside. Try it. Use the staff. It has been feeding as we have, though not as well as it could directly.

Cassandra's dark gaze cast to the staff carried almost lazily in her hand. Head tilting slightly, her eyes flicked up- a billboard.... for Paige Communications Industries. It was simple, really. Her own anger, simmering for a lifetime beneath the carefully controlled surface, combined with the fear they had been feeding on slowly. With a flick, easier than the weight of the staff would have led her to expect, she aimed it-

And threw back her head, laughing as the billboard exploded into a thousand shards, raining down on the sidewalk below it.

Fear billowed.

And they swallowed it all.

[member="Itash Mecetti"]

 

[Itash Mecetti]

[member="Cassandra Paige"]

There were those that believed they understood what the Force was.

Some would describe it as a river, raging, screaming, barely held together by the dams constructed carefully by those wielding the Force.

Others spoke of a storm.

A network of life.

Mud clinging to your skin and suffocating you.

Vast emptiness slowly filling you, blanketing everything out.

There were as many philosophies as there were stars on the sky it seemed. Itash had never been much of a student of any of these- he had known his luck, known what to do and when to maximize his profit. It had worked out well for him, but it had barely been mastery. Not even competency. No, it had been leading life through instinct and pleasure without worry.

It had been grand.

But there were limitations to it too.

An hour passed and Lord Mecetti found himself on the surface of Etti IV. The streets dirty, the corners occupied, there was garbage in the alley. But there was more than that: palpable fear as the huddles crept deeper into the shadows at his passing.

Tash paid them no mind.

The destruction increased the more he followed her scent.

In her wake, the closer he came, the more Itash could sense power thrumming in the beat of a heart.

 

[Cassandra Paige]

It was a marvel.

The feelings, the sensations. How it felt to draw a breath. The way their fear licked across her skin, as real as the rain. But she knew that she had only just scratched the surface of it all. That she was skating along the surface of dark waters, perhaps floating face down, arms splayed and sunk in only centimeters when there was an eternity beneath her.

The billboard had been left behind- somewhere in the distance, she could hear sirens, but they didn't worry her in the least. What were they compared to this?

What possible consequence when the concept of godhood seemed only just beyond the tips of her fingers? She had spent the last decade, behaving for the fear of the consequences of allowing herself to be true. Now what fear could there be of that? All of the fear swirled around her, and she walked within it, immune to the depredations of terror....

Even if it would have been prudent.

"You said that it didn't feed the same way," she murmured. "Explain."

I feed off of fear. The very primal sensation of it. The staff feeds in a different fashion entirely. More.... direct. It drains the very life essence, uses that to offer power.

"Show me."

You can show yourself, Cassandra. Choose someone. If you do not kill them, we can feed off of the fear in addition. There is, after all, so much worse than death.

A thousand someones. Eenie, meenie, minnie....

Mo.

Cass leveled the staff at the back of a swiftly retreating figure. Scuffing footsteps, splashing through the puddles. Away from them. Away from her. She focused in, feeling that fear propelling.

The orb triggered the staff, allowing Cassandra to feel what that meant, and the figure screamed.

Cass's eyes widened.... as did her smile. Mouth opened, a soft gasp, deep inhalation as the energy and life flooded through her.

[member="Itash Mecetti"]

 

[Itash Mecetti]

[member="Cassandra Paige"]

He passed a quivering huddle of person and halted for a brief moment.

A foot pushed the person out of balance, onto their back and the cowl swept away to see what was there. A face old, very old, but the eyes were still so young and full of former potential. That, too, would dry up as the mind followed the body.

"Hmpf."

"I... I- pain everywhere." She, it was a woman, whined and tried to grab for his boot. Tash took a step back and sighed. "Yes, that's usually how life goes, I am afraid." The voice was devoid of any compassion. Everyone was gone, after all. There was only one aura that remained and Cassandra was farther away. Down the alley, around the corner, hmm... no, two auras.

But one was rapidly shrinking sadly.

And here Tash hoped to have some closure here.

"Sleep." His word was power and the girl responded in kind. She collapsed to her side and Itash moved on, maybe later, before turning around the corner. There his bride-to-be was.

"Cassandra." Mecetti greeted her calmly, interrupting her... meal so to speak. "You have made quite a little mess of things, haven't you, love."

 

[Cassandra Paige]

The bothan huddled at her feet. It took a moment for Cass to turn her attention to Itash. When she did, it was just her head, slowly looking halfway over her shoulder at him. Just enough for him to see the way her grey eyes were almost completely black, pupils wide- far wider even in the dark than they should be.

Be careful of that one. He's dangerous.

"It's part of why I like him."

Of course he couldn't hear the other half of the exchange, but it wasn't difficult to pick up that she was answering something besides him.

"I wouldn't think you'd be too particular about messes, Tash," she replied, her voice rich and almost indolent.

She felt full. As if the galaxy had poured liquid star stuff into upturned lips. As if, at any moment, her skin would start to glow from within, unable to contain it all. But there was no fear of that sensation. It would not destroy her, it would not shatter her bones and scatter her flesh. She didn't know what would happen, but it would only be to her benefit. Rather than fear that potential, she basked in it.

This was not the careful Cassandra he knew. Meticulous planning, covering every eventuality to keep herself and her activities thoroughly beneath the radar. Following laws because it was a safety precaution for herself, not because she cared about the laws themselves.

Stop now, do not kill this one.

Reluctantly, Cass acquiesced. Without the fear, she would lose a secondary source of this high. Drawing back with the staff, she laughed, the sensation almost delicious as it skittered across her skin. The senses were all twisted and warped. She could taste the touch across her skin. Hear the scent of fear. As the staff let go, a second person's energy inside of it, and through it, trickled to her, she turned fully toward him.

"I understand now, Tash," she whispered, words warm to the point of a nearly uncomfortable heat. She smiled, the expression curling and self satisfied like a cat. Except there was no truly sating this. There was always more to hunger for. "What we've been missing."

We? Cassandra, there is no we there..... and there never was.

"What?"

Confusion rippled across her face.

Ask him. Ask him what he is. If you haven't figured it out by now.

Confusion shifted to slow epiphany.

He knows what you have been missing. Because he has it.

"But you haven't. Been missing."

The weight of the rain grew on their backs. The soft whimper of the Bothan, left behind as she, wielding the staff and that strange, whispering orb, stepped once toward him. It wasn't a question.

[member="Itash Mecetti"]

 

[Itash Mecetti]

[member="Cassandra Paige"]

"Depends on the mess."

Itash could feel it in the air.

Fear.

There was a palpable sensation in the air, like the texture of oil clinging to every surface. A curtain that was softly, invisibly, shimmering as you stepped through it and Itash certainly stepped on through as he approached the woman that was his. He felt that fear, pricking through his skin and trying to find purchase deep within. Had this fear been from a man, someone living, it might have recoiled against what it found beneath the skin of the suit that Itash Mecetti wore.

Instead... it found home and reveled in it.

Tash sniffed, tilting his head as his nails started digging into the flesh of his palm. "I don't particularly enjoy-" internally he shoved that presence out as it was making itself a place within him. "-guests in my head." He scowled as a trickle of blood skipped past his finger and dripped to the ground.

That was when the illusion... the lie broke, well, one of them, anyway.

It still wasn't possible for him to read what the apple was saying to Cassandra, the moment he had pushed the presence out, it had been covered with that oil again. It made it impossible to see through, but he knew either way. "I have been missing something since the day I was born." Mecetti stepped through the veil once more, approaching her, one step at a time. It were the words that his mother had said to him... over and over... and over again.

She hadn't been talking about the Force though.

"The orb speaks words that serves it best, Cass, you should stop touching it." He did not say: give it to me, because that inspired even more scrutiny. In truth... Tash didn't want to touch it.

 

[Cassandra Paige]

"Oh, it's been very forth coming..... unlike you...."

She wasn't angry. Surprised by this particular thing, yes. Angry perhaps with herself for only seeing it now. She had not been shy about her view on Forcers in the past. It was only now that she realized just how careful his responses to those moments had always been. Of course, she knew they both lied. Had secrets. That was part of their acknowledgement, even agreement in its own way.

"One day I will ask you to marry me. You will most likely say yes. We have been playing each other from the start. I'd like that to take a backseat if that possibility becomes reality."

"If you ask. And if I say yes. Then no more games."

But those things had not yet happened, and so they kept playing. Power and control, shifting back and forth between them.

You have the power now, if you don't give it up. He wants you to, but he always wants you to.

Her fingers curled just a little tighter around the orb. Dark eyes flicked to his own clenched hands, catching the drip of blood. Her lips curved slightly into a smile.

He's keeping the fear at bay. I cannot draw it from him.

That was a certain disappointment. Especially now, with this realization. He had known her afraid, after all. He already knew just what that felt like, what it tasted like. Always, the scales balanced in the end.

Quid.

Pro.

Quo.

It was her turn, and it annoyed her that he was holding it off.

Oh, she didn't want to hurt him. Well, maybe a little, but no more than they ever did.

"I don't think I will," she said slowly, eyes casting back up to his face. She licked her lips, gaze trailing over his. "I might, though," she whispered, "if you let it in."

[member="Itash Mecetti"]

 

[Itash Mecetti]

[member="Cassandra Paige"]

"Beware the loose tongue and its gifts..." Tash murmured softly as he watched her every move.

His nail dug deeper in his meat as the orb tried to push its way back into his brain at the coax of her suggestion. It was... annoying like that and it was slowly becoming less amusing to Itash as they went. Her suggestion, it exposed something between them. A flicker of dark passing through his eyes and relaying to hers. But perhaps it had been a suggestion born from knowledge.

That Itash wasn't shifting himself into becoming vulnerable.

Just to save her from herself.

"Mm- no, I don't think so." He shrugged off his cloak, even that simple gesture relaxed and filled with elegance. Every move done in a way that accentuated and made him look good.

It was forged into his mannerisms at this point.

"I like the privacy of my mind." Itash clarified as he took another step towards her. Flicker of metals between his fingers- she wouldn't feel the intent of danger coming from him, no suggestion that Tash was about to attack her, but that didn't mean it wasn't coming. "I hoped I would be able to start your education in a different manner..." It almost sounded apologetic.

That last statement implied many things.

 

[Cassandra Paige]

"Mmm like your disgustingly silver one?" She murmured warmly, stepping to the side. Starting to circle. The rest of the city fell away entirely as far as she was concerned.

In a way, he was seeing a combination of two things. The truth of Cass beneath the mask, no fear of reprisals, of repercussions. In truth, no fear of anything, even if she ought to have been. It was the primary draw back of the orb's powers. Without at least some fear there was not proper self preservation possible.

It wasn't all her of course. Part of her in truth was that sensible capacity to parse risk and reward. That part was muted utterly by the artifact.

And of course, there was the not inconsiderable aspect of just how high she actually was on the borrowed and stolen power. Higher than any drug could ever take her. Usually she was disinclined- it was a surrender of power itself, wading into drugs or alcohol too far- but the affects had started trickling in at the very first touch, before she had known what exactly she was getting into. What she saw as clarity and expansiveness was in truth that high, and it made her vulnerable.

It also made her dangerous.

The shrug of his shoulders and cloak dragged her attention, disguising the metallic flash between his fingers, gone again by the time her eyes slipped back up to his face.

He means his secrets.

"You mean your secrets," she murmured. "I don't need you to teach me, Itash. I am not a supplicant, seeking knowledge on my knees. Though I'm certain you wish I was." Her tone was heavily sardonic. "You like that, don't you?" Her smile curled, almost hungry on her lips as she watched him come closer.

If he won't share his fear, there are other options.... he's a Force User, Cassandra. You think you tasted power from the other two? It was nothing compared to what he would taste like. I can't benefit from that, of course..... but.....

[member="Itash Mecetti"]

 

[Itash Mecetti]

[member="Cassandra Paige"]

"The joy was never in you submitting..." Tash pointed out with a smile of his own. No, it had always gone beyond that, it was about the sheer act of making her submit to him in every gesture and move. Over and over again- it made the quid, pro, quo worth it for him. The pain she dished out to him was pleasant and it allowed him to continue his own little game with her.

Oh, so, appetizing.

"Are you going to continue to let it lead you along... or are you making your next move, love?"

No, Tash couldn't read the apple's mind, but he could catch a glimpse of hers and what Tash saw there interested him. He wasn't sure what exactly was about to happen -- it clouded too much -- and yet the Mecetti scion knew that it would set them on a path.

It was his luck calling to him.

That little itch at the edge of his throat.... silenced for months, but now returning in full force.

This was the crux and Itash was ready for it as his smile grew deeper, teeth baring just a bit in the shadows. It gleamed and made the shadows around his eyes more pronounced. "...or am I to take charge again?"

 

[Cassandra Paige]

To say that Cass didn't want to hurt Itash was..... too simplistic. And vice versa. It narrowed down a view of what constituted hurt too far for either of their liking. It put them in the place of the average person, and the morality of the masses.

And that was not something either of them cared about beyond appearances, after all.


The expression on his face, the words falling from his lips- he was practically begging for it, wasn't he? Of course, he probably didn't realize just what that would mean. Her mind cast back to the dream, the visceral feeling, even know, of how the knife had felt sliding into his flesh, and something stirred in the connection between her and the orb. It didn't say anything, but she could feel its interest.

It held its silence though.



It was already getting what it wanted, after all. As Cass grew in strength, fed by both the fear effect of the orb and the essence drain of the staff, it too grew in power and influence. And the higher Cass got? The greater the chance of exerting that influence on her.

"Oh you want me to act? I've been holding back despite the little voice whispering in my ear."

She didn't even wait until she end of that sentence. Glutted on stolen power and fear, Cass moved faster than he was used to. The Staff flicked up, and she breathed in sharply as the Force snapped around her, latching itself to Itash and pulling. Not physically, no. Her lips parted with a gasp, as with the help of the Staff she reached for the core of him and took.




"In that case."




[member="Itash Mecetti"]

 

[Itash Mecetti]

[member="Cassandra Paige"]

No, Itash was not expecting what happened next.

Cass wasn't a forcer after all.

She shouldn't have been able to summon the strength to actually turn the scepter against him... but it happened anyway and Itash was stopped right in his tracks as that beam of power surged through him. For a moment they were all connected- Cass and him (closer to one another than they had ever been before, she would feel the shadow of his self behind the flesh just for a second), until the apple joined them.

This was when Tash could finally hear it.

Oooh, so many secrets. It husked softly with eagerness as it tried to dig in deeper through that connection. You really should know when to quit while you are ahead. Tash murmured back.

Two things happened.

Itash snuffed out the voice of the apple through their shared connection and the Scepter of Ragnos yanked at his life. He might have been able to stop it before, but now his attention had been elsewhere. Focused on nullifying that influence on Cass. He immediately dropped to a knee as the force of his life was dragged from him, funneled through the scepter and went straight into Cassandra.

Days, weeks, months, years of time flooding into the very fiber of her being.

The apple was no longer there to modulate or influence, but that intensity of pleasure would increase as Tash's force would make her feel better (and more alive) than anything else in her life before.

Hggggrrrm. Tash grunted as he tried to rise, nails digging deep into his palms now, blood seeping royally.

 

[Cassandra Paige]

Cass's back arched, lips parting to draw in breath that wasn't needed, eyes wide and intent.

It wasn't just power. It was life itself. It was a million sensations where only a dozen had perhaps been possible to even imagine before. It was seeing the world through the eyes of a being that could see into a different spectrum of light, offering colours there were no words to describe. Stepping from the third dimension and into the forth.... or else down into the second and knowing that to everything at your feet you were suddenly a god.

Cassandra Paige laughed, high and light and joyful, her voice rich as honey.

The closing off from the orb didn't even seem to touch her. In truth, it was like removing a string just before the flood- she barely even noticed that she was cut adrift in the swirling waters. They were warm and bouyant, and the string had only been a tether anyway, keeping her attached to the dock when what she wanted to do was swing.

She could have drown in that moment and been happy for it.

In a way, she was.

Not unlike any other drug, Cassandra did not have the capacity to draw back. She had not worked up a careful tolerance, an understanding step by step of the limits of a body, of a soul. Either hers or Itash's. She wasn't trying to drain him to his death, but once it had started the sensations going through her were too good to draw back from. Feelings, sensations, emotions were always muted, at best, but this?

This was going from not even knowing the world was black and white to full technicolour in an instant.

Some might step back in fear, recognizing the danger of eyes unaccustomed to such things, the risk of blindness.

But because of the orb, Cass felt no fear.

No sense of hesitation as she stepped forward, her hand coming out to caress his chin.

She didn't want to just take it like this.... though she had no intention of killing him (but what true intention could someone as high as Cass have in that moment?) she wanted to drink the feeling, the flow of his life through his lips. Eyes black to the edges, she leaned over, pressing her mouth against his hard, fingers curling into his chin.

[member="Itash Mecetti"]

 

[Itash Mecetti]

[member="Cassandra Paige"]

It was perhaps that kiss touching his lips that made Tash break his eyes open and watch.

As their bodies melted together Itash was rapidly growing... well... older. Full brown hair slowly slinking into grey and pepper - not all at once, but as the tide of the river slowly finding its way mainland - and Mecetti knew that this could be his end. He knew it. Fully. That realization. Strangely enough it didn't make him fear anymore than the orb had made him taste that experience.

No, death had never been something Tash feared.

Consequences... they were foreign to him. At least the negative connotations they had. He did things, because he wanted to and through that act he accepted whatever might come next.

Regrets were impossible, when life was enjoyed at its fullest.

"Oh, darling," Tash murmured against her lips, as his arm wrapped itself tighter around her waist and pulled her in. "I would be sorry about what happens next... but that would be a lie." It was the kiss, the embrace, the feeling of life still unfulfilled, that made him shake himself from that pleasant hazy stupor the scepter had been pulling him into as it was coaxing out life itself.

His mind traveled through that connection.

Then it found exactly the vulnerability that the green-skinned witch had left for him.

Except it wasn't Itash wielding the scepter and it was almost as natural as breathing for him to tap that that flaw, suddenly seizing control of the scepter's transition and turning the tide and flow of power in reverse. Draining it from her body, hungrily, like a man gasping for breath or water in the desert. Sinking his teeth into her lip as it happened and transferring pain right back to her.

Quid. Pro. Quo.

 

[Cassandra Paige]

She devoured him. And the more she took, the higher she got and the harder it was to stop. There was more, and if she just kept it up, for another moment, ten, a thousand, she'd find that next step upward. She could stop, of course, any time she wanted.... the problem was that she didn't want to.

Her hands tightened on his face, finger tips digging into his jawline.

For a moment, she knew what power meant.

And she'd spend the rest of her life chasing this singular moment.

It took a moment for his words to register. She was beyond the physical, even as she was grounded in it, and as eyes turned dark as pitch from edge to edge opened again, looking down at him, shifting the words into a language of sensations from sounds, he reversed the instant.

Her hand still wielded the staff, but she could feel the change in the moment it snapped and then solidified. Gasping against his lips, she started to pull back, but his grip was iron and even if she had the ripple of the tide had shifted inexorably. Cassandra had the raw power, but not the knowledge and experience of what to do with it. And without the orb whispering instructions, she flailed in the dark.

Her nails raked back, drawing blood along the line of his chin as his teeth did the same against her lip. As he took back what she had stolen, the high and that buoyancy abandoning her, she whimpered against his mouth. Slowly, she sank to her knees, meeting him there on the pavement, kneeling together as the rain poured around them.

[member="Itash Mecetti"]

 

[Itash Mecetti]

[member="Cassandra Paige"]

They were born of pain.

Dishing out and devouring it in equal measures.

When they entered this world, this life, they had entered it with a part missing. A part that would have allowed them to be as one with those around them. Instead, the simple act of being born had put them separate from the normalcy of existing. Everything dull, everything less... there, until they found that little little something that gave them life. For some it were lies, others it was pain, control, pleasure, there were acts that inspired any and all these emotions in equal measures.

Some gorged on all of them.

Others found peace at a more limited pleasure.

Tash took and took and took from her, his claws racking across the inside of her enflamed spirit without pause or regard. First came what she had stolen from him, then followed that what she had stolen from the two souls before him. Then everything paused, the air around them stilling, even the rain seemingly freezing in that singular moment. As if existence itself held its breath to see just what this cruel joke of a farce of a man would do to the woman in his arms.

Around her spirit, her soul, her life his fingers clenched and squeezed.

It was control of thought- as Itash relayed to her his meaning: in this moment, I own you and I choose to let go. And let go he did, leaving his mark within the deepest essence of what made Cass... Cass.

Then everything unfroze.

The cup broke and the rain poured anew, while Tash leaned in- strength in his arms, fire in his eyes as power coursed through him like never before. His face was older now, lines deeper, but within those embers of his eyes there was life.

 

[Cassandra Paige]

The staff and orb both clattered to the ground, splashing water up over their feet.

Fingers gone slack, the strength now in him holding her up. She was conscious, but it was more than the simple loss of what she had stolen. While she could still sense it all through the Force, it started fading as soon as her grip on the staff was lost. It wasn't merely a return to the normal, it was the crash that came at the end. At the very height of her high he had taken it, torn out in return, leaving her a scraped out shell, raw and collapsing in on itself.

A temporary thing, surely, but the marks he'd left within were anything but.

She could feel them pulsing, throbbing like an open wound, fading slowly, step by step as the rest of it did. She tried to hold onto it, tried to grasp it, strangle it if need be to keep it- but the sensitivity granted by the staff was ephemeral without the correct input and that had not been knowledge the orb had imparted.

After all, what did it care?

It had simply wanted out of the box and out into the world to feed. Even stopped like this, it was still sated and content.

Cassandra was anything but.

If she hadn't already been on her knees her legs would have buckled. She eyes opened, squinting against the rain washing across her face- the black had receded back to where it belonged, leaving behind the red, blood shot irritation of change where change did not belong.

There was no question that moment as it had passed was one of choice. Either could have killed the other, but while Cass had been stopped, Itash had chosen to stop. It was not lost on her.

Nor the fact that if he hadn't stopped her, she might not have.

She leaned heavily against him, hollow and oddly light, like the barest of wind could blow her over now. There was no question of what had happened, what she had done- because it had been her doing all of them. She had not been possessed- influenced by that high of power, yes, but none of it had been anything but her own actions. And given the choice?

She would do them again.

Cass didn't offer him the satisfaction of asking him to give any of it back. But there was no way that would be the last time she felt that way. It was simply not acceptable.

"I would apologize," she whispered, her voice raw against his shoulder, body almost limp against his. "But we'd both know it was a lie."

[member="Itash Mecetti"]

 

[Itash Mecetti]

[member="Cassandra Paige"]

In that moment between life and death her fate was in his hands.

Her life in his arms.

She knew it, yes, but Itash knew it too.

It was a sense of responsibility as he could feel whatever went for a soul beneath his touch. In that moment it wasn't clear to Itash yet what he would do, kill her, spare her, wed her, they were all actions swirling around one another in a constant struggle. Years ago he would have cut her, one slice at a time, until she had no more blood to give to him. But within this pivotal year something had changed- he had changed. Turning away from carelessness towards something more... measured. No slicing then, but that didn't mean she had her life, had she?

A response was necessary.

Was required.

For what Cassandra had done to him.

He could feel it- his skin dry, his eyes slightly less sharp than they had been before, a weariness within his bones that hadn't been there before. Even the joints of his knees felt older. Oh, Tash had returned his life-force and then some, but the damage to his body was already done. He was power now and felt the might swirling through him, but beneath it?

Tash felt the years ripped away from him still.

No, she would have to die- then she spoke those words and the sharp glint within those eyes turned thoughtful as Itash looked down.

Taking a measure here, a ponder, then a decision was made behind those blue orbs of storm. "Cassandra Paige," Tash murmured and leaned in, his lips brushing her cracked and bloody ones as blood seeped gently from where her nails had dug into his chin. "Will you marry me?"