Eight Hundred Years in the Making (Ket)

[Ahani Najwa-Zambrano]

Sabarene had begun it. The unlocking of [member="Ket Van-Derveld"] 's mind had happened with the shuddering ache of old lovers reminded after an absence of lifetimes. Ahani had thrown herself into the duel, she'd poured her soul into each attack and defence, ending up on the bottom side of Ket's boot.

Life, in all its complexity was as simple as the continuation of the familiar. This time, though. . . this time there was an unfulfilled lust in his lupine eyes, the piercing fangs of his modified jaw grinning in a way Ahani had never expected.

She was in the most intrinsic sense valuable. It had been centuries since the woman felt like more than a tag-along to her powerful son, or the minion of her Echanar. Licking her wounds, Ahani had fallen into a deep sleep nestled in the safety of her Handmaiden's arms as they bandaged her wounds before Manu could come heal them.

The desert sun had risen in a rosy brilliance on the planet her son had brought his refugees from the ASA. Abha was as it was named: A City of Light. It nearly burned her eyes, but Ahani rose out of bed and looked down to the long red dress she'd been put in by her Najwa Handmaidens. "Mmmmh."

Ahani walked barefoot through the house her son had built for her, entering the refresher to see the bruises that still hadn't closed. After her inspection, she went to the kitchen, pouring a mug of tea and walking to the floor to ceiling window to watch the skyline in hopes her Handmaidens will have found the Ewok before he died.

 

[Ket Van-Derveld]

And that was where she had failed, and miserably at that. No one escaped him, not a one. Ket Van-Derveld would not be denied the spoils of his battles. She'd awakened something within him he long thought dead, something he thought he'd kept at bay beyond the measures of his own thoughts. Yet there it stood, in all it's deceptive and unbridled glory, fangs bared, the grin of a thousand men bringing him ever closer to the summit of the mountain top. And at that peak? The real Ket, the Ket that had existed before time itself. The one who'd made Jedi Masters cower at his feet when he was just an Acolyte himself. When he was barely into puberty, he'd made full grown men beg for mercy, and made full grown women wonder just why he was still so young. Ket Van-Derveld was an enigma in this galaxy. SOmething that should not be, yet existed just the same.

Within that window she looked out upon, on rolling hills and trees half dead due to the seasons change, a light snowfall began to twinkle. It was unnatural, but it was there just the same. A dark silhouette stood just beyond the realm of sight, something that could only be seen as blackness beyond what many would ever dare to imagine in their own mind. Yet this was real. This was as real as life could get for anyone. For within that reality, stood something that common men feared, and that even those with power held in high regard. The wind blew cold, as spiked hair waved in the wind, and a long coat bellowed out within it's currents. Hands gripped into fists, as he stood there like a statue among the few trees, an oak among twigs.


[member="Ahani Najwa"]

 

[Ahani Najwa-Zambrano]

In the disquiet of the house, Ahani's lunatic mind had conjured itself a bandage of rags. She sipped her tea and peered at the snow. "Bilana, am I hallucinating? Is there snow in the desert?" Falling in the habit of asking permission of her mind's eyes, Ahani glanced at the elderly woman whose face matched Ahani's own and watched her wrinkled chin nod. It was snowing and the man in the middle of it was the cause.

"I was never young. But I was young in the Force when first he found me. My Master had vanished, I was little more than a play thing for the powers of Munto Cudro and Ket found me again and again and again. I would heal, I would break and he would break me further each time. Daring me to stay on the ground.

In all these passing centuries, I realize now I owe my outlasting will to [member="Ket Van-Derveld"]. Funny universe, isn't it? Hmh. Make us breakfast. Make it hearty, the man like's meat. You may go." The Handmaiden bowed and vanished, continuing her vow of silence as penance for an unknown crime. Ahani padded outside in her bare feet, the dress sliding against the snowy ground. The depth of him, the uncanny thunder rumbling in his ribcage - there was no end and never would be. Raien had been a glimpse of the conceptual destruction of the Force, but Ket was its' Master. The wind tossed her hair around her face, Ahani willed it up off the nape of her neck and bound it there with a twirl and a twig. Silver eyes watching the statuesque man, Ahani hazarded to come close - into his field of vision.

She put her hand on his shoulder, offering him the hot mug of tea. "Snow on Sabarene. This weather is as rare as we are, to this place. Why are you still here, Ket?"

 

[Ket Van-Derveld]

"I shall not be denied. Not by anyone, especially you."

As he spoke, the Force began to concentrate, and conglomerate into a focused ball that sparked and spit at his fingertips. with but a whisper, it let itself go, point blank at her chest, shoving her toward the house with the speed of a Star Destroyer entering Hyperspace, annihilating the wall of the kitchen. Ket Van-Derveld was not one to be trifled with. He'd said that time and time again, yet so many thought themselves better than such knowledge. That they might withstand the onslaught. Yet there he was, clad in a leather coat that nearly kissed the ground, bellowing out in unnatural winds, a white dress shirt that hung loosely upon his chiseled features. Leather pants that had seen the coming and going of the centuries, and boots that crept up to his knee, that had been around just as long. In moments, they appeared before Ahani, and he looked down to her, his sapphire eyes unforgiving as he spoke to her quietly.

"You thought to just leave? That After what you've done, I would simply let you go?"


[member="Ahani Najwa"]

 

[Ahani Najwa-Zambrano]

In the quivers of her insanity, she had fallen into the lull of a false security. No one was safe in the bastions of the elder Van-Derveld, not one person was free to survive him without permission and Ahani had damaged that permission when she opened his spine and cracked his protective shell. Yet, that glint. That odd flicker of his eyes on her was as abnormal as her lifespan. The woman peered up at him, aware for the first time that a woman was precisely what she was. A woman on the ground by Ket Van-Derveld's feet. Her heart flipped in her chest, her face contorting in a wide-eyed wonderment of the precarious lines drawn across his presence in the Force.

"I wanted that tea, you xh'ar'chath!" Ahani bellowed, picking herself out of the wreckage of the kitchen and glancing down at her tattered dress. "For the . . are you crazy!? You'll hurt Bilana! She's my great-great-great-grand daughter!" Surging out of the room, Ahani put enough distance between them to breathe again. Ripping the torn rags off her body, she rummaged through her closet and threw a white silk blouse over her head, he'd be on her in a minute and the last thing she wanted was a state of undress.

It had never been important before, but that flicker. . . the tug of a series of connective tissues of the past and present Force sang to Ahani's conscience. She had to get dressed. Why was he looking at her with those eyes? Yanking a leather skirt on, she felt uncomfortable with how it hugged her thighs, all the way toward her knees but it was clean and there. Pity the only boots she could see were her knee-highs she'd bought on a whim with Matsu Xiangu in one of her former student's lesson days. Standing in front of her mirror, Ahani slapped her hands on her cheeks. Why were they red? "Stop it. Stop! STOP IT!" She screamed at her reflexion, grabbing a jacket and throwing it on in time to turn toward the kitchen.

If she ran, how far would she get? Run. Running was useless. Ahani put steel in her spine and growled, strutting back out toward Ket.

"Back off! Stop destroying my home! It's the first one I've had in eight hundred and fifty fething years. Did I leave? No! I came out to say good morning, b-b-b-ut y'yyou b-b-b-blasted me here. Whose denying you, Ket? Am I hallucinating? Are there other Ahani Najwas walking around? Goddess of mercy. What do you want!?"

 

[Ket Van-Derveld]

"Revenge for what you've done to me. YOU unleashed it. YOU conjured it forth with your foul, evil ways! YOU brought forth that which you did not understand THEN and still do not understand NOW. Darth Ahroun was DEAD and BURIED within the bowels of Ket Van-Derveld's mind. AND YOU LET HIM LOOSE. YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR ALL THAT BEFALLS YOU, AHANI NAJWA. AND YOU HAVE NO ONE TO CRY TO EXCEPT YOURSELF!"

As heavy footfalls came closer and closer to her home, the Darkness that radiated off Ket Van-Derveld showed him for who he truly was. A Sick, twisted, cruel and all-consuming vagabond. Someone who cared not for anything other than himself. He was someone possessed by another. Darth Ahroun and Ket Van-Derveld had always existed separate of one another within his fragile mind, yet due to her actions, they no longer did. They were one and the same, a hybrid of power and intelligence. A mix of Cruelty and Humanity. They were and always shall be what they had meant to be. And in that revelation, Lord Ahroun would not stop. With a mighty intake of breath, he let loose a scream that would level her home, and kill all within it, save Ahani herself. She wished to take his safety from him? He would do the same, and then some. He would make her cower at his feet like the little girl she always had been. She was a Master now? What did that make Ket? It made him a GOD. And so he was, as he lifted up off the ground, and hovered there in the air, his eyes trailing across the destruction as fires began to explode all around her, her home nothing more than rubble as the desert grew cold, somehow. The air grew frozen as the light of the sun dyed out, and the cold, black night began to envelope them all.

"You took from me the one thing I had worked for all my life. You took from me what little sanity I had left! You wanted the Old Wolf? Then you shall have him for ALL TIME. Ahani Najwa, I curse thee! At my side you shall remain, my will shall be your only want, and you shall cower in fear for the rest of your days, groveling at my feet. Or I shall take from you ALL you hold dear. Starting with your precious MANU."


[member="Ahani Najwa"]

 

[Ahani Najwa-Zambrano]

"You asked me to!! YOU came to US, remember!?" Ahani screamed the words into the air, her lungs heaving in her chest, "YOU came and said you were lost. What are you if you're denying every piece of yourself? A lost ragged man, an eternal belligerent who won't die, you're the King of the Universe who forgot his crown. Be fantastic, turn your gaze to the universe it's there for YOU!"

The bellow came with a flicker of precognisance, Ahani dove for Bilana, wrapping her arms around her distant descendant and covering her body from the damage [member="Ket Van-Derveld"] committed to. Yes, she had awakened him, and it had seemed like brilliance in the lock and key of her insane mind. But now he wanted to hurt her children. Her kids. Putting Bilana down, Ahani staggered out of the wreckage and flew into the air to meet him, "You can't kill a man who was supposed to be dead already! I keep Manu alive, it's my will that holds his body together, it's all me, Ket! I create the motions of his still pumping heart and I will not let my son go!"

She tore into the air with a frothing wave of telekinetic will. "You want me by your side, I'm already there. You want me to cower, or. . . " Ahani's eyes narrowed, she gulped. "Or are you afraid to admit you want my companionship? The one person who can and will know you and know you completely? You don't need to threaten me to make my will yours. I already am. I'm yours, Ket. I have been since the day you first tore me down and I got back up."

 

[Ket Van-Derveld]

"YOU DO NOT KNOW ME!!!!!"

His eyes shut as hard as they could be, he let loose a wave of Darkness unlike anything Ahani had ever felt before in her life. It was primal, unhinged. It did not claw at the physical, no, it clawed upon the mind, the heart itself. It was something that was insane, yet fully aware. It was something that had within it the power of the cosmos, yet was as simple as a grain of sand. It would claw at her mind like nothing she'd ever felt before. He was a man possessed. A man who felt that nothing was worth living for. He would die here this day if not reigned in, some way, somehow. He was lost, and that was more true than ever before. She was talking, but he did not hear. His mind was still trying to merge the halves of itself into one, whole being. Darth Ahroun wanted nothing more the death of all that dwelled in the galaxy, and Ket wanted nothing more than to save the galaxy from itself. He was torn, a true monster with more power than any could possibly imagine. Mountains began to form with the desert, water began to creep up from the cracks as the planet itself began to vibrate, crying under the stress of his influence. He meant to kill them all. Perhaps only in death would he find peace and tranquility. Yet no matter how close he'd come to it, no matter how many times he'd embraced it, Death looked him over and went on to the next. Why? Was he that insignificant? Or Did even death itself fear his reprisal? He had no idea, but he'd bent the magnetic sphere of the planet so badly by this point that within hours, it would cease to be what it was.


"I WILL NOT BE DENIED MY VENGENCE!" he howled out, a fuming, hatred-filled wreck of a man.

[member="Ahani Najwa"]

 

[Ahani Najwa-Zambrano]

"Yes I do." Ahani's voice lilted across the distance with an emphatic connection of the Force itself. Passion had been the Echani Matron's gift, a passion for life and its creation, a passion for survival. A passion for victory. She had always been the other side of pain's equation, that strong-backed woman who stood despite the fears and evils coursing through her veins. Ahani could be mighty, if she were loved.

She threw her arms in front of her, knees knocking into her chest as she hung in midair. To Ket's blistering cacophony, Ahani gave the essence of herself: an innate ability to take the horrors of destruction's influence and fuel it into a sacred, creative act. Ahani's arms flung open and the surges of Ket's aura were not dampened nor blocked but shifted. Where mountains formed, rivulets of rain kissed the land below their feet. Where the earth cracked and people groaned, Ahani wrapped the destruction of the old, ragged dilapidated states of affairs and breathed into them a new creation.

It was then the woman in her recognized what gaze [member="Ket Van-Derveld"] had beset upon her with his sapphire eyes.

He needed her.

Ket needed her.

"Funnel your vengeance into a place where good can be wrought of it. No correction to the courses of events we have lived through can be made without perspective and without the banishment of the broken old guard. Take your vengeance out on a place that deserves it. Pair your inner leanings together. Ket, I'm the Starmother but I am only half of myself. You said yourself, I will be by your side. What if there's a reason for it? What if this entire surge of our elder years has come now, when the galaxy is ready, when it's poised.

You war with yourself, but you do not have to." The idea of coming closer to the frothing Sith Lord was the most terrifying idea that had come to her mind. She was but a broken thing, tortured for centuries by the one man who should have held her tight and called her blessed. Her Echanar's body laid in state, locked away but his mind continued to jeer and stab at his mate's. Raien was but a puppet in comparison to Ket. He was a tick she hadn't removed.

And as Ahani drifted through the mire of Ket's display, wisps of nebulous array followed her like a cloak threatening to turn the destruction around them into a glorious new age. "I know you and you know me." Within distance of his skin, Ahani's hand trembled as she took his hand and put it on her beating, near-bursting heart. Holding it there, Ahani shut her eyes and put her hand to his heart and breathed.

The seas of calamity in her mind lulled, a calm took the Sith Master. "Do they not beat in tandem? Do we not ache in similar ways? I told you, Ket. I'm already yours."

In the presence of a legendary powerhouse of the Dark Side of the Force, was it Ahani's greatest danger to look up into his face with a mystified trust laid bare for his horror or amusement? "This was a broken world and you're tearing it down. Help me. Tear it down and give me the confidence to fix it in our image. Please. Ket." His name shivered off her lips with an eternal consolation.