From One Hammer to Another.

[Gabriel Sionoma]

He blinked slowly. She was formerly in the military as a soldier. Her father was a mechanic. She's a native from Coruscant. And a 6%, quarter serving of mead was stronger than what's she used to? He's served in the military long enough to know that it was a rare breed that didn't partake in alcohol. His gut told him this one didn't land in that camp.

Something didn't seem right here. His hazel eyes shifted to her hand as he retracted his own. Tonguing the inside of his cheek, he nodded as he put the bangle of sizer rings down on the table and stood up. "Of course, of course..." Why would she need to use the restroom right before sizing? He was a component of law enforcement when he wasn't busy fighting for the Galactic Alliance and building alchemic items, inherently tied to his ability to sense the world around him. Built on top of his eidetic memory and use of psychometry, it made him a potential obstacle when scrutiny came into play. He waved towards the hallway. "Down here, first door on the right..."

He recalled that flash of anger, fleeting yet pronounced, as it drifted across her aura.

Coruscant.

"There are a lot of alchemists in the universe...Some far closer to Coruscant than here. In fact..." He looked towards the woman. "One of the more prominent conglomerates of alchemists, Marrow and Illskin, has a shop on Coruscant. I find it...interesting that if you could do enough research to find me, that you didn't find them first. Assuming that was what you did...why come all the way here for something that you could have gotten in your back yard?"

Did she really need to use the bathroom? He, of course, wasn't going to stop her.

Who is Miss Venn? How does she know about him if she's neither part of the alliance nor an active purveyor of alchemy wares? Even to the point of admitting total ignorance on the matter.

His face shifted, moving slowly away from warmth to one of more neutrality. He wasn't sure what was going on here but perhaps her initial question of whether he had gotten what he needed had a more appropriate answer. The answer being no, no he didn't.

[member="Aver Brand"]​

 

[Aver Brand]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAdQzCq53XE​

​

It would’ve been small miracle if it had worked, honestly. Nobody short of a meddling, merciful god could pull this off, and gods didn’t exist. On the off chance they did… the mercenary was hardly at the top of the list when it came to people deserving of divine intervention.

She was no cop, but she had one massive advantage over the man seated opposite.

Perhaps the last ace in her figurative sleeve – Aver knew his face. More intimately than Gabriel had any right to expect from a random, if exceedingly suspicious visitor. She knew his face, and she knew his body. Their language, even if guided by a foreign mind, remained the same.

The chair scraped against the floor, metal shavings and wood catching under its worn legs. Ten, twenty years ago? She’d have been the one pushing for this, vengeance the first and only consideration.

But twenty years ago mattered as much as the specks of dust on the floor. Today, Aver wasn’t the same woman who’d beat a man into pulp with her bare hands. She could do it still, and would.

That wasn’t the point.

“I don’t want to.”

The answer might have seemed barely congruous with his line of questioning. Barely, but then Aver spoke again. Even though the illusion persisted, the woman somehow felt taller. As if she reclaimed her rightful possession of space merely through volition.

Ygdris had always been a willful creature.

“I don’t give a shet about ‘more prominent conglomerates’. I came to you, [member="Gabriel Sionoma"].” Voice scrambling remained. The accent did not. Ultimately, Aver preferred an open game to smoke and mirrors. If this ended in blood, so be it.

But she wouldn’t be the one to raise the first fist.

“Because of who you are… were.” She paused, flexing that damned left hand. Eyes flicked up to meet his hardened demeanor. “To me.”

“Now I will leave, and you won’t ever see me again.” Her lips curled a fraction behind the illusion, behind the faceplate, behind the veneer of humanity.

He’d known her once beneath it all. With years gone past, neither were who they used to be.

No, Aver did not believe in gods. But if she did, she would’ve asked one, any of them, to grant him the prudence to let her go.

 

[Gabriel Sionoma]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvetJ9U_tVY​

Who he was...to her?

Who he was...

Who was he?

Hazel eyes hardened beneath slits, the shifts in stance and demeanor and diction. He knew this person and she knew him, currently well beyond advantage. She had his name but more than that, they had something? Once. But if she knew him for what he was, she knew him for what he was no longer.

But who had known him enough to care, beyond conquest and death?

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]. No, he had watched her as she brought life to everything that was dead. Only to make it wrong, no longer whole, and without soul. But she was something that always felt alien, a three dimensional character where he stood at as a flatlander. Looking up at her, he knew one thing more than anything other - Reverance didn't know what love was, but he felt it for her. If she would have cared to come, she would have done so in a far different fashion.

Ygdris.

Those were the only two that he could remember that looked towards him with eyes that wanted more than just title or power. Something more, something he couldn't understand. But it had been years...why? The words she spoke felt different than what Vrag would have said. Nights recalled amidst drinking, spent in a grashal, or in moments of rage and hunger and lust. The memory stung, pulling thoughts to the front of his mind that he was content to leave buried. Suddenly, she was far more open than the Miss Venn she portrayed herself as.

"Ygdris..." His eye twitched, the phantom of a missing thing. As if he were partially blind, all over again. He felt confusion set in. A life that he had pushed deep down in hopes that it would never return, had come knocking at his door disguised in something it wasn't. He didn't think of his family or of himself, he thought of her. He carried the duality of memories into this life, one beset by feelings and the other beset by what was right. And she wasn't right. She never had been. That was clear from the moment she obtained vengeance, lacquered in blood and anger, and never looked back.

He felt bile rise up in his throat at the thought. "I guess the rumors of your death were a bit..." He stopped. "No, you did die. You aren't the same as you were before." His eyes met the facade of hers, wondering where she was beneath the fog of this projection.

"Who was I...to you?" Ah damnit. "Did you know me? Did you ever sense my hesitation?" He couldn't stop the words from coming out, feeling like perhaps they were the strangers they always thought they were. He couldn't get the thoughts out of his head, the relationships formed vicariously through a psychopath, attachment from the confines of a cage. But he ended his words with a shake of his head, rubbing a hand through the developing beard.

"If you want to leave, no one will stop you." He was a Marshall of the Alliance but he was something else here, something he didn't want to accept.

[member="Aver Brand"]​

 

[Aver Brand]

She could walk away. Turn on her heel, disappear from his life just as she had swept in. No physical trace save from the sole glass on a dark table – but what swaths of upturned memory would she leave behind?

Perhaps little. Perhaps this Gabriel was stronger than she remembered, and would remain stalwart even against the quaking earth beneath his feet.

But words escaped his chest. Desperate words, brown eyes tight at the corners. Fighting himself, fighting the questions spilling forth as if he were still two minds in one body.

They’d once been parasites to each other, left lost by the separation only through years of forced attachment. But Reverance, in truth, belonged elsewhere, not with this man. He lurked as fear in the hearts of men; he walked through dark woods under a sky without stars, lit only by a moon of silver and a sun of red.

Yes, Aver could walk away – leave him without any answers in the ruin of a house he spent decades building. Brick by arduous brick, shaking off the shadow of a Sith Lord.

Instead she smiled. He couldn’t see it, of course. But perhaps he’d sense it nonetheless.

“I don’t know,” she spoke with honesty.

“I don’t know if I did, or if I did… if I cared.” A breath, half of it. “It doesn’t matter, I think. You’re Gabriel Sionoma now and— that’s all. You’re not a brother to him, and you have nothing for me anymore. But I had to know you… at least once.” Her brow furrowed.

“You were there when I found him first, Gabriel. If you hate me – if you did then – I won’t hunt you for it.” She dipped her head, standing in the door.

“But for what you used to be, I will give you this, if it’s the last thing I owe you for keeping him alive through the war.” He would feel familiar blue eyes bore into his as the illusion slowly faded into nothing, leaving naught but the wall of the corridor behind her.

But the voice, Ygdris’ voice, would linger – a soft echo slipped past barriers she knew well.

I loved you, too.

 

[Gabriel Sionoma]

He listened. And then he felt.

I loved you, too.

He watched, unblinking, as she removed herself from these moments in the same fashion as she entered. Mysteriously, totally without reasons, giving him the briefest view of her before she was gone. Smoke, ash, burning up in the pain of memories he didn't want. Feelings, he didn't want.

Did you know how to love, then?

Running a hand through his hair, the gypsy peeked her head in. All it took was her to see his face, the expression of confusion and loss, for her to lose her normally jovial tune.

"Gabe...is everything okay?"

He gripped a braid of hair in his hands, closing his eyes as he took a deep breath and centered himself.

"No, I don't think it is."
"What's wrong? What happened."
"Nothing." He took another breath and smiled. "Nothing important. Do me a favor. Close the shop down for the day."
"But it's only noon on vendors day...all the sales."
"I'm not bothered. Thanks though."
"Oh-okay. Sure thing."

He turned towards the forge. "Mother, close the door behind you please."

"Of course."

She pulled the metal door closed, pulling the latch down. Stepping on her tippy toes, she peered in and watched as he pulled the plate from the water and pressed it into the fire. When it was red hot, he withdrew it and the viewing glass fogged from the eternal heat of the shop. Pursing a lone tooth against her upper lip, she moved towards the shop front and flipped the open sign to closed. The sound of a hammer against metal resonated like a dull pang, endlessly.

[member="Aver Brand"]​