Gods and Monsters

[NightSister]

m u s i c​

Aria had moved to Maena for a reason.

She needed to build independence, she'd said. Grow in power, establish a presence, she'd said. Work out what she'd have become - what she'd have wanted to become - had she never been raised into the Jedi, and then become it, she'd said.

It had taken a very long time, but she'd decided that that would've been a Sith.

In truth, it oughtn't to have taken Aria as long as it had to reach such a conclusion - after all, the girl lived on a planet ruled by Sith, had a handful of Sith in her inner circle, and had even fought with the Sith once already - but no matter; she'd decided when she'd decided, and now she could have no doubt. Indecisive as she tended to be, once Aria had truly set her mind on something, she quite often managed to achieve it, one way or another. Becoming Sith, on the other hand, was harder than winning a duel or watching two seasons of a holonet show in one night. Not that Aria was the best person to say what such a goal required, but she had friends who knew better on such matters, and one thing she'd figured out immediately was that it required perseverance, and greatly so. Still more importantly, she wasn't the best person to say what the goal required. Which could quite possibly make her ill-equipped to achieve her goal as she was.

That, she'd reasoned, would have to be the first step; find someone better equipped to help her become Sith, and convince them somehow to do just such a thing. Imperia was the first to come to mind, but Aria had quickly realised that training could create something of a rift between them, and that was the last thing she wanted. But Maena was, after all, a Sith-led planet - Aria didn't have to exert herself a great deal to think of someone who could perhaps teach her instead.

Her relationship with Matsu Xiangu wasn't perhaps the best it could be, but the Sith Lord was the most powerful she could think of - that she knew at all beyond reputation, at least. Certainly, she was the only Sith Lord Aria could claim to have had ice cream with while watching a foreign movie. It had taken pleasingly little work to arrange to speak with her; that was her business in the New City today. She'd been given a location to go to, where the Sith either would or wouldn't choose to meet, but that was all she could hope to begin with.

The rest would follow.

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

She was finding it hard to remember the reasons she’d been angry with Aria Vale.

At first it had been simple - she had been a stranger on Matsu’s turf, contributing to the destruction that had torn one of the more beautiful parts of the planet in to an unrecognizable waste. That day had been strange and she’d been so taken by a wave of rage and fascination that somehow that strange dark-haired girl had gotten caught in the mix.

That odd and quaint Girl’s Night had served to somewhat ease the tension.

Matsu had never been a ‘shoot first, ask questions later’ type unless her life was on the line, and the explanation for Aria’s flying off the handle fell in line with much of Matsu’s philosophy. The woman Prazutis had murdered was important to Aria, so she’d been unable to stop herself from revenge. Though Matsu would have found a quieter way, personally, she suspected that Vale was more in line with her son’s thinking, with the way Reverance took care of things. She could not fault her for any of those things.

So when the Sith Lord appeared it was in that pall of the in-between the two women occupied.
The held breath.

The city sprawled out bestial and beautiful beneath them. Matsu occupied some of its top levels - low enough to feel a part of its beating, but high enough to be able to see the star-limmed sky above the volcano’s opening. As such a breeze still reached them there on the parapet. Matsu bent towards a sturdy railing to lean on bent elbows, long fingers curling together. Her face was lit by the city below, its warmth bleaching over her skin. Shadows crawled over the low planes as she turned her head to look at Aria.

“Certainly is beautiful until you look closer, isn’t it?”

[member="Aria Vale"]​

 

[NightSister]

She stood just a few feet from Matsu, somewhat less comfort in her stance than that of the Sith Lord. In truth, she was afraid - but not of Matsu Xiangu, not today at least. No, Aria feared she'd be deemed without the potential to learn under the other woman; she feared failure. Her past failure hadn't been to herself, and that was how she'd dealt with what guilt it had caused her. What guilt it still caused her, though that was something she'd never tell a soul.

If she lacked the potential to become Sith, it was entirely on her.

"It is," the Dark Jedi agreed, gaze flickering briefly between Matsu and the view she spoke of. Afraid she was, but the possibility of failure would be confined to being no more than a worry, nagging at the back of her head. She couldn't - wouldn't - kill the underlying distress, but she was stubborn in her refusal to let it be anything more than that.

But she was getting off track again.
Quit the daydreaming. Focus.
Her motives wouldn't be hard to guess, she supposed, but her indirectness was never useful and especially not today. If she lacked the confidence to be totally sure in herself, then the durability to go through with it anyway was the next best thing - so she had best go through with it.

"But I'm sure you know I'm not here for the view." The resolve in her voice was largely superficial, but nevertheless she persisted. "I - I want to become Sith." It was easier now; the determination that she find a way to achieve her goal bled into something that almost passed as confidence.

It was strangely satisfying to really want something once more.

"Could-" No. Too hesitant, too uncertain. "Will you teach me?"

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]​

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

A small smile dragged across dark lips as Aria quipped about the view. Matsu appreciated sarcasm or humor, especially when so much of her day was spent around those attempting to maintain control of their bladder while speaking with her. Really, that got rather boring. And considering their history she supposed it took some nerve for Aria to make even a light bite such as that one.

“I don’t suppose you have.”

But Aria’s request was an interesting one. Not entirely unexpected considering the company Matsu had seen her keeping lately but still - putting it bluntly said more than if Aria had danced around the statement. The Sith Lord wasn’t opposed to taking her on, at least not on the grounds of whether or not she was capable. Matsu had seen firsthand the streak of power that had flown out of Aria’s hands and towards Prazutis. And Vale ran with Onley from time to time. Matsu had seen enough of what her son did to those who went against his enterprises to figure that Aria was far, far from squeamish.

No, the question was - what was Matsu becoming?

She was Sith by virtue of the ease that came with the label. But now, contemplating the divergence of paths that opened as Maena flourished, she wondered if she’d ever been Sith at all. It was just her and the Dark Side, her and the Truth. She didn’t resent the Sith for their ways or beliefs and wouldn’t begrudge anyone who stuck to them. But she couldn’t really call herself one anymore.

The Sith were natural, one side of a coin.
And Matsu was wholly unnatural.

She was interested, but…

“Why? Why do you want to become Sith? There’s no right answer. I’m not one of those who carry a rulebook. I just want to know what you ultimately want to become.”

Not that those visions always matched the one you found yourself in.

[member="Aria Vale"]​

 

[NightSister]

It only took a beat.

Aria knew the answer, of course - the girl lived with her head in the clouds. She'd thought over the decision enough to know what had pushed her towards the Sith. No, her instant of hesitation was just that, a pause to choose her words so she could give a helpful answer, for want of a better word. There was a story spanning nearly two years that had her standing leaning on the railing as she spoke to Matsu of the Sith, an intricate spiderweb that the other woman might've even appreciated as a process, but a saga would be as needless here as it would be unwanted.

She was still trying, after all, to make the right impression.

When she answered, it was with careful certainty, stress on every word.
"The path of the Sith was shown to me as the alternative to weakness," she replied, hesitantly fixing her gaze on Matsu.

And it had taken her so long to realise it. Aria was a creature frequently driven by her subconscious - the dark side had lurked beneath her consciousness for the longest time, waiting patiently for her to pay attention to its presence. There were things she liked to put a lot of thought into, and things that only crossed her mind when it was absolutely necessary; it had taken countless reaffirmations of what she already knew before she'd sought out the darkside, and the Sith had been no different. Darth Vitium's murder, Imperia's presence in her life, her battle against the Jedi on Midvinter. It was slow, small nudge after small nudge, but she'd have had to realise eventually where it ended up, where she wanted it to end up.

"It's been confirmed to me enough times since then."

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]​

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

Matsu brought her elbows off the railing, exchanging them for her hip as she looked more directly at the younger woman. For years the Atrisian had taken on not a single apprentice. They had all been obscenely boring, easily broken. Her time was precious and she did not want to waste it on worthless worms that tried to learn the Dark Side only to find the reality far dirtier than their ideal. And then the Force had seen fit to bring her more than one prospect at once. First Korog had come along though...no, the Muun did not bear consideration, not unless she wanted feel her rage spiraling out of control. Then Jacob, endlessly promising in his mental potential.

And then there was Aria. From what she knew, she was a more physical creature than either of her other two apprentices. That was of little concern. Matsu had trained other warriors despite not sharing their preference of force-use. It wasn’t so much about the application as the understanding of what one was drawing from.

“The alternative to weakness,” she repeated quietly, her tongue curling around the last word with a hint of revulsion. “That is true, though I would guess you know it’s not because trouble is any less frequent. The Jedi simply swallow their tragedies, whereas to you and I they will become fuel. And so will everyone else’s.”

She took another pause, a few heartbeats of consideration before she nodded. “I will train you. But know that before your training is over, I will take something from you. Physical. Mental. The form and time is as strange to me as to you, but when it’s over it will make you more powerful than you could imagine, and more. I tell you this now so that neither of us wastes our time if you don't think you'll survive that.”

Matsu’s eyes roiled with memories, the smell of Darth Bane’s blood flooding her senses again as she thought of taking his arm in the heat of their last battle together as Master and Apprentice. The suffering and pride in his expression, knowing he’d survived - that pain was power, and one was no longer scared for their body then they had nothing to fear.

[member="Aria Vale"]​

 

[NightSister]

"...if you don't think you'll survive that."

She could honestly say she'd expected a different ending. The promise of sacrifice had only mildly surprised her - Aria was perfectly familiar by now with the good that could come of sacrifice, and knew by now that the Sith promoted growth through pain. It was among the first things she'd learnt upon renouncing the Jedi, when Silara Kuhn had pulled her into her past to show a pain that had destroyed and rebuilt the Sith Lord all at once. The memory, partially veiled in her mind for not being her own, of the blood and debris drifted briefly to the front of her consciousness, but she sent it on its way at once.

The idea of sacrifice didn't strike her as odd at all; she'd have been more surprised to make it through her training without sacrifice of some sort. She was surprised only that the Sith Lord had come straight out with it, but the succeeding statement replaced that first question with an entirely different uncertainty.

For the instant before Matsu finished her sentence she'd presumed it to be a question of cowardice, not survival. If not for the Sith's last words, that there was even a possibility of her death hadn't crossed her mind. Did that make her insane, arrogant, reckless? Aria was simply accustomed to just surviving - she took hits and then got back to her feet, she kept going and going just to prove that she could. Aria's life, Aria was her constant; she knew that even when it hurt to exist, she existed, and if she existed long enough it always stopped hurting in the end. To say that she feared death wouldn't quite be accurate, though - it simply wasn't an option, couldn't and wouldn't even be considered. When she died, she'd die, but right up until that moment she would live.

Was Matsu suggesting this. . .loss was likely to kill her? She honestly couldn't tell.
But Aria thought she could live through whatever it would prove to be.
The smallest of small voices said that Matsu must think the same.

Then there was the matter of if her mind could take it - that was what she'd thought the Sith was warning her of, after all - but her mind she wasn't worried for. She was certain by now that years of varying strife had taught her mind to endure. Perhaps she was wrong, and whatever sacrifice this was would leave her brain dust; it could be rebuilt, and she'd still exist.

And Matsu was promising power. . . moreso, she said, than Aria could imagine.
Some things were worth the risk.

"I appreciate the warning, but I think I'll risk it. If you'll teach me, I'm prepared to learn."

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]​