In This Twilight

[Kuzo]

M A E N A

Rather than stay on Panatha while [member="Darth Prazutis"] was away on Mandalore, Irajah chose to travel to Maena. Knowing that [member="Matsu Xiangu"] was there gave her some measure of comfort, and the idea of staying alone in her suite was simply overwhelming. Better to come here, to be around people, even if they weren't friends, here in the labs. She was as safe there as anywhere, especially with her two towering shadows. Work, keeping her mind busy, had always been her fall back in times of distress. If she was focused on Gideon, then there was no room for anything else.

When she was working, it was almost possible to ignore the parts of her body that were no longer hers.

The labs were an extensive warren, threading through dozens of levels in the depth's of Xiangu's facility. She didn't go back and forth between the different places her research was running, not lately. Up until recently, the chair she had been confined to had been simply too unwieldy for the hallways in the lower portions. And now.... right before Braxus had left, she had finally received the cybernetic replacement for her leg. She was still getting accustomed to it, and despite the fact that the surgeons promised everything was integrating flawlessly, she still felt the strangeness of the metal limb. She was not yet comfortable depending on it, and she moved with a stiff hesitation.

So she stayed in the upper levels of the labs. The great plate glass wall of where she was currently working allowed a full view into the room, as well as out into the hallway. The Crownsguard flanked the door on the outside- she'd banished them from hovering while she was working. They tended to stand in whatever place was the least convenient for her. How they did it every time was a mystery left to better minds than hers.

Perched on a stool, Irajah pulled up a holo of the genetic code for Gideon. She frowned, reaching out to swipe it back and forth with the index finger of her left hand. Her right hand, entirely false, stayed curled in her lap as her brow furrowed. Enlarging the code with a flicking motion, she reached over, starting to take notes on the datapad perched on the lab table beside her.

[member="Carach"]

 

[Jairus Starvald]

[member="Irajah Ven"]

Weeks spend exploring had given Carach a new found appreciation for Maena.

It was dangerous, extremely so, but danger had never been an issue for the Sith Lord. If anything it made things far more... real, when there was risk attached to it. One could almost forget that life was only worth living when there was actually something to lose. Otherwise it was stagnation, corrupt decadence and sloth overwhelming you - no, Carach would live and push and challenge, until the day came that his last death came, but that was not today.

Today the Sith had decided to take another walk around, to study and explore, few stood in his way and those that did... the whisper of his name was enough to have them move.

His friendship with Xiangu allowed him this much, if not more.

He descended the stairway, deeper and deeper into the depths of the facility. The corridors went on forever - or so it was said - filled with complicated tech, dark experiments and more. It did not surprise him, though, if Matsu was anything it was an enterprising soul who knew just what she wanted.

Maena was her brain child and it filled him with pride.

New guards? Hmm. Carach thought to himself, as he went down a few more steps, at least until he halted.

At least until a vision through the glass made him frown.

At least until the amber seeped into his eyes and his lips turned downwards into a vague hint of a snarl.

At least until the realization hit that Irajah Ven sat there, working silently, as if she had never disappeared in the first place.

Instinct drove him, instinct told him to slaughter her guards and demand answers, but instinct was a tool and not something that enslaved him in the end of days. He blinked and with his blink reality molded itself into that which he wished to be. All the Crownguards would see was the tall Sith Lord continuing his path to wherever his goal lay, all the Crownguards would see was silence and hear the nondescript walls filling the corridors. All the Crownguards would sense was heavy death and soft truths as a door slid open between them and nothing passed through it.

The doors shifted back into their prime stance within the expanse of half a breath.

But they would not notice, because Darth Carach, his own Voice now, did not wish it so.

"Irajah Ven." The heavy tone rumbled through the air and reached her. "Yet, some would call you Bethina d'La Croix, would they not?"

"I have not seen you in some time now."

 

[Kuzo]

When she heard the doors slide open, she didn't look up. After all, there were only so many people the Crownsguard could admit, and she had okayed every single one of them. The list of possibilities was short. And right then, she didn't really feel like talking....

"Whatever it is, can this wait? I'm in the middle of something very important-"

The sound of [member="Carach"]'s voice stopped her cold. She turned halfway around on her stool, obviously surprised to see him here. She looked different from the last time she'd seen him- her hair was cut in thick bangs across her forehead, there was a hunch in her shoulders, a nervousness that hadn't been in evidence at all for those three days they had spent together. She kept her right arm curled in at her center, the angle awkward for flesh and bone, but she didn't seem to notice it. After all, that arm was no longer either. Absently, that hand started to pick at the hem of her lab coat, a nervous tick developed only in the last two weeks.

"The only people who would call me that are you, and one particularly drunk idiot," she said. It was obvious she was trying to make a joke, but it fell horribly flat.

Her voice was quiet, hesitant. She could see past him, through the glass window, noting the Crownguard were still there. She had no objections to his presence, not exactly, but it hadn't even occurred to her to add him to the list of people with access to her. She hadn't expected to see him again any time soon, and certainly not here. He'd entered her mind a dozen times since they'd parted ways, but.....

A lot had happened since then.

Of course he'd come to Maena eventually. The bond between he and Matsu practically assured it. But she had hoped to have.... more time..... before she saw him again.

Not like this.

And for the first time since they met, Irajah looked away. Hazel eyes fell to her lap and then across the room. Chewing absently on her lower lip she tried to think of what to say.

​"It has been. I'm sorry, I've been.... very busy. It's good to see you.... Carach."

It was genuine, yes. Just. Complicated beneath that.

 

[Jairus Starvald]

Molten.

He remembered the days when he had fought with the One Sith.

On Kashyyyk, with the aid of Neph, he had channeled the power of the Dark Lord himself. On that day they had told him, that through the slits of his eternal mask, fire burned like molten topaz. The intensity did not approximate it, but surely it came close to it when she offered her words and through those words her feelings filtered through and through those feelings he finally noticed her. Not the concept of [member="Irajah Ven"] which he had been fixated on in the first seconds of entering the room.

No.

Her.

The slight hunch of her shoulders, the nervous tick as she rubbed against the textile of her coat - her arm seems different, how many times had he touched it in those days?

More details flowed in now that Carach bothered to look and that anger of his only strengthen itself.

"Who did this to you." The question cut through everything: through the excuses made, through the thin veneer of civility she tried to project, through the apologetic stance and through her attempts to shroud her pain. She knew his power, knew what he could do and yet he simply asked in his voice.

Because no more was needed.

Not yet anyway.

Yet, his mind reached out as gentle as the whisper of a wind, it curled around her mind... just out the reach of her notice. It didn't force itself in, no penetration of her defenses, instead he simply rested there within the medium of intent and possibility. There, in that thin realm, he was undisputed ruler and Carach would know her lies.

 

[Kuzo]

Irajah physically flinched when his words roiled over her. It was distressing, how many times she had been asked that in the last two weeks. She wanted, nothing more, than to forget. To pretend that it hadn't happened. To find a way to lose herself in her work, or in the moments of surreal normalcy with Braxus- to pretend, for at least a little while, that she was whole.

That question never let her forget.

She hated that question.

Irajah was a poor liar at the best of times. She rarely attempted to. But the last two weeks brought the lie easily to her lips. Even with that, however, her eyes wouldn't meet his, her hands twisted in her lap.

"A man I've been told is named [member="Vrak Nashar"]," she said quietly.

She hated the question, in part, because she hated the lie. But there was true terror to the truth. She had no doubt that he would not hesitate to kill her if she told anyone. So she looked down at her lap, not really seeing. After all, to look in truth would fill her vision with a body that wasn't truly hers. Right arm and hand. Two of the fingers on her left hand. Her left leg.....

He didn't respond right away, and the tension in the room was stifling. Irajah found herself talking, just to fill the silence.

"I was.... taken," she said quietly. This part was true, and came easily. "By someone who required my..... expertise. My knowledge of genetics and viruses. He had a specific bit of Sith Alchemy he needed to recreate...."

The red faced Sith had not hesitated to show his displeasure when she had not been a malleable as he had hoped. It wasn't difficult to lay the blame at his feet- she hated him. She had no qualms about lying as far as his sake went.

"I was..... difficult. He did not..... find me particularly charming. So when I had completed the task he'd set for me....."

​She closed her eyes for a moment. What he had done was nothing in comparison.

"It's over now," she whispered. "He.... can't hurt me any more."

That last part had a rote quality to it. Something someone else had said, not her own thought. Vrak, no, he couldn't.

But that's not who had done this, after all.

[member="Carach"]

 

[Jairus Starvald]

[member="Irajah Ven"]

The core of a good lie was paradoxically the truth.

Stay as close as possible to the truth and it was almost impossible to detect the lies within it, twist a few results, mold a few conclusions to your liking and then simply spin the tale to your liking. Because people... sentients had this tendency to not pay attention to the details as much as to the greater narrative being drawn. They forgot those details, filtered away into their subconsciousness until it was simply one more little fact hiding away. Carach knew this, because Carach had refined lying to such a degree that even he wasn't sure anymore where it ended and the real truth began.

He saw the signs of rehearsal and repetition, saw the lack of eye contact - afraid that her eyes will tell more truth than her mouth could - saw the trembling of the hands and even the subtle twitch of her shoulder as she tried to suppress the memories wailing up in response to the words said.

"You speak... yet you say nothing." Carach calmly pointed out. "You know what I can do, you experienced it first hand... many times, your lies - well hidden - have no place here."

His hand waved and behind him the Crownguard seemingly started to grasp at their throats, choking sounds could faintly be heard from behind the glass, before they seemed to collapse and then disappear out of view. Jailers, not protectors, that was the sense that the Sith Lord had gotten from them and as such they served no purpose for him.

"The truth, please. Now."

Now... the Force had not been used at the end of that sentence, but the Voice had never needed the Force to get his way.

 

[Kuzo]

Her eyes flickered to the view through the glass. Her breath caught in her throat.

The relationship with her 'shadows' was a complicated one. They were there to protect her, to make sure she was safe in everything she did- and as promised, she hadn't seen him again since that day. But there was always that underlying fear that if he did appear..... after all, they were his guards first. And only hers by courtesy. She wanted to believe Braxus, and she believed he meant what he said when he promised he would never hurt her again. But there was always, would always be, the underlying knowledge in her core that if the cats claws hadn't come out, it was not because of anything the mouse had done. If he appeared and gave them the order to stand aside.... or worse.....

She had no illusions about who their loyalty would fall to.

Of course, what she was seeing was exactly that- illusion. She simply couldn't know it.

Irajah started to stand, but stopped halfway up. Her left leg hitched uncomfortably and it arrested her movement for a heartbeat. She dropped back onto the stool, hazel eyes flashing to [member="Carach"] . There was true fear there now.

"Carach please," she whispered, shaking her head. "I.... I can't."


"He'll kill me."

[member="Darth Carnifex"]. Those sulfuric eyes tried to fill the back of her mind.

 

[Jairus Starvald]

With the domain of the mind sparing few were his equals.

The Sith Lord could have taken the truth from her mind or lips any time he truly wanted to. That wasn't the point of it, never was it the point to brutally force and extract something, not when there were more elegant solutions. More... reasonable solutions. It was all good and well to be evil, to take what you wanted, when you wanted and never care about what others wished. In his experience not the true Sith way, but that was a discussion for another time.

No, the point was that there needed to be a certain measure of class.

The images flashed through her mind and it was as natural as breathing to dip into the pound, to follow the traces of her consciousness back towards that singular moment that had turned her into this.

The name was on the tip of her tongue, the edge balancing precariously and only needing a single nudge towards tipping over, spilling out and revealing all that was hidden. Would Carach do it? Make that little nudge and get completely involved into what seemed to be happening here?

Already the name was clear to him... but she needed to say it - not for his sake, but for hers. If Irajah could not do this, she would never be truly strong.

"He'll kill me."

"He kills you every day a little bit, the silence choking you, the secrets smothering you... you will never live again, unless you release and speak his name." Now the Force was there, but its presence was illusive and silent and being spun within that same thin medium of possibility.

It did not push her, instead it simply strengthened that what was already there. So tiny, so small, but in that little crux of the situation as Irajah considered, there would be a core of strength and defiance she had missed before. Perhaps it had always been there, just waiting to be discovered.

A core that would give her the nudge she needed to break away from fear and indecisiveness.

[member="Irajah Ven"]

 

[Kuzo]

There are certain things that go into creating a victim. Compromises that only look that way on the surface. Isolation. The breaking down of self for the sake of the abuser. Instilling doubt. Creating supports that only exist so long as the person in question does as they are bid. Shifting the blame for things that are not truly within their control. It is built in layers, over time, settled between the mundane and even the enjoyable. When abuse is obvious and unrelenting, it is easier for someone to call out stop, no more. But when it is wrapped in moments of kindness, of compassion, even of love, it is harder to pin down. And harder still to study from the inside.

The process of seeing those things for the truth that trails through them is hard. Because no one wants to believe that the people who claim to care about them would do such things. Not on purpose at least. But intent is not magic, and even those series of weights brought down on someone's shoulders without deliberation is still monstrous.

And here, there had been nothing but intent. There could not be even a veneer of good intentions.

But all of those layers had been built, one upon the next. Fear and doubt and hesitation all mingled with the savagery of what he'd done.

"It was my own fault," she said quietly. Her throat, her voice, was tight. Part of her believed that. After all, if she had taken the protections offered to her, she never would have been taken by the red faced sith. And if she hadn't been taken, if she had been more responsible, more careful- if she had listened- then he wouldn't have been so angry with her. The curling shame of blame laid squarely on her own shoulders in the moments she was weakest was searing hot. Even without saying those words, none of them would be hidden in any meaningful way. Her face, as always, was an open book.

And he didn't even need that.

"He was angry with me. I should have been more careful."

Strip one layer away, the fear for her life (though that wasn't gone, would never be gone. His eyes would haunt her for the rest of her life), and there was another. The carefully laid foundation for her continued presence here.

The very base that she couldn't be trusted- that she could not trust herself. Because look what happened when she did?

[member="Carach"]

 

[Jairus Starvald]

[member="Irajah Ven"]

Oh, dear.

Carach did not consider himself a good man. Not a righteous nor a moral one, but he did consider himself a man with a certain sense of class. Above that, he considered himself professional in all the ways some were not. He saw it happening within her: the little core he had carefully build up swept away by a tide of despair, pain, sadness and overlaying guilt. She believed her own words and they were her words, mechanical and repeated ad infinitum, until they finally started making sense to her and her alone in the moment.

They provided some comfort and illusion in the face of a world which no longer made any sense. It was the blunting of reason, until its very existence was covered under thick layers of mud and dampened to non-existence.

Until all the pretty, little words whispered into her ear started to make sense and all that hurt her could be explained away.

These were amateurs. The Sith Lord hummed to himself as he listened on to her making excuses for her own state. To break someone so fully... shattered into little pieces... this one will never be a Sith again, not without great intervention.

This could not have been him, could it? It made no sense. Carach and him had their disagreements over the years - over methods applied, over reactions and excessive force, but this? It did not seem his MO, to destroy the foundation and demolish it, until whatever you build would be a shaky card-house that could be pushed over by a single, well-aimed breath.

"Say his name." Carach repeated softly.