Not Your Kind of People

[Keira Priest]

Music

Corellia​

Coronet City​

"Sometimes, forever is just a second."

She still remembered it. The sirens, the bodies, the blood, the tears. The sudden way home didn't quite feel like home anymore, how even her own room was an alien place. How even her own body didn't seem inhabited by anyone in particular, like she was suddenly drifting through life with no greater purpose in mind. Nothing seemed real, and for a long while it had all been like a bad dream she would eventually wake up from, a nightmare with some kind of conceivable end. Except this time, it never really came to a stop. Nineteen years later it still persisted, though just like a dream much of it had faded from her memory over time until it was only recalled in fits and bursts. But still it lingered there, on the very fringes of her subconscious, waiting for an excuse to emerge again.

And damned if he hadn't given her one. The moment the key card traded hands, everything seemed to disappear from around her yet again. Just as it had done when she was a child reality seemed to fade away, and she was left there in her own head, though even that didn't manifest as something entirely real. The past had a funny way of sneaking up on you when you least expected it, those memories you thought were dead and buried returning on a whim without so much as a friendly warning. Every wall she had built up around those memories had cracked at the very foundation, because she knew exactly to what the key belonged. Her father had maintained a safe, one in the floor of his office. But their manor was gone, torn down for over a decade. Wasn't it?

A more sensible and forward-thinking individual would have pried further in order to determine if the building was even still standing, but when it came to the matters of home and heart Keira had always been one to work on impulse. And so, after finding an excuse to leave the bar and return home, she made arrangements to leave the next day. There was a brief explanation as to where she was headed, and for once an entirely wholehearted understanding from her husband, as this was far more personal than any warzone. Never did she so much as mention anything so personal from her past, least of all anything related to the deaths of her parents.

There had been no need to ask her way around the streets, and even after so long away she still recalled the route home like the back of her hand. Something about her stride was entirely weightless, as if her body wasn't fully rooted to the ground she walked on, boots not seeming to make complete contact with the duracrete. Memories flashed in front of her eyes, recollections of how all of this had been nineteen years ago, and for a moment she had to blink away the flashing of sirens from behind her eyelids, the tri-colored flashing lingering into reality for a moment too long as if it was permanently seared into the backs of her eyes. For awhile it had been, and she prayed those nightmares would never return. They had been barely manageable then, and now...she didn't want to think about it.

Her heart seemed to disappear from her chest entirely once the building that had once been home came into sight, her breath fleeing on the breeze, the entire galaxy freezing in place around her. She nearly collapsed then and there, but something inside forced her to continue on. Perhaps it was a willingness to find closure, or a fleeting hope that maybe, just maybe it had still all been a dream, and that everything was just as she had left it when she was twelve years old. Opening the door, however, there was another story. This place had been abandoned for years, a thin layer of dust coating everything in sight. Her entire world spun, and she was unable to discern any details of her surroundings, as her attention was drawn to one thing: the old bloodstains on the floor.

[member="Marvik Dathu"]

 

[Darth Vulcanus]

Music

Corellia,​

Coronet City​

Shadows stood opposite of Marvik, faces black and figures oily. Blank faces staring at him with a hate so intense it could be felt in the pit of his soul. Glaring with no eyes. Grinning with no mouths.

"Come, oh' son of the morning." They coax in his voice "Join us, fallen brother. Embrace the shadows you bring."

Marvik stood, looking back at these forgotten memories; sinners whose sins are forever unknowable. Sinners who are known to have sinned only because no other answer keeps the old Mandalorian from leaping into the warm embrace of brimstone and fire that he knows awaits him upon his final sleep. The boiling heat was the only sure future he had.

Tucking his face deep into the trenchcoat, Marvik pushed forward and felt the past weigh down on him. From the landing pad to the lobby, from the lobby to the speeder. Every footstep added another stone that dragged his body closer to the ground. Every breath a scream that split his skull. Every stranger's glance a trial that played out in his own mind and the only verdict was guilty.

This city was who he used to be. This city was who he was. No, this city was what he was. The toxic smog was his every breath. The gutter water was in his veins. Every drop of blood was his memory. And he said nothing. He paid the cab driver with little more than a murmured address. Ticon Manner, he had said and the driver shrugged the name off as if the haunting name meant nothing. The living nightmare had been forgotten here but it tormented on inside Marvik.

What had he been thinking? He knew exactly where Keira had gone as soon as he entered her empty office. He knew exactly where he'd find her and he didn't want to go. He didn't want to face the shadows but he had to. He should have never given her the card in the first place, he should have let the dead lie. There was no bringing them back and the Ticons were one set of graves that, perhaps, should have stayed forgotten. Yet, here he was. Chasing after a woman he knew by name and vague, guilty memory. Nothing more.

Who was he anymore?

Red and blue lights pulsed, featureless police cars parked in the center of a grand courtyard. Shadows that faded as the cab drew nearer to reveal the shambled remains of hell. The windows of the house were blown in, the doors collapsed and the grass long dead from decades of neglect. A small girl, no older than twelve, stood in the doorway with her face turned away from him.

Her body was oily just as those who waited for him at the Space Port, but this girl was much clearer. Her hair was a brown, mangled mess and her shoulders jittered; her head buried in her hands. Blood ran past her feet and a policeman stood beside her, wrapping her small form in a blanket. Marvik blinked. The girl was gone and in her place stood Keira as he knew her. Still in the doorway, head ducked.

Shaking hands opened the door and Marvik found himself standing in the shambles of the courtyard. The world phased around him, oily memories blending with the ruinous reality around him. He closed his eyes, forcing his feet forward. They had become lead and a step was like a crawl. Still, he pushed the boulder of the past up the steps where Keira stood. Breath heavied. Heart throbbed. Eyes blurred.

There were no words that could be spoken, just as the day he watched her cry. There were no actions that could be taken, for all was far too little far too late. So he did the only thing he could.

Arms wrapped around Keira gently from behind, a heaving chest brought into her back.

And he cried.

[member="Keira Ticon"]

 

[Keira Priest]

Be sad.

No part of her remained in the body that stood in the doorway of the old Ticon manor. While her physical form may have been present her mind and the entirety of her soul was elsewhere, lost in some blurry space between nowhere and whatever had become of her life in the past thirty-one years. The past and the present merged into one smudged, messy reality that cut a rift through the foundation of her existence that was already barely holding together as it stood. Nothing was real and yet everything was too much and all at once, and while she wanted nothing more than to be able to leave it all behind she knew in her heart that there wasn't a single shred of her being that would ever allow her to let any of this go, not now and not ever.

Dried blood turned to fresh crimson pools right before her eyes, that empty space being replaced with sheet covered bodies, the pristine white cloth already being soaked through with what remained of the lives of her mother and father. Sirens still flashed silently in the windows, lending to the unreality of it all. None of this could be happening, and yet here it was, right before her eyes. Her brothers and sisters stood around her, and where normally there would be some kind of solidarity in their presence there was only a mutual grief and a loss for what to do next, or if there even would be a next step in any of their lives. Everything they had ever known had been swept out from under them, and all it had taken was a few bullets.

For just a moment those arms that wrapped around her from behind took the form of Jaymes Ticon, her father, and she could almost feel his calming, gentle presence. Everything about the man had been an antithesis to the brutal light those that didn't really know him had always seen him in, and he had a trademark soft spot for every one of his family. Always she had watched him perhaps more than he seemed to think, taking pages out of his book even now, certain mannerisms still fragments of what parts of him would always remain inside of her. Growing up she only wished she could be half of the person her father was, and in nearly two decades it seemed nothing about that had really changed.

But then she was jolted back to reality with an overwhelming suddenness that shocked her with its immediacy, life drawing itself back into her form in a shuttering, rattling breath that echoed in her chest and her head. Her shoulders shook, form that once seemed to construct itself out of iron crumpling like paper as she fell back into him, that inner pulse and willingness to move forward all coming to a standstill in that moment, the whole of her future screeching to a halt as the past sunk its claws in deep. A hollow sensation grew inside of her very center, tearing at organs and bone and tissue, carving out its own plane of existence within her core, making a home inside of her soul.

The truth began to remember itself in shreds, reasserting itself in fits and bursts that jumped through the fog of the past that shrouded her mind and memory. Slowly the still-warm bodies of her parents were replaced once again with the worn and bloodstained floor of a building that had been left in the hands of the streets for nineteen years, but even still the emptiness remained. The iron didn't return to her bones, all of her strength seeming to have left her the moment she stepped through the door, the proud resolve that always shone from her dulling to nothing more than a pitiful spark in the overarching gloom.

It took her a long while to realize she was crying.

[member="Marvik Dathu"]

 

[Darth Vulcanus]

Music

​

James stared at him from the floor, eyes fixed on the traitor who embraced his daughter. Black blood ran past Marvik's boots, pooling beside the oily hand wrapped around his ankle. Keira's shirt pulled inwards, towards Marvik's arms as his embrace tightened around her. He didn't need to look at the hand to remember whose it was. Evelin's pleading grip was the same now as it was in every nightmare for the past twenty years, just like the endless stare of James. No anger. Just sadness...just confusion...just betrayal.

Warm trails ran down the black leather wrapped around the little girl Marvik had hurt all those years ago. Every thought dragged him back to that day. Every sob echoing through time. Every breath a reminder that he was alive and he should be dead. Corellians thought hell was a place, but it wasn't. Hell was living when every fiber of your being wished to die. Hell was taking a breath and praying to a fake God that it would be your last. Hell was embracing every mistake you'd ever made.

Keira's body shook as she cried quietly in his arms and every tear that fell to his skin was a dagger in his heart. "I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry..." Marvik rambled on, repeating an apology that could never mend what he'd done. "ad'ika, I'm so sorry."

He held her in the darkness, his oily memories watching from every doorway. Looking up, he could see hazy smoke fill a distant corner. A shined dress shoe stood atop the rotting fur of a long forgotten teddy bear; arm torn from its socket and stuffing spread across the porous floorboards. A transparent hand brought a cigar down from ghostly lips and from behind the veil of shadows, unnaturally blue eyes burned away what was left of his soul.

He turned his eyes back to Keira, burying his face in the crook of his neck...the blue eyes still watching him...even from beyond the darkness of his own eyelids.

[member="Keira Ticon"]

 

[Keira Priest]

It's not on Youtube so go to your Spotify and listen to the song Blind Man Sell by The Brothers Bright. Then be sad.

Sanctuary was found in the man that embraced her, the arms that wrapped about her fragile form helping to squeeze her bones back together, taking all of her broken pieces and forcing them into place. Every part of her seemed to all but collapse back into his arms, her legs incapable of supporting her by themselves anymore. The weight of all the memories this house held fell down atop her shoulders as if the roof itself had collapsed in on her, and her tears slowed until they no longer cut new trails down her face, until only shuddering breaths remained. Still the air caught stubbornly in her throat as if the ghosts of her past refused to let her live another day with what she had done, and some part of her willed them to take her away, but what remained of her old resolve wouldn't let her.

Eventually she dared to look around at the remnants of her old life, each inhale growing steadier as instinct cut off the stem of emotions within her in order to protect her from herself. The worn scrap of fur and stuffing caught her eye, and her heart dropped when she recognized it for what it was: the teddy bear that had been passed down among the Ticon children, last belonging to her younger brother on the day their parents were murdered. It was the last nearly untouched piece of her past, but she didn't dare cross to pick it up for fear of what it would cause her to remember. Instead she turned her head away, eyes squeezing shut for a few moments before opening again, and there was one final, shaky inhale.

With gentle movements that still had some force behind them she carefully pushed her way free of his embrace around her, making her way up the stairs that lay on the other side of the foyer, her footsteps becoming heavier with each step, knowing full well what recollections lay upstairs. It was where her father's office had been housed, where her parents' room was, and where she and the five other Ticon children had rested their heads at the end of the day. More than anything else in the house, more than the kitchen or living room on the floor below, this had been home. As a child she had spent countless hours in her father's office simply watching him go about his work, sitting in on the less sensitive talks he'd had with opposition or business partners, learning from him every step of the way. On other days she had ran down the halls with her siblings, bare feet thudding loudly on the floorboards as they chased each other around the house in a game of tag or hide-and-go-seek.

Some days the older children would leave the house entirely, trading the familiar surroundings of the Ticon manor for the streets of Coronet City, walking them as if they owned the place. In a certain light they did, as their family had controlled the majority of the underworld in and around the capital of Corellia. Certainly there were other, minor gangs and syndicates, but none eclipsed their hold. Except perhaps the new syndicate that had moved in, but her father had told her and her brothers and sisters not to worry about the South Systems Syndicate or the man behind it all. Outsiders would never have any true place on Corellia, and he ensured them that the families were keeping an eye out after what had happened with Diego. If he made any kind of move they would know about it, he'd said.

If only he had been right.

The door of her father's office stood before her, seeming just as looming as it had been when she was twelve. The entry was slightly ajar, and she half-expected to see her father sitting behind his desk the moment she stepped inside. However, nothing but an empty room greeted her, books, papers and other documents strewn about the room, it evident his files had already been picked through. It turned her stomach, the thought of anyone outside the family being privy to any of the sensitive information housed within this room, but what was done had already been done. Slowly she stepped forward, hand trailing across the surface of the desk before she fell back into the leather chair that sat behind it. It almost felt natural, taking her father's place, but she still felt displaced here. This wasn't her right, not yet. Not ever. Not anymore.

[member="Marvik Dathu"]