Oh Dreamer, Daring Is Not Often Wise (Mikhail)

[Yasha Cadera]

The familiar sound of [member="Jared Ovmar"]'s lungs breathing in our bed keeps me from sleeping. I'm not ashamed of the insomnia tonight, wrapped in the blankets with my hand on his chest. The subtle movement of his ribcage is a form of sorcery on a magic-dead world, the last flicker of a spark which lit the lamp of passion and gave me focus for my fresh and fledgeling power. Not all is right with the adonis in my borrowed bed, and not all will be right with me until Jared is repaired in full. Craning my head on my elbow, my eyelids drift and I open my mind the way Sargon showed me to the greater sensitivities and guidance of the Force to make an outline of his slumbering face in my conscious mind. The Force however, is obedient to no mere sentient nor is it complacent in half measures. My mind blossoms in petals of will and the Force lifts me above - into the macrocosm itself - to peer down on the sorry scheme of things entire.

A fracture line exists in places familiar, one of which is the line of his brow as my feather-light touch stirs him. My breath catches, the fracture grows wider and deeper, it tumbles into a cyclone in the centre of which I reside. Safe. Protected. But loved? My lip wobbles and I ease out of bed and wrap a Naboo silk shawl around my pale, naked skin. Padding to the living room, I pass the night on the couch in meditation. If I ponder long enough, the problem will fix. Isn't that how this works? As the sun rises on Annaj, I reach for my brow and find worry lines across my unmottled skin. The Force did give me but one clue in the healing of my beau: @Mikhail Shorn, and his mental digs on Val'halla replay on repeat. Secrets and turning gazes. The snark of a Dark Lord. I shiver as Shorn's voice hits me again. Far from gentle, it was power and tempest inside my skull. I nearly shot a sentient being in his thrall, but now I understand.

Why is it out of anyone in the universe Mikhail Shorn has been the stimulus of my most potent moments of discovery? Is there so much laced in the man that the spider lines of my destined course circle and spin round as he dances myopic in his chaotic whorl? Before Jared wakes, I dress and leave the Penthouse. He's been home for days, and still the uneasiness is growing in my mind. I have to know. I have to find the Thronebreaker.

Aboard the Sumatiyara, the droids set us off and I sit cross legged in my meditation chamber casting my Sight outward. The lines of Shorn will show. Can I still feel him, even so far? Finally, I sleep curled in a ball in the spherical chamber and the fitful collective of dream-images have me shifting course for Bunduki.

Once in orbit, it's easier to locate the man I still carry the lingering swell of a symbiotic imprint with, and as I touch down from my Lifter, I pull a pale yellow embroidered scarf over my hair. I reach the door of a yacht designated The Pariah, and ring the bell.

 

[Lord Ghoul]

For several moments, nothing occurred in the nearly empty spaceport. The place smelled too much of fuel and a certain windless cold crept into the skin, hinting at the frigid void of space which so many of these ships waited for, idle and dead. Even the Pariah appeared devoid of life until the door abruptly hissed aside. In the doorway stood Mikhail Shorn, square jaw fixed in a grumpy expression as he rubbed his eyes. He wore oddly casual clothing for a man of his infamy, simple blue pants and a black shirt that clung to his skin. But then, most murderers appear benign. That's how they get away with it. And if anything could be said of Mikhail Shorn it was that he tended to get away with a lot.

"Ugh, what do you waaant?"

The pale skinned man kept to the inner darkness of the yacht, away from offending rays of sunlight. His lean muscles appeared relaxed, hinting nothing at the tension in his chest. Two once-overs later of the fine-featured face of the woman standing in his doorway and a spark of recognition finally alighted in his eyes.

"Oh," he said shortly, leveling a sudden and devastating smirk at the woman that had quite literally laid many of her sex low. "I see you couldn't resist my mysterious chic. And at this hour of the day too. We might be seen! What ever will our dearest Jared think?" He raised an eyebrow slyly and beckoned with his hand, retreating into the interior of the ship.

The interior of the ship was very ship-ish. White walls, black lining. Right up until one reached the lounge. Sumptuous carpet of a deep, deep red gave softly beneath Mikhail's feet. A table of a rather expensive looking dark wood sat in between two facing couches of brown leather. A liquor cabinet and a cooler sat off against one wall, while entrances to two rooms lined the other. The walls in here had all been paneled over with more rich, dark wood and the lights cast a dim illumination over all, giving the lounge the scent and feel of a forest. A black forest, where things disappeared and never returned.

Mikhail moved over to the liquor cabinet and grabbed a bottle, his back to [member="Anders Sivas"].

"Come to unravel my secrets, or just my clothes?"

 

[Yasha Cadera]

I can count the seconds before he puts the feeble mathematics skills of a Garhoon brain to the conundrum of which in the long strings of disastrous one-night stands I am: 3… 2… 1… ah! There we are. My heart flips in my ribcage as his face contorts and I fight to keep a strangely pleasant flush from my olive cheeks at the way he eyes his potential prize. Why I'd done this now is a query beyond my ability to rationalize as I stand aboard the Pariah with not even a droid to protect me. Not that Bucket could provide more than idle distraction to a Master killer like Shorn, frugality of arms seemed the more regal option. It hits me: Even Queens had Handmaidens. I have a shawl and a bag slung primly against my shoulder.

"Very few females could resist your mysterious chiq. Males too, I imagine. I've been enough of them. Hmm, Jared. Let me check." My eyes distance, body suspended in stance at [member="Mikhail Shorn"]'s doorstep as I reach out, out, out to the causeways of well travelled roads until my eyes come back to their brilliance and subtle strength. "Still asleep, just as I'd left him. Don't think he'd notice if I left in mid sentence right now. Coming back from the dead is tiring work, I imagine. Of course, you'd know more about the stimulus of the condition than the reprieve." A petty jab, maybe. A flicker of images more like.

"Not much knick on men's clothes, the secrets if you please. I figure you can find much better lays than a gender confused empathic lover of one of your more recent kills-come-ressurections." My sandal bound feet push into the red carpet and I walk into the beast's lair, more a den than a dragon's domicile. Wonder how many ladies had met their petit morte dans les chambres de l'homme jamais gentile. Sitting primly on a brown leather couch, I pull the shawl from my head and lay it neatly down beside me, smoothing out the blue fabric of my dress and playing my finger around a spot of gold woven into the threads. "Consider yourself blessed, Mikhail. You're the second person in ten years to meet Andra in all my truthful glory. Didn't seem prudent to continue the ruse when, well, it seems you have an idea already. Where that idea came from I'd really like to know. No ice, thanks. I come to offer a deal."

 

[Lord Ghoul]

Mikhail turned around, holding two glasses in his hands. Both without ice. He rolled his eyes theatrically. "A deal? Dead stars, you're so formal. I'm not some crossroads Maelibus or a holovid villain. You don't have to make deals with me."

He strolled over and handed her a glass, before himself plopping onto the leather couch. A single square cushion was all that separated them. He'd heard somewhere that men liked to sit directly across from one another, but women prefer sitting side by side with someone. Though, given Andra's aesthetic proclivities, Mikhail wondered if it even mattered.

He leaned back against the arm of the sofa, relaxed and calm in the knowledge that this woman would not attack him, or perhaps simply expecting that even if she did he would be able to overpower her. After all, this little ship was his home. What did he have to fear? Especially from one little empath.

Intense blue eyes noted the way she toyed nervously with her dress. Mikhail's gaze flicked up, meeting soft, hazel eyes. He let out a long, soft breath through his nose. Why were they always hazel?

"As for the lay, I don't know about that. I saw Jared's mind when I killed him, all his memories, his fears, everything." He waggled his eyebrows suggestively. "There was this great little scene where-" Mikhail smirked suddenly at the expression on Andra's face, "Well... I guess you already know."

Shorn sipped lightly on the bourbon in his glass.

"So, you've got questions." He blinked lazily, voice pitching down. "Go ahead. Ask. I don't bite." Laughter in his eyes. "What do you want to know?"

[member="Anders Sivas"]

 

[Yasha Cadera]

"I can still feel your fingers on my neck." I clench my teeth before their constant chatter alerts him to how timid and nervous I feel sitting passively in his yacht demanding half the solar systems in the Quadrant. "Pardon me if it makes me tremble." He should know, having Jared's memories, how long it took Jared touching my neck before I wouldn't flinch. Saying the fear aloud steadies my teeth and lowers my shoulders. As Mikhail sits beside me, I believe his informality as a fawn believes a companionate hand holding edible wildflowers in a season devoid of plenty.

My hazel eyes sparkle in the artificial light not due to some trick of the Force or manipulator's code of conduct as my face tilts to Mikhail, a rim of pink spills into my eyelids, "Does he love me? W-was... I'm being stupid. It's since... I didn't come to ask you that. Forget I said it." I slap my hand down on my thigh. Like Shorn needs the barf-tastic image of a flighty young woman in his head.

Mikhail's easiness should disarm me, unsettle me but I find myself laughing and tilting my cheek to the side at his jest. "Yes, we've got a fantastic collection of unforgettable nights and days and mornings and... We've been luckily uninhibited... And as you no doubt saw, add some others to our fun some nights." One thing can be said of Andra Sivas: I'm no prude in any gender identity. "I'm glad you can enjoy the memories. I do." The smirk on my face follows a tweak of my eyebrow. "The woman in me wants to know if I was special.. Beyond the other women Jared enjoyed. The intelligenti in me wants to know how he died, and how he's alive now.


What happened as you broke his legs was enough to leave me shrieking on the bed paralyzed from the waist down, surging from the most ungodly pain until with a snap - blank. Nothing. I woke up with a bloody nose and bit cheek two days later. I've been with dying people, Mikhail. I've held them, I've been symbiotically linked as their brains shut down in bursts like liquid lightning. There's a residue to the recently dead as their essence returns to the Force. Someone as close to me as Jared I would have been able to grab some of his spirit before it dissipated - even at planetary distance I'd feel it. Jared ceased to exist. He was flush in sincere death throws, then he cut off. Cut off. Gone. I can't explain it, and I need to know what Jared's protecting me from. There's a shield in his mind I can't get past. He's a far better practiced Mentalist than I am, but I'm catching up."


My lips curl around the rim of the glass and I sip the bourbon healthily down my throat. "He's protective. More possessive than I'm used to but that's what happens when a man lays claim. I'm no idiot and I'm not a naieve young girl thinking I'm his one-and-only. The pieces don't fit and if I'm going to fix his mind I'll need the pieces to fit. Help me understand what happened. He considers you a friend, [member="Mikhail Shorn"]. You, the man who killed him. The man who hung me from a tower. It was that tower which had me running to Jared's penthouse in the first place, and I could kiss you for it in retrospect. You were only doing what you thought would give Lucien a better marriage. Ended up the best thing to befall me, but now the secrets outweigh the way I lit him up from the inside. What was it you tried to tell me on Val'halla? I was dazed and nearly outside myself in shock." I lean toward him, brow knit with a worry tugging at my spine. "What would make the Thronebreaker warn a hiding woman about the nature of her beau?" I whisper, my hushed voice passing the space at a lilt.

 

[Lord Ghoul]

Blue eyes, capable of being as devoid of mercy as the barren snows of Hoth, stared with a burning intensity into Anders' own. Through every sentence, every word, every syllable. Shorn's gaze, prone to flushing and draining cheeks, seemed to burn away everything else except himself and Andra. And Andra's words. Words that sent spears of guilt ramming through his heart. A heart he had almost forgotten he possessed.

Mikhail Shorn swallowed. Hard. A certain violence came into his eyes as the lackadaisical expression disappeared beneath a surge of vehemence. "Don't," he hissed. "Don't call me that."

He leaned forward, nostrils flaring, something like murder in those wide blues. "Not unless you understand what it means. I. Break. Things. Ok? Don't go searching for redemption in me too."

Slowly, the man settled back. He didn't know exactly what set him off. Maybe the way his heart continued to spill red drops of regret all over his thoughts. Maybe her questions about Jared, reminding him of how he was utterly devoid of such devotion and adoration. Maybe the question of hope that lurked within the query. Or maybe none of these, perhaps just over exposure to the Dark Side prompting him to an outburst. He could feel the thumping of her heart. He was lucky she could not feel his. It raced.

Appearing utterly at ease again, Mikhail took a sip. "Why warn you? Spitefulness." A lie, in part. "The only thing worse than heroes is a happy couple." He smirked broadly. "Oh, you were special to Jared. When I killed him the moron had enough spunk to lodge his essence inside my mind. I killed his body, not his soul, or whatever you want to call it. His soul got stuck inside me. In the process, I got all of his tragic life story. Boy meets boy. Boy is actually a girl. Boy and not-boy fall in love. All very romantic. Boy fights sexy psychopath. Boy gets himself killed and while he's dying realizes that the one way to save himself is to flash-freeze all his emotions."

Mikhail spread his hands. "Poof. Boy's soul becomes psychopath. So yeah, Jared loved you. Once. Not anymore. Now you're a tool to him. A pawn, or maybe you'd rate a bishop. Just another cog in his big scheme. Possessive, right? Like a mastermind not wanting to let go of a valuable piece. That's what you are to the new and improved Jared Ovmar." A note of disgust tinged Shorn's light tone. "I didn't make him that way. He did it all on his own. Little boy's all grown up." He wiped a fake tear from his eyes, stifling a faux sob, then took another sip of his glass, chuckling.

"You said I enjoy these memories. I don't. I hate them. They aren't mine and I really want them gone. But I remember every tear I never shed and every heart I never broke. And you know what really sucks? The idiot thinks he actually loved you." Something shimmered in Mikhail's eyes. He blinked and it was gone. "If he really did love you, he'd have died loving you, not given it all up just to survive."

[member="Anders Sivas"]

 

[Yasha Cadera]

For some reason Mikhail's outburst makes me bold.

"Since the day I was born, my mind's been frakked up by every viable person I've met. I've symbiotically attached to housewives, merchants, artists, drug runners, mercenaries, regular men and women and extraordinary ones. They towed me around, flung me up ways-sideways-bent and straight and unquestioningly twisted right round. I've never met a one who was outside mercy, because I'm never outside of mercy. If there's one sustaining glue in the universe, it's grace and I'm it. Being beyond redemption is a lie you tell yourself to sleep when you're battle tired. The food you like that poisons you by inches. It's the fuel you guzzle to do incomprehensible things, but it is not you. If I could find enough mercy to forgive Jared his incalculable crimes, what makes you worse? You've got his memories, flash backward to the night he found out I was a chick, I'm pretty sure the words 'I'll break you' came up."

What could create a disconnect so powerful to shut out a constantly attached empath, but the flat out denial and strength of the emotions involved? [member="Mikhail Shorn"] made sense. His lips spewed such a consistent amount of poison into the air, it sunk into my heart and lodged itself wedge-like in the growingly distant wound. I shudder and suck in a shaken breath. My lips and teeth part as my brow knit. Another shallow breath. I'll break you [member="Jared Ovmar"] said and now Mikhail says the same. What, is this my type or something? Seconds ago I told Mikhail nothing and no one was outside of redemption. Am I going to crumble like a housewife who discovered husband's other woman, or am I going to stick to the cards in my hand? "Grace is the hardest card in the deck to play. It takes a courage and resilience beyond unbelievable pain and you're telling me Jared cut me out of his heart to survive. At least he loved me. Can the action be forgiven? Sure, was it a dick move? Oh yeah."

'Who does that?' My mind screams, 'He's right' it yells. I gulp down the whiskey and grab Mikhail's glass, dumping it down my throat too. Liquid courage dulled naught but the layers of providence on a day like this. "So I've got to contend either with a dead lover or a living one whose using me for my mental and physical bits? What bothers you more, that he chose coming home over dying with my name on his lips, or that you can feel the solar-level heat of what he gave up? Why would he want me as a bishop anyway? I'm just a mind-frakked mentalist empathic healer from Naboo. An artist living off his scraps."

How easy would it be to give up? To crawl back to Jared and 'give him the chance'? I know exactly where I'll end up tonight and at the moment it makes me sick. So sick I rocket to my feet and gasp in distress as my hands splay on the table near the couches. I must look so small and frail to him. A tender slip of a woman the powered man could snap in twain and it's not a difficult assessment to make. Not without curves, I'm tall and thin the way a priestess of a pacifist's temple is thin - only working the muscles when the goddess declares to her 'dance'. Once again I am in the thrall of the Goddess of Infinite Chances, and my spirit is being woven into a horrible series of threads. "… I can rid you of his thoughts. Repair the damage." My voice croaks out unconvinced of its' ability and efficacy. I don't mention it'll change me, nor do I mention that it'll become me. Should I fix him, Mikhail's mind will rest inside mine as one of an endless series of stars. A healer cannot be unaffected by the healed. Maybe he doesn't have those memories from Jared. I feel the pain in my legs again, that dying unconquerable pain. Jared's pain. It's worsened by Mikhail's sudden burst of insincerity as he brushes away fictional tears.

Now I know what the leg pain is: the last of Jared's love. The last whisper of my name writ across the stars and sequestered through solar systems to a physically unimpressive woman from Naboo, whose mind grew stronger than dragon scales. Can I fix an amputated limb? Can I knit the flesh discarded? My jaw trembles with doubt as the liquor soaks into my muscles with a pleasant numb. I want more. "I can still feel the pain from his legs. It drifts into my dreams and it soaks into my days when I'm not looking. It's like wearing an infected tattoo… but it's as important as fusion in a star. It's a message to decode, I wouldn't be able to feel it if it wasn't." Maybe grace is running to catch up today.

 

[Lord Ghoul]

"No. I've already had one person digging through my mind. I'm not going to sit down and let someone else dissect my brain."

A firm voice, no longer harsh, nor mocking, his vials of venom spent. Mikhail spoke to the woman, but his eyes stared at the empty glasses. Drained, just as she herself seemed drained. Shorn rose swiftly, decisively, features looking set and focused as if on some task of which he cannot speak. He seized the bottle of liquor and returned to Andra's side, pouring her more of the liquid courage in silence. Shorn set the bottle down with a thud, then took the woman's hand in his own cold grasp. The feel of her fingers against his sent a thrum through Shorn that he could not ignore. It was not in his nature, Garhoon or Sith. He let out a soft breath, then set the glass of liquor in her hand, releasing her fingers as he felt she had a firm grip.

"This is imported chibetan wool. Don't spill."

He stood so close. He could smell her hair. A memory flashed through his mind. Something stabbed into his chest and twisted. Mikhail gave an empty smile. These were not his feelings. These were Jared's. So why did they feel so real to him? Mikhail exhaled again. Enough.

"Maybe you can save Jared. That's cute. Go ahead, go redeem him. I'm not Jared Ovmar. My emotions aren't burnt away. I feel, okay? And it hurts. I've tried being good. It's not who I am. It's not in me! I am bad, because the alternative is living up to other people's rules. And I can't do that. Don't try to make me someone I'm not." The intensity of his eyes on her was blistering. "You came to me. You wanted answers, you got them. So why are you still here? Is it because you want to redeem me, or is it 'cause you're so scared of the new Jared, the Jared you say you can forgive, that you're willing to go run to the man who killed him, who almost killed you, rather than sleep next to someone you don't recognize?"

The love she felt for him was palpable in the Force and it pounded against Mikhail like an ocean's furious waves battering against a rock, wearing it down bit by bit. Jealousy sunk vile fangs into his heart and he could not tear them out. Why did they get a happy ending? Why not him? What had he done to the galaxy that was so unspeakably offensive that it had to set everything against him? Somewhere along the line, this had become personal and nobody had told him.

Mikhail leaned in so close that he could feel her breath. The beats of her heart throbbed in a rhythmic entrancing tune that awoke the insatiable hunger in him. The Garhoon side of him wanted to rip open an artery and see if the sweetness of her smell matched her taste, but he held back. The struggle evident on his features. "Dick move? Please. Who's feeding herself on lies now?" Shorn's voice was a low, growling whisper of outrage mixed with a confused, unwanted, but still present desire. "If his love is the kind that he can just cut out with a blunt telepathic knife anytime he feels like it, is that really a love you want?"

[member="Anders Sivas"]

 

[Yasha Cadera]

"If the memories get to be too much, my offer is open. I can be in and out in the space of time it takes you to sulk another layer of brooding onto the walls." I need his memories, if I'm going to verify, if I'm going to have a hope of fixing what Jared tore apart. Tilting my head to the side, I feel a slice of caution hit my liver. What'll happen if. Always if. "No, you're not Jared Ovmar. You're the man who killed him and I don't know why you did it. But, he duped you. Stuck you with his dying mind and found a way back. Consider his memories a form of payment for the Ferryman, who stole two coins from your pocket. It doesn't have to be. You can get better. Be left with your own memories, and nothing more. The offer is open. All you have to do is find me."

His fingers freeze my skin - cold in summer, when my better predilections are to rest in the murderer's lair and let the sapping heat of [member="Mikhail Shorn"]'s pasion-bound words eke off. "We're on a ship, everything's imported from somewhere. I'll be careful."

I came too soon. Far too little time has passed since [member="Mikhail Shorn"]'s expressive and charismatic word had me levelling a blaster at a unicorn and nearly firing into centre mass. Riddled with the swaying charisma of his proximity, I'm a millisecond from swooning into a tumultuous affair, where eventual wakefulness might never come. There's a twist in a chest - is it mine? Is my gut wrenching with the tale of these two men biting and weeping and dying? Shorn didn't ask for this, but he didn't ask to kill Jared either. I sip the amber liquid in my glass, a hope that the draining alcohol will ground me. Delight me. That there is enough of me to be found and parcelled back to Annaj.

"The memories plaguing your mind are the after burn. They mattered enough to a dying man that even when he ripped the love from his heart, I was there. Andra Sivas was still one of the keys to the current and future [member="Jared Ovmar"]. He came out of the shadows and called for me by name. Held my hand in public. He's ripped apart but he did the unimaginable. Jared fought death itself and came up the victor. If that's not worth some loyalty and a chance at redemption, there's no atomic bond and the universe is a fission bomb galloping toward extinction. None of us can turn around and trace our steps backward in perfect measure. But I know enough to go forward and that's more than I knew this morning. So, thank you. I am not a worshipper of the Goddess of Letting Go. Neither are you. Am I scared? That I'll grant you. Never thought that was possible, and the hesitation is stellar. I'm s-- why am I still here?"

This close I can smell the Dark on him, and he's right. The Light is not in him. My red rimmed eyes soak up his chest and feel the tension in his neck, the set of his cheeks on the visage which would make most women swoon. My heart leaps. Wonder what his teeth look like? I don't know what I'd been expecting, but for the longest time I thought Mikhail human. Now so uninhibitedly close, my medical training and Force-led senses can smell the difference on him. The gastrointestinal hunger for a less savoury kind of food. "What else should I call it?"

I've been here too long. "I…" Tarried too much after Val'halla & shouldn't have had that second drink. My heart beats faster, I take another sip of the bourbon, a voorpah in a pen with a tavi-snake. "If I remain so mutable, would that make me worth the feelings in your head?" Is it the kind of love you want. Deep inside I'd known any life built with Jared would be temporary - another long term symbiosis where he'd get tired of me or bored, or I would get an itch in the back of my throat. Gave it a shot, here I am at the end of it and I don't want to Let Go. "Would it be tragically romantic to have someone rather die than lose me? You're making survival sound like sin, and maybe it is, maybe there's a point where it fallows but I haven't a handle enough to be able to fix it. The more I know, the more I experience of it, the better I can see the weather patterns in the storm. If he'd died with the memories in your brain, if Jared had stayed dead: would you have come looking for me? Would you have been staring so hard at my neck?"

I need to go, I need to run, I need to run. My feet are glued to the ground, my drink seeped down my throat and the natural sedation of liquor is making it harder to concentrate on any sort of destination. My feet are harder to command than that first person I Mind Tricked into saying his ship was purple.

I peer up at him, the glass between us, and damn my choice in an open necked, one shoulder dress.

 

[Lord Ghoul]

Her words incensed anger. She didn't listen. "Why do you think Jared showed up on Val'halla? You think he came for you? If Jared still cares about you then why is it that the first time you see each other since he died is when he's on official business for the Fringe?" Mikhail took a step forward and leaned even further down, their noses almost touching. The scent of pine drifted off his skin, but that was nothing compared to the intoxicating waves of the Dark Side swirling from him in a heady mist.

"You think because he called your name and held your hand that that means everything is going to be okay? He doesn't have a soul, Andra!" Shorn snarled.

Why the hell did he care so much? Why was he so angry? Why did she even matter to him? Mikhail couldn't answer any of those questions, or maybe he just didn't want to search for the solution to the emotional riddles.

"You're still here."


The sudden calm in his voice spoke nothing to the heavy breaths through his nose that made his nostrils flare. Mikhail stared, eyes wide with an ardent, piercing gaze. Control? Exhale. No control. Inhale. The lust and gluttony inside begged him to take the simple step forward and devour her. The soft fabric of the dress exposed far too much skin. His gaze drifted slowly up from the tendons of her throat to her own eyes. Hazel. He knew someone else with hazel eyes. Memories of her sledgehammered into his mind.


Spencer. The woman he could never have. She toyed with his emotions. He saw it. He hated it, but he couldn't resist her. These emotions inside him, so foreign yet so visceral. They were for someone other than the blonde with the hazel eyes. That was why he clung so hard to the feelings in his head. Shouldn't he push them away? They weren't his, but he could feel the pounding desire in his heart. Did it matter? Yes. These feelings... they offered escape.

What he felt for Andra came from memories too. Not his memories. Jared's. The thought that the feelings burning up his chest were not his own sent a flare of anger through him. No mere spark of irritation, but the rage-induced inferno of a Sith's fury. He wanted to hurt something, anything. Anyone. His breath sawed in and out, shuddering. The fingers of his left hand curled inward, nails biting into the flesh of his palm. The anger was a symptom of him holding back. Why did he have to hold back? Mikhail Shorn had no inhibitions. Words like right and wrong turned to ash beneath the flames of the heart.

A long exhale spent the air in his lungs. He dragged it back in, chest rising, and smiled crookedly, revealing too-long canines. Shorn moved his head to one side of her face, cheek brushing against a strand of caramel hair.

"That's not why I'm staring at your neck," he whispered.

[member="Anders Sivas"]

 

[Yasha Cadera]

My breath catches, the rims of my eyelids become glassy with unshed tears as my lips curl downward and my forehead creases. The weight in my chest expands and contracts without much air entering my lungs at all. He came for the Fringe, but not for me. The heady dose of realism [member="Mikhail Shorn"] pumped out is enough to give me a few moments pause. Am I being stubborn? Loyal with no hope of redemption? Can my dignity only go so far before I become a limp puppet in the palm of his hand? "He gave me everything I have. I've got some money, now that… but my ship, droids, my clothes, I live with him. He still … if he didn't care why did he tell me to go with him? And when he … he told me t-" My mouth worked in a crashing wave of realization and envy. I see eyes - not my eyes, but Hazel all the same, and I know I will always be a placeholder of others to these people. My dad made me promise I'd never put myself too far into any situation that I couldn't crawl out of and be okay. Setting down roots, well that was an unfortunate sacrifice of the life I'd have to lead to stay Andra.

Andra isn't memorable enough to survive in anyone's mind in her own right.

"Ripped out his soul." The words flutter out of my lips with as much of a shiver as my body is beginning to feel. As my heart continues to race, my pupils dilate and the rest of the liquor is pulled down my throat, glass affixed in my trembling hand. 'You gave up your soul. Jared, what have you done? How can I fix that?'

I gasp, the predator is at my neck and I, humble woman am but a powerhouse of the mind. My mind numbed by liquor and bad tidings, I stand powerless in Mikhail's thrall. "Are you going to rip my soul out too? Suck me till I crash anemic onto your couch in a pretty blue dress?"

There was no one to rescue me, no one to care and it was then the images of Sargon's last lessons floods. He taught me I was as significant as an ant to the Force's universe. As dainty and strong as an ant, but moreso he taught me to see why I was afraid of strength which was my own. What strength I have is not of body or tactics or even useful skill. It is will. I lean up to his ear - so easy with his canines so close to my neck. My hand alights on his shoulder, slim fingers twisting in the fabric of his shirt. "Bite me, or stop. What am I, but a mirror of those meaningful bits I can see frolicking in your mind? Let me go."

 

[Lord Ghoul]

""I'm not stopping you. You could have left whenever you felt like it..." his voice came out a whisper.

Slender, insistent fingers pressed against his shoulder, a black shirt the only barrier between her skin and his. The breath of her words tingled against his ear. A voraciousness tore through his body. He longed to know the taste of her flesh, her blood. Mikhail's eyes flickered open and shut in the throes of his hunger. A hand wrapped around his heart, squeezing. Someone had flooded his stomach with butterflies that sent a thrill of eagerness through him. Hunger and excitement collided in a surge of impulse that he could not deny.

"....but you're... still... here."

Shorn's left hand reached out, his only hand of flesh and blood and bone. He cupped her face in his palm and ran a thumb across the smooth skin of her cheek. The smell of rosewater and spice and coffee drifted off her body, but to Mikhail these scents paled in comparison to the sweet, coppery tang of her blood running just beneath the surface of her neck. His fingers trailed down her face, whispering by her ear and running down her neck.

"It's not your soul I need."

In a blurry trance, he let the Garhoon take control. Shorn's other hand, his cybernetic one, seized her by the waist and pulled her close. His lips met hers in a kiss of hungry desire that moved across her cheek and onto her throat. Suddenly, fangs bit into her neck, drawing a stream of red ichor that Mikhail drank greedily. Mikhail reveled in the taste, the feel, enjoying it to its fullest lest intruding thoughts of guilt destroy him. He didn't need to kill her to have his fill. He just needed her. The fingers of his left hand moved from her neck down onto her shoulder, pushing forcefully against the single strap of the blue and gold dress that prevented him from feeling all of Andra.

[member="Anders Sivas"]

 

[Yasha Cadera]

Go. Go now. Run. Just run. The mental chatter of my own self preservation kicked in too late. The express charisma and emotional tangles around [member="Mikhail Shorn"] had been pulling me under an ocean of future pain from the moment I stepped onto the Suma in the hours before this morning to find him. "Don't you get it… you have to let my mind go." I pull into his brain and tug the first memory I have of [member="Jared Ovmar"] and I sitting in a bar. The natural symbiosis of my empathic condition began to tie into his threads and with a wave of his hand, Jared pushed my mind back into my own body. He let go of the fledgeling attachment my mind made to survive. Now in the thrall and company of a passionate Garhoon, I overestimated my ability to separate my own mind from his - it'd worked in bars and meetings, heck I even kept my own head on Thakwaa and in the Rhand Nebula, but those were casual passers-by, the few people of renown weren't in my head already, lingering there sickly-sweet and glaring at me with the memories of my own lover. "Get out of my head." I whispered, the strength pouring out of my voice as his fingers lit on my cheek. The glass crashes to the ground, both my hands push on his ribs and I curse my notorious physical weakness.

I'll never drink again. If I hadn't dulled my senses with alcohol, would my battle be an easier one to win, today? Run. Run Andra, get out. Oh no. All too late I struggle as his thumb strokes my cheek, he's more hunger than man and I let out a harried bawl as his arm wrenches around my waist. A girl could get frostbite from a Garhoon's kiss and Mikhail's is doubly suited. My lips shudder apart and I wrench my head back as his canines puncture the flesh of my neck. "Aahh!" All at once I feel the seeping chill of his mouth, my weak arms pushing at anything I can reach but he won't budge. My legs grow weary beneath me, the warm walled room dims as my hands fall limp, tangled up in his grasp. He tugs at my dress. I moan, the struggle useless and draining.

Medically, the pressure of my lost blood flow is browning out my brain. The more I struggle, the less I'll be able to push through the barrier and carve my way inside his mind. A spear of telepathic energy blasts at Mikhail's mind and I plunge into it as the fabric of my dress yanks down my arm. The man's mind is a bag of nexu crawling around each other, but I dig for his memories of the Glory Song. I start pushing at the tender moments, the protective moments where Jared did the opposite of harm. Maybe if I could get Mikhail to second-guess himself, to stop and feel the terror pouring into his mind via my building link he'll stop long enough for me to stick my hand on my neck and run.

I gasp at his tongue on my wound, have I shut my eyes? It's dark… so dark in here.

 

[Lord Ghoul]

She kicked and struggled and screamed, but lost in the delights of her blood, Mikhail knew no boundaries. The salty taste of her sweaty flesh mingled with the coppery tang of that scarlet intoxicant. She pushed at him, but he couldn't feel it. Too deep in a dream of crimson rivers and satin sheets. Suddenly, a presence pushed itself into his mind. Shorn's eyes flared wide and he dragged back a blood drenched maw, strands of her ichor dribbling down.

He loosed a cry of pure rage, confusion, and terror. The woman was in his head, in his thoughts! The one sanctum Mikhail could keep from the galaxy, the one thing it could never rip away, now violated as Andra ransacked memories that weren't his, tugging forth emotions he'd never felt. An urge to shield, to defend welled up in him. He pulled away from Andra, trembling hands letting go as he felt her fear in the Force. She didn't want him. He'd almost killed her. He'd killed Jared too. She wanted to leave. The thought drove a sword of agony through his heart, opening up old wounds that gushed sorrow and self-pity.

"I'M NOT IN YOUR HEAD!" Shorn roared, his true fury obliterating the false memories she'd summoned. The bottle of liquor and the second glass on the table shattered into a thousand pieces that fell shimmering upon the floor. Booze spilled off the rich wood of the table and soaked the carpet. He pointed a finger at her accusingly, webs of telekinesis whipping forth as he attempted to seize her and pin her to the wall. "YOU'RE IN MINE!"

"Why didn't you leave?" Mikhail hissed, blue eyes turning a dangerous golden-red. "You could have left. You should have left. Why didn't you leave?!"

[member="Anders Sivas"]

 

[Yasha Cadera]

I hit the ground with a wet thunk, my eyes half open I see nothing but my blood on his jaw, then carpet and shattering bottles of liquor. Mouth working, I whimper and my eyes shut. A curious warmth sparks across the crimson pour from my ruined neck, as blood begins to pour backward into the wound. I pull at the bright light flashing behind my eyes, too weak to even put my fingers on the re-knitting tissues as Curato Salva - the Art of Self Healing repairs the bite.

'Sssshhhhh.' My telepathic voice is a gale of sweet wind, warm in a cold place. It offers openness. A lull in the rage.

In less than a minute, there's not even a bruise. I feel my body jerked and lifted, his screaming voice shattering the Light which attempted to coddle me, to bind and take me on. The back of my head slaps against the wall, I hang there as the cuts and mars of his telekinetically wrecked glass repair themselves too.

'Settle.' The Glory Song rested in [member="Mikhail Shorn"]'s mind. I see the venue, the throngs of spectators and a flush hits my cheeks. Jared got killed over . . . a competition. Scares me even more, in Mikhail's rage as I am. My mind swings through his again, but instead of disturbing his memories, it's fragments of my own.

"I'm a symbiotic empath, Mikhail. I become whatever the strongest person in the room needs or wants. You got in my mind in Val'halla. I almost went with you. Almost shot Zaiden and that's not me. It's taken all of my stamina and mental prowess not to fall completely in your thrall. You're more charismatic than a room full of politicians. You know how hard it is for a girl not to want you? I figure, you'd want Andra to want you, not a woman in a passive thrall." My eyes blink open and I watch his agony.

Hundreds of lifetimes, of people I'd become and been shaped by. Always the same pattern: Connection, Cohesion, Separation. All in, I've never disentangled myself. 'I don't mean to hurt you. Settle down. It's okay, I'm okay. '

Calm. An ocean of it filters in my mind to Mikhail. I twitch and pull, filtering out of his memories and putting as much of a balm between my mind and his as I can. The fear recedes for an all proud joy of being alive, a gratitude of expectancy and the idea that I've got about thirty seconds to live. "Put me down."

 

[Lord Ghoul]

The words in his head soothed out the rage, wiping them away with bands of calm, but bindings of silk are still bindings all the same. Though she smoothed away his immediate anger she could not entirely suppress a lifetime of pain that welled up in an instant. She could only keep it bottled, contained. A temporary solution for her predicament.

Memories flashed unbidden in Shorn's mind. The arctic howl of a blizzard. The sound of Jared's legs shattering to bits. The feel of his life force winking away. He caught different images, ones he had never seen before. A frightened girl finding solace with her dark protector. Their bodies wrapped up in sheets. Safety. Peace. Tranquility.

"Want Andra to want you, not a woman in a passive thrall."

The words rang in his ears like the thundering of bells, only he stood far too near for them to be pleasant. Shorn cringed, fearing the reverberations would tear his head open, or was it his heart? She said she was okay. He didn't believe her. She would never be okay as long as she was in the same room with him. Shorn closed his eyes, body shuddering with the repressed fury.

So, she didn't leave because she couldn't. Enthralled by his presence. Mikhail nearly laughed. He tasted bitterness.

He relinquished his telekinetic hold over her and she dropped to the floor with a crunch of glass.

"Go," he said hoarsely, "Before I change my mind. Get out."

Cold blue eyes opened, devoid of the yellow hue they'd taken on earlier. Mikhail stared fixedly at the ground. Something like shame and guilt ran through him as his gaze settled onto the shattered bits of glass in the rug. This was what he was reduced to... a monster who seduced women for pleasure and blood. He wanted to enjoy it, to force himself on her and drain her until she could no longer resist, but something held him back.

Mikhail glanced away, toward the distant wall, away from Andra.

[member="Anders Sivas"]

 

[Yasha Cadera]

I hit the ground for a second time, and my arms push meekly at the carpet. On my third attempt, I make it up and lean on the wall. My head feels like it's combusted as I pull my memories loose of [member="Mikhail Shorn"]. I dare not let go of the emotional blanket, warm in his frigid wildness, as his mind thrashes.

"Mikhail, I forgive you." Stinging salt-water glosses over my eyes but I don't let it drift downward yet. All honesty, my spirit hums with it. I told him earlier that I was grace. That my mission was mercy and no contrite heart was irredeemable. I slide against the wall 'cause I don't trust my shaking feet, eyes on Mikhail's imminent combustion. Might have been able to heal myself, but I can't make lost blood from nothing. The man's going to fall harder for this, I've not made an easy path. I'm surrounded by the guilt of taunting Shorn unintentionally. What would have happened if I'd just let him have his fill? "For all of it. If you have nothing to believe in but the hurt in there? Believe that. I forgive you. Thank you for the secrets."

I leave him with a sense that I always will. Maybe that's what's wrong with the galaxy: not enough people forgive themselves and others - what chance have we got, when that's the case? I get to the Sumatiyara in a stumbling trance. It's only once I'm on board and Gilbert the Droid's taken off that I see my reflection and notice the finger-length tears in my dress.

Bucket catches me before I hit the ground, I hear a distress call ([member="Jared Ovmar"], [member="Coryth Elaris"]) parsed from Gilbert's mechanical voice as we leave atmosphere, and I'm abandoned to the tattered layers of my mind loaded with another man's secrets. Mikhail's emotions burst like the first fusion of a newborn star.

If I'm awake, I won't know it for days.