Restless Wanderer, Always Lost

[Lord Ghoul]

Space.

A hollow void of absolute silence, dead but for fleeting foreigners. Mikhail Shorn stared out the window of a ship and into that vast expanse of blackness, spotted with pin pricks of light. His heart felt more empty, more utterly encompassed by darkness than the vacuum of space ever could be.

For once in his life, he'd known true happiness. It didn't matter that it had been a false life, full of implanted memories and lies. It had been simple and joyful. He'd had a family... a family who cared. But he seemed destined to throttle out every ounce of joy from his life. He didn't know whether to be mad at himself or at the galaxy for taunting him with a real, human existence. In fact, he wasn't even sure if he was angry. He just felt... empty... empty and exhausted.

A simple farmer, he'd run away from Dathomir to Eshan, seeking adventure. He found more than he'd ever wished. The Witches had tracked him down and in the ensuing counter with the Echani guardsmen there'd been an intense stand off. Maybe they would have made it, but Shorn had tried to help and, as usual, merely produced more senseless violence. He'd unwittingly hurled an Echani guardsman via an unintentional Force Push. The resulting conflagration left the rescuing Witches dead.

In the chaos, Salem had swept him up. Disgusted by his lack of knowledge and martial prowess, he'd frozen him in carbonite. What followed were months of emotional torture as Salem fed him back his memories, piecemeal, hoping that he would regain his powers. Shorn had entered a state of delirium and brain fever. Even now he had little recollection of the events. His jumble of memories were still recompiling. Somewhere along the line he had fought, his body had been broken, and he'd undergone the cleansing fire of Force Light.

Later, much later, he'd awakened in an empty hospital, his Garhoon side reversed or destroyed, he didn't know which. All he knew was that that eternal hunger for blood was gone. And his arm, the one [member="Anaya Fen"] had blown off so long ago, had been regrown.

How all this had occurred was beyond him. Likely it had all happened in an epic thread that will totally be written someday. For now, he contented himself with having a new arm and not wanting to rip people's throats out and gorge on their spurting jugulars.

So, cleansing himself guilt by drilling a gigantic hole of nothingness into his heart, he wandered around for a time. For so long he'd striven with only two goals in mind. A, Survive. B. Destroy the Sith.

Now it all seemed so pointless. He'd sabotaged or killed - literally - every love he'd ever had, pushed away those who might have been his friends, and turned the galaxy against him. He'd gotten a mind wipe and a clean slate, but he'd managed to smash that slate to bits within a year. Was this just who he was? Some conflicted monster who wandered around, breaking people and things, feeling bad about it, then breaking more things to compensate?

He just wanted... he just...

Someone.

Andra? He didn't know. He had to try.

Finding her hadn't been that hard, oddly enough. Talking to her... well, that would be another story.

He turned around, easily sliding the mask of snide remarks and flippancy over the brooding expression of a man who might just maybe care. Couldn't let them know. Couldn't ever let them know... because then he'd have to act like it. And that wasn't who he was.

Was it?

A smirk curled slyly up the corner of his mouth. "We've got to stop meeting like this."

[member="Anders Sivas"]

 

[Yasha Cadera]

My feet haven't touched soil since I left Annaj. Feeling the door swish shut behind me was an odd finality, an ever present shadow tying me to the place where above all, I had known joy. If Jared had been only joy, what surreal universe would I have found myself in? If life itself was only joy, what willows we would be. What breakable cords. Leaving Padawan and lover behind, I let Bucket and my droids be my companions as the Sumatiyara made for deep, still space.

The Force in all its mercy attended to its child. In the cocoon of my temple, my 'wise and noble thought' I shattered the lock on my person and bathed in the freedom of the Light's regeneration. "I am grace" the Force said, and grace is an expensive Master. Grace required all of me and all was given. I left nothing for myself, in an utter act of divine, sacred release.

The tempestuous solar winds tore me down, but as most who feel the tears and crashes of the almighty Force survive perpetually within the crash, it is but a way point for desperate travellers. The crash is but a process of, not the end result. I know now the tempest is a cleansing river to dream in and let lift the mire and clay from all our weeping bones. Yet the Force will not leave its children in such an infamous state. To those who weather openly, who humble themselves to the flow, grace and its sister mercy join with the vestige of power to rebuild.

Oh how I have been rebuilt. Shining and wonderful without a single scar, I kneel by the statue of the Goddess of Safety and blow out the burning incense. Its' fragrance cloys and sifts into the air, I feel it almost smells of home. What beauty is metamorphosis! What bliss! What joy to wrap round the wounded and hurting until they too find grace. This man I should hate most of all. I should by all accounts end the creature, but for the desperation in him to redeem.

And oh I shall redeem you, [member="Mikhail Shorn"]. You, this horrible murderous thing. I shall better you. I get up as he enters my ship, and turn to greet him, and I can't help but feel the beginnings of a sad smile push upward on the edges of my lips. "This one's on you. I was quite content to stay in the Sumatiyara as a right and graceful meditating hermit, but what can I say? Bucket convinced me. He's getting tired of being the only intelligent conversation around here."

 

[Lord Ghoul]

Behind the mache of snide deceit stirred unused emotions, scattering dust across the floor of his heart. Oh, remembered Shorn, so this is what it is like to feel. He'd almost forgotten. No, he'd almost wanted to forget. Maybe it would've been better if he had... but for who? How many times had he been wiped clean only for that craving to return. Not for blood, that urge was gone, but for the connection to the Dark Side. Power. He wanted it. Would she try to cage him from it, or...

or what?

He didn't know. He seemed to be in a habit of "not knowing" these days.

"That's the name of your ship?" He scrunched his nose, "Stars, that would've been a pain to look up. Good thing I can just feel your presence anytime, anywhere." He gave her a sidelong glance, "Not that that's creepy." A smile. Wounded, real, or just plain patronizing? Hard to tell.

Shorn glanced around. "So.... no Jared?" Trick question, he already knew the man he'd once killed wasn't aboard, which could mean so many things. Way better to hear it from her. Not that he had any vested interest or anything... or did he?

 

[Yasha Cadera]

"Sumatiyara" I say, enunciating the flowing inflections of the vowels and consonants of my home planet. Hey, with names like Amidala, Shiraya and Apailana it's a lilting language. "The wise and noble thought. Figured it was fitting for a ship with an empath as its Captain and charge."

I shake my head and my eyebrow quirks up a bit. "It's a little creepy. I was hoping to be hard to find."

Leaning back and away, I pull a light grey sweater from a chair and pull it over my slight top & linen trousers. I turn and walk down the corridor in my stocking feet, padding off toward the living area where Sparkles is already boiling water for tea. Faithful little thing. "No Jared. I don't know where he's got to or what he's doing. Truth is, tragedy makes weaknesses of mighty men, and strengths of cowards. No one knows which end you're going to get till you live through it. I haven't seen Jared since. . . well, after we got back from Lipsec."

A catch in my voice? My shoulders slump, but with a deep inhale I keep my back to [member="Mikhail Shorn"]. "Why did you take the trouble to find me, Mikhail?"

 

[Lord Ghoul]

Tea? Stockings? Sweaters? Shorn hadn't seen those things since... screw that, he hadn't even known they existed until not so long ago. Relearning about the galaxy post-mindwipe was trippy. He strode nonchalantly after Andra, expression jaunty and perhaps even a tad triumphant - likely some small imperceivable victory that only mattered in Shorn's head.

Or because he was staring at-

Ah, Ah, Ow. The falter in her step and tone caused a megaton guilt-bomb to detonate inside his chest. Hot, searing pain tore through him as wounds no medicine in the galaxy could heal reopened, oozing forth regret. The tiny reminder of his infinite wrongdoing seemed to flick the switch on Shorn's bipolar settings, switching him from apathetic, snarky bastard to murderer with a conscience.

Andra might as well have ripped off the mask, stomped on it, dunked it in fighter fuel and then lit it on fire for all the change it wrought in him.

"Andra," he rasped, desperate for something, he still didn't know what. Forgiveness? Maybe. If he asked for it would she stay? Or maybe he should just push her away, far away. Somewhere he couldn't hurt her. Again. He tried. He tried very hard. But selfishness festered inside him, a rampant disease that craved affection the way most people craved food. And he'd been starving himself for so long.

"I'm s-" his breath caught and he half-turned away, then he seemed to find that selfish resolve. "I'm sorry. I never meant-..."

He stepped toward her, features a vexed canvas of pain and longing. "I'm lost."

Then he did something he'd done with only a handful of people in the galaxy, and let her into his mind. To see what he saw and feel what he'd felt. Would she understand then?

 

[Yasha Cadera]

Strengthless, talentless in the acts of war, fragile that I am it would be pointlessness supreme to harbour any violent act toward [member="Mikhail Shorn"]. Violence is his bedfellow, the only permanent bedfellow the man will ever have. His mind is far from an impenetrable cave to the empathic gifts, and for someone whose been using the mind itself as her only out course well... the shudder that rocks my spine is a curious monster creeping up from my feet. He feels it. Mikhail feels the loss and the guilt and it's ripping deeper than any crash or storm could rip without permission. "Self flagellation isn't attractive, Mikhail."

I try to be flippant, to lead the conversation away from the memory, but it stops as he unfolds and I feel the chapel of his mind crumble and fall. My turn round is slow, methodical. These months I've been out in deep space have been a cleansing tempest of meditation and isolation. Was it all for such an event . . . as this? "You know why I've been out here?"

"You hurt me. You terribly and horrifically hurt me. You pulled and bit and seethed your way past me, past Jared in fits of rage and hunger and self-preservation. You've certainly made your marks, Mikhail." I pull the long brown hair away from my face and neck, up and back. "See? Those wounds are gone." No scars remained where his jaw had bore down.

"The Force is an all consuming Mistress, she charges her fee and it is mighty high but to think after these years, these collection of moments between you and I, I can stand here with you in my home and it's okay. The hardest part of forgiveness is accepting it once it's given." My hair falls back around my shoulders, longer now than it has been in the past and I fold my fingers on his shoulders. He, this lost soul. "No one in the universe has taken so much from me. Outside of the grace I have been given, there would be no hope. Mikhail, look at me. I forgive you. I forgive you, now accept it and be worthy of it. You said you were lost? Found me quick enough."

 

[Lord Ghoul]

Blue eyes, normally lurking with sparks of mischief, grew intense and pained. The tightness in his chest did not fade with her words. How could she... He'd killed her kid and the guy she loved, but here she was, standing so close that he could smell the scent of her hair. Dark, arching brows drew together sharply and for a moment, Mikhail said nothing.

She forgave him. What did it mean... Did she-

He clenched his jaw, eyes flicking past her to stare at the wall. "A thank you seems a little trite," he said, tone in one of those rare moments where it was devoid of any animosity or allure. He felt stripped bare, exposed, but she did not shy away from the monster beneath. He looked back at her, eyes focusing on her face.

Slowly, he reached out a hand - was it trembling? - and brushed a lock of her hair behind her ear.

"But I did find you." He took a breath, "Because I needed to apologize... apologize and tell you that I can't promise I will never hurt you again. I'm human. I suck. I fail. But I won't try to keep you out. It took two mind wipes and too many deaths, but I get it now. I care about you and only you. Nothing else matters."

[member="Anders Sivas"]

 

[Yasha Cadera]

"Heheh. I'm still taking that as a thank you."

I stand and listen. I feel the stroke of his hand as some solar storm washing over the Suma's hull plating - electrifying and sudden. It's impossible for my lips to stick together, to keep lucid. A gradual knit takes my forehead and I tug at the corners of my lips like a mother pulling laundry in from a line. My fingers pull through the recycled atmosphere of the ship and take his hand.

"Come with me." There is only one place I can go: one place I can bring [member="Mikhail Shorn"] in a moment as intimate and lasting as this. I walk through the corridors of my ship to the Hangar Bay, where an antique Naboo Lifter squats in its tiny repose kept still by docking clamps and binders. I have to duck to get inside the hatch and in its' sparse heyday a Lifter could only carry five passengers on short hauls. This one, though, has been remodelled piecemeal into the teensy tiniest living space in the known universe. Every wall and crevasse is crammed with random delights. The further things have the patina of a decade's worth of dust. There are hundreds of holodrives, tiny crystal sticks and sound devices. One might think I had the most epic music collection in the universe, but for the labels on the side written in a descending line of childish scrawl to adult script. Names and places. Planets, some identifiers like 'Green Eyes' or 'The Hallow Singer'. I push a pile of old charts off a small hammock and finally dig up the courage to look at Mikhail in this most precious, private place in the cosmos.

"My Dad bought me a holorecorder for my fifth Life Day. It was our secret, he made me record whatever I was thinking or feeling. I was too young to know Dad needed evidence to figure out what was wrong with his little girl." I glance up at Mikhail's blue eyes hopeful that he'll discern what a gift I lay open and bare at his feet. "I promised never to delete a single one and it's been hard to keep that promise. By the time I was eleven Dad realized the recordings weren't me. Not the daughter he knew when we were alone. They were dozens of people. Teachers, friends, bullies who chased me, people down the street whose minds never stopped yelling... He bought me this Lifter and shoved me off in it when I turned twelve. Told me to never come back. Maybe... maybe in deep space I'd be able to see who I was when I had no one to symbiose myself on." I smile and shrug, the smile loses it's joy as my hand drapes along the stacks and stacks of tapes.

"Each one of these is a record of the people i've involuntarily linked with. Symbiotically attached to is probably the better term. Good ones, poor ones, rich ones, some downright terrible, horrible, wonderful, crazy people. That one over there was a Spice Dealer who hit his product too hard and couldn't tell which colours were real. This one was an artist who saw the sky as such a beautiful thing I can't help but paint the same way today. This one was a housewife who wanted her daughter back. I stayed there for four months when I was thirteen. This one was a gang leader on Corellia. . . his mind didn't spit me out till he died in a firefight. I was fourteen. . . I've been so many different minds, Mikhail. I've felt the inner motivations of thousands of sentient beings. How could I not learn grace from all that? How can I not learn what mercy is like, what compassion feels like? It's impossible for me to look back at these tapes and hate them. I can't do it. There was too much to care about in each one. Even the ones I'd feel great about forgetting."

When my life wasn't mine, when I was a spinning wheel being spun did I have value? Would Mikhail be standing here asking to be allowed to care? I gulp a little nervously, hands wringing together as I look up at him. "Meret wasn't the last symbiont I had, but she's in here too. Jared's not in here. He kept me out of his mind. I was just one of his many, but I was special in my way. I've learned since then how to shut people out. I'm not perfect at it, but more and more I'm just . . . learning to love being Andra. This Andra. The one that can look at you and mean it. The one who can tell you all is forgiven because I see you. The Andra that can feel the thrill up my ribcage when you said that you cared. Can you look around here and see this and still say you care? 'Cause I've never shown anybody this before and now I'm kind of getting a bit nervous so it would be great to hear what you have to say."

 

[Lord Ghoul]

Confused at first, Shorn followed after the young, somewhat naive woman who decided it was probably ok to show the most intimate, precious place in all her life to the man - Sith Lord - who had killed her lover, her baby, ripped her neck open, betrayed her trust, and left her with gigantic emotional trauma... all because he said he was sorry.

Not that he was complaining.

He glanced around the cramped, cluttered lifter with initial apathy. Ook, I see some old stuff, some more old stuff, some junk and... I don't even know what that is. Oh, she's talking again.

Shorn stopped picking through the contents of her life and listened intently. A father who cared, in his way. Ish. Shorn wondered what that must have been like. The only presents he'd ever gotten were- oh wait, none. Yeah, dads were dicks. He was tracking. Not so much when it got to the part about the symbiotic relationships. Shorn had trouble caring about the galaxy post-eviction of his girlfriend's family, which consisted of her and her single mom and basically consigned them to a life of abject poverty on some craphole planet as far from him as his father could make it.

"I don't understand," Shorn said simply, honestly. "I don't understand how you can still empathize with them. I don't understand, well, a lot. Do I care about these people? No. I never have." He shook his head vehemently. In fact, if it would make her happy he would gladly kill them all and then sleep like a baby. "But you do care. And if it is important for you, then it is important for me. Because all that stuff you talked about, the compassion, mercy. I've seen exactly three instances of that in my life. One being from you."

[member="Anders Sivas"]

 

[Yasha Cadera]

"It took me many, many months of letting go. It's a gift the Force gave me. I am a healer after all. Can't be one if you're broke in piecemeal." He's glancing over this stuff like it's a rummage sale, and it goes to show that not every treasure is for all people. But he gets it a little more now, I hope, who and what I am. Nigh infinite potential proven and proven and proven and proven until the ungraceful fall.

"That's the beautiful part. It's astounding how many people think they have to feel or be everything. I'm convinced we're not built that way. It's the reason we're not supposed to be alone. Filling in the gaps is sort of the point of having people to care about." Maybe I'm still young. Maybe the universe has more knocks to dish me but at least now I know I can take it. He starts talking about caring because I do, because I'm one of three and it hits me upside the cranium.

The Throne Breaker is confessing in my ship. Should I be calling Bucket and hoping to the Goddesses there's a random Space Dragon around to save me? It's all coming down to the transformative power of compassion and absolution. [member="Mikhail Shorn"] is a truthful scoundrel: He will hurt me. He may hurt me again and again, but at least I've been warned. A girl's got to respect seeing her man's cards on the table. "Would you like to understand?"

Now whose talking like they're already reading the owner's manual? Her man? Back it down, Andra. "They made me a part of them. I had no choice but to become them until their minds spat me out. Or my immune system spat them out. I'd wake up on some planet a period of time later going 'what the blue zippy?' and all I'd have to go on was the lingering feeling in my head, and these recordings. I had to make peace with them or I would have gone loopier than a corkscrew in a bottle of blossom wine. Speaking of wine, I wonder if Sparkles finished making that tea. Do you drink tea? I forgot to ask."

His eyes - good goddess Shiraya they shimmer in their own gravitational oasis. Shorn's eyes are bringing flickers of electricity into my ribcage in a delightfully primal collection of danger and avoidance. He's already said he'll hurt me. . . someday. . . but not like that. By the time I notice I'm staring at his eyes, I jolt and turn around and knock over an entire shelf of stuff. "Oh goddess!"

 

[Lord Ghoul]

Shorn casually waved a hand, catching the entire shelf and its contents before they could clatter to the floor. He set it all back up - haphazardly - without a second glance. Obviously order wasn't the primary concern in this place. She wouldn't care. Probably. He definitely wouldn't.

The man who'd made nations tremble continued staring intensely into Andra's eyes. "I'm fine," he said in regards to the tea. "Non-alcoholic drinks aren't really my thing." Would've been better if she'd offered him milk. More funny that way. Also, tea tended to be poisonous... or paralytic. Not that he expected her to pull anything like that... She usually just resorted to bungling about inside his mind.

He looked at the collection of her possessors. "Make peace, eh?" Those pale lips twitched enigmatically. "I think you know why that's a little hard for me to understand. Do I want to understand? I don't really know. Maybe. Part of me wonders how you do it... but the other half knows that I'm not like that. So I guess it's less about me wanting to understand and more about why you want me to understand. Is it because you want me to know more about you... or because you want to change me?"

An ominous light came into his eyes, a flash of a soul so promising in its longing for redemption and so contrary in its vindictive impulses.

[member="Anders Sivas"]

 

[Yasha Cadera]

"Thanks for . . not letting my stuff crash. Do you want something stronger, then? Might have a bottle or two of Whyren's in the pantry. You're welcome to it." Smart plan, Andra. Let the Throne Breaker break your bank of booze. Yeah, there's not going to be a drop left after tonight. Don't I know it?

"Hah" The sordid laugh burbles out of my mouth with a shake of my head, "There's no changing anyone these days. I don't think I could change anyone. I'm just a gender confused girl from Naboo, who landed in the Fringe after the Jedi scared her 'cause some guy named Sargon bought me boots. Thought it'd be safer with a bunch of are-they-aren't-they Sith Lords than with tip-of-their-patience mamby-pamb Jedi."

I lean against the back of the pilot's chair, which has several pairs of trousers, shirts and a bright red, lacy slip on top. My hand hits the slip. I shove it in the middle of the pile fast as I can. "You said you cared about me, felt it was my duty to warn you about what you put your care to. It took a lot for you to face me, guess the only reward I can give you is letting you see me. No one else really has." My shoulder shrugs, I'm trapped in a cycle of grace and indecision heralded by [member="Mikhail Shorn"]'s arrival. Would I have been happier with him never showing up? I already know the answer is a resounding 'no'. "I do know it's not the easiest path. Peace is costly and it's double-edged. But I'm not mighty, Mikhail. I'm not capable of throwing people across rooms or besting legendary lords in battle. All I've got is my ability to see the truth of folk and see where I can make that truth a tiny bit brighter. You could crack my spine in twain like a toothpick and we both know it.

Do you want to change? What do you want? 'Cause that's the only question of these that matters. Other than the offer for a stiff drink. And why would I change you? What possible motive could drive me to attempt to fiddle around in your brain till I saw my personal vision of Mikhail Shorn fulfilled? Don't think I'm that dubious, truth be."

In front of the entrance is a new stack of tapes. The top of the pile is my last imprint and reads in neatly written marker, 'Mikhail Shorn', but I don't look at it. My eyes are still too busy locked with Mikhail's in the electric air between.

 

[Lord Ghoul]

The offer of liquor lingered in the air, acceptance left in ambiguity for a bit with Shorn being momentarily distracted by that red, lacy slip. Shorn stepped closer, face a mix of the mischief that he so commonly treated to serious topics, skirting around them before hitting directly to the point with a striking about-face of piercing frankness.

He stood over her, looming like some kind of weird fusion between dream and nightmare. Best of both worlds... in the worst ways.

"Maybe I could break you," he said, voice a note lower than before, softer too, "but we both know you can get inside my head. You're there now." Icy-blue eyes blinked slowly, then looked past her at the pile of clothing. He reached a hand out and pulled out the slip, eyebrow quirking up as he held it on the tip of his finger. "What do you see?"

Shorn didn't answer her questions about change. He didn't know that he could give her an answer. Not a truthful one. How could he speak truth when he didn't even know how to sort out the convoluted mess of his heart?

"Nothing you want to change?" He smirked.

He didn't spot the small stack of tapes with his name on the label. He too was busy...

 

[Yasha Cadera]

"Oh boy." I gulp, locked on to his face and inside his mind with the cloying, lingering cling of incense in a long-used temple. Except this temple was breaking in spots - marred and consumed by years of self-loathing, outward attack and intimate betrayal. His mind's the sort of place I'd like to recreate. Patch up a crack here and there until Mikhail is himself again.

Pity neither of us know what that 'self' would look like. "Ah. . oh gosh, gimme that! It's ah. . it's . . ooohh you caught me. Anders Sivas likes pretty, lacy, silky things. A lot. And yes, I can get into your mind. So there is that." There it is, my racing red slip in the hands of a nymphomaniac marauder and my fingers lace around the slim fabric. I give it a little tug. "I like being a girl. It's the best." A shiver laces over my spine as I feel the thoughts expressed in his mind. They're not unpleasant. . . just new. His voice thickens and delves into a deepness that flutters my eyelids and opens the seal on my lips. Has [member="Mikhail Shorn"] shaken all my atoms loose? Am I a half-being now, a nebula from which cometh all good things? Shaken and beset by it, the voice resounds within the echoes of this lifter and I fold my mind around his as a cloud folds around that which could make it a corporeal being once again.

"I see cracks in the veneer. Ones you don't know how to fix. I see the search, the quest and I see a moment of still water across the rippling lake of your conscience, the moment building since you came on board my ship. I see a lot of imaginative ideas of what you could do with me in that slip. I see a man worth being around for. Worth being that calm spot for. 'Cause you're a powerful entity, but you lack direction. Find a direction and you're a wrecking ball without restraint. I see how angry you are over what people have done to you and to those you cared about, and I see how they're not really people - or they can't be called that. The word 'people' is too good for them. Too pure. I see how easy it would be to snuff them out, and save the Galaxy a freighter-load of trouble. And I don't see anything wrong with ridding the Galaxy of those who are only there to hurt it and oppress its' peoples. I see the cracks, Mikha, the shudders and I do want to fix them. I want to shore them up. 'Cause I know the secret.

No one should have hurt you. No one should have hurt her, but they did. So here we are standing in my tiny lifter holding on to the same red slip and it's and easy thing for me to say I want to give you peace. 'Cause I do. 'Cause I certainly don't want to give you war. You deserved better than that once, and you do deserve better again.

Even if it's just 'cause I've decided you do. Even if that's the only reason right now." I didn't notice how close I'd gotten to him, how my elbow bent and I'm looking up at those piercing blue eyes. Consuming cerulean, if they'd give me a moment's rest would the trance break? I feel a stoic energy reach into my backbone and shore it. I might not be mighty, but I can be poetic. Powerful, in a way I've yet to discover for myself.

 

[Lord Ghoul]

The tug pulled the soft fabric across his fingers. He didn't let go. He leaned slightly toward her, an impish smirk on his features. As her words pounded against him like waves on the shore, not meaning to be hard but simply powerful by nature, the smirk faded slightly. Those "imaginative ideas" set his heart racing to a steady thump, thump, awaking a dark hunger within. His eyes almost glowed with intensity as he looked on her, wondering what lay beneath.

Thump, thump.

Direction, did it matter? As long as he was moving, as long as he was living, why should he care what direction life took him? He wanted to get away from the past, from the monster he'd been made, but the farther he ran the deeper he seemed to fall into that mire of darkness. Could he find direction? Yes. She could give it to him. Anywhere, anything. Without restraint.

Thump, thump.

People. His father. The Sith. Not people, but monsters. Monsters just like him. He'd tried to kill them, tried to kill them all, but how many others had he killed along the way? He didn't want to think about it. He didn't want to care. So why did it hurt so much? Why did this make him so angry?

Thump, thump.

Better than war? He'd had that once. A girl, a love. She was dead now. He'd killed her. He didn't deserve anything, but he wanted, he needed... So. Much. His breathing was heavier now, chest rising and falling in a deep rhythm. His eyes had taken on a new, ravenous cast.

"You talk too much," he rasped. The slip fell through his fingers.

Did it matter about their past? He'd almost killed her, had killed her baby, and had killed the man she once loved. He didn't have any right to... but since when had Mikhail Shorn asked permission? No. Impulse control had never been his best quality.

He stepped forward, strong, lean arms wrapping around her thin frame, then he bent down and kissed her on the mouth. Not gently, not sweetly, but with vicious and unabated passion. The kind that wrecked rooms.

Thump, thump.

[member="Anders Sivas"]

 

[Yasha Cadera]

Some time in the last few minutes, my heart started beating through my chest. I can feel it as the grey sweater falls off my shoulders, jostled no doubt by the thump, thump of my heart. What was it about these powerful dark men and my blisteringly naive affections? What was it about my wide eyes and trembling lips that called them so easily to my bower? Not them, only two. Jared and Mikhail, and it had always been Mikhail.

He'd been the stimulus of my relying on Jared for safety and a comforting shoulder, me the scared Naboo girl hiding in a boy's clothing and posture and voice. It had been Mikhail that made me fear and get stronger, Mikhail who I went to when I thought the losses Ovmar suffered were too great. And when Jared got angry and detached and love-less, there was Mikhail's snarky smile grinning down at me like the biggest 'I Told You So' in the Galaxy.

On Lipsec, it had been Mikhail's charm and charisma to finally break me from my masculinity of mind and brought me into his arms for that one stellar kiss. Would it be Mikhail to break me? Mikhail to tear me apart and lead to my ultimate demise?

"Of course I talk too much! I talk 'cause you lot hold it all in and wait for some magic moment where it'll make sense and it never will if you keep holding on to the bits that sucked and hurt 'cause you keep thinking about how you don't deserve it and I think you do deserve another chance, 'cause I'mmmffhrrrhmmmmhh!" His kiss clashed with my words like the battering ram of his telekinesis and left me utterly desolate of voice.

My hand balls into a fist with the slip still inside it, it presses against his pectoral muscle as my other hand goes to his shoulder. "MMmmmhh!" I groan into this feral joining, the slip drops and I pull my face away as a stack of tapes falls over. There's not enough oxygen in the Lifter, not enough atmosphere to fill my aching lungs and I'm gasping as the fist relaxes and pushes on his pec. "Not. . not in here." Not in the bastion to the Other People who had taken my mind. I wouldn't add him to it, not like this. Not again. My memories flicker to the living quarters of his ship, where he bit at my neck and I gasp.

How much better will it feel, that his lips meet the spot without Garhoon fangs to place therein? I'm consumed with the desire to find out. "Please. . . " I put an image in his mind of the Suma's corridors trailing from the hangar bay and the lifter down the halls to my personal quarters. My bedroom. A flush of red hits my cheeks and it hits me simultaneously with the insanity of what I'm about to do. What I'm about to give to the Throne Breaker, the man of a thousand women, the murderer of my son . . . but isn't grace better? Isn't one single moment of complete healing better than holding on to the grudges that burn planets and leave men fallow and worn?

But to a man like [member="Mikhail Shorn"] would this mean anything at all?

Is that the penalty of women, who love so frequent and so strong? Who jealously cling to the connections they made in panting sighs and broken gasps, when the Other has cancelled his amazement and struck out for other pastures? Ultimately one sentiment strikes louder than my thumping, ringing heart: will this help Mikhail?

 

[Lord Ghoul]

Sweet nectar, victory, the taste of her lips. It did nothing to sate the burning desire to have her, no matter what expense. If the lifter had been going up in flames around them, her precious stacks of tapes melting into a sticky, plastic mess, he would've kissed her no differently. Heat and chills and a storm of sensations wrapped into a single sensation that swept them all away, like dirt beneath the driving rain, as they entered a nirvana of no cares, no worries, just simple ecstasy.

She pushed against his chest with one slender hand, while the other dragged across his shoulder, trying to pull him closer. A yes. And a no. Her indecisiveness frustrated him, heightened when she drew back and breathed that they should move somewhere else. His eyes flared open, a cold blue. Not here?

"Why?" He growled, pulling back, hand slipping away from her hips. Why not here? Was this place too sacred too her that she was afraid his presence would defile it? Or did they confuse her, make her wonder who she really was? Why did she have to cling so hard to the past, to these memories, to all this pain?

Scowling now, his raven brows drawn darkly together, features twisted in an expression of anger and confusion. She wanted him after all, but not here. Shouldn't that have settled him? Why did he still feel this bubbling pit of frustration?

His heel kicked against one of the fallen tapes. He glanced down, eyes slowly widening.

"Mikhail Shorn," he mouthed.

Intestines twining into knots, his stomach tightened. He struggled to breath, feeling as though a punch had slammed into his gut. He called the tape to his hand with the Force. His fingers were trembling. He stared at it, mouth slightly ajar. He knew what would be on there. What he'd done. The reminder tore open old wounds. His shaking fingers tightened and the tape shattered, bits and pieces falling from his hand along with several crimson drops.

Why did she have this? Why did she have any of this?

"Stop," he muttered at last, "Stop holding on to all this," he swept his hand wildly across the room. "You don't need it! These tapes aren't who you are. That isn't me. It's just... just pain."

The frustration boiled over and he lashed out, waves of telekinetic energy exploding from him and blasting apart the interior of the lifter. Tapes fractured. Relics disintegrated. Anders remained in the midst of it, protected despite his fury. He didn't want to hurt her. He wanted to hurt them. Those memories. Those people who'd caused her pain.

The power faded, leaving him shuddering in the midst of wreckage. He sank to his knees, exhausted fury giving way to anguish. He didn't know why the tears were running down his face. He didn't know why his heart hurt so much.

Mikhail glanced down at his hands and found one bleeding. He let out a crazed chuckle. For once the blood on his hands was his own.

 

[Yasha Cadera]

The kiss is a breath of the eternal, a crux-point to place the events of my life now and hereafter, and the longer it continues the more I breathe it in. I feel the star fire of his body and my spine turns into molten durasteel, pliant and moulded near its original design. We push apart and the hurt in him, the frustration and confusion bites at my jaw with the distinct snip of a man who needs this, needs to care, needs to feel cared for.

He snarls and I feel the magma of a volcano rising, until it rises too far and he brings his hand around a slender tape with his name on it. I try and reach out, grab it,

"Mikhail put it down. . . Mikha!" He has to let it go, he'll crush it! I'm too late, the tape shatters in his hand and a piece of me shatters with it, a drifting malaise that I will always be the lack of something. It was the Great Fear, the Unholy Lie of my existence, that I am a void and my body was devoid of a spirit or a soul. The quest for identity has chased me my entire life, nipping at my ankles and tearing at the corners of my peripheral vision with the idea that the world disappears when I turn around and can't see it.

I am the Great Illusion, the Ultimate Chameleon, the Ghost in Flesh.

I can be gracious and merciful for I have experienced some of the very worst of sentient beings. I have done those things, because I could not stop them from being done, both to me, or to others around myself. And Mikhail Shorn is breaking my throne to marauding voices who stole the brain of a little girl. "No don't!"

The lack of these personae and their heterovoxia, their many textured voices hits me with the destructive power of Mikhail's obsolete fangs on my neck. To the ever reverberating crashes, I hear a distinctive feminine shriek and in hindsight I know it is my own, but it is a clearer sound than I remember making. Am I usually so clouded by the throngs of witnesses that I cannot recognize the frailty of my own timid female voice? My hands fly up to my ears, shoulders wince high as I bury my head in his chest, leaning against him for safety.

Safety! My eyes flicker across the dying testaments and I am distinctly aware that I am outside of the tempest's path. Sub-conscious or conscious, Mikhail is protecting me. The pain he brings me now is one of discerning care. Maybe the deepest of my pains was the one I was loathe to let the Force heal, and in the end of my hermitage the Force sent a Throne Breaker to end my tether to my old life. My ribcage shudders, I'm shaking from my hair to the soles of my feet, "What did you do? What did you do!?" I gasp and survey the dust left behind, the ruined lifetimes I lived in catastrophic fits. "Who am I then!? Huh!? How can you tell!?"

Tears well up on the brim of my eyelids, my lifetime of memories gone. The idols of the Other Sentient Beings are chaff on Cerea's windy autumn sky.


And in the silence, the aftermath of [member="Mikhail Shorn"]'s destructive billows my shaking fingers take his bleeding hand. I stare down at it, kneeling in front of him and bringing his hand within inches of my face as I search the wound for any bits left over. "You're telling me who I am isn't a process of elimination. That who I am, what I am is intrinsic. Valuable. That I'm somehow not a botched up collection of other peoples' unprocessed emotions and I. . . I. . . I didn't have anyone to defend me. I didn't know how to defend myself or. . . Mikha?"

I stroke two fingers down his sliced up palm and the skin twitches and reconstructs. Blood pours backward from the ground to the originating wound and back again. The damage to his hand never existed but for the memory of the event. Erased were the lines and scars. I kiss the tips of his fingers, running the back of my hand across his crying cheek. Slowly I feel the tethers to the past dissolve and lighten. They run off my mental back like water down a cliff face, and I know he can feel it. I know the sensation is passing through our mental connection. But I am myself, and it's one heck of a new feeling. "You're right." I lean up and kiss the stain of salt water on his cheek, wrapping my frail arms around his powerful neck. My lips find his jaw, I nuzzle into him as he chuckles like he's mad and maybe he is.

"Why did. . . you destroyed them. They're gone. They're all gone." My chest caves, I cling to him as I kneel on the floor, pushing my face into his shoulder, "My head feels light." No crowd of witnesses was broaching us, I am alone with Mikhail.

 

[Lord Ghoul]

Slumped forward over his knees, Mikhail could only stare at his hands, deaf to the world. The hole in his heart, empty of rage, ached with lingering toxins and the feeling of emptiness. A deserted open-pit mine, nothing more than an ugly wound, all worth leeched away long ago. He watched in numb shock as she took his hand and, amidst the wreckage, healed the wound on his hand. The physical pain at once evaporated, but he did not feel whole. The ache in his hollow heart grew more palpable, as if making up for the lack of pain in his life.

Is this my destiny? To be bound to suffering no matter where I run?

He shuddered.

Thin arms wrapped around his neck and he could feel the heat of her body as she laid kisses on his cheek. They felt abstract, surreal, as if he was outside his body looking down.

Ha. I could wish.

Had he really tried to help her? Or did he just want to erase anything that could come between them? And for what? He didn't actually think this could last, did he?... Whatever this was....

Another twinge in his chest caused his features to contort as he convulsively wrapped arms around Andra. A still beating heart, bled dry of love, but pumping the only thing it still could. A crushing sadness threatened to bear him to the ground. He blinked, eyelashes wet. No more. No more emptiness. No more pain. He needed to fill the emptiness, to keep the loneliness at bay. Night had closed in around him long ago... and he was tired of shivering in the dark.

Clinging more tightly to her, he closed his eyes and twisted his head so that her lips met his in a frantic, desperate struggle to escape the lurking fingers of a shadowy insanity. The taste of her this time was one of innocence instead of frightened prey. A pristine light whose presence might maybe, just maybe, make him a little more pure. His hands moved along her spine, her hips, her shoulders. Thoughts of sorrow began to slip away in the heat of passion as he moved to take more, hands slipping beneath fabric to feel the warm flesh beneath.

He never answered any of her many questions, but in between kisses he managed to breath out,

"Didn't I tell you already?... You talk too much."

[member="Anders Sivas"]

 

[Yasha Cadera]

A man is a lesson in being emptied. The masculine condition is one of gain, giving and begetting, a coiling intervention on the constantly mutable feminine ideal. It is an installation and a possible regret, a potential for lifetimes changed and created until the day when one of the two wake up and go, 'how am I here?' To be wanted, to be needed, to provide, to protect, to be a man is a singular sensation I'll never forget, and yet I know my talents lie elsewhere. How is it this man brings me to the door of my femininity with stumbling grace? How is it in close proximity I revel in the beauty of how I was created when so often I hide in the perception of the opposite?

I hold [member="Mikhail Shorn"] in my arms. He swells with desperation and loneliness, a caving, hungry collective of hurt, rage and pain. He has missed every good thing to come his way to his own folly or the intervening folly of others. He is a man in transit to a place he was barred from years ago. Since that first instance of pain and regret he has tallied only the negatives that reign supreme in his life. His agony washes across the bower of my mental gift and I weep inwardly for the lost and noble son that could have been, given a better father and a better chance. I take his sadness and bring it inside myself, pulling it from him as stardust is pulled into a singularity and I study it. Bear it. 'Give it to me. I will give you something better to fill it.' I banish his suffering, for it has no place in my dominion and I shall not be denied with him in my sanctum.

As his arms cling to my frail body, I feel the desperation like a haze in the air and in the desperation of this mighty being I find beauty. I find beauty in his honesty and his fright that this too cannot possibly last. I take that fright and shush it, fill it with the confidence of a blessing born from tolerance and tenderness. In freeing me of my ghosts, the Throne Breaker has given me more room for mercy. His lips mash against mine with the saltiness of his tears and I drink him in. Now is the time of acceptance, the time to open up and allow him entry to my most private self. And oh how I shall minister to him, how I shall become his joy. I could be long lasting, a stable point of contact in the lonely, ever shifting galaxy.

Truth is, I like being that one shining star. The fountain from which flows blessing and grace and a belief in the possibility of delight. As his kisses strike me down, I grin into them an a bubbling joy consumes the space where minutes before laid only sadness, contaminating regret and the sorrows of a man whose scars laid firmly inside his own ribcage.

"Keep me otherwise occupied, then." I gasp out in the in-betweens. My warm, soft hands creep under his shirt and onto his back and fill his spine and shoulders with the physical representation of my joy and delight. Fill him with the emotions he's giving me with every stroke and kiss. I want him to feel it, to be proven in the goodness he gives me. I want to push that pain far, far away to further pastures.

Delight in me, and stay till after morning comes.