Smoking Stones & Proving Grounds (Valik)

[Lord Ghoul]

"No!"

The word tore from his mouth, raw and savage.

"I won't calm down!"

He quivered with rage, eyes locked on Valik's face, which was so indifferent that it only heightened the fury in Mikhail's chest, like flames jetting from a volcano's roiling pit. Lips against his shoulder and hands on his chest intensified the struggle. He wanted release. He wanted to slam Valik against the wall again and again and again until the alchemist was just a crimson smear. A shudder of pleasure slipped into his quivering, the ecstasy of imagined pain. All that sweet, sadistic imagery made his breath come hot and heavy.

"I don't care. I don't care who you fight. It's not about that. It can't be. I'm the killer. Not you."

The tightness in his chest was just getting worse. Flashes of Andra, her face smeared in scarlet, skipped across his mind. He turned to her, gripping her by the shoulders.

"Not you!"

Power burned in him and wide blue eyes lost their hue to that of a molten gold, stained with an ugly red.

"You don't know what it's like. You don't know. I want to kill, Andra. Every second," his voice was high, the words bitter. "It's inside me. Dark. I like killing. All I have to do is reach out and flip a switch. It's so easy. It shouldn't be easy, Andra. It shouldn't be this easy!"

Both hands jerked to his sides where they hung, fists clenched into balls, trembling. Whatever glass hadn't shattered the first time now splintered into fragments. He was panting, eyes flicking back and forth between her hazel orbs, searching.

"Do you want to be like me? Like him?!"

Golden sith eyes swung toward [member="Valik"]. "I should kill him."

[member="Anders Sivas"]

 

[Yasha Cadera]

"I never thought you felt so strongly about me." Value. Care. These men I come to love, they both seem to like the Light in me. That same light they don't have. Is that my allure? Is that the reason Mikhail has so gladly come to cuddle me to his chest at night, his fingers curling so delicately through my hair? Am I his salvation, his moment of respite from the glad killing fields? Does he want me to retain my silken feel and be that anchor which makes the actions of the Dark worth his while? If the killing is for a reason, is it wrong?

I send the military into action every day. I send people to their deaths and send men and women to the killing floor to double tap and end threats to the sanctity of the Fringe. Now I see that Mikhail doesn't really know who he shares a bed with, who he's fallen for. "I'm the head of the military, Mikha. I send troops into battle every day. I hate it. I wish it wasn't my docket on the high council but it is. Thank Jared for that one." I take Mikhail's fists in my delicate hands as I watch his chest move with the thrill of impending violence and I realize that no. I don't want to be like him. I don't want killing to be easy, I want it to be costly and painful. "I don't ever want violence to be simple. You're right about that. I don't want to be like you. But don't tell me it's always easy for you. I feel your guilt, Mikha. I feel what you do in the moments after and yes sometimes you're glad you did it. Sometimes it's right. Sometimes those people need to be stopped. So we find the ones who need to die and we make a judgement call. I won't be the violent one, but I'm not going to let you go alone. I'm not leaving you and I never will. We're a team and I thought... I thought I wasn't pulling my weight. I thought I was too weak to be of any help to you. Maybe I'm not. Maybe I need to examine my head, give it a shake. I've been feeling bizarre lately and you don't deserve that."

Being able to drift through space beside this man is a lesson in joy he doesn't see for the angst and putrid taint of his darker self. He is the demon that killed my child. I'd been contenting myself with the idea that his Garhoun half had been the culprit, a genetic smoking gun. Standing with his arms on my shoulders, I see the real brimstone curl that led to my son's untimely death: The Dark Side of the Force. I think I've learned how to hate. I hate the Darker urges that cause people like Warren and Mikha to turn. I hate the forces that caused Jared to lash out at Mikhail's mind. Full feminine lips drift upward, "Mikha, remember when you went away for a few weeks and came back for my birthday?"

I tilt my head to watch the rise and fall of his chest, nudging him along toward the exit. "When you were gone, did you remember to stay up on your Sylphe Stims?" As the query sinks in I keep a firm grasp on Mikhail's mind with the wonderful confidence I've been devoid of for weeks. I want Mikha to know. I want to be happy about being a future mom and I check on his face. His yellowed eyes rebuke me. I shake as I hold his hands, my nerves more about the impending motherhood than the fierocity inside him.

"We're having twins and I'm scared. I thought I was going to endanger you by putting too much pressure on you to protect us, so I asked Warren for help. I made your ring, cause I saw there . . . Well you know. I was trying to find the right way to tell you. Guess this is the best I can come up with. Please don't kill Warren for my mistake. I already owe him for new lab equipment." [member="Valik"] [member="Mikhail Shorn"]

'Warren run.

 

[Valik]

As the loving couple continued their lovey-dovey discussion, Valik continued to use Art of the Small to change glass to water, finally getting all of it, or all of it that he could see anyways. There might have been tiny fragments hidden somewhere that weren't obvious to his eye. The next step was to remove miscellaneous items that could prove dangerous projectiles. Scalpels, tongs, pipets, syringes, things of that nature. They began to change chemically, switch from their durasteel formula to alter the atoms, change them into a much simpler and less harmful compound.

His ears kept a constant read on the discussion though. Additional blackmail material was never a bad thing.

 

[Lord Ghoul]

Of course he knew she was military, but ordering people to kill other people wasn't the same as doing it yourself. He would know. He served in the Republic's army, once, and he had been forced to order his entire company to take an untakeable position. Mikhail watched them die, knowing he killed them. There was guilt and shame and anger, but it was nothing compared to when he killed Alexis. He remembered the smoking hole his lightsaber left in her chest and the way her eyes stared out, a look of hatred frozen on her dead features. Andra didn't want to know that kind of suffering. He wouldn't let her.

She didn't understand. It was easy! In his head, he was screaming at her. She didn't want to see the monster inside, but he had to live with it every day.

Andra was still talking. He didn't know when she'd grabbed his hands but she was holding them now and saying something about her birthday and the stims and - and....

Numb fingers dropped from her grasp as a spear of shock rammed through his heart. A coldness swept down his spine. He stumbled back from her, eyes wide and full of confusion and anger. This wasn't happening. Not here. Not now.

"No," he whispered, "No, no, no....no."

Those numb fingers grasped the sides of his head and squeezed. A kid. Two kids. Twins. They would die. She'd bring them into the world and they would die because their father was a psychopathic murderer with a list of enemies a mile long. They would come to kill them, to get to him. They would die. What have I done?

Frantic eyes flicked across the room, looking for something, anything... anyone. So much responsibility. Too much. He needed someone, someone to blame. Yellow eyes fell on Warren Valik.

"You."

His voice was raw, as if someone had taken sandpaper to the inside of his throat and scraped till it bled.

Mikhail's hands fell back to his sides. They trembled.

Valik knew. Valik knew everything.

The moment crystallized. Clear thought broke through the black clouds of Shorn's thoughts, not like a ray of sunlight, like a flaming jet of volcanic wrath. He knew what he had to do. No one could know.

No one.

Shorn acted without hesitation, one hand stretching out and making a twisting motion. He knew Valik's aura would prevent him from crushing his larynx or disconnecting the brain stem, so he did the one thing that the master alchemist couldn't truly stop. It wasn't complicated or flashy, but it was calculated; calculated, fast and utterly simple. Mikhail made a claw with his fingers and jerked his hand inward as if unscrewing a bottle cap, exerting every ounce of telekinetic power - the same power that had ripped the bridge off a star destroyer - on an attempt to twist Warren's head just a little too far to the right. Just a little. Enough to cross that fragile divide between life and death. Enough to snap [member="Valik"]'s neck.

[member="Anders Sivas"]

 

[Valik]

"You."

The Thronebreaker said as he pulled his hand up, not throwing it out. If Valik's instincts were right, and they always were, then that meant he was going for a calculated strike. A choke around the neck, a concentrated jab of force into his eyes, the snapping of a neck, it could be quite a few things, but all of those would be there in mere milliseconds, which made how he attacked insignificant, only that he would. Valik could have done numerous things, shock him with lighting and hope the pain interrupted him, use Art of the Small to put a layer of soot in front of his eyes, use Sith Alchemy to turn his skin into terentatek leather to lessen the blow. But instead Valik chose a newer technique, a product of the work he'd put so much time into studying.

Midi-Chlorian Manipulation.

He'd studied Anzati feed on "Soup", Stennes Shifter's absorb the Force around them, how the midi-chlorians of the "Force Dead" clone troopers of the former CIS worked, the Murakami Orchids that created Force Bonds so easily, the Blackwing Virus that infected the midi-chlorians of others. He'd increased the Force Potential of Ashin Varanin after she was severed from the Force, revived the dead though soulless boy of Je'gan Olra'en after he was killed by Daesumnor's blade. And now he altered his own Midi-Chlorians, changing them into something that would linger after his death. While he did so the body of Valik died but his conscious remained, flowing in a form of so-called "Maxi-Chlorians" invisible not only to the eye but to the senses of the Force. His Maxi-Chlorians traveled soon finding an adequate host. Not [member="Mikhail Shorn"] nor [member="Anders Sivas"] but their unborn son, perhaps a month in gestation.

Once inside there he reverted his "Maxi-Chlorians" into their natural state, taking over the to-be-born Lucien Sivas-Shorn, and made sure to apply Art of the Small to hide any trace that he still survived. Valik's time would come once again but for now, he needed only to wait.

 

[Yasha Cadera]

A shrill and vehement scream pours from my voice box and taints the murderous air with regret.

For three seconds my growing belly feels incredibly wrong. My skin pales, I grimace, my stomach muscles tighten. The sensation passes unawares of [member="Valik"]'s master work. I want to double over, to buck the sensation, but it strings through my body with a newly integrated surge of morning sickness or disgust at the way Warren Valik's body tangled undignified on the wet floor of his own lab. I stare at Warren's open vacant eyes as my chin trembles and I see once again the murderer who killed my son on Lipsec.

Mikhail said it was too easy. The flick of a switch in his mind. I want to bore a hole into his brainstorm and traverse the divide until I find that switch, and I want to destroy it. Terrified, frantic tears splash across my face and I realize they must have started when the putrid smell of bone marrow and choking blood flooded out of Valik's gap-mouth grimace of his planetary shell.

I caused the death of Warren Valik, today. I asked the wrong person for help and my lover's temper is absolute. For all its usual sensual fantasies, Mikhail's mind is as open to me as my own. I see the string of logic that brought him to can't Warren's neck too far to the right. I dry heave at the thought, pushing my forehead against Mikhail's shoulder. Mikhail was protecting his children. He was overwhelmed. Who is Valik that Mikhail has such a strong response? Who did I come to for help? The wrong sort. "Why did he have to be Kiffar?" I cry into Mikhail's shoulder, "If he hadn't... I'm sorry. I'm sorry. . . It looks like he slipped on a lab puddle." I whimper.

My voice is hoarse from the scream, "Please... Please let's go home, Mikhail... What do we do abou-ab-he's just lying there... Oh Shiraya... His eyes are open. Why are they still open?"

Shivering, pale hands pull into my jacket and tug a thin gold envelope from the inner pocket. I crack the seal and hold up the flimsi card for Mikha. The front is a comical scrawl of "WOOPS", which was supposed to make him laugh at dinner tonight when I put the card next to his whiskey on the rocks and declined one of my own.

'Dear Mikha,

We hadn't planned this. I don't know precisely how, well I do know and it was a fun night, but that's beside the point. I'm letter babbling, can you believe it? Yes. Yes you can. Anyhoo. Somehow, either through our gargantuan levels of sexual activity or one gigantic genetic WOOPS, I'm pregnant.

The babies are healthy and so am I. My fall and injuries during the whole Rhand thing didn't hurt us and at the time I didn't know. We're having twins and although it's too early to confirm it feels like a boy and a girl. I know at this point you're freaking out. Do. It's ok to freak on news this big, I'm freaked out of my gourd. We'll make it. All four of us will make it through. You're going to be a rude, eye-rolling, protective and caring father. I'll do the best I can to be a great mom to these kids. I know you're probably scared you'll hurt us. Don't be, we have to let fears go. There's enough in the galaxy to be afraid of to fear mutual pairs of loving arms.

I love you, Mikhail. Your kids are going to adore you, too.
We'll figure this out together.

Your girl,
Andra'

 

[Lord Ghoul]

Mikhail stared cruelly at the limp, lifeless corpse. He felt the twisting of his lips and knew he held a look of revulsion, disgust, irritation and utter disregard. A shroud of ice had frozen about his heart, sealing him away from all the hurt. The shroud had a name: apathy. He felt nothing. No remorse, no guilt just pure ice, as if he could do anything and not give a damn about the consequences. It felt good. It felt right.

The shivering, weeping woman at his side handed him a card. Mikhail read it with a calloused, unchanging expression. When he finished, a second layer of ice had formed above the first. The tightness in his chest, remnants of anger, knotted up again. His breath shuddered out. The paper crumpled easily in his fingers and fell softly to the ground.

"I need some air."

He walked with steady strides toward the exit. And then he was gone.

[member="Anders Sivas"] [member="Valik"]

 

[Yasha Cadera]

The shroud slinks down like glaciers in winter descending from arrid, distant poles. I feel the caking of my lover's heart and shiver at the frigid stillness.

What is cold, but apathy? But the eradication of motion forward or back? He's locked himself inside his heart and it is I who has pushed him. I let go of [member="Mikhail Shorn"] and step backward, heel slipping on the water [member="Valik"] was turning the shards of glass into be-b-I heave and turn toward the body. "His eyes are open, Bucket." I hear the crackle of my familiar droid's technologically created voice in tandem with Mikhail's footsteps.

I let Shorn leave, his frost burning against my skin. I rush the body, putting my hand on Warren's chest and yanking it off as if the body'd burnt me, as if his death clung like shrouds of his own. I grunt and rub my hand against the fabric of my shirt, gasping and crying out. "Warren... Warren! Shiraya help me. . . " I put my ear on his chest, and sensing no sound there (as I knew there wouldn't be but for the hope, that crazy hope!), I put my hands on his chest and try to heal the break.

I push at his heart. One, two, four, six times. I pump my hands on his heart, pouring my healing abilities into it. Hoping.

Hoping.

"Wake up. Wake up, Warren!" I yell. My lips tremble as I close his nose and breathe into his mouth - his cooling, flaccid mouth. His chest rises. It falls. I push. "Wake up! W-wake . . Warren, wake up! Wake up!" I breathe into his body again, fighting the gag reflex I experience and pumping his chest. I hear footsteps.

"Boss, we've got to leave, Boss. We have to get you out of here."

"Wake up, Warren! WAKE UP! Wa-aaah drop me, Bucket! Stop it! I gotta wake him up! I've gotta save him! Let me go!" I shriek and flail and kick, but Bucket pulls his arm around my arms and body and yanks me away. "Bucket! Stop it! Stop! I have to. . . . have. . ha-wake up!" My leg lashes out, I kick Warren's side with my boot, his body jiggling resistantly to the action, yet not staunched by any muscular control. I see Bucket reach in to Warren's jacket and pull something out. I don't see what it is.

I don't see anything through the flooding tears in my eyes. "No! Let go! Let-Warren! Valik! S-st-why didn't you . . " My voice descends into nonsensical sobs as Tyr and Tus plant a package down, as Bucket picks me up and manhandles me out the door, as I watch the body of Warren Valik getting smaller and smaller, eyes open on the cold Ssi-Rruvi floor. "Bucket!"

"You can't raise the dead, Andra. Don't struggle now, it's no good for you." I kick and reach for Warren as I feel Bucket's fingers on my neck and a sharp sting. Barbiturates flood my bloodstream and my limbs go numb. "I have. . have. . havtotryagain. Can't leave him on the fl-fl-"

"Sshhhh. Easy, Andra. Easy. Shhh. Let go. Tyr. Tus. Light the place up."

"B-bucket wh-eres M-mmikha. . "

"I've got you. Shhhh. Easy. That's it." My body slumps.