glory will be yours
His boot made connection with her and she was jerked back away from him, collapsing. Between the both of them, it widened that invisible gap that connected them. Every cracked bone, every layer of skin and flesh that was cut, it only furthered them from each other. He was conscientious of it all, but he could not stop himself on this path now.
Not that he wanted to anyway.
He had learned that the life of a Ronin was rarely fair. Less so as a mercenary, even lesser when fighting for the Mawite fanatics. Though his goals were solely separate from theirs. Their conflict brought them to blows against the entirety of the galaxy. To fight with them meant the odds would not be fair. But that was how the Greats made names for themselves, wasn't it?
Dark eyes stared at the Ashina before him, his own sister, the first for him to cross blades with. The first of the Ashina he'd have to take down to get where he wanted to be. A necessary sacrifice. He'd give it to her cleanly, no matter how much she spouted the vitriolic denial and shame unto him.
"No," head shaking. "I chose my path apart from the Ashina name."
As far as the words he spoke, Qiy'on spoke true. He had wondered the stars, not as Qiy'on, the Dark, or as the Black, but as nobody. He had exiled himself, not solely from Atrisia and the Hebo Estate, but from his own identity. The only thing he retained from the past were his memories, and the lessons that had been ingrained into his everyday life.
His head shook again. She wouldn't understand. She couldn't understand, what it was like to be an outsider.
Both a drive to feel accepted, but the reality of being different.
She couldn't.
Not with a Father whose name was respected and feared, and a grandfather who was the same. They were not his blood, but Qiy'on knew of their exploits. He could not say the same for his biological grandfather. He was a forgotten man that he had never known, and his own blood father was much the same. The Ashina's Way was what he was raised with, but in the end, it had ultimately been his choice to be his own person.
To be a Jedi, to retain the name Ashina, no, that was the path she had gone on. It was not independence, it was not even her choice; It was a willing servitude to destiny. He created his own path, denied the familial ties that'd usher him down the path of Ashla. He was the Lost, and he would find his own way.
They were close now, and his blades flashed in at her. The first, his sabre was avoided, ushered up and over her shoulder as she stepped into his wingspan again. She was small, weaker, from outward appearances one could never have anticipated the stunt she'd pull.
The Steel sunk into her wounded thigh, and she pushed herself through it. The action alone as his arm reached out to his collar, the size differential irrelevant as his eyes widened in surprise and disbelief. The blade sunk almost past the halfway point, and by then, he knew nothing but pain, as the butt of her sabre crashed into his sternum.
First was the wound created by her laser sword cutting its edge across his bicep. Searing pain gave way to the death grip he had on his saber laxing and dropping in a single moment, as his shocked eyes snapped to the wound. Singed through robes gave way to the burnt and seared flesh underneath, a gaping wound that he hadn't the time to process as wounds, long since forgotten flooded his sensations.
His genetic physiology had always ensured that he'd heal quickly from non-fatal wounds. Scars almost never formed on his body, not unless the wound had struck deep enough. Even covered in all his robings, she should've never seen it. The path of a blade that he failed in protecting himself against. One of the first occurrences where the Ashina youth had sparred with edged blades.
Of course she would've known, for it was her, who had struck the blow.
But it was not the only wound that awoke from times past. Both visibly healed on his naked body, and those that were too shallow to generate a blemish once healed, were aflame. It reminded him of the ripping and tearing that had caused them. Rocks, as he climbed the waterfall during the final Trial of the Carp. The searing heat of a saber from the Sith whose lightsabre he'd stolen after defeating them in his wanderings as a Ronin.
The pain was enough to shatter his repressed mind into breaking. His body - already in the midst of toppling over - crashed into the cracked duracrete.
It was unfit!
Unfair!
The thoughts he could barely form as he screamed aloud. It was one of agony, one that curdled blood and caused bones to quiver as the empyrean empowered it. Years of physical taxation, of toil and punishment were reborn, all at the same time as the suffering poured out from his mouth. The ethereal gave voice in his weakness. The unquestionable cold that rolled off of him during his screams only comparable to forcefully induced fear; it was of the make of the Dark Side.
His once dark orbs were alight with fury and rage, only focused on the white-haired Ashina as a deluge of salted tears flooded and blurred his sight and streaked down the sides of his face as closed wounds pulsed as if they were alive.
The Force Scream was all that was manifested from his maw, unintelligible words that would've shattered the wills of those lesser, if there had been any nearby.
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