Once Awake

[jadus]

He had read the signs, seen the inevitable diminution. The fall of Adas had opened the galaxy to the sith, and yet his advisors already tore them apart. Could he rule such a people? Perhaps. But it would break him to try, and he would not permit this. Remaining in the shadows too would be pointless. Instead, he would travel to a most secluded vault, hidden on a planet deep within the Stygian Caldera, the dense and treacherous nebula that protected their world.

He left final gifts to his most faithful, and then sealed himself in, alone. His body joined with the half-living alchemy within. Cold, stinging fumes hissed into his lungs, and every breath came slower. His heart beat twenty times in a minute.

Twelve.
Two.

None.

His mind persisted. It was almost free of his body, almost what it should be, but the cold still touched it as well, slowing his thoughts to the scale of decades. The galaxy seemed to roiled with life and pain and fear, shimmering with ceaseless change. At first, it was overwhelming.

But there were patterns. He could not yet describe their form nor predict their course. They were intriguing. And he had so much time to study them.

He was oblivious to the smaller, briefer things around him. He stared unblinking through twenty-four thousand years. His presence in the Force seemed to almost have melded with the land itself, his presence had so thoroughly tainted it over the centuries. But he remained at its center, deathly still yet somehow living.

No one had found him since his servants had departed, and so undisturbed his meditation could persist for eons more.

The vault was set deep into stable, solid bedrock. The water that had once dug these caverns ran dry millennia ago. Though creatures that could stand the Dark made their home here, they avoided the passage that led to him. He had been aware of them much as he had felt the rest of the galaxy: in aggregate, a rustling of many limbs and lives in the darkness.

In this myriad of years, the sith were of little interest to him. The invaders driven from Korriban still shaped the galaxy, and he watched the darkness they wove into steel. Then suddenly, they were gone. Wars guttered in their absence, arcing from the galaxy's core to the rim. A world that had split in two spread a poisonous Light that pained him to witness, but it cast more shadows in its wake. A wave of minds crawled from the core.

In the next myriad, something far distant caught his attention, beyond the galaxy's edge. The loss of something he had not consciously seen before its end. He dimly saw something in its echo, but the nothingness was swallowed up by the roiling of the worlds around him: the core fractured, a new palace of misery to the east, while to the west, twisting skeins of gravity kept the worlds beyond enmeshed in their own constructs of conflict and life. The piercing Light retreated, pushed outward, and broke itself again. The jagged edges left in its wake sprang up around him, bleeding the Sith until they mirrored the light. He felt no grief, only growing disinterest in their fate. The more he meditated, the more the patterns of the Force itself began to make sense.

In this millennium, a sudden crescendo. A war pushed outward from the worlds around him like a wave, then retreated. All around him, death. And then, so soon as to be almost instant, absence. A hole where a planet had once been, an echoing void. He watched the remains, but there were few stirrings in the darkness to explain it. An event in passing. But it slowed his thoughts with consideration. There was a Dark that left it, singular, splitting, settling, leeching. It was of interest, but there was something he had seen in the nothingness it left behind. He would need more time to think on it.

In these centuries, the growing Dark reached hidden tendrils across the galaxy. The formless Light rose in brittle spires, rotted through, and shattered. The Dark around it fed mindlessly on it, but there was no will to shape it further. He was now so vast and uncaring, but even he could reach out with slow sieving grasp and catch those echoes, draw them out into filaments of pure, glimmering fire. In its shimmer, he saw the forms of great and distant things.

Another world disappeared, and this time he stared directly into its un-light, heard the chord it sang for only the briefest moment. In this flash he saw again, and it was as he had desired.

In these years, the shock of seeing had been too much to sustain. He retreated back into cold, into something forgotten.

And in these lengthening days, he grew to dim awareness: something crawled along his surfaces.

He did not see the smooth black curves of his vault, or hear the voices it stole to whisper with. It had done this before, and each time it brought conflict and ruin to the bare rock above, the caves it nested in, the door it had refused to open.

Comments

[jadus]

He watched the Miraluka key in the destination. He had expected more suspicion. More questioning. But its thoughts were already turned towards later plans. Later lies. It was an obvious trap, one he would not pretend to have missed.

"I do not know if you will reconsider." Not freely. "But this ship must move in stealth as it approaches its destination. I can hide it from the minds of others, but I cannot guarantee that knowledge of this place is safe. If your maps do not contain this place, then it has been deliberately hidden by the creature you now call Emperor." He did not know that for certain. His view of the events had been so brief. But he would learn the truth.

"If you find this too much to bear, say it now."

[tagential]

“Then I’ll activate stealth once we get closer,” Edwon said, no pause or hesitation. Actually, that sounded intriguing, and personally he wasn’t especially worried about angering the Emperor. It might get him killed, or tortured, or worse, but that possibility had never stopped him before. It only encouraged him.

He dropped back down into his chair. “You don’t waste time, do you? Five minutes awake, and you’re already trying to uncover the Emperor’s secrets.” He was actually a little impressed. “Personally I’d at least get a drink first, maybe some dinner.”

He’d have to postpone his report now. And he’d have to come up with an excuse for his delay. That wouldn’t be a problem. Finding a way to make that report without Jadus trying to stop him was still his biggest challenge, assuming he made it back from wherever he was taking him.

[jadus]

"There will be time to do so as the ship travels." He could only read the estimated time to arrival through Cipher Nine, but it gave him enough of a sense of it. Besides, he was only still awakening, and his body was slowly becoming aware of its own needs and desires.

[tagential]

“R8 is already preparing a meal,” Edwon said. He stretched his legs out. There were more comfortable chairs elsewhere, but he didn’t feel like moving yet. Thankfully, he could send his droid messages from here. “I’ll have it bring us a drink now.”

[jadus]

When he concentrated, he could feel the movement of something in the ship, but no readable presence in the Force.

"You use droids as your servants?" He was not incredulous, simply learning. He did not know how many of these things resided in the galaxy. Perhaps he should consider how to sense their actions for his future meditation.

[tagential]

“We do. You didn’t?” Maybe he should start asking Jadus more questions about the time he was from. “You’ll find droids everywhere in the galaxy now. R8 takes care of most of the menial tasks on the ship, which means I can focus all of my attention on my missions. Plus, I’m a terrible cook.”

[jadus]

"The shaping of metal was not what drew the interest of our engineers. They worked in stone and crystal to shape the energies of Korriban." Their contributions had been valuable to him. "The shell of my vault was of their design." As was the cargo he had taken with him to the ship. He had left the heavy black case sitting near the airlock, sealed shut and inert.

"We learned of droids from our invaders, but found little use of the idea. Creations that can be sensed and controlled with a thought held more promise to us."

[tagential]

“Personally I think droids are convenient,” Edwon said. “Especially since most of the galaxy isn’t Force sensitive, it hasn’t been trained.”

Which was the moment R8 arrived with their drinks, and his exclamations of “Here you are, Master! I made it to perfection for you! I’m so happy to see you return in one piece, Master, I’ve scrubbed the whole ship twice in your absence!”

Droids could be a bit obnoxious, but R8 definitely made a mean drink. He took the two glasses from him, and sent him back to finish dinner. Then he held out one of the glasses to Jadus.

“I wasn’t sure what your preferences were,” he said, neglecting to mention that he’d ordered R8 to make it strong.

[jadus]

"Without sensitivity?" His tone was still even, but evidently surprised. Force-blindness was rare among the Sith, and the Rakata that had come to them had also had power. Only the aliens' slave races had been without talent, and there had been debate as to how the Rakata had severed them from something so fundamental. Even Massassi and Grotthu Sith could sense the world as others could.

He watched the groveling construct, but with only marginal interest. It did not seem any more advanced than the Rakatan droids that had floated and skittered behind their masters, first extolling the virtues of the Infinite Empire, then screeching its wrath when Adas had rebuffed them. Perhaps this one could kill as well, but if it could, it hid that capacity more thoroughly.

He took the glass, studying it for a moment, dipping a grooved fingertip into the liquid. No poison that he could taste. Simply an abundance of alcohol. The smooth shell of his face retracted, sliding just far enough over his skull to reveal lips that were almost like those of a sith. "Clean and uncontaminated will suffice," he said, and his mouth opened but did not move as he spoke. Something not entirely like a tongue curled inside it, visible for a brief moment before he brought the glass to his lips and drank.

[tagential]

“Did everyone control the Force in your time?” Edwon was surprised as well. The Sith as he knew them would never be happy with that situation, not if it meant having to share their power with people they considered lesser. And the Jedi held similar views, even if they’d argue that they didn’t. “Was that just the Sith as you knew them, or other species as well?”

He sipped his own drink, his mind on Jadus, curiously, as he investigated what he’d been given. As a species, he definitely felt like something unfamiliar, though maybe not entirely distinct. It was impossible to tell for him, with how the different species had evolved over the millennia. He clearly wasn’t entirely organic, either. Some sort of cyborg?

“If you like it, I’ll have R8 make us some more to go with dinner,” he said. His next question was whether or not Jadus could get drunk, and what would happen if he did. He’d find out soon enough.

[jadus]

He drank, considering the odd taste as it flowed into him. Though the Miraluka might not see it in the Force, the liquid was just barely visible through the translucent layers of his throat. A quiet sigh was his only acknowledgement of the burn it left behind.

"We knew only ourselves, our Rakata invaders, and their slaves. We assumed there were more, but we had yet to reach them." Only the most myopic thought they were alone. How could they be, when the Force was so universal? "Their slaves were blind to it, but most considered it an affliction worked upon them by the Rakata." There had been doubts, of course, but it was useful to intimate to the people that the Rakata were monsters that would blind them and rip their spirits from their families. "Perhaps it was true. They conquered many peoples before they found us."

As to the drink... "It is acceptable." Cipher Nine was likely attempting to render him drunk. Whether he acquiesced or not was yet to be decided.

[tagential]

"Not all species are sensitive. Though it wouldn't surprise me if more have the potential than the Sith like to pretend." He shrugged, unconcerned, because he really had never been interested in it himself. There were too many downsides to becoming a Sith. The short life-expectancy didn't bother him, but that attitude they all had didn't suit him at all. He wasn't one for shows of brute strength, either.

"The Rakata are long gone. The Sith met humans, and are not an entirely separate species anymore. A lot has changed." And if that bothered Jadus, that wasn't his problem, though he had a feeling it wouldn't make much difference to the man. He seemed like the type to want to judge other people either way. "Maybe the Force has changed as well."

He didn't know. He wouldn't know. He'd finished about half his drink, which wasn't enough to get him drunk, but it was enough for him to start pretending to be tipsy. Though at the moment, exhaustion was a factor as well, so it wasn't completely an act. "I take it you were Sith? There was something familiar about you."

[jadus]

His body was still cold and slow, but the drink was hot within him. He had fasted before his hibernation, and the drink would fill him more quickly now. With meditation he could banish the effects, but he did not care to.

"It has. It always will. As life changes, so does the Force." Adas had been powerful enough to shape both to his will, even stand against it for a time. but in the end, it had not been enough.

But the changes he had witnessed in the years since then still puzzled him in some ways. "Why did the Sith become Jedi? Did these Humans do that as well?"

[tagential]

The question surprised Edwon enough that he laughed, and had to put his glass down to avoid spilling it. "Please, ask a Sith that question," he said. He wanted to be there for that, somewhere in the background, just to watch the outrage, the indignation. He laughed harder imagining it.

"But it was actually the other way around. There's too much propaganda on both sides, so I don't know exactly what happened, but some Jedi split from the Jedi order - they were human, you had that part right - and they met the Sith on Korriban, they had some fun together, and they created the Sith Empire from there."

He picked up his glass again, just to lift it in a mock toast. "The things we can do if we work together."

[jadus]

Evidently he had found some new question that would be an inconvenience to those that thought themselves important. This was, intentionally and not, a pattern in his life.

He gestured a no. "The sith had changed, but their vestiges ceased to exist when the Jedi came."

But knowing the history of his own people, the toast was especially ironic. "As god-king Adas bade us say before his fall and our fracturing: Joined as one." It had caused him no particular pain to proclaim it as well. That was not the part of Adas' tenets that had stood in his way.

He drained his glass and set it aside, the shell of his face sliding back into place.

[tagential]

“You should tell them that, too. But only if you want a fight.” He was still grinning as he finished off his own drink. “They’re going to hate you.”

Which wasn’t his problem. He would try to avoid getting caught in the middle of it, and let them fight it out between themselves. Unless Jadus really planned on just hiding, and somehow pulled that off. Edwon doubted it.

He tilted his head, mind still on Jadus, trying to figure him out. He felt something sliding across the man’s face. “Is that actually part of you? I can’t tell.” He wondered if having eyes would make a difference, though in his experience, people with eyes tended to miss a lot. “You feel... strange. No offense.”

[jadus]

"They will. It is inevitable." Even those that loved him had often hated him too.

"It is all myself, and of my own making." He extended an arm to within the agent's reach, offering contact if it was sought. His skin was dry, perfectly smooth on the harder plate that protected his forearms, the rest shot through with texture. He was warmer now, but the heat was only just beginning to reach his fingertips.

"I remade myself as I saw fit, and I shall continue to change." And now that his creations would not be in tribute to Adas, he could remake others as well.

[tagential]

"And you don't care about being hated?" He had to ask.

He also couldn't pass up that offer. He pulled off a glove and then reached out, fingers trailing gently over the strange arm at first. It didn't feel like skin, but it didn't feel like anything else he could place, either. A little too cold, maybe. He allowed himself to touch higher up his arm, a little more firmly now, just to see if he'd react to the touch at all, curious how sensitive he was.

"I've met cyborgs, but this is different," he said. And maybe the alcohol combined with his exhaustion had been a bad idea after all, because now he grinned a little again. "What's the rest of your body like?"

[jadus]

"Do you?" It was evident from Cipher Nine's behavior that it made many enemies, and that fact did not bother it.

"Another word that tastes of metal." It was easier for him to understand now, as the Miraluka became less guarded towards his presence. "I am flesh, worked into shape and function by the Force." The body was a place for the mind to do its work, and he had built himself into a more pleasing shape.

His hand lightly grasped Cipher Nine's arm, pulling him slowly closer. "You may answer your own question." It was as clear an invitation as any.

[tagential]

He shrugged. "It's their choice if they do or not."

He let Jadus pull him to his feet and then closer, surprise readable on his face even with a blindfold obscuring half his expression. But the gesture had caught him completely off guard. And then a second later his grin was back, and he pulled off his other glove as well, dropping it to the floor.

He stroked a hand straight up Jadus' chest, feeling life and strength, nothing like touching a cyborg, nothing like touching armor, nothing like touching a Sith. It was easier to get a sense of him with his mind now, too, the picture in his head becoming clearer. It was all him. There was nothing that didn't feel alive.

"So you can feel every touch?" His other hand stroked up to his shoulder, though the height difference made it slightly awkward for him. "Can you protect yourself from pain as well?"

[jadus]

"I feel pain when I wish to do so." He accepted the touch, supporting Cipher Nine as the Miraluka's reach extended beyond the point of easy balance. Before that moment, even. As Cipher Nine relaxed, he could observe more subtle parts of its mind and intent. "As I feel all other things."

[tagential]

"So are you a masochist, or is there another reason to feel pain?" He was almost tempted to pinch him just to see, but he didn't want to push too far, and, more importantly, whatever Jadus' self-made skin was, it wasn't easy to pinch. That was definitely a design flaw.

He got up on tiptoe and touched higher, stroking his neck, and then the back of his head. But he was tall, too tall, so he switched to feeling lower. Were those robes, and were they alive? That had to be impractical, and made him wonder what was under them. "How does someone like you like being touched?"

[jadus]

"Sensation is a fundamental aspect of how we shape the Force. To shy away from pain is to deny what could be made from it."

At the unvoiced questions, his robes flexed slightly, then split into wide ribbons of living cloth. "A question that has never been asked. When sith desire intimacy, our minds are joined." Why ask, when you could simply know?

[tagential]

Edwon tilted his head. "So you have masochistic tendencies."

He might be teasing. He might be feeling a little out of his depth here, but that had never stopped him before. The robe changed suddenly, and he jumped, fingers gripping tight for a second. But it wasn't enough to distract him from the implications.

"So you're in my mind." He stated it as a fact, and he sounded slightly annoyed. He couldn't help it, though it wasn't like it was a surprise. That's how Jadus understood him, wasn't it? And Edwon had invited him to do it. It was unnerving, but he'd let it go.

"I'm not sure if you've noticed, but I'm no Sith." Teasing again. And, in fact - Jadus was asking for it. He twirled a finger around one of the robe-tentacles and then tugged, just to see if he'd feel pain, just because he wanted to know if he'd like it. "I'll just experiment, then."

[jadus]

Finally, realization. "That remains unchanged." Of course he was. He would do so regardless of Cipher Nine's wishes. What reason did he have to deny that to himself?

"You have been made to understand my words. You can also be made to understand more." The tendril and two others beside it wrapped around Cipher Nine's arm, pulling him closer.