Two Irons (Part 12.)
The world around you suffered loss of texture and clarity, atrocity and grief blurred everything into a characterless smear. All sharp, repeating modular construction had been swept clean of angles and precision, replaced by a flurry of arcane brushstrokes. Where you were once sure of the General's pronounced cheekbones, carved out in his sophisticated cruelty, did he newly appear as a matted red and black gathering.
He said nothing else. Not that you had wanted him to. You couldn’t say anything either, condemned by a vacant throat and numbed tongue, pressed against your teeth. Words and phrases furloughed through about your mind, all in recognizable language but jarringly useless.
An intense anger rooted around at your core. You fought to suppress it from spitting and shaking with unmeasured voltage. Even if you had been able to produce sound, even if you could scream or argue, Nines was lost and words were an inadequate device.
The General had surely understood, without needing to personally assess the damage, that he had sufficiently broken you. Hands, not made to shield or protect, closed around you.
He allowed the evacuated administration block to further punctuate the message, judiciously. In your isolation, nothing existed but tremulous thump-thumping of your own heart as it resisted the unsympathetic stillness, the gravid indoor silence of an empty facility. No echo of footsteps from others, swirling in the adjacent hallways, or shrieking of droids, could be found.
Why are you still here? What are you waiting for?
You would be afforded no particle of assurance from the shrewd General, having been appraised and found that knowledge made you hazardous. For your nerve denying authority, after having earnestly gut you with the intent to leave you out to dry, he made sure that he had took from you what he wanted most– everything in his power to take.
You recalled the churning of the General's greatcoat in stride from your last meeting. How the heavy fabric pulled gracefully in the air and how had unintentionally revealed a blaster clipped to his uniform’s belt.
I’d sooner be blasted into smithereens than let you see me cry. If that’s what you’re waiting for...
You felt your eyes itch but would not permit it, somehow containing tears as they drew themselves up from the colossal pit in your stomach. It was too easy to be angry, to give yourself into the rage. You could hear it moving and shaking in agitation, bubbling to the surface.
Still, complete self-denial proved impossible. You could feel your expression contort.
The General’s eyes, ghostly and righteous, watched you struggle with muted, personal approval. A reflexive grimace, the cocking of his head.
The expression struck you with the stealth of a crashing TIE fighter; something about the neat, equine thin-lipped sneer that made the next moments warp and swell. You had every right to be upset. Nines had his mind scrambled. You were allowed to be furious.
And then you were.
Blinking transformed his face, then his whole being, which flickered into and out the plausible borders of reality. He twisted about, a lapse in your imagination once again, showing his bloody face warped and eerily glitching like damaged security footage. Red, glistening and crude, slowly leaked from his nostrils and down to his lips, bubbling over his mouth and pouring to fill in the spaces between an animated leer.
You think I have nothing left. I have nothing but reason.
Allowing the feelings to rush through your system brought the world back into focus. Though you were conscious of the hated that ignited and it’s toxic properties, you allowed yourself to freely indulge in the heat; it was the only feeling that would deceive your halting mind into feeling remotely satisfied.
“You would have done the same.”
No dip or nod of his head, no signal to you that he had felt even the lamest sting of remorse. His hands folded, lacing together behind his narrow back, before the heel of his boot soundlessly turned on the floors.
I would have done the same?
In the name of settling the score, of some perverse idea of fairness and payback, your being erupted with desire to observe him sentenced to the very same treatment that he prescribed Nines. Watching the General gradually disappear down the end of the corridor with eyes that burned into his back, you imagined raking your hands through his neurotically immaculate mane, shaking free the heavy scent of pomade. You imagined the inhumane straps necessary to render him immobile and plugging him into whatever monster of an apparatus that would snarl and twist his wits.
You imagined tugging his head back on his neck and letting him gaze upon you in deserved terror in his final moments of owning his mind. You would let the General’s eyes, unable to focus through confusion and panic, become symbolic of your victory.
You’re right, General. Maybe I would.
Loosing yourself, or being broken down piece-by-terrible-piece, felt all the same. In the end, each spiteful act would erode you, a product of your cruel circumstances. Previews of violence seized you, leaving you shuttering in denial whether it was at all in your control at all to stunt them.
Each time, the hate settled a deeper, rose faster.
The General ensured, that you would for another night, sleep well. Although without meaning to, after leaving the block and returning to your quarters to rest, the dream that Nines had painted out to you in your final moments had unfolded around you.
The horizon pulled back, only to sigh and bloom, heaving out flora. You could feel the air turning through created branches, singing, bringing you the cool, clean smell of shoreline lilies and other hydrophytes. The described castle dressed, in all manner of banners, sitting just behind you next to an unblemished body of water. Mesmerized by the remarkable height of the trees, all swaying in the spot but firmly anchored by their ancient trunks, you were immediately delimited by the natural world, a sight you hadn’t seen for some time.
Though this was Nines’ vision, he was missing. Your only company was the gentle breeze, tumbling about you as you made gradual movements.
Step by slow step, removing your standardized boots with ungraceful tugging and dragging of your heels, to allow your feet to rest against something other than sterile tile floors and steel. They bathed in the soft carpet of overgrown grass, kicking free dew from tall blades as you strayed from the path.
You had long forgotten the simple luxury of feeling earth under you, feeling a connection to the natural world and the gradual process of healing that came with it. For not having seen your home planet, in person or on a star chart, Nines had correctly assumed you would have a fondness for the place. You yearned for a name, just as you had found one for the forgotten observation deck, as if a title was something you could wrap your fingers over and claim. It offered you nothing. Nothing save for a dull buzzing sound. You moved with necessity.
Crackling with electricity as you approached a small clearing, the buzzing was connected to a curious object that had been branching and alive with currents and causing the earth around it to jump back. In full armor, next to the item, Nines was sprawled through the rubble. Rushing to where he lay, you nudged him as you looked for a sign of movement. Nothing. Hastily, you then searched for a pulse, pulling at his gauntlets bespattered by the muck you stood in. Nothing, still.
Freedom had found him at last, freedom that softened his expression and wrapped him in motionlessness. He failed to mention in his spectacular hallucinations that this dream was of his death. You wanted desperately to believe that you had misinterpreted what he had said, but no such comfort was available.
“What happened to you?”
The blue of the sky dissolved, leaving darkness to wash over everything. The shadow you cast behind your back, crept along the ground, away from your body until it became one with the encroaching blackness that swallowed the world.
Dirt, warmed by the sun under your toes, replaced by cold tile; skin doesn’t lie, it only reports.
The hallway. Fixing before you, the silhouette of Matt, just as you had seen him before. Only this time, the body on the floor was not a stranger– you saw the face of Lieutenant Colonel Zack.
Matt then turned to you. You understood the look; you understood it meant you needed to run. But as hard as you tried to put one foot in front of the other, to create distance and loose the whites of his eyes, you were frozen in place.
The ground shook. One large rumble.
Another.
Another.
Then the last— and it was in that moment when you rocketed upright and let your quarters settle around you. Focus darting about the perimeter of your room, you solidified your location as you felt a vicious cold sweat plastered at your brow. No endless forests in sight, only the synthetic confines and winter beyond abiding walls.
Burdened with further cerebral symptoms, you were unable to set aside what you assumed to be the saddle of foresight. It was understood that you would have to watch and wait if you were to understand if it was a prophecy or a fluke. Letting your head to flop forward on your neck, you prayed to the makers that it was just a poorly executed patchwork of all your stressors and nothing more.
What could any of it mean?
Socialization was nominal, adding hours onto your day. Morale in your sector had suffered a tremendous blow with FN-2199’s absence; no one was interested in laughing and joking. It felt disrespectful. The room was occupied by stooped postures. Day two of collective mourning proved more severe than the first, it had sunk in that Nines wasn’t coming back and no one wanted to talk about it.
You had been waiting for the Lieutenant Colonel to come by as he always had, impatient to continue your last conversation about the FN-corps and Dr. Thos, plans you had never been aware of and still did not believe to be truthful. After significant suspension, waiting to the very moment you were to leave did he finally shuffle into the room.
Everything about the Lieutenant Colonel’s body language was irregular, he always managed a certain confidence about his motions. It was only as you got closer could you see why. Dusting the bridge of his nose, his skin broke into maroons and purples and blues. At his eyes, cheek. A constellation of bruises and cuts, uncharacteristically solemn eyes hiding amid.
What happened to you?
Your mind moved faster than you intended. It persuaded you to believe that the radar technician had hunted after Zack just as he had done to you before.
Still offering a kind look towards you, his seriousness melted at the sight of you and the worry radiating from your stare. Without drawing attention to himself, he held his face still and high, looking down through heartsick pupils.
“They’re watching,” skill of a ventriloquist, through closed lips.
They.
You knew it was one of two people. You were sure you had inadvertently been the cause.
He offered you a kind look, wincing as he did though a nasty black eye and split lip. You hadn’t noticed the thermajug he held nervously at his side, until he pressed it into your hand, “Maybe caf will cheer you up?”
Are you kidding me right now?
“I don’t want it, but thanks.” You had to wonder what kind of pain meds had he taken to make him assume the offer was an appropriate gesture.
His voice overlapped yours, as if you hadn’t just refused or said anything at all. Proudly, he tapped the top of the canister, “Try it!”
His enthusiasm over the trivial offering frustrated you, “I’d rather not, Zack.”
“I insist. It’ll perk you right up.”
The look on his face alone was one you couldn’t deny twice. As he held the canister out for you with a now trembling arm, it was less complicated to just except the offer.
“Let me know what you think of it.”
Gesturing without making much more physical movement, his eyes moved past you to the doorway, saying it was time for you to leave without really saying anything at all.
What have I done? What did he do to you? Oh, stars, I’m sorry.
You had no motivation to do the job, or pretend to. Instead, you sat in the chair, staring blankly at the monitor, moving memories about the basement of your brain. The interface of your data programs waited patiently for you but you were so stuck inside your own head that you might as well had powered the console down.
Twisting the cap of the thermajug off, in a moment of curiosity, you laid it open on your desk. A crumpled piece of flimsi was stuffed inside the lid. You wondered if it had been stashed inside by accident. Unfolding the message then pressing it to the desk to tame the creases, it read in shiny red ink, in what you assumed had been the Lieutenant Colonel’s hand:
E. A. Zack | Thos – Avel
You nearly fell out of your chair.
Avel has a brother. The psytech.
Your eyes, unable to focus or stare any longer at the scrap before you searched beyond. There were files spread across your desk that you hadn't bothered sorting. More plast. Upon closer inspection, you found a copy of Lieutenant Colonel Zack’s profile. Someone had gone to the trouble of underlining that his record stated "N/A" for next of kin.
The First Order doesn't know.
Foolishly, you looked over your shoulder. You had a sneaking suspicion that you were being watched. Checking proved you were still alone. You returned to the paper, insisting the need to double-check.
They don't know you have another son. They don't know he works for them.
Shuffling the files around, you found that whoever had left the document for you had also included a request for an interrogation chamber. Pushing your chair back as you stood, you moved to the refresher, stuffing the documents in the sink before turning the tap on.
Plast dissolved. The fastest, safest way to dispose of it. You didn’t want to have to explain the documents, should anyone crop up for a gratuitous check-up.
Who keeps doing this?
You hadn’t noticed, through your impulsive and fevered movements, that you had started tearing up. Mad tears, bitter tears. Your bad luck brought a plague, moving through everything you valued, silently dismantling it. Between the General and the Commander, you would soon have nothing left.
From outside the refresher, there was soft beeping. A holocomm pulled you back to the desk. Setting yourself back in your seat, you answered before common sense could advise you otherwise.
Met by a projection of Kylo Ren, mask and all, you studied the soulless porthole which he surveyed you through. At least you weren’t subjected to his eyes and the stare that came with it. It could have been worse, it invariably had been.
Though whatever he was going to stay, he didn’t. Your tears fully confused him. There was a long bout of silence before he had a voice.
“Stop.”
“Stop what?” You asked, even as you understood what he meant. From his command, it was clear to you that he was largely unsure how to handle emotional outbursts; others or his own. He made a point to ignore you, as if you had stopped.
The computerized beryl recreation of his profile was easier to speak to; easier being relative. You amended his discomfort, asking a question you would never dare to had he appeared in the room in the flesh, “How’s Matt?”
No reply. No nod of his head, no movement as if he was contemplating to scold you for asking such a senseless question. You guessed behind the mask, his eyes narrowed.
“Thanks for everything, by the way.”
He was stoic.
You spoke again to clarify, dragging your sleeve under both eyes, feeling the itch of a tear streaking down to the top of your lip, “I saw what you did to the Lieutenant Colonel.”
He turned from you, still in view. Pulling up information on monitors, you saw the screen mirrored in the reflective portion of his helmet. Once he had turned back to you, his voice changed, “I had nothing to do with that.”
He had been thickly distorted, not only by the vocabulator, but by his own anger as it mutated. He was livid, spitting under his helmet.
The General. The General interrogated Zack.
Resentful, with chopped syllables, but low and cold, “My quarters. Now.”
The hologram collapsed into itself.
Upon leaving your office after much indecision— I’ll just stay in this room for the rest of my life— a pair of stormtroopers had been waiting outside for you. One positioned at either side of the door, symmetrically cradling blasters across their chests. You said nothing to either and moved.
After some time and with the door to the Commander’s private quarters in sight, one of the stormtroopers used the stock of his blaster as they knocked for entry. The sound it made as it struck the surface grated on you; it was getting harder and harder to liberally recall anything on the base that evoked a good feeling, let alone neutrality.
The door, with hiss, opened. Through your peripherals, the trooper motioned again with the blaster, remaining outside as the hatch shut behind you. For the second time, you stood in enemy territory, as the noxious atmosphere compressed your chest.
Chrome and coal with melancholic luster, the space itself was awkwardly barren with a quiet luxury embedded in the details around you. You had missed so much with the lights off. You had missed appreciating the tessellated reflective onyx that ran over the ground, likely rare stone from some inaccessible planet. The surface you had slept on, blankets twisted and unmade, creating ribbons and grooves in the sheets.
Aside from the state of the bed, the room maintained impeccable cleanliness, like that of a museum. No hint of personal items and all surfaces left uncluttered. Nothing on the polished desk, nothing along the bookshelves. Everything he owned was either hidden away in small compartments lining the walls, or, simply still, he had nothing. No attachment to material goods or people, for the matter.
Of the doors that sliced up the room, one had likely lead to a closet, some locker that held his ridiculous disguise. It was strange to imagine that Matt existed at all when you observed his ceremonial dress, the heavy fabrics dripping off his body as they had now. It was stranger still to imagine he may have owned clothes you had never seen him wear, naturally assuming the Commander would look equally ludicrous in normal attire. You had always known him to be more than human, with flesh as durable and resilient as metal.
Draped in vaporous robes, the usual, light from the falling sun stabbed his supernatural costume. The Commander showed you the broad of his back. Dark hair, falling in limp ringlets and waves told you that he had removed his helmet in anticipation for your meeting, though you did not feel wholly prepared for his face and all of it’s deadened expressions and low, sweet voice. Metallic thrashing, the inelegant scraping of his modulator, made it vastly easier to disassociate the Commander from a human than his expected voice.
Sharp, alive. Not quite a command, but his voice pulled at you as if it had been, “Lieutenant Colonel Zack was interrogated by General Hux without my knowledge. You’re going to tell me why.”
I bet you already know why...
“I do, yes.” He challenged you, still, not deeming you worthy of his full attention as he spoke without turning to face you. Fortunately, with the helmet gone, there was depth in his words and you found advantage in gauging his reaction by the slight color of his tone. “I want you to tell me.”
I don’t know.
“Liar,” he seethed, voice hardening and body crumbling. He moved, his hands collected at his sides into fists. His full attention was now yours. You fell inside his sight lines with a turn of his head. With his pronounced jaw quivering, he began speaking as if he was trying to convince himself first, before you, “You can’t protect him. Or yourself.”
Just as the intrusive whispering in his brain had assured him, or had conditioned him, to think. The voice he had listened to and obeyed all his life– “See, young master, they are weakened by their connections... Sever one and you slowly kill them all... Don’t let them hold you back from your destiny, sever yourself from others and become free.”
Searching for the words in the space between you, you felt safer at the distance but not as brave as you preferred. He hadn’t killed you yet; you were banking that he still needed you for some reason. Your voice trembled as thought transposed into sound, “I have to.”
He took in a breath, facing away from you once again as he did so to collect himself. You were treading in dangerous territory by the way his spine curved him forward, and hands collected into fists. “I understand freedom,” his voice low, dogmatic, “How it creates rebels... traitors..." The inflection of the word made it even more ugly. Spoken and repeated to nausea.
“I understand the First Order creates murderers,” you respond with less quivering in your voice, to the very best of your ability. It would have ran through your mind regardless, speech or not, he would have felt your bias. “They created you, didn’t they?”
Movement. He stirred. A single, dreadful step towards you, monitoring your response and seemingly delighted by your fear. Taking no efforts to hide his emotions, he conveyed it all.
You shook your head, defiantly, speaking again in a voice you hadn't been aware that you owned, “But they failed. They couldn’t make FN-2187 a murderer." Your own eyes widened at the words, surprised they had come from you. A bad taste to him.
FN-2187 is strong. You’re weak.
“You will either help me,” a gloved hand rose, to stifle you, “or you will die.” Advancing, until he could lean in, words soft again. You felt the warmth of his exhale as he murmured, “What will you choose?”
The disgusting claustrophobic intimacy again. The absence of tenderness, the soft blood-filled cavity. You both noticed the insult of closeness too late. There was strain, disgrace, breaking over him like a tide. Something, so startling about his face; how it was rounded and curved, continuously hinting at the child he had once been. You wished him older, scars and broken bones. Had his face, under the mask, looked sharper or worn, it would have fit him.
Your mind unwilling recounted the moment when he proved there was someone else behind the veil, the deception of his rage. You had seen him. Not a monster, but as a human.
Like now, once again. Almost like you. Something familiar in his face, and even worse, something caged inside his chest, reaching for his heart. A familiar light, purpose.
His face turned with rage as you made the association, striking like sheet-lightning. Your consciousness nimble, from your skull to the bottom of your spine.
That’s why you care so deeply, isn’t it? You envy him, me. Us. You know you’ll never be free.
He tore away from you, cape swallowing him and further billowing in all his sharp movements. Blackness. He yelled in certain, unhinged frustration. Your body understood his feral energy, to which it recoiled physically, as if to pull yourself into a safer distance.
His dominant hand reached for his lightsaber, pulling it free from his side. A phoenix bursting forward with fire and light. You heard it, the blade breathing and shuddering. The ethereal glow of a flame simultaneously growing and dying. It stayed at his side, his arm locked. Panting, breathless.
“Go.”
You couldn’t stop the words, “I’m right, aren’t I?” You hoped for his motionlessness, to freeze where he stood as the touch had done to him. You planted hope in each sound, the opiate of belief, waiting for him to be tranquilized once again.
The person underneath. You would force him back.
His lips pulled tightly, swallowing back words. More heaving. Tapping the blade against the ground, dispelling your wishes as he walked forward through a wave of sparks, “I am master of the Knights of Ren... I am the Commander of the First Order...”
But you weren’t always.
More taps. Then it crashed into the floor, releasing a wave of fury. Intimidation. You were bathed in spark and ash. He created smoke, twisting up around you and him. “There is no one else.”
Pulling the saber out of the floor, the blade ushered you back. He held opposite hand hand up.
You felt it all over you. Your arm, your neck, your shoulder, your back. Pulling you, conducting your blood, turning it vicious.
“There is only this.” He clenched his hand, your mind overflowed. You felt hot and cold and numbed with grief and anger.
Nines voice, from the deep archive of your memory, was the only thing that could reach you, “Whatever happens, don’t forget who you are. Before all this...”
You had to disarm him, you had to pacify the beast. With no weapon to match his and only a blind, visceral reaction, you knew that if you touched...
Through cataclysmic fear, as he snarled down at you, the soft of your palm met the side of his cheek.
The devil’s face was in your hands.