Standing over the bodies of the people she’d spent her life trying to protect should have felt horrific, and it did. Of course it did. Her ego had allowed her to walk into this trap, his trap. She had thought she was too strong, too certain of her convictions, to ever fall into this invasive, terrifying darkness that gripped her mind like a vise. And she had been wrong. The Emperor had shown her the error of her vanity, and he had torn her down remorselessly, and rebuilt her in his own image.
The former Jedi looked down at the corpses of the Republic soldiers she’d slaughtered, her green eyes empty, devoid of any hope that she would ever be able to atone for the sickening things that Vitiate had forced her to do so far in his name. Surrounded by the merciless, inescapable proof of the death that she had inflicted, Kallyn’s only thought was that once their screaming had stopped, she was alone, finally.
If only she could silence the screaming inside her head.
I wrote and rewrote the start to this from four different directions, then finally one start clicked. ;) Here you are, @cinlat !
She talked in her sleep.
Not -every- night. Not even frequently. But Theron had to admit that he'd learned more about Selirah's past by listening to her random disjointed comments in the dark than he would ever have pried from her when she was awake. She loved to keep her secrets, that was certain. Not that he had a lot of room to point fingers at other people when it came to that particular habit.
He'd heard her speak of someone named Tremel – the fondness in her voice had seemed unfeigned, but another time she'd said something about killing him. Some nights she seemed to be remembering wars, commanding troops, taking the lead on assaults. Other nights she was mouthing off to Darth Baras, or trading playful insults with Pierce.
More often than not, the words made no sense at all in context, like the time she'd pushed him nearly off the bed and muttered something in Twi'leki that he'd translated later as a particularly inventive and foully descriptive string of profanity.
Theron had come to bed late tonight. The fledgling Alliance was proving to be a monumental and time-consuming effort for him as much as anyone else now that they'd found Selirah and begun to make waves of dissent against Arcann's tyranny over the galaxy. Exhausted and a little tipsy on the whiskey he'd been drinking while he worked, he slid into bed beside her, moving both slender lekku aside, then a splayed arm that had been stretched across his portion of the bed. While he was removing them, her leg inched across to his side, bent slightly at the knee, and he pushed that incursion back with one foot.
Clearing enough unoccupied space to lie down, he smiled in the darkness of the room as her hand crept across his stomach before stilling. Her blatant attempts to annex his territory ceased, and he turned towards her, stretching with a tired sigh.
“Theron.”
It was clear, perfectly so, but she lay sprawled close to him with her eyes closed, asleep. He could feel the delicate touch of her eyelids and lashes against his upper arm, her eyes moving back and forth beneath them. Dreaming.
“Not here?” Selirah's voice sharpened, impatient. “Where is he?”
He'd been about to answer, thinking that perhaps she'd respond to him and then sink back into a deeper sleep. But the question caught him off guard. Theron waited, holding himself still, her warm breath tickling his neck, and wondered what moment filled her dreams. Perhaps the rescue.. Lana said she'd asked where he was once she'd started to come out of the carbonite sickness.
Her hand flexed on his stomach, and he hissed an indrawn breath as her nails bit harshly into his skin, leaving red marks before her fingers spread out flat over his belly. Slowly they worked their way upwards, over his chest, and she moved closer to him, out of her characteristic sprawl. Selirah's legs twined with his, the warmth of her body pressing against him, curving to a perfect fit. The touch of her lips against his neck was feather-soft, and he felt her breathing, the simple act of drawing air into her lungs carrying the familiar scent of his skin into her mind.
The Twi'lek relaxed in unconscious recognition, melting against him. “Oh. You're here. Missed you so much,” Seli whispered, the soft, sad words barely audible. He heard her breathing slow as she sank into a deeper sleep, and he brought a hand up, stroking her back in long, gentle strokes. Theron's fingers brushed the still-tender, circular scar that went through her from front to back, the mark of the lightsaber that had almost taken her from him forever, before he'd even had a chance to see her. Not for the first time, he felt a twinge of regret that he hadn't been the one to free the warrior; hadn't been the first face she'd seen when she'd opened her eyes after five long years.
“I missed you too.” Theron pulled her closer, her head tucked under his chin. Closing his eyes, he forced himself to move his hand away from the scar that reminded him painfully of how close he'd come to losing her. He took a slow, shaky breath as he struggled with the unfamiliar weight of an emotion he hadn't wanted to acknowledge. It was a truth that he'd hidden even from himself when he'd believed her dead, along with Darth Marr and so many others. “Seli. I love you,” he whispered to the sleeping woman in his arms, knowing she wouldn't hear him.
Someday, he'd find the courage to say it to her openly. Someday.
