featuring ... cecil ryen, and @tiredassmage's tyr deckard
(this was written for the oc kiss week prompt, "first")
In the shadow of the Imperial Citadel on Dromund Kaas, ex-Cipher operative Cecil Ryen decides to be reckless.
(cross-posted from AO3)
In the long, intervening decades since his sudden and unexpected departure from his homeworld, Cecil Ryen forgot how unique Dromund Kaas was. The qualities that stood in stark relief against any other world he visited: Ziost, Hutta, Alderaan, even Corellia, once, to name a few. None—save, perhaps, Tatooine—was quite so determined to slaughter its inhabitants.
Its murderous intentions were ubiquitous. Expansive, fast-growing jungle untamable by any industrial-strength pesticide or controlled burning. Fauna and flora both had at least three to five ways of killing the unprepared. Home to an ancient Empire that desired ultimate victory over its millennia-long adversaries and the Sith's mortal enemies.
What shocked Cecil the most was the scent that clung to his nostrils even as he made his way down the interior corridor of the hotel. Charged energy, ozone, a crack of lightning caught within a held breath. At any moment, even down to an infinitesimal fraction of time, a storm could erupt upon Dromund Kaas.
Cecil lived that way all of his life, until the lightning finally struck. He was a cautious, reserved sort. Kept his head down, as he was told. Studied hard, often at the expense of his health, as he was told. He graduated valedictorian and was set for a career in the Imperial military when those lofty expectations of being promoted to Moff and serving the Dark Council were unceremoniously shattered by an offer from Imperial Intelligence.
He did everything as ordered, and he did them well. Exemplary, if he dared to say so.
No good deed goes unpunished.
The younger man in front of him—alright, not quite in front, more slightly leading at his left—came to a standstill, and Cecil withdrew from his thoughts.
Dromund Kaas seemed the fitting sort of place to find a man like Cipher Nine.
Cecil watched through narrowed lashes as Nine deftly flicked the keycard from his wallet. Despite the air having been cleared about their respective intentions, old habits die hard, and his gaze remained on Nine's nimble hand as it returned the card to its original place and the door whooshed open.
A small smile creased an aging, but still youthful face, crinkling gray eyes. Nine elegantly swept his hand towards the doorway. His black gloves briefly eclipsed the form of his fingers against the backdrop of the darkness within. "After you?"
In the feverish research Cecil threw himself into after he found Lucia left abandoned and cold on that expensive and hideous rug she insisted on buying a good ten years back, skin ghost-pale and lips stained with bloody bile, Cipher Nine seemed twice the agent he'd ever been on paper. Stories filtered through a dozen channels that found their way to Nar Shaddaa about terrorism in the Empire, about great machines set upon their crown jewel of a capital, and ridiculous rumors of a secret organization pulling the strings of the galaxy finally brought low. Of what he could make of the massacred and deprecated records, much of those odd stories inevitably led back to Nine.
It was why Cecil knew it was by intention that his wife was left on display, and had died in a gruesome and evidently painful manner.
Cecil glanced at Nine's hand, still hanging awkwardly in the air, before he crossed the threshold ahead of him.
He felt blindly along the wall and found the switch. Soft, golden light flooded the room, illuminating Nine's figure as he followed him in. Cecil cast a wide net of the room. It was impeccably neat, characteristic of the accommodations this close to the central district. He didn't need to touch the emerald green sheets fitted to the king-sized bed to know they were Old Ziosti silk. The ornate bed frame was of a dark mahogany embellished with solid gold trim. An intricately patterned, deep red rug bisected the main area of the suite.
Combining all of the furniture of the room, the monetary cost likely approached, if not surpassed, a year's salary of what he earned back in the day in service to Intelligence.
"You needn't go to all this trouble," Cecil said. It finally dawned on him just how ridiculous—and idiotically reckless—this whole situation was. He was standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the assassin who made him a widower. He'd taken Nine on his word simply because the offered explanation made sense; Lucia was long overdue for it, for all she had done to their son.
Nine smiled; a sliver of teeth peeked at the corners. "This was their only vacancy, and I didn't see a reason to waste time looking for a cheaper room." He ducked his head as he casually worked off his gloves. Blond strands curtained his eyes from view.
Cecil scoffed. He was not the only idiot in Kaas City, then. He still thought he was chief among them.
"Eager, are you?" There was still a sensible voice somewhere inside the recesses of his mind banging on the walls, begging him to come to his senses. Funny, how that voice had been the loudest of them all only days ago, until it was usurped by a voracious hunger for the hunt, for the Game. The one he forfeited some four decades ago. Abandoned his cards and left the table in a storm. Lightning struck, and he would not be hit twice. "They say patience is a virtue."
Cecil turned fully in Nine's direction, only to find the man had come closer. A step just out of the invisible boundary Cecil would consider personal space. He couldn't tell if Nine was doing him a courtesy, or testing him.
"I'm afraid that's never been my strength," Nine said, still smiling so easily. A few hours ago, Cecil had the man trapped against the wall of a tucked-away alley, vibroblade held lightly against the exposed, vulnerable flesh of his neck. It wouldn't have been much to end him. Cecil had wanted to try it. How would the infamous Cipher Nine find his way out of the impossible odds this time?
Cecil cocked his head. On paper, Cipher Nine was twice the agent he ever was. The man standing before him, however, was an enigma.
"It's a miracle you've survived this long." Nine chuckled, like it was a compliment. For some ineffable reason, this infuriated him.
In the moment of awareness after Cecil gripped Nine by the forearms and pinned him to the nearest wall, he realized anger wasn't quite the emotion he was looking for.
Nine looked up at him. No fear lay there, nothing that could even be described as trepidation. Curiosity, then, as gray eyes—in the shadow of Cecil's body blocking out the light of the room, they were not dissimilar to a passably pleasant Dromund Kaas day—examined his face. Whatever he found must've pleased him. Nine's smile widened to show more of his teeth, canines pressing slightly into his bottom lip.
"You can admit that you're curious."
Cecil's jaw jumped. He returned to Nine's eyes. "There's no mystery. Luck and bullheadedness go a long way."
Nine laughed. He tilted his head back far enough that it kissed the wall behind him and laughed. Cecil's face fell into a pout. He'd missed something.
Crow's feet jumped out at the corners of Nine's eyes as they squeezed shut. Smile lines dimpled at the creases of his mouth. Then his eyes opened again, though that foolish smile remained stubbornly in place.
Then, stranger yet, the man's features softened entirely. Cecil went stiff as Nine's fingers gingerly held the lapels of his jacket. "That's not what I meant."
An awful scratching emanated from the dank, shadowed halls of the back of his mind, like a corrupted audio file playing abruptly from a defunct speaker. That sensible man he was mere days ago screamed and cursed and kicked the machine.
His gaze, however, fell back to Nine's mouth. Noted the difference in shade between his sun-kissed skin and his lips. Examined the particular shape of his teeth that were pressing into pink flesh. All of this belonging to a man who accomplished more than Cecil could've ever imagined possible from a Cipher agent. Principally, that he was still alive at all. A relic, a ghost out of time, outlasting the masters that gave him his designation and purpose.
Eager didn't come close to describing the way Nine was looking back at him.
Cecil wished he could split his consciousness in twain and hand the wheel over to the sensible part—the passive husband, who maneuvered quietly all of these years, who left the table when the hand dealt to him ensured he'd lose the game, who finally figured out the only way to actually win was to not play at all.
Nine tilted his head. The motion reminded Cecil of a dog impatiently waiting for its owner to throw the stick. His hold slackened. "If you've changed your mind -"
Forcibly, Cipher Three took the wheel.
Damn the game, and the rules, and keeping his head down, and being careful, and all of the things that guaranteed survival and not much else. The smart thing, Cipher Three knew, would be to leave now that his mission was complete, or even to reach for his blade and tie up one last loose end.
Damn the smart thing, and throw the damn stick.
Cecil kissed him. A harsh, abrupt thing like a vicious right hook. He was woefully out of practice. Lucia hadn't wanted a thing from him—physically, at least—in years. Infidelity was the least of her crimes. And it caught Nine off-guard, if only for a moment.
Nine pulled him closer insistently. One of Cecil's hands left his arm to brace itself on the wall next to Nine's head. Clumsily, like a teenager, Cecil kissed him and Nine chuckled against his mouth. He tasted sharply of the whiskey that Cecil bought him back at the bar. The least he could do, for no doubt giving the man a heart attack.
Hot breath fanned across his face as they parted only just. Already, Nine was chuckling again. His thumb affectionately teased the corner of Cecil's lapel. His free palm fit delicately along the curve of his neck. "You had me worried," Nine said. It sounded genuine. "Not that I would've minded, but the bill for this room was rather steep."
Cecil grumbled gruffly in reply, though it conveyed no real meaning. He surveyed the younger man's face, flushed pink by their exchange. Where the shade had deepened the most, he could make out freckles standing out against his skin. How interesting.
He wondered how far down they went.
(The sensible Cecil Ryen was, at present, bound and gagged and stuffed in a broom closet in the basement of his own mind. Cipher Three, on the other hand, was insatiably eager to find out.)
Cecil's hands snaked down to Nine's waist, then his hips. He surely hoped that Nine wasn't any heavier than he looked. Nine's gray eyes widened owlishly, and Cecil couldn't help the wicked grin that overtook him at the sight.
"Well, we'd better make your money worth it, then."
On his body's own martial strength and a prayer, Cecil hefted the other man up from the ground by his hips and close to his body. Nine gasped, arms flying instinctively around his shoulders and legs hooking around his waist. Cecil grunted, nearly losing his grip in the adjustment, but found it again just as quickly.
Nine laughed, breathless, flushed scarlet. His face was above Cecil's now, and he looked down at him slightly dazed. He was cautious as he adjusted himself, and nimble fingers toyed idly with the hair at the nape of Cecil's neck. "As impressive as this is, try not to drop me." He paused. "Or throw out your back."
"Shut up, Nine," Cecil growled, with little actual bite, and kissed him again with a fervor entirely unknown to him. Unknown, or merely forgotten. What he most certainly forgot, but was quickly remembering, was how to kiss someone breathless.
With Nine gasping against his mouth and thoroughly distracted from the effort it was taking to keep him from crashing to the floor, Cecil turned them around and made for the bed.
He hoped the frame was as durable as it was extravagant.
Index Prologue, or Eddas for Dummies: Page 1 Childhood, or a Litany of Terrible Fathers: Pages 2-3 Early adulthood, or You Could Wikipedia This: Pages 3-6 Late adulthood and death, or That Time I Was a Supervillain: Pages 6-8 Reincarnation, or That Time I Was a Bird: Pages 8-11 Young Avengers, or...
Here we are. Twenty five pages, complete with an index. The abridged memoirs of me, Loki Laufeyson, so that I don’t have to keep typing it over and over again. Consider yourselves lucky it’s this short.
Here is a convenient flow chart to help you understand the order of events, if you’re a visual learner.
Please note: this is written from my perspective at the time, and in no way is meant as a defense for anything that I did. I’m also not going to go out of my way to explain the perspectives of the other people involved. If you have any opinions, feel free to keep that shit to yourself.
HAHA so i’ve named hector’s first wife achelois, which means “she who washes away pain.”
on several alignment chart quizzes, there’s been the question moon or stars? and for some reason i’ve always stated that i associate hector with the moon. i figure it’s an ancient constant that he’s seen most nights, and i picture him on a horse in the middle of nowhere, leaning back in his saddle, staring up at the moon and talking to himself/to it.
one of the achelois-es of greek mythology is a minor moon goddess :’))) i didn’t even do this ON PURPOSE either it’s just one big sad coincidence
hey man. yeah, it's more hyroh writing and literally no one else because he's god's favorite. except this time it's an abandoned wip from 2023 that still goes hard as fuck so im throwing the whole thing into the ocean (my blog). enjoy! it's fortress trauma related so please be aware of that.
His room does not have a shower or a tub. It has only a sink and a bottle of hand soap and a couple of drinking glasses. He has no brush or comb. The Fortress is kept pristine - not a mark upon the walls or stains on the floors, not even dust bunnies hiding away in the corners. He has never seen a service droid or a servant with a broom. He has never seen it be cleaned, as if cleanliness is simply its natural, immutable state. Despite the blood he tracks through its halls, it's gone the next time he looks, disappearing behind him as though it were never there.
His room has a mirror. In it, he sees a hulking, dark creature; its maw permanently wine-stained, black armor containing its grotesque shape. The armor is chipped and bloody. It drips off it, squelching footsteps when it moves around its cage. Eyes rivaling gold, they’d make for good centerpieces on a necklace, or melted down and reforged into twin rings.
He can’t bathe himself in here save for his hands. It’d take the entire bottle and then some to get the viscera out of his fur.
When the smell gets to be too much for the Sith (which says a lot, how accustomed they are to the rot) he’s dragged out of his bed just when he’s fallen asleep. Taken to a room with four white walls and a floor. He isn’t offered so much the dignity of a tub. Here, too, they want to break him.
A hand on the back of his neck, a pair on each arm, another pair on each leg. One with a hose.
The Sith are silent. The soldiers laugh. They’re so much bigger than he is, he’s gotten taller but barely breaks one-hundred pounds when wet. He sobs against the pavement, he struggles, kicks his feet, it all makes them laugh.
They strip him off his clothes. The Sith are efficient. The soldiers roam. Look at this, one says (the one who brags about his son and daughter back home) and he drags a finger down protruding ribs. They laugh. Hands bigger than his head press down the ladder of his spine - there’s something funny about his vertebrae, the fact that they can see it. They can see all of it. They can see all of him.
He didn’t remember this part before.
Before, Tsahet had stepped in as they were hosing him down and brought him against his chest, shucking off his cloak to shield him in it.
Before, he had thought to himself it could’ve been worse, it could’ve been so much worse (so it wasn’t that bad).
Vitiate showed him, as He has shown him everything else. And it had been worse.
Blood circles the drain. He watches it listlessly. He doesn’t fight anymore, because this is the only place where he knows the Sith won’t touch him more than they have to. They lather him in soap, their hands neither gentle nor harsh. They wash him like one would the dishes.
He can fool himself into thinking this is kindness. Tears mix with the soap and the hosewater. He can believe this is kindness. He wants to believe this is kindness.
And then they haul him off the floor and use only one towel to pat him dry. They put him back into his armor wet. His skin breaks out into sores that he scratches until they bleed and until he is filthy again. The sores get infected, they itch even more, and so he scratches them more. His fur is more red than black.
They start bathing him once a week just to get rid of the rotting, carcass-stench that keeps coming back.
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic (Video Game)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Jedi Knight | Hero of Tython & Original Jedi Character(s), Male Jedi Knight | Hero of Tython & Original Jedi Character(s)
Characters: Male Jedi Knight | Hero of Tython (Star Wars), Original Jedi Character(s) (Star Wars)
Additional Tags: Pre-Star Wars: The Old Republic, Pre-Canon, Harm to Children, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Hurt No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Jedi Critical, Master & Padawan Relationships (Star Wars), (the implied/ref sexual assault is probably not what you're thinking but i think still qualifies), (and a character insinuates it is in fact what you're thinking so yanno. on goes the warning)
Summary:
Hyroh Kaah, Jedi Padawan, is undergoing special training under the strange, enigmatic Master Tsahet on Taris, whose training regimen includes casual child endangerment and heaping helpings of projection. Nothing good has come out of this.
warnings: child abuse & neglect, implied sexual assault of a minor + a scene that is arguably (attempted) sexual assault for Realsies, and canon-typical violence - more tags on AO3
featuring ... hyroh kaah & tsahet
Hyroh Kaah, Jedi Padawan, is undergoing special training under the strange, enigmatic Master Tsahet on Taris, whose training regimen includes casual child endangerment and heaping helpings of projection. Nothing good has come out of this. (cross-posted from AO3)
The light grew, first from an infinitesimal point, then radiating outward, slicing the cave walls into ribbons, bursting from the ravenous well until it devoured Hyroh's vision completely. For several moments, he was blind. His boots squelched unsteadily in the mud, and he threw out a hand towards the wall of the cave.
His hand caught nothing, and the ground slipped from beneath him. The Padawan grit his teeth and brought his hands underneath him to save himself from falling face-first into toxic muck. The impact of his hands against the unstable ground flung it into his face anyhow.
His respirator saved him from most of it. A necessity out in the jungle, because while the vaccine protected him from the plague, it protects him from little else. Back at Olaris, they set up gardens and atmospheric converters to clean up the air surrounding the base, and then the subsequent strongholds pockmarked throughout what little of the planet they managed to tame, so as to minimize the amount of respiration equipment needed.
But the rakghoul tunnels were dug far from these settlements, deep within the irradiated jungle that constituted most of the planet. The Sith bombardment left nothing unscathed.
The starbursts finally faded from his vision, leaving him to stare at his hands half-swallowed by wet earth.
Hyroh swiped mud from above his brow, ultimately passing it into his hair. Not that the motion did anything either way. He was covered, head to toe, in mud and viscera. He smelled of it, too. He did not have much to compare to - besides, perhaps, the fish and game he and Aric skinned and butchered on the kitchen table in their small home on Ord Mantell - but rakghoul guts had a particular stink to them. Bitter and acrid, reminiscent of metal and burnt hair.
Carefully, Hyroh pushed himself completely onto his knees, then got one foot underneath him, and finally the other. The mud gurgled underneath his boots. A shudder went through his spine. Rakghouls - they sounded like mud, when they died.
One cautious step at a time, he extricated himself from the mouth of the cave and further still, until mud turned to damp earth to crumpled, dry grass. Once he was confident he wouldn't trip, he allowed himself to breathe.
Which hurt.
Every pull of air placed an uncomfortable pressure on his ribs, like his lungs were pressing up against them. The respirator made taking full breaths difficult. Out of every deep inhale, most of what he breathed in was particulate and radiation that the mask filtered out. It made fighting in one a battle with asphyxiation.
Even away from the tunnel, Hyroh felt lightheaded. During the short distance towards his speederbike, little black spots flit across his vision. Specks of ash landed on his eyes, inconsequential at first, until they started drowning out the light.
Hyroh steadied himself on the handlebars. He was panting and nearly blind again, head hung low enough that it kissed the cold metal of the speederbike's frame. In, out. In, out.
He blinked hard. Though warped by the steel mirror, Hyroh could make out his reflection. Rakghoul blood - a deep green, nearly black - clung to every part of him, caking in his hair and the fur of his face, and likely staining his robes. Not that it mattered. Every change of clothes he brought with him to Taris were stained near-black with rakghoul blood. But they were in relative good condition otherwise, so Master Tsahet saw no need to requisition more.
His lip curled. His eyes hardened, so much so that they cracked the dried blood around them.
Then he cut his gaze from his reflection and forced himself into the seat. Leadened limbs reluctantly obeyed him. He managed to lift his wrist near to his mouth, pressing the button of his comm with the opposite hand. "This is Padawan Kaah. The tunnel's been cleared out. I'm on my way back."
He didn't bother waiting for the reply.
--
Hyroh didn't remember the ride back. This was normal. After every tunnel, time seemed to - skip forward, like someone else was pressing fast-forward through his own life. Or maybe it was himself with the controls in hand, ever impatient and wanting to skip right to the good parts. The parts that, at least, were not here. On Taris.
He wasn't always clearing them alone. The first several dozen, he did with Master Tsahet. The rakghouls more or less ruled Taris in the wake of the violent, total destruction of its cities. Other fauna posed lethal threats if encountered, but none colonized Taris' surface so successfully as the sick and corrupted survivors of the bombardment.
He threw up, the first time he smelled the insides of a rakghoul. It reminded him of the races that the grunts at Fort Garnik ran when they were bored. He heard whispers from classmates, and conspired to follow a few (naturally, they hadn't invited him) after school that day.
Five thousand credits to the brave soul who makes it across the minefield with all their limbs attached, cried a Republic trooper in dusty, dirty white, like a carnival barker. Five thousand credits was a small cut out of a trooper's salary. Five thousand credits could feed a refugee family for two weeks, if they were smart.
Master Tsahet's golden lightsabers tore that first rakghoul apart, and it smelled just like the elderly man that Hyroh knew had lost his home and most of his family in a Separatist attack the previous year. Most of his family, save for two of his young grandchildren. The mine had blown him ten, twenty feet in the air, and left pieces of him scattered over the entire field.
Hyroh ran from the tunnel, sobbing. Throat burning from the bile and tears. Master Tsahet cleared that first tunnel alone.
Then he got an earful once they returned to Olaris. Being a Jedi would ask far more from him than this, Master Tsahet said, and did he really think peace (if they could call it that) with the Empire was truly going to last? No, one day, they would ask Hyroh to fight a war just as they asked Tsahet and his master.
This was what it took. The rakghoul blood had fully dried by the time he was struggling his way off the speederbike; little flakes broke off and fluttered off on the breeze every time he moved. His boots met the broken up slabs of duracrete. The little tufts of grass peeking up between the cracks were crushed beneath the soles of his feet.
Partly to guide it, mostly to keep himself upright, Hyroh set the speederbike to hover and pulled it along by the left handlebar. Out from underneath the cover of the jungle, the sun beat mercilessly upon his head. Even after three hundred years, the planet's ozone layer hardly recovered. Probably the radiation.
His free hand shielded his eyes so that he could make out the two guardsmen posted at the main gate into Olaris. Hyroh's jaw tightened. He forced his chin higher, and dropped his hand.
"Hold on!" The guardsman to his right called as he came closer to the gate. Hyroh drew a breath and his boots shuffled to a halt. He held one arm in front of him, palm skyward, and the other loose at his side. The guardsman - Hyroh recognized him from the new platoon that arrived last month; a Human with tousled, sand-blonde hair - approached him warily, fumbling for their checker.
Hyroh's attention switched to the other guard. Yes, he remembered this one. Whatever his actual name was, he didn't know. All the other troopers just called him Ripper.
The Twi'lek glowered down at him while his Human partner pressed the checker - a small, cylindrical device with an opening at the bottom - to his forearm. "I was wondering what that smell was," Ripper sneered. "Was gonna call Command and tell 'em there had to be a horde coming our way. Turns out it's just you."
Hyroh flinched when the needle punched into his flesh. "It was a big colony." He watched his blood fill the checker's small repository. "I counted twenty-six on my way out." Likely, he missed a few. Some hadn't died cleanly enough to be recognized as one body. Rakghouls could not be counted while they were alive. Their hulking, hunched forms would lead one to suspect that they were slow, though brutish in strength. The latter was true, the former was not. They were faster than they had any right to be. Not only that, but once you swung at the nest, it was as though they poured forth from a bottomless well. You could never know if you'd gotten them all until the tunnel finally fell silent.
Then you could count.
The Human withdrew the checker from him and studied its interface carefully. They must've been new to guard duty. The checker always took longer than you'd think, for such a small amount of blood.
"Twenty-six?" Ripper echoed, brow rising incredulously. He wrinkled his nose. "By yourself?"
Ripper had two long, curved, parallel scars on either side of his mouth. Beginning at the corners, they stretched all the way to the hollows of his cheeks. The left scar rippled as Ripper's lips pulled into a sideways smirk. It was not the sort of scar one earned in battle. Hyroh saw similar ones, born by those who fought like dogs upon scraps. It was a scar done with the intention of sending a message; like a slave brand, it marked you forever. A scar like that, they held you down for. Someone with a scar like that wouldn't be keen to be pinned down again.
Hyroh's ear twitched. "I don't need you to believe me." And it was true. His first month here, he might've balked at the insinuation that he was a liar. He saw no need for it now. The blood told the story plain enough.
"Oh, I believe you." Ripper's grin grew. "Based by the smell, I thought it'd be more."
Hyroh felt it keenly. The flick of a match being thrown into the tinder at the pit of his stomach. But the tinder, and everything else, was too wet. Soaked with green-black, sticky, viscous blood. He was exhausted. The drive back had done little for his energy; on the contrary, it sapped him almost entirely of whatever he had left.
"I must've missed the bathhouse on the way back," Hyroh replied tiredly. Inwardly, he grimaced. Master Tsahet hated it when he talked back. It's unbecoming, he remarked, and that wasn't a new criticism. Master Le'raya expressed similar sentiments from time to time, though she intended them gently and constructively. Stand up straight, with your shoulders back, so they take you seriously. Speak with grace, and always remember you are representing the Order, and, perhaps most often, try not to swear, Padawan mine.
Master Tsahet was a quiet man. He spoke low, hardly above a whisper, and refused to raise it in order to demand attention. If Hyroh missed him, if he was enthralled with a task and either ignored or never heard at all Tsahet's mumbling, the Jedi Master would not repeat himself. Which usually meant that Hyroh also missed a vital task, or assignment, or their training for the day had been pushed up, and so on.
The first lesson of Taris was to never make Tsahet repeat himself. The second was to listen, and to listen always. Tsahet's first warning had been it's unbecoming, and the second had been, when they mock you, or rebuke you, you take it. Let it pass over and through you. To acknowledge it injuries your pride, which invites anger in retribution. That is not a path you can take.
The Human soldier looked up nervously. Their green eyes flit between him and Ripper. Ripper, whose face had gone dark.
"You think you're smart, huh?"
Hyroh bit his tongue. Quite literally, lashes fluttering from the pain of it. Any harder, and his fangs might've gone straight through.
The checker chimed. Both he and the other soldier looked down at it. The interface glowed green. "He's clear."
Hyroh dipped his head. "If you'll excuse me." The words burned at the back of his throat. He knew men like Ripper. Fragile prides like the hollow bones of birds. Bitter, caged, in their own way, even if enlistment was voluntary. They had no power - not over themselves or their fates, not over their comrades, and certainly not over the war. At any moment, whether by blaster or grenade or airstrike, their infinitely significant lives could be over. Crushed like a bug.
But what control they did have, what little of the game they could play and decide the outcome, they brought their resentment and bitterness and rage down upon those who had, somehow, even less power than them.
Hyroh hated them. It was a strong word, and not an emotion befitting a Jedi, but it was true. People like Ripper blew up war orphans' grandfathers for a fun afternoon, and what point was there to being a Jedi if he couldn't stop them from doing so? What good was he?
But, on top of the exhaustion of the day, he did not need Tsahet's disappointment. Hyroh chewed his tongue and angled past the two soldiers, making for the gate -
(Sometimes, he thinks the Force is betting against him, and rigging the game.)
The warning came a moment too late. A flash in his mind's eye of a large, meaty hand, just as fingers hooked into the pocket of his hood and yanked. Hyroh choked, breath kicked out of his lungs all at once as his body lurched backward, like he weighed nothing.
"Get -" Hyroh began to snarl once he gulped down breath, trying to spin to face his attacker. But Ripper only yanked again, dragging him, like a dog on a leash. Hyroh's voice cut into a strangled cry. His ankles kicked and slid across the duracrete road and found no purchase. He reached back blindly, claws unsheathed, and grappled at Ripper's wrist. The Twi'lek only swatted him away.
"Keylan, get the hose," Ripper called over his shoulder. Hyroh's eyes widened. He watched, mouth agape, as Ripper's Human partner looked helplessly back. They chewed their bottom lip, met his eyes, and then - then they looked away.
"Stop it," Hyroh croaked, no more than a weak push of air. Keylan turned, following after Ripper toward the gate, where there was an emergency fire hose hooked up to the outer wall barricading Olaris from attack. "Let go. Let go of me!" He felt his claws cut into the meat of Ripper's big hand. The man winced, but he didn't let go. He didn't even budge.
Then the ground disappeared beneath him. Hyroh braced himself even if he couldn't see for what. His head met the barricade first, snapping against it and bouncing off. His vision exploded with bright, blistering white light. Terrible, awful pain erupted at the back of his skull and reverberated through the bones, all the way into his jaw and chattering up to his teeth. It ran down his spine too, momentarily snapping the connection between brain and body. He was falling still, knees too weak to hold him, and he landed in a graceless heap of limbs on the duracrete.
But even through the pain, even though he was exhausted and sore and bruised and now potentially concussed, instinct was a powerful force. Hyroh, still half-blind from white spots in his eyes, found his mainhand 'saber at his belt and brought it in front of him in a guard. White turned fierce blue as he depressed the ignition switch, and he had to squint past it just to make out the fuzzy, hulking shape of Ripper standing over him.
Hyroh bared his teeth and growled.
Ripper chuckled. He stood with hands set on his hips. A few winks of blood drip-dropped off of his hand. "And what are you planning on doing with that, youngling?"
Hyroh's tail snapped to-and-fro. Though it hurt, he dragged himself up onto one knee. "Defending myself. So don't make me."
Keylan reluctantly appeared beside Ripper. They weren't very strong-looking; kind of wimpy and frail, like how Hyroh himself looked when he was inducted into the Order. The hose was enormous in their hands - they had to hug it against their chest just to keep it up.
The Twi'lek took it with another bemused snicker. And it took no effort at all, for a man like that to hold the emergency hose. Hyroh's gaze flicked from Ripper's face to the mouth of the hose. There were all kinds of ammunition inside Olaris, as well as the fuel depot and the farms that grew some of their food - Olaris and open fires did not mix. These hoses were for quelling any sudden outbursts, or incoming vehicles if they were damaged and throwing flames. The water pressure needed to not only put out but put down a fire was immense.
"If you do that," Ripper began, and Hyroh forced his chin up to glare at him, "you're gonna be in a lotta damn trouble." Ripper cast his eyes down to the hose, then jerked his head at Keylan. They didn't look at Hyroh as they went to the spigot. "Don't you know they got a place for bad Jedi?"
Hyroh's ears pricked up. Then flattened. He flexed his fingers around the hilt of his lightsaber. "And what would you know?"
Ripper shrugged, jostling the hose. "Maybe I don't know shit. Maybe it's all rumors. But, y'know, I gotta feeling that good Jedi don't get sent to Taris. Good Jedi aren't stuck clearing rakghoul tunnels like hunting dogs." Ripper flashed his teeth in a wide grin. "If you can't even take that, what else can they do with you? They gotta have a place they put the bad dogs they can't do nothing with."
Instinct was a powerful force. A living being's instincts are primed to react against real and perceived threats. Instinct was the enemy of a Jedi. Instinct was rash. Instinct was action without cognition. Instinct meant people get hurt because someone else got scared.
But what was the difference between instinct and precognition? What was the difference between relying on instinct, and relying upon the millions of little warnings and blips from the Force that piled on, day after day? Was that not what he was being trained to do, being sent into the rakghoul tunnels and fighting - in the most literal sense - for his life?
They wanted to take his teeth. His edges were filed knife-sharp because they had to be. You couldn't be someone that the soldiers saw amongst the crowd and thought there, that's the one - the one that was young, old, weak or sick. That, when the crowd took to running, would lag behind the rest.
There was no clear answer as to what the Jedi wanted from him, or what they wanted him to be. No response that he could give that would be correct. Eventually, sooner or later, he was going to fail them all. And maybe Ripper was right. Maybe they would put him somewhere, or put him down, if he spun and bit someone he wasn't supposed to. If the hunting dog spun and bit the hand that fed it instead of the acceptable target.
That is not a path you can take. What other one was there?
Hyroh lunged. Even in his terror, he wasn't foolish. He angled his blade and intended it to only graze Ripper's hand. An ultimately painful, but temporary injury that would force him to drop the hose.
Too late.
Water burst from the hose's mouth. A tidal wave, if the wave was also made of trillions of individual, needle-pointed daggers. The pressure blew Hyroh back into the wall. At point-blank range, when his head hit the wall a second time, the world plunged into black rather than white.
For a breathless, infinitesimal moment, Hyroh was nothing at all.
Then, unfortunately, he was something again. A painful, cold something. Hyroh groaned and gargled and squinted through his lashes. He could not see anything except stray shafts of light and a massive shadow over him.
"Stars, you still reek," came a deep, fuzzy voice overhead. "You're gonna bring a whole nest on us like that."
Rakghoul were cannibals. Hyroh did not witness this much himself, because he and Tsahet left every tunnel entirely devoid of life. Nothing could be spared. But he read it somewhere, surely he had. Then, through pain and ache and fear, he recalled one of his first outings into the jungle. Him, on the back of Tsahet's speederbike, holding on tight to the Jedi Master's armor. They were on recon, and Tsahet brought the speederbike to a crawl when they both spotted a pale shape nearby, bowed over another pale, faceless corpse.
The corpse, upon closer inspection, was a rakghoul. And so was its devourer. They were all that remained of Taris' civilization, and they would endure and survive at all costs.
And, without eyes, smell was the rakghoul's primary way of tracing the contours of the world. Rakghouls knew intimately the stench of flesh, including their own.
Hyroh heard, more than he saw, a vibroblade being unsheathed. His eyes went wide and feral, though it did little to clarify his vision. Instinct, or the Force, or whatever the hell they wanted to call the cold, clear, protective lightning that jolted through his nerves and propelled his limbs in defense of a threat he couldn't wholly perceive - he kicked wildly and threw out his arms, a vicious snarl bubbling up his throat.
A large, meaty, warm hand grabbed his skull - his skull, it dwarfed him, it could crush him - and pushed it down. Ground his face against the duracrete. Hyroh shrieked furiously, and his hands scrabbled to attempt to leverage himself up. The weight bore down harder.
"Ripper, I don't know if -"
"You wanna deal with a bunch a' rakghouls trying to climb the barricade?" Ripper shifted his position. Hyroh hissed and spit against the ground as the Twi'lek planted his knee across his shoulder blades. In the corner of his eye, Hyroh saw the wink of his vibroblade as Ripper brought it to his tunics. "Or you just scared of getting in trouble?" Keylan didn't answer. Ripper huffed. "The bitch attacked me. It's self-defense."
Tears burned in Hyroh's eyes. He couldn't move, and his pulse thundered mightily in his ears. He couldn't move, and suddenly all he could hear was Ripper's vibroblade sawing through fabric. The warm, Tarisian breeze hit him where fur was exposed as the blade drew down, splitting his tunic open at the side.
Even his jaw was locked shut. All sounds of resistance had frozen up in the back of his throat. He couldn't see - what he could see was a kaleidoscope of refracted light - and all he knew is if Ripper wanted, he could drive that blade right between his ribs. His life was as fragile and insignificant and easily ended as the rakghouls he was wearing on his robes.
"What is this."
Instinctively, Hyroh's head snapped to attention. Except all he did was push up a little against Ripper's hand before it fell back to the duracrete. Ripper too, went quiet and still. A beat, then two, and he finally breathed again.
"Master Jedi -"
"What. Is this."
Keylan spoke first. "Uh, we - I mean, Ripper -" they swallowed nervously. Hyroh blinked through his tears enough that he could make them out. They'd moved from the spigot, but they were still several feet away. Their hands shook in tightly balled fists at their sides, and they glanced from Ripper to Hyroh. Their brows furrowed. Almost apologetic. "We - Ripper told your Padawan that he needed to clean off before he came in, in case he attracted rakghouls. He said no, and then he - he attacked."
Hyroh inhaled a ragged breath. "You - you liar," he spat. His lungs trembled as he struggled in another gulp of air. It was hard to do much, with a man at least twice his size putting his full weight on top of him. "You coward, you pathetic piece of-!"
Tsahet reeled toward him. "Not another word." It was quiet, but it was not soft.
Hyroh stared desperately up at the Jedi. "Master Tsahet, you have to believe me."
Tsahet merely looked away. He ground his jaw as he regarded Keylan, and then Ripper. "Captain," he started, addressing the latter, "get off of him."
Ripper slowly returned the vibroblade to its holster, removed his knee, and then finally withdrew his hand. Hyroh stayed perfectly still as the Twi'lek stood up and brushed himself off. Hyroh hated him, he hated him, he -
"Both of you will explain this incident to Governor Saresh, and you will tell the truth." Tsahet folded his hands behind his back. "Do not bother to lie. There is no defensible or justifiable reason for trying to forcibly disrobe my Padawan. At least if you are honest, your punishment will not be as severe."
"Sir, he really did attack me," Ripper blurted.
"And you had him subdued and the situation well in hand, Captain. Anything further was unnecessary cruelty." There, something scathing entered Tsahet's tone, like he was near to being sick with disgust. He paused, then added, "need I discuss with the governor your intentions to motivate you to take accountability for yourself? She is willing to overlook a lot of bad behavior, but not that."
Hyroh didn't dare lift his head, but he sensed Ripper's heart drop to his stomach. "Sir, it wasn't -" Ripper stopped, presumably cut off by the harsh, steel-gray and steel-cold glare that Tsahet leveraged at him. Ripper bowed his head. "We'll tell her, Master Jedi."
Tsahet acknowledged that only with a slight nod of his head. "Leave us."
Keylan and Ripper didn't need to be told twice. Hyroh watched, still on the ground, as the two scuttled off like dogs with tails tucked between their legs. It brought him a little satisfaction to see them scared. But only a little.
The Rattataki finally regarded him again. Hyroh's pleasure dissipated like smoke. He was terrified to move, so much so he didn't realize that he was still locked in the position that Ripper had manhandled him into: flat on his stomach, cheek rubbed raw against the hard ground.
He flinched as Tsahet moved toward him. But he moved slow, purposefully so, and kneeled next to him. Cool fingers brushed through his locks and found the back of his head. Tsahet's face contorted, jaw pulled ever tighter, crow's feet jumping at the corners of his eyes. Then he closed those eyes, and breathed deep in through his nose, and the vicious, rolling sea that had risen up in the Force relaxed back into a still, smooth plane of water.
"You should be able to move. But be careful, Padawan. We will have to get you checked for a concussion."
Hyroh put his hands underneath himself and pushed. The world spun when he lifted himself up, and he would've fallen right back onto his face if Tsahet hadn't caught him by the shoulders. Carefully, his master guided him to sit upright.
Half of Hyroh's tunic slipped right off his shoulders, flayed open at the seam. He gasped and moved quickly to try and pull it back up. It was hardly indecent, and he wore his bindings underneath, but it still - it still.
He glanced to Tsahet, mouth flopping open as if to - apologize? Plead? But Tsahet had - closed his eyes. He had closed his eyes, and was shrugging off his cloak. Hyroh stared in disbelief as Tsahet pulled his arms out of the sleeves, turned them right-side out again, and enshrouded him in it. Shakily, Hyroh grabbed the corners of the worn, warm, musty smelling cloak and held them tight to cover himself.
Tsahet opened his eyes. He was silent for a time, gaze flicking over Hyroh's face and hair and the shaking whole of himself. Then he sighed; a deep, tired sigh, like he'd been holding it in for years rather than moments. "Did you?"
Hyroh's mouth was dry. "Master?"
"Were they telling the truth?" Tsahet didn't sound frustrated, or impatient, just - tired. That seemed worse. "Did you attack them?"
Hyroh bristled. He would not let Tsahet shame him for this. "You weren't there, you didn't hear the things that bastard said to me!" Bitterly, he wondered if Ripper would've dared to say them at all if Tsahet had been there.
Tsahet sighed again and pinched his nose. "So you did. Padawan -"
"No. No, you do not get to tell me this was my fault," Hyroh snapped. He wanted to throw Tsahet's cloak off, or rip it to shreds. He would not accept kindness if it was accompanied only by admonishment. "I did exactly as you've asked me to. Maybe I talked back, but I wasn't going to push him. I knew I was angry, and I was walking away! Master, I was walking away, and then he attacked me first!"
Tsahet looked down at him. He scanned Hyroh's face again, like he was looking for something there, an answer that he didn't have readily available. Hyroh pushed on. "I'm hot-headed, fine. I'm impatient, fine. I don't have respect for authority or - or whatever! But I did exactly what you said I'm supposed to do. But how must am I supposed to take before I'm allowed to defend myself?"
"You think it's about whether or not you defend yourself?" Tsahet asked wearily. "Hyroh, I never told you that you should disregard your physical safety." Hyroh thought about rakghoul tunnels, and black-green blood, and doubted even that, but he bit his tongue. "Defending yourself is one thing. But this was a matter of your pride. It always is."
"I wasn't even trying to attack him, I was going to disarm him, like you taught me to."
"But you wanted to do more than that, didn't you?"
Hyroh fell silent. There was no point in lying. Tsahet seemed to know him better than anyone else, sometimes.
Tsahet rubbed his face. "Try your best to believe, Padawan, that everything I say and teach you is for your own good, not because I am out to get you." Grey eyes met his. "Maybe you intended to disarm him. But your 'saber was guided by fear and rage, invited in by the threat not simply to your body but your pride. You do not hide your hate well." Hyroh flinched viscerally, but Tsahet continued undeterred. "A weapon is a fickle, unpredictable thing when wielded by hands driven by emotion. No matter how sure you think you are, it can slip -" Hyroh's breath died in his throat when sunbright, burning gold burst into his vision. He hadn't seen the movement, hadn't even sensed it, but all of a sudden Tsahet's lightsaber hovered just to the side of his neck. Any closer, and it would be burning the fur. "Whatever control you believe yourself to have over your weapon and your abilities, know that it can disappear faster than you can even perceive."
Hyroh, pupils narrowed to slits by the blinding light, glanced between Tsahet's blade and his eyes. He kept his breaths shallow, so as not to touch the ignited lightsaber by accident. Apparently noticing this, Tsahet deactivated it and returned it wordlessly to his belt. Hyroh gulped.
"Hyroh." Tsahet inhaled, then gently put a hand to his shoulder. Hyroh blinked hard, and resisted the urge to run. "All I want for you is to have learned the lesson I hadn't known at your age. What I teach you, I learned firsthand. I don't wish that pain upon anyone, especially not you." He inclined his head. "Could you live with yourself, if you killed someone you didn't intend to? Someone who cared about you?"
Unbidden, Hyroh saw his Master. She was sitting, legs folded underneath her, on a scraggly, grassy knoll overlooking the low tide outside of Oradam. Her robes were traded for simple worker's garb, her hair tied up and underneath a hat. It was a rare pleasant day, and the sun shone on her warm, orange face, and her hands folded in her lap had a few less tattoos than they did now. She turned toward him, and smiled, and silently patted the grass beside her.
He decided in that moment, without realizing he'd been deliberating on it at all, that he could never tell her about this day. No, not even this day - he could not speak to her of Taris, ever. He would need to fabricate a lie of this entire blasted, ugly year. He could not tell her of all the ways his life had been put in danger. He could not tell her that they all made him into their dog.
"No," Hyroh said hollowly. It was the right answer. It was the only one he could give.
Tsahet nodded, whether in sympathy or because he was appeased, Hyroh couldn't tell. It didn't really matter either way, did it.
Tsahet's knees popped as he stood. In some distant memory that wasn't actually as distant as it felt, Hyroh made some joke about it, and Tsahet had smiled at him. He held out his hands to Hyroh. Silently, Hyroh took them, and allowed himself to be pulled up off the ground. "Come, let's get you cleaned up."
Hyroh looked down at himself. Despite being hit with the full force of a high-pressure emergency fire hose, designed to smother fire out of existence, to douse every single inch of it with unrelenting water, there was still blood stained into his robes.
