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ebitenpura · 7 months ago

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Quietus

Takes place in Chapter 9 of KOTET.

Warnings: Implied violence, implied violence against children, minor miscommunication (skip second memory)

It begins with a whisper.

Sleep, Valkorion’s voice echoes in her mind, as firm and gentle as a parent tucking their young into bed. Her eyes flutter shut not of their own will, heavy like lead. The last thing she hears is Theron and Lana shouting her name before darkness overtakes her and her body slumps weightlessly over the cold armrests of the Eternal Throne.

She awakens in a desolate land. Devoid of warmth, grey ash scattering about her feet, the stars whirl ceaselessly overhead, turning in an infinite wheel of lights that streak against the blackboard of the night sky. The wind howls. Yutorin shivers, and rubs her goosebumping forearms, only to stop and turn unfamiliar gnarled palms over. Thick and pale, crusted over with age… these are not her hands. She feels the power running through their veins and snaps her fingers. A tiny spark of purple electricity jumps between her digits– his digits. She takes one unbalanced step forward; she is too tall, her steps uneven. Her too-large hands trace the ruin of her face, and she lifts wizened, yellowed eyes lined by crows feet skyward.

She and Valkorion had switched bodies, but this was not the waking world.

It was a setting that had appeared to her for five years of carbonite. Five years of unceasing loneliness in the funeral urn of a dead planet. Where the abstract took form and voices of the past lambasted her ears, carried by gales of woe and misery. It was her mental landscape, corrupted by the one known as the Emperor, replaced with the last moments of a dying star.

She’d become intimate with the out-of-body sensation it provided and the dawning realization that one was in but a dream, unable to wake. Yet this was her mind– one she had been trapped in before without her bodily autonomy, like a puppet dancing on strings, long ago, when she answered to a different designation. Her fists ball at her sides. Valkorion would not have his way. She would not suffer it a second time. You may have my body, but not my mind, she thinks aloud, but the cosmos above, the unceasing desert, and Valkorion himself do not answer.

She traverses for what feels an eternity. The razor wind tears at her clothes, buffets her off the path, yet she advances dutifully all the same.

Her journey takes her through the labyrinthine innards of a cave, and eventually, to a stretch of open sky dominated by kneeling statues chained at the neck and torches whose flames do not flicker. Before her unfurls a crumbling umbilical cord of a staircase, the only other physical manifestation in this space beyond time. Four arched doorways surround the spiral pit, their paths leading into the seemingly empty void of the starry beyond.

Yutorin stops and stares at the bizarre scenery. There appeared to be no clear way forward, but in the annals of the mind, anything was possible.

She faces the arches, standing like sentries above the crumbling abyss. Her intuition tells her she must enter those doors to proceed– something important lies behind them, but her current knowledge of it is obscured like a memory she can't quite recall. Her brain feels muddied, shattered into incoherent fragments that only leaves her with a faint throbbing sensation when she tries to form a thought.

Yutorin shakes her head, hand falling from her temple. No good. She can't recall a thing. Valkorion’s influence is worse than I thought-

Hurry.

Yutorin recognizes the sound that rings in her ears; of her own timbre and the smooth accent that she's heard from her own throat countless times before. It's her voice: practiced, learned, Imperial. She looks around with increasing uncertainty, searching for the source amidst the chaos of her surroundings.

Hurry. Hurry. The disembodied voice of her psyche urges her on again, coming from nowhere and every direction all at once. Hurry and remember. Hurry and reclaim who you once were.

The voice falls mute. The arches continue to beckon to her in their silent gravitas, and she realizes then there is no other way.

She frowns, and reaches out.

The first doorway sucks her past the threshold, and everything fades into white.

When her vision clears, she's standing in the center of a trashed apartment.

“Where is that bitch spy?!” bellows a man's deep voice, his accent unrecognizable. The sound of furniture being upended and transparisteel breaking fills the air. Flimsi are strewn all over the floor; broken wiring lay ripped out of the walls. More household items are tossed from the next room over to the growing pile of detritus.

Yutorin surveys her environment impassively. She doesn't appear to be a part of this scene despite standing in the middle of it, as evidenced by a kolto pack next sailing through the air and passing through her body as if she were incorporeal. She closes her eyes. This must be a memory of her past. And if her suspicions were correct, then he should be…

A small whimper, imperceptible to all but her own ears, comes muffled from an undisturbed closet.

There.

Yutorin sticks her head past the closet's shutters, passing through as easily as if she were a ghost. What greets her is the sight of her younger self as a mere child of a few summers, trembling in his skin and clutching in his desperate fist an Imperial-grade army dagger, one which looked far too unwieldy for such a small boy to use.

The intruder in the next room stomps over the debris they made, hesitates, makes a half-turn, and pauses in front of the closet.

She sees her younger self deliberate and shove one hand over his mouth. Tears spring to his eyes unbidden, wide with primal fear. She stares at his unmarked face. Her hands trace where it would be lined with a cross-shaped scar, one that would last into adulthood.

She doesn't need to watch this anymore. She knows what comes next.

You were always collateral for someone else's mission. A liability. When Nosta took you in, she made it clear you would face death and worse for the crime of being associated with her, a spy. But you were a child, and you would learn.

The voice invades her periphery once more, speaking aloud the uncomfortable truths she'd always known deep down in her heart. Lessons she'd internalized all her life and never questioned.

The horrific scene progresses. She gazes at her younger self left twitching on the floor with pity, his blank, lifeless eyes partially obscured by the curtain of blood running down his cheeks. The knife is discarded to the side. The man's boots track crimson across the room as he leaves.

She had been a pathetic youngling. Weak and so alone in the world. How could she have forgotten?

Always remember. No place in the galaxy is your home. You will never be safe for as long as you walk this path.

The memory fades the same way it arrived, and she finds herself back where she started. The torches before the first door extinguish themselves. She turns to the adjacent door. Her expression darkens.

She reaches out anyways.

This time, she is in Keeper’s office.

Or rather, he is.

Cipher Eight– her male self, her previous identity as an agent before she became Commander– stands in front of the Minister of Intelligence. His fists white-knuckle at his stiffened sides. The blood has drained from his face, and all she can read from his paralyzed expression is that of pure shock.

Keeper’s eyes bore into hers past Eight himself, and Yutorin flinches.

She would never forget that day. Intelligence’s fall… she had done everything in her power to prevent it, only to be looked dead in the eye and told there was no stopping the inevitable, from a man she had been so utterly loyal to she would've cut her own arm off if he had so much as asked. She had played the game exactly how it should've been, had sold her soul, her freedom to protect them.

In the end, she had been betrayed.

“I will never accept who you are, agent.” His words are like daggers, cutting her to the core. She sinks to her knees.

Intelligence is not being rebuilt.

“There is no longer a place or a need for you. It is time to be let go.”

Dark days are coming for the Empire, and I can't protect you.

Yutorin grips her chest, where the stabbing ache in her heart turns to ice with each consequent phrase.

“But consider one thing: If you could change who you've become, would you take that opportunity?”

She turns away from those kind, unbelievably cruel words, her elegant features colored with pain. Her clothing crumples from the severity with which she holds her heart. Was I not enough, Keeper? Was there nothing I could've done for you to ask me to stay?

Is there any version of me you would've acknowledged as worthy to be by your side?

…Or was I simply doomed from the start?

At his desk, Keeper stamps the exit paperwork with resigned finality.

The memory fades once more. She's back at the cosmic stairwell. Two doors remain. She rises unsteadily to her feet, sways, and lurches through the next door.

The Star Cabal’s hideout, where she executed her final mission, manifests before her eyes.

Hunter is laid out on the floor, bleeding heavily from a deep wound in his abdomen. Eight kneels down beside him in one last act of kindness for an enemy he had neither sympathy nor enough words for. Hunter’s palm, slick with his own blood, slowly reaches for Eight’s cheek. He rests it there in an oddly touching display of uncharacteristic affection, a wan smile forming on his lips.

Eight makes no move to withdraw from his touch, an unreadable expression on his face.

“Goodbye, love. Don't ever let them stop you.” Hunter murmurs, letting his hand fall back down.

Eight wipes the crimson prints left lingering on his skin, smearing the blood across his cheekbone. His dark gaze lowers to the body going cold on the septic metal floor.

He says nothing for a long time, then faces away from him.

Whether you acknowledged it or not, you were exactly the same. United in soul. In history. In conquest. Did you think you could be different from the corpse you’ve made of him?

Watcher X’s voice suddenly pierces the numbing silence of her mind. If she closes her eyes, she can pretend she’s still back there, trapped, listening to the ruminations of a dead man as her skull breaks.

All you’ve been through, your trials and travails, will always lead to one end. Someday you too will be hunted, put down like a dog. When that day comes, you’ll see him again.

Then you’ll know in your heart of hearts…that you played the game right.

The memory dissipates like foam on the seashore. Again. Back at the threshold. The fires snuff themselves out. One door remains.

Time to cross.

She doesn’t look before she leaps.

The old, ruggedly handsome features of Ardun Kothe come into view. She’s back at the Shadow Arsenal, minutes before the impending disaster that would’ve destroyed Kaas City. Eight levels a tired look at the aged Jedi, who only replies with a sad, sad smile that holds years of untold guilt that she’d never get the chance to ask about.

“What I did to you was unforgivable. But I did it anyway.”

We all carry our own sins in this line of work, Yutorin thinks, but maybe you were the only one to see me the way I was meant to be.

“Hold position. Keyword: onomatophobia. And thank you.”

Thanking me. How strange. There’s no need to be gracious to your tool.

That was always what she admired about the man, oddly enough. For all his combined guilt, the burdens that weighed so heavily he would never reveal them to the world, and his rampant idealism, he never once lied to himself. Yutorin had seen his true face that day. It was…kind, for what little good it did him in the end.

But most of all, it was honest. Ardun Kothe was a man of sheer pragmatism. In his hands, Yutorin, the then Cipher Eight, had been nothing but a weapon to be wielded as he saw fit.

This, she would remember.

This, she would respect.

The last memory fades away into the ether. As she returns to the spiral staircase, she hears a sound resonating from the pit below. A sound…of iron being struck in clanging blows, melodically, like a bell. It calls to her, ringing in the depths of her soul. Before she realizes it, her feet have moved of their own volition and carried her down the winding steps, further and further into the darkness below.

The ringing stops. Before her lies the final doorway, and beyond that, the throne. A solitary monument in a snow-covered field of stone and ash, where her body awaits.

She ascends.

Valkorion gazes boredly at her atop his high seat as she comes level to him, a smug expression worn on what should be her face. “You continue to defy me. For what reason? I have given you everything– power, influence, the Eternal Throne. All that remains is to allow me to take your body. You would be a fool to resist.” He rumbles in her voice, the tone benevolent yet warped.

“I am not ready to die here, Emperor.”

He chuckles. “It is too late. There is nothing more you can do.”

“You underestimate me. That will be your undoing,” She declares, stepping forward with a look sharper than steel in her darkening eyes. The snow crunches beneath her feet. “I have seen my future. I have seen who I truly am. And you-” She plants her feet firmly in the ground, squaring off before the Immortal Emperor. “-are not a part of it.”

Simmering fury gathers in Valkorion’s countenance. “You are testing my patience, child.” He moves to rise from the throne, and Yutorin feels the ozone coalescing in the chilled air.

She exhales sharply. “...No. You are testing mine. This is my mind. My world to shape as I wish. You think you've won, Valkorion, but this is the trap I’ve laid for you. Keyword: iconoclasm. Come to me!” She barks, thrusting an arm towards her possessed body.

“!” Valkorion’s eyes widen as he takes one step forward, stumbling as he attempts to resist the codeword ingrained into her very being. “Impossible…! This should…” He struggles in vain. “Only work on Vaylin…!”

“You stole the programming for the Castellans from the Empire. It was used on the Ciphers,” She flatly explains as he unwillingly walks towards her, “First us, then your daughter. Reap what you have sown, my Emperor. I will never be free again.”

She grabs him by the collar and pulls him close into her embrace, holding him as if they were partners in a twisted dance. “And neither will you.”

“What are you doing?!”

Yutorin ignores his protests, blocking out all distractions from her mind. She recalls her memories, reaching deep into the depths of her heart. She has seen it laid bare; she knows what lies at the center of her psyche, the truth of her identity.

She will repair what has been broken. She will reforge it anew.

“I am nothing but a sword,” She chants almost reverently, “I am a weapon. I am no woman, nor man.” Her hand plunges deep into her body- no, Valkorion’s chest, passing through flesh and spirit both. Valkorion’s cry of surprise turns agonized. She feels something begin to take form within her vessel, and grasps it with all her might. “All my life, I have fought for others. I have cut down enemies. I have cut down friends.”

As she speaks, she begins to draw out her hand from within Valkorion’s chest. An intense light ruptures from where she's pierced him, and as she slowly pulls away, something begins to emerge from the cavity. A hilt.

Valkorion writhes beneath her. She pours all her strength into pulling out the hilt– and soon, a guard, a naked blade. A sword. As she does so, visions of her past flash before her eyes.

Intelligence. Ziost. The people of her Alliance.

And…

Before she knows it, she's pulled the full length of the sword from Valkorion, who has gone limp within her arms. The light grows ever brighter, blinding now in its brilliance. It's the blade she's always carried into battle, manifested now in the metaphysical as a representation of her very soul.

“I am not a body to possess,” She says, as the body Valkorion once inhabited becomes translucent and begins to fade away, “I am a sword made to slay you, and I will not be broken.”

She turns the blade on herself, and stabs inward.

When she reawakens, she’s lying on the ground as her old self, in her own body. The sword is clutched to her, bloodied as it is, and she feels a lancing pain in her chest. She gets up slowly, weary.

Atop the stairs leading to the throne, Valkorion’s spirit turns yellow Sith eyes full of loathing upon her. “Well done,” He bitterly rumbles, white vestments flowing in the harsh wind. “You are indeed an unbreakable tool of my empire. I should have chosen a better vessel to mold than a faceless weapon who will never find peace as an individual.” His voice is filled with barely-concealed disgust. “But it ends here. If I cannot possess you, I will send you to oblivion and start again. The Immortal Emperor will never succumb to mortality.”

Yutorin says nothing, answering with only a flick of her blade.

Valkorion gathers lightning within his hands, and fires.

She charges.

END

#swtor #swtor fanfiction #commander eight au #imperial agent spoilers #oc: orradiz #kotxx #valkorion #mentions of swtor hunter and ardun kothe #heavy depiction of mindfuckery bs and general force shit #admin writes #if this and the symbolism makes any sense ill kiss you on the mouth who said that

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