#hildr fahn.

[valleyofthemachinegods]

She finds him halfway between the landing pad of her ship and the complex, looking entirely the exiled-yet-redeemed husk of a man she'd taken him for. It's almost whimsical how he looks, staring off into the landscape, the slight breeze billowing the white fabric that adorns him nigh-hypocritically. Hildr-- and that is who she is today-- isn't entirely surprised; a deaf man could hear the whispers that follow him, the accusations. It's warranted, she knows; the same for her, though they dared not to create cause for her eye to fall on them.

Commander or not, she is just as guilty as he is.

"Arcann," she greets, noting the way his body shifts, as if surprise had conquered the Force, as if he hadn't felt her presence long before she'd announced it.

-- conjecture, possibly.

Still, Hildr finds a place at his side, letting the scenery draw her gaze in the same way it always does. Odessen truly is something to behold, a rarity, and certainly not for the sake of a balanced Force.

"Commander," he returns her greeting at last. She feels him shift again, uncertain. It's curious, unexpected, and she wonders if he'll offer her any insight into his head.

"You haven't said why you spared me."

Ah, there it is.

She prefers it when he is less forthcoming.

"You haven't asked," she hummed in response. The tips of her gloved fingers drum against the railing, less impatient than they are a manifestation of idleness.

She can feel the sidelong glance he gives her. This is a familiar exasperation, previously encapsulated in her dry quips during battle.

The Commander deigns, just this once, to be forthcoming. "It's complicated," she admits, resting her chin in her hand. "Multi-faceted."

The silence he offers her is well-deserved, she thinks. Arcann patiently waits for her to continue, and she must realize that she's brought this on herself. How easy it would be to simply leave it at that-- but it wouldn't be fair, not to him. Owing him something, for all of the blame and unuttered projections she pins to him, a small token in retribution.

"Do you remember what I said to Vaylin?"

"That we can choose to be better." It sounds better coming from him.

"I didn't do it for Senya," she says quietly, with an edge from an accusation that simply wasn't there, the distortion of her mask hardly allowing the words to filter out. That's the first lie: she places much more on Senya than she'd ever admit. "And I didn't do it for you either," lie number two, "yet I can't deny how selfish I am. Blame it on our bad childhoods, but there is something in you that's also in me."

I'd be afraid to let that die, she omits, because what would that mean for me?

"If you can change, there's a possibility that I can too." There's something weighing her down, an anchor in the syllables, a vulnerability that she had yet to cut out of herself. Hope had been extinguished from her long ago, somewhere aboard a young girl's ship adrift in the fringes of Wild Space-- so whatever this is, she thinks she can allow it. Her hand drifts to his, metallic-skeleton from the darkest spaces between the stars, rests on top of it.

Again, the silence sinks between them, snowdrifts in an endless tundra. It isn't uncomfortable, though her breath is only released once lungs begin to strain.

"We can choose to be better," he says again, lowly, at last, and with a sort of understanding that she loathes. If there is anything else, she is closed off from it. Not unkindly, he removes his synthetic hand from under hers. "If you found something redeemable in me, after everything, then it is in you too."

For all that she is, she can't look at him. The rejection doesn't sting because she doesn't let it: because she knows that friendship is a long stretch for someone like her. She recalls Aurine complimenting her dead eyes, once.

"Of course." Her gaze is drawn again to the black durasteel of his arm, glinting in the sunlight. She traces it up to his ruined face, now directed at her.

"And," she deflects, "If I'd killed you, who would be left in the galaxy to suffer with me?"

[honoshauntisgnosis]

OC faceclaim because I’ll never remember:

Marvel: 

Eloise Strange - Adelaide Kane

Silje (seal-yah) Ward - MyAnna Buring

Star Wars: 

(currently unnamed) Mando oc - Michelle Yeoh 

Hildr Fahn / Darth Agonia - Paulina Alexis

Sibahl Singh - Dev Patel

Siree Fahn - Sophia Brown

Star Trek:

Eleanor Sunden - Sofia Helin

Vega / Lovisa Göta Sjögren - Noomi Rapace

Levi - Tom Hardy

Vikings:

Hilda Ragnarsdottir - Poppy Drayton /  Yuliya Snigir

Fantasy/Historical: 

Niamh (Neve) - Ella-Rae Smith

[valleyofthemachinegods]

It is a void.

Not the same that she is accustomed to-- it is not the same, not empty enough, devoid of everything and everything. But it is a hollow point, where rage once simmered, now a gap that she cannot quite comprehend. Whatever the Voss had done, whatever Senya had done, it had worked.

Agonia wishes it hadn't.

He isn't the same white-hot flare of agony that scorches her dead eyes, not the same grip around her throat. When he appears there, at the Zakuulan palace and offers his aid, she thinks she might have come across a very convincing clone. No; it is him, the same strange eyes, the same scars that creep across his face like spiderwebs. Absent, yet, a torrent of darkness that swirls around him like a storm.

Odessen does not accept him. The Alliance follows her word, perhaps hesitantly, but there is no outward rebellion. The whispers begin immediately though-- a fog that overtakes, cascades through underground halls. She knows. She listens. Venom spitting maws that long for the throat, and she wonders which of them will strike first. Even then, could she stop it? Would she?

Ah, her mouth, first.

Only days after, she finds him in a hallway, and it is no coincidence. Flitting in the shadows, watching with ravenous eyes, waiting and waiting. When he's alone, she strikes, shoving him against the wall with a wild gaze that only just begets her gnawing hunger, salivating behind her mask.

"Where is your rage, Arcann? Where is your anger?"

This time, when she looks into his eyes, there is only mild surprise, an eternity of regret, enough sorrow to sate an ocean. A loss of self, the agony it precipitates.

It is what she sees within herself.

"Who are you?" before he can answer, "Who are you now?"

"I am the former Emperor, commander of the Eternal Fleet," he makes no attempt to free himself, to fight back, "I am a murderer--"

"No," there's a desperation that breaks through her voice, her mask, the space between them, "Why won't you fight me? Why won't you try to kill me? Hurt me?!"

"Commander--"

"Who are you?!" with a shriek that echoes through the base. Blood seeps from her nose, touches her lips. The silence that befalls them is heavy, a gravity too formidable for her fragile chest. If he is no longer the monster that echoes in her dreams, than who is he?

Who is she?

"I am Arcann," he says at long last, watching the fury evaporate from her, leaving her desperately cold. Unfathomably vacant.

Agonia releases her grip, backs away from him as if he'd just struck her.

"Just Arcann."

[valleyofthemachinegods]

Certainty

The doors to the lift open, and the scenery that greets her is less a memory than it is a fever dream she can only just recall with the correct combination of meditation and spice. Yes-- throne room is just as stark, cold, and devestatingly void as she'd remembered. Grand, and entirely unwelcoming. As they walk down the landing, Arcann overtakes them, stopping just short of the seat that had caused so much unrest, so much strife.

"My throne…" he says, and Hildr shivers at his cadence. She stands astride of Senya as he ascends the steps, only to stop short of the prize.

"I took my brother's life here. Provoked Vaylin's anger. Abandoned the people of Zakuul…"

Hildr walks slowly up the stairs, pausing behind him, letting him continue. A shadow to blend in, to observe without interference.

"I am not fit to rule… I never was," he says at last, turning and meeting her gaze.

"You were following Valkorion's twisted example," she answers quietly, "But you're a better man than he ever was." She holds his gaze for a long moment, searching for something that she isn't ready to name.

"--Are you certain that you're ready to give it up?" she asks then in a low voice that sounds eerily robotic, synthetic through her mask. The surprise that crosses his features does little to sate her, and how unslaked she is. "Your throne, darling. It doesn't call to you?"

"Commander," Senya says from behind her-- less of an inquiry and more of a warning. Hildr-- no, Agonia, ignores the wayward mother, hyper-focused on Arcann. Walking slowly, replete like an akkling, around him until she could drag a gloved finger over an armrest. A viper in waiting, watching him carefully.

"You could do it right this time. You could be better."

"What are you doing?" Valkorion seethes in her ear and in her head, causing a grin to form on her twisted lips. It fails to reach her eyes. "You are meant to take the throne! My son will only kill you!"

"Arcann," she purrs, seductive and silky as she was when they'd been enemies (aren't they still?), shrouded in a coquettish veil that does little to reflect the whirlwind in her chest. He walks closer to her, gaze darting between her and the throne, "Is this not where you belong? You are strong."

The silence that lays between them is thick, electric. Her pulse quickens when he looks to her entirely, attention driven into her dead, dead gaze. Whatever he's searching for is hidden well, locked away in a place far less obvious than a window to the soul.

"And you are even stronger," that his voice sinks into her so thoroughly is damaging, but she will survive. Always does, it seems. "Claim the throne, Commander. You have earned it."

With that, Arcann turns away from her and descends the steps, leaving her with little else. I had to be sure, Agonia-back-into-Hildr says aloud, rendered free of any trace of emotion. Whether that explanation if sufficient is neither important nor reachable. With nowhere else to turn, it may as well be an eternal throne-- she sits upon it, and gazes through Senya and Arcann, into something unknown. Something worse than an assurance of peace for the galaxy. The static in the walls, between the atoms, inside of the darkness.

Just before the energy takes, a moment before the throne is fully claimed as her, she cannot help feeling as if she'd done a piss-poor job of outsmarting destiny.

Somewhere in her skull, there is laughter, and it does not belong to Valkorion.

[valleyofthemachinegods]

Hildr Fahn Darth Agonia.

Overseer of the Sphere of Mysteries.

Child of a literal wound in the Force.