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shimmersing · 3 years

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“Master Jedi!”

Elara Dorne called to her from across the hall; Aitahea had just closed the door of her suite, ready to meet Hallam Organa. Finally, she could find Master Sidonie, heal her, and end this plague once and for all. The exquisite gown had been carefully packed away and was en route to the Luminous with the rest of her belongings. She’d donned her carefully cleaned and mended robes this morning with a trace of sadness, a chill that faded once warmly wrapped in the familiar clothes.

“Sergeant, good morning,” Aitahea said, slipping into her kindest smile; it wasn’t hard in the presence of the buoyant former Imperial.

“Are you well after last’s nights events? I’ve never seen anything like that, the dancing, the music!” Aitahea nodded, and the woman beamed brightly. “The Lieutenant hasn’t smiled that much since I’ve known him, though it’s only been since Taris, which isn’t long at all.” She seemed suddenly embarrassed of her ramble, raising her hands to her lips to hide a giggle.

Aitahea couldn’t help laughing, but a spike of jealousy needled through the shared delight when she realized how little time that meant she herself had known him. Months had passed since Taris, but unlike his crew members, Aitahea’s sliver of his time was infinitesimal, scattered across the galaxy.

“And you! You looked like a princess.” Elara’s smile went a bit wistful. “Like you belong here.”

Aitahea ducked into the shadow of her hood, flattered and pleased, but haunted by the sergeant’s words. She felt an uncertainty, a jarring dissonance like she’d felt in the last few moments of the dance when the steps had begun unwinding before her, and then she’d falled, once again, into Erithon’s arms. Aitahea knew she certainly didn’t look like she belonged here, not muted layers of robes, hair back in efficient plaits, and weapon at her side. She wasn’t certain quite where she belonged.

“That’s kind of you, sergeant. Forgive me for the short farewell, but I’m expected in the diplomacy wing. Please take care.”

“Of course. May the Force be with you, Master Jedi.”

It would be the grand stairs they’d meet on again, Erithon noted with wry amusement when he spotted the Jedi ascending. Like him, she was back in what passed for a uniform, but very unlike him, she remained as remarkable in earthtones and lightsaber at her side as she’d been in gossamer and flowers and starlight.

Last night had gone so well, until it hadn’t. He’d let things go too far, too fast, and he’d deserved to have her put the brakes on like that. But… I never stopped, she’d whispered. Dreaming, of him. He hadn’t known quite what to do with that information last night, and he hadn’t figured out anything so far this morning either. He had a fellow in the detention center to meet; she’d likely be on the trail of her ill Jedi Master. Back to their assigned roles.

She still looked tired and pale, but her voice held a note of warmth that chased away the morning chill. “Good morning, Lieutenant.”

He swallowed the ache that tightened in his chest when she used his rank, not his name. Names were for dancing and dark hallways, not now, not when they each had someone else to be. “Morning, Jedi. Ready to save the world again?”

“The summit is already underway.” Aitahea exhaled a slow breath. “I only hope I’m not too late.”

Erithon wanted nothing more desperately than to gather her up and hold her until that haunted look disappeared from her eyes. It had, for just a few moments last night, when they’d been dancing. When he’d held her and was certain that in his arms was exactly where she’d wanted to be.

While he struggled for words, Aitahea began to frown at him. Really, she was frowning at the new chest plate supplied by the quartermaster to replace the one he’d… lost. It didn’t match the rest of his armor quite right, different paint batch or something, but at least it didn’t have a huge lightsaber slash through it.

‘Hey, I’m back in action too, see?’ He thunked a fist against the mismatched armor and grinned. Her expression softened after a lengthy moment, melting away like snow in sunlight to reveal a small but bright smile. That did chase the shadows away, for a moment at least.

“Erithon,” she began, and everything he’d wanted to hear was in his name as it left her lips. Then she paused, considering; she still smiled, thoughtful, but a sudden distance stretched between them. “Thank you for rescuing me.” She stared hard at the new chestplate again, then raised her hand and touched her fingertips to the mismatched composite. “May the Force be with you, Lieutenant.”

“You too,” he echoed, a little mystified. He could have sworn he felt her fingertips against his own skin again, touching the vague discoloration that belied the life-ending wound. The wound she’d healed, and here she was, thanking him for her rescue? He started to add something, but she bowed low to him, and before her face disappeared in the shadow of her hood, eyes that seemed just a little too bright. And then she was disappearing around the corner, just a swish of robes and the scent of white flowers.

Duke Charle Organa wandered up, watching as Aitahea disappeared, humming pleasantly to himself. “Last time I saw that kind of longing on your Jedi’s face was when we put her on the ship to Tython.” Erithon startled when Organa said your. The Duke mused at the suddenly flushed trooper. “No one ever wanted to both stay and go as much as that girl did.”

Erithon swallowed hard and nodded. He was pretty sure he felt that, too.

“Duty is a privilege and a burden, I can safely tell you, Lieutenant.” He pursed his lips thoughtfully. “Master Aitahea knows that perhaps less well than she assumes.”

“Folks who work that hard – in particular for the benefit of other people - do it for a lot of reasons, Your Grace. That’s part of her code, isn’t it?”

“It is indeed, Lieutenant. It is indeed. But what about her?”

Erithon pulled a face. “Sir?” Organa gave him an expectant look, so he added hesitantly, “I’m not sure I’m in a position to speculate there, especially about Aita – about Master Daviin.” He grimaced as he stumbled over her title. Organa’s smile grew satisfied.

“Best intentions are all well and good, Lieutenant, but time will slip away before you know it.” The Duke drew up smartly, giving Erithon a sideways glance before he turned away. “You have appointments this morning, Lieutenant?”

“Yes, sir,” Erithon said in reply. Organa was right, it was time he get to that meeting. He’d have to puzzle through the Duke’s words later.

Best intentions, indeed.

#swtor fanfic #swtor fanfiction #swtor #fanfiction #star wars the old republic #jedi consular #republic trooper #alderaan #best intentions #COMPLETE #chapter 9

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sirensdxn · 3 years

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Music

Daily writing challenge day 5: @daily-writing-challenge

Warning: Themes of manipulation

It all began with a ruler's bite upon his knuckles. The distant ramblings of Cantor Soulek who doubled as the local tutor during off outs. He’d been singled out as pride of Greenbrook’s choir for special lessons every other night. While the children made mudcastles by the river he’d be learning sheet music. There was a half year attempting to teach him piano that ended with bruised fingers and cracked cries. A stint that ended with the boy running hiding out in one of the barrels out back for a rainy evening. Ra’hsen still remembered the chill that night, but the sting of pulled hair and scraped knees on wood was fresher than any storm. The lecture that followed put any scolding before down a level. After all, what would they do if their precious choir boy got sick?

A pretty voice, that’s all he was. .

They fell for each time. The youthful lad dressed in silver and white with a hood over his head. A guise of humble robes with a weathered staff that sank into the wet road’s much after every step. Mud stained the hem of his robes as fragile eyes stayed glued to the street. Only the flickering lamp in his opposite hand offered any lumination through the night. Till the occasional carriage road on by into the village ahead. Yet, some still offered the lone priest a seat in their overpriced vehicle. Of course unaware of the watchful eyes in the distant fields waiting for the lamp’s flicker to vanish. They’d always inquire of his well being, it was dangerous to be all alone on these gang filled fields. He’d never have to worry now, after all, they’d protect him. Where was he going? Oh, the town next over? They’d be happy to take him. There, as the coach drove past the village did the oh so tired priest lean against the pig. They’d offer him a room, such a generous offer how could he refuse? Graciously he’d nod and offer them a blessing in thanks, it was the least he could do. His voice had grown more mature over the years, but held that youthful pitch. He kept their eye contact as the distance between the two closed. Only for it to be shattered with the sudden shake and carriage drawing to a halt.

Just another chance for them to be the hero. They’d grab his hand and insist not to worry. Brave eyes as they waited for the guards to tend to whatever nuisance interrupted their impromptu rescue. He’d offer them a skittish smile and curled up besides them, oh so frightened. Next came the familiar pull of the door, a swift but gentle pull of his arm out into another’s old. A jacket draped over his shoulders as he rolled his eyes up his partner. Jack stayed near, always within arms length as the others dealt with the rest. There he cried, pleaded and begged with such accuracy it should have been a crime. Oh, please do not hurt him. Where was his hero?

Nothing felt better than seeing their reactions.

It was a hobby. Tucked away in his room, beneath his bed, sat a small journal bound by crimson twine. Inside sat a series of idle ramblings and lyrics that needed years of refining. Each verse held a fear, an ache, or memory from years ago trapped inside ink on a page. Still, no matter how small a treasure might be, its destiny was to be found. The next morning his mentor returned it to its rightful space, tucked between logs in the fireplace.

You don’t need to create, Darien told him. You only need to read. So he did. He read the books, the scriptures, the psalms, and whatever else he’d find in the cathedral halls. Nose down, ears open, mind focused. Who needed to create when everything was copies of the originals? It’d be better to study them than put any energy into a silly little hobby. Sleepless nights of journaling and doodling turned to study sessions by candle light. A propped up arm with a chin upon his palm. Ink stained fingers skittered across smudged pages leaving short annotations.

Every morning he joined the choir with a humble song. Each sermon he took his place in the back wearing a pretty face and smiling eyes. Once the preacher stepped aside he walked to the pulpit and held arms out toward the congregation. From youthful song his voice matured into a gentle bellow that filled the pews with joyous praise. There he led those faithful in prayer, as Cantor Soulek had done so many years ago. At least he didn’t have a ruler looming over his fingers anymore.

Despite the crowds it all felt hollow.

What was the point of it all? He had taken up scribbling once more in a journal, for studying he insisted. Lyrics, poems, short drabbles of what claimed his mind all torn up and tossed back into the fireplace. Who needed it? Stories? Music? They’d all been written before. So then why did they relish in it? Everyone from children to the aching elderly listened. Some danced without a care to a beat that, stylistically, never made sense. It went against all the training, the practice, the rules of music. Still the unfamiliar beat appeared and reappeared in his works. In return it fell to ash along with the rest of his pages. They were for no one. So then why did it return?

Once he let the melody flow, let it cover a page without scratching it out. It had to be the way to get it out of the mind. Like an earworm you couldn’t unhear, you had to follow it through. It was an evening of frustration, but an evening of elation. A cauldron of anger and relief settled in his chest. How could he write something so terrible? After all this time could he not write anything better? Had the study of the greats not given him some insight? Still, it felt good to have it off his chest. To have melody out of his head.

Maybe, this once, it didn’t deserve the flame.

#::Recorded Memories::#dwc2021 #//weak ending. I didn't have the energy to finish it//#//Small snippets of proper scenes. Maybe I'll flesh them out later? Knowing me probably not.//#::The Gossamer Priest::

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doorsclosingslowly · 3 years

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Hell is just a beat away (3/9)

Despite early promise, young Maul has turned out to be a disappointment, willfully delaying his training with secret attempts to make himself friends from scrap metal. He must be properly motivated, and so Darth Sidious sends him to a slave market on an impossible mission. It backfires. Star Wars: Darth Maul (2017) comic AU | 5.2k | warning for slavery, sexual assault of a teenager (non-graphic)

Ten to doomsday, moving fast

Eldra does not sleep. She refuses. If she has to bite her fingers bloody when her eyelids threaten to drop, then so be it. Master Fyaar would have chastened her for it—she always insists that Eldra be at her best regardless of circumstance, and staying awake for what must be more than one or two entire standard days now will help with neither her innate distractibility nor her willful emotions. Her secret inadequacy, unknown to all but Fyaar, who chose Eldra when she was ten and had yet to develop the mind that is, and she has rarely admitted to those fears even in the privacy of her own brain, the mind that is perhaps fundamentally unsuited to the noble path of the Jedi. Sure, she does well enough in her classes, though she drives her teachers to frustration with her incessant fiddling with any trinket at all within her reach and her doodling and her daydreams. Sure, she mostly behaves acceptably among people, though she does not pick up on the right cues to be a diplomat and she vacillates too often between excited talking and secret loneliness, when she, once again, finds her peers more interested in each other than in whatever she has wanted to share. Her one friend in the Order is Bayro who’s two years older, though now she’s not even sure if Bayro would see her as more than a friendly, clingy acquaintance, and—

Will Bayro even miss her? They’ve made plans to watch a holovid after Eldra’s back from Teth and Bayro aces the Advanced Test on Coruscant Sublevels 6665 through 7900. Vague plans, though, and since Eldra didn’t know how long she’d have to guard Mayor Woobudg… Bayro will probably notice in a few months that Eldra hasn’t returned to the Temple, and then watch the holovid with one of her many other friends. She’ll—

Watch your feelings, Eldra, she remembers. It hurts. The memory of Master Fyaar hurts worse than even the imaginary indifference of Bayro does, but it’s necessary. As ever, Master Fyaar’s warning is right, even if it’s only the ghost of Fyaar living on inside Eldra’s grief. Eldra almost lost her calm over a scenario of her own imagination, yet another reminder of her unsuitable mercurial temperament. Yet another reminder of why she needs Fyaar, needs her constant watch, if she wants to remain on the path of the Jedi.

And Master Zalandas Fyaar is dead.

Fyaar’s dead.

Eldra watched her murder, and the murder of everyone she was supposed to protect on this mission. Eldra watched her murder and did not reach for the dark side of the force to avenge her. Eldra watched and held still.

Eldra allowed herself to be abducted.

She does not sleep in her tiny cell, just as she didn’t sleep on the freight ship that carried her to an unknown planet far away from bloodied Teth. She didn’t sleep then as stubbornly as she does now, but even before her wide-open burning eyes the pictures will not stop. The blood. The touch. The grin of her vile captor when he said that she would fetch a tidy sum, despite being a blue twi’lek (“A dime a dozen, they are, and this one’s not even a trained dancer! She hasn’t even… look!” Her captor had pulled her upper lip away then, and she had snapped for his fingers. “She’s still got those awful sharp teeth! Who the hell lets a twi’lek girl walk around with sharp teeth? She could tear a guy’s throat out, with these!”) she would still be worth a quick sale to her captors but only because she is (was) a Jedi padawan, and apparently there are quite a few pieces of shit out there who’d like to hurt a Jedi. Or—she keeps her eyes open, open, open till tears threaten to drop, and yet the thought comes. Or fuck one. Same difference.

A toy that’s padawan-shaped. That’s why they let her keep her own robes. But at least they did.

Watch your feelings, but still, Eldra shakes to her very core. She’s never thought of herself as being anything but a person, slightly inadequate perhaps in all ways that matter to her but a person; a luminous being, a small conduit for the very force to act through in the material galaxy; but now she’s been caught and taught that what she is is actually just a twi’lek girl. Cheap. Interchangeable. Nothing but her species and her gender, nothing but her flesh: a pretty dancer, never mind she hates dancing and if she ever makes it out, if the Jedi find and rescue her, please, please, she will never ever dance not even a single one of those silly novelty dances ever again even if Bayro does it first. She’ll go to whatever lengths needed to never be appraised, judged, looked upon, perceived as anything but a luminous dutiful Jedi ever again.

To these people, she’s not a person. Not a Jedi, unless the fetish counts, not really, not to the slavers and—watch your feelings, but still, the seething disgust returns and she wants nothing more than her lightsaber through her captor’s hearts or their hands torn off by her teeth—perhaps, maybe, please no, not truly anymore either to herself.

⁂

Maul wakes up to insistent beeping. He’s never heard the noise before, except—somewhere behind the headache and the nausea he remembers—except roughly five minutes ago, and five minutes before that, and five minutes before… He’s read about those periodical noises. Snooze button on an alarm clock, they’re called. He’s never used them before. He’s never used—Master teaches that a slothful tool is a tool broken, useless, and he’s never before dared to oversleep, even with his throat swollen and filled with mucus he didn’t, but now—it is a mercy he does not deserve, that Master was not here to witness Maul fail so deeply on this mission and just because something beats a booming drum inside his head and stuffed his stomach full of eels twisting up languidly through his esophagus.

Not real eels, though. He checks his vomit after throwing up. No eels. No animals hatched inside him; it’s just an inconvenient illness. And he feels better already, after spewing out the clear oily water and half-digested bread and no eels whatsoever. He does feel much better. Definitely. Illness during his mission would be inconvenient.

He has ample time to travel to the palace of Xev Xrexus before the padawan is sold there. Time he is grateful for, because Master’s ship will not let him in, so he has no access to his stilts or anything else he prepared apart from his cloak and the vocoder mask he carried in his satchel to the convenience store like a talisman of ingenuity and pretense. He doesn’t have his finest Sith robes that he left safe inside, only to be worn in the moment of Darth Maul’s triumph, and most of his weapons, too, apart from one anonymous knife strapped to his shin, are still tidied away in the ship Master gave him that will now pulverize anyone who dares approach.

Luckily, Maul is both incredibly clever—he figured out the location of the padawan! Despite Master giving him a wrong date and location! Solely by his own superior Sith cunning!—and he is within another sucker’s ship now—he sliced the lock in minutes! Because he is Darth Maul!—and the ship is full of new tools for improvisation.

Such as the large pair of black sunglasses that helps guard him at least slightly against the sun’s sickening poking and poking and poking of his cerebral cortex. Such as the trio of black shirts that, belted with a strange deltoid strip of fabric, bulk up his frame considerably and also make him feel toasty warm. Nar Shaddaa is cold, but Maul isn’t. Yet another victory to add to his tally.

With the gloves and the vocoder mask and the Sith cloak added on top, every square centimeter of Maul’s flesh is covered, and as he struts in front of the berth mirror he decides: he looks both incredibly dignified and scary, not to himself obviously but to those forcenull denizens of the underworld who will yet learn to tremble before the almighty Sith. He looks almost as impressive as Master. He doesn’t have the pale chin lurking under his cowl, obviously the most Sithly of looks, but in a pinch the black leather covering his cheeks and the opaque gridded speaker over his mouth should do almost as well.

Before he leaves, he ransacks the ship. No point in abandoning tools he might yet use. Everything he can carry, he stuffs inside his satchel.

Then, he begins the long pedestrian march to the palace of Xrexus. As usual, while he walks, he seethes in the Sithly anger of how much faster he could go if only he had a decent speeder bike. Soon, he reminds himself. Soon. After the oncoming awesome success of this mission, Master will be impressed enough to bestow the title of Darth and gift him a CK-6 swoop bike tuned up to the limits of terrestrial speed. Soon. Besides, with how slow the nausea is to settle, it’s perhaps a tiny bit useful that he is forced to take this brisk long walk in the Nar Shaddaa morning air. Although his coat and shirts fluttering with the speed of his bike would look very cool… He loses himself in his daydreams, and before long, he spies a duo of falleen in white dress shirts and black pants before the palace that belongs to Xev Xrexor.

The most adventurous part of his mission has just begun.

“Greetings,” Maul growls haughtily with the handsome baritone of his vocoder. “I have chosen to purchase a Jedi slave today. I trust this is the location for these sorts of errands?”

“Are you on the guest list?” the left falleen asks.

Guest list? Yet another complication. But Maul must not fail. “I am Ma Goweelr,” he says, borrowing the name of the man whose ship he ransacked. He found an identification card with his name on it and wisely brought it with him. He pulls it out now.

“You don’t look like Goweelr, friend,” she says.

“Unfortunately, I had… an accident.” Blast. They cannot see his face, so tt’s the height issue again. If Maul had his stilts, he could have made his way through easily, but because Master saw fit to lock the ship—no, it’s not Master’s fault. Because Maul was stupid enough to leave his tools aboard the ship, he now falters. What to do. What to do. What to—

“He’s slow,” the other bouncer whispers to his partner, but loudly enough that Maul heard it without issue. He stares intently at Maul, almost if he was expecting a specific reaction.

The left falleen winks. “All right. A little grease in the palm goes a long way, friend.”

Grease? Necessary for the function of machines. Cooking, apparently, also. Often a type of fat, either animal or plant-based, though hydrocarbons mined on certain planets or synthesized in labs such as Corellia’s X-Tech Max nowadays are a far more affordable and controllable—

“He’s dumb, Brighta. We don’t care whether you’re on the guest list. We want a bribe.”

A… Maul’s certain he read about bribes somewhere, but—

“Cash. Money. Credits.”

Credits! Maul found some on the ship. Since they were light enough, he put them in his satchel. The force is with him! He pulls out the chits he found, rummaging in a perhaps less than dignified way—the falleen exchange a look over his head that he’s too busy to try to read, but it doesn’t seem hostile—and when he hands over five thousand credits their vague non-hostility turns to genuine excitement.

“House Xrexus is honored to host you for this auction, sir,” the male falleen says when he opens the door.

“As am I,” Maul replies with a bow. When he walks past, the female bouncer taps him on the shoulder and then bends down to whisper in his ear.

“The Jedi’s auction’s in two hours, but the preview starts in one and she’ll probably get snapped up then, so. Might wanna hurry.”

“Thank… you?” Maul rumbles and winces at the vocoder turning his slight surprise into a question, but the falleen does not laugh this time.

“Appreciative customers are rare. Come back anytime,” and she winks and pushes him with her—warm, strong, startling—hand the rest of the way through the door and then slams it shut.

Presale. Other customers. Complicating factors Maul would not even have known about if it wasn’t for the bouncer—and for the force, therefore, willing him to succeed—because he didn’t… He did not actually expect any competition. After all, there are no other Sith but the Master and his apprentice. Who, then, would have need of a Jedi padawan? Who has need of Xrexus’ auction at all when they are not sent by their Master? Their… Master. Master might compete with Maul at this sale, both as a test of Maul’s readiness and as a failsafe, should Maul not manage to succeed in his mission. Master is incredibly smart after all, and foresees any number of possible twists and turns of a scenario, as unlikely as they might be. Even such unlikely eventualities as Darth Maul not completing in his mission. Master considers everything. It’s why he’s the Master.

Luckily, Maul was forewarned, and so when he passes a fire exit plan of the palace that’s nailed to a wall in the empty entrance hall he looks for any possible… There. A server room. A small bureau. Two places where Maul might gain access to the databases of Xrexus and convince the filing system that he has already bought the Jedi, before the first competitor has even placed their bid. It’s the only surefire way of preempting a person as thorough and prompt as Master is, and besides… Maul understands machines. He can charm and bend them to his will. His confusion at the bouncers’ hints and the tip the falleen gave him when he would never have expected anything of the sort based on the way the previous part of the encounter had passed—never mind the blasted lack of his carefully constructed stilts—were a sore reminder that in the field of people Maul does not yet excel to the standard of a Sith. Something he must remedy, but perhaps not on a mission as important as this. (Perhaps not among people who are oily and stare too hard.)

Laughter peals in a room straight ahead, but the server room is one floor down a side staircase. It’s sectioned off by a dangly gold chain that Maul needs to barely duck to pass under, and no-one passes through either the main corridor he left or the dusty unlit staircase while Maul hops down, thinking I am Sith alternating with I am shadow on every step.

The hallway leading to the server room is just as deserted. The door is locked, but Maul has sliced the access pads of twelve ships now and has refined his technique to under three minutes of elegant fiddling. This lock takes two seconds.

A datapad is already hanging inside right next to the door, from the cable with which it’s plugged into a socket there. Maul picks it up. Its screen is thrice-cracked and fixed up with clear tape. The touchscreen is incredibly sluggish to react, but as much as he might love the challenge of repairing it he only has less than an hour to spare. If he must, he will, but—gloves. He removes the right one, and the datapad responds.

A login screen.

Thus-far, the security has been abysmal. Worse than what he improvised for the secret hiding space of the first functional droid he built, and so he enters root, root. It works.

Pathetic, Maul thinks. Disappointing. Embarrassing. Horrendous. Useless. Awful. You deserve this. You deserve worse. It almost takes off some of the giddiness at how well Maul has been performing on his mission, thus far. His opponents are veritable morons. It is no great feat, to succeed against people as unprepared for basic survival as these, and it does not take a Sith’s cunning—it’s not worthy of the great Darth Maul who learns under Darth Sidious the greatest creature in the galaxy—to fight them.

In the central database he changes the status of the Jedi padawan to Sold and the buyer to Ma Goweelrand types in 666666666 for the winning bid. It’s a large number, and Jedi means valuable. It should pass muster. Probably. Money: yet another area where Maul requires further instruction. There was another card Maul stole with information on Goweelr’s account with the InterGalactic Banking Clan, and he enters it in the respective field. As to the user listed as making these changes, he picks the fifth-most appearing in the database. If he wanted to arouse no suspicion at all, he would need to research Xrexus’ organization in total, but—he’d really rather not. Even glancing at some of the entries of the database reawakened the eels in his stomach.

He pettily changes the admin password and wipes the screen carefully before he logs out.

Mission almost complete.

Half an hour left until the beginning of the presale, a clock tells him, and that’s most likely when they will check the padawan’s entry and approach Goweelr as her legitimate buyer. Everything is going according to plan, as long as he is not caught down here.

Since Maul is Sith and shadow and incredibly silent and deadly, he isn’t.

He sneaks back up and then strides, with as much power and dignity as he can muster when he wants to skip giddily to celebrate a job well done, into the room where the laughter comes from. It’s—

It’s bright. Loud. Full. But more than any other adjective, it’s huge, a room that is a thousand times bigger than anything Maul has ever set foot in, with a domed ceiling rising so far above that he can’t make out any details there. Can’t see whether there are any cameras, or snipers—can’t see anything but the luster and wealth on display. Plants growing on floating bowls of silver, plants he has never seen anywhere but in holos (Most plants are plants he’s only ever seen in holos. Almost all of them. Master rarely makes him train off-planet, and there is nothing but fire on Mustafar.), plants and waterfalls. Delicate staircases that appear to hover in the air just like the tree-bowls are. It looks like something out of a dream, if Maul’s dreams were able to imagine impossible worlds and not just impossible people who’ll save him.

Below it all, there are throngs of people in various kinds of festive garb, chatting and sipping on dainty glasses. People of most species he’s ever read about. Even…

Even a zabrak. There’s a zabrak over in a corner, not an Iridonian zabrak like the ones Maul finds often in his research but a zabrak who looks startingly close to him, hairless and bright and black-marked, only he’s much taller than Maul—he’s tall! Maul always worried that his species was doomed to remain as small as he is right now but he’s tall! He won’t need stilts forever!—and he’s yellow.

Idly—or trying to appear idle but actually shivering with curiosity—he saunters closer. The zabrak, it’s quickly obvious, is not here as a buyer. He’s chained up, both manacles connected to the neck cuff, though the bonds look so flimsy that Maul could have snapped them. He’s almost naked except for a pair of trousers that barely reaches his thighs and, moreover, is made of a fabric far too flimsy and tight to fight in. His skin is weirdly shiny as well, as if he was sweating but that is unlikely, given Maul’s not too hot under his three shirts and a cloak (in fact, it gets colder the closer Maul comes to the strange zabrak), and the yellow zabrak’s not exercising either but standing completely still, feet slightly apart and arms raised in a poor imitation of a fighting pose. The claws on his hand and feet would be called neatly trimmed if Maul didn’t know intimately that this length means they’re cut so close to the bed that it irritates several internal nerves. The horns are filed too close as well, and they look blunt.

A fighting slave.

No. A pretend fighting slave.

Everything about him might look fearsome to one who does not know what to watch for, but he does not stand or dress or groom himself like a fighter.

It’s—it’s difficult for Maul to sort out his reaction. This is a zabrak, the first person like him he’s ever seen, but he’s also a mockery of the warrior he trains so hard to become. Are all other zabraks like this? Does Maul look like this to other people? Flimsy and fake? It is almost enough to be ashamed of the association, and Maul is glad that with his clothes no-one else here can guess at their shared species.

“Welcome,” the unchained human next to the zabrak shouts, and Maul cranes his neck but apparently it’s addressed to him. “What are you looking for? A nightly companion? A gladiator? A—”

“This is not a gladiator,” Maul growls.

“Ah, well, he’s versatile,” the slaver says. “Do you see his muscles?” He squeezes the other zabrak’s biceps. The zabrak does not react. “He is excellent at bearing pain as well,” and alright, Maul will give him that. From this close, he can see the faint network of scars.

“He’s truly a wild beast when you want him that way,” and if to contradict him—the first time Maul feels anything approaching pride at their kinship—the zabrak refuses to bare his teeth, even when the human slaps him in the face twice and then prods him with something bearing electric sparks. Still, the zabrak will not relent. He’s breathing and moving but somewhere deep in his eyes he looks nothing short of dead.

“I have business elsewhere,” Maul stutters out and the vocoder smooths it into a low growl. The queasy pit in his stomach must be the return of the eels, or else the force aims to reveal to him that he might be being observed by fleets of holodroids, a technological wonder he should research immediately upon completion of his mission, when he will never think of the scar-covered zabrak and his empty eyes ever again. He won’t even remember his face or his color. No, Maul will attempt to engineer holodroids and present them to his Master, who will be proud.

That’s what he thinks about, while he wanders the huge room at random. Holodroids. He doesn’t think about zabraks. In fact, he’s forgotten every fact he ever heard about that species. No zabraks exist but Maul. That’s the way it goes.

He doesn’t think of zabraks at all for several more minutes, and then a tannoy system message calls out for Ma Goweelr and his time of floating is over.

⁂

Thus far, the boy’s little adventure has been a disappointment. There were moments of fear and shame and misery, but mostly, what Sidious receives from him is bright giddy elation at being entrusted with this mission. It should have figured that Maul is not intelligent enough to see through his Master’s true plans, and yet—it was folly on his part, Sidous is prepared to admit that, but he expected more of his little zabrak.

Well. More agony, mostly.

He’ll have to be a little more patient. Someday soon, Maul’s luck will have to run out.

⁂

“This is her, Sir. Opening the cell now,” a woman says in front of the suddenly-bright cell, and Eldra’s hard-won, tattered, wide-eyed serenity dissipates.

It’s Dilar. Dilar, self-loathing traitor of a twi’lek slave. Eldra’s only known her for a day and enjoyed exactly zero seconds of it. The old woman’s hatred and revulsion at what she is forced to do, preparing slaves to be sold on, crowds out the very air. For the slavers, her utter loathing might be imperceptible—Dilar is a grudging, but polite tool—but it’s everywhere in the force, and Eldra cannot breathe. It’s hard enough keeping herself calm—keeping herself Jedi—when she knows that any time now a lecher with a Jedi fetish will come to her cell.

A lecher, or her rescuer.

Watch your feelings: do not give in to despair, Eldra, as Fyaar would say if she could. Maybe a Jedi will come.

It’s a war inside her, equal parts of hope and terror, and without her Master’s guidance how will Eldra find the strength to make herself calm again? Calm, serene, like the Jedi she was supposed to be.

A Jedi is better than this.

There is no emotion. There is peace.

There is no hatred, especially. Eldra should not hate Dilar. She shouldn’t hate every single slaver in the entire world, with even deeper depths of seething odium reserved for anyone selling or buying her. She shouldn’t. She does.

She isn’t wearing a force-suppressant collar, but that doesn’t matter. There are things far more binding than chains, than collars, in this world: Eldra promised her Master that she would be strong. She promised. She promised, and she hates these slavers. If she reached for the force now, she wouldn’t be able to call herself Jedi anymore. She would fail her Master and lose herself.

She would use her hatred to kill her tormentors. She would tear their throats out.

She would Fall.

Fear, raging and cold, has been her only companion for uncounted waking days now, that and bitter loathing. Master Fyaar died in front of her. Eldra’s been stripped of everything she thought she was and turned into a commodity, and now the only bright spot in her life is the fact that Martrey Woobudg the slaver, slaver, slaver who brought them to Teth is also fucking dead. Hopefully, it hurt.

The sudden hope is new, fragile and staggering and still too volatile to make reaching for the force safe. Hope: maybe the new arrival isn’t one of them. Eldra’s Master was in constant contact with the Temple, after all, and they must know about the ambush by now. They must have sent someone to save Eldra. (She tries very very hard not to remember that they don’t, sometimes, search for missing padawans, because of deferring to a higher purpose and the will of the force and being instruments of the Galactic Senate and not privileging attachments, including to their padawans, over the greater good et cetera et cetera, which is a code of conduct that Eldra, too, had always believed in. Until she got thrown in this cell, at least.)

Please, let it be a Jedi. Even if she gets thrown out for her hatred. Please, let it be a Jedi.

“Get up, girl,” Dilar says.

Eldra struggles onto her feet. She almost loses her balance, and that would kriffing hurt, because she’s got little chance of breaking her fall. Her hands are cuffed in front of her, encased in thin manacles she could easily break out of if it wasn’t pointless. If she wasn’t watched at all times. If she could use the force without Falling. If there was any way off this planet she doesn’t even know the name of. She could break them, but she can’t. They’re tight, and her shoulders ache from the forced immobility. (Almost, she’d told the slavers that restraining someone like this for days on end was a sure way of causing muscle damage, that they were lowering her value—were hurting her, by treating her like this, but she’d reconsidered. It would probably count as ‘helping slavers’. She hopes instead that they lose all their captives to their own bad practices. Eldra will not help them, if it kills her.)

If her visitor is a slaver, they’ll probably enjoy the sight of her helplessness. If they’re a Jedi, there may be compassion, pity, judgment—they’ll feel how scared she is, and how close to breaking—and that’ll be even more embarrassing to deal with afterwards, but at least there will be an afterwards for her.

For a second, the force floods with pain. Anger. Then, the presence hides itself again. Doesn’t matter. She’s felt it.

A force user.

A… Jedi, then?

Would a Jedi… Eldra herself would be angry, if she saw anyone else treated the way she is now, no matter how hard she tries for serenity. Eldra isn’t a good Jedi though. She’s too scared for that.

She looks up. If the visitor is a Jedi, Eldra doesn’t recognize them. But that means nothing: they’re covered head-to-toe in layers of black fabric. They’re wearing some sort of mask that covers their lower face, too, and oversized mirrored-glass sunglasses, and gloves, and a cowled cloak and what looks like at least two shirts, one over the other. They look like a black ball with legs sticking out. They look like someone decided to dress up as the platonic concept of shady. They look ridiculous.

They’re very short as well. They’re about twice the height of Grandmaster Yoda, and shorter than pretty much everybody else that Eldra knows. Well… they could be Master Piell. Would Master Piell dress up like this, though? Would he come to rescue her? Would he… well, he wouldn’t feel like the visitor in the force. Even Piell is a Master of the High Council. He wouldn’t fall prey to emotions as easily as Eldra did. He would not fail the light.

The only bit of skin that Eldra can make out is the bridge of the nose, between the jaw-mask and those sunglasses. Red.

Whoever it is isn’t human.

It might give hope, but—whoever it is has already paid and they own Eldra now, they tell the slavers, in a deep and slightly mechanic voice.

Paid.

Own.

Not a rescue, then. The Jedi wouldn’t reward a slaver for abducting a padawan.

Eldra will not cry. Not because if does not befit a Jedi, because the Jedi didn’t come for her. Eldra remained faithful—barely—she didn’t give in to her hatred and fear, didn’t Fall… and no-one came to rescue her. She will never see the temple again. She’ll never watch those holovids with Bayro, and Bayro—will she even notice? Will she mourn Eldra? Or will she be relieved that the clingy kid is gone?

She won’t cry. She will not give Dilar or this new buyer the satisfaction.

The shielding of Eldra’s cell opens. Dilar attaches a chain to Eldra’s manacles and her buyer ties the other end to their belt. They barely look at her, at least—in the nightmares she refused to allow herself to grow into images they always looked at her, excited and hungry, but this buyer seems curt and weirdly business-like.

Without another word, they start walking.

Eldra has no choice but to follow. The Jedi didn’t come. She is alone. Whatever awaits her outside, though, it can hardly be worse than this cell.

#darth maul #eldra kaitis #savage opress #savage oppress #hell is just a beat away #dimtraces makes things

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m00nslippers · 5 years

Note

Since you reminded us all of the JayRa's Roadtrip au: could we have some fluff of them with each other (or in an abo case their kid :D ) Also! Could I write something loosely based off of it for Ra'sbat week if I give credit? thanks!

You absolutely can write something based on the RoadTrip!AU. Saves me having to write stuff, lol. If you do, @ me so I can read and reblog it!

Here, I wrote something for the AU. It’s not really fluff? Maybe at the end a little. I don’t know, but here you all go.

---

I Didn’t Ask For This (a RoadTrip!AU fic)

Ra's' behavior had been atrocious throughout the whole ill-advised venture, starting from when Jason had busted the Demon’s Head out of Lady Shiva's oubliette where he'd been left to starve and die in solitude, to their globe-trotting jaunt hitting every League base they could find, cleaning out Shiva's loyalists, searching for information on Talia and Sensei and anything that could give them an edge against the Shadows. Jason had owed Ra's a save, for letting Talia take him in and getting him training, for taking care of him when he'd been catatonic and planning to continue doing so for his whole life if necessary, so he'd felt compelled to do the bare minimum to ensure the asshole's survival. He didn't know where the idea to put the man back in charge of the League came from. When it came down to it Ra's wasn't much better than Shiva, he might claim he was killing people for the planet, but from where Jason was sitting it didn't look that different.

Yet here they were, on a goddamn road trip across the country, raiding every League base they could find together and there were a lot, way more than Jason had any inkling of.

The man had started out condescending, waspish, constantly degrading Jason and his low birth, his inferior skill and lack of talent. The normal shit he'd been telling Talia since day-one when she had brought Jason home. He was no good, he was low born, had poor breeding, he was destined for the dirt—Jason had heard it all before.

At first he'd put up with it. When you get overthrown and tossed in a hole in the ground to die you're allowed to be a bit pissy, at least for a day or two, but after a week of constant berating Jason was fast reaching his limit. Pathetic to say, but Jason was used to the treatment, he used to believe he deserved it, and sometimes he still did. But the longer Jason stayed silent the worse it seemed to get. Ra's didn't have a global criminal empire at his beck and call anymore, so there was no reason to let the man get away with this kind of behavior.

“This place is filthy,” Ra's spat, running a finger through the dust layer that had accumulated in the six months it had been since Jason had visited this particular obscure safe house. “But what do I expect from my daughter's useless mutt? But I suppose you think this is acceptable, being as you are used to living in the scum and grime of the worse parts of that sewer of a city. I'm sure you're actually proud of your substandard accomplishments.”

Jason had been listening to this shit for over an hour as he cleaned and restocked their weapons and supplies. He was refilling the magazine cartridges to his pistols, suffering through a lecture about Jason's incompetence, his laziness, his heritage of poverty and how baffled Ra's still was that the Bat he so respected had stooped to taking in a mongrel such as Jason, when his patience just...ran out.

Jason pushed the now full magazine up into his gun, racked the slide to put a bullet in the chamber and aimed it at the immortal.

And Ra's Al Ghul, former Demon's Head, the man who used be unafraid of injury or death because he knew at any moment his body could be restored, flinched.

He flinched and clearly hated himself for flinching, and the six-foot-five alpha drew himself up to his full height, looming furiously, lip snarling beneath his sharp aquiline features and finely trimmed goatee, acid green-eyes glaring at Jason's gall. “You dare, boy--!” he began in outrage.

But Jason's expression didn't waver from regarding Ra's with disinterest as he leveled the gun with a steady hand. Jason was fed up with his shit. People had been saying he wasn't worth anything his entire life, because Jason was poor, because he was a street rat, because he was an omega, because he was an omega that looked like an alpha. He didn't deserve this kind of treatment from the man he'd rescued. He didn't expect a 'thank you', Ra's was too much of an arrogant shit for that, but at the very least he expected not to be insulted.

“Ra's I don't give one flying fuck if you were an emperor or a sultan or whatever back in the freaking dark ages,” Jason stated matter-of-factly and his low, serious tone seemed to startle Ra's into silence as he listened. “All these servants and so called loyal retainers that make you elite? They ain't here. Not a one lifted their finger to get you out when you were sentenced to death. The one who saved you? The one who got you out? That was me, the low born dog you're insulting. Yeah, I was born in shit and I ain't got much even now, my safe houses aren't decked out like the Ritz, but what little I've got I'm sharing with you. I'm putting a contract on my life for you. And what am I asking from you in return? Nothing but that you keep your damned nasty comments to yourself. Do you hear me?”

Ra's luminous green eyes narrowed, analyzing Jason as if seeing him for the first time, darting around Jason's face, across his body, to the gun aimed steadily at Ra's chest for a killing shot, back to Jason's sea-glass green eyes. Ra's was silent a moment more before he finally said, “Yes,” through gritted teeth and turned on his heels, stalking to the only room in the one bedroom apartment and pulling the door shut.

Jason sighed and lowered the gun, returning to his tasks in blessed quiet. Being around anyone all-day-everyday, much less a testy alpha that liked to tell him how pathetic he was, was enough to drive Jason crazy. The gun was maybe a bit much but...well, what was done was done. This incident probably wouldn’t change anything but at least it had given Jason’s nerves a rest so he could deal with the Demon’s shit again tomorrow. Jason slept on the couch like the dog he was, and didn't see Ra’s again until the next day when they tossed their gear into the nondescript green SUV that was their transportation this week.

Jason took the drivers' seat, as he always did, and expected Ra's to slip into the back seat like usual, as if Jason was his damned chauffeur, but he didn't. He opened the passenger door and slid in, messing around with the controls before he figured out how to adjust the seat to accommodate his extensive height. He had insisted Jason adjust it before, pushing the chair all the way forward to give him leg room in the back seat, and watching Ra's Al Ghul messing with the seat position himself now was surreal.

Finally satisfied, Ra's sat back and pushed up his sunglasses, crossing his arms over his emerald-green silk button-up shirt and black slacks, dressed like he'd stepped out of a GQ magazine, and stared firmly ahead as if the situation wasn't completely abnormal.

“The hell is this? Decided to sit with the servants, your highness?” Jason asked skeptically, almost certain he was going to regret it. Then again that never stopped Jason from speaking his mind before.

Ra's bit the inside of his mouth and looked physically pained as he bit out, “It has come to my attention that I have been...treating you poorly, Jason.”

“Ya think?” Jason deadpanned, not sure where this was going but taking the opportunity to get back a bit of his own dignity against the asshole alpha.

“You have risked much for me and I have done little to earn that loyalty,” the man stated, the nails of one hand digging into his arm, but he pressed on, Jason becoming more intrigued and confused as he continued. Ra's didn't admit to mistakes, Ra's didn't think of loyalty as something earned, at least not when it came to Jason.

“I, the Demon's Head, who has seen the worst of humanity, who began the League of Assassins to cull them for the sake of this planet's continued survival, fell pray to my own baser instincts, my own emotions and prejudices,” Ra's confessed. “When my daughter took you in, I never gave you your due, even when you proved yourself time and again. Even now you continue to make yourself an irreplaceable ally and I...have shown you nothing but disdain.”

Behind his sunglasses, Ra's eyes fell to his knee, proud brows wrinkled in distaste that for once was turned inward and not unfairly at Jason. “I was at the end of my means, my death certain after so many years of prolonging my life. I had no one, and nothing to offer anyone—and yet you appeared as my savior. But instead of gratitude and praise, I offered you only criticism, to raise myself above you who I had thus far held in low regard for reasons that I now see where based in pretty lies to justify my actions.”

Suddenly Ra's looked up and held Jason's gaze. He enunciated the words with difficulty, as if fighting to get them out, but he seemed genuinely sincere as he said, “Jason Todd, I...apologize. I will endeavor to correct my behavior. You are one who is worthy of my respect.”

Jason stared as Ra's fell silent. Through the man's confession, Jason's throat had begun to clench, his muscles tightening as if every word was winding him tighter and tighter. His eyes were burning and he had to fight not to blink because if he did he knew a tear would form. So long as he kept his eyes open, he could pretend to be unmoved.

He hadn't expected this. Not in a million years and not from Ra's Al Ghul of all people after holding the man at fucking gunpoint and telling him off. These were words Jason had wanted to hear for years, from Bruce, from Dick, from...from a lot of people that meant a lot more to him than Ra's. His whole life Jason had just wanted to do the right thing, to be worthy in a world that saw him as trash. He'd thought Bruce was different, but at the first opportunity Jason was replaced as if he'd meant nothing, and as soon as Jason wasn't exactly what the man wanted, when he disagreed with him about how to save their city—the city Jason had lived and been born in, had experience in every way more than Bruce ever had—he was called a villain.

Jason would have liked to get some acknowledgment from Bruce for all of that, but instead he got it from Ra's. He didn't want Ra's Al Ghul's fucking apology. Jason never cared what Ra's thought of him.

So why the fuck did hearing this all of a sudden make him want to cry? Why did it mean so damn much?

Jason felt the tear grow heavy and start to roll down his face so he raised a hand to hide it even if the gesture was pointless. Ra's already knew. He must. There was no hiding how broken up Jason was by his words, how much they had impacted him. Jason's emotions, his weakness, should have been enough to have the man revoking everything he'd just given to Jason, but Ra's didn't, he remained quiet in the front seat, looking out the windshield as if nothing out of the ordinary was taking place. It helped, that he was ignoring it. Jason was able to pull himself together and he wiped his eyes, put on his own sunshades to hide his red-rimmed eyes and leaned over the center console to open the dash compartment and pull out a map that he dropped into Ra's lap.

“If you're gonna sit up here, might as well make yourself useful,” Jason said, somehow managing to keep his voice from quivering as he turned the key and put it the car into gear.

Ra's huffed in amusement and unfolded the map. “If you had a map all along, then how were you able to become lost for four hours yesterday?”

Jason frowned, trying to hide his embarrassment at the event. “Hey, you try to drive and read a map at the same time and not crash, it ain't easy!”

Ra's eye lids lowered, unimpressed but also maybe...somewhat fond. “I suppose not. And we mustn’t use GPS navigation to avoid tracking. Your driving has been satisfactory, I suppose I can aid you in the navigation aspect of the task.”

Jason snorted. Ra's reading a road map was going to be interesting. Let him see how tough it actually was—you needed a damn microscope to see half the road names. “Great, now help me navigate to the nearest Denny's. I'm starving.”

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winterverses · 5 years

Text

The Hollow Ones

My ears hear what others cannot hear. Small, faraway things people cannot normally see are visible to me. These senses are the fruits of a lifetime of longing. Longing to be rescued. To be completed. -- India Stoker

Slim, deft fingers. It was those he noticed first as he stood there waiting for her to be finished wrapping his bouquet. Elegant brown hands, unpainted nails, with no sign of calluses or work-roughened skin. The regular woman had calluses, just faint ones, one on the side of the first joint of her right middle finger and the other on the heel of her left palm. This woman’s hands were soft all over, as if she spent a lot of time or money making sure her hands looked as if she’d never worked a day in her life. Touga looked up, mildly curious.

An unexpected wave of deja vu rolled over him, making him catch his breath. Deep purple hair was gathered into a knot at the back of her head. Sea-green eyes, long-lashed and heavy-lidded, not watching him. A faint smile on her beautifully curved lips… one that, despite knowing nothing about her, he could have sworn was fake.

But why would it be? He had no reason to believe it wasn’t genuine. The conviction remained with him, however, unshakable. The feeling of deja vu grew stronger.

He had an account at the quiet little florist in the bottom of the office building. It made things easier-- he was always buying flowers for someone, for some reason. Often they were for himself. The flowers he took home were always the ones she was wrapping up now, the silvery, red-lipped Osiria roses. He had them ordered in specifically for him. No need to waste them on someone who wouldn't appreciate them. But this girl was new… wasn't she? Certainly his order would have been written down, but she hadn't consulted the proprietor or any list, just immediately gone to wrap up his roses as soon as he entered. He hadn't even spoken to her yet.

May as well make sure those really were his roses. “Excuse me,” he began, walking over to her.

Her hands stilled completely and her eyes shot up to his face as if startled. Almost immediately, her hands started up again and she gave him a bland, polite smile. “Can I help you?” she asked, as neutrally she would to any stranger.

No. Something was off. Something wasn't right here. Intrigued, Touga gave her his most sincerely charming smile. “I believe those are my roses, but… I could swear we’ve met. Haven't we?”

Always just a little too perceptive, a little smarter than anyone had given him credit for. Anthy saw Touga notice her surprise and felt faintly irritated. Not much smarter, but enough to make him annoying. They'd worked together well once, long, long ago, but she didn't want to see him now. He shouldn't have remembered her. “No, I don't believe so, sir,” she said, smiling her blandest, most boring smile. “Are you Mr. Kiryuu?”

She'd half-hoped that he'd recall his father and be put off. He must have been too used to it for that. “I am. Are you certain we've never met?” His slate blue eyes were probing, too interested. She didn't want him to be interested in her. He laughed, a little chuckle that was meant to sound endearingly embarrassed. She knew he felt nothing of the sort. “I'm sorry if I'm too insistent. I just have the strangest feeling that I know you… or maybe I did, once.”

“I don't think so, sir,” Anthy said, still smiling, and taped the bouquet shut. That was what she got for not paying attention.

Before she could punch anything in on the cash register, he stopped her. “I have an account,” he said, and he'd grown up enough that he didn't say it with any particular inflection. Years ago, it would have been bragging.

“Thank you so much for your patronage,” Anthy said, smiling exactly as brightly as a grateful proprietor would to a valued customer. Touga left, but that curious look never left his eyes.

The next week when he came in for his roses, that strange woman wasn't there. Nor the week afterward. He had the oddest feeling that she was avoiding him; there was no reason on earth for her to do so, nothing that he could possibly have done that would put her off… but he'd seen her eyes narrow slightly when he'd asked if he knew her. She hadn't liked that. It wasn't a reaction he was used to receiving. Oh, maybe it had happened once or twice when he was younger, but he never needed to make up for a bad first impression now. He could hardly imagine how to begin.

Normally he would have ignored her and gone on with the rest of his life. She was unimportant, barely on the periphery of his awareness. He should have forgotten about her the moment he'd left the store.

That he hadn't was proof enough for him that he should pursue her further. Whimsy rarely played a part in his decisions. Impulse was something he'd carefully controlled all his life. This… was different, somehow. Was it because of that strange feeling of familiarity, or was it because she had been indifferent to him?

Either way, he found himself sweetly rejecting his current paramour, making sincere-sounding apologies and assuring her that it wasn't her fault and that perhaps someday in the future he would be open to something more, and no he didn't want her waiting for him, and it was all so ridiculously tedious that he had to keep himself from becoming short with her display of emotions. He would definitely stay in touch, definitely not lose her phone number and forget her name the moment she was out of sight.

It was no more than any of them deserved. Their eyes lingered on his expensive suits and his antique car, his impeccable looks and perfect body. He knew very well that he was a status symbol to them, a set of price tags and the expectation of gifts, a promise of sweet words and pleasurable evenings showing off to their friends that yes, they were desired by him. He lived up to it. It was simpler than finding something real.

Breaking up gave him a reason to go to the quiet little florist when he normally wouldn't, and of course, that woman was there. His skin was suddenly at attention, as if her mere presence had him awaiting her touch.

Was that what this uncertainty was, some strange sort of foreplay? Was that how those others felt about him? It was impossible to tell. And he couldn’t let it sway him; despite the twinge of attraction, what he most wanted was to know more. She was a mystery.

Again, he was here. Anthy damped down her internal frustration. Yes, at Ohtori they had colluded on certain things, worked together for certain ends-- Saionji came to mind, the outburst that she and Touga had driven him to with the illusions, the bloody slash across Touga’s back. Touga had orchestrated that… but he couldn't have done it without Anthy's willingness to play her part. Masking her irritation, Anthy again gave him her blandest smile, standing behind the counter as if the barrier would protect her from him. “Is there something I can help you with, sir?” she asked. Hopefully he would think she had forgotten his name.

He shouldn’t have remembered anything. None of the others had. The only one she hadn’t spoken to was Saionji; his attachment to her had been too strong, and she had worried that it would break his forgetfulness if she approached him at the kendo tournament she’d seen his name listed in. She’d watched him fight from the sidelines, his movements more controlled now, his mastery of the sword evident. Without her to push and sway him, his temper was no doubt easier to master.

Touga hadn’t been there. Perhaps that was another reason Saionji had seemed more at peace. Perhaps that was why he’d won the tournament, grinning widely as a brown haired girl had rushed into his arms at the end. Touga’s absence had made these things possible.

But here he stood, giving her a charmingly embarrassed smile, the tips of his fingers delicately stroking the lip of one of the roses in the vase near him. They were red as blood next to his pale skin. He still kept his fingernails long and perfectly manicured. “I’m afraid I need some cheering up today,” he said, his smile turning a little regretful. “Is there anything you can suggest?”

Anthy had to try very hard not to press her lips together in irritation. That was no more sincere than anything else he did. She knew it because she had been that hollow, once. His question demanded a question in return, an inquiry about the reason for his feelings or an investigation of his preferences. She decided to go with the latter. “Which of the roses makes you happiest?” she asked, not moving from her spot.

A mistake. She’d gone with roses without thinking, and she saw that curiosity flare in his dark blue eyes. There was no reason for him to be curious! He only ever bought roses! “Usually it’s the Osirias, but I know you have to order them in. You don’t happen to have any now, do you?”

“I’m sorry, no,” Anthy said mildly. She knew very well that he always ordered the Osirias. And… to tell the truth, she couldn’t blame him for his admiration. They were uniquely beautiful, the petals luminously white on the outside, red as sin on the inside. “Those are difficult to get without a few days’ notice.”

He shrugged, his smile quirking in a careful construction of understanding. “I suppose I’ll have to be satisfied with something else. Could you possibly tell me a little about the other roses? I’m curious.”

There was no way she could remain behind the counter then, not and keep her façade of welcoming customer service intact. “Of course,” she said, coming out from behind the counter, walking the few steps across the room. “Is there any specific color you prefer?” she asked as she came to stand near him-- but not too near-- her spine straight, her posture as remote and perfect as it had been when she had been the Rose Bride. “Orange, perhaps? It is comparatively rare.” She gestured toward an arrangement of orange roses, one that had maroon chrysanthemums scattered among them for contrast.

She had to admit she’d been thinking of Juri when she’d made it. Their brief encounter at a fashion show a few years ago had left Anthy thoughtful; Juri was as elegant and detached as ever, and there had been no recognition in her eyes when Anthy had complimented her on her wardrobe choices, a closely fitted, dark pinstriped suit with a maroon ruffle spilling out at the throat. Her hair was looser than it had been, falling over her shoulders in graceful ringlets. She’d accepted the compliment graciously and turned to look for someone in the gathering crowd waiting to be let in to take their seats. A smile suddenly lit Juri’s face, and Anthy thought she’d caught a glimpse of maroon hair before Juri strode off, following that glimpse.

“I’m not one for orange,” Touga said, his voice shattering her remembrance. His eyes were on her rather than the flower arrangement, his gaze probing. “I do enjoy rarities, though. I’m glad you noticed. Are there any other uncommon roses you can show me?”

If only he’d stop watching her… but Anthy knew his mind was working, teasing at the edges of the forgetfulness, trying to figure out who she was, what she was. The intense attention was a little unnerving; she had cultivated an air of unimportance and used it well back then. It had obviously lingered, in spite of her efforts to be the person Utena had imagined she could be.

Even thinking the name hurt. She’d looked so long and found… nothing.

She swallowed, knowing he would notice that she was unsettled but unable to keep it entirely to herself. Her voice was calm and unwavering, however, and her smile as vapid as always when she answered. “If you’ll come over here, we have some blue roses you might like. They were once said to be impossible.”

He somehow ended up standing beside her at the next arrangement, his Italian-cut grey silk suit almost brushing the arm of her dress. His proximity made her even more aware of him, a little shiver wanting to run up her spine. He’d always had that effect, though it had never worked on her before-- possibly becoming less hollow made her more susceptible to physicality. Anthy gestured at the arrangement, blue roses and white lilies spilling from the tilted vase in a cascade of petals. “Something like this, perhaps?”

He reached out to fondle one of the roses, languidly glancing at it as his fingers made contact with the velvety surface, then looking back at her, his eyes intent as his fingers stroked the petal. “Did you make this?” he asked, and while he only sounded curious, there was an undertone in his voice that brought memories rushing to the surface.

Miki. They’d played with him, batted him back and forth between them like two cats toying with the same mouse. Anthy's hints of sexuality, and Touga’s brazen use of it. It had spontaneously appeared, that game between them. They’d never spoken of that secret game, not even to each other.

Miki was none the worse for it, thankfully. Anthy had been to one of his concerts, had the chance to speak to him after his performance. The auditorium had been packed. As Anthy had walked up to the passage backstage at the end, she’d caught sight of a blue haired woman in the front row. Miki himself had been as bashful as ever under the heaping praise, but there was a new strength to him now. Perhaps he’d found his shining thing after all. He’d smiled at her, shook her hand, and accepted her compliments with no recognition at all. Once his attention turned elsewhere, she’d left.

The remembrances rushed through her mind in an instant, but she hesitated too long before she spoke and she saw Touga’s blue eyes flicker as he noted it. “I did, yes,” Anthy said, her voice as mild and placid as always.

“You have a wonderful touch with beautiful things,” Touga said, that undertone in his voice like the purr of some giant, self-satisfied cat. His fingers stroked the petal, his nail lightly scraping the skin of it. “It’s very beautiful… but I think I’d prefer something more genuine.”

Of course he knew that blue roses were dyed. Of course he would know that. And of course he could somehow make it about her rather than the roses. Anthy knew what he was doing… but that didn’t entirely stop it from working. She nodded her head, acknowledging his point, and said, “I may have something in the display cooler.”

Once in the cooler, of course he stood close enough that she could feel the warmth of him contrasting with the frigid air, like standing in the chill air a moment before stepping into a warm bath.

There was a bank of yellow roses overflowing the cooler buckets on the left, an order that was about to be made into centerpieces for a wedding. He chuckled fondly when he saw them, and Anthy knew he was remembering his sister. Nanami had done well for herself, making it to the top of a successful finance company. Anthy had seen her once, coming out of her building into the busy street, surrounded by a cloud of followers that she was barking orders to. Pretending clumsiness, Anthy had bumped into her hard, as if she’d stumbled. Where the old Nanami would have thrown a fit, this one asked, if a bit impatiently, “Are you all right?” Her lackeys fluttered around them, steadying them and offering assistance. Anthy had answered her and they’d both continued on their way.

Behind the exuberant burst of yellow roses, near the back, there was one lone rose that might suit Touga’s overly discriminating taste. Anthy lifted it gently from the cooler bucket, bringing it up for his inspection, the unfurling flower so dark a red that it might have been black.

It was a mistake. She realized it as soon as she’d done it-- she’d lifted the rose up to him, and his eyes had widened, as if with some realization. His hands came up, clasping the stem of the rose, careful not to touch hers. “I’m sorry to bring it up again, but there’s something so familiar about you. Are you sure we’ve never met?”

“Never,” Anthy said, feigning surprise. Of course lifting up a rose to him would tease loose another thread of remembrance. She should have known. Why hadn’t she known? Was that something that came with being human, did losing that hollowness mean she also lost some of her clarity of thought?

“I could swear…” he said, trailing off. His fingers did not touch hers as he lifted the rose from her hands. He hadn’t touched her back then, either. Once she’d been his bride, he’d dropped all pretense of seduction. He’d known he hadn’t needed it, not with her. She was the Rose Bride. But… he’d never used her that way. He hadn’t even touched her unless it was necessary for their deceptions. That felt almost kind.

But then, he knew very well what it was like to be objectified. Against her will, Anthy felt a little swell of kinship with him.

“Lovely,” he murmured, glancing at the rose and then back to her.

Mustering her professional demeanor, Anthy asked, “Would you like me to make an arrangement for it?”

A lazy grin curved his lips. Anthy could tell it was so practiced that he barely knew he was doing it anymore. “Sometimes I prefer beauty unadorned,” he said.

“At least let me wrap it for you,” Anthy said. As he acquiesced and followed her from the cooler, she couldn’t help but wish that they were on the same level, whether that meant that she was hollow again or whether that meant he had chosen to be human. They might have been able to coexist somehow, in some nebulous way her mind couldn’t define. Maybe it was just that she wanted someone to talk to after all this time.

She’d been wavering, Touga knew it. Those sea-green eyes had changed from blank and impenetrable serenity to alertness, watching him carefully, weighing his actions. It was perhaps the first time she’d really looked at him. But the wavering had come to nothing; when he’d asked about the possibility of knowing her outside of her workplace, perhaps at a little café he enjoyed, she’d gracefully declined. Wishing her a good evening, Touga started for the door, his mind flicking through potential options for changing her answer.

Another customer bustled through the door before he was halfway there, an older woman in a designer dress, a scowl marring her smooth brow. In her arms she held a potted rose bush. It was covered in deep purple blooms, the barest hint of white deep in their hearts. She almost ran into him, ignoring him completely, and she was speaking before she even reached the counter where the intriguing woman stood. “This is not what I wanted. I told you I wanted Midnight Blue longstems. This is a shrub.”

The woman with the sea-green eyes responded mildly, “Midnight Blues aren’t a longstemmed variety. We told you that when you placed your order, and you said you would take them however you could get them. I’m sorry if we misunderstood you, but there is no way to get Midnight Blue longstems. They don’t exist.”

Revulsion prevented Touga from leaving. Carrying his single dark rose, he stepped back, drifting around to the side of the counter and listening to the exchange while pretending to browse the flower arrangements.

“If you like, we can refund you the cost of the rose bush,” the green-eyed woman said calmly.

“Oh, you’ll do more than that. You’re going to pay for my gas getting here, the half hour I spent talking to you then, and the time I’m spending talking to you now,” the other woman sneered. “Lawyer’s rates. I round up to an hour for consultations. And I’m going to lodge a complaint with whatever governing bodies are concerned with this business, starting with the rental owner here.”

Disgust had been building in Touga’s mind through her entire speech, and it peaked at her last declaration. This was ridiculous. Before the purple-haired woman could answer, he spoke up, striding over to the counter. “I’d also like to file a complaint. Do you mind if I get your name so I can make the process smoother?” he asked, pulling out his phone to take notes.

The customer smirked triumphantly at the woman behind the counter before looking to Touga and giving him her name. “It’s so good to know I’m not the only one this business has taken advantage of,” she added.

“I’m sure it would be,” Touga said, “but I’m asking you to leave the premises, ma’am. I’m the owner of this building, and if you don’t remove yourself immediately, I will file a complaint. With the police, for trespassing.”

The only expression on the woman’s face was shock. Excellent-- he’d caught her completely off-guard. “You can’t do that,” she finally said, visibly starting to gear herself up for another tirade.

“I absolutely can. And I promise you, I can hire an entire team of better lawyers than you.” Replacing his phone in his pocket, he withdrew his wallet and pulled out a couple of bills, handing them to her without looking at them. Hopefully they were ones. “For your trouble,” he said. “Now leave.”

Flabbergasted, the woman reflexively took the bills, then collected herself and left with a huff, the quick taps of her high heels cut off as the door closed behind her. Once she was gone, Touga turned to the woman behind the counter. “It appears that lovely rosebush is back in your inventory. I’d like to buy it from you.” Not that he thought he could keep it alive, but at least he’d be able to enjoy the sweet clove-like scent for a little while, before it died.

When he looked at the green-eyed woman, however, he caught a glimpse of an almost stricken look. Blinking rapidly, she cleared it away as best she could, but Touga could tell her composure was hanging by a thread. “Take it, if you like,” she said. “As thanks.”

He shook his head, opening his wallet again and pulling out one of the large-ish bills. “Don’t be ridiculous. A business needs money to run.” Laying it down on the counter, he picked up the potted rosebush and started for the door.

Just as he touched the handle, he heard her voice, a note of urgency in it that had never been there before. “Wait,” she said. “Please.”

Looking back over his shoulder, he saw that stricken look again, as if something had pierced her to the core. And again, she blinked it away, although this time she couldn’t seem to recover the placidity she had worn like armor. Touga turned toward her, waiting for her to speak.

“My name is Anthy,” she said as she came out from behind the counter, walking toward him as if choosing her steps on precarious new ground.

Touga smiled, meeting her halfway. When she looked up at him, that blankness was nowhere to be seen; she was curious, uncertain, and something about her wide eyes and the set of her lips suggested a barely-hidden ache that he couldn’t define. Instead of trying, he said, “The goddess Antheia.”

She smiled, a puff of air that was almost a laugh escaping her, as if the reason for her amusement were a secret she couldn’t voice. “Yes. Possibly. I do love flowers.”

“I don’t know how to take care of this,” Touga said, nodding to the small shrub he was carrying.

“If you like, I’ll teach you,” Anthy said, her smile fading. “But… it’s been a long time.”

Touga nodded. He knew she wasn’t talking about the plant.

And that was how, a few days later, this fascinating, mysterious woman that felt so familiar lay in his bed, draped across him, both of them still breathing hard and utterly satisfied. Even in bed, she had felt so familiar; a gesture or a look would suddenly strike him as something he’d seen before, somewhere he didn’t remember. It was a little dizzying. Outside of the bedroom there had been talk, of course… but there had also been silences, and that was something he’d never had. Those silences were a chance to set aside his endless performance, and something about Anthy made it possible to do so. It was as if she knew him from the inside, knew what lay beneath his performances. Sometimes it seemed she would react to his inner thoughts rather than what he’d done.

It was… comfortable. He should have been incensed that anyone could presume to know him that well… but something in him wanted it. After all these years of playing his role, there was something attractive about being able to set it aside.

Not that he would ever speak to her about it. That was too personal, even for a lover. He was under no illusion that this would last… but for now, the enigmatic silence she brought with her soothed him like cool darkness after an eternity under the glare of a desert sun.

He slid his hand up her back and she shifted gently so that her head was pillowed on his shoulder. She smelled like roses and sex. Familiar. “I still feel like we know each other,” he said.

It took a long time before she answered. “We never will,” she sighed.

Weighing the answer in his mind, he decided it was sound. He had no intention of laying his soul bare for someone else to carve up. There wasn’t enough of it left for that sort of nonsense. “Good,” he said, and continue to stroke her back, his fingers tangling in those glorious purple curls.

It had been so long, so very long since Anthy had left Ohtori. So long to fight for herself with no one there to help her or protect her… was she backsliding? She couldn’t tell. But there was more humanity left in Touga than she had thought, or he wouldn’t have stepped in to get rid of that awful customer. Such a small thing. She dealt with angry people from time to time. Their threats never came to anything. But to have someone look at her situation, decide it was wrong, and immediately attempt to change it without asking for anything in return… it really was such a small thing, but it felt like water for the parched land of her soul.

It wasn’t something she could give up. If it had been someone else, yes, she would have let them go, deciding they were a good person and admiring that. But Touga wasn’t a good person. She knew that. He’d protected her in spite of what he was… and she couldn’t help remembering the way they had treated each other in Ohtori, the delicate dance around their respective territories and the brief moments of concord between them, cut short as if they had subconsciously known that getting too close would be disastrous.

They could never hurt each other now. Their walls were too thick. And eventually they would tire of each other and drift away, but for now it was good to be held by him and know that something in him thought she was worth protecting even in defiance of his selfish, cold nature. And it was good just to be held by him, although she sometimes recognized a gesture or a look that could only have come from Ohtori.

His hand slid up her back, nails dragging lightly on her skin, and she felt goosebumps follow it. It had been a long time since she’d slept with anyone, and the break in her celibacy was welcome. She shifted so that more of her body was pressed against him, her head resting on his shoulder. “I still feel like we know each other,” he murmured, his voice a purringly satisfied sound that failed to disguise his questions.

Should she answer those questions? Should she let him know? If any of them could handle it, it would be him. He was already unhappy, she knew, though he didn’t feel it because of his hollowness. It wouldn’t destroy him to find that years of his life were lies the world had told him; he’d had his reality shattered long ago, first by his parents, then by his adoptive parents, then by Akio, then by Utena… one more shattering could hardly do that much damage at this point.

But then she would have to explain herself. If she did that, she would make herself vulnerable to him. That was not an option.

“We never will,” she sighed, a little sad that it could never happen, but mostly relieved. Keeping her silence meant he could never hurt her.

His hand slowed to a halt on her back while he thought, then he said just one word. “Good.” He began to stroke her back again, sweet silence resuming its dominion over the room.

Perhaps this was all she deserved. Perhaps this was all they deserved, this hollowness. But at least if this was hollow, they weren’t alone in it.

Just as a flower does not choose its color, we are not responsible for what we have come to be. Only once you realize this do you become free. And to become adult is to become free. -- India Stoker

This story is a part of the Absolute Destiny Post-Apocalypse zine. Check it out for more cool stuff!

#utena #touga kiryuu #himemiya anthy #touga #anthy #fanfic #sku #rgu #shoujo kakumei utena #revolutionary girl utena

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shirlleycoyle · 3 years

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The Tamagotchi Cemetery

This article was originally published on Burials and Beyond. You can subscribe to the Burials and Beyond Patreon here.

“I thought it would be better for him here because I didn’t really want to reset him because it would be like a different thing and I was really close to him. I know that sounds stupid, but I was. But you can bury your pets and if you love something else, you can bury them as well.”

So said young mourner Danielle Perren in 1997.

Interring her pet into the beautiful farmland of Pontsmill, Cornwall, Danielle’s beloved friend was placed into a tiny wooden coffin and buried in a small square grave, there to rest in peace. Danielle’s grief was very real, but her pet? Not so much. That was a Tamagotchi.

In 1996, Japanese toy designers Aki Maita and Yokoi Akihiro debuted the first ever Tamagotchi. The tiny plastic case held the world’s first virtual pet, which, despite being a simple arrangement of pixels, required constant care and attention, lest the creature perish. Released by Bandai, the egg-shaped toy was one of the biggest fads of the 90s, maintaining a surprising popularity over the decades, with over 82 million units sold as of 2017.

The name itself is a portmanteau of two Japanese words; ‘tamago’, meaning ‘egg’ and ‘uotchi’, meaning watch. Considering the product is an egg shaped toy, the size of a watch…it seems to be pretty solid marketing.

Image: Mathieu Polak/Sygma/ Sygma via Getty Images

Those of us who were at school in the 90s will vividly recall a classroom of incessant bleeps and cries of ‘I’ve gotta feed ‘im’, before the eggs were promptly and unsurprisingly banned from schoolyards. From this grew a strange, rarely remembered, sideline in individuals who would take your Tamagotchi into daycare, feeding and washing them (via tiny button clicks) until you could return from school or work. As bizarre as it sounds, after recently discovering a pair of 25-year old Tamagotchi survivors, I believe nothing to be impossible.

The Tamagotchi interface is incredibly simple, with most utilising three buttons, which correspond to care functions of the creature. The pet, should it live that long, is designed to go through a basic life cycle of Baby, Child, Teenager and Adult (with later versions adding a hopeful Senior option). However, the majority of Tamagotchis had brief, fleeting lives before succumbing to death through a child’s negligence.

While many parents bought their offspring Tamagotchis as toys, others thought that a child taking responsibility for a digital creature would be an ideal pre-pet investment, to see if they were mature enough to understand the needs of another living thing. While this is an ideal moralistic exercise, what occurred in reality was a pocket of brief generational trauma where young children woke up to find that, after sleeping though muted midi cries of hunger at 3am, their new toy had perished overnight. You killed your first pet.

Image: Mathieu Polak/Sygma/ Sygma via Getty Images

This culpability for death is one of the strangest qualities in toy history; even the death of shoals of Sea Monkeys failed to elicit such a primal reaction of grief and blame from the very young. In the new world of portable digital pets, they were expected to entertain, but not truly die. This element of blame, guilt and finality was truly amped up in the early Japanese models where a ghost and headstone would meet the neglectful owner. In more recent English-language variants, this cemetery scene was substituted for an angel of death, or a cheery little UFO, popping in to take the Tamagotchi back to its home planet. Once you’ve inadvertently murdered your new pal, the game can be reset and you’re trusted with a strange egg baby once more.

The Tamagotchi in its many forms has never shied away from death, addressing the finality of existence in its cheery little game, but also in its genuinely bizarre cartoon.

In the ninth episode of the original tie-in anime, titled ‘The First Death’, several little creatures gather and weep inconsolably at the bedside of a dying Tamagotchi (Ginjirotchi),after a small yellow doctor with mouse ears (Mametchi) confirms death. Quickly, the soul of the deceased is surrounded by tiny little angels, who guide it to the pearly gates and Tamagotchi heaven, which is mainly pink clouds and sweets. Suddenly, the sweets disappear in a cruel trap and the Tamagotchi is tormented by little bat creatures with forks (Deviltchi), before being rescued once more and taken back into hyper-cute heaven where everyone sits down and has pudding together. The whole affair lasts a matter of minutes and is as brilliant as it is disconcerting.

I never owned a Tamagotchi in my 90s heyday, as my mother couldn’t afford the indulgence. Instead, I had a knock-off variant, a Giga Pet called ‘Compu Kitty’ from Woolworths, with which I was utterly chuffed. (I still have it to this day, unable to part with the luminous yellow crap plastic atrocity.)

I vividly remember crying when I woke up for school one morning and the pixelated cat had breathed its last. But one reset later, those tears dried, and after another six hours came another death. After that, the circle of life seemed rather less majestic and a more predictable cycle of button pushing and bleeps.

In 1996, a pet cemetery in Pontsmill, Cornwall was the first to diversify their interments and fence off a dedicated section for the burial of electronic pets. When CNN reported in 1997, they equated this very modern mourning with the established love that British people have of their traditional, breathing pets.

On January 17th 1997, two teenage girls were in Cornwall to bury their Tamagotchis, named Sid and Arty, two consoles never to be reset.

My first thought was very outdated parental shock, as Tamagotchi’s weren’t terribly cheap when they came out and to bury a brand new toy seems awfully wasteful. Taking another expensive trip to Argos wouldn’t have gone down too well in my household.

However, 14-year-old Danielle was strong in her resolve and placed the little plastic contraption into the earth. She was not alone in her beliefs either, as cemetery owner Terry Squires revealed that many international burials had been carried out in his Cornish field. Tamagotchis from as far afield as Switzerland, Germany, France, Canada and America had all been laid to rest in his pet cemetery, with many more on the way.

However, looking at Pontsmill today, there are no mentions to be found of deceased cyberpets, with the business promoting itself solely as a pet cemetery and green burial site for traditional human interments. I would be curious to know if the rudimentary headstones remain, or if the Tamagotchis and their mournful batteries were turned over or forgotten as many other crazes came and went.

For those who wanted to memorialise their Tamagotchis, but didn’t fancy burying the case in the garden, there were several online cemeteries and memorial sites for dead digital pets, where eulogies, ages and causes of death could be recorded in one enormous late 90s census.

Today, there are a handful of online Tamagotchi cemeteries still functioning, if long-abandoned. However, records of their digital death and memorials remain in sites such as Tama Talk’s Memorial page. These old GeoCities or Angelfire websites are framed in pixelated gifs and solemn MIDI music where you must adjust your eyes to decipher the spidery text against questionable repeated wallpaper. In these simple databases, names and brief epitaphs are recorded; some sincere, some dismissive and some simply odd:

Banjo – Cause of Death: Died taking the biggest crap you’ve ever seen.

Joe the Dinosaur – Cause of Death: Accidental Resetting.

‘My poor Joe. The first born. He had a good life and was taken care of very well It was unfortunate that his life had to come to such an abrupt end, whilst living in a jeans pocket. We shall all miss him very dearly.’

These eulogies and epitaphs are time capsules of young people’s first interactions with death and loss, where an essay can prove as impactful as an unplanned tumble into a bathtub. There’s a certain importance of a digital emotional connection in childhood that deserves to remain memorialised, and not lost to the ether.

The levels of emotional investment that we have with digital media, and computers in particular, has been tracked by researchers since the 1980s. Alan Turing said in his 1950 paper ‘Can Machines Think?’ that we can judge the intelligence of a computer by its performance in conversation with man. Namely, if the computer is able to convince the human subject that they are talking to a fellow human and not a machine, then human-equivalent intelligence can be determined. This test became known as the ‘Turing Test’ and is still studied and implemented today in experiments of navigating artificial technology, or the ability of ‘bots’ to mimic human interaction.

In the intervening decades, it has been noted that people attribute an increased level of personhood to a computer, not least in terms of pre-programmed gameplay. Therefore, if a Tamagotchi was able to incite very real joy and grief from its user or owner, it could be seen as the first great wave of artificial intelligence in the western world.

In more extreme contemporary circumstances, man’s relationship with digital games has snowballed. While in terms of toys, other digital pets like the Furby, Poo-Chi (which I did own briefly, but was swiftly broken by my portly, recently-divorced father screaming into its microphone on Christmas day. I’m over it. It’s fine.) or even NeoPets virtual pet community have not brought about the same primal love and devotion as the humble Tamagotchi. Perhaps it was the inevitability of death that separated our love for the Tama from its immortal digital counterparts.

However, interactions with digital gameplay appear to have moved in two separate directions; ambivalence and devotion.

Today, electronic games and pets are commonplace, providing no new emotional experiences for children who have grown up within the digital age, where entertainment can be accessed at the click of a button and nothing is finite.

On the other hand, there are instances of individuals such as a 27-year old Japanese man named Sal 9000 (the only name he would provide to the press), who was so emotionally invested in the DS Game ‘Love Plus’, decided to marry the main avatar in a lavish, if highly controversial ceremony in 2009. When questioned as to whether he could truly love a digital, pre-programmed woman, he explained that “I love this character, not a machine.” Going on to say that “I understand 100 percent that this is a game. I understand very well that I cannot marry her physically or legally.”

However, his preference for the digital, predictable and placid provoked far more discussion. Explaining that Nene Anegasakiwas better than a ‘real’ girlfriend, he listed her perks, stating that, “She doesn’t get angry if I’m late in replying to her. Well, she gets angry, but she forgives me quickly.”[1]

Sal is not alone in his preference and several others have followed in his stead, marrying digital characters in ceremonies across the world. In 2018, Japan hit the headlines again as 35-year-old school administrator Akihiko Kondo married the hologram of video game character, Hatsune Miku. Whether these marriages will last when the bride’s updates are discontinued is another matter, but our changing relationship with life, love, and death in the digital age is undeniable.

On which note, I’ll thank you for taking this strange journey with me and take my leave. My Compu Kitty needs feeding.

The Tamagotchi Cemetery syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

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black-strike-otp · 7 years

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part 64

♫♪ You are a blinding light. A darkness courses through my veins but somehow you chose me, and I refuse to let you down. So come here a little closer. I love you past the breaking point. You’re what I never wanted, but now I have never wanted something more~ ♫♪

Excuse me I just have to- //stabs myself repeatedly//

Lights adjusted to a dim, lovely setting? Check. Open scenery of the cosmos stretching out for who knew how far out from the open viewing window? Check. Cleaning supplies for themselves and repair items for weapons put away properly? Check.

This was as far as he knew to go. All the blasted, sickening theatrics and poetry, all the performances he ever read and Megatronous’ own wordplay, this seemed romantic. He wished he’d paid more attention to all those plays and stories back when he was a younger mech. Some of it still stuck to him, but less than he’d liked.

Primus, he never felt so uncertain in his life. Everything before this had been so easy in comparison. Fighting in the Gladiator Pits of Kaon? A learning curve, but something he picked up on steadily and as Guard had pointed out, his size had helped him along the way. Becoming a Decepticon? Simple, he trusted at the time a capable Megatron to lead them to victory and a new beginning for Cybertron. Killing bots, destroying his enemies, making his way above being simply a slave but a mech of strength and courage? Easy.

Telling the femme who breathed life and light into him that she meant everything to him? Not so easy.

Blackout drummed his digits on the berth he sat upon. All he could do was wait.

Leaving work behind, Novastrike felt like a royal mess. Blotted with oils and dusted with dirt from whatever else, she looked filthy. Usually she liked her white armor; clean and pristine it glowed like the stars in the sky and like the shine of a sun hitting a lunar rock, but in this case she simply looked terrible. Nothing made for an indecent frame like a white-armored one. A single speck of discoloration and the whole look was thrown.

She decided that some recharge first and a shower later would be best. Some quality rest could do her some good after the day she’d had. Going from ship to ship, wrangling bots, keeping the order, biting back and forth with Neutroboost earlier and dealing with his steely silence later in the evening that threw her off, it’d been a long day. And that was just the start of the day; climbing through the mechanics of weapons system on Rising Star and on the Revenge II, fetching items for bots, running errands, helping the medic briefly, speaking with Guard over comm’s while breaking up a fight between a bot meant to be keeping watch over the pirates that decided clobbering one would silence the mech...

Frankly it was a whirlwind. She wondered if Blackout’s work had been this crazy prior to being put off duty so he could rest. As far as she’d known from their conversations, hadn’t exactly had to beat anyone down recently. Well, any Rising Star crewman, anyway.

Running her servo over her faceplate, the small femme groaned softly as she turned off the short extended hallway to the private captain’s quarters. She pinged the activation code up to the doorway as she dropped her servo and emitted a static-filled yawn.

That’s strange. The lights usually grew bright the moment the door opened.

Moving her sapphire blue optics around, she spotted Blackout’s glowing red optics standing out before she realized his dark silhouette was truly there.

With a smile, she placed her a servo on one of her hips and gestured to him. “Look at you, out of the medic’s caretake rooms. Did you leave of your own accord, or did she let you go?”

A quiet chuckle flowed out of the mech; a mythical sound of cheer. “I was released jours ago, actually.”

“Well that’s a relief,” Nova sighed heavily as she sauntered in the room. The door hissed faintly as it shut behind her. Her optics blinked rapidly, adjusting with an inaudible whir to the darkness as her pupils grew slightly wider and the glowing, shimmering lights played out from her gaze.

“What are you doing sitting in the dark anyway?” she asked, glancing around. “Isn’t it a bit, dim in here?”

As she swept her glance up to the formidable darker than ink mech’s faceplate again she watched as his shoulder stiffened and raised slightly. Her own polite smile wavered a touch at his anxiety. What in Primus’ name had him so stirred up?

Tapping the berth beside him, Blackout emitted a cough with his vents. “Join me?”

Suspiciously narrowing her optics, Nova gave a curiously puzzled smile. “Alright,” she cautiously agreed.

Strolling further into the room, the femme leaped up to join Blackout on the berth. The stiffness in his posture was still there, and he couldn’t seem to keep his optics on her. For a moment he’d look to her, and then gaze slightly towards the viewing panel to look outside of the ship.

“Something pressing on your thoughts, dear?” she teased, reaching over to caress his armor.

Ebbs of tension seemed to drain out of him. Not all of it, but at least his shoulders dropped. After a lengthy drag of air in and a slow exhale, the mech turned his optics back towards her. She noted how unusually luminous they appeared. The glow coming off of them was stronger than usual, adding almost a haze over his faceplate that dusted over shadows that usually fell in certain areas of his faceplate from his helm and making it light enough to really take in his softened expression and gentle smile.

Novastrike’s spark flopped in her chassis. It was entirely too unfair for a mech to be so attractive.

“You could say that,” he roughly commented.

“Hmm,” she drawled, drawing slow circles against his obsidian frame. “Anything I can fix?” she pondered aloud, leaning in to press a kiss against his side.

A shudder raced through Blackout. Sometimes she picked up on the tremors, but this time it was physically visible as well as leaving a sensation through her digits. Twitching her ears forward, she tilted her helm back to gaze with a confused look to the mech.

“You know, you’re the only individual of any bot, any species, anyone to ever look at me and instantly seem terrified. Even with the Autobot’s, the first time you laid your optics on me I remember so vividly seeing the defiance in your optics and the anger you had to your own factionmates as they beat me. You weren’t scared in the least being in the same room as a towering murderer. You didn’t even act scared when I kidnapped you to help myself escape; in fact you yelled at me, cursed me, told me that I was an aft and got even more furious.”

“I may have been hiding some of my terror at the time well,” Nova admitted with a slight laugh. “I do remember thinking you were probably going to hand me over to the nearest Decepticon you saw.”

Offering a wanted smile, Blackout tilted his helm slightly at the comment. “You didn’t think I was going to hurt you?”

“No. You would have done it sooner if you’d wanted to,” she stated with a shrug.

“Perceptive,” he hummed thoughtfully.

Where was he going with this? Nova rubbed her servo lightly over his side as she met his gaze, trying to decipher the look he had about him. Sure he appeared as charming as ever but he looked like he was struggling with something. Something was bothering him. She wished he’d just get to it; she didn’t like seeing the conflicted flickers in his crimson gaze.

Clearing his vocalizer, he continued: “My past, my struggles, my insufficiency, even my attitude and violent mannerisms, you set that all aside to speak with me. You Scorponok and I the moment we came together to rescue you. You didn’t give up on me.”

“You sound a bit awed,” the femme breathlessly giggled. “Of course I never gave up on you. You’re deserving of happiness and second chances just like the rest of us.”

A grimace briefly married Blackout’s face. “I’ve been given more than enough second chances. Your handed me probably a dozen in of itself.”

“You didn’t prove me wrong,” she reminded him with a sweet smile.

Blackout’s optics widened a fraction. For a moment his mouth opened, just slightly agape. It was a humorous dumbfounded look, but more adorable than anything else.

“You remember how I was telling you about how brave, strong, compassionate, determined, gorgeous-”

“That’s lovely handsome but I’m filthy and-”

Giving a firm shake of his helm, Blackout raised a servo. Extending a digit, he lightly placed the tip against Nova’s lips. She looked from his servo back up to him, and the gentle complexion of his faceplate.

“I wasn’t finished,” he stated softly, losing all undertones so that the depth and baritone of his voice ran like a pool of raw smelted gold.

Novastrike shivered lightly in response and gave a numb nod. As Blackout drew his servo away, she shyly pressed a kiss against the tip of his extended pointer.

A pleasant warble escaped Blackout’s chassis in response. Nova turned her helm sharply up towards the mech. He appeared slightly embarrassed, but didn’t sheepishly try to quiet the sound of his spark playing its dark melody.

Light flourished in Novastrike’s ears as her spark slammed into overdrive. Each pulse stronger than the last as the rhythm of his tune orchestrated an ominous song both beautifully enchanting and haunting. She could swear her spark was trying to either lodge itself in her ears from the thunderous roar it created, or bust out of its chamber and through her chassis.

There was a slight hesitancy from Blackout, and then he began to speak in that same gentle voice: “You are breathtaking in all of your elegance and fair angelic marvelous beauty. I’ve witnessed your grace with ever confident stride, saw you fend off Decepticons and insane former Decepticons. Even when you might be afraid, you weld your inner will and your strengths and you fight with the heroism and valor. And when you smile and laugh, I swear it makes the gods that may be filled with envy and jealousy. There is nothing more exquisite than your joy; pure and overwhelming and as splendid and overwhelmingly divine just as you are.”

Swallowing hard, the small femme allowed her servo to still upon Blackout’s frame. The other, she gradually brought up to her chassis as if it would stop it from it’s erratic beating.

“That way you light up,” Blackout chuckled, shaking his helm. “Primus I just lose every care, every thought, every worry. All I care about is that moment spent in the aura of your light and your happiness; enveloped in it, soaking it it like you’re the rays twinkling in the darkness and guiding me somewhere far better than where I’ve been.”

Allowing his words to sink in, Blackout reached out for her. Nova’s optics briefly moved from his faceplate to his servo as it moved closer. His digit gently, so painfully gently Primus she knew he was taking every inch of caution and care not to hurt her, brushed along her cheek.

She couldn’t help herself from beaming. Smiling wide, a faint giggle briefly emitting from her as she looked back up to the mech who stole every desire and dream she ever had and made them in comparison seem small and insignificant to the world of possibilities he brought to her.

“Novastrike,” he said her name slowly; rolling it off his glossia as though speaking her name was like that of summoning a goddess and he, a sinner, deserved no such honor. “I’ve done a long of wrong in my life. A lot of wrong that I haven’t deserved to be forgiven for, that should never have put someone so heavenly and wonderful in my life. You’re the one thing in my life that is right though, in every way. You bring out the best parts of myself, you’ve taught me things about myself I never thought existed, you... you’re very patient with me, and very good to me, despite my faults and flaws.”

“We all have those,” Nova gently reminded him, her voice hardly a whisper.

“I know, darling, I know,” he agreed softly. “But Novastrike, you are the most precious individual in my life. Your affection, your warmth, your tenderness and your consideration- it’s far more than I should deserve yet here you are. Always here for me.”

“I- I uh... I-” Blackout stuttered, clearing his vocalizer and trying again still in that delicate voice, “I’m afraid of losing you,” he admitted, “of ruining our friendship, but I need to be honest about something.”

Primus, she couldn’t breathe.

“I love you, Novastrike.”

The light from the femme’s optics grew brighter as sparkling reflections glanced off like stars in twilight. She inhaled sharply, spark fluttering in her chassis as her ears flooded with light, illuminating the entire area around her.

Self-conscious, Blackout continued in a slightly more hurried voice: “I should have told you this a million times already; I should have told you this years ago like you deserved to hear. I’m a mess. I have an unclean past; I didn’t even know what love was, what it felt like, until I met you and I realized how much I fragging cared. I don’t expect you to... I know you deserve a Pit of a lot better than anything I can provide to you. But I’ve come to realize one thing and that is that there is nothing, nothing in the universe that I’ve ever wanted so badly as I do you, at my side.”

Novastrike sucked in a strangled breath and let it out slowly. Through her servo that still was placed upon Blackout, she could feel him stiffen up again.

Dear Primus, he was actually afraid she was going to reject him, wasn’t he?

It only made her spark beat a little stronger, a little harder. This poor, sweet, sappy mech was scared of revealing his feelings to her. And here she’d been swallowing her own feelings for so long, desperately convinced there was no way he could possibly love her. She hoped, she mused, she considered maybe but love was not a word you simply threw around, it simply didn’t seem to be part of Blackout’s regular vocabulary.

By the Well of Allsparks, he loved her.

That made this easy.

Placing her servo over Blackout’s digit that rested upon her face, Novastrike nuzzled her cheek against the callous armor. She kept her optics on his, smiling ever so faintly as she pressed her lips against his digit.

The warbling sound of his spark seemed to hitch and grew louder as he took in a shaky breath.

“I love you too, Blackout,” she whispered softly.

Relief sank into his face quickly. The hard lines set in his shoulders dropped fast, and the edge of his smile that had been twitching anxiously vanished as he smiled warmly.

“With all my spark,” she added, her voice growing louder to speak over the sudden wave of music that escaped her chassis as her spark began to sing a spell of harmonious affection that mashed in a curious union with the sound of Blackout’s own spark-song.

“For me, its always been you,” she admitted timidly, optics flickering as she stared up to him with an adoring glance.

With a suddenness that caused her to yelp with some alarm, Blackout picked her up in a blur of motion and the next thing she was aware of, she was pressed gently against his chassis, right over his spark.

It was only after the fact that Blackout seemed keenly aware of his actions.

“I- I’m sorry, I should have asked,” he feverishly rambled.

Nova let out a breathless giggle, rubbing her servos eagerly over his armor. “Don’t worry about it handsome devil, you’re fine,” she insisted, peppering his frame with kisses.

Rumbling with relief, Blackout’s digits lightly brushed along her spinalstrut, just the way she liked it. Novastrike quivered from the tips of her ears to the tip of her pedes in response as she wrapped her tail around one of Blackout’s digits.

“Happy to hear that, love,” he vented lightly.

Love? She could get used to that.

“Mmmm,” she purred, snuggling into his warm frame. It meant a little more to her knowing he was purposefully warming himself up to be a cozy temperature for her.

“You know,” Nova murmured softly, “I’ve loved you since waaayyy back on Giohizmut. Seeing your stupid faceplate after all that time, I don’t know, it gave me chills. And then you left and I just sorta felt... empty and alone. I desperately had wanted you to stay.”

“Well you don’t have to worry about me going anywhere, Nova, not without you,” he echoed in a playful growl, stroking his digits along her back. “I’m sorry I made you wait so long.”

“Softie,” she murmured against his chassis as she kissed him once more.

“Only for you,” he chuckled softly in response.

“Guess that makes me pretty special, doesn’t it beloved?” Nova teased.

“More than just special,” Blackout affirmed in a more serious tone, leaning in to press a kiss to the crown of her helm. “The most most special, remarkable, unique femme I’ve ever known.”

Listening to the sound of their sparks playing off each other and bouncing notes to and fro, Blackout wasn’t terribly surprised when Novastrike lulled off to recharge on his chassis. He felt a little guilty for having kept her from the shower racks, but he figured he’d make it up to her tomorrow helping her clean up at least.

As always, she stunned him with her beauty. Curled up, looking so innocent as she rested so peacefully on his armor. The essence of a celestial deity herself recharging on his armor; armor that had been splattered with blood-energon and the gore of those he murdered.

She could do a million times better with so much ease. Any bot on this vessel would be lucky just to have her glance in their direction, let alone have her sharing their berth and snuggling up against them.

Nova was purely a sight to behold. Even grimy, she looked heaven-sent. He couldn’t recharge. Even if he actually felt exhausted, he wasn’t sure he was. It was simply all too much in the best way possible. Her smile, her allure, her charm, the fact that he was not a one-sided hopeless fool in his romance. She’d said she loved him. Fearless as always.

In all his years that came and went, this was something worth fighting for. And he’d do so, till his last day until the fates came upon him he would protect her and this love they shared with every inch of his strength and will, to his final rattled breath and the stars descended and his spark imploded and returned to the dust of the galaxy.

Pressing a kiss to his digits, Blackout pressed it gingerly against the small femme’s helm. A lazy smile pulled on the corner of her lips even in sleep just slightly in response.

Grinning stupidly despite himself, the mech’s spark hummed a little louder as he sighed, silently going back to taking in the view of perfection that lay upon him as he settled himself in hopes of getting a little recharge tonight.

#quid pro quo au #OTP AU #OTP Lit #Cute OTP

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