#sure he exiled himself but what about asajj

[jewishcissiekj]

as much as I like Cavan Scott and Dooku: Jedi Lost I can not wrap my head around Ky Narec willingly staying on Rattatak with A FORCE-SENSITIVE CHILD HE SHOULD'VE TAKEN TO THE TEMPLE for like about 20 years because he thinks he should be in exile??? I might have misunderstood it but that's such an insane concept. What would make him do that.

[doorsclosingslowly]

Your death is a number but I cannot count that high (5/?)

In which conclusions are drawn. Some of them are even accurate.

Zombie Savage AU | 2.1k | canon divergent after Son of Dathomir | also on AO3

This Darth Maul is a far cry from the angry stalking beast of Raydonia. He’s quiet, for starters. He’s lost his shadow. He looks much older, too; the man standing before her in the busy landing bay of the massive Mandalorian cruiser has aged far beyond the mere months it’s been since they last saw each other, when Asajj saved Obi-Wan Kenobi from two raving monsters.

He’s not gaunt, but close. Ribs peek out shamelessly from his open tunic. Like all nightbrothers that Asajj has ever seen apart from fucking Savage Opress after his faulty upgrade, Maul’s never been much more than lean muscle, though she always attributed that to his exile, and for the others, to the scarce harsh landscape of Dathomir. To the tributes they paid to her clan, instead of eating. Perhaps the males were just bred for thinness, though.

After all, Maul apparently now commands Mandalore, or the terrorist army occupying it, depending on who’s asked. By all rights, he should have put on weight instead of losing what little he had. He owns luxuries, now.

He should look better.

That he doesn’t fills Asajj with quiet satisfaction. It strengthens her hopes: she did not want to come, but apparently, she was right.

A wreck. That’s what he is now. A sickly green tinge to his red face, and he’s barely more than spat-out garbage, even though Sidious apparently still couldn’t kill him. He’s slouched and finely trembling and stubbornly upright, a purple-armored Mando close by his side, arms ready to catch him should he fall. Not a warlord, but a has-been tolerated for his former glories—if there were any—and Asajj tucks the fault line close. It may prove useful. He must be weak indeed to tolerate this display.

If it wasn’t for his black markings, there would be deep sleepless bruises visible under his eyes, because surely, his recent nights have been just as restless as Asajj’s. He’s probably got the pounding headache, too. The alien revulsions. The hallucinations. The second-hand death wish.

Savage Opress is Maul’s apprentice, like he is Asajj’s mate.

They’re in the same boat now.

No, not boat. They’re tied to the same karking boulder. The same force bond, driving them both slowly insane. If anyone else has been subjected to the strange, constant psychic assault of nonexistent things wriggling under her skin that she finally managed to trace to that as yet unbroken mental connection, it’s Maul.

Despite all this, he is also saner, more controlled, than she has ever seen him. Open hatred in his eyes and a hand tapping nervously against the hilt of the lightsaber dangling from his belt, but apart from that, he is still. Silent. Waiting. Empty. Glowing—

Green.

The longing hits Asajj so strongly it almost bowls her over. Green, and she recognizes it now: faint green traces on Maul, like her Sisters’ magicks. Light, slowly leaking out.

He looks utterly miserable.

Asajj doesn’t pity him. Wouldn’t even be tempted. Maul brought this pain down on himself, and on all their heads. He let Savage loose. He… Asajj bares her teeth, and the pathetic handcuffs fall. She reins herself in. He is bathed in their magicks now, but he killed them. Maul brought Sidious to Dathomir. Every day still, unforgotten—unforgettable screams ring through Asajj’s mind, the last desperate pleas of the Nightsister witches before their annihilation, of Asajj’s family, and that’s not even the worst problem. It’s not what brings her here. She could have coped, if it was just death-screams. Asajj mourns her people. That makes sense. The other thoughts, though…

(There would be no sleep tonight, Asajj decided when the last Sister’s cry had hushed. She knew how it went. She had been abandoned by Hal’Sted—and good fucking riddance—by Master Narec, by Dooku, and now her clan was gone too. It would be unwise to sleep. Instead, she threw knives at the wall and collected them and threw them again in moving meditation, until all was still inside and action automatic. She sank into the force.

Then, after uncounted hours, faces came to her. Not her family’s. Instead, patterned horned faces she did not care about. Maul, laughing and whispering instructions and begging her desperately to stay alive; other nightbrothers; and over and over, a small orange-skinned maleling that was vaguely familiar. They were faces she didn’t care for, or ones she hated—this was all Maul’s fault, something awake and outside knew—but she mourned them. Each face was the loss of an entire life, a world that could have been. She cried. I am alone now, she thought. All of my brothers are dead.

Let me die, Mother.

When Asajj realized her mind had been hijacked and fought her way back to the surface, she had already cut through her vambrace and deep into her arm.)

The other thoughts are foreign thoughts. They’re not her, for all they take control as soon as her attention lapses. They’re intrusions. Hallucinations. Concerns she’s never had, or not for a very long time. Asajj has been alone, abandoned, for most her life. She’s dealt with the pain. She’s beaten it long ago. She has emerged, powerful and vicious and the master of her own destiny.

Still, the other thoughts are impossible to get rid of, relentless despite and because of their absurdity—She remade me and I cannot die—and they had mystified Asajj, terrified her, until she’d finally remembered after the first sleepless week: the living force is a web connecting all beings, and there are still two reinforced bonds tethering her to the living. Two chains to drag her down.

One, to her former Master, the man who betrayed her and who she failed to kill. This one’s dormant, for everyone’s convenience.

The other: to her slave.

Apparently, Savage Opress is trying to murder her again.

(Their connection had originally been mostly a formality. This is what happens when you win a maleling, her Sisters had explained. He belongs to you now. His thoughts belong to you. Asajj had cared much more about results than about the arcane theories of her people then, for all the plan turned out a failure. She’d been naïve. She hadn’t asked whether it could be used against her. She hadn’t asked whether it could be broken. The connection had been nothing but a minor nuisance her Sisters should have warned her of, though of course, none of the others ever had to suffer. Nightbrothers die long before their leaky thoughts get too repetitive. Slowly, she had grown used to it, and then Savage had tried to kill her and met Maul and finally learned how to shield his mind.

And that would be the end of the whole affair, Asajj had hoped.

Fat chance.)

Dathomir burned, and less than a day after, the force bond flared back to life. Something happened to make Savage Opress stop caring about the boundaries of his mind, and now, Asajj is being boiled alive slowly. A pounding headache of despair day-in, day-out. Drowning in a sea of love and mourning for Maul—for a man who she can’t even imagine anyone genuinely liking, and who, besides, is clearly unfortunately still alive—and suffering endless secondhand tortures. Needles, maggots, cables, forever writhing.

Asajj wants her own skin back. She wants to sleep again.

She wants Savage Opress to shut up.

She’ll do whatever it takes.

She just needs to find him first, and that’s why she’s here. He vanished without a trace, one-and-a-half months ago, a short while before Dathomir’s end. Asajj had loosely been following the trail of the monster she’d lost control of and unleashed, paying contacts for tales of Maul and his massive, quiet, ever-present shadow meandering around the galaxy and slaughtering pirates and mafia and peaceful Mandos alike. Then, suddenly: nothing. Not for any price. Maul left Mandalore, alone, and dis- and reappeared. No sign of Opress. A falling-out? A fight?

Whatever it was, Savage can’t be dead, or he wouldn’t be bothering Asajj. Whatever it is, none of the information brokers Asajj has ever heard of know anything at all.

There’s nowhere to go but the one source left, now. The fellow drowner. She’ll just have to hold back the hatred for the man who got her people killed.

“Hello, Maul,” Asajj greets, with supreme dignity.

Then, she waits. There’s no acknowledgement.

“I did not come here to fight.”

Maul stares.

“I have come to exchange information.”

Nothing.

The bustling all around them continues. Mandos waving around the blasters they drew when Asajj unlocked her cuffs. Mandos dragging their slave cargo out of the ship’s hold, whispering quietly. More Mandos, pouring into the landing bay. More threat displays, but Maul himself doesn’t even blink.

Finally, the purple-armored soldier at Maul’s side steps forward and says, “You did not ‘come here’ at all. You were brought.”

There’s nothing to be gained from underestimation, right now, and so Asajj raises her uncuffed hands and explains, “Do you really think you could have made me do anything I didn’t want to? It would’ve been easy to find you. I’m a bounty hunter. But why bother when there was a Mandalorian taxi ready to take me straight where I wanted to go? I did not come here to fight, Maul. I came to talk. I have a proposal for you.”

“No,” Maul says. Well. It’s better than mulish, stubborn silence, at least. Barely.

“It’s mutually beneficial, I assure you.”

“No.”

“It’s about something you lost.”

“No.”

Asajj is tired. She has a headache. She doesn’t particularly want to be here in the first place, and there are phantom worms multiplying and digging through her ribcage—Maul’s hand twitches towards his chest, another piece of evidence—and she has no patience for whatever game Maul thinks he’s playing. She hisses, “Where is your brother, Maul?”

He stills again. So does the whole bay, this time, except for the purple Mando who lightly touches Maul’s shoulder. Then, blasters cock.

“I’m asking about Savage Opress, in case that wasn’t clear.”

“Dead,” Maul says flatly.

“Don’t insult me. You know I’m not that stupid.”

No air, suddenly. Fingers pressing into her throat. Dirty, scraping nails. Asajj curses herself for her mistake, for the split-second in which she failed to defend herself. Maul was just meters away, and she forgot. She’s been lulled in by his wretched demeanor, by his petulant silence, by his pretense at calm, and she’s forgotten: beneath it all lurks a beast, ready to lunge.

Maul’s eyes are close-by now as he tries to wring her neck, too close and far too wide, and there’s no intelligence left in them. Nothing but pain.

Still—she couldn’t have skewered him on her sabers, anyway, no matter how desperately she wants to. She came here to talk. He’s the only person left who knows anything. Even though, apparently, if he’s not lying—he’s too ignorant to even realize there’s anything to know.

“I wouldn’t do—do that, if I were you,” Asajj rasps out.

More pressure.

“Don’t. You’ll regret… I know. He’s not dead.”

Maul’s voice isn’t particularly pleasant, howled straight into her ear. “I watched him die,” he shrieks, loud and hoarse and spittle-flecked. “I held him. He fought—I tried to—I let go. I let him die. My Master killed him. He killed my brother. He took everything. Savage is dead.”

Still: his hands ease off slightly. He wants to believe her.

Asajj gulps in air.

“He’s not,” she says, once she’s recovered. “And you know it. You should, anyway. Stop me if any of this sounds familiar. Nightmares about him, over and over. Every night. The kind of things he’d be thinking. You, mostly. Other dead nightbrothers. Not much variety in his mind. It feels like it’s you, thinking it. It feels like it’s real, but then you realize…”

Maul nods. A jerky, unselfconscious movement.

“Weird tortures. Like something’s inside you, trying to get out.”

“Yes.”

“That’s a rogue force bond.”

He looks stunned. Desperate. Eager.

“It’s stronger than it used to be, than it should be, but yes, that’s what it is,” Asajj explains, as if to a stupid child. “I won him, a long time ago, and Mother Talzin’s ritual... We’re connected. He’s your Sith apprentice, and you—he’s awful at shielding. That’s what he’s feeling, right now. Those fucking worms. The torture. That’s him. He’s inflicting his misery on us. He wouldn’t be feeling anything, if he was dead. In conclusion: he’s alive, and we need to find him.”

We need to put him out of his misery is something she’ll hold back for now. She has no desire to get attacked again.

Maul isn’t listening anymore, anyway. His eyes are saucer-wide, stuffed to the brim with epiphany and bottomless horror. He lets go of Asajj’s neck, finally, and staggers backwards. He stumbles. He falls. He doesn’t get up.

“Master,” he whispers. “My brother—Lord Sidious took him as well.”