Hoth: Blood and Ice

Some people needed to see the doctor after a battle, others just needed a drink. Moyr was in the latter group. She'd been first to a bottle of whisky that survived the bombardment, and was drinking it now from a chipped glass.

[Healing Trance On]

She'd felt it. During the battle frenzy, she'd put it aside, compartmentalising and disbelieving, consigning it to the battle haze. But with the first sip of whiskey in the empty bar, the clog was removed and dry tears poured out, just the tiniest trickles of brine. She was a desert creature, her grief didn't waste moisture.

Grief wasn't the only feeling. There was anger and jealousy for whomever had spent those last moments with him, whomever had been entrusted with whatever his last wish might have been. But she had been elsewhere then, defending this piece of turf she didn't care much about, mostly because he had never asked that she would be by his side. She perfectly knew what it meant; love was for someone else, for her - excuses and apologies. For him, she was too much, or not enough. Or both.

And now it was all gone. Except it wasn't, because a festering hole of pain, regret, and anger wreathed inside her, the alcohol and the physical wounds only adding to the fire. It would not go, she knew. He had tempted her with Light, but ended pushing her even deeper into darkness, where there could be nothing personal to her life anymore. No partner, no children, a few friends with lives and plans of their own. In the end, solely the calling of the Force.

It was a freedom of some kind, sure. Not one she had secretly wished for, but the one she ended up with. And in fact she could well scold herself for it. If she'd ever thought her life could come to different point, she hadn't been paying attention to her own actions.

How to mourn him? With a song, of course. Probably the last one. Which one, of those countless she'd composed?

"Breathing on is harder
Than it seems
Drinking in these empty rooms of
broken glass and shattered dreams
Feeling in my fingers
Speaks your name
Softly like forgotten tunes
Just outside the sound of pain

Weren't we like a pair of thieves
With tumbled locks and broken codes
You cannot take that from me
My small reprieves
Your heart of gold
Weren't we like a battlefield
Locked inside a holy war
My love and your due diligence
The thing once worth fighting for

Change will come to those who
Have no fear
But I'm not you, you never were
The kind who kept my rule book near
What I said was ever
What I meant
And now you leave my world in flames
My shadow songs, my deep regrets

Weren't we like a pair of thieves
With tumbled locks and broken codes
You cannot take that from me
My small reprieves
Your heart of gold
Weren't we like a battlefield
Locked inside a holy war
My love and your due diligence
The thing once worth fighting for."

In the end, against physiology, her eyes' moisture happened, thick and red.

When the official confirmation came, the blood tears had been long wiped, and two more glasses drained.

She knew the propaganda language well enough to know that it was not what had transpired. The thought of seeking revenge came to her. While she knew it would derail her, she could not banish it. At least not now.

Glass broke in her hands with a crack, staccato of fragments followed.

She sensed Bellious... might as well start with her... and heard the glass breaking. The wound felt too fresh for her to be doing this now, but the people close to Sylvain were owed an explanation. Her breakdown could wait for going through the rest of the necessary steps.

"... Bellious," she said from the doorway. "Do you have a moment?" Her expression was drawn and tired, eyes glassy. She looked a little like a walking corpse, as pale as she already was.

There was a moment of silence when a piece of glass was pulverised in an already bloodied red palm. Moyr did not turn.

"I see you are very efficient in your new tasks, Lord Khalan, already seeing to the outstanding business. I have just received a memo from the other successor, Draagh. What kind of business is it going to be?"

The woman seemed drunk. Alcohol or cold rage, it did not matter; she was one or to steps away from the heart of violent chaos. And yet, her voice was not hoarse, quite the opposite, melodic and mellow, ready to burst into a song of blood. Some of it had already puddled around her on the floor, probably from the wounds she had sustained in battle.

"There were a lot of people close to Sylvain. They deserve to hear what happened from the horse's mouth. You among them," she replied quietly. There was no anger in her voice, but perhaps some acceptance of Moyr's. "It's just one successor, though. Draahg will be returning to the Empire and taking on what Baras left. I'm just trying to make sure nothing explodes until we leave and I can take whatever I have left there."

Luth was holding whatever complicated emotions she was feeling under strict lock and key, but her voice betrayed the emptiness and exhaustion of some painful thing dug bone-deep into her.

Moyr turned around on the bar stool, sprinking glass on the floor. Her eyes were literally bloodshot, no whites in them, her irises not golden but bright orange, clotted streaks of blood on her cheeks. She was herself not aware of the depths of her despair and anger, at least at this moment, as these eyes did not comform with rather measured movements and a calm tone.

"How did he die?"

She walked across the floor toward Moyr. The cantina was empty, but the pleasant fiction that Baras and Sylvain had died for the station... it was better it be maintained except between certain people.

"... He was there to support me. I was exiting the service to Baras. Not unlike how I accompanied him back when he initially tried to kill Baras," she began, her eyes focused somewhere on the floor a thousand miles from their current location... Or perhaps only a few hundred away. "Baras took umbrage that I was leaving the Empire with my children. He... demanded Sylvain be killed. Not me. I killed him for that. I tried to help Syl, but it was too late by then."

She could have gone into some musing about it was all her fault, but what would that be other than self-indulgence? Moyr would make her own judgments.

"It's possible your first thought might be revenge, and I might have accepted it in any other circumstances. He asked me to look after Arymis, though. So I have to ask you to hold back for the sake of that."

There was a long silence, as Moyr started forth. Sometimes on Luth, sometimes somewhere behind her, into emptiness. It looked like she was waging some internal battle between various impulses, and neither was gaining higher ground. Her hands had balled and knuckles whitened across carmine skin, and her body stiffened like a bowstring pulled but held. Her lightsabre must have been on her, but despite its size, it was hard to spot it.

The maelstrom raged, roiled, ravaged for well too long. There were moments when she looked like saying something but nothing escaped her mouth. But then she snap-winked and her gaze regained some clarity. The tension was receding. It had not sprung.

"He made a choice." Her voice seemed hollowed out now, not unlike Luth's. "I won't share my feelings on that choice. What I know, however, is that the galaxy is worse off now. You've got what you wanted, and you have a patch on your conscience with his blessing to raise his daughter. But without him, our chances to repel the Zakuul are smaller, and Baras' power in the hands of a scum like Draagh is a calamity to the Sith. I cannot guess your loyalties now, but if the world comes crashing down, you will perhaps reflect on how you took his sacrifice rather than made your own."

She considered her words, feeling the weight of them. There was a time she would have agreed with them, let herself dissolve into misery and self-hatred. Recrimination. Spirals of pain that built on themselves.

"... No. I'll learn the lessons to be learned from this, yes. He wanted his children's happiness, though. And mine. And yours. Dwelling on my failures won't fix anything, and won't fulfill his wishes," she replied. "The only thing I can do is try to do better, and create an environment where our children can shine and make the galaxy better than we could ever have imagined."

"As for people like Draahg... He may be or maybe he won't. We don't know yet. Building up fear of him as some sort of disaster won't change anything - we'll just have to deal with it if he turns out to be so more than any other Sith with power. He'll bring his own downfall out of his own fear, eventually. That's the nature of the Dark Side. It happened to Baras, too, sacrificing everything he truly wanted for power. And Syl, forcing himself to dim his light so he wouldn't raise the ire of those more powerful, out of fear. And me, building up fear in my head of Baras until I betrayed the people I cared about. It's all fear, anger, hate, the pain that comes from it, and the self-sabotage it all creates."

"I was responsible for my choices, and I'll accept the consequences of them, but I won't darken myself or catastrophize the future. I won't fear Zakuul, or Draahg. We'll do our best to defeat them, and if we fail, those who come after us will take what we've built and create victory out of it."

"Then as far as my happiness is concerned, he dramatically failed despite my minimal expectations of him just staying alive." Moyr retorted. "And what's the fear talk? Fear isn't bad, if anything it should be spread wider as it spurs to action. I get from your words that you don't care about what the Sith should stand for any more, but from where I stand Draagh is a calamity to what I believe in. I don't feel like elaborating though, especially to someone so keen to excuse the fallout of their actions."

Some resolve solidified in Moyr, sealing a course of action that had been uncertain until that moment.

"I think you should leave, Khalan, and let me mourn him here in my own fashion. Thank you for telling me the truth but that's it. Go fight whomever you want to fight now, I've had enough for one day. Actually, if you haven't noticed, there were Zakuul here when you were sorting out family business. Those kriffers kept my busy and I wasn't able to prevent the man I loved for all my adult life from being killed. And I find no excuse for myself for that."

She considered for a moment all of the bitter things she could say. Accusations, justifications, all the rest of it. In the end, what would be the point?

Instead, she shook her head. "As you wish."

/exits unless stopped

/not stopped
/scene