Wine and Undignified Actions

[Dalethria]

Vjun - Underground Catacombs

Weeks had passed since Milivikal k'Vik had followed the lure of freedom. Cryptic in simplicity, a message had enticed and brought old family together after centuries displaced. Suspicious and careful, the pale Siren still retained a high guard of her lost Cousin, Dalethria, but the weeks that had passed had dented the shield bit by bit. Today further progress had continued after a delicious dinner of fresh crepes, cream, and fruit that had been procured from the Château Malreaux. Having such luxury readily available was easy to steal as the winding catacombs stretched from the chateau to Bast Castle easily, as long as one was careful of the acidic tide that washed in from the Bay of Tears.

Both k'Viks had retired to Dalethria's study after dinner, created solely from the power of the mistress' mind - an extension of the several man made rooms underneath the château where past generations of Malreauxs secretly deciphered the nuances of the their dark potential.

"Is the wine to your liking, Sansa'rrk?" asked the host over thin slits that betrayed only the hint of blue that lay underneath as red lips hummed close to their owner's own glass of spiced white wine. Despite Milivikal's hesitation, Dalethria remained relaxed on the black couch in the middle of the room. Directly across, a fire crackled and popped to keep the chill of the stone at bay. The shadows cast against either woman made both appear far more ethereal then their natural skin tone. The yellow and orange hues granted at times appeared to give life to seemingly dead skin...

[Milivikal k'Vik]

Milivikal folded her legs in a ladylike fashion. She sipped at the wine. Had Dalethria wanted her dead she would have been long so by now, her body consumed by an acid bay.

She rolled the liquid in her mouth, letting it settle on different parts of her tongue and breathing in and out slowly.

"Most agreeable." She inclined her head and glass gently toward her cousin. Dalethria had been teaching her the secrets of the Château and the chambers below. Mili had asked, or hinted at, on more than one occasion that she was curious to Dalethria's purpose here regarding Sanya. She had not said a word more beyond their earlier conversation, and Mili's vulnerable patience began to crack. She sipped the wine for several more minutes, and made the edge of the glass sing with a finger.

"Cousin, what are we to do with this Tagge girl? And when?" The pair had stalked young Sanya through her own home. It was not an especially daring feat given the collective ability of the two pale women and the relative emptiness of Malreaux.

[Dalethria]

Patience was a difficult attribute for her sister to possess, however understandable. Locked away for centuries, awakened to a galaxy uncertain, unable to realize her own potential as the Empire kept her under a sharp thumb. She wouldn't even regard the Rebellion as an option. It was a waste of synaptic potential.

"Would it please you to know that Ms. Tagge is already in my custody?" Setting aside her wine glass, she lithely rose to her feet to retrieve the wine carafe set on the table between them. True she could have easily used the Force to bring it to her, but such displays of power were disregarded as foolish attempts of bravado. In her old age, physical pleasures, no matter how simplistic, held more nuances to her as she cheated away the years.

[Milivikal k'Vik]

Mili feigned disappointment. She rubbed her finger across the top of the glass, making a sad note.

"Ah, you took all the fun and left none for me." She stood, and took a gulp of the wine.

"But I suppose I shall have to endure, and find other enjoyments." Mili added, hands turned upward, shoulders shrugged.'

"Where is she?" Mili asked, excitedly.

[Dalethria]

Her cousin's face betrayed every hint of excitement that was channeling through her being. Enticed by the knowledge that the great female Tagge was in Dalethria's possession could not be contained at all, though Milivikal was an excellent actress verbally.

Ruby red lips parted with a delicious smile. "She's awaiting our arrival within my chambers."

Legs and arms bound in andurian silks on Dalethria's bed, Sanya was waiting with horrid anticipation indeed.

[Sanya Tagge]

Elsewhere...

Bound and gagged and blindfolded – this was not the evening that Sanya Tagge had planned, far from it. She squirmed within the confines of her constraints, determined not to fall asleep for even one micro-second for fear that whoever had brought her wherever she was would subject her to whatever it was they were planning. Assuming, of course, that she hadn't been abandoned – but that was a fate far too dire to contemplate. The kind of tragic fate that she would make sure befell who ever was responsible for this whole affair.

Once again reaching the conclusion that the ties which bound her would not come loose, she screamed, the ordinarily shrill sound made impotent by the fabric stuffed into her mouth.

[Milivikal k'Vik]

Milivikal licked her lips slowly and watched Sanya squirm. TaggeCo’s heiress, Miranda’s propaganda plaything was at their mercy. Mili was going to repay the Empire a thousand-fold for their transgressions against her. Sanya would be the ironic instrument of her vengeance. The woman screamed into her own silk.

Mili approached the bed, her footfalls silent. She ran a finger across Sanya’s jaw slowly. Sanya squirmed away.

“Shhh.” Mili encouraged Sanya to be quiet.

“No one can hear you.” Sanya screamed into her bonds more loudly. Her muffled screams became silent, even in her own ears. She couldn’t hear herself breathing, yet she felt air through her lungs. That was only supposed to work in a vacuum. Sanya felt added weight on the bed she was bound to. Mili brushed aside a stray strand of hair. Sanya was a physical specimen of beauty. Her mind, however, was panicked. She did an admirable job of self-torture.

“Would you like the gag removed?” Mili asked. Sanya paused, and then nodded. She was first greeted by the same eerie silence. Mili counted to ten, and slowly Sanya could hear her heart pound in her chest.

“We have much to discuss.” Milivikal stated. She glanced back at Dalethria, and grinned mirthfully.

[Sanya Tagge]

Even fibre of her being told Sanya to scream with all the breath in her lungs – but she felt frozen, the sensation of her voice being swallowed by some inexplicable vacuum having shaken her almost more than her captivity itself. The gag had left her mouth dry and so she licked her lips before speaking. Her throat was hoarse from screaming.

“If it's credits you want-” she began.

[Dalethria]

Like a ghost, she hovered at the end of the bed like a ravenous bird that wanted to pluck the fearful eyes out of Sanya's skull.

"Credits?" she hallowed out, "Surely the capable mind of Sanya Tagge can dissect a better cause for her capture."

[Sanya Tagge]

Ordinarily, she might have come up with a pithy reply – but there was no wit left in Sanya now. Her thoughts veered from one direction to another, like a moth trapped in a glass jar, beating its wings in vain.

“Who are you?”

[Milivikal k'Vik]

It was a good question. To give Sanya all but the smallest grain of truth might lead too quickly to as to who they actually were. Even the dimmest specters left marks on history, with names, deeds and dates.

Mili smirked slightly. Her eyes undressed Sanya, leaving her naked in her mind. Sanya squirmed in a futile attempt to be slightly less stripped.

"I am the Song. She is the Ghost." Mili said, with a hint of whimsy, her voice melodic and smooth. Sanya's eyes narrowed. The sliver of her mind that managed to ask a legitimate question recognized that it was not a legitimate answer, but one that held the smallest portions of truth. It was enough.

"Both of us are dead. We are not in your reality." Mili's voice seemed distant, ephemeral, yet seemed to be in Sanya's head. It didn't come from a specific direction. It was everywhere, but not close.

[Dalethria]

Palms pressed into the bed on either side of one of Sanya's lower limbs, almost readying to crawl onto the bed and join the woman.

"And you are now ours."

[Sanya Tagge]

Abruptly, Sanya realised she was naked. Terror flash through her mind, an irrational panic that somehow by being laid bare before her captors she was more vulnerable than if she had still been fully clothed. She had been dressed... hadn't she?

The voice of the Song circled her like a vulture. Her body responded to each soft-spoken syllable on reflex, not shrinking away but almost imperceptibly straining towards it, her spine arching just a fraction away from the bed she'd been bound to.

“To what end?”

[Milivikal k'Vik]

"Sanya, pretty Sanya." Mili's voice sounded bemused and soft. She ran a finger lightly across Sanya's jaw. The young woman was conflicted, unsure if she should recoil or embrace the gentle touch. She simply shuddered at her touch, torn between terror and pleasure.

"Power, perhaps. Revenge. Ego, wealth, pleasures, comforts, solace, friends."

Mili stopped, and leaned down next to Sanya, so her warm breath could be felt upon her ear.

"Maybe friends, even. You lack true friends Sanya. All want to look at the flower, but none dare to take her out of the glass case and ask 'What does this flower want from life?' She wants to be loved. Everyone craves love. The flower..." Mili paused, she sifted through thoughts and impulses, hers and Sanya's.

"Never had a true friend who loved you for more than a pretty flower. Well Pretty Flower Sanya, what do you want from life?" She asked

[Sanya Tagge]

What did she want? Safety, security, justice and peace. What every Imperial good citizen wanted. What the Sub-Adult Group had taught her to want. For the sake of our children. For our children's children! For the next ten thousand years! Safety! Security! Justice and peace! Emperor Palpatine's words, booming throughout the Senate chambers, joined by hundreds upon thousands then - and millions now, echoed by children who did not understand the words but understood obedience and uniformity, hungry for the approval of their elders and peers alike.

That was what she wanted, ultimately. To be approved of, liked. First by the prefects of the Sub-Adult Group, then by her father. Ulric Tagge, the man who had plucked her from the grimmest of fates and given her a life that she could have only dreamed of. She had to become perfect for him, had to prove that she was worthy of the name Tagge. He was dead now, another senseless casualty of the war, but the need to be loved had never left her.

Pretty flower... The words made her tremble, the pulse in her throat fluttering. She wanted to feel needed. Not the kind of lecherous need that she saw in the eyes of men like Yeart Quenn, but love, loved by everyone! Applauded and admired and embraced. In spite of her bare flesh, heat had risen into Sanya's cheeks, as though she'd sipped one two many glasses of wine. She thought of the Empress and the warmth began spread throughout the rest of her body.

“I only want,” she said, voice a whimper. “To be the best that I can be.. for the Empire.”

[Dalethria]

Dalethria grinned despite herself before closing her eyes and latching onto the rushed warmth of lust that past through Sanya.

"Rhetoric pounded into your head. Trained like an animal, but without the bite. Otherwise, you would have already claimed what you truly want."

[Sanya Tagge]

Her bottom lip trembled until she caught it between her teeth, desperately willing her emotions to become still, to become manageable. She felt on the verge of hysteria, desperate to get away from the pale faces grinning down at her. Terrified that all of the masks she wore were about to be peeled away to reveal the mania beneath.

“I don't understand,” she said, the tremor of emotion finally cracking her voice.

[Milivikal k'Vik]

Mili sighed in an exaggerated manner. She regarded Sanya with a look of disappointment and sadness. It was obvious to her that the poor girl had been at the service of someone or something else constantly. Sanya was absolutely terrified. Her voice was fragile. She emotionally cracked at the realization that she had no inner purpose. Mili gave her a gentle pat on the head, as if Sanya were a small child, or perhaps a hand-friendly pet. Sanya in some ways was less than a small child.

“Pretty flower, what do you do for fun? For your fun, and not another’s.”

[Sanya Tagge]

“I don't...” Sanya began again, the words spoken on reflex without consideration – but when she paused to think about the question, her words caught in her throat. Fun? The word rattled around her mind. What place did fun have in her life? Did fun further the goals of the Galactic Empire? Did it eliminate the Rebel Alliance or provide essential resources to Imperial worlds?

Even when she had not been officially acting on behalf of the Empire, it occurred to Sanya that everything she had done had been to better herself for the Empire. The team sports she'd taken part in as a child were a way of building the coordination and strength needed for military service. Months and months ago, she had spent an evening at a bar with Zeri Kasajian in an effort to 'let her hair down' but for Sanya the night had become more about political posturing than partying.

Drawing in a long, ragged breath, Sanya tried to regain her composure.

“I don't have time for fun.. for this.”

[Dalethria]

Looking over at her Cousin, Dalethria smiled before what had been endearing turned bitter towards Sanya. She was trying so desperately to regain control of this situation and show no fear, though it continued to churn madly within the Tagge. They just needed to push her, coax the real Sanya out of the layers of protective armor that had been built up over the years.

"No time? Ha!"

Dalethria crawled onto the bed to the other side of Sanya and lovingly stroked the Imperial's cheek. "Now you make excuses for your weaknesses. Empty words for frailties. Just like with the Empress."

She knew full well how Sanya had slowly begun to fall out of favor with Miranda Tarkin and scrambled to renew that relationship, wanting the same trust they had growing up together. Jealously of her brother had made Sanya irrational as of late but there was far more under the surface of this woman that anyone knew.

Except she and her cousin of course.

[Sanya Tagge]

The body next to Sanya ought to have warmed her flesh but instead it brought her out in goose-flesh. Fingertips brushed against her cheek, a caress that felt too tender and liable to turn to violence at any moment. When the touch felt to her throat, Sanya tried to turn her head away from Dalethria.

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

[Milivikal k'Vik]

"You'll see Sanya." Mili's voice felt much warmer, friendlier. All of the malice and danger had fled. Mili's hand closed over hers, a tender gesture. Sanya closed her eyes, and opened them again.

Sanya felt much younger. Mili and Dale there, over to play. Sanya hadn't been feeling well, but Mili and Dale were finally over.

"Sanya, didn't you hear? We don't have homework for a whole week." Mili said excitedly. Dalethria and Milivikal helped Sanya from her bed. She bore a jersey in pink of a popular smashball team, and yawned.

"Let's go exploring!" Dale put on a rather absurd triangular hat over her raven hair, Mili put on a pair of speeder pilot goggles, and handed Sanya a plastic vibrosword and blaster.

[Dalethria]

"And this will make you feel better!" she said, giving Sanya a playful shove forward before stalking around front, matching each step the blonde took with one of her own, but backwards.

"Devron's meeting us outside. Come on!" Growing impatient, Dalethria tugged on Sanya's 'gun' hand impatiently. Devron was the fourth in their little band of mischief creators. Friends for what seemingly felt like forever, the four of them were inseparable.

[Sanya Tagge]

“I had such a strange dream,” Sanya began but Mili shushed her with a word and suddenly she felt very silly. Dreams were such silly things, but what did they matter when there was no homework for a week? Unable to contain a giggle of laughter at her own silliness and their marvellous fortune, Sanya stumbled along after Dalethria as the pair lead her outside.

“What are we playing today?” She waggled the toy blaster in her hand. “Stormtroopers and smugglers?”

[Milivikal k'Vik]

"Devron had a game planned." Mili said excitedly. Devron knew all the best games. It could be Stormtroopers or Smugglers, or they could be spies for the Republic, keeping an eye on dissidents. It could be almost anything, except boring.

"Hey, where's Devron?" Dale asked, confused. Mili shrugged in the warm daylight, a delightful contrast against the cool air, under the pale blue sky.

"Lets find him!" Sanya said, and she pointed the sword at the unseen estate entrance, hidden by trees and a winding road.

[Dalethria]

"Yes! Let's...." she said timidly behind Sanya and shoved her playfully forward. Out of the four of them, Dalethria was the youngest and often spooked easily, especially when it came to Devron and his games.

[Sanya Tagge]

It was Sanya's turn to lead the way and it was not long before she found herself striding ahead. She swished her sword back and forth as they reached the tree-line, where the path became a road that was as shadowy and serpentine as an eel. Patches of light spotted the ground like stones in a stream and Sanya sprung from one to the next, stopping only to regain her balance or glance behind her and make certain that Mili and Dalethria were making the treacherous crossing too. As they rounded a particularly winding corner, she spotted a figure up ahead, standing in another patch of light, waving.

“There he is!”

[Milivikal k'Vik]

"Devron!" Mili cheered breathlessly. The girls had finished the last stretch of ground in a sprint, and even though she was the dancer of the group, all three girls engaged regularly in athletic pursuits. She was a bit smaller than her friends, but fast and lithe.

"Hello Mili. And Sanya and Dalethria." He always put Dalethria's name in full, because it didn't have the same impact, and it was fun to say, he said. Mili was Mili. Her full name could be harsh. Sanya's name was short and sweet. Unlike Sanya, who was tall and sweet.

Devron had light hazel eyes and auburn hair. He was only a year older than the girls. He was of an average build, but he had a big smile and sharper wit.

"What are we playing today?" Dalethria asked through pants, hands on her knees. All three looked up expectantly

"We'll be Corellian Security Force, and we have to track down a nefarious thief on Corellia who wants to steal art from the museum!"

The girls ooooh'ed aloud.

"Only one of us is a tratior." Devron added, his voice low.

[Dalethria]

"Who gets to play the traitor?" Dalethria asked, eyes wide and looking between the four of them, wondering who would volunteer. Often Mili and Devron loved to put twists in the game and this was a fantastic one.

"Nope. Can't tell you. That would spoil the fun!" he said with enthusiasm. "You're gonna have to figure out who it is along the way."

Little eyes scrunched together. "But, but don't we have to pick who the traitor is?" asked a clearly confused Dalethria. "We can't all go pretending to be it and ruin the game."

"True. Which is why the traitor already knows who he," and he paused looking at each one - Sanya, Mili, and Dalethria individual as if an unspoken secret had passed between them, "or she already is."

[Sanya Tagge]

Sanya wrinkled her nose. “Corellia is full of thieves and traitors.”

Devron waggled a finger at her, grinning his grin. “But we're just after one!”

She peered back at him, trying to decide whether Devron was the thief. He didn't normally like art, definitely not enough to steal it, but this wasn't normal.

“Alright,” Sanya brandished her sword at Mili. “Officer Mili, where do we start our investigation?”

[Milivikal k'Vik]

Mili used her pointer finger on the tip of the blade to move it away, as if it were a sharp and real sword.

"Officcer Sanya, watch where you point that thing." She said quietly in her melodic way.

"Oh." Sanya moved the blade further away, but never apologized.

"We should start by profiling the museum staff. Making a list of who does what and when."

"We should start with the head curator." Dalethria added helpfully.

"The what?" Mili looked at Dale. She didn't know what the word meant.

"They're in charge of the contents of a museum." She explained.

"Oh."

"We should talk to the director too." Devron said.

"Wouldn't it make the most sense to start with the director and make sure they know we're investigating before we talk to the, um, curators? Since the director is in charge."

The girls nodded.

"Devron, you'll have to be the director." Dalethria said. Devron nodded.

"Dalethria you're up." Mili whispered.