The Wretched

[Darth Acera]

Dagobah



The swamps of Dagobah were encroaching. The gnarled trees and deformed shrubbery invaded in, out, and all around; competing for space and life with the wildlife that slithered, crept, and crawled from the depths of the deepest marshes to the tops of the tallest trees. Sunlight was a farce here, unable to penetrate the miasma of planet life that wound and twisted with itself. Dank air mixed with muck. It swirled and melded with whatever it could.


Standing alone at the edge of a murky bank of whatever passed for the water on this planet, Darth Acera waited so patiently for her apprentice to show himself. She watched tiny air bubbles float to the surface, watched as invisible creatures in the depths below created small, rippling eddies with their unseen movements. The low, constant calls of native creatures kept her company for the time being, and the Sith lifted her head up to test the air.

It was almost toxic. Unfit for a Lupine to breath. It was an offense, but one that she endured regardless.

Acera waited. She would wait as long as necessary. She would wait as long as she was required to.

Head held high despite the olfactory onslaught that she endured, the Lupine stood willingly at the water's edge.

[Vega Van-Derveld]

As he limped out of the shade of an ancient gnarl-tree, at last within eyesight of his master, there was no guile in Van-Derveld's approach. There was no point in it: he did not fear Dagobah, and no amount of stealth would conceal his approach from Darth Acera. However suffocating the foetid stench of the swamps, she would smell him - his blood, stale sweat and burnt flesh - long before she had the misfortune to look upon him. The edge of his cloak, open at his chest, trailed along the sodden earth and hung limply at his right side, where the fabric was sheared away just above the elbow.

Coming to a halt, Vega fell to his knees some six feet behind Acera. His head rolled back just far enough that his empty eyes were visible beneath his heavy hood.

His chest rose, a long laboured breath drawn in with a mechanical drone.

“Master.”

[Darth Acera]

There was certainly no surprise in hearing his hollow, artificial voice, and Acera kept her back to him. For the moment she wished not to look upon him, only hear that his mission had been successful.

His single word was answered with a slight inclination of her head, and the Lupine squared her shoulders only slightly. When he offered nothing else, she finally shifted her stance, her feet pivoting so that the rest of her body followed suit. It was a slow motion that culminated in the sight of her apprentice, on one knee with his head lifted just enough so that their eyes could meet. The stink of him cause a frown to pull the corners of her lips downward. She would not voice her suspicions; rather she would allow him to.

"You are alive," she spoke, her eye moving from his face to where his right arm should've been.

[Vega Van-Derveld]

“Yes.. master,” was all the answer that Vega offered, as he reached across his body to peel away what was left of his cloak. The cut was clean but tattered fabric clung in clumps to the cauterised flesh. The discarded fell into the damp earth behind him, revealing a body wracked by battle and the Dark Side; his flesh was puckered with scars and lined with dark, distended veins that bulged beneath his flesh like the buttress roots of the trees around them. His head bowed, the Lupine's attention lingered dispassionately on the stump, the latest in a long line of mutilations, before sliding back to meet Acera's gaze.

[Darth Acera]

It was as the scents mingling around him had told her, and the Lupine stared at him; a ponderous, unblinking gaze that gave no quarter. His marred flesh and mutilated body caused a scowl to further darken her features, and Acera let out a low hiss from between her teeth. She let the silence between them linger, allowed the ever-present rumblings of the life around them fill the air. So much was said in that moment of time, so much that their voices needn't say. They let the murmuring flora and fauna speak for them.

And yet it was a moment that could not continue on into perpetuity, and the Sith mistress huffed out a breath from her nose. She took a single step toward him, giving him a cruel, broken stare.

Stand up," came the order, and one hand rose, palm held upward as fingers hooked slightly in silent beckoning.

"Come to me."

[Vega Van-Derveld]

Without question, Van-Derveld obeyed. The Dark Side wove around him as he drew himself to his full height. His use of the Force was palpable as he drew upon its power to sustain himself, though no trace of pain twisted his features. His expression was void of emotion or feeling, the downward turn at the edge of his lips simply the natural, grim cast of his features.

He came within a foot of his master, not quite standing toe to toe, and halted. Shoulders square, head held high. If her obvious disdain had wounded Vega, he did not show it.

[Darth Acera]

"Dear Cousin," she began, her voice like some piece of silk that swept over him. Her outstretched hand angled slightly so that fingertips could brush against his arm, just above the seared and cauterized black flesh.

"Dearest Cousin," the silk began to fray.

The gentle touch of her fingers continued despite the harder edge in her voice, and Acera let her hand travel up to trace along his shoulder before coming to rest, her palm against the side of his face in a deceptively tender gesture. There was no tenderness in her eye. There was no kindness. No concern. She was a creature of so much conflict that her own body could not be in harmony. She was as much of an embodiment of chaos now as the Loveloxx had been since they all began.

"Tell me, Love, who did this to you."

[Vega Van-Derveld]

He barely felt the hand at his cheek. His body was dying, dead even. The darkness that had consumed him overwhelmed not only his thoughts, but what was left of his flesh too, numbing him to pain and pleasure alike. Unless he grasped the Dark Side and drew upon it to regain his deadened senses, he would never feel anything quite so tender as her fingertips brushing against his cheek.

“An old Jedi. He knew you. He knew what we are and that you had sent me,” he said, staring back into her eye, unblinking.

[Darth Acera]

"Ahhh."

The word was more like the dying breath of a woman condemned than an actual utterance of recognition.

"Zem-El."

The name gave a sort of sense of finality to the end result that now stood before her, and the elder Lupine drew closer, perpetuating the mask of a concerned lover.

"I trust that you repaid him in kind... "

[Vega Van-Derveld]

Van-Derveld.. hesitated. He broke eye-contact for an instant, his eyes twitching down to Acera's throat. He had torn through the Jedi ship, leaving confusion and fear in his wake and even claiming a captive in one of the Alliance's pilots (http://sw-fans.net/forum/member.php?4794-Carr%E9-Inirial), but he had not taken the life of the Jedi Zem-El.

“He is not unharmed... but I did not take an arm for an arm, if that is what you're asking of me.”

[Darth Acera]

The admission gave her pause, but it was slight and almost unnoticed.

"Flesh of my flesh," she whispered, "... have I not given you enough incentive to wipe his presence from this world of the living?"

There was no chance for an answer as her hand at the side of his face tensed, and she finally pressed her body against his.

"I have given to you all of myself; I have shared with you my own inner being... "

Suddenly sharp fingernails dug into his skin.

"... have I not given you the carnal pleasures that you desired?"

Each fingertip pressed in further.

"Have I not allowed the darkness in your soul to gorge itself upon my blood?"

Her eyes narrowed.

"And you now tell me, that you were unable to end the life of the one who took from me one of the hands that gave me so much pleasure?"

[Vega Van-Derveld]

Now he felt her. Fingernails splitting skin, digging into his flesh. He didn't flinch, didn't look away from her again, not now. His vocoder whined as he drew in a breath then exhaled, chest rising and falling. To each of his master's questions, there was only one answer:

“Yes, master.”

[Darth Acera]

It was as if her claws had retracted, and her hand ran up the back side of his head in a sudden show of mercy.

While he had the advantage of height, she still held the advantage of power, and it was now that she used that power.

Her hand became stiff, fingers clutching suddenly at the taut skin over his skull.

Her body remained still, held in suspension against his in a morbid recreation of their previous beginnings of coupling. Did she wish for closeness, or were her ministrations a sheen over the blossoming disappointment that she now suddenly harbored?

"You would admit to your failure then?"

[Vega Van-Derveld]

He tensed against her, acutely aware that there was every possibility she was a moment away from snapping his neck. Close as she was, it would be no challenge – but that was a double-edged blade. She had to know that he would not go down without a fight and within the blink of an eye his teeth could be at her throat.

He angled his head back against her grasp, looking down on her. His lips twitched, a hint of a sneer tugging at one corner. He could not admit to failure. Would not, but there was no denying what he had done - or rather what he had not done.

“Your.. teachings did not prepare me.”

[Darth Acera]

With a swipe she pulled her hand free, nails raking mercilessly along his tender flesh in a show of power and distorted affection. Whatever carnal offerings she had given to him, whatever beastly ministrations... it was dashed away like a thousand white particles in a Hoth snowstorm. Never to be retrieved and never to be regained.

"My teachings were what they needed to be," she hissed out, the hand that had so held him close now planted firmly upon his chest - pausing before the act of completely pushing him away. As if she waited for some backlash.

"You are one of my own," she did not wait for him to protest, " You are of my Bloodline. A Lupine. You make yourself prepared. The Bloodline does not allow you all-seeing eyes to hold your hand through the events you choose to crash though."

Her free arm came around, palm open and his cheek so inviting. Her slap was a sharp staccato beat lost in the low din surrounding them.

"Are you such a whelp that you cannot complete that which is asked of you?!"

[Vega Van-Derveld]

Staggered a step by the hand at his chest, the sneer on Vega's lips contorted into snarl as he pressed back towards Acera – right into a slap across the cheek. He took another step forward and grabbed her wrist before she could pull away. He felt a flicker of something implacable at his right-side, an itch, the echo of where his hand had once been.

“I am what you have made of me,” he bit back, the monotonous sound of his voice a stark contrast to the vicious grimace on his face.

[Darth Acera]

"You are nothing of what I sent to the Jedi."

Her answer was of acid and ridicule, needling into him with the accusation of a disapproving parent.

"You bring me nothing but words of failure," she made no move to pull away from his grasp, and the Sith glared up at him in contempt.

"Tell me," her voice was dangerously low, almost a growl, "... what reason do I have to allow you back into my good graces... ?"

[Vega Van-Derveld]

The broken Lupine bristled; every part of his master's posture was an unspoken threat. She hated him. He didn't need to hear it in her voice; he could feel it. A low, oppressive current of energy that hung in the air between them, encircling them. Serpentine, constricting closer and closer.

“I will have my revenge. I will eat the heart of the Jedi Zem-El and lay his head at your feet.”

[Darth Acera]

"Is that so?"

The scorn in her voice was like a whip, lashing across him like so many cat-o-nine tails. She let her hate encircle them, let it permeate the air around them like poisonous barbs.

"And how do you propose to do such a thing when you stand before me now, so broken?"

Her free hand moved to grip his arm, inches above the blackened and charred skin of the stump that used to be his arm.

"And how will you do that when you are not whole?"

Her fingers clenched, constricting around what was left of his arm.

"He will destroy you... "

[Vega Van-Derveld]

Pain had become a pulse to Van-Derveld, an ever-present beating inside of him. Ever since Hoth, since the days when he had first begun his descent into the Dark Side, it had been with him. Yet however used to it he had become, he felt it sharpen and come into fresh focus when Acera latched onto him.

“This.. flesh is only a vessel. It can be rebuilt.”

He was living testament to that already, both of his legs having been replaced.

“My hatred for him will make me stronger than he could ever hope to be.”

[Darth Acera]

"Rebuilt?"

She gave a laugh of pure derision.

"And how do you suppose? Your failure here gives me no inclination to offer you any sort of reward... " her free hand came up to caress his face in the only way that a Lupine could.

"... with new limbs... or otherwise."

A stray fingernail scraped almost lazily across the bottom of his ear lobe before pulling away. She stepped back, placing distance between the two of them. She would've had him on this horrid planet if the news that his mission on the Wheel was one of triumph; she would've taken him and he would've taken her. But no. His failure only conjured up hate and revulsion.

A long breath, and the elder Lupine looked to the side, away from him in a deliberate motion.

"I care not for your suppositions of the future and the strength that whatever coming hate may grant you."

[Vega Van-Derveld]

“I can rebuild myself.”

There was that sneer again, scarred and cracked lips drawing upward at one corner. She would offer him a reward. As if he were a dog at her heel, begging for scraps. He had started down this road before their paths had even crossed. Whatever Acera have given to him, she had not made him. He had be born of the Dark Side in the frozen depths of Hoth, and he would weather whatever scorn she heaped upon him, in the knowledge that one day he would return it in kind.

There was some... small matter of consolation that he had to offer. He did not have the trophy she desired, but he had not returned – for lack of a better phrase – empty handed.

“I have something for you.. on the shuttle that I arrived in.”

[Darth Acera]

"Is that so?"

Acera glared at him, her simmering anger abated only barely as he spoke. She let her eyes narrow, angling her gaze so that the murky grey depths of her grey sightless eye were upon him.

That he had some sort of gift in consolation was enough to temper her, and she felt her posture stiffen, her body expectant as her thoughts reached out for purchase on any emotion that might've trailed after him when he left his small ship.

"What... gift have you brought me."

[Vega Van-Derveld]

He had her curiosity now, however slight. “Something for the appetites that I can't sate,” he said, already turning away from her to follow the trail of footsteps he'd left back to the shuttle.