Bent From Broken Darkness Still Life Is Born Anew

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Bent From Broken Darkness Still Life Is Born Anew

Posts: 5387

"Whatever you think is best."

Ahnk did not honestly know what was best. He had seemed to have lost control of what he had assumed to be his own head. He could not fight her... had no will or desire to harm her at the moment, nor did he seem to have the ability. With frustration mounting, he watched her as she spoke... and as she drank.

"You have done many terrible things, Andrew Micheal Rashanagok. But you are still a great man," she said, raising her glass in a toast, and emptying it before Ahnk was able to begin resolving thoughts.

The words were truly shocking to Ahnk. A great man? On what basis was that conclusion reached? All those around him whose hand had been laid upon were tainted by his dark heart. He had hidden behind warships like a coward and hiding from what he really feared. Was this conversation, this moment of truth, even imagined truth, amongst the tapestry of lies that had made up his existence, enough to redeem him of his crimes? In her eyes? In any eyes but hers?

"Whether you want it or not, you have my love and respect," Organa told him, fetching herself another glass.

Ahnk found himself surprised again. It had been decades of derision they had shared. She... loved him? Even respect was to be held as unattainable, given their recent transactions of violence and numerous years on the polar opposite of ideological positions. To say that Ahnk was caught off guard would be an understatement... he had been left with mouth slightly agape at the impossibility of it. He looked down at her... was she drunk? She'd been drinking fairly heavily, but she did not seem to be visibly inebriated. Her face was starting to flush but that could be a reaction to the cold as well. Her eyes did not seem to be unfocused, and she regarded him with a likeminded stare.

"I suppose it's my turn to level with you," she said, placing her glass on the table. Ahnk nodded, appreciative.

"We were both young when we first met," she began, and again, Ahnk found himself nodding. "I was as powerful as a Master and everyone recognized me as one, but I just didn't have that higher understanding yet. My training was rushed and incomplete... there were no other Masters in the galaxy to guide me, I had to forge my own trails."

Ahnk nodded. He, as well, had been abandoned during his training by the only Sith Master fit to tutor him. When learning from Exar Kun the prospect of lowering himself to learn with a Recon Klain seemed a step in the wrong direction. Rather then follow this antithetical path to defeat, Ahnk took it upon himself to complete his training... something that had left notable weaknesses in what should have been an unbreakable wall. He imagined for a Jedi, with the ethical responsibilities so intrinsically tied to their position

"I fought you because you were evil and I had the power to protect others from you, but I never looked beyond that until much later. I should have seen you as something other than just another Darth Vader, because you weren't... yet."

Ahnk's eyes widened as she said that. Then... she didn't know? She didn't know who he was. Why he hated her. Or why he'd fought her that day in the forest. She only thought of him as the painted warrior who had hunted her down that day... and she did not know why.

Maybe that was why she was here.

"I thought about it for a long time afterwards, I had done what I had to do with what I had been given. I wish I could have done more."

Ahnk turned his back on her. He stepped to the rail of the deck, looking out onto the water. The dark surface of the lake rippled in the evening wind, edges shaded green of varying hues. He knew from experience that water did not end; it became vapor and then it became clouds and then it became rain and then it became lakes, but it was never anything but water in all of it's various forms. Cold and dark, warm and totally translucent, the appearance of water did not change the fact that even a handful could mean certain death.

She may appear to be a mentor, a tutor, a mother, an alcoholic, but she was still a Skywalker. Inside her veins ran ready blood always prepared to circulate through the weapon she referred to as a body. Even now, with her having aged and him having become younger, there was no guarantee she could not kill him. He felt it an unacceptable risk.

There were too many questions. Too much he needed to know.

"Do not feel sorry for what you could not offer me, for I could offer more then I did and gave you nothing but my hatred," Ahnk said, snarling at himself. He turned back to her, bowing his head. "If one of us owes the other an apology, then it is I, to you. I offer my apologies freely... almost unconditionally."

He bowed his head even lower, dropping to one knee in order to offer her complete fealty.

"There is... only one condition."

Ahnk rose, and locked his eyes with her. "I need you to tell me about that first day we met... on Naboo."

Leia Organa Solo

Posts: 1584

"I need you to tell me about that first day we met... on Naboo."

Leia sighed, and was the first to break eye contact as she reached for her drink on the table. It was a long story, and the details had deteriorated in her memory over the years. But…. she was interested to see where Ahnk was going with this, and she did remember the highlights at least.

It started with the war…

Her words came slowly, and were often interrupted as she paused to sip from her glass.

“The Sith were really pressing in on Otah Gunga, they knew our council was hidden somewhere in the city and they wanted it destroyed. Sith would sneak through our perimeters to sabotage whatever they could get their hands on, especially at night. More and more Gungans were dying because our presence among them made them easy targets. We had to at least try to protect them, so I assigned every available Jedi patrol routes in the swamps surrounding the entrances to the underwater cities. Even the Padawans…

I was out on one of those patrols the day I first met you. I wasn’t really surprised when you popped out of the swamps to challenge me. Sith challenges were becoming a rather frequent occurrence, and I thought you were just another one of them. We exchanged words, I don’t remember who struck first...

Maybe I was technically stronger, but you held your own... you landed some really good blows. We were both battered and bleeding when I decided to try a few tricks I had been working on. The bugs, and setting your clothes on fire…"

The theory of pyrokinesis had sounded absurd the first time she'd heard of it, but the Sith's robes had flared right up her first try. The technique was immediately effective, but Leia had instantly regretted using it - in mere seconds the fire had burned through the robes and started roasting the flesh underneath. She had been fully aware that she was involved in what would quite possibly be a duel to the death, but roasting Ahnk alive was not what she'd had in mind.

"Instead of using one of a hundred different ways to put the fire out in the middle of a wet swamp, you ripped all of your clothes off and threw them away. Then… you ran away butt naked, cursing me the whole way."

"I didn’t know what to think, I was shocked... relieved too I guess."

Leia stared down at her bare arms, which except for light blotchy marks on the top and bottom of both wrists were devoid of battle scars. The Republic had always ensured that their Jedi Master Chief of State recieved the best medical treatment available, lest some disfigurement suggest any weakness about her. She doubted that the same could be said of Ahnk... he had probably never served anyone in his entire life but himself. If she were to cut his arm off tomorrow, would anyone really care?

"When I later told the Council what happened they all burst out laughing. In hindsight your retreat was rather funny, but I never should have set you on fire. I never told anyone outside the Council about our duel, but of course rumors started circulating through the Order like wildfire. Someone combined the rumors into a story, and the result was a favorite among Padawans for years. None of the younger Jedi saw me until after I had spent a considerable time in the bacta tank to heal the lightsaber burns, so it claimed I had easily defeated you without getting injured. And of course certain details reguarding the anatomy of a naked Sith had been enhanced. Mostly complete nonsense…"

Leia shook her head and grinned. “But you did have a cute butt.”

Ahnk Rashanagok

Posts: 5387

Ahnk smiled as she retold the story of their duel in the woods.

Ahnk had been a Sith Warrior… still several months from when he declared himself, despite other living Sith who had been alive much longer than he, as the Dark Lord Of All Sith… and felt that he was ready to take Organa Solo, and end the vendetta between them.

When he appeared to her in the woods, she did not recognize him.

Ahnk was taken aback… he had spent much of the past decade of his life hating her… what she was, what she represented, and most of all, what she had said… but she did not even know him!

Ahnk consoled himself with the fact that he looked very different from how he used to be… but he was still the same man! Surely, she must have… felt the familiar presence…

She hadn’t.

She didn’t remember him.

Ahnk had left that battle more than wounded… with more than burnt flesh and discarded robes. He had left with fundamental questions about who he was, and his direction…

But his ambition did not change.

The realization was that Andrew Micheal Rashanagok was long dead. She did not recognize him because he was Ahnk, Sith Warrior.

Of course, that was all a lie.

“Tonight is a beautiful night,” Ahnk said, and he raised his glass. He allowed the liquid inside to swirl with a flick of his wrist, causing tiny particles of it to waft on gusts of air into his nose. It smelt like escape. “And you… you are a beautiful woman,” Ahnk added, and then lowered his head. When he raised his head he turned his glass to the sky and took a hard, deep sip of the drink, leaving nothing left in the glass. “And this is a beautiful night!” Ahnk repeated.

Everything suddenly seemed clearer to Ahnk… suddenly, he saw the entire tapestry of the truth, stretched out there across the water.

“Of course, this night isn’t real,” he said. “This lake isn’t real. These drinks aren’t real. But what is real? What can we really trust?” Ahnk said, and then he shook his empty glass. “You can’t trust memories! Memories are flawed, and biased! You make mistakes when you remember and who knows! Who knows if what you remember is what was really true in the first place? If you have a flawed memory, is the memory itself flawed, or your recollection? Who can say? Not me!”

The ice in his cup threatened to fly out at any second. “But it is amazing how much truth you can find in a good lie. Like that day in the woods… our first meeting. Of course, it wasn’t really our first meeting… or was it? Maybe it was! Maybe I wasn’t the same person! Maybe you weren’t the same person! Maybe I just imagined it all…”

Ahnk stopped. Realized he was getting overworked. “I had a point…” he said, and stopped. Reached down and filled up his glass again, swirling the drink to mix together the partially melted ice and the slightly warmer alcohol together. “I had a point that I was working towards. The point is… or was… or is, I suppose… the point is… you know this is really quite good. Do you know what this drink is called?”

Ahnk looked at her curiously. In that moment, he realized that he really never drank alcohol… an occasional glass of Cadinth Sasoma, or Tionese Wine, but only then to toast… never really to sit, and drink. She’d been talking for a bit, had Leia…

Ahnk realized that he was drunk.

This realization changed nothing but it changed everything; he wasn’t really drunk because he wasn’t really here but if he was drunk, that meant that in this reality, or what substituted for reality, the rules of things were the same… at least for him. He bled, and he breathed, and he felt intoxication…

He was at a severe disadvantage…

He had to do something… something to slow things down…

He grabbed the rail… looked at his drink… then put it down and grabbed the rail with his other hand. “This… this is a beautiful night,” he said, looking out at the water. “The truth is, I hated you because, when I was a child, you were the one who told me… told me my mother had died…”

Ahnk let out a deep sigh. “You don’t remember… but I was a very different person then. Not… what I am now, or even what I was that day in the woods, all twisted and dark… I barely recognize myself, some days.” Ahnk looked back at the glass… then back at Leia. “The truth is, for all these years, I’ve wanted to kill the messenger.”

Ahnk let himself grin. “Of course, even beyond that simple act, of telling me, I did harbor blame for you… did you do enough to secure Naboo? To train my mother? To help the Jedi learn how to fight the Sith?” Ahnk said, pondering. “But… you’re right. You were rushed… your training was incomplete. You weren’t prepared…”

Ahnk looked down again, and this time, took his drink. “But the truth… the real, honest truth… is that none of us are prepared… not for this… not for any of this…” Ahnk sighed. He took another big drink… once again, leaving only ice left in his glass. “There are no excuses in this galaxy… only what happened. We cannot explain why. This all started long before either you or I were born. And this conversation, between a Sith and a Jedi over drinks by the lake, has probably happened before too…”

Ahnk looked out once again at the water. He saw his life, to this moment… the rise, and the fall… the valleys and the peaks, the depressions and the floods… everything reflected in the cool, dead black. Theirs was a history of 26 years… it spanned four lifetimes of Ahnk… but as he looked to the water, to find the future… he found only the cold rocks of the shore…

Maybe this was the end of their journey together.

A disturbing thought… but one that, in that moment, seemed to be obvious, and undeniable.

“I do not know everything…” Ahnk said, putting his empty glass on the table. “What I know is that I have been holding on to my hatred of you… for far too long. I am not the same man I was and hatred no longer soothes my soul. It is time to finish what once began, and to bury what exists between us…”

He smiled at her, holding up his empty glass. “It feels like the end of a long night. Like the still is dry and the lights are out. It feels like its time to fuck or leave. To dance, with open palms or closed fists. It feels like its time to settle our differences…”

Ahnk turned back from the water, looking at Leia directly. “To satisfy what exists inside me, requires that I forgive… or avenge. I do not know everything, but I know this.

It ends tonight.”

Leia Organa Solo

Posts: 1584