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Ceremony
by Silverr
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I was so accustomed to moving around at night and in dark places that I rarely turned on the lights in whatever room I happened to be in, and as I never remembered to look in mirrors I assumed, when my sister came in and immediately headed for me, that I needed tidying.
"Today of all days," she said, "must you look like you just crawled from beneath a pile of rubble? Tell me that's not what you're wearing!"
I didn't take offense; as always, her sharp words concealed a hint of affection. "What's wrong with it?" I looked down, brushed imaginary dust from my sleeve. It was what I was wearing when we'd met; I knew he'd appreciate the gesture.
"No sense of style," she said, taking out her holocommunicator. She pursed her lips. "Let's see… three hours until the ceremony. Might be enough time to get you something more appropriate." She seemed to realize that she was being too brusque, for she then asked, "Are you nervous?"
"No. Should I be?" I asked. "Why are you even here? Why do you care what I wear?"
"I don't." She glared at the holocom. "I just thought you'd want to look better for… him."
She can't even say his name, I thought.
"And what would be appropriate?" I asked.
"I have no idea," she said. "You're the expert in such things, aren't you?"
"If you really want to help," I said, "find a place that can replicate traditional Sith wedding garb." I went to my travelling bag, took out a datasliver, and held it out to her. "Here. I've been doing research at the Historical Society. I'm sure your clothier can replicate something from these pictures, as long as cost is no object." Calling her bluff in this way was gratifying.
"You're not serious!" She frowned, but snatched the datasliver. "Tell me you're not serious? Sith garb? Under the circumstances, you can hardly pretend to know that that won't be seen as provocative. Why not go with something less ostentatious? All that black and red and polished metal and chains and skulls and bolts! Between you and me, I think it's hideous!" She shuddered melodramatically.
"For your information," I told her, "Sith only dress that way when their intention is to awe and intimidate. Not all of them choose to be that way."
She gave me a look.
I knew I'd never be able to convince her how different Cytharat was, convince her of the understated elegance of the way he dressed, the way he spoke, even the way he fought. I knew there was no point in telling her how funny it was that, when I'd first been introduced to the 'tactical advisor' who'd been sent to co-ordinate the ground team, I'd thought that Lord Cytherat's pale grey robes and elegant adornments indicated a typical bureaucrat, the sort who never got his hands dirty. I'd met hundreds of them over the years: cowards all too willing to sit on high and send others out to fight and die, only getting up close when torture was required. I soon found that none of my past experience applied to Cytharat. He didn't hesitate to come down from the docking ring and lead a strike team into Stronghold One to assist with the recovery of the isotope-5. He didn't shirk from using violence, but — unlike other Sith lords I had known — he didn't seem to take pleasure in killing or causing pain. He moved with the calm, steely economy I'd seen in Jedi, and I'd thought, He gets his hands dirty without getting his hands dirty and then I'd thought, No wonder his robes are immaculate: his enemies cannot touch him. I was impressed. It was as if he was a new breed of Sith, his nobility and power combining the best of the Empire and the Empire's enemies… and then I realized I had gone from disinterest to surprise to curiosity to admiration in the space of four heartbeats.
And I knew I wanted to see more of him after the mission was completed.
"What are you thinking about?" she asked.
"The day I met him," I said.
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The robes and cowl my sister ordered — the cloth was an abstract pattern of muted blue and violet hues — arrived in less than an hour. The shop had sent along various pieces of silver jewelry as well, but I wasn't prepared to wear them. I took the rings, of course.
"I thought we'd travel by private taxi," my sister said. "Give you time to collect yourself."
I bit back my response to this lie. I knew full well she didn't want to take one of the family transports and risk being recognized.
We rode in silence. As we neared the Temple of Order I could see, even through the taxi's heavily-tinted privacy windows, that the plaza was packed with several hundred people.
"There seems to be a crowd," she said.
"I can't imagine why."
She scowled. "Do you mind getting out here? I'm going to go around the back — you know how I hate having strangers rub against me."
"Afraid, so afraid of what people will think," I said, not looking at her.
I'm certain that she shielded her face from view as I got out of the taxi.
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"Say the word, and I will be at your side," he'd said, addressing me with the polite formality he'd used since my arrival.
I had already dismissed him as 'intriguing but unattainable,' just another in a long series of those I'd quickly forgotten… but then I saw an unexpected warmth in his eyes, a flicker, an invitation, a promise; and in that instant I was snared for all time, like an insect in amber.
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I was halfway across the plaza before the crowd realized who I was, where I was going, and why.
"Can you give us any details," a reporter with a cybernetic vid implant asked, "about your latest mission?"
"Do you plan to retire?" asked another.
"Turn this way, please! I want to capture your good side!"
"Is it true you were friends with the former apprentice of the traitor Darth Malgus?"
An aggressive Chiss with a cadre of four holographers planted himself in front of me and demanded, "Your father has publicly disowned you. Does he blame the loss of his Hutt financial holdings on you, or is there another reason?"
I tried to back away, but people were pressing in behind me. Instinctively, I reached for my weapon, but of course I had not brought one. Not today.
"Record his reaction to this!" Someone held up a holopad. On it was a grainy recording, only a few seconds long, of a lone figure, radiantly proud amidst gleaming, hellish creations. An instant later a blazing light broke the image into static, and I was pierced through with horror and the pain of freshly-reopened grief.
I didn't resist when a huge gray Cathar swept the crowd aside, grabbed my arm, and pulled me through the masses toward the temple steps.
"Hanthor," the Cathar said once we were safely inside. "You probably don't remember me, but I was there. In Makeb. With Bedareux and Niar and—"
"I remember," I said, turning my face to the wall, trying to put the memory of Hanthor's face between myself and the memories I didn't want.
"Take all the time you need," he said gently. "They can hardly start without you, can they?"
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And I tell myself this: I tell myself that even to save a thousand Empires I wouldn't have let him be sacrificed, wouldn't have allowed him to sacrifice himself. I would have raced to the security center and found him, battered but victorious. I would have seen how he and the last two of his squad had managed to prevail over an attacking force ten times their number, and I would almost have laughed because, even then, his robe would have looked almost new.
For that alone, I would have heard him say after I kissed him, I would have come to Makeb. My only regret is that I cannot see the battle through at your side.
I would have knelt next to his stretcher in the transport, wanting but not daring to hold his hand, admiring how he never flinched even though the flight to Vaiken was brutally rough. And then every day I would have sat by the kolto tank, impatiently patient…
"Are you alright, sir?" Hanthor asked.
"Of course," I said, taking my hands from my face.
And then we made our way through the temple and down the aisle, toward the rotunda where he was waiting for me.
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~ The end ~
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Author's notes:
***** NOTE: SPOILERS IN THE NOTES! *******
A week or so ago I was persuaded to play a bit of SWTOR in order to get my female Inquisitor to level 55. At level 50 we went to Makeb and did the quests for the main storyline. As we had a male Agent in the group willing to choose the {Flirt} and Light Side options, I got to see the Imperial SGR with Lord Cytharat. I found this atypical Sith unexpectedly intriguing, and so after finishing Makeb, I went to see what fanworks he had inspired ... and found very few. I decided to remedy this.
A special thank you to Nicademus, whose Youtube film of the Makeb cutscenes and dialogue was enormously helpful in picking up details I missed when I did the quests, and to Stinger, my personal Wookieepedia.
There are claims that the Dark Side option for Cytharat's fate is "canon." I hardly see how this can be, as not only does the decision point offer twice as many Light Side options, all three options segue right back into the main storyline with no discernable impact. (If you do choose Light Side, there is a reference - made by Niar, I htink - that Cytharat is "almost recovered," and you do get a "progress report" email at some point as well. (Frankly, I think that entire decision point was shoehorned in, as there was reference to the ability of Gravity Hook Seven to interact with the Security Center computer (and presumably they could have lowered the heat shields from there) but that's a digression for another time.)
When poking around for quotes to inspire a title, I came across these lines by William Cowper (1731-1800):
Ceremony leads her bigots forth, prepared to fight for shadows of no worth
While truths, on which eternal things depend, can hardly find a single friend.
Those lines crystalized for me the mood I was trying for in the story.
I missed most of the Makeb "controversy" when it was fresh, but there are still quite a few columns and forum posts out there. Reading them stirred up many thoughts—some of them conflicting—that I haven't fully sorted enough to articulate, but the current tl;dr version is 1. Do I think the Cytharat storyline could have been better implemented? Yes. 2. Do I understand (from a programming/production standpoint) why it might have been done as it was? Also yes. 3. Am I still happy that it was included at all, even if it wasn't everything it could have been? Absolutely.
(ETA: My initial intention was to write a story that was somewhat misleadingly vague in order to arrive at an ending somewhere between "a twist" and "open to interpretation." Now, however, I'm considering writing a second version of the story with a clear "Light Side" ending (because that's my wish as well as my alignment).
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21 October 2014