A/N: Another RP-turned-fic featuring Evren and Mother of Ducklings' Ravaszhi—now with actual chapters, consistent POV throughout each section, and an extra-casual attitude towards SWTOR's canon timeline \o/
Content warning for canon-typical violence, past abuse, past torture, body horror, hand trauma, and mentions of genocide.
Self-Destruct
o.O.o
The crew of the Dorin's Sky are bundled off to the brig without further incident. Or objection from Moff Phennir. Always nice when not slaughtering everyone in sight goes unquestioned. As the newly-installed Imperial helmsman lays in a course for the Foundry, Evren paces across the bridge behind him, port to starboard and back, restless energy crackling under his skin. The helmsman's unease prickles at his awareness. He should stop. He should really, really stop, if only for the sake of the crew's equanimity.
He keeps pacing like a caged manka cat.
The communications officer nervously clears his throat. "My . . . lord? A transmission from an approaching shuttle. Sith clearance, requesting to board. My lord."
Evren glances over at the officer, who can't hold his gaze for more than a second or two. Never noticed that, before, but after Oricon . . . Inconsequential. Focus. "Did they give a reason for their visit? Because unless it's a damn good one, request denied."
"A last minute addition to the strike team. They're—most insistent, my lord."
He exhales. "Fine."
The comms officer nods, visibly relieved to have avoided a confrontation with a rival Sith lord, and begins transmitting docking codes.
The last thing Evren wants right now is to deal with some pushy Dark Lord who will insist upon the bloodiest possible solution to this mess. And with his luck . . . My, we're in a cynical mood today, he thinks, and twists his face into something approximating polite neutrality as he stalks over to the bridge blast doors to greet the new arrival. Or confront them, if need be.
The doors hiss open. Evren freezes as the Force and his eyes give two very different impressions of the figure outside. "Ravaszhi?"
The newcomer bows, as befits a lower-ranking Sith greeting the Emperor's Wrath. "Ravaszhi Dzwoyat-chul, my lord. My master Darth Ikoral sent me to assist."
His accent is different. Old Sith, rich and harsh and musical. He's wearing all black: robes, layered tunic, trousers, boots; his hair is long enough to be tied back to keep it out of his face. Same facial piercings, though, and same magma-bright eyes—but the context, the circumstances, it's all wrong, and stars his aura is—
Ravaszhi feels like death, like rot and emptiness and slow starvation.
What happened to you, what HAPPENED—?
"Your aid is . . . most appreciated," Evren says haltingly. He steps aside with a mechanical gesture to join him on the bridge. "Please. We were just about to make the jump to hyperspace." Inane and irrelevant but they're surrounded by Imperials and no matter how many questions clamor to be given voice he can't, not here and now.
Not aloud, but—Evren cracks his shields, reaches out tentatively with worry and fear and friend.
And it's a risk, it's always a risk but he cannot allow himself to believe that the moment of vulnerability will be his last. Not like this. Not with someone who he is—is—proud to call a friend.
For a long moment, there's nothing. Only the decayed and withered edges of a once-bright spirit, creeping out like contagion past the shields Evren taught him. Then for an instant, Ravaszhi's defenses loosen, the tiniest of fractures, and there's—Evren doesn't know what to make of it. Too brief and too faint to read before it's gone.
"Do we have a plan of attack for when we arrive?" Ravaszhi's asking.
. . . They're still talking. Right. Evren wrenches himself back to the present, to the coming battle. Foundry. Escaped Jedi. He is the Emperor's Wrath, and this is his reason for existence, what he's for.
What is Ravaszhi here for? What does Ikoral want? Why is Ravaszhi serving—stop. Stop. Not now, not yet.
He says, "We don't know much about the layout of the Foundry, but the Dorin's onboard scanners should give us an idea on arrival. The strike team—you and I, now—will fight its way through to the command center to assume control of the factory. And then we deal with the Jedi prisoner."
. . . Oh hells. Jedi prisoner. I was a hostage on a Sith battlecruiser. The word torture lurking beneath the simple statement like a sleeping monster. A then-nameless Jedi breaking again over the memory of what the Empire did to him.
"How much do you know about the Jedi's plans?" Ravaszhi says, voice so even as to be nearly toneless. "My master was vague, but it's why I'm here."
No reaction is better than what happened on Tatooine, isn't it? Evren doesn't bother trying to sell himself the lie. Even if Ikoral doesn't know Ravaszhi's history, the parallels are there. And if he does, and gave him this task anyway . . .
Everything is wrong, in new and exciting ways.
Breathe. Crack a smile. "Well, it most definitely involves war droids," Evren says with forced levity.
Ravaszhi goes along with it. "How fortunate; I have an old model I'm trying to repair. All I've been told is that the Jedi's plans represent a threat to my master's interests, and he has to be stopped at all costs."
Still a tinkerer. That much hasn't changed. "Then we stop him," Evren says, another useless inanity, another beat in the script of Sith discussing an upcoming mission. He looks out the front viewport, hyperspace streaking past in skeins of howling blue. He raises a hand to rub at his eyes, buy time to—to think. Oricon burned them red, and though it's been weeks they're still . . . It doesn't matter. "If we're lucky, there'll be plenty of scrap left over for your own project."
Ravaszhi doesn't run with the topic of droid repair, lets the silence stretch long enough to be uncomfortable. Evren wants to believe it's due to their audience, or not knowing what to say, or—anything but not wanting to just—talk. Connect. Something. Eventually, though, Ravaszhi says, "How long before we arrive? If I'm not needed, I can be preparing."
I need you to be okay, I need to know if I can help—But Evren can't say it aloud. "Less than an hour. I'll be here if you require anything." Hollow courtesy. Meaningless, for all that he means it.
"My thanks," says Ravaszhi. "I'll return presently." He bows, turns, leaves.
Evren watches him go.
o.O.o
Meditation is almost impossible. The Dorin's Sky is a seething missile of fear and tension racing towards the Foundry, and the asteroid that houses their target is a dark horizon on the edge of Ravaszhi's consciousness, gaping ever closer. The Force licks at his eardrums with a razor tongue, carrying the scent of alien technology and moldering stones, deep underground.
Something on the surface pulses out of sync with the Rakatan fortress, an almost familiar swell. Ravaszhi recognizes it, and at the same time he doesn't.
He rises, and rests a forearm against the small viewport set into his shuttle cabin's hull. The asteroid's barren surface rises to meet Ravaszhi as the Sky descends, eating up the starry void now with rock, now with craters, now with the Foundry itself.
There's more of it than Ravaszhi had realized. A lot more. If it were just him, it would practically be a suicide mission.
Ravaszhi flattens his scarred palm against the transparisteel, inadvertently scoring it with his nails. Temptation, Master? Is that your test?
Somewhere, across the galaxies, Darth Ikoral doesn't answer. It would take a stronger bond than the one they share for that to be possible.
Ravaszhi lets his hand fall back to his side. It doesn't matter. He's not alone, and of all the Sith lords it could have been . . . he's selfishly glad that it's Evren. Even if it leaves him feeling raw and exposed and monstrous, Ravaszhi has already broken so much, lost so much, that this one brightness is everything.
Reaching out, he can sense Evren still on the bridge, armored and solid and real.
Time to quit dawdling and join him.
Ravaszhi draws away from the viewport, and exits his shuttle onto the ship proper. Either the crew is light, or they all avoid him as he makes his way back to the bridge. Ravaszhi doesn't blame them. He knows what he feels like to those with enough sensitivity to pick up on it, which is why he doesn't usually bother masking his Force-signature. It's better for all of them if people keep their distance.
The bridge doors hiss open, and Ravaszhi steels himself against his own insecurities as he steps through. He's here for a reason. It makes this that much easier, having the mask of purpose to hide behind. "Are we detecting any unusual life signs?"
Evren turns, and Ravaszhi is saved from making eye contact as one of the bridge officers responds in the negative. "Humanoids only, my lord," the officer says, "though we are picking up massive energy readings at the factory's core, presumably the generators."
Rakatan technology is Force-infused, practically alive. It could be the generators. Ravaszhi rubs a finger across the line of piercings in his lower lip. It could also be nothing; he's imagined things before, but . . .
"Airlocks are aligned, docking in thirty seconds," an ensign pipes up. "You'll have only a few minutes before the Republic realizes we've hijacked their ship, my lords."
Evren is nodding, turning for the airlock amidships. "We'll make the most of it, then. Lord Ravaszhi—ready when you are."
They'll just have to deal with as it comes, whatever it is. Ravaszhi falls in at Evren's elbow, unclipping his lightsaber as they come to a halt in front of the airlock doors.
There's a dull, echoing thunk from without the hull. "Airlock secure, my lord!"
Evren pulls his lightsabers from his belt.
The doors hiss open, and they move together through the airlock and into the Foundry, straight into a squad of Republic troopers fanned out in front of them.
At their head is a Miraluka Jedi Master, green saber humming, shining out calm and still and driven in the Force. The light around her pulses out of sync with the rest of fortress, familiar and alien and everything Ravaszhi lost.
What he'd sensed from his shuttle. Jedi. Here.
Evren charges the line. He falls on the troops in a reckoning of rage and burning blades, and Ravaszhi is right beside him, the same rage arcing down his lightsaber like dark fire as he cuts through the troopers' blaster fire and into their bodies, through armor, through bone.
The air is thick with the sweet, sick stench of burned flesh as Ravaszhi closes with the Jedi. He strikes hard and fast, with no grace or finesse at all, nothing to his form but the bitter taste of finally understanding what the price of the mission is: a path of Jedi corpses. That, or they kill Ravaszhi instead. And not just him.
He sees Evren go through the last of the soldiers in his peripheral vision, one trooper wrenched off his feet into enemy blaster fire, a briefly-living shield, the other falling to a lazy flick of the wrist.
The Jedi parries Ravaszhi's downward strike, ripostes— and Evren intercepts the blow and twists his blade around the Jedi's, throws their guard wide open. He's laughing, low and mirthless and sick, and it's so familiar— nothing changed and nothing helped and he never—
Ravaszhi reaches through the Force for the Jedi and tears. Blood pours from her ears, and she falters, her pain a miasma leaking through the Force.
Evren snaps his lightsaber around in a short arc and the Jedi's body slithers to the floor, head thudding beside it.
The Jedi's corpse is horribly still. Her blood pools in the crevices between the Foundry's flagstones, inching towards Ravaszhi's feet with whispering fingers.
How many feet of stone over their heads? How many more before it's over?
Evren's voice reaches through the deathly silence and steadies him. "Let's go."
"I was hoping to have a bout of hysteria, for old times' sake," Ravaszhi says dumbly.
Evren tips his head back, Sith tattoos yawning over his throat, grinning. "Might be able to provide one, if you give me a minute or two."
There's something off in Evren's smile. His dark-sun eyes look clear, but…Ravaszhi remembers them being blue. Human eyes aren't supposed to change colors like that.
They're not on the ship any longer, it's safe enough to ask, and Ravaszhi wants to ask— Evren looks so tired—but he doesn't have the right. It's been too long, and it's his own fault. And there's nothing he can do, nothing he can offer to help if Evren is hurt but . . . but that's never stopped him before. Ravaszhi swallows. Steps over the corpse and doesn't look back, dropping the accent if not his shields. "Evren, what happened?"
Evren blinks. "What—happened?" he echoes. "I'm fine. Bit worse for the wear, perhaps, neglected to sleep for a week or so in the middle of a war zone, but that doesn't . . . Ravaszhi, what are you doing here? I thought—you stopped responding to messages and I'd hoped you were on assignment again but—are you all right?"
Ravaszhi hangs his head. Of course Evren would turn the question around. He's kind, he's always been kind, and Ravaszhi has done all but cut him off completely. Evren deserves so much better. "I was dismissed from the Order."
That much is probably obvious, given that he's in Sith space using his real name, but as to what he's doing here . . . what is Ravaszhi supposed to say? That he's willing to slaughter Jedi, the only family he's ever known, all he's ever had or wanted, just to save the nameless strangers that make up his race? Ravaszhi is a monster. The Order was right to have him put away. But—
"A whole week, Evren? You shouldn't . . . it's not safe for you to—"
Evren's laugh cuts him off, slow and clear and teasing, but gentle. "I'm hardly about to make a habit of it, you ridiculous worrier." He looks down. "And—and whatever your reasons, I'm just . . . very glad that you're alive."
Ravaszhi's throat closes. He doesn't deserve that, not from Evren, not after pushing him away. He should sink to his knees and beg for Evren's forgiveness. He doesn't deserve that, either.
There's a rhythmic clanking from down the corridor. Hostility flares into focus, lives bent on ending theirs twined with gossamer-thin threads of energy: droids, the big ones, and troops, and more Jedi.
Always more Jedi.
Evren sighs, shifting his weight. "In retrospect we should probably have gotten this out of the way en-route."
With all those Imperials potentially listening in? There wasn't any time on the way here, and there still isn't any time now. Even still, Ravaszhi isn't sorry for asking. "Someone should worry about you."
Their lightsabers' glow stains the floor, red and purple-back like spilled blood, casting odd shadows over the bodies at their feet. The fortress weighs heavy overhead, but somewhere above the metal and stone that make up the living machinework of the Foundry, the naked sky is stretching away into space, clear and untouchable. Ravaszhi focuses on that, draws in a breath, and doesn't look at the bodies as he moves forward.
He doesn't hear Evren's quiet response— "And you."
o.O.o
tbc