ONE | SOOTHSAYER
DISCLAIMER: I don't own anything you recognise.
So, the rewrite of the first chapter turned out to be a bit darker than I was aiming for...but I kind of like how it turned out.
THE DARK SIDE'S claiming of Anakin Skywalker and, thus, the creation of Darth Vader, had always hinged on the love of a woman. Perhaps his love for the wrong woman was what resulted in his hideous fall from grace, his collapse into self-destruction. (Perhaps it was the weight of his duties and the secret wife he had, or even before that and the death of his mother, Shmi.) His hamartia was his own pride, pride of what he possessed and could possess, and the Disciples believed that Anakin's beloved Padmé Amidala would prove only to be his undoing. So, when a vision of such a future made itself known to Armelle, the Supreme of the Angels of Iego, she took it upon herself to change the future, a most dangerous feat that involved letting the darkness into herself to save the light. But Armelle firmly stood by her assessment that Anakin Skywalker needed someone as stubborn-headed as himself but filled with humility; capable of evil, just as he was, but powerful enough to do what was right; personally connected to the Force but unhindered by the laws governing the Jedi.
But, just as there was a before to Armelle's horrific fate, there was a before to Darth Vader. Anakin Skywalker was just a little boy living on the desert, slave-ridden planet of Tatooine, bearing a weight far too heavy for him to carry. And before even that, was just a little girl shouldering a heavier burden as the Light and Dark hinged on her ability to protect Anakin Skywalker from himself.
The protection of the Chosen One began long before Anakin Skywalker was born, even before his immaculate conception. In desperation after being notified of a particularly disturbing vision that involved the murder of the Chosen One before he or she even discovered themselves, the Jedi turned to the Winged One's Disciples—or simply known as the Angels of Iego—for guidance. The winged sentient beings of Millius Prime worshipped the Winged One, the goddess of the light side of the Force, very unlike their simply anthropoid cousins, the Diathim, and they possessed a great amount of power. The Angels were all beautiful women, with curling green locks of hair, much like their patron's, but their most appealing quality was that they were prophetesses, capable of seeing through and, to a limited extent, manipulating the Force. Many of their visions spoke similarly about the Chosen One's demise—dead by the hand of a Sith Lord, which had been believed to be extinct—but the vision of the prophetess' leader, the current Supreme known by the name Armelle, spoke of a more horrifying fate that would befall the Chosen One. Death would be a mercy compared to the punishments and havoc the Chosen One would inflict as a Sith Lord themselves. A guardian, the Jedi requested without thinking of the consequences, one to keep the Chosen One safe when it is time.
Time was a fickle thing, however, and even if a guardian was found, there was no guarantee that they would be present at the time to pull the Chosen One back from the precipice they teetered on the edge of.
But a guardian was what the Jedi got.
Millius Prime, though archaic in some aspects, was extremely advanced when it came to genetics. They had been creating children—the future generations of Angels—within pods for centuries as all Angels were female and very few Angels made it off the planet, let alone had interspecies relations with any other creature to produce children. It was also no secret that the Angels valued purity, holding it in high esteem—when it came down to it, they much preferred genetically engineering their next generation that carrying a child for nine months that, due to impure blood, may not possess the same connection to the Force as their mother. The Angels of Iego were a dying breed as it was and their hair alone was highly sought after, some lower beings believing that a single lock could make a person immortal. A ridiculous notion but others had killed for less and immortality was an attractive proposition. Armelle had been on the receiving end of that once before—she had been young and naïve and she had been one of the lucky ones, her attacker had shaved off her hair to test the theories before he had attempted to lay a hand on her and, within that time, she had escaped.
Armelle stood in front of the incubator, arms crossed loosely in front of her chest. The infant was caramel skinned and already had a tuft of emerald green hair on her tiny head. And she was perfect. The baby was still curled up, still much too young to be out of the incubator (and in Armelle's arms). Her wife, Trinigan, had yet to remove from her duty on the Wall, the outside borders of the temple that housed the Angels, segregating the prophetesses from the less than amicable Diathim.
But Trinigan would be home soon and soon the baby—Kaleetha, Armelle had already decided—would be with them too.
Kaleetha was a strong name, one that would serve her well in the future, and the woman already knew that her child was going to be one of the best. Armelle would raise her to be the best. The angelic woman—incredibly tall and willowy—ran a hand through her short hair, the mint strands sticking up in haphazard spikes but despite her ragged appearance, there was a peace that seemed to have seeped into her very bones at the sight of the infant in the pod. The baby was encased within a solution that emulated the womb that allowed her to move, lying comfortably; Armelle's heart warmed at the sight of the little girl's arm stretching, tiny fingers separating as the infant turned and regained her curled position. The Angels of Iego always prioritized emotions and feeling was what kept many of them sane, Armelle was proud, so very proud of her daughter and she hadn't even done anything yet. And she knew Trinigan, though considerably the colder of the two, would be too. Reaching forward, Armelle ran her thin fingers over the outer rim of the incubator, wishing that she could reach through the containment field and place her hand against the small swatch of emerald hair on Kaleetha's head. But patience was a virtue and Armelle would rather wait years to touch her daughter than potentially infect her with a virus she collected off-world that Kaleetha's vulnerable immune system wouldn't be able to fight off.
"You look like a proud mother hen," a raspy voice murmured from behind Armelle but the mint-haired woman made no effort to turn, already knowing who it was. "It's a good look on you, Armelle."
The woman's thin lips turned up at the corners, "It will look good on you too, Trinigan."
Trinigan wasn't so sure. The planet of Iego was separated into three categories—the Diathim, the soldiers and the academics—and while the mint-haired woman was an academic, her wife was a solider. Trinigan, in comparison to Armelle, was dark; her hair was dark a shade of green that it appeared almost black, a clear contrast to her wife's, and Armelle's eyes were pale like sapphires, Trinigan's such a dark brown that they bordered on black. They contrasted in personality too, like sugar and spice. Armelle was gentle and kind, whereas Trinigan found herself often apathetic, cold in a way that some found unsettling. But it didn't mean Trinigan didn't care. No, she probably cared too much, too fiercely for those she loved.
"I'll love her," Trinigan promised because she knew that she could only promise that. She made the same promise to Armelle on the day of their union too. It was a promise she could keep, even if she couldn't promise to be welcoming and smiling every moment of her life. "And I'll protect her. Like I love you, like I protect you."
The mint-haired woman smiled faintly as their eyes locked on the baby, hands laced together. "That's all I can ask for."
And so life continued like that for many years; Trinigan would offer all the love she was capable of generating when she was home from the Wall and Armelle would split her time between the Temple and caring for Kaleetha. Kaleetha was entered into training far earlier than her fellow Angels, found to be extremely strong in the Force. By the age of six, four of her visions had come to pass and none of them had been particularly happy, seeming to prove to the Angels within the Temple that darkness loomed on Kaleetha's future. She had been made from love, made for love, but she had been labelled a failed experiment far earlier than she had realized; the Angels watched her constantly, as if they were worried that she would one day snap and kill everyone she had ever met. Trinigan had scoffed at that—ridiculous, Kaleetha wouldn't hurt a fly, Trinigan had sneered, especially angered when her pale-haired counterpart had expressed her own fears at their daughter's strength.
And, perhaps, Armelle had been right to worry but not about Kaleetha. It was Armelle who fell to the darkness well before Kaleetha had even managed to glimpse it.
By the time Kaleetha was eleven, life at home had severely declined. Armelle was falling into insanity, inch by excruciating inch as visions of pure torment needled their way into her skull and blurred her eyes. It started little by little, flinching at noises only she could hear, sleepwalking onto the balcony overlooking the markets of Iego. Then it became worse, especially when Trinigan was on the Wall, when Kaleetha would cop the brunt of Armelle's anger, reduced to hiding beneath her bed. But Kaleetha could never blame her mama, knowing exactly what was swirling in the older woman's head; the emerald-haired girl felt the pull of the darkness far more than the measly tug of the light, watching her mama be swallowed whole by her own doubts and visions of her wife and daughter dying in her arms. The darkness was vicious in that way, the cold caress of a shadow drawing death closer and Armelle had fallen into a trap many Angels before her had: fear. The Jedi had been right that fear was the path to the Dark Side and after Armelle's veil of fear began to recede, Kaleetha discovered her intellectual mama to be angry. Anger quickly led to hate—a hatred for being forced to stay home to look after Kaleetha, hatred that her wife was never around, hatred that Kaleetha had achieved a great deal more than she had within little more than a decade—and with a great deal of suffering, Armelle succumbed to the Dark Side. It was much like how poets spoke about falling asleep and falling in love: slowly and then all at once. At first, Trinigan didn't notice—thinking her wife was just having trouble handling the pressure of the prophecy of the Chosen One; she was a perfectionist, after all—and Kaleetha's sense of loyalty kept her from saying a word. (When she got older, Kaleetha would look back on the first few signs of darkness and wonder what if, what would have happened if she had just said something?)
But, as most things did, there was a breaking point and that breaking point was when the bottle-green-haired woman came home to find Armelle holding a bloodied knife and their young daughter bleeding out on the tiles. At the point, it was clear that Armelle wasn't herself, too consumed with blackness to see what she had done. Kaleetha, tiny and fragile, was growing paler by the second, blood seeping quickly through the little fingers crossed over the wound in her stomach but she didn't dare move or call for her mother. Armelle was unstable, dangerous and Kaleetha had never been more terrified of—or for—her than in the moment she was bleeding to death in their kitchen.
"Armelle…" Trinigan breathed, horror in her eyes. Her instincts screamed to kill the Angel who had clearly lost her mind but her heart clenched at the very thought of harming her beloved. But Kaleetha. The dark-eyed woman turned her attention to Kaleetha, voice shaking, "Kal, just hold on."
Even at eleven, Kaleetha was tempted to make a sarcastic comment that Trinigan definitely wouldn't appreciate in the moment. Armelle didn't seem entirely conscious, swaying on the spot and humming a haunting melody but it was clear by the way her fist tightened around the blade that she knew someone else had entered the home. She was ready for a fight, Trinigan could see that, and there wasn't enough of Armelle in her to recognize that she could potentially kill the love of her life.
Easing forward, Trinigan spoke to Armelle as if she was a bantha and she didn't want to startle her into running. Or harming. "Armelle…put down the knife. Come now, lovely, I know you didn't mean to hurt Kal."
"I did mean to," Armelle argued, voice dazed as she stared down at her bleeding daughter. "She's going to hurt us, Trini. She's a killer."
Trinigan stiffened. She supposed she should have realized something was wrong when Armelle stopped regarding Kaleetha as if she was the sun; it wasn't until the mint-haired woman began to sleep less that she began to treat Kaleetha as if she was a bomb about to explode, siding with the other people to believe the emerald-haired child to be a threat. Yes, Trinigan knew Kaleetha had the potential to be dangerous, she had trained Kal herself, but the little girl cried when she found the pests around the home dead. (Trinigan couldn't count the amount of times she had caught her daughter performing a funeral for a stray beetle that had been hiding in the cupboards and eating their bread.) A danger, perhaps, but not—never—a killer.
"This isn't you," Trinigan soothed, a sob rising in her throat that she shoved down, "you're just tired, Armelle. Let's get you to bed and we can talk about this in the morning, after you've rested."
Armelle shook her head, a sharp jerking motion as she hovered over the prone form of her daughter. "No. She's not dead yet, Trini. She needs to be dead." Something seemed to snap in Armelle's psyche as she let out a deranged giggle, "Darth Mortis, Darth Mortis—all hail the Queen of the Empire." Armelle began to rock, eyes wild as she leant down to press the blade to Kaleetha's throat. Kaleetha didn't move a muscle. "One to end the fight between the Dark and Light; one blind to himself and the other with sight; the strength of a husband, the sacrifice of a wife; two children to bring balance, a life for a life—"
Trinigan let out a devastated scream—something that sounded similar to glass shattering into a million shards—as Armelle slid the blade across Kaleetha's throat, a thin line that immediately began to weep vermillion. She laughed in pure joy, chanting that they were finally free of the darkness as Kaleetha let out a sharp gasp of pain and surprise before she began to choke on her own blood. And Trinigan reacted instinctively. Armelle didn't feel a thing as the sharp edge of Trinigan's sword cleaved her head off her shoulders, didn't know a thing as the mint-haired thing tumbled across the ground and her body slumped against the tiles. Disregarding her headless wife, Trinigan gathered her dying daughter to her chest, trying to stem the flow of blood that seemed like an endless river that joined the growing ocean they were both sitting in. She knew the likelihood of Kaleetha surviving, even as she called brokenly for someone, anyone to help her!
Dark eyes wide in terror; a wet, bloody gurgle; the sound of Trinigan's vow breaking the sound of her sobs. "Never again. I'm never leaving you ever again." Another sob tore itself free from her throat as her eyes skipped from Armelle's body to Kaleetha's dying form—she looked so small, so weak. Too much, too much and Trinigan felt something in herself shatter. "Just live for me. Please. Please—Kaleetha!"
And as she cradled her dying daughter to her chest, the Angels' words of sympathy swam in her head. My condolences. Her passing was a great loss for the galaxy.
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UNEDITED
Let me know what you think, please! Sorry for screwing all you wonderful readers around by rewriting this story.
~ Raven
