parallax: the visual offset of a foreground body against its background when your perspective changes

The golden boy has been here the whole time, since before Dziyof or Orphris got here. He used to hang out with them more. He was good, really good, but not too serious about it. And he would play 'blindfolded hide-and-go-catch-me' in the archives, which was great for honing your sense in the Force, and when he got time off to visit people, he'd usually come back with little trick gifts for Dziyof and Orphris, like bootlaces that doubled as garrottes and a lipstick that would inflate into a one-minute breathing bubble underwater. He didn't dance with them, exactly, because he liked that sappy crap with violins and such better than cantina rock. Not catchy. But he would sometimes sway around. Arms over his head, shirt hanging open, his whole thing, like he was forgetting anyone else was there at all.

"Emperor, he looks like a buttered snake," Dziyof drawled to Orphris, grinning. He'd been working on his Imperial drawl. You had to sound like you knew everything and barely cared. Master Bellacost was great at it. Orphris frequently told him he wasn't Master Bellacost.

She told him so, again, and said that butter would just be a sticky look. It was more of an oiled thing. Imagine him leaving buttery clumps when he shook a Senator's hand.

"Yeah, he's oily, like a fireman's pole," Dziyof giggled, fingers nervously playing over the back of his neck. It felt the edge of being worse than a joke. "'Cause everybody goes down, uh, down on him."

"Don't be gross."

"I'm just saying." He wasn't sure what he was saying. A crewman had said it once when he thought the apprentices weren't listening. Dziyof had always been a good listener.

To the music, Mabon swayed in silence, his pierced rings glittering and his eyes shut. It made Dziyof unaccountably sad for a second. It had just been so obvious then. Mabon wasn't lost in the music at all really. He was thinking about how to look like he was. Every second thinking about how he would look to a hidden camera. About the way to lie down so he'd sleep looking good instead of droopy. He practiced looking injured in a Mabon way- Dziyof had accidentally seen him once in an empty conference room of the ship. Just kneeling there alone with his mouth bloody, looking up into the wall mirror, breathing hard with his hair wrecked, like he'd probably been imaginary beaten-up. Dziyof could only figure it was in case Mabon had to fake-surrender, and convince them. He'd probably be on a team sometime with Dziyof and Orphris to do that for real, and Dziyof would nail the 'Pub scum from a hiding spot and Orphris would cut them down, because everyone was good at their own things; together they would be the best Sith team in the Spheres.

It's pretty good to be ready for your purpose as early as eleven years old, Dziyof thought proudly. And Mabon was fifteen, which meant he was already getting to fly out and do it.

But it's not much later when Mabon starts to be gone more and more of the time, and never comes back bringing tricks or wanting to do games anymore.

"My darling Dziyof, my very dear. I've been rather busy," he says distractedly, already stripping out of his flight suit into formal robes, to conference with Bellacost. It's not anything Dziyof hasn't seen before, but he notices Golden Boy is bruisy in weird places. "Politician's sons can be so forthright under certain circumstances, although I don't expect you'll have to know any of that, if the job can't be done with a smoke bomb and a fast speeder. You'll give kisses from me to Orphris, won't you?"

"But you were going to come tell us both about Hutta," Dziyof protests, struggling to keep up with the long, bronzy legs. "And I was gonna show you a new kind of swoop, with my speeder. It took me five days to get right. You have to flood the gas at the same time as you bank, and there's all the timing issues. Even the engineer said it's advanced stuff, 'n that," he adds defensively.

Mabon chuckles and tousles the top of his head between his short horns, pulling away down the bleak corridor. Even Dziyof won't infringe on the way to Bellacost's quarters when he's not invited. "When this swoop goes viral on the HoloNet, I am sure I'll spot it. I'll be able to tell the Senate that I know this young man in person, and will keep forgeries of your signature just for this occasion in my accoutrements. It will doubtless open doors for me. I'll catch you later, Dzi Dzi."

"Use some kolto," he yells down the corridor, arms folded tightly. "You're bruised up everywhere. You look like a leopard. How many fights did you lose?"

A single finger comes up, although its position suggests it doesn't refer to the fights at all. Dziyof wipes his eyes and clambers away, popping the grate to the ventilation system, where he likes to hang out. Who needs Golden Boy anyway? He can go show Orphris his speeder trick. Again. And they can keep training, and soon enough they'll be doing the same caliber of jobs for Bellacost. It won't matter whatever a politician's son has to fourth write or kick Mabon around for, because Dziyof can sneak into his station, steal anything he's got and plant what he really shouldn't have, and be out with a swoop. During this mission, there will be the sickest music playing. Only some really nasty guardspeople will die, if anybody, and it'll be surprisingly bloodless. That's his purpose. He doesn't have to do what Mabon does. He's not sure, exactly, what Mabon does. But he doesn't know if it's good for him.

Mabon seems to be very good at it, because more and more he comes back to base with documents and covert recordings of secrets that Bellacost wants. He carries around kits of gold and scent and silk and weird tools. Dziyof just recognizes inlaid stun cuffs. So probably hostage missions sometimes. VIP hostages who get leather instead of metal cuffs.

But Dziyof doesn't get much time to wonder about it anymore. Dziyof and Orphris are growing up. They are very good at leaping around and fighting with the Force. Dziyof sometimes falls asleep before he can get to his bed; sometimes doesn't bother leaving the training floor at all. He and Orphris set up a system, for when they'll be out on long assignments one day: her back to his back, Pureblood and Zabrak like an overlapped symbol, each ready to cross-draw their lightsaber from the other's hip as soon as they might wake. They practice. In between practicing everything else.

They laugh loopily at things nobody else finds amusing, born of too-long cycles and stress tests. Anything can turn hilarious when you're in stress conditions, running on no food and gulps of water. Scaling slick walls with no time for breath. Hurting people in countless ways, then counting them back up. Analyzing the data. Doing it better.

Sometimes he has weird breakthroughs about Mabon, their distant ghost brother-apprentice, who never flies back to base except to conference with Bellacost anymore. In the escape tests, Dziyof makes great time, and Orphris is only seconds off. He compares his red-scored wrists to hers, quiet while the tunes from his dangling earphones buzz against his neck.

"Mabon usually had these," he says.

"Could've had to escape a lot."

"On diplomatic missions?"

They hold their wrists side by side, his just narrower. Absent-mindedly, Dziyof reaches across, drinks from the water canister on her belt. She flicks her hand minutely toward his. She's still doing fine.

"He had scabs. Sometimes. He came back with scabs." He thinks. "Bandaged one time. When he was limping 'n missing the hunk of his hair."

"Let's not talk about Mabon," she says flatly. "We still need to improve our time. We're re-running till 1900 hours."

Dziyof stops talking about it. Neither of them do talk about him much anymore. But he knows she's glad she isn't doing Mabon's job, too. She doesn't have to tell him that.

They tell each other everything, nearly. It's later, about two months from then, that Dziyof sees Mabon by accident, and never goes on to tell Orphris at all.

It's the same damn conference room, even. Somebody has got to fix the magnalock on this door.

Dziyof is fourteen. He has heard a couple of things and picked up more on accident. Also, he is changing, from a runty flop-haired Zabrak with a slouch into an awkward, knobby-jointed shape that might eventually be a mean Republic-killing machine. He wears a leather jacket when he can get away with it, and doesn't mind what else. He would love for his skin to clear up, any day now. He's pretty sure he doesn't have a best feature.

Mabon is standing in that empty room like a streak of wet gold in a pan. Every line of him says sex. While Dziyof is open to be surprised some day, he's fairly confident he doesn't lean that way, but the thing about Mabon is that everything starts leaning really weird around him, towards the magnetism. You would have to be blind. And even then you would smell the flowers.

Just standing there in a loose silk coat. His toes are turned in toward each other, half of them flesh and half recently exchanged for metal (a punishment? A mistake on the mission? Mabon had never told him, and Bellacost wasn't in the habit of disclosing information for free). Even the silver leg is like an enhancement somehow specifically calculated to make people go a little crazy. If he were all symmetric, he wouldn't look real. Dziyof's seen twi'lek hologram girls that looked realer than Mabon. In passing. Not because he was searching them up.

It feels wrong, intruding from the background. But he hasn't spoken to Mabon for most of a year. How would you start? How would you claim to be able to catch up with him, who will always be a few years in training and practice beyond you? 'I know what the scabs on your wrists were from. I started following the news for politicians who got caught in mystery scandals and blackmail deals. They're never the nice ones. Because you wouldn't be able to catch nice ones. I kissed a really nice girl, 'Bon, from Dromund Kaas, 'cause she said she always wanted to with a Sith, but I was thinking about you- not like in a creepy way- because I don't think your first kiss was probably nice. And between you and me, I'm more glad the old man just makes me kill people.'

It wouldn't be much of a welcome home.

Mabon moves forward, cupping the big wall mirror with his palms, massaging the cool glass over his head. His eyes are nearly shut. The memory pings off Dziyof's mind: dancing with Orphris. And the oily snake. Dziyof has always had Orphris. He never needed to fill holes in his life by being so good that people can't not touch him.

He can't tell this time who Mabon is acting for. Mabon and his copper hips, a V extending over his waistband, Mabon and his high flush and lidded eyes that make promises even when he isn't promising anything.

Mabon and a bright, sharp noise, as he brings his head back and smashes his face against the glass.

Dziyof doesn't move, even in the ringing echo of the cracked mirror.

Mabon goes back again, smashes his face. His nose pops, spraying an arterial-colored gout down his chest. He's looking way into himself now, in the increasingly fractured surface. Ritualistically, smash. Unaffectedly, smash.

Glass tinkles out of his hair and catches in sparks of light on his eyelashes.

He slices his forehead raw and he doesn't make a sound about it.

Dziyof has to leave eventually, as quietly as he came, because they'll be wanting him and Orphris on sparring at 1700 hours.

He feels strangely calm. As though he has only been seeing Mabon's version of training. Self-focus. Maybe he does this all the time? Maybe he never caught on to as much of Mabon as he thought he had. It could've been kolto masks every night and new mirrors built. He wants to think that. He doesn't want to keep thinking about the boy swaying by himself, always separated from Dziyof and Orphris, slippery snake.

Dziyof doesn't want to think that Mabon could have been helped back then.

He was probably already gone.

And Dziyof has more to worry about anyway, because by the time he heads back to training, Master Bellacost is there, as unctuous as he gets when he has the worst kind of orders for somebody, a suicide mission for a fighter pilot or a claustrophobia test in a steel coffin, and he lays his hands on Orphris's head and Dziyof's head, telling them that the cohesion has been a marvelous experiment, results truly unprecedented among the Spheres, and it will be the time for them to begin training in separate from now on.

Half of Dziyof's life blows away into dust.

(Elite Sith training: not even once.)

(Darth Bellacost and Orphris are the OCs of my resplendent writing partner, Fel Arkanna.)

(And thank you very much for the reviews, Closed on Sundays and Radio Free Death! I may just have more material still bubbling around. I hope you'll enjoy.)