Author's Note: Here are my week 5 drabbles, featuring my other beloved trash lord OC, Darth Festus... and my not-so-beloved Sith OC, Doctor Mezzon.
.
Week Five
43-50 ABY, Enter!verse AU
.
.
21. Prolix
.
Sometimes the speech is unceasing.
At first, he only understands one word in ten; they spill out at a frantic pace, as if the doctor's brain is firing too rapidly for his mouth to keep up, resulting in long stretches of muttered rambling that Dorian only later realizes are a grotesque simulacrum of conversation.
Over time, he becomes more adept at parsing the doctor's speech, until he comprehends everything that is said, and understands that much of the formerly incoherent oration is directed at him.
Maybe that isn't strange, when he's the only one who's managed to survive this long.
.
.
22. Duress
.
There are times when he considers saying no. It's not as if he's ever been forced onto the table. He climbs up there every day of his own volition, except on days when the doctor deems him too weak, too exhausted—
(too drained)
—to endure the usual procedures. But what would happen if he refused, just once? Could he fight back?
He never breathes a word of those thoughts, but the old man is a canny bastard.
"I do sometimes wonder," he says one day, "how your brother would have fared in your place?"
Dorian never considers saying no again.
.
.
23. Perception
.
He starts out as Jedi. A reviled creature among the Sith, particularly useful for demonstrating their various forms of brutality. He has it on good authority from Veeran that the label of Jedi exponentially increases the beatings and ridicule.
He's kept apart from the others, so he doesn't ever experience their mockery in person. But after his first kill, when he finally joins the initiates, when he has to walk past them with blood still crusting his fingernails, they give him a new name, uttered with disdain and through clenched teeth.
Psycho.
He can't help thinking they're right about that.
.
.
24. Nuance
.
One minute, he is observing – the next, there's a scalpel pressed into his hand.
"I thought you might like to try today," the doctor says simply, as if they've done this a thousand times.
His mentor steps away from the table, leaving Festus alone with the child. Her eyes are wide and frightened and delirious. She doesn't know where she is, or who she is.
His hand moves without conscious thought. Find the carotid, slide the blade in, one precise stroke.
The doctor returns and sighs, irritated. "One of these days, my boy, you must learn the value of restraint."
.
.
25. Tenebrous
.
Château Malreaux is a tomb, a monument soaked in the blood of some long-dead noble house. Festus is used to living near tombs; he spent years on Korriban, looking down on a valley of ancient Sith graves – but this is not the same. This is a madness that seeps from the walls, drenching him to the bone. This is a voice that whisper-shouts from every rafter, echoes off every stone, bores into his head where he'll never dig it out.
—what kind of monster are you—
This is where he belongs. Tomb, haven, cocoon, charnel…
This is his home now.
.