WARNING!: This is a torture chapter, not overly gory, no slaughtering of younglings, but not kind.
KEYnote: I will be releasing another chapter today, so I know this is a short one but it needed to be separate from the next chapter which is longer and happier.
Chapter 14 - The Sith
Darth Maul had finally received a message from his Master. That message commanded his presence. He frowned at the address located in a storage lot in the underworld.
It was where Darth Sidious had trained him, the location was close to the surface but sound proofed as it was, no one had ever found them.
He was braced for just about anything his Master had planned. Even if he was contacting him now, Maul still feared Sidious had been in need of saving. Naboo's politics had seemed to go against everything his Master had envisioned. Then there was the shutting down of the droid factories throughout the Republic and the de-escalation of the Separatist movement…
No, Maul was not expecting his Master to be in high spirits.
But he knew the minute he entered the space that it hadn't been his Master at all who had called him.
All the lights were on.
His Master didn't like the overhead lights.
"Darth Maul," greeted a voice as Maul turned a corner.
Maul dropped to his knee, bowing his head to the tall figure before him, "Darth Plagueis."
Lord Plagueis walked a circle around him, "Obedient."
A long finger traced the dip between his skull and neck, and Maul fought himself not to flinch away.
In one touch, he felt the other Sith's power.
More powerful than his Master, more power than he could comprehend.
"Fearful," Plagueis mused, before grabbing Maul's head. Those fingers gripped him by his horns, and bowed back his spine, using the Force to increase his speed and strength.
Maul used his training to keep from lashing out.
If he lost control, Plagueis would kill him, he knew this as surely as he knew his Master was not coming to save him.
Plagueis's yellow red-rimmed irises stared down into his own, before lifting him up, the pressure on his horns making him want to rip out of his grip, but then he was being thrown to the ground.
Maul caught himself with his hands.
"Stand up, apprentice. You have more power in you than Sidious managed to tap. I will rectify this."
He stood, turning to face the Muun with wariness, "Did you kill my Master, Lord Plagueis?"
Plagueis observed him coldly for a long time before he said, "You do not know, do you?"
Maul said nothing, guessing correctly it was a rhetorical question.
Sidious liked the sound of his own voice too.
Plagueis laughed, "Poor little Dathomirian, apprentice you are not. You would know if he was truly dead, you should know that Sidious is alive, if not well. You share no bond with him, do you?"
Maul felt fear creep into his muscles at the change in the other Sith's tone.
"I can feel that there is no Master and apprentice bond in you as exists between Sidious and I. You are anyone's meat, Zabrak. A Sith you are not."
Maul bit his tongue to keep from hissing at the Lord. He wanted to run, he probably should have, but he would not be slain from behind.
"Go chain yourself up."
Darth Maul went completely motionless, not having to look at the chains hanging in the corner to know where the Muun indicated. The spot where Sidious had tortured him for countless hours. Where he had been strung up for days at a time, where his birthmarks had been replaced by needle point tattoos.
The humiliation of an artist sticking pins in him as he held still through the pain.
"Did you hear me, Zabrak? Go chain yourself up. I will not ask again," Darth Plagueis repeated, his tone amused with his own sick pleasure.
Zabrak, not his name, not his origin, not his title, just Zabrak. A Muun shouldn't have addressed him as such, no matter how much the Sith Lord outranked him in power and knowledge, but Maul knew why.
When Sidious was at his cruellest, he addressed Maul as such.
Hatred laced his veins as he turned stiffly to the corner. There was no escape for him, and pain he could take. He could play this game. He could run later if he needed to, he had only to survive.
And he was a Zabrak, he could take quite a lot.
The manacles when he was standing were about chin height. He still hadn't figured out how the lock mechanisms worked, he was mostly insensible by the time Sidious let him down, his thoughts too muddied by the rush of the Dark Side to focus on something as minor as locks.
"Kneel," Plagueis ordered.
Maul dropped, making no effort to slow his descent. The pain of his knees hitting the floor was nothing with what was about to come.
If Plagueis thought he was going to break him, he was wrong. Maul could fight through Sidious's lightning attacks, pain was an old friend to him.
Plagueis grabbed him by the chin, and Maul growled low in his chest at him. Only his Master dared to touch him like that.
"Sidious gave you power through your hatred, through your humiliation, rage, and fear. I will give you pain, Darth Maul. You will be my creature, loyal to me and me alone, because I will give you more power, more pain than you could ever have imagined."
If it had been anyone else, Maul might have bitten him. Yes, his Master had trained him with pain, but it was a gross simplification to say it had been the torture that had forged his loyalty.
Maul was loyal to Sidious because they shared a purpose, because in order to further the Sith, working together as a route to victory against the Jedi.
But according to Plagueis, he wasn't Sith.
He could go off himself for all Maul cared.
"Do you know what pain is, Zabrak?"
Maul didn't dignify that question with a response.
Plagueis reached down to unhook his saber from his side. In a seemingly effortless motion, he broke the saber in two.
Maul's growl built in his gut but he didn't let it spill from his lips even as his throat vibrated. He could fix the saber, as he built the saber on two separate circuits.
Plagueis hooked one to his own belt before igniting the other half, cutting Maul's robes from his body without brushing his skin with the beam.
Sidious didn't have that much control.
Turning off the blade, he pocketed it, and patted Maul's cheek, "Pain, my child, is your nerve endings telling you that something is wrong. Injuries don't hurt you, your nerve endings, their breaking, hurt you."
Maul refused to speak.
And then he refused to scream when the skin on his chest ripped off, sliced with the finest of blades, he refused to scream.
He looked down at his chest expecting to find a bloody mess. What he saw instead was impossible.
His flesh was completely undamaged, but it felt-
Plagueis laughed, his voice coming filtered through his mask, "You begin to understand. Call to the Force, my apprentice. I will make you powerful."
Maul called on the Force, tore it from its slumber, tried to meet Plagueis's surgical use of the Dark Side with a blast of his own.
But Plagueis only laughed as he shattered the pain receptors that would have informed Maul if his bones had been broken.
He roared, straining at the chains that he himself had put in place.
Plagueis did not stop, did not relent.
Maul kept pulling on the Force, and when it fought him, he pulled harder, forcing it into submission to the tune of his own physical torment.
"Oh!" the Muun exclaimed, "You have two hearts, I didn't realize how hardy your kind was. I see why your females make beasts of burden of you. Humans wouldn't have even endured this long."
Maul lashed at him in his chains, fighting his bonds like a large feline in a wire fence.
Plagueis broke the actual bone of his leg several inches above his knee.
Maul screamed, as his Master's Master used the Force to cut through a thousand smaller pain receptors throughout his body.
oOo
He didn't know how long had passed, but eventually, even his endurance failed him. The hatred, the humiliation… faded in importance, he held the Force to him with pain alone, braced against Plagueis's attacks because as long as he was conscious he would fight.
He would fight until death ended him.
He became pain, he became power.
He pushed back at Plagueis, threw the full weight of the Force he had been spilling within himself. It attacked the Sith Lord with a scream, the Force itself screaming, black and inky, seeking revenge.
Plagueis stumbled back.
Maul bared his teeth, the strain of that attack had almost killed him, leaving him too weak to reach for control of the power again.
The Muun straightened, "Was that the best you could do? I would call it impressive, but it wasn't. You are weaker than I could have imagined."
Maul hissed at him, finding that he did have hatred enough, strength enough to try again.
But he didn't have time.
Plagueis ripped into places he had previously left untouched, and the new pain, unexpected, fresh -was -it was too much.
It must have been hours, it might have been days. Maul wasn't wholly conscious through it all.
Pain was all he knew, past reckoning, past processing, past -past anything.
If he had had words, if his throat hadn't been torn from screaming, he might have begged for it to stop.
But the hurt didn't stop.
He was reduced to less than an animal. He was an open wound, sentient enough only to know that he was hurt.
oOo
He must have fallen unconscious, because he woke in his chains with a whimper when Plagueis grabbed him by the jaw.
"I will leave you now, my apprentice," the Pain Giver whispered in his ear, "You will never betray me. You are mine, no matter where you go, no matter what you become, you are my creature."
Fear filled him, and if he could have answered, he would have agreed. For the chance that this would stop, for the chance that he would never have to experience this again, for the fear of the possibility of something worse, he would promise anything.
He was the Pain Giver's creature.
He was his.
Everything he was, everything he feared, was the Pain Giver's.
oOo
Time passed again, no fresh pain came.
Maul blinked his eyes open, he was covered in dry blood, his leg was broken and- he stopped cataloguing his injuries, flinching away from the memories of how he had ended up this way.
He began to panic.
The Pain Giv- NO!
Lord Plagueis was gone, and Maul couldn't stay in these chains any longer.
He had to escape. He had to.
He strained upward, gritting his teeth against the pain that ignited through him. But he got his hands around the chains and he tore into the Force as he tore the chains from the ceiling.
He grunted as he hit the ground and the chains slapped down on his back.
He didn't care, he just needed to get away. He snarled at the bright lights.
He crawled, dragging himself across the floor to a shelving unit across the room.
It took a long time, each moment an agony.
He used his pain to bully the Force into helping him. He was so weak, so crazed, he thought the Force was screaming back at him.
Maul managed to curl himself under the shelf, he had to pull his legs into position, he hissed at the sensation of his broken bone in his thigh. But he was safe under the shelf now, his back to the lights.
He closed his eyes, thinking of how he was going to get out of here. Of how he could hide from Plagueis.
He was shaking uncontrollably, and he growled at himself because the shaking hurt, he needed to be still, he needed to think.
He couldn't go out like this into the underworld. He wouldn't make it a block even if he somehow managed to get to his feet -foot.
He moaned, he hurt.
No one was coming, no one was going to help him.
Sidious would kill him if he found him like this.
Maul didn't want to die.
He tried again to turn his pain to power, he wanted to live. He sent his desperation to the Force to lure it to him.
The Force came to his call but it came like a lashing fish with stingers.
Maul jerked as power flooded him, his pain tripling, he screamed as the Force turned against him.
He cried then.
He didn't know what to do, he hurt, he just wanted to live, to survive this.
He wanted the pain to stop.
Maul gave up. He stopped. Stopped fighting.
Let the Force kill him. The Force was bigger than anything, he could accept that, he could accept death under its embrace.
He surrendered himself to the Force.
And the Force did not snuff him out, though it could have, it did not. The Force pulled him in, away from his physical form that the Force took over like a cool spill of water.
Maul opened his eyes, staring at his cuffed hands in the shadows as the Light filled him.
The Force on its own behest, began to mend his wounds, slowly, slowly, but…
He slumped, giving it all to the Force, his will, his pain, his fear, all of it.
In turn, the Force, the Light, gave him freedom from it all.
He didn't know what to think of this, didn't know how to pair it with the teachings his Master had given him, but right then, Maul did not care.
Everything else had betrayed him, failed him.
He was utterly alone in this world.
But he had the Force, and the Force had him.
And the Force was a more tender Master than Darth Maul could have ever imagined.
AN: I will post another chapter with the Mandos today, but do you have any thoughts, reactions, or ideas on Maul's story progression, pretty please?