(A/N)- AKA I take the Fridge Horror implications of "Visions and Voices" to their natural, horrible conclusion. Because uhhhhhh how exactly does one repopulate and "rebuild the great clan of the Nightsisters" by possessing a sum total of three(?) people via one bargain with an ex-Sith Lord?
...Yeah.
Prompts used were No. 21 "See the chains around my feet": Vows/Restraints/"Don't move" and Alt. 9 Drugging.
Trigger warning for implied/alluded to potential rape. Nothing actually happens but it's very clear what the Nightsisters intended to do. Sorry.
Disclaimer: Would giving Star Wars to me to write really be that bad an option at this point? I'm tired.
Rites and Rituals
Shadows moved around her as she stalked him through the dark. The thing inside her cackled softly to itself, zeroing in on the spot of orange wandering through the cave.
Sabine screamed inside her own head, watching things play out as a helpless observer.
A dizzy leap, a weightless feeling, and then her hands were catching hold of him, toppling him to the ground. He threw her off a moment later, green lightsaber springing to life as he crouched.
Run! Sabine wanted to scream at him. Run, Ezra! She strained at the control of the spirit inside her, trying to wrest her body back.
A green mist obscured her vision as the Nightsister tramped down on her; the next thing she knew there was a glowing obsidian blade in her hand, clashing against Ezra's emerald saber. Her vision blurred in and out, as ephemeral as the green smoke surrounding her. She was behind him. She was on top of him, holding him to the ground with her hands wrapped around his neck.
Sabine stared down with horror into Ezra's matching expression, saw the fear in his eyes as his hands scratched on hers, fingers prying.
"Sa... bine..." Ezra strained.
She felt sick in the pit of her stomach, mentally begging the spirit in control of her arms to stop, pleading with it. She felt her fingers around his throat, squeezing the breath out of him, felt the horrible way the air rattled through his constricted windpipe.
Stop! Please stop! she heard herself screaming.
The debt must be paid... came the rasping hiss of the Nightsister. He belongs to us now.
Sabine felt her arm drawing back, saw with dismay that the repulsor in her vambrace was charging.
The pulse hit Ezra square in the head, stunning him, knocking his head against the rocks.
Despair and distress pierced through her, and Sabine shoved hard against the walls of her head, trying to find a way out.
No. No no no no no this was wrong, this was ALL wrong, she hadn't overpowered him, he had saved her, he had SAVED her, this wasn't what had happened!
Her hands were under his armpits, dragging him deeper into the cave. He should have been too heavy for her but she had an unnatural strength. Sabine tried to pull against her own body but she was useless, trapped in place, the Nightsister's mind was so much stronger than hers, like icy fingers clenched around her skull.
She was at the altar already, and Kanan was moving to take him from her. She didn't want to let go—she hated the vindictive glee in Kanan's Nightsister-possessed eyes, hated the hungry intentions she could feel from the one inside her—but she had already turned around, fiddling with bottles and vials, the cold stone of them in her hands.
She strained to look behind her. All she could hear was Ezra's dazed struggling, the shrill laughter of the Nightsister spirits, a low hum reverberating through the wide space.
The Nightsister finally turned her back around and Sabine choked to see Kanan dragging a half-conscious Ezra onto the altar by his hair, pulling him up onto its stone surface as Ezra weakly batted at his hands.
The rough, rasping voices of the Nightsisters rose up together, starting an eerie chant. It was sonorous, melodic, in a language she didn't understand but with a fervent repetitive pattern she could guess at; a prayer, a mantra, an incantation. The other spirits hovered over the altar, bright green mist rising up, swirling around both them and the open space. Kanan held Ezra down by his arms and the mist formed into spectral manacles that wrapped around Ezra's wrists, tightening, chaining him to the altar.
Sabine wanted to vomit. She wanted to scream and kick and cry but she couldn't; she felt her own lips curling in a smirk, stone vial casually held in her hands, walking towards the altar.
She blinked and she was straddling him, vial held out over his face, a guttural chuckle emanating from her bowels.
"Don't move," she heard the Nightsister inside her say, tilting the vial as Kanan's hands held Ezra's head in place, held his chin firm and his mouth open.
Ezra choked on the ichor that poured from the vial, coughing, gagging horribly, chest clenching. Sabine wailed inside her head, once again begging the spirits to stop.
Don't do this! she cried. Please!
The Nightsisters were unsympathetic to her pleas. Maul promised us flesh and blood, they said, their voices echoing and overlapping. The ritual must be completed. With this, we will rebuild.
Ezra's eyes were glowing green, staring up blankly towards the ceiling. There was a knife in her hand and Sabine's mind screamed but the blade didn't pierce his flesh, didn't bury itself in his chest to spill his blood.
Instead it sliced his jacket open, collar to navel, revealing the Nightsisters' intentions in a moment of terrible icy-cold horror and clarity.
No! Sabine shrieked inside her own head, as she felt her body lean down, felt her lips pressing wetly to Ezra's neck, sucking, biting.
No no no no no no—
-SWR-
"No!" Sabine cried, snapping awake in blind terror.
The horror and fear clung to her, tight around her lungs. She was ramrod straight, her spine a tense iron bar.
There was stumbling footsteps outside her door and then it hissed open, and Kanan was there, staggering into the room with half-frantic panic.
"Sabine!" he called, the concern in his voice crumpling her, making her clutch her stomach and heave for breath.
Sabine gasped, inhaling great gulps of air as she tried to reorient herself, tried to wrap her mind around the fact that she was awake, she was awake, Dathomir was long behind them, she didn't hurt Ezra, it had just been a horrible dream.
Kanan's hand was on her back now, trying to help her regain her breath. Sabine sobbed, relief and disgust and a dizzy shuddering moving through her.
She couldn't bring herself to speak, just gasping and crying, hot tears spilling from her eyes.
"Easy," Kanan told her, rubbing her back. "It's all right now. You're okay."
Flutters from the doorway announced an audience to her trembling breakdown. Sabine didn't want to look but found her eyes stealing sideways anyway, spying Zeb hovering in the hallway and just behind him Ezra with wide worried eyes, looking at her in innocent concern.
Sabine sobbed harder, turning her face. She couldn't look at him. She could still remember the leering vile intentions of the Nightsister that had been inside her head, how it had appraised the Jedi padawan like a specimen. She could still feel the lurid thoughts the spirit had had, as it manipulated her limbs, the plans that played out in her nightmares, vivid and awful. All she could see when she squeezed her eyes closed were afterimages of his face gaping up at her in terror, as the thing inside her used her body to hurt him. Choking him. Drugging him. Raping him.
Hot shame flared her cheeks. She shifted closer towards the wall, turning her back towards the door as if that could block out the searing light of his presence, floating there, completely unawares.
Seeming to sense her turmoil, Kanan quickly shooed the other two away, a hasty, "Give her a minute." the explanation behind his hitting the button to close the door, stepping quickly closer to the side of the bed.
"Sabine..." he called gently. "What is it? Talk to me," he urged.
Sabine slowly collected herself, heaving great inhales of breath, arms clutched tight around her knees.
"N—nightmare," she stammered. Her dry mouth felt like acrid cotton; she swallowed and bile dripped back down her throat. "I—I was remembering... remembering what they wanted to do with us—the Nightsister spirits—with our bodies and—" Her throat tightened again, heat and wetness stinging her eyes. "And how they wanted—wanted to—to—"
Her voice strangled.
Kanan was immediately present, stepping up a few rungs on the ladder so he could wrap arms around her. "That didn't happen," he emphasized firmly to her, squeezing her tight. "You didn't get hurt and you didn't hurt him—neither of us did." The conviction in his voice seemed half meant for himself, and Sabine shuddered, calming down a bit, remembering she wasn't the only one who'd had her body stolen from her, had come so close to hurting someone she cared about, even if it wouldn't have been her that actually did it.
Slowly, with agonizing prickles traveling up and down inside her lungs, she managed to stop crying, though her throat stayed clogged and tight, hands squeezing her legs. Kanan's arms stayed wrapped around her, warm and comforting, grounding her.
She breathed in and out, in time with the ticking of her heart.
It hadn't happened, she told herself. It hadn't happened.
The knowledge that it could have happened, though—if Ezra hadn't pushed her outside, hadn't freed her from the Nightsister, if she had somehow bested him in their clash—still made her feel... violated.
She shivered. Her heart gradually stopped beating a thousand miles per minute, slowing to an anxious thumping. She stared past her knees, straight ahead at the mattress, and tried not to think about being on top of the altar with Ezra underneath her.
Miserably, she squeezed her eyes closed, letting go of her legs and mashing her hands over her face, pulling away from Kanan, who stepped back down to the floor.
"It was horrible, Kanan..." she said, slightly muffled by her fingers. "Her cackling voice in my head, not having control of my limbs, knowing what they wanted to do with us..."
"You don't have to tell me," Kanan agreed, sighing.
"I want it out of my head." Sabine raised her face, eyes dismayed. "How do I even look at him, Kanan? How can I trust myself around him?"
A firm hand pinched her shoulder, Kanan grabbing hard.
"It. Wasn't. You," he growled. Less harshly now, he let his head drift back, his grip loosen. "If they had managed to complete the ritual it would have been just as much of a violation on your end. But that didn't happen."
Sabine shuddered, trying to quell the churn of unease that turned her stomach. For a moment she just sat and absorbed Kanan's admonition. Let the memories of what actually happened—as horrible as they were—fill her mind and replace the images from her nightmare.
He saved me, she reminded herself. He saved me. We're okay. I didn't... I wasn't...
Her head quieted. She sat in the silence with Kanan and just breathed. There was something soothing about it, feeling the breath pass through her lungs, her mind focused solely on the motion of her chest. Maybe the Jedi had a point about meditation.
A long few silent moments more and then she stirred.
"Sorry I woke you," she mumbled, shifting and letting her legs dangle over the side of the bed.
"Anytime," he told her softly. "You think you're the first one I've checked in on after a nightmare? Hell, I've been the one who needed checking in on." A fond smile touched his lips and Sabine felt less guilty for worrying him.
Her hands wound together on her lap. "Guess we've all had our bad nights, huh?" she quipped. She put hands on the edge of the bunk and hopped down. "I think I'm going to paint for a bit, if that's okay," she said. She shuddered with unease. "I don't think I can get back to sleep," she admitted softly.
"All right. Can I get you anything?" Kanan offered.
Sabine shook her head, then added for his benefit a verbal, "No. I'm all right. Tell Zeb and Ezra that—" Her voice hitched a moment, everything from her nightmare threatening to come rushing right back. She found herself again and cleared her throat. "—that I'm okay."
Kanan nodded, reaching out, finding her shoulder for one final squeeze. "I will," he promised.
Sabine started to get out her brushes and canvas as Kanan stepped across the room to the door, exiting. Out in the hall she heard Ezra's worried questions and Kanan's soft answers, glanced up once to look past Kanan and meet the probing concern in his blue eyes. Ezra looked back at her, anxious lines in his face. His worry over her was palpable. She almost trembled under its intensity, face heating.
Throat thick, she managed to smile, though it was choked and uncertain. She turned towards her blank canvas as the door slid back closed.
She would tell him later. He deserved to know. How much danger they had come close to evading.
She dipped her first brush in vibrant orange and began a line across her canvas.
(A/N)- Spoiler alert, she does not tell him later. Because that's an awkward as hell conversation to have.
And that does it for this Whumptober, I'm really happy with my work this year. Hope you all liked reading too.