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Through Other Eyes
Oct. 9th, 2022 02:19 pm(OOC: Set immediately after this. Warning for mention of past child abuse and POV characters who were raised with all the usual prejudices of the Empire.)
Kaal can feel the shakes coming on as the medical droid uses the bone mender on his cracked skull, the aftereffects of adrenaline and utter terror. Corrin had flung a kolto pack at his head and stalked off to meditate as per their Master's orders without saying a single word, which he knows means she's incandescently furious at him. She has every right to that fury, as it wasn't just HIS life he risked today.
He swallows, takes inventory of his body and its injuries while the droid works. He's mostly intact, which means that Balvadares must share his Master's patience and reluctance to waste resources, even ones as foolish as he's been today. His father, his father would have left Kaal with a permanent reminder of the price of his folly, had he ever been so foolish as to defy his orders like that.
The thought of his father prompts physical aches and pains, scars twinging. He thought he'd learned what true terror was, the last time he and Corrin had been on the receiving end of their father's temper. They'd been in kolto tanks for weeks, after, which was why they weren't present when his father's experiments ate him alive. His father's Force presence had been like a whirlpool, whatever emotion he felt spinning out and into the world, manifesting as generosity in a good mood and casual cruelty in a bad one, the stillness at the center an illusion that would drag you under to drown. He had let his passions, his emotions, dictate his actions, and Kaal knows that he takes after his father in that way.
He allows himself to shudder, because the droid won't tell anyone. He'd wondered, when Ibani first became their Master, just how an apprentice managed to kill Darth Skotia and Darth Zash in the space of a year. He knows now, oh yes. Power, more than he had ever sensed from her before, and an absolute control of that power that he didn't even know was possible! The Force usually ebbed and flowed around Sith, like water or wind, but she had controlled it like a tame beast on a chain!
He takes his leave of the droid, finds Corrin in the Force as easy as breathing, settles across from her to meditate as ordered. He ponders his Master, what he is meant to learn from this, searches his memories.
***********************************************
"It's quite elegant, really," Corrin tells him, leaning in to point at the data. There's admiration in her voice and the Force even though the data seals both their fates.
"Our Master's subsection has been deliberately designed to fail," he says, the realization bitter.
"Oh yes, loudly and dramatically," Corrin replies, tone dry. "I count at least sixteen different sub-sections in the Reclamation Service that Darth Thanaton has pulled from, and he's stripped out almost every officer above the rank of Lieutenant. Two thirds of the subsections he pulled from have grudges with one another that have been going on longer than we've both been alive."
Kaal hisses. "He'll purge everything, wipe the slate clean, when it fails." Including them and their Master!
**********************************************
But it hadn't failed. Somehow, someway, Ibani has kept things going, made a manufactured disaster into a functioning subsection. Their Master was the most PATIENT Sith Kaal had ever met. Keen, so terribly keen, on not wasting Imperial resources, preserving their power base, growing those resources into BETTER versions of themselves. There had been rot that needed cutting out, of course, which she had done with all the careful efficiency of a medic removing infected tissue from a wound. And if their replacements were utterly green, at least they could be taught!
**********************************************
He remembered saying to Ibani, once, that the Sith were the heart of the Empire, easily worth at least eight Imperial soldiers a piece. That had amused her, for some reason. "And what happens to a heart without a body, Apprentice?"
"My Lord?"
"I'm assigning both of you a little project. Research what would happen if, oh, let's say an eighth of the Empire's population decided to revolt at once."
Neither of them had understood the reason for the assignment, at first. There had been so much data to go through, so many reports of revolts. But the results had been...sobering. The Empire would collapse, slowly and terribly, in famine, disease, and other horrors. If they were willing to pay the butcher's bill, they could even kill every single Sith, save perhaps the Emperor! He and Corrin had both underestimated their strength.
************************************************
Which, he realizes in a flush of shame and anger, is exactly what they both did with Balvadares. What Darth Skotia and Darth Zash both did with Ibani, which resulted in their deaths. No wonder their Master had decided they needed that lesson beaten into them!
He opens his eyes to see Corrin looking at him. "Balvadares, we underestimated him and we paid for it. That's the lesson."
"Yes," Corrin replies. "You paying more than I, you damn idiot," she growls. "I saw you die twice, by the way, so thanks for that."
He grimaces. They've never told anyone about the rare flashes they get of each other's futures. They're never more than a few seconds in the future, so what would be the point? "I can guess the first," he replies, shuddering at the memory of HER power crawling over him. "But what was the second?"
Corrin's voice is tight as she answers, the Force full of her remembered terror. "When she asked him if you'd learned the lesson..." She pauses, takes a breath. "He said no."
"Ah," he replies, the potential demise playing out in his mind's eye. "Then it appears I owe our Master's retainer my life twice over." That galls, stings, but he can take some comfort in Balvadares being unusually skilled.
"More than a retainer, or at least WANTS to be," Corrin replies, smiling slightly.
Kaal huffs a laugh. "Well I can't fault his taste in that. Being a regular bed-mate for her would be a smart move for him, politically and socially."
"And he'd be safer there than most who wind up bedding a Sith," Corrin replies. "Safer than our mothers were, for a certainty," she adds, tone going slightly bitter.
"Yes." Kaal doesn't really remember his mother, but Corrin remembers hers. They hadn't been Sith, but they'd been bright, talented, women who had given their father Force sensitive children. In the end, that hadn't been enough to save them as their father's temper worsened as his career stagnated.
He's struck by the certainty that the Empire would be better, immeasurably better, if all Sith had Ibani's patience, her concern, her ability to help people grow.
"Then we work toward that," Corrin replies. And Kaal isn't certain if he spoke that thought aloud or not. They've always been more connected than most.
"A goal we can actually agree on, whatever is the world coming to?" he replies, his tone one he knows she finds especially annoying.
She flings a cushion at him in irritation, and he laughs, the fear beginning to fade.
Kaal can feel the shakes coming on as the medical droid uses the bone mender on his cracked skull, the aftereffects of adrenaline and utter terror. Corrin had flung a kolto pack at his head and stalked off to meditate as per their Master's orders without saying a single word, which he knows means she's incandescently furious at him. She has every right to that fury, as it wasn't just HIS life he risked today.
He swallows, takes inventory of his body and its injuries while the droid works. He's mostly intact, which means that Balvadares must share his Master's patience and reluctance to waste resources, even ones as foolish as he's been today. His father, his father would have left Kaal with a permanent reminder of the price of his folly, had he ever been so foolish as to defy his orders like that.
The thought of his father prompts physical aches and pains, scars twinging. He thought he'd learned what true terror was, the last time he and Corrin had been on the receiving end of their father's temper. They'd been in kolto tanks for weeks, after, which was why they weren't present when his father's experiments ate him alive. His father's Force presence had been like a whirlpool, whatever emotion he felt spinning out and into the world, manifesting as generosity in a good mood and casual cruelty in a bad one, the stillness at the center an illusion that would drag you under to drown. He had let his passions, his emotions, dictate his actions, and Kaal knows that he takes after his father in that way.
He allows himself to shudder, because the droid won't tell anyone. He'd wondered, when Ibani first became their Master, just how an apprentice managed to kill Darth Skotia and Darth Zash in the space of a year. He knows now, oh yes. Power, more than he had ever sensed from her before, and an absolute control of that power that he didn't even know was possible! The Force usually ebbed and flowed around Sith, like water or wind, but she had controlled it like a tame beast on a chain!
He takes his leave of the droid, finds Corrin in the Force as easy as breathing, settles across from her to meditate as ordered. He ponders his Master, what he is meant to learn from this, searches his memories.
***********************************************
"It's quite elegant, really," Corrin tells him, leaning in to point at the data. There's admiration in her voice and the Force even though the data seals both their fates.
"Our Master's subsection has been deliberately designed to fail," he says, the realization bitter.
"Oh yes, loudly and dramatically," Corrin replies, tone dry. "I count at least sixteen different sub-sections in the Reclamation Service that Darth Thanaton has pulled from, and he's stripped out almost every officer above the rank of Lieutenant. Two thirds of the subsections he pulled from have grudges with one another that have been going on longer than we've both been alive."
Kaal hisses. "He'll purge everything, wipe the slate clean, when it fails." Including them and their Master!
**********************************************
But it hadn't failed. Somehow, someway, Ibani has kept things going, made a manufactured disaster into a functioning subsection. Their Master was the most PATIENT Sith Kaal had ever met. Keen, so terribly keen, on not wasting Imperial resources, preserving their power base, growing those resources into BETTER versions of themselves. There had been rot that needed cutting out, of course, which she had done with all the careful efficiency of a medic removing infected tissue from a wound. And if their replacements were utterly green, at least they could be taught!
**********************************************
He remembered saying to Ibani, once, that the Sith were the heart of the Empire, easily worth at least eight Imperial soldiers a piece. That had amused her, for some reason. "And what happens to a heart without a body, Apprentice?"
"My Lord?"
"I'm assigning both of you a little project. Research what would happen if, oh, let's say an eighth of the Empire's population decided to revolt at once."
Neither of them had understood the reason for the assignment, at first. There had been so much data to go through, so many reports of revolts. But the results had been...sobering. The Empire would collapse, slowly and terribly, in famine, disease, and other horrors. If they were willing to pay the butcher's bill, they could even kill every single Sith, save perhaps the Emperor! He and Corrin had both underestimated their strength.
************************************************
Which, he realizes in a flush of shame and anger, is exactly what they both did with Balvadares. What Darth Skotia and Darth Zash both did with Ibani, which resulted in their deaths. No wonder their Master had decided they needed that lesson beaten into them!
He opens his eyes to see Corrin looking at him. "Balvadares, we underestimated him and we paid for it. That's the lesson."
"Yes," Corrin replies. "You paying more than I, you damn idiot," she growls. "I saw you die twice, by the way, so thanks for that."
He grimaces. They've never told anyone about the rare flashes they get of each other's futures. They're never more than a few seconds in the future, so what would be the point? "I can guess the first," he replies, shuddering at the memory of HER power crawling over him. "But what was the second?"
Corrin's voice is tight as she answers, the Force full of her remembered terror. "When she asked him if you'd learned the lesson..." She pauses, takes a breath. "He said no."
"Ah," he replies, the potential demise playing out in his mind's eye. "Then it appears I owe our Master's retainer my life twice over." That galls, stings, but he can take some comfort in Balvadares being unusually skilled.
"More than a retainer, or at least WANTS to be," Corrin replies, smiling slightly.
Kaal huffs a laugh. "Well I can't fault his taste in that. Being a regular bed-mate for her would be a smart move for him, politically and socially."
"And he'd be safer there than most who wind up bedding a Sith," Corrin replies. "Safer than our mothers were, for a certainty," she adds, tone going slightly bitter.
"Yes." Kaal doesn't really remember his mother, but Corrin remembers hers. They hadn't been Sith, but they'd been bright, talented, women who had given their father Force sensitive children. In the end, that hadn't been enough to save them as their father's temper worsened as his career stagnated.
He's struck by the certainty that the Empire would be better, immeasurably better, if all Sith had Ibani's patience, her concern, her ability to help people grow.
"Then we work toward that," Corrin replies. And Kaal isn't certain if he spoke that thought aloud or not. They've always been more connected than most.
"A goal we can actually agree on, whatever is the world coming to?" he replies, his tone one he knows she finds especially annoying.
She flings a cushion at him in irritation, and he laughs, the fear beginning to fade.
