Until We Have Faces

[ninefox]

Krell had to pin him with the Force to get him on the altar, and not gently. The back of his head might be bleeding, but it's hard to tell: the antechamber already smells of iron. The whole station is a bristling-black hulk of ancient ore, nickel and iron and ice and stone. The lack of anything resembling alloys or right angles makes it feel horribly unreliable, not a machine guaranteed to keep the air in, but an ancient brooding piece of debris untouched by the steadiness of engineers. It did have an airlock, that Krell and a few shame-faced clone guards shuffled him through, and iced-over doors somewhere in the dimness of their crisscrossed headlamps that must lead back into the warren of Ninefox Point.

The benighted promontory did not orbit so much as a brown dwarf or black hole: it was a rogue planetoid, drifting through the ragged stretches of starless, lifeless space. Here, old Strife, the Dark Side of War, had been confined ever since the ascendancy of the Jedi, noble Combat, and the rest of the Light pantheon. But even reviled and relegated Gods were due certain honors, and retained certain powers - and certain appetites. And Krell - who had his own suspicions about the future of that ascendancy - had come to give Strife his due and be rid of his most vexing problem in one blow.

It's pitch-black with him and the others gone. The heavy magnetic manacles embedded in the alter are utterly immovable; the stone beneath him is pitted and rough and cold, almost untouched since the creation of the universe - except, of course, for all the sacrifices that have come before.

Comments

[callmefives]

He chokes and gags at the invasion, and then moans at the feel of the mouth on his cock. Taking him deeper, hot and wet and all-encompassing. He tries to turn his head away, but there's nowhere to go, the mouth follows him, the tongue cutting off any sound but the moans and gasps he can't hold back. He feels tears squeezing out past his tight shut eyelids and he's mortified at the weakness as his hips lurch up into the monster's mouth.

He tries to follow the litany in his mind, at least, but everything's fractured, his focus destroyed by the mouth at his cock, the tongue twining against his own, in a way that no pain has ever managed to undo him. He bites down hard on the tongue again, even though he knows it won't do him any good; it's the only show of defiance he can manage right now.

[ninefox]

This time, biting down tastes the way a bonfire smells, woodsy and spicy and smoky, strange and enticing at once.

"You feel so good fucking my throat," he whispers in Fives' ear, tongue laving over the head of his cock even, impossibly, as Jedao takes him deeper.

[callmefives]

He gags again and the sound he makes is half moan half sob, and he jerks frantically as his bonds, even though he knows there's no way he can break free of them. He has to at least try, he has to find some small facsimile of defiance as the thing takes him, not in the way he'd been prepared for, not with pain and rage, but with a kind of pleasure he's been forbidden to even think about his entire life, let alone experience.

It's touching him more tenderly, with more gentleness, than he's ever felt, and the fact he can't stop himself from enjoying it feels like the worst betrayal. So he thrashes and jerks and pulls, sink tearing against the harsh metal manacles, blood running at his wrists and ankles. If the thing won't give him the pain he was promised he'll make his own, and focus on that, even as his hips push up again into the yielding warmth of one of its many throats.

[ninefox]

It's throat pulses and hums around him, delighted and hungry at the same time. It changes, from soft undulating flesh to tomia-like ridges and back, always wet and so, so warm. The mouth kissing him slowly, reluctantly withdraws, tongue stroking Fives' mouth from the inside, then nibbling and nipping at his lips, before it trails over to lick under the edges of the manacles, soothing and stinging the fresh cuts at the same time as it laps up the blood Fives spills on his altar.

[callmefives]

The first time he tries to pull back he whines in shock as the ridges catch at sensitive flesh, the pain infinitely worse than what the thing had done to him with its claws. The worst part is it doesn't do anything to shrink his erection, though, none of his struggles or efforts do; he's been so thoroughly conditioned to equate danger and pain to arousal that it's all just playing into the creature's twisted, inhuman hands.

"Go to... to hell," he chokes out as soon as his mouth is free, though it's more a sob than anything. And then the thing is lapping at his wrists, dragging at raw flesh, and he can feel its hot breath on him as it drinks his blood, feel the wet heat of its throat undulating around him, and he knows he's going to come. Knows there's nothing he can do to stop it from happening, but he thrashes more desperately anyway, bellows wordlessly in rage and betrayal and fear as he feels pleasure coiling low in his belly, drawing up his balls, making him dizzy with the hot rush of it along every nerve.

He tries to focus on his goddess, thrashes and jerks and tries to tell himself this is battle, that this is dedicated to Her, but he knows in his soul that he's soiled beyond any hope of cleansing, that She'll never touch him again. That no matter what he does, he's lost, and he comes, shaking and sobbing and feeling more empty than he ever imagined he could.

[ninefox]

Jedao moans, loud and long, savoring it as he drinks Fives' orgasm down, whining simultaneously with the mouths at Fives' wrists for a few moments of disconcerting harmony. He keeps sucking steadily until Fives is shivering with overstimulation, then lets Fives slip easily out of his mouth - after the ridges, passage between the canine teeth is only a mild threat.

Jedao's mouths roam after that, as he kisses him everywhere, with light, tender kisses: on his knees, on his belly, on his clavicle, and most gently of all on his tear-stained eyelids.

"We are where we are, my darling," he murmurs, softly, sadly, and sweetly all at once.

[callmefives]

Soiled. Ruined. Even if he eventually dies defying this monster it won't matter. He'll never be pure, never be Her Warrior again.

"Let me loose." He jerks at his bonds again, fresh blood trickling at wrists and ankles. Tries not to think of those mouths, everywhere at once, the soft tenderness of them, the sweetness of the thing's voice. He's never known tenderness, nor sweetness, and even as he tells himself it's a ruse, a path to corruption, the allure is strong. "Let me kriffing loose."

[ninefox]

"Promise me you'll stop hurting yourself," he demands, fur rolling and coiling over Fives' body.

[callmefives]

"Fine!" He almost manages to make it a snarl through the mortifying tears that just won't stop. "That's only for you to do, is it?"

[ninefox]

"Yes," he agrees serenely, leaning in to kiss Fives' tears as he reaches for the manacles, pulling apart the magnetic halves with a scraping noise and impossible strength. He pulls apart the ankle pieces without any apparent twisting around, and there are two hideous large clacks as he aligns the two sets of semi-circles before setting them on the floor.

[callmefives]

The second both sets of manacles are open Fives throws himself at the creature, a lifetime's worth, however short that life has been, spent training to fight and kill brought to bear with all the skill at his disposal on trying to find pressure points, weak spots, something. Anything. Literally fighting tooth and nail, because there is no such thing as fighting dirty, just fighting for your life, and he promised he wouldn't hurt himself, he didn't say anything about the monster he's been sacrificed to.

[ninefox]

It laughs, rolling and cackling and delighted, even as Fives finds a hand, breaks some of those spindly, too-long fingerbones. Jedao rakes the broken edges across his chest, not aiming to stab and damage, just to mark and sting. He is twisting, surging, impossible to get a sense of or a proper grip on.

There are wounds in him that he has not let touch Fives before, that Fives did not make, but they are there; when he gets a hand in one and tries to tear it becomes a mouth sucking on his fingers. When Fives tries to bite, it only kisses him, wraps closer around him.

[callmefives]

He howls in rage and frustration. He feels fingers snap, and the thing just laughs. He tries to shove his entire fist into that sucking mouth, to find something to grab and rend and tear and it kisses him again and again and again. He grabs for handfuls of fur, trying to throw it or pin it or even just get some sense of its dimensions and proportions and there's nothing but more.

He rolls himself off the table, the altar, and reaches unerringly for where the manacles dropped, aiming to use them as bludgeons since his hands are having no effect.

[ninefox]

Jedao is behind him suddenly, heavy again, hot and enveloping. He shoves Fives back, pinning and bending him over the altar, hands pulling his legs wider apart.

"You're so beautiful," Jedao breathes, kissing the crease between one thigh and his ass.

[callmefives]

He tries to kick, to twist, to drive his elbows into soft spots that don't exist before his arms are pinned on the rough stone he'd been spread eagled on just moments ago. Tries to kick, but his legs are held fast and spread wide. He can feel cooling blood beneath his cheek where it's pressed into the stone and he howls again, in rage and despair.

"Just fuck me and kill me and... and be done with it!" he rasps when he runs out of the voice for wordless bellowing. "Just... just be done with me." It's almost a plea, but he won't let it be. He'll cling to that, at least; he'll demand, he won't beg.

[ninefox]

“I’m so sorry, my darling,” he murmurs, trailing slow kisses up and down Fives’ spine, brushing something that feels almost like a human cheek against his ass, “But I’m not going to kill you.” He actually sounds...sad. Somber. Sincere.

“Believe me, I understand. But I’m a selfish old beast. And you’re much too perfect not to keep.”

[callmefives]

"No." It's choked, desperate, saturated with despair. His only escape, his only hope, is death, and this monster's going to deny it to him.

He slumps against the stone beneath him, chest heaving, heart hammering. "You have to," he finally rasps. "I'm a blood... a blood sacrifice. You have to kill me!"

[ninefox]

Jedao wraps arms around him - more than two, but nothing like Krell's, slender and sinewy, lightly furred on their upper sides instead of sleek amphibian skin.

"I know, I know, I know," he murmurs, and there's a fathomless aching in his voice, like lingering wounded soldiers' wails and whimpers sieved into one shaky sound. Jedao doesn't want to be trapped here either. He wants to die, should die, isn't war full of death? But he can't, he can never have it.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. It'll be okay. It's not forever, not for you. And I'll take care of you. It's okay."

[callmefives]

His laughter is choked and disbelieving, completely devoid of humor. "You?" He rubs his face against the rough stone, dragging abrasions into his skin. "You'll take care of me?"

He laughs again, the sound edging towards unhinged. "Just how fucking soiled and defective am I that the... the avatar of death without honor, of betrayal and pillage and murder and rape thinks I'm beautiful and wants to take care of me?"

[ninefox]

Jedao



swallows him.



A mouth the length of his body opens up, and Fives is pulled in by half a dozen tongues, or tentacles, or some other appendage. And then it closes, and then they're gone. It feels like zero gravity, like floating in salt water much more concentrated and buoyant than Kamino's, warm and wet and soft and yet equally supported by the press of flesh from every side. There's no teeth, no bones, no sign of which way would be up or out. There's only the dizzying slick close press everywhere.

He gets dizzy here from not breathing, but his lungs don't burn and he doesn't pass out. He can struggle and struggle until he wears himself out. It's so warm it would be steaming, if there were any air for the steam to float in, warm as a jungle or a sauna, and even more oppressive.

[callmefives]

Fives struggles as he's pulled in, but it's useless, as useless as everything he's tried so far, and as the darkness closes in around him and the tentacles withdraw he screams.

The fear he'd felt before is nothing to this, to the absolute, unreasoning terror of being engulfed like this, pressed in on all sides, hot and slick and darker than the emptiness between stars. He has no air, he's dizzy with its lack, but he screams and howls and roars as he thrashes against the walls if his amorphous prison.

He screams until his voice is a barely there gravelly rasp, his throat bleeding with it, he twists and kicks and gouges and thrashes, trying to get purchase on something, clinging to the irrational delusion that he might possibly tear his way out. And in the end he hangs limp, his mind drifting loose with the horror of it, his memory reaching back to the oppressive, liquid warmth of his growth tank, except there he'd drifted in endless twilight, not this impenetrable blackness.

He twitches and whimpers almost soundlessly, exhausted and despairing, wishing for death even as he dreads dying here, alone in the dark, consumed utterly by the deathless evil that's stalked his and his brothers' nightmares all of their short lives.

[ninefox]

It's only then, when he finally calms, however miserably, that Jedao disgorges him gently back onto the stone. All the places Fives has bled - his wrists and ankles, the claw marks, even the scrape on his cheek - throb and tingle slightly, but with strangely little pain. A smaller, rougher tongue laps at the places, only one at a time, and Jedao seems to have folded into something smaller, now, a jumble of folded limbs settled between Fives' sprawled legs.

And there is, now, light: a collection of lambent yellow eyes, gleaming in the dark. It's not enough to make out Jedao's shape by, but it is something other than black.

"I will take care of you," he promises softly, fiercely. "I may be wicked and brutal, but I am all you have, now. And you are fierce, and glorious, and clever and brave and devoted. And you are not devoted to me, but you are all I have."

[callmefives]

He doesn't have the energy to struggle anymore, even enhanced as he is, his limbs are leaden and his head is foggy and even the icy cold of the room, now that he's been released from the humid heat of the creature's belly, or whatever that had been, isn't enough to stir him into any kind of motion. Not even to pull away from the creature that's curled itself between his legs, that's lapping at him now with one rough-tongued mouth.

The light's no comfort, not when it's the creature's eyes staring balefully down at him, and neither is the fierce promise of care. The care of a monster, a creature made of claws, of mouths full of tongues and sharp teeth, of some shapeless, consuming maw and the belly attached to it.

He's screamed himself hoarse, his voice nothing but a rasping, wordless croak, and so he has to content himself with struggling for enough coherence to think, as clearly as he can manage it, I'm not yours. I'll never be yours.

[ninefox]

"Barely the strength for breath, and there's still defiance in you," Jedao murmurs, and drops another one of those soft kisses at the corner of Fives' mouth.

"Fine, don't be mine. But let me make you feel better than this, dear wildling. I can do that. I am not only the things they've told you."

[callmefives]

He wants to close his eyes, to block out the gleaming eyes looking back at him, but the thought of the darkness behind his eyelids is unbearable in this moment, so he turns his head laboriously away, only to find they follow him there.

His breath is steady and slow, his heart no longer a trip-hammer; panic can only be sustained so long, and the darkness has winnowed it away. He's not sure if the creature can actually read his mind, it said it doesn't use the Force but that it's of the Force, but in case it can he lets the next thought rise through the exhaustion to the surface of his mind. I can't stop you.