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]

"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.

[ninefox]

Jedao nuzzles him, strokes more human-feeling hands along his arms. He hadn't planned it, but engulfing Fives had been very helpful for remembering certain physical articulations more precisely.

"No, but you can certainly choose to be more miserable about it. The body exists to feel, you know. To grow and change and scar and survive and ache and year and delight and die and rot. You aren't meant to be all pure, none of you. It's cruel of her to ask it."

[callmefives]

"She's our goddess and we're hers!" he manages to croak, the words torn, barely above a whisper, from his ravaged throat.

He won't hear Her called cruel, not in Her treatment of them, not without finding some last iota of strength in himself to counter the insult. It's the last strength he can muster, though, and he wishes for nothing so much than that he had the energy to curl in on himself, draw into a ball against the cold and the eyes and that voice, insidious and coaxing.

[ninefox]

"She's the Republic's goddess. That's not at all the same thing as the people, no matter what the knights tell you. Is it even still called that? I have no idea how long I've been here, you know."

The hands stroke Fives everywhere, slow and firm, gently massaging out aches and nots and weary soreness.

[callmefives]

Ours, he thinks doggedly, tiredly. Our goddess, our Republic. Ours to serve and protect.

Not his anymore, though, not when they've both cast him out and turned his back on him, and he curses Krell again, if only in the aching, fractured recesses of his mind. He wonders how many of his brothers Krell will waste on his next campaign. Wonders if Rex will continue to follow him with the blind obedience expected of them and expects he will. He's been made a very effective object lesson.

"Why?" he manages to rasp, but it'll take catching the tattered edges of the thought that goes with it to catch that he means why is he doing this? Why is he pretending he cares?

[ninefox]

"Is it really so unendurable, to believe that I like you?" He sounds a little plaintive, maybe even hurt. "It doesn't have to be complicated. It doesn't have to be a judgement. I'm war, and you're a warrior. A stubborn, fierce, irrepressible one. I'm lonely, and you're here. Why not?"

[callmefives]

The last of his breath gusts out in a ragged sigh and he goes limp under the stroking hands.

"What-" He breaks off, his throat too torn and his breath too short, and finishes silently, expecting to be understood by now- Do you want of me?

[ninefox]

He sighs, softer but somehow the same, and he doesn't slump over Fives but he rests a check against Fives' shoulder for a few moments.

I could eat the whole world and still want more," he admits. "But right now, I want you to let me make you feel something new, and...try not to hate yourself about it?"

[callmefives]

I can't stop you, he repeats, too tired for more direct defiance for that. Too despairing to delude himself there'd be any point to it if he could find th energy. He's been given to this monster, to do with as it wishes... it just so happens it doesn't appear to wish to maim or kill him, though whether he'll be devoured and destroyed nonetheless remains to be seen.