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.

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[ninefox]

Another of those long-fingered hands splays over his heart.

"You were always mine," the voice counters, softer again, like the soft crackle of wood burning. "My crooked, vicious little soldier boy. You were never quite right, were you? Not for what they wanted. Because you had my fire in your wild heart."

He laps at the claw marks at one shoulder, then rests his strange head there.

"Tell me your name, wildling."

[callmefives]

"No," he protests, almost choking on the word. He thinks the voice might be worse like this; insidious, almost alluring. Better the sharp crack of its rage than this.

"No matter what that etyc shabuire Krell said-" He spits the name, like it's a curse unto itself, almost too vile to even pass his lips- "I"m not a kriffing traitor. I'm not." And so he doesn't belong to the god of traitors and liars. He might have been left here, given as an offering, but he refuses to accept that he belongs here. You can't betray something or someone you owe no loyalty to, and he has never betrayed his brothers.

[ninefox]

"The sssupplicant be damned," he hisses and crackles, in almost the same tone Fives used. "And you can't betray sssomething that never deserved you. Isss that what they ssay about me, now?"

[callmefives]

The answer catches him with a kind of surprise nothing else has, close echo of his own thoughts that it is. And then he realizes that's exactly what it must be, echoing his own thoughts back at him.

"What else would they say about you?" he snarls. "Demon god of traitors and cowards."

[ninefox]

"There are no demon gods," corrects, not with anger but a sort of impatient primness. "There are gods. And I am war, and you have always been with war. No matter how much of me they chain here, I am my sister's shadow. I am the eyes where she is blind. I am the screaming when she is silent, and the silence when she cheers. Everything forgotten and everything denied by those who fly their banners high, that is mine. Traitors and lies and atrocities, yes. And you, too, whatever you were too brave to swallow that no one wanted to hear."

He presses a soft kiss to the corner of Fives' mouth, and his lips feel almost perfectly human, except for the shape of the teeth underneath them, and running a few degrees too hot.

"Tell me your name, wildling. What would you ask me for it?"

[callmefives]

He turns his head away again at the kiss, shocked by the gentleness of it, a kind of utterly alien tenderness he's never experienced in his life.

"As if you can't just pluck it from my mind," he rasps. And he won't be tricked into cooperating, into some delusion that if just gives this creature what it wants it won't be so bad.

[ninefox]

He presses the same kiss to the other side.

"I can't," he murmurs. "I am of the Force, but I don't use it. You are a soul. And a bright one at that."

[callmefives]

He squeezes his eyes shut, shivering with fear and confusion, not cold.

"I'm not giving you anything. Whatever you get you'll have to kriffing take." He's not going to cooperate in his own destruction, even in so small a way.

[ninefox]

"What would you want for it?" He asks again, trailing more of those soft, gentle kisses down Fives' chest.

[callmefives]

Fives shivers again and tries (and fails) to arch away from those kisses. He remembers the teeth behind those lips, and the tongue.

At the question he barks a mirthless, almost manic laugh. "What would I want? Give me my freedom and maybe I'll give you my name."

[ninefox]

"Give me my freedom and I'll give you the burning world on a platter," he growls, before settling a mouth around Fives' nipple, sucking and teasing with flicks of tongue. "But I will not be alone again," the voice murmurs quietly, almost to himself.

[callmefives]

He laughs again, sharp and disbelieving. "As if-"

He cuts off with a choked sound that turns into a whine as the thing sucks at his nipple, and he reminds himself he's bound here. Tries to focus on the warmth of blood trickling from a dozen claw wounds. Tries with everything in him not to acknowledge how good it feels, even as his traitor body reacts and he shivers again, this time with the urge to arch into the heat of the thing's mouth.

[ninefox]

"Anyway, I can't," he continues, licking a few more times before sliding over to suck at the other nipple.

"There aren't any ships here."

[callmefives]

"Then-" His breath hitches and his voice trembles on the edge of a whine. "Then let me loose. At least let me die fighting, you kriffing coward!"

[ninefox]

"A strong argument. Noble. Heartfelt. Counterpoint: I don't want you to die."

Another mouth sucks against Fives' neck, while the first swirls a tongue around his nipple.

[callmefives]

"Of course you d-don't," he answers, hoarse and bitter and humiliatingly unsteady. "You want to... to make my suffering and humiliation last, don't you?"

He laughs, the sound cracked and broken before it shifts abruptly into an involuntary moan as the mouth at his nipple does... something. He's not even sure what about it feels so good, but he clamps his teeth shut against the sound he's making, eyes squeezing even tighter shut. When he told himself it wouldn't matter if he cried out this hadn't been the kind of sound he'd been expecting the monster to wring from him.

[ninefox]

"Why be humiliated?" he asks, the voice low and even closer than usual, as though he were speaking cuddled right up to Fives ear.

His tongue swirls again.

"There's no one here but us."

[callmefives]

"Because I'm not yours. I'm... I'm not," he rasps unsteadily, sounding almost desperate.

"I serve... Noble War... with purity of mind and purpose and... and body." His voice breaks on the last and he turns his face as far away from the monster in the dark as he can. He might not serve the Republic, he's turned away from that, but he still belongs to the goddess... doesn't he?

[ninefox]

"Her knight gave you up, my darling," he purrs. "And there is old magic in this place, on this rock. She couldn't take you back now, not with every star in the sky set on her wings. Not without breaking the promises that keep me here."

[callmefives]

"He's not," he chokes out. "He's not Hers. He's the traitor, not me. He... he squanders the Republic's loyal troops, throws us away like we're of no more value than scrap. He'd have seized defeat from the jaws of victory if I hadn't... hadn't-" Hadn't disobeyed the direct direct orders of a Jedi priest. "I serve Her." He almost whimpers it, head still averted. "I serve Her and Her Republic with... with purity of mind and purpose and body," he repeats the mantra, like it will somehow protect him here. Like he can make it still be true if he simply clings to it stubbornly enough.

[ninefox]

"That's the trouble with mortal servants," he muses, and licks at Fives' neck some more. "You put the seal of the infinite on them, and they can't always carry it. But it is still her seal. Still her blessing on his every moment of vindictive carelessness."

He strokes a claw-tipped thumb down Fives' cheek.

"And she's always been prone to blind spots. If you hadn't what, my darling?"

[callmefives]

"That's not right." It comes out more plaintive than assertive, his voice trailing off raggedly. "How can She bless... bless that kriffing shabuire? How can she condone what he does?!"

He's trembling now more with rage and frustration than actual fear, though he still keeps his face turned away from the monstrosity pinning him. "He was sending us to pointless death. We were going to be overwhelmed and overrun, we'd have been lucky if anyone survived. I had to disobey." Not just disobey, but take command. Suborn his brothers and lead them in an alternate assault. "We won. We took our objective with almost no casualties!"

[ninefox]

"Nobility is pointless, sometimes."

Another mouth drops a soft kiss on Fives' mouth; the angle he holds himself at doesn't seem to matter at all.

"Of course you had to. And of course you didn't. Soldiers die every day." More soft kisses along the curve of Fives' shoulder, as one of those strange hands strokes at his nipples. "I'm proud of you. How did you win?"

[callmefives]

He almost sobs at the unlooked for, unasked for, unwanted praise. This isn't who he wants to brew proud of him, this creature's pride just feels like one more nail in his coffin, proof of his condemnation.

"Why do you care? It was Her victory, not yours. They may have condemned me, but they still... they still presented Her with the offering." Even if they'd attributed it to Krell in the ceremonies, Dogma had taken great delight in making sure he knew that.

[ninefox]

"It was neither," he corrects, dropping another kiss on Fives' forehead. "It was your victory. And that is a beautiful thing."