#darth-marr

“My body is a dead language and you pronounce each word perfectly."

--Sierra DeMulder, “On Watching Someone You Love Love Someone Else,” from New Shoes on a Dead Horse

"This is all your fault, darling."

Fault is subjective, same as it is inconsequential. Blood singing from the walls says as much, smatterings of many a dark-Force-infused creature that met the wrong end of a saber. Agonia laments it, laments them; she's never been able to lower walls. Something about the extensive emptiness within her, how the depths sow fear in basal ganglia response.

Cemeteries blossom in her footsteps.

"If you hadn't distracted me..." dies in the air as she attempts, once again, to open the door that had sealed behind them. Beyond it, the screams of the possessed and the restless become muffled warnings. A chorus fit for the Dark Temple, every relic and cursed soul within its walls.

A sigh vacates her mouth, distorts behind the rebreather.

"I told you, darling," an attempt is made, certainly, to envelop herself in authority, rigidity, though it tends to fall short when coiled around a lover. When tangled in sheets, when her mask has fallen away to grind down the teeth.

Agonia lets the gravel of her voice levitate, flit into something warmer. It can't be helped.

What walks with fire and breathes in water? She's manifested both-- a lulling of unsteady footfall, bruised-knuckled, taller than herself. Lei is the fire beneath her tongue, so her wife must be the water in her lungs.

These things used to be easier-- but the clinic now residing nearer to Alliance operations did ease her mind.

"Your daughter," no bite nor reminiscence of teeth to be found in the wake of Kadryd's syllabic legacy, her unending love, "Almost beat me during sparring today. Just wish it hadn't been with a rock to the forehead."

"Have you ever watched a star die?"

Her vocal folds do not adduct unless it is in the vein of a master; but Kylo Ren is not here. Her throat does not constrict unless it is in the absolution of shrinebuilding; there are no bones of which to find foundation. There's only Heung and there's only Kavra, both of Ren, both beneath the palm-span of a dark sky.

One star, blinking rapidly, hooks her attention.

"There are worse fates than this."

Not many by his standards; the bloodiest of battles, bleakest of Sith-made labs couldn't possibly compare. An opinion he's always shared with Agonia, even stored some of her driest remarks for his own later use.

"You look radiant, by the way," as if that could possibly help. A socialite likely thrives better in these places than he does. Nobility has bred tolerance, adaptability, if not enjoyment. Sith Galas have been a constant for him, long before he completed his quarter-life rituals.

He still loathes them.

Hand settled on her hip, he keeps her near, less a symptom of possession as it is appreciation. He implores her to lean down so he could whisper, conspiratorially, into her ear.

"All death is gorgeous."

The serpent beneath her tongue shivers: completes the passage. A bridging, an entropy. Twi'lek rage, too, paints her pretty. Manicured nails, sharpened to a point fine enough to raze, indicate the between she's been reading into. Straight to the heart, pointer finger to the armor that hovers just above Azimuth's collarbone.

"Do not make me repeat myself." Slithered out from a mouth that rarely moved, with a voice nearly hoarse, typically unused. So much of their time spent in laboratories or dark, decrepit crypts-- what was the use of voice? Apparently, in this moment, to chastise the poor Intelligence liaison, who tried quite desperately to remain placid in the face of a Sith who was quickly losing their patience.

Their laboratory in the depths of Dromund Kaas had become sterile. On Korriban, it had been manageable, yet with the ever overreaching politics of the Sith, they'd been forced to relocate. Escapism manifested in uncovering ancient ruins, some so far lost in the erosion of time, their namesakes had vanished into the stars.

And-- escaping the wounds that Va'rika had inflicted.

Some wound never heal, and those are the ones that still wept in their shadow, following like ghosts. An aide wouldn't keep them away, but would serve as a much-needed distraction.

"They're just returning from a mission," the liaison interrupted Kaduul's downward spiral, and fortuitously-- their temper. "Ah, now, it seems."

Before she can gesture toward the Cipher, the alchemist disregarded her without so much as a sparing word, instead turning their attention fully upon the agent.