#diiscipulus

‎ ‎ such a simple offer. Does he understand the magnitude of it? With Savage's death, his anger had bled away. Fighting just seems so pointless. He's tired. The offer almost feels like home. Like relief. And that's dangerous. Inviting cruel fate to torture them both all over again.

‎ ‎ he searches Maul's face. death is all around you. Everybody around you dies and you keep going. But Feral can't say that out loud because can't the same be said for him?

"...I want to." He breathes, so softly, so quietly, it's almost hard to catch. "But we both know I'm a liability."

‎ ‎ Could the two of them ever find harmony? Is Maul capable of it? Why hasn't he just refused? Why does something in his heart twist with forgotten warmth at the offer on its own. It's so childish, to be wanted, to be given a chance.

Oh.

So that’s what the Force had been screaming about. That makes sense. Now that he knew what the warning was for, he wished he’d gotten it earlier. 

Because this is Maul. The same Maul he’d heard stories about. The same Maul who killed Qui-Gon. The same Maul who had, apparently, survived being cut in half. 

Kark. 

“Is it?” He asks. He takes a step back, a subtle stance (more for moving than fighting; Maul had killed multiple Jedi far better than him. Braig wasn’t keen to test his luck), and rested his hands on the saber hilts that hung from his hips. His thumbs brush over the ignition switches, but he doesn’t turn them on, not yet. Don’t jumpstart anything. His eyes never leave the Sith(?) in front of him, but he does his best to scope the scene with his peripheries. It would be wonderful, he thought, if the others were to show up right now. The Force, winding around him as it was, seemed to shrug in response. A dispassionate rumble that rippled through reality. He was on his own. 

Great. 

he remained where he sat beside the weak fire, motionless save for the slow rise and fall of his chest. the flames carved sharp hollows into the red and black markings of his face, turning him into something ancient in the dark. watching. waiting. the girl's frustration churned through the force like disturbed water. fear beneath it. anger beneath that. familiar things. twin suns lift from the fire, toward her. "peace??" he said at last, voice low and rough with disuse. "you mistake me." he leaned back slightly against the stone wall, gloved fingers resting against his knee. the silence stretched before he continued. "there is no peace." his gaze drifted toward the cave mouth, toward the endless dark beyond it. "not for people like us." more truth that she should come to accept sooner rather than later. "i was betrayed by my master." his jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. "cast aside after i devoted everything to him. my brother was taken from me. my people erased. again and again the galaxy has stripped things from my hands until there was nothing left but rage." the fire crackled between them. "you ask how i continue??" a humourless smile touched his mouth. "because i refuse to give my enemies the satisfaction of my surrender." the words came harder now. "the jedi teach acceptance. the sith demand domination. both are chains." a brief pause, his gaze settling forward. "survival is simpler."

A pastel face would scowl under the firelight at his harsh but true murmur, her soft features turning sharp then...but a false mask to hide her true emotions behind a glare and a frown. Dread, refusal of the truth. Denial of what she knew was fact.

there is no peace

The girl would ball her fingers into tight fists on her lap where they laid, and for a moment he would see the child behind the knight. The girl behind the resolved creature she had no choice but to become.

She would never know the peace. Neither of them will.

"So what then? We live if only to spite those who want to kill us? We survive just to prove we can? Is that all we're meant to be now?"

"It...Seems like a lonely road. That path is only darkness, Maul." The girl cocked her face to the side, her lekku's following the movement of her head as she did so. Emerald eyes searched the burning ember of his gaze, quiet and studious as if expecting more than that. There had to be.

She was well aware he had been a Sith once. But for some reason, he did not carry himself as one despite the nature of his philosophy. Something told her he lived for much more than just revenge.