Divinations: Blood of My Blood

[Darth Decepis]

"Are you?"

The Master's posture relaxed, his hands clasping before him.

"Patience has its uses. It allows you to learn many things. A lifetime ago, I was a young man as you are, Markos. I too was patient."

He put on a sympathetic smile.

"Make sure your patience is tempered with awareness. The time to become what you must become is often not announced, and is usually fleeting. You are my most ambitious son. That is one of many gifts."

He made a casual gesture.

"Your talent in the force can be honed, but your insticts are as natural and unteachable as the affinity for that ethereal power. If you remember that, you will live forever."

[Markos]

Slowly he rose, his shoulders hitching back as he looked from father to mother, then back to his father. His mind brought him about in a whirlwind of memory and old wounds - they had been so saddened, heartbroken at their loss of Cassius and Helios and since then so protective of him. Was that too an act? Had Dan Thrule spoke these very same words to his brothers? Was he now the one to experience the same realizations? Had they even been shown?

Markos coughed lightly, wiping at his lower lip with the back of his forearm while keeping his eyes locked with the Sith's yellow gaze. His normally well-kept hair fell haphazardly, falling into his face. Yet he made no move to sweep each unruly strand away, and in that moment he looked every ounce like the youth his father had been.

"Cassius and Helios... "

[Darth Decepis]

"...were lost in a tragic accident."

He shook his head.

"It could not be helped. Perhaps some time, I will speak more of this."

[Lordess Acera]

She did not give her son the chance to pry further, and with a smooth gait that seemed odd on her aged and Dark-side ravaged frame, the elder Lupine was once more beside her Master.

"Leave us now," she spoke, her voice without patience.

[Markos]

The spell his father held him under was partially broken, and his gaze shifted to his mother. The pools of black that had once been as blue as his own eyes were now boring holes into his very soul, as if to skewer his desires and shut him away from his true place.

Hoping to find some amount of lenience, Markos turned once more to look at the Sith Lord.

[Darth Decepis]

He found none there.

"We will talk later, Markos. You have plenty already to dwell on. Your training will begin tomorrow."

There was no room for bargaining in this. Markos had been given much to think about, but also a gift beyond fathoming.

[Markos]

Markos said nothing in the face of denial, but for a brief moment he felt the previous rush of anger that had flooded into his mind at the beginning of this unsettling night. He wanted to rage and shout out his frustration. He wanted to simply become a storm of anger that needed to wear itself down into a state of rest.

He stepped away from the two, slowly making his way across the open sitting room. His eyes never left the Master and the Apprentice, standing side by side like two shadowy sentinels, their silhouettes unsettling him enough that he breathed a sigh of relief as he moved around a corner, through the closed doorway that led into the rest of their home, and left their presence.

[Lordess Acera]

As the door clicked shut, she blinked. Her mate and Master had not moved at all, but she knew that his mind was not so docile as his body. She pulled in a long breath before finally turning to look up at him.

"If he turns against either of us again as he did this night, I will not stay my hand as I did just now."

She looked away in disgust then.

"I do not care if he is your favorite."

[Darth Decepis]

"It won't happen again," he lied.

Of course, the chance was quite nearly certain that it would happen. It was the nature of Sith. But then again, hadn't he discovered the key to immortality? It was that doubt, and that lust for the statistical outlier, that kept this bizarre family together.