What's Past is Prologue

[Razielle Alastor]

Things would be different, she knew, had Salem put up a fight at all. Encountering little resistance, apart from the expected complexity that was her master's mind, was enough to coax another twitch of a smile on Razielle's lips. And why should Salem fight her? From the very beginning she had been his devoted apprentice, constantly complicit in anything he had asked of her, even if she had not understood it, or wanted it at the time. She had always been his, to shape her or destroy her, as he liked. His ardent, dark bride that wanted only for him. He had only to name his desire and she would focus all of her relentless passion on whatever it was, until they had achieved it. And so she had always been..

Or just maybe he had underestimated her, just a bit.

There was no vanity in the fact that Razielle knew the value of her beauty. Had she not been graced with her looks, there would never have been a question of Queen Mother Ishara desirous of mingling their bloodlines through Tristan. The Hapans themselves would never have accepted a common, lack luster, female as the divine vessel of their next goddess queen. She'd learned to utilize that particular weapon to get her way years before she ever heard the name Salem Ave. It was the perfect prelude, one smile and somehow they all thought her genuine. Even Salem had..

Above him, Razielle leaned forward, her smile changing into something.. just a bit nasty.

She played the role well, the doting and steadfast lover, and it had served her equally as well. Taken her from a remote beach where she had been nothing but a lesser noble, fated to be married off to someone equally as mundane, and now she was the Queen Regent of Hapes.

[Salem Ave]

Salem’s mind was drawn inexorably back, back to their first meeting so many years ago. He had not earned the trust of Adraudia Basille, and yet he styled himself as an ambassador of Onderon. Everyone had believed his story, eagerly eaten up the lies, but none of them had looked so intently at him as Razielle Shadana.

A girl, desperate to be free from a life of restrictions, of performing for the entertainment of petty nobles. They had met under cover of darkness, her eyes locked earnestly to his, her hands sliding up his chest and bunching in the fabric of his shirt. She needed him. She would do anything he wanted, anything. If only he would take her away...

A slow poison began to drip, drip, drip into Salem’s subconscious. On the word of a stranger, Razielle had condemned her entire family to death. The people who had known and loved her best, she had discarded. When they had outlasted their usefulness, when Salem has offered her something more, she had cast them aside without a second thought. Now, it was as if they had never existed, and her heart was utterly free of remorse. If she could do it so easily to them, to Tristan Alastor, then why not -

Salem opened his eyes, looking up into the smile, almost a sneer, twisting Razielle’s lips.

[Razielle Alastor]

When viewed without the rosy lens of affection, their story was very a different one. It was just possible, that one of the greatest players of the game, might have been played himself, for years. It had taken Razielle some effort, but in time she had wound him around her pretty little finger. With the power of her very own pet Sith Master, look at all that she had achieved. She had spent a decade learning from him. All that he had shown her, and all that she had observed of him on her own, unaided. No one could say that she had not grown stronger because of Salem Ave.

Sick satisfaction twisted her smile further. Her eyes that always seemed to shine like gems just for him, now seemed cold with calculation. There was no hiding from that gaze, she pinned him beneath it. She saw him. All the way back through all the various masks he had worn. Lord Protector. Minister of State. Prime Minister. Ambassador. She could, and would, flay each one away until there was nothing left but the stripped, raw truth of him.

[Salem Ave]

Like flesh stripped away, each layer revealed new blood beneath it. Lord Protector of Hapes. Minister of State for the Alliance. Prime Minister of Onderon. Advisor to the Queen of Onderon. Sith Lord. Sith Knight. Jedi Knight. Jedi Padawan. The many faces he had worn, many of them before their time together.

Callidus, the Fanged God, Salem Ave, Glace Kilgannon, Alaric Sunfell, Salemescro Avesca. The shapes of each of them rose up around her, in her mind, like shadows, eclipsing indistinct figures who stood behind each of them. Behind each of his false identities, there were women, reaching out towards him. A red-skinned Twi’lek, covered in tattoos. A white-haired Jedi, stained with the ashes of the Jedi Temple. Ishara Alastor, her throat slit and bubbling with dark blood. Adraudia, entombed. All of his apprentices. Beatrix. Beatrix, in manacles, chained to the throne, rivulets of blood spilling from beneath her crown. Their bodies emaciated, drained of all vitality, and their faces contorted in soundless fear, desire, or fury. As the shadows grew longer, the women were lost, forgotten, and the face of each mask he wore faded into nothing, featureless but for a pair of empty white eyes staring forward.

A voice echoed in Razielle’s mind, a chorus of voices, similar yet different enough that the ear could not help but strain, maddeningly, to listen for the false note that surely betrayed which was the true voice.

There was no mistaking the source of the words. Razielle had heard them before: “Our charade is at an end.”

What had she found, at that final layer of him? Like a scab, picked and picked and picked, nothing good could come of it. What was Salem, truly, beneath all of it? Beneath the ambition, the deception? The deeper Razielle reached into him, questing for the truth, the less of him there was. Only shadows, like smoke. No pride to exploit, no fear, no love - not for her, not for their daughter, not for anything. Faceless shadows with white eyes. A void, cold and empty.

[Razielle Alastor]

It was not that she was unaware of the imposing figures hovering menacingly around the edges of her own mind, and the shattered remains of the women behind them. Just that the only egotistical terror that concerned her presently was the one beneath her hand. As for the shriveled husks of women, their interest to her was negligible. They should have more carefully tended to their own futures, they might have seen her there, smirking back at them.

Even as everything she knew to be true faded away into just...nothing, she remained in control. She had known from the start, nothing about this was going to be pleasant for either of them. That was all there was in this transaction of Baska's.. pain for pain. Find it and use it, or craft it and push it inside. It made no difference once the connection was made, and theirs was strong.. She'd been aware of the damage she was doing to herself while connected to Baska this way, but even that paled in comparison to this. Razielle's face moved a fraction, although her focused eyes never left his.

There was just nothing. Colder than a corpse. Blacker than a sealed tomb. Nothing was there, not even hate, which would have been something at least. Instead, all she could feel in response to her merciless exhumation was indifference...and it made her furious. For the second time that day, she felt a familiar buzzing beneath her skin. It felt like a million spiders wriggling, about to explode out from her pores. She did not see it, but doubtless he did, as the color of her eyes bled away, the gentle violet shade sizzling into mercurial silver.

Asserting some kind of control over the unspent power pulsing inside her, Razielle refused to capitulate with the facts as they were presented. He could torture her later, if that was what he wanted. Around his throat, her fingers tightened. She was in control now. Dropping the reigns on that control, the energy lashed out of her directly into the abysmal darkness. All of the dark thoughts that made Razielle who she was, no apathy there. The complete opposite in fact, one unstoppable cresting wave of every wild emotion contained inside of her, and she had so many..

[Salem Ave]

It was like screaming into the vacuum of space.

While her eyes burned like molten metal, Salem’s white gaze remained constant and unwavering, as cold and distant as two stars. As her hand constricted around his throat, his lips pressed into a thin, dispassionate line. He had been a Jedi once, hadn’t he? Skilled in denying emotions of all kinds, and yet it wasn’t the pious dogma of the Light Side that seemed to fill him now. He could feel her, feel the torrent of emotion cascading from inside of her, and it was though he simply did not care.

Beneath his composed exterior, Salem felt the rush of Razielle’s psychic assault as if it were a physical thing. The cacophony of emotion was so dense that he was impossible to distinguish any one part. It all became... fury.

[Razielle Alastor]

Her graceful dark brow arched, just momentarily.. a flickering expression that seemed to imply acceptance of a defeat.

She simply gave up on him.

What was the point in further exhausting herself on Salem's behalf really? She had all she needed from him. If there was truly nothing left there at their core, nothing except cold indifference and manipulation, then she did not need him anymore.

One by one, all of those vibrant, responsive emotions that comprised who Razielle was retracted from the connection between them. Pulled back like fangs that had been about to bite, but found him no longer worth the effort. Even her grip around his neck slackened.

She could feel the truth of it, as he would be able to as well. If Razielle asked it of her, Baska would continue her training. She need not lose a master at all.

Callidus had taught her many things, but this might have been the most important lesson of them all. The utter fallacy of having placed her faith in someone else. He had won, it seemed. She'd learned how to be like him. How to.. not care at all. Rather than let those emotions back in, she just let them wink out like snuffed candles. They could both live in the cold and dark. She no longer cared, she...only needed him to not die.

[Salem Ave]

The heat of her emotions, swirling angrily inside of him, began to cool. Like a solar wind, scattering into the darkness as quick as it has come. All that fury, all that passion, it pulled back out of him, a tidal wave in retreat. The absence of her, the utter indifference, was more chilling than its presence ever could have been. The grip on Salem’s throat slackened. He swallowed, his lips twitching apart for a moment with something unsaid…

He would destroy Baska. If that was what it took, to keep her, he would do it. There could be no question of Razielle’s loyalty, no chance that she would betray him - no chance that she would… leave him. His mouth turned down at the corners, and Salem reached up into the space between them, sliding claws around her neck.

[Razielle Alastor]

Ahhhh, there it was.

She could feel it now, as surely as her teeth had penetrated a weak spot in the silk currently wound about her hand. It felt something just a little like paranoia, perhaps a little spoonful of panic mixed in. She knew that feeling well. That was almost exactly the one she had succumbed to herself, and it had just about broken her. Just recognizing it for what it was, it was like stepping into it again. It made you question everything. Did you really know the people closest to you? Did they mean the things they said? Would they betray you? Was anything true at all?

Like the silk, she had made a vulnerable spot, all that remained now was rip it apart. Rip him apart.

Razielle did not shrink away from the claws around her own neck, she leaned forward into him. Her fingers flexed, just once before going still once more, gripping him quite firmly again. At once, she ceased everything she was doing in her mind. In the space of one beat of her heart and the next, she was once more exactly as she had always been. Exactly as she appeared to be. His.

Her mouth was just a breath away from his. "Enough?"

[Salem Ave]

There was a moment, a flicker of possibility, in which he felt Razielle just a breath away from tearing into him. Eviscerating him, seizing on that seething sensation of covetous desire to dismantle him entirely. Instinct and reflexes honed over years in service to the Dark Side compelled Salem to do more than just lie beneath her, but he pushed down the impulse.

Seconds later, the threat evaporated.

The tension in the connection between them shifted to something more familiar.

“Enough,” he breathed, lifting his head to brush his lips against hers, while his hold on her throat tightened.

[Razielle Alastor]

The residual effects of the attack on her had lasted for hours, dug deep into her subconscious like a burrowing insect. She had not rid the infestation by herself. Salem was stronger.. He also had the benefit of being tested with this trick of Baska's by someone who truly was that devoted to him. Razielle had no desire to leave any lasting damage with him, and inflicting that kind of torment on him brought her no real pleasure.

What did please her though, was to prevail in rattling him, as he had requested it.

Demonstration concluded, body and mind driven to the brink of frenzy twice now, Razielle trembled a bit. There was nothing so reassuring to her as Salem's kisses, or his claws around her throat. What might have seemed like a gesture of punishment to some felt only like a caress of belonging to her. Another fancy collar, one made of his flesh and bone..

"I would never betray you...", she managed between covetous kisses. "..or leave you. Not for anyone, or anything."

Doubtless, these things went without saying, yet they came tumbling from her lips all the same.

[Salem Ave]

The worm of paranoia did not shrivel up and die right away, but it’s gnawing at Salem’s subsconscious became less insistent. He had known the purpose of the exercise all along, and yet it was a testament to Razielle’s growing power that he had, undeniably, felt an unsettling surge of betrayal at the thought of being replaced, usurped. He had shown her what he felt she must fear the most and, deftly, with all the finesse of a well-timed riposte that would have pleased her old fencing tutors, she had turned it back on him.

It wasn’t fear or doubt he felt, now; it was pride. Pride that squashed the last traces of paranoia, smothered them. So many had pledged themselves to him, to Callidus, but only she had the potential and the power to truly stand not only as his apprentice but as his equal. Pulling his lips from hers, he squeezed her throat tighter and smiled at the little gasp of breath she made, the shudder of her pulse beginning to quicken against his touch.

She could not leave him, any more than he could leave her. The two of them were inextricably bound, to death and whatever darkness lay beyond.

[Razielle Alastor]

The slightly higher pitched catch of her breath, followed by a reflexive swallow of her throat, obviously did not bother Razielle. Had she been able, she might have purred.

Her own white hand fell away from Salem's throat, both hands then drifting to his shoulders, pulling him up closer to her, fancy silk dress becoming bunched around her thighs. She needed Salem that close. Never satisfied until there was nothing between them, not even space. Still riding the intensity of so much channeled emotion, she could think of no better way to have the excess be consumed.

Be consumed.

Little points of light blinked at the edges of her periphery, hypoxic stars beginning to shoot through her brain. From the delicate bones of her bound hand, she could feel something.. serpentine.. slither through her veins. It was a dark, potentially catastrophic, bond Salem had placed on them, and she would not have it any other way.

[Salem Ave]

Had a member of the Chume’doro walked into the tower at that moment, it would have looked as if the Lord Protector was about to murder Ta'a Vaisseu Ereneda. She was clutching him, yes, kneeling over hiim with the hunger of a lover, but it was his clawed fingers that closed around her throat, holding her in place, smiling at the sound of her struggling for breath. It would only take a matter of moments longer; as her consciousness began to drift into oxygen-deprived darkness, his white eyes would be the last thing she saw.

[Razielle Alastor]

Surrendering was a concept that was normally anathema to Razielle's nature. On the contrary, she was unyielding in a way that only someone born to nobility could be. Maybe that was why she liked having the option denied her.. but only by him. Surrendering to Salem was it's own victory.

She felt weightless. A little cold. A little far away, despite their closeness. Beginning to drift into darkness and oblivion. A sensible person would be afraid, but Razielle felt euphoric as her oxygen starved cells, all of them, pulsed with sensation. It should have been terrifying, hearing the reflexive choking sounds of her own throat. Feeling her own fingertips, that had just been gripping him so insistently, slipping away because she was too weak to keep them upon his shoulders. Feeling her empty lungs fluttering like deflated balloons beneath her ribs, chest trembling with the demand for air. She did not fight, not even then. Not even as she felt like she was falling, her body going as limp and pliant as a doll, one that twitched a final few shudders before going still. Glazed violet eyes, that had been locked on his just one second before, were now unfocused.

[Salem Ave]

When her body sagged against him, Salem relented. Enough, he thought. She had surrendered enough. Though the darkness that bound them together thrived on their willingness, and indeed their eagerness, to push one another to the precipice of collapse, being pulled back from that perilous edge was just as thrilling. Salem’s claws shifted from a vice-like hold on her neck to a lighter touch on her jaw, holding her head up so that he could watch the spark reappear behind her eyes.

[Razielle Alastor]

The one thing Razielle was not afraid of was that Salem would actually kill her. She was secure with the knowledge that, even right there on the cusp of asphyxiation, she had never been held safer. The claws around her neck weren't harming her, so much as pushing her, seeing how much she could take.. just a little longer.. The last shiver of her coincided with the pressure on her neck relenting, and air finally flowing back in.

Her pulse was weak, fluttering in erratic spasms as life rushed back through her, but she could not hear it roaring for oxygen. The only thing of any importance were the white eyes watching her, and her immediate recognition of who held her enervated body.

"Salem..", she managed a breathless rasp, reaching for him with strength returning to her fingers.

[Salem Ave]

Later...

It was difficult to mark the passage of time on Hapes by the setting of the sun, when the planet lived in almost perpetual daylight. Hours could have trickled by and no one would have gone looking for Ta'a Vaisseu Ereneda and her consort. There were matters to attend to however and so, in time, Salem and Razielle emerged together from the royal tower. Major Lecavalier was waiting at the exit. She looked the two of them over, with no attempt to hide her scrutiny. Though Salem had left behind the overcoat that finished his uniform as Lord Protector, there wasn’t a wrinkle on him, save for a slight tousling of his hair. Razielle was likewise composed.

“There’s food on it's way to the small dining room,” the Major said. “Ta’din Tankryed has been informed.”

[Razielle Alastor]

Razielle had changed her gown, retiring the Hapan blue and gold for something cooler against her flush skin. The wine red silk she had chosen had a low cut in the back, leaving her bare to the small of her back, and was sleeveless. The front draped from around a smaller golden collar fastened around her neck. Not one designed to conceal anything, simply the nature of the dress. Likewise, a belt of gold emphasized the curve of her still small body.

Apart from the two of them, Baska was the only other one who knew of her condition. It seemed their new acquaintance had been the first to know, in fact. With Beatrix, by this point she had been what Lira had referred to as 'a lovely shade of green' most of the day. Curiously, with this child Razielle still felt fine. It seemed she would be spared that particular trial this time. Instead, what she felt was over-heated almost all the time. Her skin felt too sensitive for formal attire. She had been favoring lighter, airy materials since their official return to the Fountain Palace. Also, she was ravenous.. but not for food.

Her amaranthine eyes slid to Major Lecavalier, a slight arching of one dark brow carried many implications, and no explanations with it. The major was a Hapan woman, Razielle doubted any explanations would have been necessary anyway.

"You can tell them we'll take it outside.." Razielle said, without caring for any plans that had already been made. She wanted the sea breeze against her skin, and did not care who was inconvenienced by it.

The small dining room was anything but small. It was merely slightly smaller than the formal dining room. One side of the space was lined with sets of Hapan doors, boasting sea-themed colored glass, that opened outward onto a stone carved veranda, above the waves below. There were even less informal tables and chairs, as well as cushioned lounges and couches strewn about. They would be much more comfortable, and the Major could be comfortable knowing there was only one way in or out, short of dropping into the sea.

[Baska Tankreyd]

Time had compressed and distended in its unexpected patterns, since Baska had walked out of the chambers where she had met with Razielle and Salem earlier on. The time spent assuaging the searing pain pulverizing her mind over and over again had left her with needs to be sated. The four servants of House Alastor were barely leaving, one with a limp, all of them with cuts and scratches, and looking fairly exhausted. She had done no permanent damage to them, for she knew how to be a proper guest, even in her most improper moments. The sensual overwhelm had been a temporary balm on the disquiet in her soul. They were definitely well trained and complied to orders as she saw fit. Life was what it was, and it took a lot for Baska's thoughts to dull out, to set forlorn times ablaze via forcing her senses over the edge on numerous occasions. It was much to her chagrin that she never seemed able to get past her late husband, and his unique way of asserting the most enticing dominion over her; but things were what they were, and the Sith Master had learned to compose with the trials of life. In the end, it could only make her stronger.

She was refreshed and dressed in a red gown, as she was escorted to the terrace where her hosts awaited her. She appreciated the sea breeze, as it reminded her of Iego and her own residence. She smiled to the couple. "Good evening," she said with ease, quite the contrast with the Sith duel that had occurred most vibrantly in the chambers a few hours ago. She took place in a comfortable armchair, so she could look at the two other Sith, as well as enjoy the view. She was inwardly amused that both Razielle and her had opted for red outfits.