#were basically savages - he is INDELICATE to say the least | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

doorsclosingslowly · 7 years

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Lithops

Kycina didn’t meet Sidious, the day she decided to smuggle her son off-planet and into freedom. Thirty-four years later, Maul is a dedicated Jedi Knight, and he’s content to ignore his unfortunate beginnings. The appearance of another Dathomiri zabrak on the battlefields of the Clone Wars makes that considerably harder.

Jedi Maul; Witches of the Mist AU; 6.5k; read on AO3

Drought

The comm system flashes insistently, just when Scimitar is about to begin her slow long dive over nightly Kooriva. An uncommon enough sight in and of itself, the incoming calls signal, but it’s especially worrying now, when Maul was just about to disable every system apart from life support in order to drift down undetected. Being contacted shouldn’t happen. It doesn’t figure into the plan. It shouldn’t even be possible, really, after the myriad precautions they’ve taken, including a complete scrubbing of Scimitar’s telecommunications facilities.

The mission’s delicate: Padawan Gwyolduhbeccu has secured an unpaid internship in the Trade Federation’s local office, and Maul himself is infiltrating Senator Passel Argente’s home staff and investigating possible Sith ties, without drawing any attention. Without notifying him—notifying the traitor Dooku, notifying the Galactic Senate—of the Jedi Order’s suspicions.

It’s dangerous, and more than slightly illegal. It requires extreme discretion.

That’s why they sent Maul, after all.

(His infiltrations may be called dark, by those who value looking pure over Jedi lives, but the Council knows better. Maul knows better. The good of the many outweighs a Knight’s image.)

This mission is delicate. No-one has this frequency. No-one, apart from select members of the Council.

Padawan Becs is just as unnerved, apparently. She moans in agitation. Her claw pauses over the console, and waits to poke it until Maul has given his permission.

Maul glances at the chronometer and sighs. This is unwise. The Trade Federation could be scanning the space around Kooriva for any type of signal. They certainly have the credits for data mining centers with sophisticated algorithms and an army of sentient overseers; the collection of ridiculously large quantities of irrelevant data should provide no deterrence. However, weighing the slightly increased risk of discovery against the certainty of lecturing, when they return home after the scheduled month of communications blackout… The consequences are nowhere near comparable, but he truly does not enjoy being accused of not taking the Council seriously. He authorizes the call and says, “Good afternoon, Master Windu.”

“Re-route immediately.” No time for politeness, then. Just as well.

“I apologize, Master Windu, but this current mission is extremely time-critical and above all, requires stealth,” Maul says, even while he brings the engines back online. Three months of intel gathering, weeks of prep, the soft Koorivan inflections they’ve trained into their accents. The internship application, with its carefully calibrated set of competences and loyalties and naïveté, and the pitiful story of a wookiee orphan, so far from Kashyyyk, just yearning for a chance to prove herself. The complete overhaul and ghastly repainting of Scimitar. All for nothing.

He pulls the ship around and guns the engines.

Carefully, Maul breathes out his irritation before he adds, “Flying this close to Kooriva could possibly alert Senator Argente—”

“Re-route. I’m sending the exact coordinates now.”

“But, Master, that’s just… empty space?” Gwyolduhbeccu asks when she’s set the navcomputer.

Maul repeats the question in Basic.

Master Windu shakes his head. “It’s the location of a Separatist frigate. The projected location, based on realspace travel at constant speed without altering its trajectory. It should be accurate for at least half an hour, so hurry. Master Kenobi and Skywalker have tracked Savage Opress there, Dooku’s new apprentice. He’s murdered the Toydarian king and abducted the corpse.”

“So, this is a reinforcement?” Maul remembers meeting Dooku in person, dimly, when he was a new Padawan and Dooku hadn’t yet turned traitor. He was an impressive swordsman, and cold. Maybe he just didn’t like Master Windu.

He’s never met the new Sith—his own modus operandum is infiltration and plausible deniability in service of all beings that live in the galaxy, not sudden mindless carnage, and so their paths are not likely to cross—but he has heard of Devaron’s fate. Of the slaughter of the Jedi there. Increasing their numbers on the frigate is prudent, regardless of Obi-Wan and Skywalker’s undeniable skill.

It’s flattering that Master Windu has recognized Maul as a match for the Sith’s apparent brutal strength, but… “Was it necessary to terminate my mission? Surely there are other adept fighters in the vicinity.”

“There are no zabraks in close proximity.”

Maul’s glove creaks. “Master—”

“Dathomiri hybrids are a very tribal people,” Master Windu says, as if Maul didn’t know this, hadn’t researched and rejected the planet that spat him out. As if he hadn’t been watched like a farlus hawk as a baby, after the desperate Nightsister that may have been his mother had chanced upon a travelling Jedi and handed him over, her parting gift nothing but life and the markings that wind around his body and stink of dark magic. Nightbrothers are tribal, Master Windu says, as if it was new information. As if Maul hadn’t been watched, not just for the darkness of his blood but for the so-called inborn need for affection.

The meticulous research he did on the Sith until Master Nu tossed him out of the library, the way he studied the pitfalls of the dark side that he was going to avoid—luminous beings are we, and Maul will be a great Jedi, it is his choice alone and biology is nothing—it’s always been taken as a marker of something indelibly sinister.

The missions he takes provoke whispers of a congenital darkside taint he cannot escape, when they truly are nothing but evidence of his utter dedication to the Jedi Order. His reluctance to order his Padawan into battle is not prudence, apparently. It isn’t even classed as ambition, although training a youngling to knighthood and therefore receiving the rank of Master is certainly easier if the Padawan isn’t shot dead. No. It’s being tribal.

He pointedly does not seethe. It’s hard.

“He will recognize you. Opress has murdered many of our most capable Knights and Masters, but he’s still a nightbrother. I do not believe he would attack his own kin the same way.”

This is too much. Maul loses his grip on serenity. “You’re terminating my mission because of my biological species.”

Master Windu sighs. “Knight Maul—”

“I am one of the only Jedi who could challenge this new Sith on my own and win, and you know this. I am disciplined. I am powerful. I have completed every mission you have ever sent me on.” Every mission, apart from Kooriva, now. Blast it all.

“Maul—”

“Few Jedi have mastered Vaapad, and I am one of them. You trained me yourself. You trained me. You were proud of me, you said. And now, you are sending me into this fight because both me and the Sith happen to have horns.”

“I did not say that.”

Really? Maul raises a single contemptuous eyebrow. He makes sure his left hand is in full view of the holocom lens before he waggles index and middle finger and enunciates, “Opress ‘would not attack his own kin’ is how I believe you phrased it.”

The miniature blue Master Windu looks at him, completely unimpressed.

Kriff. And in front of Gwyolduhbeccu, too. “I apologize, Master,” Maul says. Not, ‘I don’t know what came over me.’ That would be a lie, and he’s been enough of a bad example today. Not, ‘I was wrong.’ Still, he shouldn’t have complained. He feels his anger, and then he lets go.

“Accepted.” Master Windu’s face comes closer. He’s bending over the holocom, now, for some reason. It’s as if he’s whispering a secret. Maul doesn’t want to be more curious than angry, but he is. “I am not just sending you because you are born of Dathomir, Maul. This is a shatterpoint. I have felt it. Somehow, this fight with Savage Opress will matter. I trust you will treat this situation with the gravity it deserves. Do not listen to your pride. Listen to the force.”

“ETA five minutes for the rendezvous with the frigate, Master. May the force be with you,” Maul says, and switches off the holocomm.

Becs grins.

“It is beyond me why you’re so elated, Padawan. We’re flying into an active war zone. This is a code esk mission, now, and you’re going to keep your feet in the ship, your eyes on the comm and the engines hot, in case Kenobi and Skywalker need sudden evac when I find them. You may gun down any approaching droids.”

“Don’t be grumpy, Master,” Gwyolduhbeccu moans. “Master Windu loves you too.”

Maul shakes his head in mock despair, and then he stretches out his arms as well as he can behind the steering wheel. There’s no time or room for proper meditation, but still, it is better than nothing, and he should be calm. He should be loose-limbed, not cramped from hours of flight and bad news and the conversations about Dathomir he cannot seem to escape.

Savage Opress is not to be underestimated. Their unfortunate biological connection has reawakened criticisms Maul thought were laid to rest long ago.

This fight will matter.

Water

Scimitar bombards the Separatist frigate’s door security system with signals and access requests until it is completely overwhelmed. She swoops into the frigate’s belly and sets down in a corner, quietly. There are no battle droids around, which is a pleasant surprise, since they can just cloak the ship and hide if no-one has observed their arrival. The less damage to his ship, and the less danger for Gwyolduhbeccu, the better.

The landing bay is far enough away that the battle is nothing but distant screams, subtle wafts of burnt flesh and, weirdly, electric static.

Maul doesn’t bother contacting Obi-Wan: it’s clear where he’ll find the other Jedi. He follows his nose.

He stalks towards the fight leisurely. There’s no need for undignified panting when surely, Kenobi and Skywalker will last another minute. A running fighter won’t impress his enemies, after all, and even though his disguise for Kooriva doesn’t feature a cloak to flare out dramatically behind him—there was no time to change—he can at least try to impress. Aesthetics have never won a battle on their own, but neither do they hurt.

It’s a good decision, although for a very different reason.

The battle is not quite as he expected.

To begin with, neither Obi-Wan Kenobi nor Skywalker are involved. Instead, there is the Separatist leader, completely focused on a harsh fight, his back against the wall and his lightsaber on the floor. Dooku is facing Asajj Ventress, and Savage Opress who appears to have betrayed him as well. Sith lacking in honor! It doesn’t come as a surprise. As far as Maul is concerned, they can wipe each other out in peace.

There’s no reason to risk uniting the warring Sith against a common foe. Let the fight run its course, and the innate weakness of their philosophy be their downfall. He’ll deal with the leftovers.

Maul ducks behind the doorframe and watches.

“Finish him… now,” Ventress is snarling at Opress, and the massive zabrak advances on Dooku. Maul grimaces. This is painful. As if it wasn’t bad enough that the count gave his zabrak apprentice a saberstaff… Opress is clearly half-trained and unsuitable. He lacks all necessary grace. He is almost offensively clumsy with it, opting for slow strikes with too much power behind them and leaving openings in his attacks that would be nothing short of deadly, if Dooku still had a weapon.

Well, Dooku doesn’t even need a weapon, apparently: he raises his hands and blasts Opress against the wall with Sith lightning. His victim curls over and groans in pain, and Maul’s nostrils are flooded with burning flesh. So that’s the smell that led him… How long has this been going on…?

Ventress takes over. She’s much better, although not yet Dooku’s equal. As soon as the zabrak has recovered enough, he rejoins the fight with yet another inept swing and no defense whatsoever. The electricity hits him again. And again.

“Get up! We must defeat him,” Ventress exhorts her co-conspirator. Dooku has reclaimed his lightsaber, she must be starting to worry. “Get up!”

Another lightning strike.

“Kill him! Kill him, you fool!”

Opress is electrocuted yet again. He stays on the floor this time, whimpering and panting. “I can’t. He’s too powerful,” he grinds out.

Maul silently congratulates him on his grasp on reality. Better late than never. It has always seemed irrational that a Sith Master would train their apprentice to the best of their ability, when the apprentice is supposed to eventually kill them. The reasoning is almost as alien as the thought of wanting to kill his own Master. (It’s reassuring, the opaqueness, in its own way.)

Apparently Dooku’s found his own solution to the conundrum: it’s plain to see that his students are but weapons, cultivated with a very limited skill-set. Hurting Opress is like shooting an oversized skirm turtle that’s been turned on its back. Useless hard top shell and soft exposed belly, and it can’t even flee. This is honorless. Not a fight but a game, toying with his opponents. It’s becoming obvious, now, that neither acolyte will ever manage to defeat Dooku.

They can’t, but Maul might. This must be why the force told Master Windu to send him to this place. This is Maul’s chance to end the war. He ignites his blades.

Asajj Ventress doesn’t want to believe in her defeat just yet. She hisses at the cowering Opress, “Your weakness will not be my downfall!”

Dooku smirks. “A failed apprentice makes for a foolish Master.”

The shockwave is so strong that Maul loses his footing. It bowls him over, and when he’s scrambled up again and braced for an attack that isn’t coming, he sees Ventress and Dooku raised up in the air and being strangled, and then bashed against the wall. The words must have triggered something in Opress, some hitherto unthought idea. It’s a reservoir of internal strength Maul wouldn’t have credited the zabrak with.

A reservoir that’s ultimately useless. It’s lost to simple stupidity, because Savage Opress doesn’t press his advantage. When he attacks again, it’s with his lightsaber.

Predictably, the Sith lightning hits.

This time, Savage Opress doesn’t get back up.

Dooku attacks Ventress and jumps down a vent; Ventress follows.

Maul wonders whether he’s just watched them kill their apprentice, their tool, and whether he should have intervened. Whether he should have cared. It’s not tribal loyalty. It’s perfectly legitimate generalized compassion, awareness of even the lowliest beings. The zabrak was a Sith, but he was also, plainly, not a good Sith. His fate was sealed the moment he joined the fight. He never stood a chance.

The pity was ill-judged, it turns out quickly.

Improbably, Savage Opress isn’t dead yet.

He growls and runs up to the closed vent in search for the enemies who have deserted him, having shrugged off the volts that hit his chest as if they were just an inconvenience. As if he wasn’t a person, a being who can be hurt, but just a murderous machine. Does he actually want to fight more, when they nearly killed him? Does he know he almost died? Does he care?

The strange invulnerability—if that’s what it is, and not a death wish—quickly becomes a more pressing problem. Savage Opress turns around, and he spots Maul. He freezes. In a loud, hoarse voice, he asks, “Brother?”

Maul should be tracking Count Dooku. He should hurry. There’s nothing of any importance left in this room: Savage Opress is but an inept pawn.

Still, the Sith has noticed him. Maul won’t be able to leave without a fight, and so he raises his saberstaff. Pity is superfluous now. Savage’s brush with death shall become an advantage. A Jedi is kind, but he also knows true kindness is protecting the many, and not mourning the one. Let this pretender see how a real fighter uses his weapon.

Then, the word penetrates his mind, or maybe Opress just says it again. “Brother?”

Brother?!

Maul should be tracking Count Dooku.

Brother.

Maul should be gone already. He should be cutting off the damnable head of the Separatist leader, ignoring this mystery. He must choose: an end to the war, or whatever this is. His service and dedication could be recognized by the entire Jedi Order. Or, he could talk to Savage.

In the end, he doesn’t make a choice. He hears the clunk of an escape pod detaching.

The opportunity was there, and he missed it.

When Maul looks up, his eyes meet Savage’s again, and the massive zabrak takes a tiny step. To him, at least, Ventress and Dooku’s flight is apparently forgotten. The fight, the blaster bolts hailing down on him from Separatist battle droids that enter the room, the plumes of smoke on his armor—forgotten. His head jerks left and right, and then he looks at Maul again. His arms drop by his side and dangle, and the ignited blade starts burning a hole into the durasteel. He lurches forward, dragging the weapon along and it cuts a path through the ship floor, and through the corpse of the Toydarian king that lies there. The stench makes Maul gag. Opress doesn’t appear to notice.

He stumbles. He goes down on one knee—another blaster bolt impacts against his shoulder—and when he pushes himself up again with both hands, he forgets the saberstaff on the ground. He abandons it. His eyes never once leave Maul.

“Please, Feral,” the Sith begs. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Another helpless, unsteady step. Even less fluid than his movement during the fight, Maul notes distantly.

Is this trickery? The Sith are not above underhandedness and deceit, and this move certainly threw Maul off guard. Who is Feral? However, no-one this atrocious at wielding a saberstaff could possibly outwit Maul. Savage Opress appears to be genuinely distressed. He doesn’t look capable of more than brute strength, and this doesn’t look like a trick.

The Sith is still approaching, mesmerized by Maul’s face and oblivious, drawn like a moth to a flame. A water-starved dinko to a well. A gormless Sith to a Jedi with an ignited lightsaber.

Count Dooku’s escape pod is long gone. Ventress isn’t here. It’s not just fighting that wins the wars, though, it’s also intelligence, and who knows what information Savage Opress may have picked up during his unfortunate months as Dooku’s acolyte. Facts that he might not even be aware he knows, but Maul is a skilled interrogator. Maybe he hasn’t totally wasted the opportunity Master Windu gave him.

Usually, there’s no point in capturing enemy combatants. They’re droids, and they can be shut off and wiped remotely. This is different.

“Feral, please. Help me,” Savage Opress begs.

New leaf

Opress is of no help whatsoever on the way back to the ship. He is limp and hanging over Maul’s shoulder, barely managing to drag his feet up at the required times. He’s taken scores of blaster-bolts and lightning strikes with little visible reaction but the occasional howl of rage, and Maul would have almost expected him keep shrugging it off forever, but that was apparently all it took to slump him over: it’s as if Maul’s appearance has finally cut his strings. Or maybe, he was due a collapse for weeks. Maul’s seen it—he’s been it, although not very often—a survivor clinging on by a thread until the danger finally passes.

Apparently, Maul’s presence is enough to render safe an entire battlefield. It’s a massive inconvenience, considering the zabrak’s ludicrously tall and heavy frame, compared to every Dathomiri hybrid ever recorded, and the battle droids that Maul must fend off while carrying him. It’s also weirdly flattering.

Maul drags his prisoner up to Scimitar’s cargo ramp. He puts him down so he can open it.

“Master, let me help!” That’s Gwyolduhbeccu, right next to them and not in the ship anymore, needlessly endangering herself counter to his express instructions. She looks down at him and his burden, and then she looks at Maul’s left hand, the one that’s steadying Savage’s head. Her eyes go wide: the grip’s too loose for restraint, and she knows that, too. “What’s going on? You brought him here? That’s Savage Opress? I can help, Master, he’s only about as big as me!” True, and irrelevant.

“Cockpit… now,” Maul gasps out, and then he scowls. That wasn’t very authoritative. He’s actually out of breath. Damn that oversized zabrak. And damn Maul himself for whatever he’s doing right now.

Luckily, he’s managed to instill a modicum of obedience in his Padawan, at least. She’s gone within seconds, and when she talks to him again, it’s over the speaker system and after he’s dragged Savage into an empty corner inside Scimitar. He would have put him into his own berth, but Maul’s arms already hurt.

“Where are we going? Where are Skywalker and Kenobi? Do you need a medcenter? Does he?”

“No…” Maul replies. “At least… not yet. Take off, destination irrelevant.” The engines whirr, and he runs a gentle finger along the root of a broken horn when the other zabrak flinches at the sound. They packed no shock binders for the Kooriva mission but, somehow, this should be sufficient.

Savage’s eyes clear slightly and he mumbles, “Brother…”

The speakers release a high-pitched, warbling scream. “Brother? Master, what’s going on?”

“Contact Master Windu. Tell him, ‘Extraction complete.’ Dooku and Ventress fled the ship. Nothing else. He was right, obviously, as ever. Ping Obi-Wan’s comm. Master Kenobi. He did not join the battle. Then, shut off Scimitar’s communications systems and homing beacon. Downgrade mission to code nern.”

“Master?”

“He’s… remarkably docile.”

“So he’s not actually a Sith?”

“Probably. Inconclusive.”

“Master Kenobi says hi, he and Skywalker are fine. I left Master Windu a message. Are you sure we shouldn’t head for Republic space? Oh, right, I see. You want to present the intelligence yourself.” As usual, Gwyolduhbeccu carries the bulk of their conversation, while Maul mostly nods. It’s a lazy but effective substitute for code, provided the third party does not speak Shyriiwook. “Do you need me to do anything? Random hyperlane jumps to prevent tracking? Good Jedi, bad Jedi? Food? Talk to—”

“Not yet. I will treat his injuries first.”

The key to gaining intel is establishing trust. Biology—and looking like whoever ‘Feral’ is—appears to have given Maul a boost, but taking care of the zabrak’s wounds should help the process. Besides, the electric shocks must have hurt.

Maul takes off Savage’s vambraces, and there is no protest. No reaction of any kind. He finds the rivets where shoulder and upper arm armor attach, and drops the heavy dented metal onto the floor. A loud clang, and not even a blink. The boot armor comes off, and the boots follow. The belt. He zips open the leather vest.

There are holes in the soft undershirt. Sickly green light wafts in and out of them, as thick and soft as smoke. This bears investigating. He’s never heard of anything like it, although admittedly, Maul has never met a Sith before today.

“Can you lift your arms?” Maul asks, and then repeats it impatiently. Savage must have either drifted off, or he’s assumed that the words weren’t meant for him.

When he’s finally got rid of the undershirt, Maul hisses in sympathy. There are large burns and scabs all over Savage’s body, concentrated at the shoulders and arms, where the electricity must have heated his armor until it melted through leather or skin. It’s where the weird light is coming from, too, those spots where the skin is broken. A stray thought. Not Sith, Dathomiri…

They’re probably painful, Maul decides, but not lethal. The burns are of varying ages, some old and badly healed and suppurative, some obviously from today. If they haven’t killed Opress yet, they probably won’t.

More worrying are the shallow gasps that Savage takes, and the invisible damage the current has done to his brain and heart.

There’s no bacta tank on Scimitar. It was removed in preparation for Kooriva, deemed much too suspicious. There are field medkits hidden behind select wall panels, though, and with a careless flick of his wrist Maul unscrews the panel next to his berth and gently lets it drop to the floor. He floats the medkit into his hands. There: painkillers, bacta, and the blood testing kit that’s capable of genetic fingerprinting. Bacta first. It’s not a bacta shake, unfortunately, but a gel for topical application. This is going to taste even more dreadful, but it’s what they have, and there’s internal damage to treat. Maul chooses the one with a thin plasteel tube as an applicator. Maybe Opress will manage to avoid his taste buds.

“Drink this.”

Savage obeys. He isn’t careful enough with squeezing the gel into his esophagus. Gets something into his mouth. He grimaces and sticks out his bloody tongue, flicks it back inside, then rubs it against his incisors as if he could scrub off the taste. It’s the first normal expression he’s had, neither menacing nor suffering nor blank, and despite himself, Maul smiles.

“It will help, I believe. Here, take this one as well. You were subjected to electric shock several times. You didn’t go into cardiac arrest, but there are other likely consequences. Calcification. Muscle spasms that break your bones, and you were thrown into the wall as well. You have difficulty breathing. You likely have broken ribs. There’s also… Brain damage. Memory problems. Difficulty regulating your emotions. Do you want to be in chronic pain?” Really, he should be in medcenter. But Maul cannot let a Sith loose on the galaxy, and this is better than nothing. This will cement his trust.

Savage wraps his arms around his chest, and winces. “But Master Dooku…”

“He tried to kill you,” Maul says.

“Master Dooku… He said it helped… I needed to… connect to my hatred. Strengthen my connection to the force.”

“He has electrocuted you before?”

“He told me that… anger was my strength. And it was so. I could obey him better, I could lift the… columns.”

“Convenient.” Maul deliberately softens his tone. “It’s strange, don’t you think? He used Sith lightning to teach you, and then he tried to kill you with Sith lightning. It is the same means, and the same outcome. Pain. Why should those actions be different? He hurt you twice, not once.”

“You are wise, brother,” Savage says.

The word’s a reminder. Kneeling down, Maul gently takes Savage’s wrist and pokes the index finger with the needle from the blood testing kit.

“It’s just another test,” he reassures Savage. Comparing genetics, to be precise, and he’ll look at the results later.

No time for his curiosity now, because this conversation is moving towards a breakthrough: Savage appears to have grasped that his fall was a mistake. That Sith training is abuse. It should be easy to flip his allegiance. Too easy—why would he join them, if he knows what Maul does? Greed for power? He didn’t appear at all powerful, in that fight. If he fell for strength, it must have been a sore disappointment. Naïveté?

“Brother, I am so grateful, but…” Savage pulls the hand whose wrist Maul is still holding, gently, until it slides out of his grasp. “How are you here?”

Blast. The strange convenience of ‘Feral’ has possibly run its course.

Time to improvise.

“Why shouldn’t I be here with you, brother?” So Savage and his kin were separated, it seems. Savage obviously cares for him, and it’s likely the affection is mutual. Maybe Savage left him when he joined the Sith… How would Maul feel, if Obi-Wan suddenly left the Order? Unlikely as that is. “I was worried about you. I missed you, and so I searched for you.”

“Brother, I killed you!”

What.

“I broke your neck with my own hands! I felt the life ebb from your body and I didn’t—”

“You killed me?!” Maul suddenly realizes how close he is to Savage. To his hands, which apparently… He’s been lulled into a false sense of security. He’s never put much stock in biological Dathomiri loyalty, but he must have believed it about Savage Opress. He doesn’t even have a lightsaber here, just this blood test needle.

He scuttles backwards.

Savage doesn’t follow. He doesn’t even look. He just breaks down in tears.

“Brother, I’m so sorry. I can’t—” Savage chokes on his tongue. “I tried to protect you, please… Please believe me. I followed the Sister so She wouldn’t take you… I didn’t know… There’s something wrong with me, something She did, and I couldn’t disobey, I couldn’t…” Snot runs out of his nose. His breath isn’t just labored anymore, it’s fast and shallow. Hyperventilation. It takes a few minutes until Savage can speak again. “I wanted to die and then I didn’t, I didn’t think anything and I forgot… I…”

“What happened to you then?” Maul asks quietly.

“The Mother gave me to Master Dooku,” Savage says. “I passed her test. I didn’t think I would see you again. I thought you were dead. I thought…” He wraps his arms around his mottled, burned, bruised chest, and he cries and cries.

Maul sits down next to him again. He lets Savage lean against his shoulder.

It takes a long time until Savage has exhausted himself, until his pain’s run out of his eyes and nostrils and made Maul’s shirt uncomfortably sticky. It takes hours, and Maul’s leg is asleep for most of it, but he doesn’t dare move. He doesn’t talk. He says something once, after the first hour has passed, tells him it wasn’t his fault. It feels stupid. Inadequate. Irrelevant. He doesn’t do anything to alleviate his boredom, apart from running his finger down Savage’s horns occasionally. He remembers the gesture from his time as a youngling. It was comforting, then.

When Savage is finally asleep, Maul heaves him up onto his sleeping berth and covers him with a blanket, and then another. He takes the bantha wool comforter from the other berth as well. It can’t hurt. He’s read that Dathomir has a warm climate.

Before he leaves for the cockpit, he takes one last look at his… prisoner, and then he picks up the blood testing kit.

“99.99% probability of genetic match. Congratulations, you have a twin brother,” it beeps.

Bloom

When Maul wakes up, Gwyolduhbeccu is long gone, but that’s normal: It’s probably noon on Kashyyyk right now, as she likes to tell him whenever she wakes him with her energetic fresher singing. Less expected is the crick in Maul’s neck, from sleeping in the captain’s chair. Why are they still on the ship, shouldn’t they be on Kooriva… Danger. Sith. Victim. Brother. Twin. Sith, here, runs through his mind while he jumps off the seat and runs and draws his lightsaber. No matter what he is—bringing Opress onto the ship was a mistake.

A tinny voice rings out of the cargo hold, where the sleeping berths are. Where the Sith is.

“—fighting for the Separatists?” it asks, and he calms slightly. His Padawan is safe. Alive, anyway. She must be, if she’s repurposing Scimitar’s speaker system to translate her Shyriiwook.

Apparently, she’s putting some of his lectures on interrogation methods into practice. She’s clumsy and rough with them, too obvious in her intentions, but that is more Maul’s fault than hers. He should have questioned the zabrak last night, and instead he just listened. Besides, she doesn’t have much practice, due to a very basic fact Maul failed to consider before training her: in many of echelons of society, it’s difficult for a wookiee to have a casual conversation. Few have the patience for listening to text-to-speech tools, or respect for those with vocal chords unsuited to Galactic Basic.

Maul’s close enough that he can see Gwyolduhbeccu now, relaxed and still in her red-black tie-dye sleep tunic, kneeling next to Savage on the floor. Two empty cups next to them. The smell of chocolate.

The zabrak looks much worse now than he did yesterday. His left eye has swollen shut and his lip turned purple from bruising. The bare torso is still littered with small burns that Maul should have taken care of yesterday, if he hadn’t been focused on the more urgent internal injuries. Focused on the trauma. He’d have treated them, if his head hadn’t been spinning with the utter weirdness of this Sith.

Savage’s running his finger down the back of Gwyolduhbeccu’s paw again and again, apparently mesmerized by all the hair. He’s taking a very long time with his answer, but what he settles on is, “I don’t… know.”

Becs types something into her wristcomm, and the speaker system says, “That’s okay, Savage. I understand. You fought against Count Dooku yesterday. Do you remember why you did that?”

“I… The Sister… She touched my head, and then I could think of nothing but obeying Her. There’s—there’s something wrong with me, I didn’t… but I…” Savage winces. He runs his tongue over his lower lip. Wafts of something sick and green slip out, too, like they did last night. The miasma.

It’s a wonder that Savage’s still speaking this well, was as articulate yesterday: even from the doorway, Maul can see the gore.

“Your tongue, it’s…” Becs roars, and her volume makes the ex-Sith flinch. She whacks her right hand, the one Savage isn’t holding, against her face. Switches to speakers. “A chunk of your tongue is missing.”

“I think I bit it.”

“Electric shock, right? Are you sure that nothing is broken? That can happen easily you know, because of the muscle spasms.” Something Maul did check for, yesterday, but he won’t begrudge his Padawan her compassion. “I didn’t train as a healer. I could have been one, though! I’d have focused my campaign of attrition on Master Che next, if he hadn’t caved and accepted me as his Padawan.” Maul remembers the months of being followed wherever he went, when he couldn’t even sneeze without an earnest wookiee youngling warbling at him. He didn’t even understand her yet. “But I know a couple of things, anyway! I fixed up my Master pretty often. Don’t worry, you’re in good hands now, uncle Savage.”

Blast. Maul really should have known this was coming.

He can’t even disabuse her of the idea: she and Savage may have the wrong data, but apparently, somehow, the conclusion is correct.

“Is it alright if I call you uncle? Only you’re Maul’s brother, and he raised me, so… I will definitely be offended if you say no.”

Savage Opress laughs. It’s a loud sound and it echoes, and he startles himself so badly he hides behind his hands, which sets Gwyolduhbeccu off. Her undulating wookiee roars amuse him, apparently, and he joins back in with big roaring guffaws. Maul allows himself a snort.

“Master?” Becs turns and looks up at him.

“Brother,” Savage greets him, and although he’s the polar opposite of Maul’s Padawan in physical terms, considering her many braids and tousled facial fur, they look almost identical. Two-meter younglings on a sleepover. Awake too early. Wide happy grins, tinged with only a smidgeon of guilt, as if they’d just been caught gossiping behind Maul’s back.

Savage’s grin disappears quickly. “You look different. You aren’t Feral.”

“No, I’m not,” Maul agrees. The bacta must have fixed some latent brain damage, he decides. Eye damage. Or maybe Savage was too hysterical to pay attention yesterday. “Although I did save your life and treated your wounds. I am friendly. Besides, you’re on my ship. Any attack would be ill-advised.”

The warning is unnecessary, truthfully. Savage Opress doesn’t look angry. He looks devastated.

It does shock Gwyolduhbeccu. She scrambles up and advances on Maul.

“Master, what are we gonna do?” she warbles, so fast her vowels tumble over each other, but Gwyolduhbeccu doesn’t look the way she usually does when she’s distressed. She isn’t embracing herself, her shoulders aren’t crooked. She doesn’t look like she’s coming to Maul for advice, for direction, the way she’s standing now: straight and bullheaded and her paws balled into fists. Maul realizes that he can’t currently see Savage. He’s completely hidden behind her broad, nightshirt-clad back. “What are we going to do? He’s a slave. He’s a slave, Maul. The Sith… The Council will want to interrogate him, but he doesn’t even know what the Separatists are fighting for. I tried asking, but… nothing. He’s confused. Mind-controlled. He doesn’t know anything. He was tortured!”

“Trained,” Maul corrects her, softly. Bruises, burns, and terror. Dooku’s contempt. “He was trained.”

The argument doesn’t impress Gwyolduhbeccu. It doesn’t even truly impress Maul.

“Exactly,” she moans. “He was trained. We can’t hand him over to the Council. This is final.”

She stomps forward and then past Maul in a flurry of righteous teenage anger, probably to the engine room where she can tinker and regain her serenity. Not to rethink her position—he’d never expect that—but she’s been taught young that she’ll only be taken seriously when she is calm.

Savage is still sitting on the floor, and he looks up at Maul calmly. Blankly. Does he know what’s at stake, Maul wonders. Does he know they are deliberating his future right now, right in front of him, without asking for his opinion or even letting him understand half their words? He remembers the zabrak saying, “The Mother gave me to Master Dooku,” and decides that yes, he does know. If he doesn’t yet, he certainly wouldn’t be surprised. He is a slave, after all.

His force presence is cracked with darkness. Wounded. When Savage is brought before the Jedi Council, they will see it, and they will do what is necessary to protect the galaxy from the Sith. They are wise beings, not spies. They aren’t used to asking. Savage is a darksider, and he is just one person. They will breach his mind, and they will imprison him, or he will die. It won’t matter that there was no choice involved. He’ll be regrettable collateral, maybe. Nothing more.

He was hurt by his Master until he lashed out in his desperation to protect himself; he was trained as a Sith.

There is no difference between these statements.

Once fallen, the path of the dark side will forever dominate his destiny. Savage Opress is a Dathomiri zabrak, a nightbrother slave. He fell, but he was born dark. You need only look, people used to tell him, at the dark magical markings that wind over his face, at his yellow eyes and sharp teeth, and see: this is an evil creature. His fate was sealed the moment he was conceived. He never stood a chance.

Well, that’s what they said about Maul too, and he turned out alright.

They’ve got a whole month before the next scheduled contact with the Jedi Council. Yes, the Kooriva mission was aborted, but… that doesn’t have to change their timetable. It probably isn’t widely known yet that the mission fell through. Obi-Wan and Master Windu will give them time. They don’t have to decide anything, yet.

A month is a decent enough time to heal and talk. It’s time to head to Dathomir and find out what that genetic test meant. It’s time to meet his new… family. They might even fit in some lessons in Shyriiwook.

He offers Savage his hand and says, “I am Maul. Please tell me about Feral. Our little brother.”

#aka 'Savage finally gets a hug' tbh #Savage Opress #Darth Maul #dimtraces makes things #silly wishfulfillment AU

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