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They’ve lost track of how long they’ve been here, at least by a calender that might correspond to home. It’s been nearly three hundred years by the calendar thier captor had provided.
Oh, they’re technically allowed to go wherever they wish within the bounds of the small empire ruled over by their captor, but it’s nothing like they’re accustomed to. Tinier than the Republic they’d fought before the anomaly had thrown them to this place where the only even remotely familiar thing are the other Sith. Even they aren’t truly familiar – they share physiology, but nothing more.
Letting out a quiet sigh, Maul leans back in the large tub – overly ostentatious, like everything else in this galaxy, drowning them in luxury – and closes their eyes while they draw on the Force. Searching for something, anything to get them out of this frustrating place.
They’re jolted out of their meditation when the door to the room is hastily opened and shut again, the intruder visible for a moment before they dive to one side, hiding in the meager shelter of the screen that is supposed to be for a servant to be at their beck and call. The person is lucky Maul has no use for such a being, not when the servant would be ultimately loyal to their captor.
“Who are you?” They don’t bother with the strange vibrato that their captor and the other local Sith use, even though they can feel the tremors in the Force that tell them the intruder is a Sith. Or perhaps a Jedi, but they’ve yet to meet any such here.
“No one.” The voice is feminine, rough, and breathless with exertion. “Who are you?”
“A prisoner in a gilded cage.” They’ve rarely been subtle, before or after they were brought here. Stealthy, perhaps, but this is not a time to hide information. Not if the intruder is running from their captor, and has the potential to be an ally.
And I’m going to outline from here, because then I can post this, instead of it sitting here for who knows how long.
Maul’s captor is uncertain, beyond not Baal, because Baal would not be nearly so foolish as whoever has Maul in their hands. Ra or Apophis or Kronos (since he’s the one who sent the ashrak after Jolinar, if I remember correctly).
The jaffa chasing Jolinar do come looking in Maul’s rooms for her, after she’s come out from where she’s hiding and they’ve gotten at least out of the water, and something something, there’s a kiss in there, but first kiss is also probably last kiss, because they’re not interested in anything like that, and Jolinar is pretty much only interested in Lantash and whoever is hosting him (Martouf, at the moment).
There is escape, and Maul is not any more impressed by the tok’ra than they were by their System Lord captor, and just. All they want at this point is to get back to a familiar galaxy. They’ll even cooperate with whatever the Jedi want to prove that yes, damnit, they’re both in this willingly, because fuck this galaxy and its backwards wish-they-were-Sith.
(There is also possibly going “fuck this”, and them deciding to find a way to conquer the galaxy with the local tech, even if it’s not nearly up to their standards, and allying with Baal, because Baal is not an idiot, and everything canon in SG-1 is thrown out the window, because this is all before Earth finds Abydos and blows Ra and his ship up.)
This is my favourite lightsaber sequence in all of Star Wars. It’s got such intensity and such urgency. Obi-Wan needs to end this quickly so he can get to Qui-Gon; maybe it’s not too late to save him. The stakes are so high.
My heart sits in my throat every time. Obi-Wan is doing his best, but it’s not clear it’s going to be enough. His master, one of the best duelists in the entire order has just been bested – how is he, the apprentice, meant to do better?
I think about Qui-Gon offscreen; he can hear the battle – maybe even see it. We can only imagine what he’s thinking. He’d called Obi-Wan capable before the Council, but does he think Obi-Wan capable of winning this battle? He hopes he is, but it must be agony to bear witness to this test.
Mental image of the day:
Darth Maul in modern clothes. Black t-shirt with slogan or geeky image, unbuttoned black or dark plaid shirt, leather jacket. Black jeans, boots (combat boots or knee-high boots). Hands shoved into the jacket pockets, glaring at someone (the viewer, or maybe someone off to the side).
…. And yes, if someone were able to help me with doing the makeup, I would cosplay this, because I have all of the above.
(And speaking of cosplay, I need to find where I left the bag with the Snape robe project, and finish the repairs/trim on it.)
Fandom: Star Wars AU: Ocean of Night Word Count: 285 Characters: Maul, unnamed Sith
The robes around her are spread neatly, looking like wings splayed on the floor. Rusty red and charcoal feathers patterned into the fabric. The rest of her is hidden by the stark shadows of the room. A room he does not remember entering, nor can recognize the architecture of.
“Where am I?”
A quiet, raspy chuckle comes from the darkness, the broad sleeves of the robe shifting as their owner moves. Wings lifting, folding back, settling. Perhaps not robes after all.
“Why should I tell you, little apprentice?”
“Who brought me here?” He tries to stalk toward her, letting his anger at her non-answer show, only to find a barrier that keeps him at a distance. And when he tries to prod it with the Force, throws him back.
“That wouldn’t be fair, telling you without giving you a chance to figure it out on your own.”
Maul picks himself up from where he’s been thrown, approaching the barrier carefully, and slowly pacing the perimeter of it. A full circle, and her at the center well out of arm’s reach. Out of harm’s way, in a pool of shadow and light. It has a direction, to hide her face so completely, but he can’t see the source of it – light or window.
“Who are you?”
Another raspy chuckle is followed by a quiet clicking. “My name is not for you to know, little apprentice.”
“What are you?”
“You don’t know? How disappointing.” She shifts, the light coruscating across purple irridescence. A hood or a helm or a crest, but her face is still hidden by shadows. Clinging shadows, even with the light’s direction unchanged. “I’m not telling you, little apprentice. That wouldn’t be fair.”
Thinky thought inspired by others, and by me poking at fic.
I use cold in my imagery of the Dark Side of the Force, but never as apathy*. Maybe because for me, cold is rage at its most dangerous, the all-consuming hateful rage that promises that everything in its path will be dust, no matter how long it takes, and is willing to wait a lifetime to achieve that utter and complete destruction.
The rage of blood feuds and endless cycles of revenge and war and bloodshed. The sort of rage that tears apart reputations, friends, family.
Cold hands, cold laughter, cold spaces. Hate and rage and cultivated arrogance that holds itself above everything. Sidious is cold. Manipulative, horrible, controlling ice.
Cold is terror, too. Terror that never ends, that becomes the core of a person, that can never be soothed. Jorus’etan is that kind of cold. Terror of his past, the terror he inflicts on those he chooses as victims. Pain and neglect and abuse and a refusal to ever be powerless before another.
Not all the Dark Side is cold. Maul is fire burning out of control and reveling in his passion, his anger. Barely and only sometimes tempered by a personal code of honor, like a barely-adequate fire break or a fire burned toward the wildfire to redirect it.
Anakin is fire born of fear, that will burn all around it to ash. That burns him to ash, twice over. Once to leave the ember that hides under the ashes of Vader, and a second time to shatter the ice and chains that are his Master.
And yet, even with them, I’ll use the tactile idea of cold hands, cold skin. Cold that burns, that destroys what it touches.
*I honesty do not get how people could use cold in the sense of apathy or lack of emotion or smothered passions for the Sith. It boggles me. It boggles me lots.
There's a Mirror on the Wall 