The Blade always knows.

Within the ruined cathedrals of a wasted mind resides the falling star.

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Fourth
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The Blade always knows.

Post by Fourth »

Melanie's dreams were habitually scattered, almost always scarred. She dreamed, on this night, of a moment in time mere minutes before she jumped into her exile.


Two people stood, one male, one female. At first glance, they could have been brothers, both clad in like armor. One, the female's, was a burnished grey with oceanic blue insets. The male's shared the base color, but his markings, less elaborate by far, were a simple red. They stood overlooking a ruined city, a world in flames and a culture stamped out under the iron heel of war.

"We can't do this. I have to go." Melanie tried to keep it formal, she tried to hide the husky, desultory purr of her words. Words that had lulled so many to a final sleep, soft moans and short gasps that had ended so many, so very many lives.

"Why?" Mord'e, when he spoke, stepped closer and brushed a few fingers along the woman's sanguine curves, the arch of her hip that even besk'ar armor couldn't hide.

"I can't drag you down into this. Look at what this is! F*cking look!" Wildly, she gestured around them, the ruined scene set against a moon that reflected fire and blood, so much blood. "They'll hunt me, forever, for what we've done. It has to stop." She didn't shrink away from the touch, she leaned into it. He'd always been a pillar of support, something to hold close. The feel, the gesture, they were all so familiar, so comforting in all of the wrong ways. This pair bought moments with hours together, short respites between hateful periods.

"Melanie, we can go, we can run together, we'll lea-..."

"Shut up, shut up, stop! What are you saying?" She could have slapped him for his words, his blasphemy. Her voice fell into the low hiss of a coiling viper, the dangerous, deadly calm that hid the storm. "Leave this? I'm a Claw, a True Mandalorian. Don't you ever forget that."

"Then what did it all mean, Melanie? What are you, some whore, nothing more, nothing less? Just a whore that gets what she wants, right? Gets it and leaves, right?" As soon as he'd spoken, he knew he did it. He knew he'd pushed her away again, he'd thrown her away from him when she was so very close.

Melanie's eyes, impossibly black, the color of stormy waters on a a murky night, fell to the ground beneath them even as she turned away and stepped in the opposing direction. "You know, I used to stand here when we were young and I used to think that, on the moon, there was a world with gardens we could walk in, no armor, no war, just people being people."

"Wha-..." The words, the confession, left her husband reeling for words.

"Shush, let me say this before I go. I used to think that, and I used to think we could go, when we were younger. Years ago, I thought that was true. It can't be that way. You're a Mandalorian, I'm True, Pure. I can't drag you into what I've got to do or what I've become." Halting, her voice nearly broke. "I love you, but I won't do it, I can't. I won't watch this happen again and I won't be part of it. You'll kill me, you'll make me weak, I wont let that happen. I won't put my death on your shoulders, you don't deserve that. You deserve...." She stopped and choked back a sob, a long, rasping noise that was barely human, so deep were the self imposed cuts. "Better."

"Stop, please? Don't go, don't do this. You can't, you cant leave me alone." He was reaching for straws, reaching to her ancestral pride. "We'll start again, have kids, make a new breed, a new race." He was wrong, again.

"You think I'm some whore, willing to have children for something so trivial? We'd all just die anyways. We're going to die, all of us."

"What broke you? What took that vision away?" He asked the dangerous question. In all the years they'd lied to each other, he'd never dared to know her that well. She had, at this moment, every right to kill him for his assumption. He expected she would.

Instead, she turned back, violently, but with no ill intention, and fell into his shoulder, pouring years worth of tears onto war scarred armor, coated in dried blood and ash. "I love you, that's what broke me. I love you, I know I can't have you and you can't have me. That's what took it away."

"Then let's make it right! Now, let's do this, now." He was pleading, he was soon to watch the most beautiful woman, the most complex creature, so deliciously teasing, so painfully vague, walk away from him, maybe for forever. He knew she'd go, it was a matter of when. Maybe he could buy another night lost under her curves and within her luxurious sprawl. "No, Mel, please don't make me watch you leave."

"Then close your eyes champ." She pulled away, but not before she laid a final kiss along the side of his helmet, where his cheek should have been. "The gardens are all dead, we are all dead. They'll die as well, but that's what broke me. I tried to love you, I did. I tried, but we never watered the flowers."

With no more words, not even a glance backwards, she stepped off of the cliff's face and fell among the ruined streets she'd once called home. A voice, from below, her voice, rose.

"Do me one favor. Don't forget this night, ever. Don't forget me. I won't forget you. You are eternal, in my mind." She went in search of something, though she'd never tell a soul what it was, much less him. In a home along the outside of the city, she searched through smoldering ruins until she found a small picture, a young woman and a man in a hidden wedding, a blissful moment lost in the fury that is Mandalore's children. The picture was stuffed into a pocket, held close to her heart even as she turned her back on all she had known, all she had lost, all that had been stolen and taken by those she'd relied so heavily upon.
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Fourth
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Post by Fourth »

She'd lost it. In her mind, failure was not a simple loss. No, not at all. As she sat, alone and within the shadowy confines of the Star's End, alone and drunk, she pondered and though back on a world long since ruined.

A loss for you, child, is not a personal thing. Mandalore's children are united in everything. In victory, we share. In loss, we share the suffering and the agony. So goes one, the rest will fall. So rises one, the rest will climb.

Words heard at the foot of an armored elder, they'd been one of the many speeches, hate rhetoric, intent on brainwashing children into young killers. A near divine fervor, the mystique and lore bled into minds untainted by such horrid, awful truths.

For such is the way of Mandalore's children. In creating such warriors, such paragons of all things martial, they sacrifice humanity willingly. Less a human and more a shattered vessel that can fathom only war, the ranks of an undying army built on devotion and misguided love knew only one cause, only one purpose. For the common soldiers, this was the fight. Victory meant nothing so long as the candle remained lit. A single battle was pointless so long as the campaign lived.

Melanie, or Ap'sala, was not common nor was she the rank or the file of the ceaseless war machine. This child, dystopia's ruined queen, champion of flawed logic and intoxicating verse, was the special one, the chosen one.

While our army can lose, child, you can not. You are the face, you are the outlet we give to the public. The weight of our people rests upon your shoulders, only your shoulders. The rest can die, you must live. The rest can lose, you must be the strong front, the tip of the spear. We operate in the shadows, daughter, you must be the shining light, our own brand of light. No emotions, no sadness, no tears, no loss. Only victory, only another fight. You, above all, must be willing to die for the cause.

Should not all Mandalorians die for the cause?

Already, at the age of three, she showed promise. Her rage, a product of bed time stories filled with blood and horror, had surpassed normal levels. Her body had taken well to the genetic engineering it'd undergone. It was, however, her mind that was the most fearsome. All Sa'ha were Force sensitive. Few were true Force users, on par with the Jedi and the Sith. She would never be able to convince another, nor could she move heavy objects with a thought. She would be able to catch a thrown lightsaber through sheer reflex and skill alone. Gone were the days of the Mandalorian Jedi and Sith, present was the age of the antithesis of all. Her emotions, rage and hate, were living things, projected through force of sheer will. The ground shattered under her anger, the very air itself exploded when she laced it with toxic hate. The other Orders were controlled, they were precise. Not this wayward remnant of days gone by. She was a beast, a dog with no leash. Anarchists all, avowed terrorists, they needed no target. Reality was the enemy. Born through hideous wars and horrific struggle, they hated life in general, they hated those who had lied to them, those who had painted this bleak picture.

You, my child....

A gloved hand, thick with dried blood, ran soothing motions along the top of the child's head. As if he could calm her or set her up for the coming blow, he sought her trust and love. Truly a child, he won such things and found himself stared up at, wide eyed expectation one a face already lined with the stress of thoughts and desires she could not hold in check.

They can all die behind the scenes, faceless casualties in a never ending war. You, however, must pick a place to die where you will do the most damage or gain the most recognition. Can you see now, child? You're purpose is just that. You will die someday, but you will not die forgotten and you will not rest on a pile of bodies and broken armor. No, that is not for you. You must hold the fate of our people, you must choose when to die and do it well, knowing you will and knowing how. Such is what we ask of you.

The man preached suicide to a toddler, he preached a martyr's death to one who had yet to fully understand life. Robbed by her own people of innocence, she would not know a child's laughter. Instead, she would know blank stares and questions asked of a shadowy room, questions with no answers. She would know rhetoric built to focus agony, she would know pain, self imposed, to turn onto another. Blinded at this age, she learned to see in black and white. Warped, she disdained conventional knowledge in the face of arts even the most vile of Sith would turn away from. Black, as black as the night with no stars, became her heart. Even before she learned to fight with such grace, even before she learned to manipulate with such beauty, she learned this one lesson.

You are supposed to die, Sa'ha Vod'e. It is up to you as to how many you kill with you and how bright the star is before it fades out.

She never learned to cook, she never learned to read or two write. She learned to write her own destiny in bloody strokes, she learned to read her own death song to the masses. She learned suicide, she learned to kill.
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