#Mahalo!Salt Queen <333< /div> Explore tagged Tumblr posts

[brooklynislandgirl]

{And ye, then the cheese stopped being molested, and I was given A Sin, verily, with much straight-faced enthusiasm, and the name of that sin was...} Murder.

{Thus delivered was the chile of green, and the enchilada thus did quake for not the gnashing of sharp teeth and batting of claw but for the glory that shone in the light of the Ice-bringer and the Heater of Worlds Unimagined. In praise, in praise I offer Thee....IA IA IA.} Cardinal Seven || - 

“I hope you’ll serve under my command. I couldn’t have survived without you.” 

The woman cups Admiral Tohm’s scarred face tenderly. Her eyes are soft and none could mistake the sweetness to her every breath. The time ticks a beat. Two.  

“It would be my honour,” Shonn Volta answers.

Before either of them could explore the new found joy between them there comes a discreet alert at the door. The protocol droid on the other side has a polite invitation from Lord Vader that the new Admiral should join him on his private balcony which provides a gorgeous vantage of Coruscant spreading out far below, an ocean of light and shadow. His effusive joy is palpable four systems over. 

Despite Volta’s unvoiced concern, Tohm takes only a few moments to make himself as pristinely presentable, then excuses himself from her company. The man sees this as an opportunity to converse with his new mentor, a man who he has nothing but the greatest respect and admiration for, something that borders on hero-worship. 

When the door clicks behind him, Volta curses softly under her breath.

“Such goes the way when you watch the man you love leave you for his duty.” Keni’s voice is as soft as the trail of her fingers along the back of the chair. She materialises from nothing, grown tired of watching this little drama play out.

Volta turns on her heel and her yellow eyes narrow on Keni, seething orbs of fire that remind her of nothing so much as the fires of Mustafar. Sends a spike of revulsion through her sharp and deep and providing nothing more than support struts to the task at hand. The Imperial uniform looks much better than the rags Volta wore as a prisoner but do not suit the woman, is no improvement to the sour look on the woman’s face.  ”What would you know of it, Jedi?” she all but spits the word as a curse.

More than you will ever know. “I think this is where you are mistaken. For I am not a Jedi. Perhaps I never was.”

“You certainly skulk about like one. Vader’s lapdog, aren’t you?” “Biting words from someone who owes her very existence to his mercy and intercession, both on Diab 6 and now. He has the Emperor’s ear, and were it not for Toh- ah, pardon. Admiral Tohm’s pleas moving him, then you would be one more unfortunate casualty of the hyperdrive malfunction like the rest of your friends.”

Volta’s hand strays toward her blaster, which in turn arches Keni’s brow. “I wouldn’t recommend-” She never gets to finish the statement. The woman draws her weapon. She is not as fast as Anakin by any means, nor is she as beautiful to watch but she manages to deflect the first bolt with the blade of her sabre, the second impacts the armour beneath her robes. Volta makes a break from the door but by a simple gesture and bearing down with the Force, Keni stops her.  “I must say, I am disappointed in you. I thought you were so much smarter than that.” The woman turns and snarls. Keni only watches her impassively.  “So much hate and contempt.” “You’re all bastards. You starved my people. You destroyed my world, my life!”

“These are the things that happen in war. Your parents hid you, when they discovered you were Force-sensitive. Perhaps if they hadn’t, you would not have needed Master Fisto or Anakin Skywalker to save you.” “They imprisoned me.” “Exactly.” A brittle smile that shows all of her teeth. Still holding Volta in place, she presses the button on the side of her sabre, retracting both the plasma blade and the knives that just from the pommel and the small cross-guard. A turn of her wrist and she sheathes it at her side. “But all of this is a digression. You see, Shonn, behind every great man is a woman. She might never wear a crown nor might she ever stand beside him as a wife or a lover, the mother of his children, but she will take it upon herself to reorder the universe to suit his whim, and she will do every necessary thing to ensure his safety. You and I both know this to be true, because you and I are both that woman. And I am protecting my world, and my life.” Both of which existed in one person. She closes her eyes a moment and tilts her head. She listens to the whispers of the Living Force, reaching out through every inch of the floors above her.

“But...we are not monsters. Because monsters steal children from their parents. Monsters enslave them. Monsters cannot love. And because I am not a monster I have chosen to spare you the agony of heartbreak.” She almost laughs at that, circling the woman and leaning into her. She gives credit where it is due, despite being held in place by the Force, she does not tremble. She does not beg. She does push back. Tries to make the blaster in her hand obey her will, but she was never trained. She was never made to suffer rather than take joy in the Force.

Keni comes to stand before her and lifts both hands. Slowly, almost lovingly, she begins to part the double-breasted gaberwool tunic. Volta is taller than she, is not as delicately built as Keni and there’s a tiny stir of envy when her skin begins to reveal itself, covered now only by the sleeveless under-tunic. Ignores Volta’s growl at the feel of her fingertips shadowing her collar bones, down to the scarred cleft between her breasts. Slowly Keni drags her gaze from the tops of their swells to the woman’s eyes. “This must have hurt like nine hells,” she murmurs softly. There’s a touch of empathy in her tone, the mark of a healer. “A replacement like this, the work is extraordinary. And how lucky are you that you have had not one heart, in this lifetime, but two.” Spittle, still warm, lands on her face and she wipes it on the sleeve of her robes. This breaks the eye-contact but not the Force-hold that Keni maintains. Volta perhaps does not realise what it was like working in the trenches, patching and re-patching the wounds sustained by the Troops and the civilians that the Separatists had fought. How difficult it was to sometimes keep a person still when you’d run out of medicine to dull the pain but you still had to remove limbs or organs too damaged to remain. How much control. How much emotion you had to swallow down like you were taught. The valves and wires inside the woman’s chest are now thundering in overdrive, pushing adrenaline though her system. “I promise I won’t keep it. I will see to it that it goes to someone worthy. Someone desperate for the life it will give, and in that way, you can go to the Force knowing that a part of you still exists, that it has helped.”  The pressure from her fingers increases, bearing down on the woman’s skin. Bone offers so little resistance to wood, skin and tissue even less. There’s a struggle then, one that is real and terrible and leaves a rending in the Force as the women clash. Thing of it is though, all Volta fought for was her life.  Keni fights for more than that. She’d heard from Palpatine’s own twisted lips as he said that should some tragedy or accident befall Anakin, that Tohm would make for a suitable replacement. No one, especially not Anakin or herself could have interpreted that as anything other than the veiled threat it was. One attempted on his life had already been made. The same conspiracy that had weakened Palpatine. Had Tohm and Tracta left well enough alone, Anakin ~who had survived his end of the intended assassination~ and she might have succeeded in riding the Empire of it’s terrible Master on Diab 6. It wasn’t as if the Prism was exactly well known among the populace. As it stands there now is seeded into her that every whisper of every shadow contains ill-will for Anakin, not the least of which is Tohm and his woman. Which leaves only one desperate recourse to her. And it wasn’t like Shonn Volta would have ever survived the Prism, was never meant to be free.

The cracking sound is almost swallowed by the piercing wail that starts the death throes as Keni’s fingers shove themselves through Volta’s meat. The spray of hot, fresh blood splatters her face, her chest, likely half the room, floor to ceiling. She grasps the mechanical heart and lets her fingers surround it as she licks her lower lip. “If it’s any consolation, Tohm will be joining you very soon. You’ll be together then.” As somewhere high above Anakin tells Tohm the last piece of advice he has to offer is to never accept the existence of a rival, Keni rips the woman’s artificial organ from her chest, and releases her from the hold, allowing her body to slump to the floor. A few moments later, Tohm’s body falls from the balcony, sending him flailing and plummeting into the depths of Coruscant.

Melakeni Ivers says nothing as she makes her way to the chambers afforded to Lord Vader, courtesy of the Emperor. Neither does she care that her robes are soaked in blood, that it turns her dark hair even darker. She cares for nothing as Anakin’s hand ~the one of flesh~ comes to cup her face. His eyes scour over her with a thousand questions and ten times that much concern. Half in and half out of his armour he looks exhausted. The last few weeks have been hell on him, have sucked from his being every ounce strength and purpose from him, leaving him to look very much like he did the day she was brought to him in the Temple below them. Only this time they are not surrounded by the 501st.  In many ways that would be so much better. They both know not a word can be spoken. Neither of them have a single doubt that these rooms are bugged a hundred different ways and that Palpatine knows all that happens. Sees and hears every single thing.

She drops the heart uncaring of it at the moment and lets it thud dully in the folds of her robes. Her hands, still sticky and wet reach up. They take hold of his face and she pulls him down to her.

She doesn’t need to speak for Anakin to understand that everything she does is for him. And no life, perhaps including her own, is as important.  But she reminds him again, silently and suffused through the Force, as she captures his mouth with her own, in a kiss as deep and full of her love as any that has come before and will come after.

Soon, Za’lali. He can’t outlast us forever.

[brooklynislandgirl]

Hey, uh, be a lifesaver and [X]

Gotta photograph, picture of... || Accepting