#cross-faction Foe Yay fools

[villainship]

[What’s gone and what remains...]

More super sad Trooper fic about bad choices and coping poorly with grief. 

Zahied visits a memory in a dream, with a twist: Tarskal has rudely invited himself to meet his late husband.

Having a guilty conscience, Zahied assumes this is an ordinary dream + his unconscious punishing itself. What he does Not know is that Tarskal (who tagged along on the Inquisitor story) has a Sith trick for getting into other people’s dreams. 

Very convenient for being nosy about things the dreamer never talks about.

—

It wasn’t right.

This had never happened.

It was something that would never happen, because it was impossible.

Zahied stood on the upper deck of a house he knew, buffeted by the sea breezes across the glimmering waters of Manaan.

This was his in-law’s home.

His husband—short, stout, with skin a bold and beautiful shade of turquoise, set apart from the blue of the sky or the dark, bottle-green of the deep ocean—was here with him. Nathuur stood leaning on the railing of the second-floor patio, his arms folded, bowed forward to look down on rippling waves.

That was right.

That— (the knowledge left an ache in his heart which he couldn’t quite fathom...) —was how Zahied remembered him.

The problem was the other man, nearer to Zahied: circling from his other side to approach the selkath.

Taller than either of them, this one was a human like him. A broad-framed, imposing man with short, dull brown hair, dressed in dark clothing. A Sith.

In the first moment the tall man had come to his attention— (and he didn’t know why he was so sure) —he expected to see him wearing a lightsaber on his belt. Knew it would be there before he saw it. 

He didn’t know why he recognized this person at all.

But of course he did.

He knew who had come to him in his nihilistic despair, wedging a foot in the door of his emptiness with an offer he hadn’t had the nobility to decline. 

Tarskal. 

A threat to the Republic he defended. An enemy. 

They met together for sex. It had become a pattern.

That recognition resolved itself slowly, fueling the confusion in his mind as recent events collided in conflict with the setting. The memories. 

Long ago.

If Nathuur was here, Tarskal couldn’t be. By the time he had met the Sith—

His husband had been dead for many, many years.

Zahied knew it already, even as he remembered in pieces of fragmented facts. He had shared his life once, he had loved someone—but not since he was young. He was getting old. He hadn’t been back to this place since he was newly wed. A long, broken lifetime ago.

Nath was here, because—

He was dreaming?

In the haze of disjointed emotions, he thought he was angry. The feeling wasn’t arriving when it should, but he knew it was the response he wanted to have to what he saw.

Tarskal was approaching the man at the railing. He was examining Zahied’s precious and wonderful husband like a specimen in a jar.

Nathuur didn’t seem to recognize the attention. He didn’t react at all, as if he couldn’t see the menacing stranger who he would never meet. 

When the Sith raised his red eyes to Zahied again, his gaze lingered only long enough to make it obvious that the whole scene was clear to him.

That affronted feeling Zahied was looking for did arrive, eventually, but only after he watched a figure of himself—separating from his first-person perspective—step forward to join his husband.

The body of him, outside of his mind, walked to Nathuur’s side and leaned toward him. Shoulder-to-shoulder, they shared the view in the way of lovers: melding to each other; their touch, their warmth and their thoughts extending toward the person who they offered it all, without reserve.

This was how he remembered them.

Dreams like this didn’t come to him very often—not anymore. Time passed, and the haze grew denser around the parts of his life that were too painful to recall.

Still, every now and then: light would strike just right to illuminate the reflection of long-gone emotions in perfect, crystal clarity. 

A dream so real, he’d wake in the lingering sense of peace and contentment—feelings a part of his mind still retained, somehow, so vividly—

—Feelings that would wither in the next breath, sucking his soul from his chest again when reality crushed him, like all the weight of all the endless oceans of his spouse’s distant homeworld. 

All the vastness of empty space in the galaxy poured in again. 

Sometimes he wept. Alone in his bed—remembering too well. Sometimes he found that he still could.

Nathuur is gone.

On Manaan—anywhere else—there’ll never be another day by his side. 

There’ll never be another morning of waking up—even once—when he won’t be gone.

It’s better to remember that, instead of letting a dream convince him things might be some other way.

“Maybe you should give him a kiss.” 

Tarskal’s voice, unwelcome and foreign to the scenario, interrupts Zahied’s meditation on the nature of his loss and his responses to it. The Sith has moved closer, extending one finger to press to the top of Nathuur’s head.

The anger rises again. It’s almost palpable in the voice that extends from Zahied’s disembodied position of observer. 

“/Don’t touch him/.”

A startled Nathuur has turned over his shoulder, finally looking in Tarskal’s direction, then abruptly looking for the voice behind him. “How’d you get over— Who—?”

He can’t see himself beside his husband; he’s no longer standing with him. 

Tarskal is on the other side of Nathuur, and Zahied is walking toward both of them, pushing between the two, feeling dizzy as he separates them with the body that suddenly belongs to him again.

He’s fighting vertigo and nausea simply for existing in this space. Something is so purely, deeply wrong.

“Sorry.” Tarskal smiles. He looks like himself. Normal and real. “I’ve interrupted.”

Nathuur’s voice behind him is quiet. Vague and inconsistent. “Zahied—? Babe— Who’s this guy?”

A hand lights on his shoulder. Zahied feels the form of its touch, familiar but insubstantial. The ghost of what he remembers.

Stricken, frustrated, he clenches his hand to his own forehead, concealing his eyes and the tears that he expects will blur his vision soon. 

He answers automatically, but does not turn around. “Just— Some asshole.”

He doesn’t see Tarskal’s face change, only hears the stifled sound of the asshole in question. Trying not to laugh. Pretending to try.

“Not even worth introducing us?” the Sith questions him, falsifying a flimsy veneer of indignation over the tone of obvious mockery. 

Goading him. Taunting them both. Watching Zahied lose his grip on his emotions. 

“You must be Mr. Anwar of the non-miltary persuasion,” Tarskal goes on, “Wrath of his Majesty, the Emperor, and Lord of the Sith—”

The ‘Wrath’ has posed himself hand-to-chest, bowing shallowly in Nathuur’s direction.

“—Referred to also as ‘Nghh, fuck; Tarskal—Harder. Please; Oh /fuck/—’, et-cetera.”

Red eyes skim Zahied’s face as the Sith straightens his posture, met by a stare of unveiled fury. “No—? Maybe just Tarskal, today. Take a deep breath, ‘Babe’; you’re losing it. The little gentleman is looking worried for you.”

He freezes not quite halfway to throttling Tarskal—gathered to spring, with tension ringing through him—and Zahied can’t help but confirm what the Sith has claimed: the face of his selkath husband is drawn in lines of concern and bewilderment. It drains the force from his indignation. He sags into a bitter, defanged humiliation. 

None of this is real. It won’t matter in the morning. It doesn’t matter now.

Turning from Zahied to stare in turn at Tarskal, his husband speaks: “Hey, Asshole.” 

Nath’s arm slides behind his waist. A supportive gesture. 

It would’ve been meant to reassure him. It feels like being kicked in the chest. 

He’s the one left choked at the throat.

“And what do they call you?” Tarskal’s expression has never faltered, his delight still clear to see in the flash of his grin and the crinkle of his eyes.

It occurs to Zahied that there are less wrinkles around those eyes. No grey in the flat, honeyed brown of his hair. He’s never seen him this way. Tarskal is some years older than him, and they have always looked roughly the same age.

Nathuur’s narrowed eyes stay on the Sith. His face shows disapproval, a warning, and distrust.

“You can ignore him,” Zahied speaks quietly to the man glued to his side, recognizing how it sounds like a pathetic attempt to hide from shameful truths.

His husband, of course, is as old as he ever would be: so young—as they both had been.

The last time they had come to Manaan was after their honeymoon. 

Not long after that, Nathuur’s parents had refused to discuss the subject of their son’s desire for children. They nearly stopped talking to him altogether.

When his and Zahied’s daughter had been alive, her selkath grandparents had known her through holo-calls and letters—Nath was adamant in his intent to never return to their home again.

He never would.

Less than five years after leaving this place for the last time, he was dead.

His face would never age: it appeared in dreams and memories the same as in pictures of him. Fixed in time. Unchanging.

Zahied can hardly look directly at it.

Nath is fidgety, the way he would get when something had made him nervous.

“What was his name, Zahied?”

“Nathuur.” The selkath finally answers Tarskal for himself, quiet and tired-sounding. His hand has a grip of Zahied’s jacket, and it’s started to feel like he’s leaning more heavily. “—Why’s he asking you what it ‘was’?”

“Stop...��� Zahied finds himself directing this plea toward Tarskal. 

Begging him not to ask more questions. Begging him to leave the time capsule of Manaan—to restore and respect the separation of what is gone and what remains.

“Really? You could have such an opportunity here, Anwar.”

His vision goes dark.

He remembers what he’s done: ways he has allowed Tarskal close. Remembers the feel of his muscles, weight of his body—and the searing of desire.

“...stop—”

Tarskal’s hands are on his face, fingers trailing in his beard. A kiss is pressed to his lips, and he wants to tear himself in half. To burn the scraps: vaporize it all to scattered ash.

“/Stop/.” He claws through the space in front of him, heaving a sob in his chest, and he falls, off-balance, into a hollow, starless reflection of the dark sky.

He awakes in his field tent, sweating and sticky in the humid air of an unfamiliar planet.

It’s quiet.

He’s alone.

The dream fades at the edges and washes into a blur, painted over by the reality of his steady breathing and aching back.

He slides out of bed. Leaves the sour aftertastes of brokenness and guilt behind him by moving forward into the pre-dawn of another empty, meaningless day.

[villainship]

Republic x Imperial - such scandal

[villainship]

[WIP whenever or whatever...]

Tagged to play by @greyias - Thanks for making me do some editing to this part. Eheheh.

Anyone seeing this who feels like posting something, put a tag on there for me to see what you’re up to. . . !

I bring: a sample of one of the TD & Zahied scenes (which I. . . don’t intend to post to tumblr. Lol. But. I’m enjoying this one & it might get shared somewhere else) ~

These idiots met not-quite-discreetly-enough, often enough, that Zahied had started to be suspected of Something. The SIS sent someone undercover to watch him, & he was /this/ close to getting caught/arrested for his bad choices.

But TD had a suggestion* to deal with it. . . *(Of something that would get even the Wrath arrested, if he were caught)

-

“Of course they wouldn’t believe it. Who would fucking believe that? That I, what—? Seduced you into harboring secret Republic sympathies? It’s absurd.”

Zahied was irritated by the flippancy. He didn’t know what he had expected, but this felt like a joke in poor taste.

“I’m NOT going to try to bullshit the SIS into thinking you want to help.”

“Don’t get pissy. It’s a great idea. You can play spy, we get this sanctioned by your higher ups—making the logistics easier for you—”

-

[TD says the Wrong Thing because he’s terrible on purpose] [Zahied threatens murder] [TD force-chokes him to be petty, and so that he can monologue uninterrupted for like a full minute] [Zahied--when he can breathe--calls him something that is too vulgar for tumblr, & rejects his monologue equally rudely]

-

“Look at that, you’re a damn genius—problem solved: the SIS can read your next messages. I won’t!”

He had pivoted on his heel, seeing nothing but red, not bothering to think what he’d do next.

Tarskal questioned his actions for him.

“Going to walk yourself back dressed like that?” *

Fear had no chance to find its feet.

He launched himself at the Imperial without hesitation, well before an inkling of concern could occur to him of potentially being suffocated again.

No effort was made to dodge. Zahied’s clenched fist crunched audibly against the bone of Tarskal’s cheek, driving hard into his face and redirecting the position of his head in the landing of a single, professional-grade infantryman’s punch.

One sharp wheeze and a trailing groan of pain told him it had genuinely hurt.

Tarskal may have buffeted the impact somehow—putting his Sith manipulation of the Force into dispersing part the physical force. Zahied’s hand hurt enough he felt there should have been a tooth knocked loose.

Reacting mildly to whatever damage the blow had dealt, the man seated on the bed pressed his tongue to the inside of his cheek and tightened his expression in a grimace, scrunching the surface of his nose into furrowed ridges of a noiseless snarl.

Blood must have pooled quickly from broken skin; Tarskal leaned forward to allow some to drain from his mouth, spitting once. He wiped the base of his thumb across his bearded chin, taking the time to consider the faintly reddish smear, unperturbed, before his gaze rose again to Zahied. 

—Who, for his part, had frozen after withdrawing into a sloppy stance of defense, both fists raised in spite of the throbbing in his knuckles, and in spite of the trickle of apprehension as he came to recognize the magnitude of what he might be initiating by returning violence in kind.

*(Neither has a shirt on throughout the bickering)

[villainship]

Enemies-to-problematic-coping-mechanisms.

I needed the visual of this closing scene from my own fic b/c I’m obsessed with the part where my scarred old dude hides his hands to hide a dramatic feeling.

(Zahied, I’m sorry abt what I did to your hair. I would like to say I’ll fix it later, but I might never do that.)

[villainship]

“Can Not, Will Not” Zahied. . .  They really bring out each other’s obnoxious side.

For TD: -it’s not that he couldn’t bring himself to kill a corrupted Zahied, it’s that he’d like him that way & would choose to keep him (meanwhile: TD already is a monster--Zahied has repeatedly decided to let it slide) -he might choose to bring Zahied back from the dead, but he wouldn’t go far out of his way to accomplish it -he wouldn’t mind meeting again in a new life--but also wouldn’t mind if they never did

[villainship]

[Who else could TD get marriage advice from?]

Another old writing WIP I went back & finished-up~! Alot longer this time. (Some of it is kinda disjointed--u kno how it is)

ALSO featuring Tarskal & Zahied. This time, they talk about Tarskal’s spouse; sad man Zahied’s POV of problems less bad than TD deserves to have. (Which is to say: the tense situation between TD & Cianna--and Juli, who ENTIRELY would rather not be dragged into the villains’ personal Situation--when they’ve joined the Alliance in the future.)

Context: TD & Cianna are MOSTLY on Odessen/with the Alliance because they needed a safe(ish) place to keep their kids.

TD & Zahied have had their ~association~ w/ one another for many years now, so TD got him recruited, too. (Competent. Leadership experience. Good aim. Not dead yet.)

They had never fought on the same side before. . . Now that they’re in walking distance of each other’s living quarters, it has become MUCH easier to just hang out & chill.

Zahied is self-detrimentally reclusive (he may or may not have any actual friends anymore), and sometimes feels it is much worse this way.

They haven’t gone back to trying to kill each other--yet.

--- “I don’t know why she has to be like this about it.”

“Don’t be obtuse on purpose.”

Tarskal’s lazy indignation and chilly side-eye glare in response had no effect on the attitude of Zahied, whose investment in the conversation was hanging by a nano-thread.

“There’s ‘not knowing’—“ Zahied continued, begrudging his own indulgence toward an incurably selfish man, “—and then there’s ’not wanting to know’ when the answer doesn’t suit you.”

“Fascinated to hear your take; have you had personal experience, Major?”

Doubly snide of him to take that tone and to reference Zahied’s former rank. Both of them had left old titles and allegiances to join the Commander’s Alliance. In contrast to the former Wrath, who had never maintained any real faith in the Empire or loyalty toward it, the former Major had taken longer to abandon a sense of duty to the Republic Senate’s authority. The water under the bridge felt like an incredibly trite thing to use as ammunition.

If he was fishing for outrage, Tarskal was trying too hard. They both knew Zahied would have been rolling his eyes, if he weren’t focused on the task in his hands: turning his rifle this way & that, examining and cleaning it thoroughly. The soldier did wrinkle his nose, and let the corner of his mouth curl with disapproval under his coarse, thin beard. 

“Very often I wonder why I talk to you. Then I remind myself not to think too hard about it, because I hate what it says about my life. So yeah; same principle.”

The Sith had wandered into his room, wanting to be heard while he complained. Now Tarskal had finally started paying attention in return. His eyes narrowed to read Zahied’s expression, then were drawn to the practiced motions of his hands.

“I haven’t got any of your issues with self-flagellating, though; /I/ only make decisions I feel great about. Why wouldn’t I want to acknowledge my own theory?”

Directing the bad mood outwards. They’d had these exchanges too many times for Zahied not to recognize the way that Tarskal threaded constant derision through a conversation when something had him acting sullen. Recognition made it less likely for Tarskal to get a rise from him, and when the subject of conversation didn’t even relate to him: the insults hardly registered as more than noise.

“I’m not the one who’s a mind-reader,” Zahied scoffed quietly down the barrel of the gun. He raised the scope to one eye, then lowered it again to make a series of adjustments. “Does your dark power not work on your wife because she has her own?”

“I don’t read minds.”

Tarskal always was quick to correct a technical inaccuracy; it was uncharacteristic of him to sound so indifferent about it. He must be on autopilot, his obnoxious habits taking over where he had stopped paying attention.

Zahied stopped what he was doing, a thumb trailing the blaster grip while the hand with his dust-rag held the body of the weapon carefully.

Tarskal still stared at the assembly of parts—or at his hands.

Trying not to be disoriented by the fixation (and wishing in the moment that /he/ could read minds), Zahied returned the gaze of the physically formidable man occupying his spare desk chair.

“We’ve been packed-in together on this planet, all wedged inside this base—for how long now? I still don’t know much more about her than I did when you and I were ostensibly enemies, in the days when she never left Imperial space. When you were a ceremonial ‘personal murderer to the Emperor’, and she was Darth Tajna, Sith council member. Important people. Out at big Sith parties together; making appearances. Your status reflected off each other’s because you were married, which might have made you some of the best-known people in your former Empire.”

“Do you realize,” Zahied went on, clamping the skeletal rifle onto the surface of the desk beside them and growing more confrontational, “—you might want to take a note—I’ve barely seen the pair of you interact in public? Here you haven’t gone walking around with her arm linked in yours, boasting about your wife. No; you follow the Commander door-to-door on her heels. When you’ve got a pet project, you chew her ear off coming and going. Anytime you’re having a disagreement in a meeting or coming back from a mission that didn’t pan out for you—we /all/ hear what you think of her. Have you not thought /maybe/ you look obsessed?” 

With Tarskal still pointedly blank-faced, Zahied put forward a hand in a gesture to preempt immediate answer, then measured his words slowly, “And you’re her asset now. One of us pieces she can put in play in the all-or-nothing game we’re playing—you don’t trust her, do you?”

Tarskal’s eyebrows had scrunched together when he was instructed toward silence, but rose with a sharp cant of his head at the question he hadn’t been prepared for. 

“Trust Juli? Is that something you think I would do?”

Zahied nearly matched the startled look that had been directed at him, taking his turn to be caught off-guard. “/Excuse me/? Did you— Call someone their damn name?”

A cold note of caution and of warning in his eyes, Tarskal cocked his head a different angle, chin lowered while he sat straighter.

Though he knew him too well to be intimidated by posturing, Zahied still felt his overtuned sense of alertness cast a shadow, tripping the pattern of his heartbeat and prickling the hair at the back of his neck. It was a signal too muddy with curiosity to feel like fear, but he held his tongue regardless.

The Sith tried to sound bored. “Bastard. I’ve called you your name plenty of times.”

“—If you say so.”

“It entertains you if I save it for a time my mouth’s full.”

Typically asinine, childish expressions of a bad mood— Or maybe he was trying to return to a comfort zone of vulgarity. Zahied felt instantly exhausted. His voice turned to salt, patience and interest rapidly evaporating in the presence of confrontational petulance.

“Not what I’m talking about, /Tarskal/.”

“Using their given name doesn’t mean anyone is special, /Zahied/.”

“Fuck’s sake...” He knew he had come this far on account of the small, undeserved amount of pity he felt for this empathy-blind shitheel. He knew it wouldn’t carry him much further.

He—of all people—knew an unsalvageable cause. But there were allowances he felt he... owed. In their... relationship.

This sort of conversation wasn’t a favour he was likely to see returned. There were other ways Tarskal had... helped him. Whether or not it was his intent at the time. Whether he would have been able to understand or not.

Jackass.

“I’m saying take a look at yourself— not in the mirror, for once. /Think/ which things you’ve been doing, and compare it to what you aren’t. I know you understand how it works. You put more energy into controlling your image than any sane person does—in ways that suit /you/. You don’t want to accept someone else’s idea of how to behave. Not even to reassure your wife. You have an aversion to considering others’ perspectives. You refuse to change. The same way you always do, and always will.”

The phrase ‘it takes one to know one’ came to mind, eye-to-eye with one of the the most stubborn hypocrites known to the galaxy.

Zahied waved a dismissive hand and looked away, self-conscious, transitioning to an abrupt conclusion of his thoughts.

“Maybe she expects too much. Loyalty in a way you didn’t promise—a way she knows you’ve never offered. Sometimes, when people know something with the part of their mind that’s rational, there’s emotions that still can’t believe it.”

Tarskal, actually, looked a little thrown by the sincerity and unexpectedly personal footnote on involuntary emotional convictions. His attitude wasn’t quite what it had been a moment ago.

They both knew Zahied hated to talk about himself nearly as much as Tarskal loved to talk about himself. Even if it was only implied, an indirect explanation for how other people might see a situation, it was rare for him to volunteer insight to the workings of his mind. Definitely none regarding his feelings.

“Hey,” Tarskal hadn’t stopped staring. The stiffness of his affronted posture had morphed into forward-leaning intrigue, heavy forearm settling along the edge of the desk, pushing aside abandoned tools and blaster pieces. “When did you start to like me? And did you ever get jealous because you knew you could only be my mistress?”

“Oh fuck /off/.” Nothing quite like a greying old man with a penchant for juvenile tactics. Zahied could give him pithy exasperation. That was already more than this level of idiocy warranted, when the idiot was after a reaction.

“Seriously; you like me. We’re like friends now.”

That? He would not engage with. “Are you done?”

“Do you think you’d be in love with me, if I loved you?”

And that— For only an instant, everything froze in him. He blanked. He was used to it; for about half his life now, his mind had instinctively fled the contemplation of loving relationships. 

But besides that: the sense of sacrilege was so immense as to invoke horror. 

The words should not have been able to come out of Tarskal’s mouth. Not even in curiosity. They should have caught at his throat, stopped, and turned back around to punch him in his lungs, curbing any subsequent attempt to voice a question like that.

Hastily, Zahied herded his thoughts back into his head, telling himself what had led to this. Reminding himself the prior conversation had nothing to do with him, and neither did this.

“Look; maybe you love your wife, maybe you don’t.” His ungainly gesticulations in the air betrayed the same frayed edge of discomfort and defensiveness as his cutting tone.

“You came to /me/ bitching about your problems—which might suggest you care, somehow.” He took a breath.  If his agitation caught Tarskal’s interest he’d never know peace. He needed this question go away. 

He ground his grimy fingers in the grimy cleaning rag, pretending to scour the grease from them until he was sure they weren’t trembling. “My advice, on top of everything else I’ve been saying: stop avoiding her. You feel like you can’t do something she wants, or be what she wants? Just don’t. We all disappoint other people; all the time. Take it or leave it. She’ll probably still like you.”

He brought his eyes to study Tarskal’s face again, impervious. “Definitely likes you more than I do.”

Tarskal smiled at him.

Zahied’s stomach lurched—not from anything roused in him, but because he felt his chair shunted forward, shrinking the gap between them. He was familiar enough to discern Force-user bullshit in an instant.

Chair-to-chair, front-to-front, Tarskal’s thighs were either side of his knees. The Sith’s hands slid to cover them, palms warm through the thick texture of his pantlegs, and that smug face drew closer to his.

“Hey. Do you want to finish polishing your blaster now? Or you want to leave it, and I’ll ‘polish your blaster’ if you know what I mean—”

“—I might hate you, actually.”

“You like me /so/ much.”

Familiar territory was, in fact, a welcome relief.

[villainship]

[”We Don’t Talk About Fish Husband (RIP)”]

I’ve been in my old WIPs, where I pass the time giving my OCs things to do & feelings to feel. . . I guess this one is a complete mini-thing now--ehehehh

Featuring TD & Zahied: enemy-lovers. From that time TD learned a detail that is unfortunate for him (an asshole) to know.

Brief & callous depiction of unhealthy sad-man angst from the tedious asshole POV! Overwrought monologuing meets ‘author was up too late to self-filter’ melodrama.

(Drafted sometime after I drew a sketch from the concept)

---

“I would see you dead rather than hear you speak on this matter.”

---

“Pardon me. There are other ways to change the subject, you know.” 

Though, putting himself in the other man’s shoes, Tarskal does acknowledge that the choice to turn a blaster on your enemy isn’t an irrational one. 

He wouldn’t have doubted this officer of the Republic could find reasons to dispatch a notorious Sith with a point-blank bolt through his skull. He has stayed his hand, for whatever reasons, in spite of that. 

It fascinates the Sith to analyze Zahied’s deadened tone, at odds with the sudden, searing blaze of fury that wreathes his rigid posture and charges the air between them as hot as the plasma chamber of the loaded gun. It was not, technically, a threat; it had been a warning.

The integrity of the deceased’s legacy, unsullied by unsolicited comment or potential slight against Zahied’s late spouse, was more than Tarskal’s despised life was worth for one breath past the question he had already asked.

Several decades as a widower had been remarkably ineffective at altering the man’s attachment. There had already been plenty of signs of that, knowing what he had known already about the untimely death of Zahied’s husband and their child.

It was seeing what the husband had looked like which added a new dimension to the angst. 

Sentiments as intense as -that- about a face like /this/? The stoic, unassuming facade of the soldier, keeping most people from recognizing a snapped psyche poorly pieced together with worn and crumbling tape, had also been concealing a brazen alien-freak fetishist all along...

The man with the gun did not choose to lower it or take his finger from the trigger in the ensuing moments of silence. Tarskal’s sense of the Force granted him a unique view of the struggle behind outward stillness: the state of Zahied’s emotions had slid into chaos from the instant he had seen the active holoportrait in Tarskal’s hand. With the silvery projection still in sight, he was having some difficulty restoring enough self-control to carry out any action. 

The sensible action for the Imperial would be to shut off the image for his own safety’s sake. 

But to observe this tumult of screaming noise flood such a cautiously regulated mind? It was too interesting of an opportunity. He made sure both of them had full view of the selkath’s face and—holding his tongue, tuning his full attention to what he could discern of the ripples flowing from the shapes of thoughts and the echoes of strong feelings in his periphery—he watched a haunted man drown in someone else’s grave.

[villainship]

As-yet-unplayed Vanguard -- whose basic screenshot portrait I needed in his character tag for my own references. I’m dying to make content, but will I? /Maybe/. 

. . . His origin as a “”love interest”” (minus love) is deeply unflattering and unfair to him & I do feel I owe him more BUT- Also at the same time: I put him there for a REASON, and that reason is that I’m weak for the conflict of “this one is a good guy; but not good enough to ignore the bad guy when they keep bumping into each other and it turns out it’s mostly because the bad guy has a crush”.

(Mentally u gotta add about 10 years to this version of his face because of the limitations of in-game char gen)

[villainship]

Attempting.. character.. design... 

😩 It’s difficult.

First one was the first try, and the picture below was the second--I decided that’s him when he was younger.

He is a leader of some Republic troops who does his job well, but. . . finds himself fraternizing with a Sith. Somehow. 😈

[villainship]

I got a pretty good song for Zahied’s situation with an obnoxious, fun-seeking Sith bullying him into having a good time, & I am not normal about it yet -- enjoy a drawing of a sad man tricked into smiling for once

// It seems no one can help me now I'm in too deep, there's no way out This time I have really led myself astray //

[villainship]

Wrt: this post, Lmaoo -

X) . . .Second “date” was too soon for Zahied. Here he is declining this manly activity in favor of. . .slightly different ones.

(I’m dwelling on the ‘banging each other but No Kissing’ trope w/ them. When did they first compromise to ‘making-out but it doesn’t MEAN anything, obviously’, which is their eventual dynamic? 🤭😎

. . .At first, having TD’s face in his face was something that freaked Zahied out a little. Much-too-complicated feelings about the possibility of unexpected mouth-kissing.)

[villainship]

Another spot-ification of collected songs -- could use more tho. Hehe.

The musical score of Zahied’s life, ordered chronologically, as written & performed by Imagine Dragons.