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Entry tags:
CLOSED | Skeletor Christmas Special
WHO: chise and kylo ren
WHAT: Being yanked sideways through the multiverse for fun and profit.
WARNING(S): TBD
OTHER> AU of the AU
Chise wanted so desperately to believe that her life had plateaued into something close to peaceful. With a home to go to at the end of the day. Where standing in front yard after sunset and not being afraid when she would look over the hill to find the lights on. These simple needs met were to her a wish finally granted. Home is what she had here and it was at home where a new chapter of troubles opened up. It started, as most things did where she was concerned, with a strange artifact. Elias told her it came from the auction house as she had. The only difference was that its seller was strangely keen on undercutting the price and never made mention of where it had come from. Not of this world, was all they could parse from its mystery seller.
The pyramidal shape in her hands was really rather beautiful. Set in a intricately made gold casing was black glass with Chise could only guess was a dead language carved onto its surface. What had been called a holocron by the auction house was a magnificent looking thing but only superficially so. Chise found it pretty to look out but neither she nor Elias could make heads or tails of the thing. Mysterious and thrumming with some kind of living energy energy but the only use for it now was an ornamental paper weight. Chise left it on her nightstand without a second thought.
That night when her eyes were heavy as she peered over her featherdown pillow at the moon hanging low through the window lattice - the whispers started. First they were barely a sound something she more imagined than actually heard until the noise began to build and build and build. Ruth barked in alarm when the whispering rose to a piercing sound that made the backs of her teeth ache and her eyes rattle in her skull. The words spoken were intelligible and not in a language she understood, but it was so loud and so unnerving that not even trying to scream over the voice or covering her hands over her ears could drown it out. Her vision blurred a blinding white before it faded to black when she finally lost consciousness. The last thing Chise remembered was a long shadow filling her vision as it grew in size to loom over her. It hadn't been Elias.
"Ah - I see it now."
The thing called Snoke spoke through a twisted mouth with a voice that was low and strangely musical. Chise knew immediately that through the heavy scarring of his misshapen face that whatever had brought her to this place was not human. Snoke was the first thing she saw when she came too in a dark, cavernous room where he sat on a black marble throne in heavy black robes that almost made he appear to be a solid shadow oozing out a greater darkness. The room was cold and the air stale and dusty in her throat. He introduced himself rather cordially but the moment he stood from his throne, standing tall and terrible like that shadow in her room, Chise knew he was anything but benevolent.
He smells like blood and old paper, She thought when spidery fingers married to cool, dry hands with skin she couldn't tell from the scar tissue cupped her face.
"You are a shadow under the briers but a light through the leaves as well," Snoke had a voice that made her skin explode in gooseflesh even as he never raised it above a whisper, "Child, the Force moves within you like water does through a bottomless well."
The Force.
For a reason felt so bone deep as to be called instinctual that word - Force, resonated in Chise. Something half-remembered came to her as she stolidly bore Snoke's hands combing over her face, her mind. Magic was called a great many things and somehow this Snoke had need of it - of her.
"The girl is a rare and precious thing the power of the Dark Side thrives through-in and throughout - take her."
Chise looked up to see beady black eyes set in Snoke's ruined face peering over to something - someone standing at a distance behind them. Her blood ran colder even when those icy hands slide away from her face.
WHAT: Being yanked sideways through the multiverse for fun and profit.
WARNING(S): TBD
OTHER> AU of the AU
Chise wanted so desperately to believe that her life had plateaued into something close to peaceful. With a home to go to at the end of the day. Where standing in front yard after sunset and not being afraid when she would look over the hill to find the lights on. These simple needs met were to her a wish finally granted. Home is what she had here and it was at home where a new chapter of troubles opened up. It started, as most things did where she was concerned, with a strange artifact. Elias told her it came from the auction house as she had. The only difference was that its seller was strangely keen on undercutting the price and never made mention of where it had come from. Not of this world, was all they could parse from its mystery seller.
The pyramidal shape in her hands was really rather beautiful. Set in a intricately made gold casing was black glass with Chise could only guess was a dead language carved onto its surface. What had been called a holocron by the auction house was a magnificent looking thing but only superficially so. Chise found it pretty to look out but neither she nor Elias could make heads or tails of the thing. Mysterious and thrumming with some kind of living energy energy but the only use for it now was an ornamental paper weight. Chise left it on her nightstand without a second thought.
That night when her eyes were heavy as she peered over her featherdown pillow at the moon hanging low through the window lattice - the whispers started. First they were barely a sound something she more imagined than actually heard until the noise began to build and build and build. Ruth barked in alarm when the whispering rose to a piercing sound that made the backs of her teeth ache and her eyes rattle in her skull. The words spoken were intelligible and not in a language she understood, but it was so loud and so unnerving that not even trying to scream over the voice or covering her hands over her ears could drown it out. Her vision blurred a blinding white before it faded to black when she finally lost consciousness. The last thing Chise remembered was a long shadow filling her vision as it grew in size to loom over her. It hadn't been Elias.
"Ah - I see it now."
The thing called Snoke spoke through a twisted mouth with a voice that was low and strangely musical. Chise knew immediately that through the heavy scarring of his misshapen face that whatever had brought her to this place was not human. Snoke was the first thing she saw when she came too in a dark, cavernous room where he sat on a black marble throne in heavy black robes that almost made he appear to be a solid shadow oozing out a greater darkness. The room was cold and the air stale and dusty in her throat. He introduced himself rather cordially but the moment he stood from his throne, standing tall and terrible like that shadow in her room, Chise knew he was anything but benevolent.
He smells like blood and old paper, She thought when spidery fingers married to cool, dry hands with skin she couldn't tell from the scar tissue cupped her face.
"You are a shadow under the briers but a light through the leaves as well," Snoke had a voice that made her skin explode in gooseflesh even as he never raised it above a whisper, "Child, the Force moves within you like water does through a bottomless well."
The Force.
For a reason felt so bone deep as to be called instinctual that word - Force, resonated in Chise. Something half-remembered came to her as she stolidly bore Snoke's hands combing over her face, her mind. Magic was called a great many things and somehow this Snoke had need of it - of her.
"The girl is a rare and precious thing the power of the Dark Side thrives through-in and throughout - take her."
Chise looked up to see beady black eyes set in Snoke's ruined face peering over to something - someone standing at a distance behind them. Her blood ran colder even when those icy hands slide away from her face.
no subject
Chise has known the company of tormentors long enough to wade through the varying manifestation of fear or apathy thrust on her that she can pick up on the little threads of positive feedback. Like living off birdseed. This might not be Ren ratifying her in any significant way but she swore she heard of a smile under all that metal and electrical white noise. The commonality of their dislike for one individual was still a commonality If anything it assuaged her feelings of disgust at the sympathetic reaction she experience. That meant she could, at the very least, defer to Ren if this general blindsided her again.
"Yes...Master." She doesn't like the word because it reminds her of the auction house and what she had so nearly subjected herself to out of desperation. Trying hard she impresses upon herself that master wasn't such a thorny word when paired with apprentice. Only just as she said it she looked over to see Ren taking long-legged strides in the other direction.
"Ah- !"
Chise moves at a brisk walk then breaks into a scampering jog until she closes the distance again. The walk back to the training room was oppressively quiet as the last time. Only now she was running through her head what she could possibly demonstrate for Ren. He certainly wasn't going to be impressed by her gardening acumen needed for the harvest of mandrake leaves or how she can weave spools cotton fly wool. The little spells that don't leave her winded were, for now, going to be her played close to the chest. Little things that might come in handy later but where she stood she was back to her first strategy. Do what Ren tells her until the situation improves.
The training room was as dimly lit and chilly as ever, but at least this time she was more appropriately dressed. Chise looks up at Ren for guidance. Suspecting a curious 'Now what?' would be seen as disrespectful.
no subject
The problem was, could she use that power? Could he shape her into something that was such the antithesis of herself?
(The Supreme Leader did it with him. Took him, a gangly boy with ears too wide and eyes too pained, and made him into a monster. It could be done. He knows it for a fact.)
As soon as they've entered the training room, he reaches out a hand - from one of the corners, a small spherical remote floats over to his outstretched hand. Grasping it, he moves to stand at one end of the room, turning to face Chise.
"Take this from me." A pause - his fingers tighten around the remote, as if his grip alone will provide most of the obstacle to his little test. "But not with your hands. Use the Force."
He lets the words sink in. Is she a power source, or a user of power? This would serve a way for him to see that for himself.
"Let's see what you're capable of."
no subject
"Alright." Her voice is steady but green eyes widen as his grasp tightens. An almost sympathetic response to the metal sphere in his hand. Those hands were powerful and terrible things and she does not want them on her. Ever.
Chise takes a few steps until there expanse of the open room stands between them. She closes her eyes to attempt something like a meditative state before continuing forward. Her breathing plateaus into something almost peaceful before she feels it.
Hands. The living weight of two hands resting on her thin shoulders. Her eyes screw up tighter, remaindering shut but her heart is in her throat threatening to flutter straight out of her like a frightening animal. Had she done something wrong? Was Ren angry with h-
"Steady."
A voice that sounded like it was coming from...inside her own head. Something as intimate as a thought but there was definitely someone beside her now and she readjusts. The hands are gentle, well worn as old brass doorknobs familiar to touch. Chise doesn't know why but she knows if she opened her eyes she wouldn't see anyone there.
Which means Ren wouldn't either.
"What do you feel as the Force calls to you?"
The presence exudes that same quiet sorrow as it had the last time. The voice that sounds like it had once been very sharp, very angry but time had worn it down to something smooth. Its inextinguishable attention fixed on Ren even as it spoke to her. The man she guessed, if he ever was a man, knew Ren somehow. The relationship that tied them together was carved in deep like a wound.
"I feel..." Her lips barely move and she speaks lower than a whisper, "An ocean."
The Force she knew was everything, in everything. It went as wide and it went deep. From above the breakers she could sense its infinite berth and 'looking' down could get a glimpse at the impenetrable, crushing dark of its depths. Both facets frighten her. The connection to everything around her, and the bottomless depths of her own nature.
"Do you go deeper, or wider? Choose wisely, little robin."
The voice fades along with the hands on her shoulders. In his absence Chise feels like a boat that lost its anchor in a storm. Without her direct action she could sink or be cast further out into that endless horizon.
Deeper - or wider. Deeper or wider.
Chise breathes, and swims out. Where she goes without moving it was cold beneath her finger deeps but warm at her back. Learning how to swim beneath the waves without forgetting to come up for air.
Her hands slowly fold open like blossoming flower petals and before she realizes it something hard and metallic comes to rest there like an enticed little honeybee. The ocean falls away when she opens her eyes - and sees the remote whirring quietly in her hands. All without taking a single, physical step.
"It did it! I- ouch!" Chise beams, only to retract in pain when the remote levitates above her grasp and shocks her with a burst of green light. She shakes the numbness out of her stunned hand with a withering look at the offending remote droid.
Then she looks over to Ren either for ratifying approval - or an overwhelming urge like an itch begging to be scratched to ask him the same question. Had he gone deeper, or wider? Or if he was drowning in the choice he already made.
no subject
And then he feels it. Something reaching out, a hand brushing the waters of the Force (there's also something strangely familiar, the sensation of seeing someone he knows, but there's no one there). And then something moves into it, sending a cascade through it that makes the whole length of his spine shudder. He steps back, surprised, and then there's the sudden sensation of the remote leaping out of his outstretched hand.
"You did it," he breaths. Even now, in his surprise, he doesn't seem to allow any nice words to escape his mouth, but the sense of awe in his tone isn't completely erased by the voice modulator of his mask. The girl was powerful, and not just a source. She could be a powerful apprentice, if trained correctly. Could he train her? He believes he can.
He waves the offending remote away, approaching her, staring down into those wide green eyes.
"You need training," he huffs. "You will learn what I have to teach you, without complaint. Don't make me regret my decision."
no subject
So there was that.
"Thank you," Chise said before even considering the thought not to. More because he made the stupid little remote go away than for his half-hearted attempt at ratifying her successes, She was a docile girl and her chosen shield was deference. Already she (correctly) surmised that along with learning her way around the Force she needed to navigate Kylo Ren's unpredictable temper.
"I never complained," She shot back mildly, feeling a bit braver. From what she gathered from Snoke that in sharp contradiction to Ren's huffing and puffing - he needed her. For whatever she could scarcely imagine and did not much want to. Still, he could stand to be less...antagonistic.
"And I want to learn, and you're my master in this," She added. This was true - some rebellious little spark deep in her gut ignited at the idea of learning magic or this Force in depth without Elias stonewalling her at every turn. Of course, she also knew when to stroke Ren's ego. Something large enough that she could have spotted it from orbit.
no subject
"That I am." He is the master. She is the student, the disciple. She will obey, and he will mold her into something that the Supreme Leader would praise him for. He can already imagine Snoke looking down with appreciation, dark eyes glinting with pride in seeing what his apprentice had accomplished.
He will stop at nothing to prove that he is still worthy of being the Supreme Leader's apprentice. Nothing.
"Are you experienced with weapons? I would hazard a guess to say that you are not, but appearances can be deceiving."
no subject
"Weapons?"
That caught her off guard. It had been obvious from the beginning that her new teacher had plans for her that aligned with what it was Snoke was up to. Something like actual combat had never occurred to her, but she was used to being taught under the assumption that she was rather delicate.
"I only know how to use a knife," She answered honestly but maybe not being handled as if she were enfeebled could be an interesting change of pace, "But not in a real fight."
Not that she really wanted to get into fights.