The Scarred Day

[Meatslopper]

The Scarred Day

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Every scar hurt. Then where my hand once stood, only a phantom. The steel stole my flesh and each and every limb taken by the mechanical malady was only held by dying tethers of rotting flesh. In them I experience a dull ache, pains and itches I cannot scratch, that I cannot heal. That I do not want to heal. There are many scars I’m proud to bear. They signify battles won, battles lost, battles where we raised our blades in triumph or knelt in defeat. These are Warrior scars. I feel no shame to know their sting, to remember, to hold onto an echo of a memory, the anger they stir keeps the soul alive and the heart beating.

It’s all I can do to keep the rhythm of life within my body, I pace it with the beep of a distant monitor, my fingers tap the steel thrice, then thrice again, each a delicately placed memorial to a sound I miss more by the day.

You allowed me this.

I confessed it all to you with barely a prompt. I thought she knew but she probably didn’t, because my loyalty to you, my Master, goes deeper than I could ever say. It always has. Your legacy stands as a symbol of Order in this Empire. The burning soul, the beating heart, the presence that draws knees to rest, heads to bow and men to sharp salute. For that is the power of blood. The blood of a Horuset, where nary a step was misplaced, the careful deftness and ascendant grace of you who stood, who stand above us hold. The ancestral beauty of crimson skin and the echo of ancient legacies passed down through the ages that reside within your veins. 

To possess even a drop ties you to the spectres of history. 

Master, the one thing I think you never understood was my jealousy. It was never a jealousy of power, passion or glory, these Sith virtues ascribed to the great men I idolise. it was of stability, of the thing normal people were afforded but I never, ever felt steady enough upon my own feet to claim. It’s almost funny, isn’t it, to have that every time I think, I think for even a moment I’ve found it, that very, very thing I craved is ripped from me, never to have a stable platform, never again to stand upon solid ground. 

I just wanted a place in this galaxy. 

I just wanted a place in this Empire, where up was up, down was down and people knew where to kneel and who to kneel to, where orders were orders, always and absolutely.

Now, I know that that will never come for certainty. So… I knelt to your wife, to the Lord Saltaeon and in her I see your other half. I am her second, her heir, not of blood but of philosophy. You together were a powerful pair, weren’t you? I saw her, at the end of you. I felt her agony at your fall. You mattered to her, and I think she to you. It was in you I saw my example, a great bond that could not, would not fade. 

Was it wrong of me to want the same?

Was it wrong to love you Rekhen?

No matter the spat, no matter the pit into which I foolishly fell, I saw stability with you. You were supposed to give me something to hold onto. You who always seemed so perfectly composed, so put together, when I, I could never be. I could just always return to you, always rely on you to calm me, to let me settle for just a brief moment of comfort in this cruel world that always liked to remind me how hot it burned. 

You always had a plan, a promise, an idea, that I listened to. 

You were in control. I needed you. 

But you, you apparently never needed me, I opened my heart to you, I told you everything even the things I really shouldn’t have said, shouldn’t have been thinking, my past, my regrets, my feelings, my anguish at the things we have committed together and apart. You promised me a House! You wanted to marry me, to unite our banners together eternally and that? That meant nothing to you as well? I bled for this, for us and for you. You who gave me what? I’d love for you to tell me, tell me how you fought for this?

You didn’t.

You treated me like trash, treated yourself like trash.

You… used me. You abused my trust. My desperate want for your stability. And what? You didn’t even think of me? ‘I’m sorry’, you thought I’d just what, accept that? You were the one person, the one person in all the stars that was supposed to watch my back! The one person I offered a complete blindspot to all so you could drive that blade into my heart. 

And the reason? The reason you threw me aside?

All so, you could sully yourself, disgrace your ancestors, your legacy with an Alien? If it had been a crime of passion, a genuine deed of worthy betrayal, like a Sith. I would maybe have understood what we had, maybe, maybe would have been worth it. At least then what stabs at my heart wouldn’t be the fact it just didn’t matter, all that time, all those tears for you, every moment with me at your side. They didn’t mean anything, not to you.

Then you mock me? You mock me with your smirk? With your amateur attempt at an exchange? Do you think you're clever with that? That you proved anything?

The only thing you proved is that… That I’m right to hate you. 

You side with Kelsa? After everything they’ve done? They are rot of this powerbase. The disease that eats at our very soul, that already gnaws at yours.

I lost, Rekhen. After everything. In truth, apparently I’m the only one who can admit I did. I lost you and I’m the only one that cares. I know no blade will fix that, no victory, no duel, no amount of your suffering will ever heal this wound…

In the end. I will make you realise, you lost too.

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