Mind Playin Tricks on Me

[Marcus DuBois]

Marcus studied her for a moment, considering. He was familiar with the nature of dreams, their fluidity and lack of consistency. One moment he might be speaking to a person, the next moment falling off a cliff. There were times where he believed the person he was interacting with was someone else- knew it in his soul and it felt natural. Only to awaken and realize he had conflate people together into one.

The subconscious mind, memory engrams being activated at random, the pattern seeking part of the brain trying to fit it all into some kind of story or narrative. Events that in real life might have happened only a moment ago, such as a blaring alarm, woven in and made part of a larger story, filled with a "history".

It was not often that dreams were logical or allowed him to speak or converse. Indeed, reading or writing in dreams was something he'd learned was impossible for him, try as he might.

He tilted his head, considering Malik and her and the surroundings. "A dream, it is true. But..." he wondered if he could write. Suddenly a notebook and pen was in his hands. Curious, he wrote "I am in a dream" with ease. He read it aloud before regarding her with a cocked eyebrow.

"...a strange dream. Unlike any I have ever had. So what are you? My conscience?" He scoffed. He didn't believe he had one. He looked at Malik. "How are we here together?"

[Thalia]

The glimmer of a smile returned, and spilled into laughter. Eyes grey as the running waters crinkled pleasantly. “For your sake, I hope not.”

“The world is wonderfully strange, and not everything needs an answer.” Her fingers fluttered through the petals in her lap, letting them float slowly back to the earth where they rooted into the ground and sprung abundant. “I don’t know how long you will stay here. Either of you. Do you think you are asking the right questions, Marcus? Sometimes opportunities are missed because we spend too long wondering why they have been given to us.”

She unfolded and stood.

With the frozen snarl on his face, Malik almost reminded her of the basalt stone, though Tristan’s uncle was dead and his imprisonment little more than the laws of nature. Trolls were seldom good creatures either, but on the rare occasions Nimeda still visited the cottage she would sit at the stone’s base and speak to the essence within. Probably he considered that additional punishment rather than a comfort, or perhaps he did not care to listen at all; he had never reacted to her presence. Likewise she was drawn naturally curious to the avatar Marcus carved from himself: singularly hateful and driven, that malice perhaps turned inwards once the enemies around them had been defeated. What purpose had he now? He felt like a wound, though she did not know why. It itched at her fingers, pulsing temptation in her chest, though she did not let it fill her.

Instead she cupped his cheek like a mother might, knowing he could not flinch from nor retaliate against the kindness. He barely saw her before, when his eyes burned red as blood, and she did not expect that to change. Rather, the affection was just in her nature. The injury was far too old, though. It had healed crooked, but there was nothing here left to fix. It just was, now. Unpicking the memories that created it would leave more shell than man, and she had no wish to see him broken.

After a moment her hand slid away, and she turned to face Marcus. “Chains always break. Cages eventually spring free. You’ll fight this war forever if you don’t find a better way.” That was his choice to make, though, and she would not take it from him -- not even to release the bonds he held on Malik, though she did not like to see it. Her head canted, considering. A small smile lingered. “You hugged me so tightly I could feel your heart beating shrill as a baby bird’s. You were too scared to even tell me your name. It didn’t seem a fair game, so I brought you here instead. I do not know why you are still two.” She tipped a shoulder into a shrug.

[Marcus DuBois]

She cut to the core of things. A slight smile played on his lips. While he supposed he could appear to sound erudite in his dreams, the way she spoke- thought, actually- seemed fully alien. Definitely not a construct of his mind.

While a dream might make the surreal normal, the very fact that he questioned said he was fully himself. And this was not normal.

And yet she was right. It would be a waste to divine an answer that might not satisfy him. He looked at her and then Malik. Focused on Malik. That was the real issue.

He knew Malik was there. It had been a childhood fancy. An imaginary friend. A way to escape. After he was older and the danger past, Malik remained. An affectation. A secret persona. He might think of it his true self. But deep down, he knew it wasn't so. He was what Marcus wanted to be, at times.

Even in those moments when he "became" Malik, he knew that at some level, he was just giving himself permission to be and do what he wanted without consequence. 

Especially as the Angel, once he, as Marcus, had taken every precaution and care to avoid getting caught, he could give vent to his rage and anger. Chaos with confines.

A weakness, perhaps.  But from a Sith perspective, no emotion or feeling was weak, provided it did not prevent the exercise of your iron will and determination.

The past year had seen less opportunity for Malik, less freedom. He did plan on indulging that side of himself again. But only judiciously and when safe. Malik, in all his glorious rage and power was weak and foolish.

And yet she floated over, heedless of any danger- indeed, as if she knew there was none. Yet another indicator this was her realm, whatever it was.

Even more oddly, she touched Malik's cheek tenderly. Despite their differences, Marcus felt it too. Felt the bewilderment at the touch. No one who knew Malik would think him worthy of anything but disgust and fear.

As of reaching into his thoughts she reminded him of himself not moments before, scared and small, heart thumping like a rabbit. And yet her words were not mocking. 

As if she saw both sides of him and wasn't bothered. He walked over to stand next to her and look at Malik. His voice was quiet. He could feel his thoughts, confused and unsure. "I needed him. When I was that boy you saw, that is."

He looked at Malik's hands, imagined the blood that had covered them. He looked at her, thinking to himself.

Was he afraid of Malik? Was that why they had diverged so completely in this place?

His eyes focused. "To be whole...it could be..." he let the words trail off. It could lose him everything if he let his emotions rule. His life was a delicate dance.

But it could also be..."...wonderful." After a pause,  he went on. "Are you...integrated? How do you suggest we do it?"

The bifurcation had clearly taken a toll on his psyche. And he needed his faculties. All of them.

He needed Malik.

[Thalia]

Nimeda accepted his explanation without questioning the why.

“Need is powerful,” she agreed. No judgement waited. She would listen to anything he had to share, but the detail itself was inconsequential unless he found the unburdening helpful. Given the way she could almost feel the hum of thought busy in his skull while his gaze slid between her and his Other, she suspected he would rather keep his own counsel.

The phrasing made her smile. Integrated was such a mechanical sounding word, like his additional piece was nothing but an augmentation or a tool to slide back into place. Her own instincts were more primal, and less easily funneled through words. Feeling pulled her, and often she acted without thought. Marcus reminded her a little of Jon, with all his questions and his desire to know everything. It prompted a little fondness.

“I think you are more integrated than you suspect,” she said, laughing, for she had told red-eyed Malik of her own duality, not the child Marcus. He might ask a river to cease flowing with the question he asked of her, though. She did not try to unpick the manner of her own nature, though he was not the first to try and turn her mind to the task. “We are not enemies,” she said, head tilted with the consideration before it slipped straight through her fingers. Nim did not care to chase the epiphany. She and her Other had never been at odds. They were the same, even without the shared space of memory; dual-natured, but single-souled. “Perhaps you should ask it of him? I would not let him hurt you here, if he tried."

[Marcus DuBois]

Her words hung in the air as if visible and glowing. ENEMIES And in his mind he saw the flash of scarlet and azure, red shadowed power against blue haloed determination.

The struggle that he haf taken a stand in years ago. Order had to exist. Chaos fleeing from an indomitable will and an iron fist. Had he not apprenticed himself to the man who had come further than anyone in history in uniting the world under one rule?

True, there was resistance. China and the US still held out, though the latter was finally crumbling. It was not a perfect order, and yet perfection was never an end state. It was merely a goal. As Sith apprentices overthrew their masters and advanced their cause, one or two steps at a time, so too would he take his steps in due time.

Malik was not his enemy. Malik was the extent he would go to. Was willing to go.

And he walled him off. Kept him caged. He studied the man, the rage and fire that churned and rolled behind his eyes. A part of him wanted to shiver. And yet a part of him smiled.

This ferocity was his own. Walled off and guarded. But his own.

He looked at the woman, the way her hair and clothes flowing around her reminding him of leaves or flowers on a vine, a stream down a riverbed, free and eternal.

A smile formed as he studied her, looked around to let this place wash over him. He recalled those words of Palpatine, part of them coming out as a whisper. "There is a place within you, a place as briskly clean as ice on a mountaintop, cool and remote. Find that high place, and look down within yourself; breathe that clean, icy air..."

Strangely, the landscape changed, knives of cold winds cutting through his shirt collar and mist feathering his breath. The three of them stood on a jagged icy peak, high enough the air felt thin, though their breath was not labored. Black oceans of cloud scudded a grey sky, light seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere.

Yet for all the dreary monotony of color, crystalline lattice, mathematically perfect in their chaotic growth, glowed behind it all, as of the reality was merely a curtain and for just a moment he could see the truth.

And he beheld Malik in all his glory, examined him as he burned with a fire hotter than the surface of the sun. Fiery ice fit to consume the world.

Was that the key?  The image came to him and he smiled, wind swirling around him, showering him- them, in a cloud of sparkling snow. The heart of a reactor. The combustion of the engine.

He looked at her once more and nodded. "We are not enemies. That was my mistake." And with that, he walked into Malik, the man misting into ghost, the fading snarling grin of pure joy remaining burned into his mind.

And Marcus breathed, inhaling the sweet breath of life as if for the first time, felt the cold flow into his chest, the icy lava pump from his heart through his limbs to his toes and finger tips.

His scalp tingled.

He was whole and unafraid. He felt the cauldron within, the fusion core radiating its slow, steady, unending stream of heat, pulsing as if a heart beat.

He looked at the woman, peace and serenity easy on his face. "Thank you."

[Thalia]

He internalised the words, and she waited patiently while he did. Nimeda was unselfconscious under the study of his gaze. When the world began to swirl and rearrange, she did not interfere. Instead her grey eyes swept the new monochrome landscape with interest, though she chose not to feel the sharp bite of cold. Her palms opened to the distraction of snow as it gusted like powdered diamonds, prompting a small and careless smile, and when her attention returned Malik was already fading. Fascination drew her closer. 

She was pleased he had not had to die, though death was not always a bad thing, and it grieved her far less than the idea of keeping him chained and raging. Her fingers itched to run down the length of Marcus’s arms as though to check for new seams to their merging, but found diversion in the profound peace of his expression. It stirred something old and forgotten in her, blossoming a brilliant smile. That soon spilled into laughter, though not unkindly. She padded close enough to stretch on tiptoe and press a kiss to his cheek, followed by the playful assertion, “It’s time to wake up.”

Then she nudged him gently back into his Waking body.