deercountry | And my destination makes it worth the while... [OPEN]

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And my destination makes it worth the while... [OPEN]

Who: Ariadne and pretty much anyone she knows
What: New Years Eve
When: December 31, going into January 1
Where: Around and about Serenity Garden
Note: If you've spoken to Ariadne more than once, assume you're invited. Her guests are also welcome to bring a +1 or two. Party crashers also welcome, just let me know if you cause any property damage so Ariadne can brow beat you. PM me, if you have any questions or need me to add any warnings.

Content Warnings: Backstory trauma likely to come up for some folks, will update as needed.

Ariadne wasn't much of a party planner, but she couldn't ignore Ezra's suggestion that she find some way to celebrate one of the most important holidays from back home. She'd enjoyed learning about the celebrations of others. New Years Eve was a time of renewal, of hope, of strength. She wanted to share that with the people of Trench. So she did her best. Was it glamorous? Certainly not by some of the standards she'd seen in Deerington and Trench. But it was something. And, really, it was the people there who mattered the most. The people were what made the multiverse worth exploring.

Still, that wasn't to say it was without any frills. Serenity Gardens were elegant on an ordinary night. Tonight, there was a little extra something.

The main great room of the shop had been cleared, all of the counters and shelves pushed to the walls, so there was a broad, open space in the middle. Thanks to Wesker, Ariadne knew how to play music with her Omni now, so she had all sorts of dances being played, in case anyone wanted to celebrate the old-fashioned way, in the arms of someone they cared for.

Against one wall, she'd actually lit her fireplace, something she rarely permitted. There were a couple of smaller tables, with dried fruit, nuts, and whatever other small treats Ariadne had managed to scrounge together. And thanks to a deal she'd made with a merchant in town, she had a few barrels of pear cider, warming in the glow of the fire.

Outside, in the garden proper, Ariadne had set up some strings of fairy lights. She trusted electricity far more than fire, especially around her precious trees. There were a lot of corners and shadows to hide away with a lover. Ariadne was no fool. She knew that part of the appeal of attending a party was sneaking away from it.

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As the host of the party, Ariadne was scurrying around the entire garden, flitting from place to place with all the liveliness of Windy, her hummingbird Omen. She'd never thrown a party before, so she wanted everything to be as perfect as possible. Every guest she saw was immediately greeted with a hug, a smile, and the offer to fetch them food or drink. Her offerings were meager, but she made the most of them, serving heavy flagons of pear cider with a bit of showmanship.

After the guests were settled, Ariadne was eager to get them out on the makeshift dance floor. What was a party without a little dancing? So it wasn't completely unexpected that she began to loop her elbow through someone else's, dragging them out to share a waltz or a gavotte, her gold gown swirling. It was all in good fun. And the music was just so lively! How could anyone resist?

It was only as the evening turned into the morning that Ariadne finally slowed down. Near the end of the party, she found herself drifting out to the garden, standing beneath her pear tree, wrapped up in a heavy black cloak. She turned her face up to the sky, letting starlight and moonlight frame her profile. Another year. It was hard to believe how fast and slow time could be, all at once. How much things had changed. And how little she felt anything had changed at all.

"Hi Adriadne!" Luca says, hurrying up to greet her when he arrives. Looking around at the trees, he says, "Wow, everything looks great!"

As one of the few children of Trench, Ariadne initially was hesitant to invite Luca. Not because she thought less of him. Only because she worried about how the behavior of some of her friends--when all together in the same place--might impact him. Finally, though, she decided to set her fears aside. Surely, the Jedi and the Sith could behave themselves at a party. And perhaps Luca's presence might even sever as a deterrent to any rowdiness.

She hoped, anyway.

Ariadne was always good when it came to hope.

At any rate, she smiled when she saw him, quickly crossing over with a little ripple of her fingers. "Thank you," she said. "I've never thrown a party before. I hope I did it right..."

"You did!"

Says the boy who had little experience with having parties on land before coming to the Trench. Still, comparing it to the few parties he's encountered in the Trench, it looks great!

"It's pretty and there's food and music! It has everything!"

Compared to the soirees she used to attend at the royal court back home, it was feeble. But she supposed Luca was right. The essentials were in place. And what mattered more than any of that, of course, were the people.

Ariadne loved her Trench family dearly. Including Luca, of course.

"Thank you," she said again. "And for coming too. I wasn't sure if anyone would. Especially when I invited both Maul and Ezra..."

"Yeah, I know those two don't get along...although, I know Maul has a lot of people he doesn't get along with."

That's an understatement.

She laughed. Then quickly covered her mouth, flushing in embarrassment. "Yeah," she said, lowering her voice to a deep whisper. "It's true. But really, I think underneath that snarly surface, there's a lot more to him."

A pause.

"Don't tell him I said that."

"Yeah, I think so, too. He's always really nice to me, and he gets me a stuffed animal every year at Christmas."

Sure, they were weird stuffed animals, but that's not the point. It still shows that Maul has a soft side, at least toward Luca.

"He gives me a plant."

Her garden was beginning to balance out, between gives from Sodder and gifts from Maul, as a matter of fact.

Sort of a funny combination, really.

"I guess he just bases it on what we're most likely to want."

Which makes sense since that's how gifts usually work. It's not that Luca doesn't like plants, of course, it's just that even in the Trench, he still wants toys.

"He also gave me some fish jerky which was really good."

And food, of course, is always valuable in the Trench.

Yeah, Maul was secretly quite thoughtful. But she'd never say it to his face. He'd get all grumpy and puff up like a cat. Or one of the snarly males from the stories her father used to tell, of the packs in time gone by, when they fought over everything from mates to sleeping quarters.

With a smile, Ariadne reached out to put a hand on Luca's arm. "Where I come from," she said, "it's tradition to embrace the new year with a wish. What's something you're wishing for in the time ahead?"

"Oh? Hmm..."

What should he wish for? It's hard to say, but ultimately, he has been kind of lonely in this place, especially since the house he lives in isn't as crowded as it was in the past.

"I guess I wish I had more people at the house, like it used to be. Even better if they were sea monsters!"

Ariadne's eyes didn't reveal it, but she felt a little piercing in her heart there. Trench could be a very, very lonely place. Much more so than Deerington, somehow. Even though she found it so much better.

The loss of Dean was still...yeah, it was still tough. Add that to Orpheus, Varian, Fern, and everyone else...

Well. She had a good idea about how Luca felt.

"I hope it comes true," she said.

"Thanks." He hopes so, too. "And what are you wishing for, Signora Adriadne?"

Ariadne tilted her head slightly, birdlike and thoughtful. She still wasn't very good at wishing for things, but she was getting better at it.

"I think the same," she admitted, after a moment. "And maybe that the Sith and Jedi won't fight so much."

A girl could dream.

"That would be nice. I don't know why they fight back home, but they definitely don't need to do it here."

After all, in this place they should all be working together to survive and make the best of everything thrown their way.

She was beginning to understand why they fought. In an abstract sort of way. It was all about ideology. And Ariadne had never understood the need to fight about things like religion or family or values. To her mind, as long as you didn't interfere with others, you ought to be able to live your life as you saw fit.

But when ideologies were so contrary...

Ariadne sighed, shaking her head. "No," she said. "They most certainly don't need to do it here."

"But I guess it's not too surprising. I mean, there was fighting back home that didn't need to happen."

Like with humans hating sea monsters.

Ariadne nodded. "Fighting happens a lot. More than it should. I just think that being here makes us special. It takes us out of the place where our fighting seems to make sense. And makes us realize how little it really does make sense."

Which wasn't to say she wouldn't have her claws out if the Red Dragon or one of his lieutenants arrived in Trench.

She absolutely would.

But maybe there was a chance they'd learn the error of their ways.

"Yeah, you're right. Although sometimes the fighting seems to have more to do with the fact that someone is different, and not anything that really made sense anywhere."

Like with humans hunting sea monsters.

"Although here at least there aren't the same rewards for doing that kind of thing."

No big cash payout for hunting sea monsters, just people horrified that someone is hunting a child. While it hasn't happened here, Luca suspects if anyone showed up that did want to hunt him it wouldn't go well for them.

"Yeah," she agreed.

There was quite the hefty sum to be made from hunting down and scalping an Alastrian. She understood. Both what Luca was saying and what he wasn't saying, this time.

Thank the gods the Jedi and Sith didn't seem to gain anything by hurting each other. Other than...well...winning. As it were.

"Sometimes, Trench is much better than home."

He's had very similar experiences. He's seen the posters advertising a three hundred thousand lira reward for dead sea monsters.

"Yeah. It definitely is sometimes."

She put a hand on his shoulder. Despite the difference in their ages, Luca was sometimes easier to talk to than anyone else in her life.

Ariadne appreciated that.

"Well. Let's just hope for a happy new year."

"Yeah. Let's hope for a happy new year."

With no crazy Trench stuff.

Maul wasn't one much for celebrations. With how many had been going on this month that he'd already attended, he was feeling a bit celebrationed out. But when Ariadne invited him to one for New Years Eve, he figured he might as well show up for at least a few minutes.

He showed up in the outfit that he'd first acquired in Deerington for a celebration to ring in the New Year as well, with a luxurious-looking coat layered on top of it to help keep him warm in the frigid night air. He wasn't one much for chit-chat for the sake of it and hung along the edges of the party, slowly sipping a small glass of pear cider. Trying to get him onto the dance floor was ill-advised. For all his skills as an assassin, the number of times Maul had actually danced in his life could be counted on one hand with fingers to spare.

He spent a lot of time out in the garden proper rather than the main area, letting the presence of the trees and the night sky relax him. It led him to feel contemplative, reflecting on the past year and thinking of what the new one would be like. He'd changed a lot but there was still room for improvement.

When Ariadne caught sight of Maul in the garden, she immediately marched over. She was angry with him, but what pass for anger with Ariadne was more like an incredibly mild irritation. If that, even.

She just didn't have it in her to rage and bellow.

Instead, she planted her hands on her hips, giving him a wry smile. "Why is it that I had to find out from Usagi that you're married?" she asked. She tried to thump her foot, but it really just looked silly.

Really, Maul wasn't even sure that Ariadne could do the emotion of mad, so seeing her in a state of even mild irritation really was all that he thought she was capable of muster. He almost started laughing when Ariadne demanded to know when he and Reaper had gotten hitched.

"We eloped!" Maul said, trying hard to keep from laughing and not succeeding very well. "Neither of us just flat-out announced it. Reaper and I can be a bit private like that." He'd just allowed the information to trickle out naturally by word-of-mouth.

She tried to look annoyed that he was laughing at her. But she was Ariadne. So, really, it was just taking everything in her power not to laugh as well. Of all the secrets he could keep, this was definitely one of the best kinds. Even if she was a little irritated that she was only finding out now.

For a second, she considered giving him one of those arm punches that was supposed to be companionable and friendly.

But she couldn't really pull that off.

"Maul, that may be the best thing I've ever heard in Trench or Deerington. Possibly ever."

It was like watching a kitten try to puff itself up and hiss. Sure, she could try, but she'd end up looking adorable no matter what she did. Her reaction only made him laugh all the harder.

Her words, while kind, did surprise him just a little bit. "Really?"

"Of course," she said.

Maybe that was the problem with being such a well-known liar. Even now, when she was constantly telling the truth, people didn't seem to believe her.

Or maybe she wasn't putting it the right way.

"Maul, you fell in love with and married someone you were never supposed to meet. Ever. We've broken all the bonds of probability just by being here. But to fall in love? That's nothing short of a beautiful miracle." Ariadne shrugged. She couldn't help it. She was Alastrian. Through-and-through. She was built to believe that there was nothing more powerful--or more sacred--than finding love.

Maul paused, thinking over what she'd just told him. One hand slotted under the elbow of his other arm as his hand, curled into a fist, came to rest underneath his chin. "That is....an interesting way of looking at things. A point-of-view I certainly never thought of before." It sounded so optimistic and sunny, so naturally Maul's pessimistic nature wouldn't have seen it that way.

"There is a saying where I am from. 'All will be as the Force wills it.' It is comforting to think that in some way we were destined to meet from the moment we both ended up in Deerington, that all the time spent together eventually led us down this one path."

Ariadne wasn't sure how she felt about the Force. On any given day, it seemed to be five different things all at once. She'd listened to the philosophies of both the Jedi and Sith and...honestly...found them both lacking.

But if there was a great and powerful lifeforce out there, it made sense to her, that it would bring people to love.

Love was the foundation of all life.

"Sometimes, at night, I would hear my parents whispering to each other in the caverns of Deleo," she said thoughtfully. Ariadne almost never spoke about her parents, but Maul had seen one of her memories, knew about her mother and her first flight. It felt all right, somehow. "'And I'd choose you;' he would say to her. 'In a hundred lifetimes, in a hundred worlds, in any version of reality, I'd find you and I'd choose you.' I never realized that there could be a hundred worlds or more than one version of reality until I came here. But...it makes sense now. To see two people from other worlds fall in love...it all makes sense."

"That is a very beautiful way to look at the matter of love." It made complete sense to Maul. Though they might have never met otherwise, Maul now knew he'd search world after world to find Reaper again if the two were parted. That was just how much he loved his husband.

"For me, love was always painful before I came to Deerington. Whenever I experienced it, there was the inevitable pain that came with it once I lost those people, an ache in my hearts that would never go away after that." Just another thing he could thank Sidious for.

"It was only after I began to experience the sort of unconditional love that people could show that I finally got to see it in a way that wasn't meant to just hurt me. Reaper has always loved me just as I am, no matter all the terrible things I've done in my past or will do in my future. And I do the same for him. That acceptance of who I am without wanting me to change is something I've found in precious few people. It's one of the reasons I fell in love with him." One among so many. "Would you like to hear the story of how we met?"

It was all she could do not to throw her tiny body at him and give him the biggest hug. She knew--regardless of how he acted, sometimes--that Maul was someone in tremendous amounts of pain. To hear it laid out bare like that was...well.

She wanted to hug him.

But she didn't.

Instead, Ariadne nodded just slightly. "Yes, please."

One of these days, he was going to accept a hug from Ariadne and enjoy it immensely. She understood a great deal of what made him up, how he was a deeply-damaged person. Despite all that, there was still some goodness buried deep within him.

He lit up upon telling the story of the first meeting he and Reaper had. "It was my first month in Deerington. I'd been warned the locals were duplicitous but ignored what I heard because they were being so kind to me. It lured me into a false sense of security. I was drugged and woke up having been sewn to a dead deer inside a small building they had set on fire. I tried to escape but felt too weak to properly move. Reaper phased into the fire, freed me, and dragged me out of the flames after he kicked down the door. I thought I was hallucinating when I first saw him until he actually grabbed hold of me. When the locals tried to push me back in as a sacrifice, he grabbed one of them and threw them into the flames before shooting another while I took out my lightsaber and killed another as well.

That caused them to scatter in fear. Afterwards, he walked with me a ways while I recovered. I flirted with him a little, having become a bit taken with him after such a dramatic and romantic rescue. After that, we simply kept encountering each other until I learned he felt about me much the same way I felt about him." Was it a traditional romantic story? No. But did it fit Maul and Reaper's personalities entirely.

Ariadne needed no reminders about why Trench was so vastly superior to Deerington. But this story certainly illuminated some of the differences. She missed some of the people from Deerington.

Not the place itself. Or its locals.

As for the rest? Well, a daring rescue was known to be romantic. That's why the bards sang so many songs and told so many tales about damsels being saved by knight errant types. At the very least, Deerington certainly provided ample opportunities for such. It actually kind of amused her that Maul--snarly as he was--would not only accept rescue, but fall for his rescuer.

She smiled up at him. "That's wonderful, Maul."

It really had been one chance in a ten-thousand that Maul of all people would have fallen in love after playing damsel in distress. But there had just been something about Reaper right from the start that seemed to attract Maul to the old soldier.

"I proposed in July when there was that compulsion going around that affected couples. I don't know if he would have agreed to otherwise, but after we'd done it and the haze lifted from our minds, we still agreed it was the right course of action."

"Almost like the city wanted you together," she said.

Whether or not that was good. Well. Ariadne had a hard time believing that love could ever be anything else.

Even if there was some supernatural manipulation involved.

"I don't regret it happening one bit. Being with him has made me happier then I ever thought could be possible." Maul hadn't believed he was allowed to be happy, not until he'd ended up in Deerington, finding love of both the familial and romantic kinds.

"So now all we need to do is find you a special someone," he said with a mischievous look on his face. Hopefully Ariadne wouldn't let him play matchmaker given how easily he overstepped people's boundaries in such matters. Maul could be awfully nosy that way.

Normally, that might have made Ariadne laugh. After all, who could possibly fall for an Alastrian? She had nothing to offer any sort of humanoid mate.

Or so she'd been led to believe.

Deerington and Trench had her thinking in a new way. Especially after enjoying her first kiss.

Instead, she shrugged thoughtfully. "That would be...very complicated," she said. She didn't object to the idea. Not at all. But she was also extremely cautious about it. For so, so many reasons.

Luca, on the other hand, was very much one for celebrations, so it's hardly a surprise that he showed up. Spotting Maul standing off to the side, away from all the festivities, Luca decides to head over.

"Hi, Maul! I wanted to thank you for the present!"

Maul grinned happily when the young teenaged sea-monster came over. He always found Luca's joie de vivre a nice change from his own grumpy, cynical personality.

"It was my pleasure, young one," he said in a sincere tone. "I like to give out gifts at Christmastime." If Maul had a love language, that was definitely it.

"They were good gifts. I liked the fish and the toy."

Sure, it might have looked a little weird, but Luca found it cute in it's own way.

"I am glad. I enjoy picking out things I think people will appreciate." Gift-giving was a skill and while Maul's taste could be called eclectic and unique at best, he still liked to find things he thought the people he cared about would appreciate.

"I shall assume you had a good Christmas then?"

"I did! I mean, it was better when Varian and Fern were here...I really miss them...but other than that everything went well."

And there were no horrifying disasters, which in the Trench is significant all on it's own.

"I know. I miss them too," Maul said with forthright honesty. It still weighed on him a little that he'd never gotten the chance to make up with the pair before he left. Ah well. He wouldn't let the past weigh him down. All he could do was do better moving forward and he had. "I like to think they'd be happy with where I've ended up versus when they last saw me."

He gave a brisk shake of his head. "But let us think of happier things on this night. Have you been well? Not ending up too hurt by all the things that go on here each month?"

"Yeah. I think they would be."

Too bad they didn't get to see it for themselves, but Luca's confident that Maul is right. Varian and Fern would have been happy with all the progress Maul made.

"Yeah! I've mostly been able to avoid a lot of the stuff. After being here a year it's made it easier to avoid things, since a lot of the stuff happens the same every year."

And it's helpful to know which months he should avoid being alone at all costs and know to avoid the chocolatier.

"Perhaps they can sense it from wherever they are in the ocean." Maul knew he had been aware of certain things even when he'd been a squid. Everything had been much calmer and simple when he was in that form, so he hadn't thought much about what he felt or how anything was impacting his thoughts.

"Yes, I have noticed that. It has made some things easier to deal with, knowing they will be here again." It had led him to be more savvy when it came to how to deal with some of the horrible things that happened year after year. Fool Maul once and it was shame on you. Fool Maul twice and it was shame on him.

"Yeah, maybe they can."

It's nice to think that they can, at least. That they're still aware of the people still back in the Trench and the changes they're going through on some level.

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And my destination makes it worth the while... [OPEN]

Ariadne | OTA

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Darth Maul | OTA

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