deercountry | February Catch-All; "We can deeply love our poison."

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February Catch-All; "We can deeply love our poison."

Who:

survivalthroughhate and open!
What: Maul comes back from a canon update with a brand-new attitude
When: All of February
Where: At his home and around Trench.

Content Warnings: Gross canon update cocoon, will update as necessary

Open prompts below!

A. Canon-Updated

After Maul peeled out of his cocoon and had reoriented himself with where he was, it was time to make some house calls. By his point-of-view, he'd been gone for three years. Though he had learned thankfully that time had passed for everyone else over the course of a week, he still wanted to check up and make sure that the people he cared about were still present, accounted for, and had all their limbs attached. The fact that the month appeared to once again be messing with his blood type just exacerbated matters.

So off he went. His first priority was to check up on those he was blood-bonded to. Fortunately, he could feel they were all still intact, but they were the ones he cared about most in Trench, so they were checked on first. Then came everyone else. If anyone had even a somewhat positive relationship with the Zabrak Sith Lord, they were going to find themselves with Maul on their doorstep to check up on them, his eyes no longer golden but now instead a grey-brown color. Close friends and family could even expect to possibly be hugged, a sure sign that Maul had changed in his time away from Trench.

B. Lessons

January had been a wash as far as all student-related activities were concerned given Maul had either been a kid or wrapped up in the membrane where he'd experienced life in his own galaxy for the entire month. Well, it was time to get back on track with his students. To that matter, after he got on the network to inform everyone of his changed state, he made sure to make time for anyone who wanted to stop by in February.

He kept to his regular hours as much as possible, not including any of the usual shenanigans that made each month go topsy-turvy, and made sure to make the lessons a little longer to make up for the fact he hadn't been able to train anyone for the past month or so. "It's been a while. I hope you haven't forgotten everything I taught you," he would say upon seeing any of his regulars show up.

C. At The Archives

After the intriguing conversation with Sharon regarding his former ability to shapeshift, Maul knew it was time to do some research into the ability of being able to turn into mystical deer that those Sleepers who had been in Deerington had once possessed. He hadn't tried to turn into that form since arriving, assuming with the corruption of Ramona into a permanent beast that such a thing could no longer occur.

But he remembered that the Ramona seen when passing through the dimension which would allow them to change into deer had seemed to be beyond time itself in a way. If that was true, than part of her was always going to be waiting there, uncorrupted and never-changing. It was time to figure out if that was truly the case. To that end, he was in the Archives, looking through ancient books and scrolls filled with text that would lead him to the answers he sought.

If he saw someone he knew, he would gesture them over. "Come, take a seat!" After they'd sat down, he would plunk down a huge mass of scrolls, a bottle filled with caffeinated tea, and a bag of beef jerky in front of them. "Tell me if you can find any mention of Ramona Derwin in these." There was something in his bossy tone that made it clear he wasn't allowing anyone to leave until they had helped him out at least a little bit, though judging by the supplies he possessed, he was certain to try to keep anyone there for the long haul.

D. Chocolatier

[After the disastrous experience Maul had the previous year that had led to the death of Willow, he was avoiding the chocolatier at all costs. He also wasn't letting anyone make the same mistake he had and to that end he was warning everyone away from the giant monster at all costs.]

Don't you dare accept anything from him!

[He'd state emphatically.]

Some of them are harmless but others will dead to disastrous, even dangerous consequences!

[If anyone asked, he would detail what some of those chocolates could do to a person.]

E. Wait For Me

[Maul had always had a little trouble with the anticipation of waiting for people. It wasn't like he didn't already have a ton of abandonment issues that stretched through the entirety of his life that made him very conscious of those that he had left. The anxiety that gnawed at him grew greater and greater until he found himself suddenly unable to move another muscle.

Then he was stuck there, a pit of fear and energy in his body that was unable to go anywhere. All he could do was stand or sit there, waiting for someone to come along and help him out, trying to reach out with his own mind to anyone he knew who could come save him from this plight.

Alternatively, he could be that person for someone else who was afflicted, coming along their frozen body and noticing almost immediately that something was wrong. He'd come up to them and inspect their form for a few moments before taking a step back.]

Well, this certainly is a situation.

[Maul observed. He wasn't certain on how to fix this problem but he also just wasn't going to leave the person afflicted all on their lonesome. He'd come far enough in his journey of becoming a better person to know he had to stay and help.]

F. You Take My Breath Away

[Maul wasn't big on being touchy-feely even with people he was close to, let alone people he might not have been fond of. As he went about minding his own business, he'd pass by someone and suddenly it would hit. He gasped suddenly, unable to take another breath. He'd reach out blindly, trying to grab whoever was close by to bring attention to his plight.

He could see the other person nearby who was also choking. Was this affecting everyone in the city all at once?! But as soon as he touched them, he could feel himself able to breathe again. He took deep breaths in, grateful for the oxygen he could access once again.]

What--What was that?

[He gasped out as soon as he had enough air in his lungs to speak with.]

G. Speed Dating!

Maul wasn't all that enthused about being forced to go through another 'getting to know you' session in Trench. But it wasn't really like he had any other options here. So he sat there, glowering a little, not exactly appearing to be the most friendly of partners to be seated across from.

On the plus side, his profile was indeed a thing of beauty. He'd been mortified for about five minutes after seeing what it had put up for him but then he began to see the funny side of it. Rather than letting it get to him at all, he decided to just have a sense of humor about the whole thing.

He glanced at whoever sat down across from him and went back to picking at his claws, which were looking a trifle long right now. "Shall we get this over with already?" He asked. "Do you want to go first or should I?"

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"It's been a long time for me. I was gone for three years from my point-of-view. I was afraid you might have left and gone back to the sea." His hearts began to beat more normally in their usual alternating rhythm as he realized Savage really was here, that his brother wasn't dead or gone. This was why Trench was now his home. Everyone he cared about was here.

He explained what had happened to him. "I went home. Back to the galaxy, to the very moment from which I left it. I spent years building up my crime syndicate again and looking for ways to gain more power so I could gain revenge. There was a planet, Damanos, where the Dark Side is particularly strong. A Sith castle there held great power within and I sought it out. What I found there....it changed me." He closed his eyes, thinking of what he'd found there. "The Dark Side, it took the shape of figures from my past. Grievous, the old Jedi Qui-Gon Jinn...." He paused before continuing onwards. ".....and you."

"Three years?" Savage leaned back so he could peer at Maul then he lifted a hand to touch his brother's horns. They didn't seem any longer or thicker as he would have expected, but perhaps they had grown a little. Some Nightbrothers never grew their horns long throughout their lifetime, but he had seen Maul on Lotho Minor with longer horns. "I remain waiting for you, don't worry."

He listened to Maul describe the time away, nodding his head as his brother's crime syndicate took off and prospered. He wished he had been there for that. He snorted from his nose and narrowed his eyes at the description of the Dark Side manifesting people of his brother's past. "Why would it do that? You've served the Dark Side as Nightbrothers do."

Maul felt Savage's large hand gently touching his horns and figured what he was looking for. Maul's horns had never grown very fast, perhaps as a result of too much physical mistreatment from Sidious growing up, but they did grow given enough time. "I hope this time you remembered to sleep and eat." He remembered how he'd had to tell Usagi to watch out for him when Maul had been in the Mandalorian sarcophagus, for he knew his brother wouldn't have taken care of himself when left to his own devices.

"It was trying to teach me some lessons that I was long overdue to learn. Some of it I had already learned here--" The one about acknowledging his brother as his kin rather than his apprentice, to close that emotional distance and love him had been learned since their their time together in Deerington. "--But there were others it wanted me to understand."

He grunted softly as his fingers pet one of the horns on the crown of Maul's head then dropping away as he had finished his examination of them. "I did. I kept everything in order as you liked it too," he remarked with a shrug of his shoulders. The cocoon might have been a surprise to him, but the bloodbond allowed him to know that Maul was safe no matter where he was. Besides, it wasn't as if many would come into the house and survive.

"And what lessons would the Dark Side want you to learn? It's the Dark Side, so most lessons will come with pain," he said knowingly. All lessons on Dathomir and under the Sith had taught him over and over that all knowledge came with pain of some sort.

He moved to pull Maul against him so he could drag them both to the kitchen. Surely after a week or even three years, his brother would be hungry. He had just restocked the meat and cheese in their refrigeration unit. "Sit. I'll get you food."

"Good. I'm glad you were alright." It showed that Savage had grown too in the time they'd been together. No longer did he need to watch over Maul at every second when he was incapacitated. Now he could go about and function as something close to normal.

Maul sat down at the kitchen table, rocking his chair to be back on two legs and then back down on four as he spoke. "The first was to not distance myself from those that I love. Doing that only hurts myself and them as well. It took your form to teach me that one." Maul shut his eyes. He couldn't have looked at his brother as he told the next part, not if he wanted to get all the words out right. "I ended up fighting the specter in your form and killing you." That had hurt; far, far more than Maul thought it ever would have. Doing that had been a lesson in itself, one of pain as Savage had said.

"I knew you'd come back," he said simply. He had been functional alone before, but it hadn't been an enjoyable experience. He had lived much of childhood and adult life being close to his bloodkin, so the separation was a bit more difficult. He would survive if Maul had remained for longer. He owed his elder brother that much.

He was digging in the fridge pulling out some cheeses and various fresh meats, setting them on the counter. Spicy aroma rose from the meats, even as he moved to the cupboard where they kept the dried meats. Nothing was wasted when it came to their kills.

Yet, his hand paused as Maul explained the experiences, and he slowly turned from looking into the cupboard to view his elder brother. "You killed me..." he murmured with a raised brow. It didn't surprise him as much as he liked to think it should; there had always been a line in the dirt between them, and if push came to shove, he had thought Maul had the capacity to kill him despite the numerous times they had saved each other. "It sounds like you failed that test. Would you kill me here if we fought?"

"That I did," Maul said agreeably. He was glad Savage had such faith in him, though the fact others had been in the cocoons and come out afterwards (albeit changed in some ways) did speak for itself as well. He was glad he hadn't gone too far down the timeline. He knew very well what lay at the end of that particular road.

Maul had a ready answer and didn't hesitate in giving it. He got up, meal forgotten for the moment, clasping one of Savage's large hands with his own two. "No. I could never do that, not now, after all we have been through." He would have rather died himself than be forced to kill Savage. Doing that would have torn Maul apart and broken something inside of him which could not be repaired.

He peered at Maul, able to now see some of the minor changes that came with a few more years of age to his brother. Maul did look calmer, so this experience had clearly done something. He didn't think the Dark Side operated to instill the kinds of lessons based on more than survival and gathering more power to wield.

He watched Maul come, giving up his mismatched hands and then leaning down their height difference to rest his forehead against Maul's in turn. "So Deerington and Trench have made quite the impact on you compared to your other life. You won't go back again, will you?" He preferred to watch over his brother and that personal development, dragged along without the pressures of being on the run as they had been back in their galaxy.

Maul's eyes closed in happiness as their foreheads touched, that small sign of affection all he needed to know Savage didn't hold killing the specter in his shape against him.

The answer to the question about staying in Trench was as firm as the first one had been. "No. I'm never going back if I can help it. I'd only live about a decade longer anyway." He knew very well what lay at the end of that road of his life. His pain and suffering turning him into an old man who still wanted nothing more than to keep causing the same in others, who hadn't learned a thing when it came to being able to move on and become something greater than what he'd become. He'd just get old and tired of it all until he wanted to either kill Obi-Wan or die himself to keep from feeling anymore pain.

"My place is now here, with you and with everyone else I care about here," Maul said reassuringly. He'd live there in Trench until he was one-hundred and one if he could help it.

Savage closed his eyes in pleasure at the familiar gesture, a low purr sounding from his throat. Such a simple, common gesture that meant so much to him as it wasn't one that they shared until he had come to Deerington and Trench.

"And that decade isn't worth living through, is it?" He could imagine that Maul had continued with the crime syndicate, but likely his brother had given up on a fulfilling life. After the eradication of the Nightkin on Dathomir, it was probably unlikely that Maul could have ever returned home and found a satisfying place. He wondered if his brother was doomed to wander the galaxy searching for some way to strike back at that old master. "You have a home, kin, a mate, and friendship here, brother. You have no more lessons to learn in our galaxy. You have a place here." That much was obvious, but perhaps the Force had to hear that and leave his brother alone.

He nudged their foreheads up a bit, then he stepped up further to lift his head away only to return it so his chin rested on the top of Maul's head. He could feel the press of horns to his throat and didn't mind. "Neither of us have lessons to learn back there anymore."

"No. It would just be full of dealing with old pain and new suffering." Even to the very end of his days, Maul would miss and mourn his family. In some ways, his attempts to form a bond with Ezra as an apprentice had been a result of the wound which had occurred when Savage had killed. "And all it ends is dying at Kenobi's hands." Something he no longer wanted in any fashion for so many reasons.

He just rested in that position with Savage's head perched on top of his, feeling at peace for the first time in what felt like his entire life. Everything he wanted was right in front of him here in Trench. He just had to know how to reach out and take it. "You're right. There are no more lessons back there. But perhaps still a few here..." Maul's growth wasn't quite done yet. But there would be time for that later.

"Then you will stay here, with me, for as long as this place allows us to stay together." These last years with Maul had been hand over fist as good as when they had traveled the galaxy for the time that they had. Without the constant threat of war or being on the run, he had discovered so much more about Maul - and himself - in their time together. "It seems you were always meant to meet and challenge Kenobi to one final fight."

He lifted his arms and draped them over Maul's shoulders now that he was in proper position to just enjoy having his brother out of that cocoon. "And do you have plans in motion to accomplish here, or with this new experience you will take your time to sort yourself out?"

"Yes. If the Pthumerians are kind, that will be for the rest of our lives." He knew one of them might get called back to the sea eventually but he wasn't going to think of that now or later, not until it actually happened. He hoped it wouldn't, not until they were both little old Zabraks with cracked horns on their heads.

"Yes. We've always been connected in a way through the Force I've never truly been able to understand, not even now after learning much more about it here with him." The Force worked in mysterious ways and always had, tying the two old adversaries together. "It was fated to end that way, either he would kill me or I would have killed him."

Maul just relaxed into his brother's embrace. "It is going to take a while to really understand how this has changed me for the better," Maul said. "After that, I will go back to a few things I have been focusing on."

"We know they are as fickle as any being that considers itself a god," he replied with a small shake of his head. He didn't have high hopes that this would remain a good thing for them long-term, not with how this place changed things month-to-month, year-to-year. However, he would value the time that he had with Maul each and every day, even during those times his elder brother drove him a little crazy. "But we have each other now, and that's good enough for me, brother."

He nodded his head, not even pretending that he knew what that was about. Maul had been trained much more extensively in the Force than he had from a young age, so if his brother didn't know the reason, he definitely couldn't and wouldn't make a guess. "It seems that way given your long history of conflict with each other. You died a warrior's death, and I suspect you joined the Fanged God."

He made a noise of acknowledgement, rubbing his chin gently against the top of Maul's head in a typical affectionate gesture. "You mean, it will take you awhile to understand how you will react to this place and the Sleepers that annoy you." There were plenty of those. "Your cult may not appreciate changes. Or they may not care as long as you remain you."

"It is good enough for me as well." One day one of them might have gone back to the ocean, leaving the other one alone in Trench heartsbroken. But Maul would take on those emotions in the future if it happened someday. For now, he was glad to be in the present with his brother, having finally reached a point where he could let go of some of the grief and guilt he still had over Savage's death. While he might never truly get over the fact his brother had died, he was in a better place now with his emotions regarding it than he'd ever been before.

"I hope I did." He'd died in a fight, as he'd always hoped he would. Dying in Kenobi's arms though, being comforted in his final moments by the man he'd hated for so long, that definitely had been a surprise. "Perhaps I would finally be at peace then and be reunited with you and Feral." At least if nothing else, his pain would be over.

Maul smiled a little, his fangs on display. Savage knew him well and how he'd react to things in his own way now that he'd grown a little more as a person. "I shall always remain myself at my core. Changes for the better or worse may affect me in certain ways but I will never go so far as to become unrecognizable to those around me."

He nodded his head carefully where it rested on the top of Maul's head, content with their commitment to value the time that they had together. It did make him wonder what sort of changes he might expect from Maul now that his brother had began to heal from some of the old traumas of the past.

He hummed low in his throat. "A warrior of your caliber would have certainly had a seat in the Fanged God's army of Nightbrothers. He probably would have made you a high rank," he said sagely, reflecting back on all the stories of the Fanged God he had been told as a kit. Maul fit the description of all the great warriors whose name's were entrenched in their stories. "Perhaps. Feral was softer than us, but he was a fine warrior. He would have wormed his way into your hearts."

He had no doubt about that, though perhaps Maul would meddle less in his love life. He knew instantly that that would never be true, but he could accept it still. "I will still be your right hand if you need someone's neck broken and their bodies thrown onto display."

“Such a fate would have been glorious to go to in the afterlife. I was born a warrior and I died one as well. I certainly earned my place there after the life I led,” he said with satisfaction. He knew that there was something after death if Imperius was correct, so Maul hoped there was a chance he’d be reunited with his family once he left the mortal coil.

Maul’s eyes closed for a moment in old pain. “Of that I have no doubt.” Maul tried not to think about the fact Talzin had essentially traded her youngest son’s life for her eldest too often but he knew it was a stark fact. He wished she had found another way. Maul would have liked to meet his other brother. Family had always been one of the most important things in his life and knowing he’d missed out on the chance to get to know Feral saddened him.

“Of course. If I need such tasks to be performed, you shall be the first I turn to.” Though likely such things wouldn’t need to come up much anymore. Maul had mellowed out considerably, and unless things in Trench drastically changed yet again, his desire for power had diminished quite a bit. Right now, the only aspiration he had was to find his brother a mate.

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February Catch-All; "We can deeply love our poison."

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