Atton's Quarters, Sia's Coruscant, Tuesday Early Morning

Atton didn't sleep much, these days. Wasn't the first time he'd had a spell of it, probably wouldn't be the last.

It was almost dawn when he got up, head halfway in a dream, or maybe not. He ran the tap, splashing water in his face. The cold was supposed to ground him, wake him up. It didn't.

He sighed, looked up, caught his own gaze in the mirror. "I look like crap," he muttered, eyes gliding down from his own down his pale face, and to the angry stretch of scars crawling up his right arm from the wrist.

As long as the dark places of this world flow through the cracks of my flesh, I cannot be killed.

He rubbed his face. "Oh, now he joins the party," he muttered.

I fight because it is the power that the Force fills me with. To survive, to inflict the pain on others. I can die a hundred times...

"You know he haunts you still," said the old scow, serenely. "It was no surprise to me that he, a failure, picked you, a never-was, to be his protege, of a sort."

"If by protege you mean, tried to kill me."

"Tried to carve out the same pain that he felt. It was Sion's downfall, in a way. To fixate so much on reproducing what he was that he didn't see a way forward."

Atton sighed. "'To face death and keep standing... it leaves scars, but it leaves room to heal.'"

"The Exile's teachings," the old scow agreed, "Which she followed. To a point."

"To a point," Atton agreed, his fingers idly feeling up the ridges of those scars up, up, to the massive one across his shoulder. He was pretty sure he was still more plain skin than scar tissue. He wasn't sure how much longer that would hold true. "To a point."

[[ open if slow ]]