A Bloody Oath

**A BLOODY OATH**

IC - Terrogate

Location - Batorine // Bathori Villa //

Date - 156 ABY several weeks after Mabs retirement.

Terrogate wakes in a sweat, it was the wee hours of the morning on Batorine. Lying in his bed, in his and his life mates newly built forest world villa he looks up to the ceiling as the moon light streaks through the window illuminating the room in a light white/blue glow.

His broad muscular body now naked with only the light silk bed sheet draped over his lower half. He was still new to this in relative terms, having a life and a family and a love. He turns his head and looks sideways at the Iktotchi woman lying next to him sleeping silently. Her chest rising and falling ever so slightly… Unlike their first months here during her rehabilitation, her eyes were now still as she slept, not flicking about under her eyelids as she was passed out from sedatives. His scars on his chest, back and arm were a constant reminder of what he had done to her. To the cruelty he had shown her, something he could never forgive himself for.

Her mouth had a slight upwards curl as she let out a shiver and Terrogate swifty grabbed the covers and pulled them up over what remained of her shoulder. She was often cold at night, despite the much more temperate climate compared to her original chosen homeworld of Prakith. The Carthar kisses her softly on her forehead and she twitches and slightly recoils, the soft features of her face turning hard for a moment at the touch of his maw against her skin. Then relaxes again as he pulls his long face back away from her.

A proper night's worth of sleep once again escaping the apprentice, as has been the case for weeks on end he decides to get up so as to not disturb her with his restlessness.

Pulling on some basic loose-fitting white cotton pants and leaving his torso uncovered he leaves the bedroom, making his way through their villa. The house is silent, Jovian the housecarl, Nova and the kids all still fast asleep in their rooms. K0R9 was on sentry mode and had switched on for a moment as his sensors had picked up Terrogates movement but once realising it was the Cathar he quickly apologised and went back to lower power sensory mode.

He makes his way down the stairs, down the hall and out to the entry, then opens the door to outside… Walking out the heavy wooden door he closes it silently behind him. His feline feet light on the villas entry lawn not making a sound as he walks, he breathes deeply inhailing the fresh night air. Across the front lawn he walks, heading past the long pool and down the forest path towards the stream. It had started a reasonably warm night yet the morning mists of the forest had already started appearing and he could feel the temperate dropping quickly.

Making his way down the path the Catharians hands hang by his side, he reaches out and brushes the leaves of a group of low ferns as he passes them. The green edges of the leaves brushing against and slipping through his fingers. He once thought he belonged here, amongst the forest with her. But lately he had felt inadequate, like he had not been what he needed to be. What he was supposed to be, and an internal nagging that he hadn’t done enough for her. He continues a few hundred meters down the winding path, moving along through the tall Batorine trees. He stopped and stood still as he reached the circle stones, the several upright slabs of ancient granite arranged into a circle located in a clearing by the stream that Mab had felt an immediate connection to when she had discovered it.

Terrogate walks slowly into the circle. It's floor was covered in mushrooms from weeks earlier when he had found his love, who had been out here the entire night and not come to bed,still in her ball gown and tears rolling down her face. Her newly developed force powers concentrated in the natural world allowed her to manipulate the midichlorians to create and rapidly grow the fungi as she sat weeping.

Her words ring over in his head.. ”I tried, I tried but I'm tired… I’m so sorry”  Terrogate moves to the edge of a near 7 foot  circle stone and places both his hands on the cool slab, his eyes closed.. Her words had haunted him for weeks now..  Keeping him awake, not allowing him to focus..  Food had lost its taste and little now brought him any joy in his life.. he couldn’t even look at her without the overwhelming feeling of personal shame washing over him.

In frustration he balls up his fist and punches it against the granite slab before him. ”AAARRRRRR I DID THIS”! He yells into the night air. The pain, a sharp spike in his fist sets off his inner fire, it's feeling like the first sensation he had actually felt for weeks and he unleashes his built up emotions and inner guilt, bringing them to the forefront like an erupting volcano.

”I KRIFFING DID THIS TO HER!” he punches the stone slab once more. \*THWAK!

”IF I DIDNT KRIFFING ASK HER” \*THWAK!

”TO THAT FUCKING CANTINA!” \*THWAK!

”THEN NONE OF THIS WOULD HAVE HAPPENED”! THWAK! THWAK!

Tears of his emotion now physically visible on his face, rolling uncontrolled down his nose and off his whiskers as he yells into the night.

”YOU COULDN'T SAVE HER! YOU COULDN'T PROTECT HER! YOU COULDN'T PROTECT ANYBODY!! YOU TRAPPED HER! YOU MADE HER INSANE YOU FUCKING DESERVE TO BE PUNNISHED NOT HER!” THWAK! THWAK! THWAK!

His knuckles now busted open and each punch was now leaving a bloody mess on the ancient stone structure.

”YOU DON'T PROTECT YOUR FAMILY! ALL YOU DO IS KILL THEM!! ABBES! YOUR PARENTS! YOUR PRINCE! YOUR PARTNER! YOU ARE WORTHLESS! YOU ARE A FAILURE!!I IT'S YOU WHO SHOULD BE DEAD NOT THEM!” THWAK! THWAK! THWAK! CRACK!

The circle stone in front of him now dripping in his blood from his knuckles the Cathar warrior drops to his knees in now silent defeat.. his knuckles are bleeding freely and one seems to be cracked to the bone, his wrists ache and tears flow freely down his face and drip onto the forest floor below him as he breathes heavily from the exertion. He leans forwards, his eyes closed and rests his head on the cool dark stone in front of him.. “It should have been me.. it should have been me..”  he whimpers into the empty silence of the mist covered forest.

Opening his eyes he looks down and he sees a piece of the granite that had fallen to the ground. His vision is blurry through his tears and he reaches down to take it with his blood matted and broken fur covered hand. The edge of the stone is sharp he notices as he runs his thumb across it slicing through his fur and into his skin. The sting cutting through the once again growing numbness he feels within.

With the stone he raises his other hand… closes to a fist and invertes it.. slowly he places the sharp edge of the rock against his opposite forearm, pushing it to the outer side of his  critical veins. He closes his eyes once more for a moment and pushes down with the rock cutting into his flesh. Behind his eyes he sees her, Ammit.  Lying on her deathbed on Prakith, grey skinned and blood soaked, face badly bruised, arm missing and a hole in her head. Then he sees his parents burning alive in their house, and his sister free falling from the tall tree home headfirst to the Forest floor. Throat slit, mandalorian machete hit deep in her pregnant belly.. the sounds of the fire roaring all around him, the screams of the dying Cathar and the thick smell of smoke fills his senses.

As he opens his eyes he sees himself holding the rock now pressed hard to his wrist.. the vein below it opened and blood flowing from underneath the sharp rock down his wrist to his fist and then dripping steadily onto the ground below. Then, as though perfect timing by a force he cannot explain, a strong wind blows across the clearing, blowing leaves down from a close by tree. One of the leaves flips and turns in the wind and lands softly, perfectly in front of him as he kneels down ready to open his vein releasing his lifeblood and ending his own life. The leaf, it was a perfect match to the one Mab had worn on her mask weeks ago to the Empresses ball…

He now thinks of her, Mab, her smile as she stood in front of him in the planetarium, the last time they had been truly happy together in the ESE. The roof covered in a million points of light displaying the galaxy she had jumped onto him and wrapped her legs around him as he held her in his arms, looking into each other's eyes they shared a passionate intimate kiss for the first time as actual partners in life. He smiles a faint smile at the memory. He was hers. And she was his. She didn’t blame him.. she loved him. Terrogate slowly lightens the pressure on the rock and drops it next to him. Blood dripping from his hands and forearm, kneeling in the circle of ancient stones and speaking quietly to cool Batorine night air he makes a deep, personal and sacred oath to himself.

“On my fathers memory and in the honour of my Cathar ancestors, I swear I will protect Mab, my life mate till my dying breath. I will be her shield, her sword, and if the force wills it.. I will lay down my life for her.”

He then places the fallen leaf onto his open wound on his wrist and holds it in place, mixing his lifeblood with the leaf. He then falls back and stretches out onto his back, laying down in the center of the circle stones, looking up into the stars. In that moment he somehow feels his fathers spirit and his mothers among him. “I swear it to you” he says weakly, ”Father..… I swear…I will….. She's my one....” his words trail off as he slips into unconsciousness among the mushrooms on the cool ground of the forest.

*End*