Antiseptic and ethanol were scents Melinoë had reluctantly become accustomed to since first arriving at the facility. She never thought she would miss the fresh, wild smells of the Vaaltsai. The Firalian had no idea just how much time she had spent away from her previous prison, they wouldn’t tell her the time or where she was. Only that she was their weapon, their experiment.
No matter how hard the scientists tried, no matter how many time they cut her, shot her, hurt her, they were unable to break her resolve. It bent, it cracked, but it never broke.
The woman would never have been able to escape on her own accord, thankfully someone at the facility was willing to help. He said he was an accountant, whatever that was, and that he wouldn’t be able to do much other than open a door or two for her. She didn’t believe him at first, not until the door to her stark white cell opened, revealing the man.
“Come on,” he said, waving Melinoë over. Watching her hesitate made the man’s chest swell with anxiety. “What are you waiting for??” He asked harshley.
Mel tilted her head as she weighed her options. She would be punished if she tried to run. They might finally take her tongue like they kept threatening to. But the risk had to be worth it.
She was on her feet in no time, dashing to the door and past the man who opened it. He simply watched as she scampered down the hall, heading for what she hoped would be freedom.
The facility was cold, and the stale, recycled air pumped out by its HVAC units reminded Melinoë of everything she’d lost: the freshness of Vaaltsai born from trees that rose high into the air like the legs of giants, the vast plains and rolling hills that she was free to roam as she wished, and even of home. Her real home. These durasteel walls were unfamiliar, alien. Nothing like the cozy walls of her childhood home, lit by the warm flame of a fireplace.
Would she ever get home? Get back to her parents? To Acantha?
These questions repeated in her mind like a broken holorecording as she creeped through halls that were like a maze. That was, until the heavy clink of something metal sounded behind her.
When she turned, she saw a large mass of metal standing on three thick legs, its mounted guns trained on her. Behind it were two men dressed in lab coats. Both of them were familiar to her. They’d assisted with the many cruel experiments conducted on her during her time here. They seemed nervous.
“Now, now, Subject 043, let’s not do anything rash,” one said, the tremor in his voice betraying his trepidation. “You know what’ll happen to you if you upset Dr. Kelec.”
Melinoë quite literally skid to a stop, the slick, polished floors still foreign to her. She stumbled for a short moment before scrambling to two feet, her body hunched and fists raised. The comments of her jailors rang hollow in the air, earning only a sneer from the woman.
Metal. Since arriving to the facility she had learned that her adversaries wouldn’t always be made from flesh and blood. She couldn’t take a metal construct’s eyes with her bare hands, nor could she bruise it or tire it out. Not without losing control.
With a puff of smoke, Melinoë disappeared from where she stood, appearing directly behind the two scientists and their construct. Without hesitation, Melinoë pounced forward, shoving the scientist that had addressed her into the droid behind him.
“Hey!” said the scientist as he stumbled forward into the droid. Running face-first into its hard metal exterior left him with a bloody nose. As the two scientists moved out of its way, the droid advanced with heavy metallic footfalls and trained its blasters on Melinoë.
The weapons emitted a blue ring characteristic of most stun tech as it opened fire.
Melinoë bounced to the right before kicking off the wall to slide towards the droid, using amplification to kick it’s legs out from under it. The metal cut deep into her shins but the force of her kick sent the droid to the ground. The woman used her momentum to get back up to her feet, blood dripping down her leg as her wounds healed
If the droid had a face, it would have a look of surprise when the small woman’s kick smashed into one of its durasteel legs, sending it toppling over.
One of the scientists rushed forward as the droid started to work its way up to its feet, attempting to grab her.
Melinoë was used to beings of varying sizes lunging towards her, and the human was no different. Even though she managed to slip on the ground once again, she was able to duck away from the man’s arms and sprint down the hall once again, saving as much strength as she could for the real fights that awaited her.
When the alarms started properly, Mel kicked it into high gear, arriving at a closed door to what she had guessed was the hangar. Everything looked the same in the facility, at least to her. There were symbols and letters written in languages she couldn’t understand, but based on the times she was dragged around, she was sure she was in the right spot.
Melinoë reached the hangar doors just in time to see them open. But how could she ever guessed who it was on the other side? Standing there clad in the darkened armor of the Brotherhood’s Inquisitorius, was Acantha Tesalun … her younger sister.
The sharp clatter of metal echoed in the hallway when Acantha’s dagger slipped from her grip.
“Mel?” she said, voice rife with disbelief.
Melinoë’s first thought was that the accountant must’ve opened up the door for her somehow, but that thought and all others were wiped away as the doors revealed what she had spent a decade trying to get back to.
At first she felt hesitation. When she was young, Melinoë would sometimes hallucinate seeing her younger sister sitting beside her when she was immobilized, too hungry to even move. In recent months, she still dreamt of her sister, but she was still young in the dreams. The Acantha in front of her was all grown up, but she still held the same features, just sharpened and matured.
“A-Acantha?” The Firalin asked, her voice hoarse. She hadn’t had much reason to speak for some time, but seeing her sister in the flesh seemed like the best reason in the galaxy
Her eyes narrowed. This had to be some kind of sick joke – a manifestation of the Force or some kind of test from her superiors in the Inquisitorius. In the years following Melinoë’s disappearance, she’d immersed herself in a world that used secrecy and deceit as its currency. How could she, then, react to this in any other way?
She took a single step backward, and although it was slight, it said more than a million words could. “This isn’t real. This can’t be … no.”
Melinoë mirrored Acantha’s movement seconds after they were made, uncertainty welling inside her. Was this just some fever dream? The sister she remembered wasn’t one to be dressed in armor, armed with weapons made to kill.
To test, the elder sister raised up her fist and opened it palm side up to reveal a pendant, one made of a tulip enclosed in carbonite. A gift that had been given what felt like a lifetime ago.
“Acantha…?” She asked once more, trepidation dripping from her tone.
Acantha’s eyes widened when the woman, supposedly her sister, produced the pendant. She hadn’t seen that in years, since the day they last saw one another. She stepped forward, seeming to blur as she instinctually tapped into the Force to boost her speed.
The fingers of her outstretched hand touched the pendant first, testing it against senses that had been trained to weed out falsities like a hound searching for its prey. She felt the rough texture of the carbonite against her fingers.
Her fingers moved to the woman’s face next, gingerly tracing an invisible line across her cheek. She was real.
“Melinoë … how is this possible? How are you here?”
Feeling more bare and vulnerable than she had in years, Melinoë actually flinched when her sister, once much slower than her, sped towards her at an inhuman pace, simply to cross the distance to inspect the pendant. But Mel didn’t back down. She couldn’t, not if this was really Acantha. Not if this was real. Not if she had finally found her.
She leaned her head ever so subtly into Acantha’s touch. Everyone else who had touched her since they were seperated ended up injured in some way, but not her little sister. No, she brought a comfort that could be felt despite the danger on Melinoë’s heels.
“I escaped. I was coming to find you, like I promised,” Mel said, tears already welling in her eyes. The shorts and chest wrap she wore did nothing to hide the evidence of each day she had spent trying to get back, a litany of scars and muscle.
I was coming to find you.
The words rang in Acantha’s ears but she hadn’t fully registered them, yet. She’d carried the heavy weight of guilt for losing her sister that fateful day for all these years, and taken it upon herself to dedicate her life to putting herself in a position to find her one day, yet here she was. Standing there, saying she had been looking for her.
Acantha wrapped her arms around Melinoë in a tight, wordless embrace that carried more meaning than anything she could have said aloud. She clamped her eyes shut in a bid to hold the unshed tears at bay, but there was no stopping them now. She sobbed silently while squeezing her sister tighter and tighter. She didn’t ever want to let her go again.
Melinoë waited with bated breath. She didn’t have anything more to say. She’d thought of how finding Acantha may have gone almost daily but she never expected a situation like this. She never expected to be questioned. All she could do was hope that her sister would understand.
The moment their embrace began, Mel knew that her younger sister understood. The elder sister wrapped her arms around Acantha as tight as she could, her own tears spilling from her eyes. It had been so long. Too long. She wanted to say how badly she missed her, she wanted to express how ecstatic she was to see Acantha again. But when she opened her mouth, all that left was a short wail before she closed her mouth and cut herself off.
Melinoë wanted the moment to last forever, wanted to spend the rest of her days on this relief, the feeling of her life finally becoming happy. But life would never be so kind. From behind Melinoë, shouting could be heard along with the clanking of metal on metal.
As much as she hated the thought of it, the sound of distant voices and the heavy, metallic footfalls was enough to get Acantha to pull away from her older sister. Were they here to take her away? She wouldn’t let them. She wouldn’t let anyone or anything take her away again.
The tearful solace of their reunion was traded for a burning anger that she latched onto, using it to empower her as she unclipped her twin daggers – Al-Sirr and Al-Kashf – from her belt.
When she saw them, she didn’t hesitate, launching both daggers through the air. They flew straight and true, embedding themselves into the neck and chest of two guards before they could raise their weapons. Twin sprays of blood stained the walls of floor, and Acantha called the daggers back to her hands with the Force before they hit the ground – dead.
“Get to my ship, Mel,” she said while dropping into a low stance, her voice hoarse.
Melinoë stared in disbelief. The ease at which Acantha killed two living beings was not lost on her. What she had just witnessed was something her sister had trained, worked to perfect. What happened to her while she was gone?
“No. Not without you,” she argued back. “We need to run.” Back only a moment and already Mel was being bossy, like that had only spent moments apart.
“I don’t run,” she growled. When she glanced back at her, Acantha’s eyes briefly flashed bright orange before she turned away.
Without saying another word, Acantha dove into the fray. Years of training in the Inquisitorius had forged the Firialan woman into a weapon that was as sharp as it was elegant, and that showed in the beautiful mess she made of the remaining guards and the droids. But she didn’t do so without incurring some wounds of her own; a gash across her cheek was the most notable among them.
With that done, Acantha sheathed her daggers before turning back to her older sister. “Let’s get the frak out of here,” she said, wincing as the muscle tissue of the wound began to mend itself together. By the time they made it to the ship, it had mostly healed, leaving a thin line across her pronounced cheek bone.
Inside the ship, she took her seat in the pilot’s chair and proceeded through a series of pre-flight checks with haste.
Melinoë watched on in abject horror, a moment to late to grab her sister and hold her back. The way she fought, the way she killed, without seemingly a care in the world. What had happened while she was gone?
At a loss for words, Mel simply followed Acantha as they ran back to the ship, worry in her heart. She was hurt, she was bleeding. The elder sister knew Acantha would heal in mere moments but she still felt the need to fix it, but it would have to wait, just like everything else, it seemed.
Once inside, Melinoë sat in the co-pilots seat and looked out the viewport, her heart racing. She was so close to being free, so close to a normal life once again. More guards appeared through a separate door, but by the time they areived, the ship had already began to hover and was making it’s way to freedom.
A tense silence hung in the ship’s cockpit as the inky black expanse of deep space was replaced by the brilliant blue and white streaks of hyperspace.
Acantha’s chest rose and fell in a long-suffering sigh. She hadn’t even released how tightly she’d been gripping the ship’s controls until a dull ache shot through her palms. Letting go, she ran her hands along her pants to wipe the sweat away before turning to face Melinoë.
She watched her like a hawk, though her air of quiet solemnity was a barely-functional veneer covering a storm of emotions brewing within her – all visible in her eyes.
“How long have you been back?” she asked, though it sounded more like an accusation than a genuine question.
Melinoë’s eyes were locked on to Acantha the moment they were away from the facility, leaving only once to witness the absolute beauty that was hyperspsce. She’d always stayed on their home planet so this was the first time for her.
But, the moment they were in hyperspace, Acantha began to look at her. Mel felt comforted by the gaze at first but with the silence hanging in the air, with her eyes so full of conflict, she wondered just what she had come back to.
“I don’t know,” Melinoë answered honestly. Did her sister not believe her? “The moment I escaped Vaaltsai, I was captured,” she understood that her sister probably had plenty of questions about her disappearance, and rightfully so. She just hoped she’d get the chance to ask questions of her own.
“Vaaltsai …,” she chuckled, shaking her head, “Who would have thought that that place was actually real?”
Then, she sighed. “I’ve been searching for you for years, and then you just … yeah. I’m just glad you’re back.”
She didn’t know what to say. What could she say at this point? Acantha could practically feel her older sister’s urge to ask her something. “Say what you need to say.”
“Yeah… Who would’ve thought…” Melinoë mumbled, her thoughts taken by her past. She’d lost nearly half her life to that place. A decade of memories and laughter with her sister, with her mother and father. “Thank you for coming to find me. For saving me. I… I never stopped trying.” Tears once again began to form, but she wiped her eyes and forced them away. She had to be strong for her younger sister. Show Acantha that she was here to be a rock for her again.
“But I have to know… What happened to you? You killed those men so easily…” She trailed off. Melinoë didn’t want to come off as judgmental but her sister had been so innocent, so pure. But here she was, ten years later, a killer just like her.
“You don’t need to thank me, Mel,” she replied. “It was my duty to find you not just as your sister, but … but as the one responsible for you getting lost in the first place.”
Those words hung heavily in the air after Acantha said them. A potent sadness flashed behind those eyes before she forced those feelings back down with a shake of her head. To be losing her grip on her emotions so easily … this wasn’t like her.
It was a relied for her when Mel shifted the conversation to how different she was. “Mom and dad took losing you hard, as I’m sure you could imagine. Even though she never said it, I know mother blamed me for it. She couldn’t even look at me, so I left.
"I was on my own for a long time, until someone found me. He sensed what I could do, and trained me. Shaped me into a weapon. And I wasn’t just good at it, I was great.”
“It wasn’t your fault, Acantha.” Melinoë’s reply was said in an instant. “I never blamed you. I wanted you to be safe, and you were.”
Upon hearing about how their parents had treated Acantha, a not so insignificant rage began to build inside her. Melinoë would never forget how high of expectations they had always placed upon her, but she never thought they could stoop so low as to blaming Acantha. Especially her mother, who Melinoë seemed to get along with so easily.
“I’m… I never meant for you to have to leave,” Melinoë said, her voice a mix of melancholy and fury. She didn’t hesitate to take the blame for what happened, wanting to save her sister from that pain. “And I never meant for you to become… Become like me.” Melinoë didn’t see a point in hiding what she had done, how much she had killed, all to get back to Acantha. Especially not after seeing what she had done.
“None of this is your fault,” Acantha replied while attempting to wave off her apologies. “I made my choices, and I don’t regret any of them because they led me back to you.
"But what do you mean ‘become like you?’”
Acantha may not have regretted it, but Melinoë couldn’t help but feel responsible. But it wasn’t worth arguing, not so soon.
And then the question came to her. How did she explain what she had gone through in as few words as possible? She didn’t want her sister to feel responsible for her pain.
“Nothing… Nothing is free in Valltsai,” she said, trying to be vague.
Acantha met her sister’s words with a knowing look. Nothing was free in the Inquisitorius, either. What a cruel twist of fate that in trying to find their way back to one another, they seemingly were trodding down similar paths all along.
She wasn’t one to overstate the aignificance of “fate” and “destiny” that their mirialan kin often spoke of, but she couldn’t rule out the possibility of it, either.
The silence they shared was almost deafening. Melinoë had hoped for more hugs and to hear about Acantha’s life but it seemed neither of them had anything good to say.
“Where are we headed?” She asked, trying to fill the silence before she cried
“We’re going back to my place,” she said, “We have a lot to discuss, but that can wait until you’ve had a shower and a warm meal, Mel. You’re home now,” she said, reaching out to give her shoulder’s shoulder a warm squeeze, “and I’m going to take care of you.”
Melinoë’s eyes widened slightly. She don’t know why she assumed they would be going back home to their parents, but she supposed it was because that was always the romanticized version of her return that she dreamt of.
Still, she couldn’t think of a better place to be going than Acantha’s home. Potentially her home, too. The moment her younger sister’s hand met her shoulder, Melinoë’s eyes began to water all over again. Tears streaked down her face as she leaned her head to the side, laying her cheek upon Acantha’s hand.
“Thank you…” She mumbled, a sob falling free. She was finally safe. She was finally home