▸ Column · Star Wars galaxy — a Sith assassin answering a plea sent to an Outer Rim holozine advice page
DARTH MAUL replies.
Replied to by Darth Maul, with a rebuttal from Obi-Wan Kenobi.
The letter
My partner of eight months — I'll call him Dren — has lately taken to "joking" about every choice I make. In the mess last cycle he told the server I'd "rather have the lighter ration" before I could open my mouth, then called me thin-skinned when I raised it after. Small things. Until two rotations ago, when he scrolled through my datapad while I bathed because he "had a feeling" I was sending too many messages to a fellow crewman, Castas. When I confronted him he wept and said it only happened because he loves me so fiercely it frightens him. He is otherwise genuinely kind — he remembered my sister's name-day, he flew half a sector to help me haul my mother's belongings. I keep telling myself the good outweighs the bad. But last night he "suggested" I abandon a long-planned voyage with friends — three months in the making — because he doesn't know them well enough to trust them, and I caught myself actually considering it before I came back to my senses. Is this a pattern I should flee from, or rough passage in an otherwise sound vessel? How do I tell the difference?
Darth Maul replies
The good outweighs the bad. Look at the ledger you are keeping, and ask who taught you to keep it. He did. Of course the arithmetic favors him — he wrote the sums.
Hear me plainly. He is not loving you. He is taking territory. Your words at the table. Your messages. Your friends. Now your voyage. Each piece small enough that he can call it nothing, and shame you for noticing. That is how it is done. Not in one blow. Piece by piece, until there is nothing left to take and you have thanked him for it.
I know the shape of the one who owns you "for your own good." My master forged me, used me, named it purpose — and discarded me the moment I had served. Devotion that requires your cage is not devotion. It is appetite that has learned to cry.
You snapped back. Good. That recoil is the truest thing in you. Do not let his tears talk you out of it.
Take the voyage. Walk out on your own strength. I do not counsel you to wound him — only to stop being the thing he carves. Go before the wound becomes who you are. I built a whole life from one. Do not learn that the way I did.
— Darth Maul
Obi-Wan Kenobi weighs in
Maul calls the weeping appetite. I would be slower. The tears are likely real — and that is precisely what should frighten you, not comfort you. I loved Anakin. I told myself reassuring things about him for years. His terror of losing what he loved became the very thing that destroyed it. Sincere love and a slow cage keep the same house.
So — how to tell the difference, since that is what you actually asked. Not by Maul's grand exit, and not by cancelling your voyage. Go. Keep your life intact, and watch what he does with your freedom. A rough patch can survive your absence. A pattern cannot bear it. Look squarely. The ledger is the story I'd have told myself.
— Obi-Wan Kenobi
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