Maul's parents challenge series

The Gift

By Z.P. Florian

Rating: R
Warnings: fairly explicit sex, hanky warning
Disclaimer as usual: The sandbox is not mine it belongs to Lucas. But I really don't bother him too much I'm just taking a handful of sand the kind he doesn't use anyway.
Summary: Maul creates a clone to be the son to his mother he can never be
Author's notes: The following story is rather loosely based on the Maul's journal not the events in it but the timing of Maul being taken by Sidious. But the relationship between Maul and his Master is a lot better in this story than in the journal though Maul's training is about the same.
Feedback to: zpflo@hotmail.com

I only saw him once when he took me out of the vat. He looked exactly like me. After that all I knew was that I was examined by all kinds of medical droids, they found me perfectly satisfactory, Then he came in but never let me see him again. I was blindfolded, and he entered my mind, erasing certain parts of his memory that I automatically inherited, installing his will into me. I couldn't disobey him to save my life. He told me that I'm an organic container of his will.

He told me this.

"You are to do what I can't. This is what you were made for. Your only purpose in life is to be the son of my mother, the son I can never be. All you need to know is that I was taken away from her when I was barely more than year old. She has never ceased grieving for me. You are my gift to her. I met her a month ago at an exhibition. She is a painter. I went there to kill someone. Her pain touched me, I recognized her. Her signature in the Force was in my memory. Her pain was more than I could bear. I gathered as much information on her as I could I learn from her medical droid, that she doesn't have more than a year to live, she contracted a fatal disease and she doesn't know it yet. The droid reports to her on her health regularly every six months, the next report is due two months from now. I asked him what could I do for her.

"He told me I could make a clone of myself and send it to her with some plausible story. Here is the story you will tell her, that you have been stolen by slavers who took you to a planet you don't remember. And they raised you to be a pleasure slave when you were old enough you were taken to a pleasure palace. You worked there for less than a year, mostly drugged, when the place was raided and all the young slaves were taken to a resort where you spent a year to be weaned from the drugs, then they released you. You had spent almost ten years trying to find her. And finally you succeeded. You tell her that you think you have some sensitivity in the Force, tell her that you'll go to the Jedi Temple asking them to teach you to control your sensitivity. Do it if she lives long enough to warrant that, but don't ever let them read about this in your mind. I'll teach you now to block this memory at will. Stay with her as long as she lives, you can take away the pain of her illness I'll teach that to you too."

He didn't teach me, he simply inserted the knowledge into my mind. The process was painful, but fast. He also gave me instructions what to do after his mother died. When I left the place we were, I discovered that he also made me know where to find the woman. He gave me some credits. I had to go to the art gallery where the exhibition was; the trip took twenty-four hours by public transportation.

The gallery was in a large stone building. She stayed there in their guest room. I saw her paintings. They were of flowers blooming among black rocks and garbage heaps and in graveyards, and in dirty alleys and in slaughterhouses, and understood what she was saying with her paintings, that hope is always with us. How can the person who made me not want to be with this woman. If I'm an exact replica of him, he must feel the same as I do. What could be more important for him than to experience the love of a mother as wonderful as she is? He must have feelings if he created me to make her happy.

I just hope she will never know that she is being deceived. But then again she is not really being deceived. Her son is alive and wants her to be taken care of. In his own way he gives her the only thing he could. He probably has some kind of a sacred cause, to fight for that probably claims every waking moment of his life. I stand there in the room looking at the paintings. Waiting for the right moment to go to her. I feel that she is sleeping, the illness already making her weak. In about two hours she wakes up and comes down to see how the exhibition is doing the gallery is crowded. Her art is extremely well received.

She looks at me. I go to her.

"I think you are my mother," I tell her.

She came close to me, and taking my hand into hers, she smells my palm. "I think you are right, your skin smells like my son's would. How did you find me?"

"I had ten years to look for you." I tell her what I was told to tell her. Tell her the whole story about the slavers and the rescue. She believes it. It is the kind of thing that happens all too often in the galaxy.

"I want to stay with you now, I don't have any education, I don't have a trade."

"You don't need a trade. I'm very rich; my art earns a lot of money. Just enjoy life. I knew that one day I'd find you. I never gave up for years, but lately I was worried that it might not happen. I was even tempted to take my own life this year."

"Gods forbid you'd have done it," I told her.

"Let's go home, my son. The exhibition doesn't need me. It can stay open here. I want to take you home. Your bride is waiting for you too."

That surprised me. He never told me about that. Probably he didn't know that part.

"I don't know about having a bride."

"Of course you have a bride. You think we chose our mates on a whim? Every person has his or her mate chosen as soon as they are born. We must take care of your wedding as soon as we arrive. I'll send a message to Julika right now so she can have everything ready when we get there."

"What had happened to my father?" I asked.

"He died in battle. He was what on other places would be called a Jedi, but we don't give our Force sensitive children to the Jedi, we keep them. They are the leaders of our knights. Your father was a hero. He defended our town from a gang of outlaws. All of the attackers were killed. He was wounded at the beginning of the battle, but he fought on. He shouldn't have. His wound was severe, but he ignored it. That was a fatal mistake. He lost too much blood. You need to join our knights. I'm sure you are like him, strong in the Force. The Force is strong in his family."

"I think I have the Force," I told her. "I feel things."

It was true, I felt her love, and I hoped she'd live for a long time. Because I knew that when she dies, my life will be over as well. I was sure that he had it imprinted in my brain, that I should kill myself when my work is done. I wished for my life to last at least two years, I'd enjoy every minute of it.

I watched her just to see her looking at me as if I was the most precious thing in the entire universe. Yet I knew that I was nothing but a gift from her real son to her. Even if a precious gift, still just a fake.

She was so happy to call my bride. They talked for two hours about the festivities. Most of it I didn't understand as they talked about food. I haven't had food yet. I had memory about food that he used to eat, but that was nothing like what they were talking about. He ate a nutrimix, not the things they planned to have at the festivities. Later I started to have a strange feeling in my body, as if I needed something. Took me a while to understand that I was probably thirsty. I started to look for water, I had his memories about how a waterspout would look like, but here there was nothing like that. I had to ask her because the need was getting very unpleasant. My mouth was very dry. She helped me to find the waterspout. It was not like in his memories, but a small sculpture of a woman, holding a vase the water came out of. The pleasure of the cold liquid in my mouth was something I wasn't prepared for. I kept the feeling inside so she wouldn't sense my pleasure. I was sure she would have found it strange that I was so enchanted by drinking water. No matter what I couldn't let her suspect that I wasn't a real person.

I listened to her talking to the bride, they agreed on what kind of food to have, then they started to talk about music and flowers. I had his memories about music being a kind of rhythmical noise but nothing more than that. I hoped I wouldn't do anything that'd make them suspect me, but even if he were here in my place, he wouldn't know more about these things. When they finished talking about the preparations, she suggested that we should go out to eat. Just around the corner there was a place with tables. When we sat down, they gave us a list of the available food.

"Please choose for me, I don't know this kind of food," I had to ask her. I didn't understand a word on the list.

She smiled at me again, to make me feel as if I was the most precious and most beautiful thing in the world. What she asked for was absolutely amazing. They brought us a large thing with all kinds of small bowls on it. The thing kept turning so that we both had access to every bowls, and those bowls all had different things in them. She noticed that I didn't know what to do, and made me a plate with all kinds of food on it, sprinkling liquids on them. She made a plate for herself, too. She picked up her food with two slim pieces of wood.

It wasn't very difficult to imitate her. Each portion of the food felt different in my mouth. Now I understood why he didn't eat this kind of food. It was too good and too distracting. He was a warrior, he shouldn't spoil himself with sensual delights, or at least this is what his memories contained about this. When we ate all the food from the small bowls, they brought more dishes. Those were even more amazing, small brown balls embedded in something cold and very sweet. Inside the small brown balls were different colored liquids, all the colors having their own taste. I wanted to eat another one of those, even when I wasn't really hungry anymore. I should be grateful that I could enjoy this. I don't care how short my life will be; I shall enjoy every second of it. I wished I could share my experiences with him. But I don't think he'd want that. If he would have wanted it, he would have ordered me to report to him, but I knew that when she died, I must end my life, and no matter what happens I must never contact him.

The next morning I helped her pack and we left. I read her thoughts. She was thinking of people, her neighbors her friends, and relatives. She had a warm feeling thinking of them. A feeling I wanted to develop for those people in myself too. It was sweet as the brown balls with the colored liquids of different taste and she loved them all. But her love for each of those people was different like the taste of the liquids.

The trip wasn't that long, just three days. We had food on the ship, not as good as in the restaurant, but here too every bite tasted different. She had us eat three times a day... right after we woke up and not much later then again, when we went to sleep. I didn't want to sleep much. There was a common area on the ship where people gathered and they had a holoscreen on the wall that showed moving pictures. His memories contained knowledge of this. It was a popular form of entertainment that he never indulged in. This had no use for him at all. I didn't understand anything they were showing, but picking up the emotions of the people watching them, I understood that the pictures were done so that they awakened feelings in them. Most amazing, sometimes the images made them feel fear. Then the images made the fear go away and they felt happy. Maybe after a couple of months I'd learn to see the images as they do, and I'll directly experience those feelings too. Maybe they'll feel sweet or spicy.

When we arrived, a whole crowd of people waited for us at the port. All of them looked at me as she did, as if I was something really beautiful. They came close to me and touched me as she used to, putting their arms around me. But that was horrible, something happened to me when women did that. Her touch didn't do that to me, but when the women's bodies were pressed against me there was a need even worse than thirst. I searched the memories to understand this, but he never directly experienced anything like this. He was not to be touched, his body was sacred, nobody was allowed to touch him, and he wasn't touching anyone unless he was to kill them. There was a word for this in the memories. This was called desire. I had to ask her what am I supposed to do about this need I shouldn't have done that, it upset her that I didn't know. But she wasn't upset with me she was upset with those she thought had abused me.

"That's what your wedding is for. After the ceremony your wife will take you into her body. That's what will ease this need. It'll give you great pleasure."

"Better than chocolate?"

"Far better." Her laughter was sweeter that chocolate.

I had to believe that there are things better than chocolate, like her laughter.

We traveled to her home on landspeeders. It was a small walled town, nothing like Coruscant, the houses were small and animals were everywhere, and flowers like on her paintings. The gate in the wall opened and I could see a procession coming to meet us. Men were carrying a seat with a woman on it. She wore a light blue dress, almost transparent, her horns adorned with sparkling crystals, the tattoos on her face exactly like mine. She got out of the seat and came to me. She was my bride. I could read her thought. She considered herself mine and me being hers. I was to be her companion for the rest of her life, and I was supposed to give her children. The memories contained some information on that about the cells being combined. But that wasn't what she thought I should do. I couldn't understand her thoughts about this.

Then she put her arms around me, put her mouth on mine and put her tongue in my mouth. I started to tremble, shaking so badly I couldn't control it. I put my tongue in her mouth. Her taste made me shake even more. Her body was hot against mine. I didn't know what was happening to me. I felt something that was indeed better than anything I had felt before. I heard myself cry out, and my pants became wet. The memories told me that this was something really bad. I must not wet my pants. But I felt she wasn't displeased with me.

"You are not angry with me?" I asked. "I wet my pants like a child."

"No, you didn't, not the way you think. It is the wetness of your seed you feel. I consider it a great compliment, my husband. You wanted me that much."

"I don't understand this." I didn't understand anything she said or she did. All I knew is that I wanted her tongue in my mouth.

"You will understand. I'm well prepared; my mother tutored me well. You have been chaste? Your mother told me that you have been kept for a year as a pleasure slave."

"Yes, but that didn't mean that I had pleasure. It's not the slave who has pleasure, it's the master." I didn't know what kind of pleasure she had in mind; I just answered as he instructed me. He thought that some people would think that as I had been supposedly kept for a year as pleasure slave, I had to be an expert on sex. He couldn't give me any knowledge of that. He was chaste. He would never soil his sacred warrior's body with sex. So he had told me that if anyone ever ask me about sex I should just say that I never had pleasure, only my owners had. It had to be a good answer because she easily believed me. We walked for about thirty minutes with the hundreds of people following us.

There was a feast laid out on tables, on a square in front of something that according to the memories I could access had to be a temple, a small one. The memories had larger ones with different symbols, this one had very small trees planted in decorated containers set into the walls; thousands of them from the ground to the roof, making the whole building green on all sides. She held my hand and led me inside. Candles were lit in there, I accessed the memories, according to them there should have been a priest but the temple was empty it was only the two of us there.

"I don't know what to do."

"Hold me. And call me your wife just do as I do." She put her mouth on mine again, breathing the words into my mouth. "My husband forever "

"My wife forever." I did the same, breathing the words into her warm mouth. Knowing it for the lie it was tore at my heart. Then we went outside.

She stood on the steps. "It is done, enjoy the feast. We will join you tomorrow."

She led me back to the temple. I didn't notice before but there was a large chest in the middle of the room, it was painted with flowers, I recognized the work of his Mother.

"This is your marriage chest. The one your mother made while she was carrying you."

"You don't have one?"

"I don't need one, yours is enough for both of us. The men bring this to the marriage temple."

She opened it. Blankets and pillows spilled out. They had a fragrance that the memories let me know was roses. She made a bed with the pillows and the blankets. She told me to lie down and blew out the candles.

"Now we need to explore each other. You have to touch every inch of my skin and I have to do the same. We can't have light for about two hours. This is the time of touching, then we can have light again for looking, then dark again to talk."

In the dark, the fragrance of the roses and the smell of her skin enveloped me. I touched her feet and her toes, touched her legs and her knees. Touching her smooth warm skin with my fingers was really much better than chocolate. As I stroked her legs above her knees, I sensed that she was looking forward to my fingers going higher. There was a hot wet nest between her legs made of curly hairs that I found, she wanted me to kiss her there. He was mistaken about this; this wouldn't soil anything. This was sacred, her body what she had there, sweet, warm life. I put my mouth on her. It was warm and wet like her mouth had been and she welcomed my tongue there. I tasted her warm wetness and there was something between her folds of warm flesh that came alive and asked for my mouth and for my tongue to play with it.

Then she cried out, not in pain but with pleasure as I cried out when I wet my pants. I felt that need again, as a part of my body rose hard and large between my legs. She kissed me there, same as I had kissed her nest. Then she did something I never expected; there was nothing about this in the memories. She held that part of my body in her hands and guided it into her nest. I was very confused. How could I put that in there? Wasn't it too big? But she put her legs around my waist as I was on all fours above her, and pushed against me until I was all inside her, and she was clinging to me, so close. And she did something to me, the inside of her body tightened around that hard part of me, I heard myself purr. She purred too. I sensed her pleasure and I let her feel mine so she would know what she gave me. Then I heard myself cry out so loud. I thought the walls of the temple would shatter.

I sensed something happening, there was a life inside her that was not there before. The memories told me that I probably gave her a child. That was good because she will have something when I'm gone. She had fallen asleep. But something called me, I had to get up and go to a small room. Where someone waited for me. It wasn't a person; it was a ghost. I knew from the memories that Force users sometimes came back to talk to the living Force users. No one else can see them. It was a man, looking like him. He had to be his father.

"Yes, I'm his father. This farce must stop. You have to leave now."

"I can't. I can't disobey him. You can't make me leave. Nobody can. I have to stay here as long as his mother lives, not very long. She barely has a year to live."

"I didn't know that. But this is still an abomination, this pretension. This is not true."

"Truth is worthless in this case. I have to fulfill my function, to keep her happy for the rest of her life. And help her die, without suffering. Then I'll be gone."

"Where will you go?"

"It depends if clones have an afterlife."

"I never heard of it."

"Then I don't go anywhere. I must get buried with her."

"That would devastate your wife."

"She will never know. "

"What will you tell her?"

"I will let her know that I went to take revenge on the slavers who kidnapped me. That's what I must say to anyone who might wonder where I have gone."

"You will get yourself buried alive with my wife?"

"Yes, there's nothing else I can do after she dies. I must do as he willed me to do. You can't stop me, nothing can. He wanted his mother to be happy as long as she lives. I'm here to do it and then I have to make sure that no trace of me remains. Nobody would look for my corpse in her coffin."

"All right, do it then. I see your point."

He was gone.

I went back to the smell of the roses and the pillows. She was sleeping there naked. I remembered that she said that after the touching we could light the candles. I found the device to light them. I sat there watching her sleep. I wanted to keep this moment in my memory, for when I will be in the coffin with his mother's body, I can pretend that I'm here watching Julika sleep. That will make it easy, to be there until I die. Shouldn't be long, I'll use up the air in the coffin fast enough.

Twelve months later.

Everything was as it should be, the droid told his mother that she has the disease, I kept the pain away from her. But she got weaker every day now, though she was happy with her grandchildren. Julika gave me not one child, but two, both girls. So small, so sweet, both of them were strong with the Force. I was so happy with them. I will never see them become women.

His mother started to work on the funeral arrangement. It was traditional for her family to build her cairn. She designed it, I learned to my dismay that there was no coffin, the body was put in the ground, covered with a mound of stones. Loosely placed so that the vines of certain plants could creep between the stones and feed on the body. That'd make my death a very long process. With that much air, it'd take too long to die. My orders were exact, I'm to get myself buried with her, killing myself was not included in that.

Once the cairn was done, she asked me to take her there, she wanted to plant the vines herself, she told me that it was a rare privilege for a person to do the planting of the vines for his or her own cairn. She even painted a picture of the cairn. A few months earlier I was enlisted in the order of their Force users. None of them were half as strong as I was. I could easily imprint them with the idea that they will protect my wife and my daughter even if it costs them their lives. The droids told me that his mother had probably two months to live.

Secretly, I dug a tunnel to the cairn, so I could get in there after her burial. I learned from the droids that a person usually dies after three days without water. So it won't be very long, not as long as I feared. I made love with my Julika as often as I could. I liked to pleasure her with my mouth. I even asked her to let me taste the milk in her breast, just once I wanted to taste that too. Time was fast running out for me. It was summer the flowers were blooming and Julika set out food for the birds that came from the Northern territories, where the weather was harsh at this time of the year. I wished I could turn into a bird and fly North to see the snow.

Julika told me that when winter comes, there would be snow. But I knew that I wouldn't be here to see that. I even imprinted in my daughters' brains the knowledge that they were precious to me, more precious than anything, so they will never doubt my love. They will not have me to guard them, but they'll know that even if I left them, I loved them. I wished I could do the same for Julika but that wouldn't make sense. She wouldn't believe then that I left her just to take revenge.

The leaves were brown and yellow when she started to fade. Her pain was so strong that I had to stay with her all the time to take away the pain. Julika brought me food because I wouldn't even leave her to eat. She told me to go and rest but I couldn't do that. I was there to ease her pain, nothing else could I do. I couldn't sleep at all, only when she slept. But I'd wake up as soon as she started to feel the slightest twinge of pain.

She passed away in her sleep just when all the trees were without leaves already. Her funeral was to be the next day. I hoped I could make love to Julika just once more, but she didn't think it was proper to make love when my mother just died. I took one of her undergarments so I can take her scent with me when I go.

We took the body to the cairn after the wake, removing just a few stones to open it up to have enough room to put her body in. Since she died in the fall, the vines won't start growing until the spring around her cairn. It was cold, the wind harsh. We went home after the stones were replaced properly. The sun was going down. I felt strange. I checked the memories, but there was no name for this feeling. It was a very strange feeling; it burned my eyes so badly that wetness came out of them. That had a name in the memories, it was called tears. The memories registered those as a sign of weakness. But I didn't feel weak, no matter how much I wished to stay. I will do what I have to do. I wrote the note about leaving to pursue my revenge. I kissed the twins. Julika was already asleep. I didn't kiss her; she'd have awakened. It was a tiring day for her. She prepared a lot of food for the wake.

I left, closing the door behind me. I even kissed the garden gate. The house that was my home for more than a year stood silent as I left. It'll be there for generations. But not for me. Nothing in this beautiful world was for me anymore, I was nothing but an organic container of his will.

My eyes were burning again, and when I touched them, my fingers were wet. I went back to the cairn and got inside through the tunnel. The body was already cold and stiff. The ground was almost frozen. I had Julika's undergarment with me. I lay down on my back, putting her undergarment on my face. I'm going to breathe her scent as long as I live. I hope it won't take too long to go. The strange feeling that I had no name for was still in me.

I willed it away and replaced it with the memory of Julika sleeping in the wedding temple. Soon I could see through the rocks that there was daylight. I didn't know how much time passed, because after I had seen the sun rise twice. I mostly slept, not exactly sleeping. In the memories there was a technique called voluntary hibernation that was good, as thirst started to torment me very badly. When I closed myself off to the world, I didn't feel thirst. But then I decided that even feeling thirst was better than being dead. I should live as long as I can. Her undergarment still held her scent, and the fragrance of the roses that she always put on her body. I thought I shouldn't complain, for the life I have known was short but rich. In this one year I have lived, I've known more delights than he would ever have. He lives for his duty, and I lived for mine, but I tasted love and pleasure, something he won't ever have. I have seen another sunrise, but only for a short while was there light, then all went dark, and I knew it was over, and there was nothing. The last thing I could think of was that her cairn would have more flowers than anyone else's. The vines will have two bodies to feed on.

END

You may want to continue reading here.

Alternate ending

I woke up to a command that hit me like nothing else ever had.

The voice in my head said, "Get up, you weakling! You are not dead yet. Get out of there the same way you crawled in. I'm not going to take this cairn apart just because you don't have the willpower to make yourself move. Get the hell out of there. I could walk in a worse state than you are in, and nobody would think that there's anything wrong with me. Get moving or I'm going to let you rot, as I wanted to before he came to me and talked me into letting you live. Why should you live, I don't know. But he did ask me to allow you to live. It is very unSithly to ignore the request of a ghost. But if you don't get moving, there's nothing I can do. There are people coming here, they'll be here in a couple of minutes, that's why I can't take the cairn apart--they'd see me getting you out and that'd ruin the magnificently sentimental explanation for your return that he came up with. If you can't get out now in two minutes, it'll be too late, get moving. Once you are out, I'll give you water. If you can't move for your life and for all those feelings he values so much, get moving for the water."

Only then did I recognize his aura. It was him. He who made me. Was it a dream or had his father's ghost really asked him to let me live. I gathered all my willpower and made my body move to crawl out through the tunnel. He was waiting for me among the dry bushes. There were people nearby but they didn't look at us at all, I presumed he could make them look away.

"Yes, I can. Now here is your water, drink slowly. I'll take you to my ship. It is cloaked. It is down in the valley. I expect you to recover in three days; I'm not going to nurse you. There will be a droid for you there. He (as with the first time, who he was my maker blocked from me) will pick me up now. I have more important things to do than to help you to get back between the legs of your wife. You stay in my ship until the droid tells you that you are in a good enough shape to meet your wife. You tell her that after a couple of days, you realized that revenge wasn't important, and you'd rather be with her."

"Don't you even want to know what those feelings are that he values so much? I would like to share those with you."

"I know those feelings, I have felt them in people. But what you don't know is that I do have a quest that's holy to me. I'm not devoid of emotion as you might think. My devotion is for things that are not as fleeting as the life of a woman or a child or my own life."

He didn't support me even though I was almost too weak to walk. His way to help me was to taunt me all the way to the ship about how little willpower I had. It worked. I managed to walk.

"Now how do you want this? Should I make you forget that you are a clone?"

"No. I want to remember everything," I told him.

"Fine, you can remember, but you can't talk about it."

He gave me a command that locked his order into my mind. I couldn't talk about him to anyone. Though he only ordered me not to talk, he didn't order me not to write. So this is how you could read my story.

The end now for real.