Chapter Text
Maul's daughter was difficult.
She had the personality of someone who would be plagued with teenage angst and an undeveloped prefrontal cortex for all of eternity- both in the usual combativeness and mood swings that one could expect, as well as all of the emotional issues of someone forced to reckon with the fact that they'd be fifteen chronically.
There was also the fact that she'd been raised by the Jedi Order- which only made her worse.
He didn't know what her Sire had been thinking when he Turned her, to be honest. Because either he hadn't been thinking clearly or he was a fool who hadn't been thinking at all. There was a reason why Sidious had waited until Maul had reached his species' maturity to Turn him, despite having trained him as a Sith for long before then. A child vampire was inherently problematic and prone to serious mental conditions. And that was when the fledgling didn't count herself as a member of their sworn enemies.
He'd been prepared to deal with all sorts of issues from the moment that he'd taken her in- he had been willing to handle her fearing her own nature, or her trying to fight him, or her trying to run back to the Jedi who'd only kill her- but this was something else entirely.
For lack of a better term, applying an entirely mortal concept to a vampire- Ahsoka was on a hunger strike.
She absolutely refused to feed. No matter what he tried: enticing her with the worst caliber of criminals so that she'd feel less conflicted about opening their veins, feeding himself before calling her into the room and offering her the throat of his prey in the hopes that her hunger would win out once she got the chance to smell and see what she craved- he'd even drained some blood into a cup and given that to her, in the hopes that the idea of feeding on a living body was what threw her off.
None of it had worked.
Even as her eyes become increasingly bloodshot, and her strength diminished, and she gained a tremor, and she lost the ability to call on her Gift-
Even as she started to show the symptoms of being Blood-Addled- she dug her heels in and refused to budge.
It was... Problematic.
To make use of a rather ironic metaphor, considering the circumstances- trying to get his daughter to feed was like trying to get blood from a stone. She was difficult, and she was impossible.
He hoped, at least, that her being Blood-Addled might make her more susceptible. She was becoming twitchy and reckless, already- unconsciously trailing after injured Death Watch soldiers before she remembered herself and snapped out of her trance, immediately putting as much distance between them as she could. He only hoped that the Jedi tendency for self-denial would go before she became truly Blood-Mad. He didn't need her to tear through his thralls, and he certainly didn't need for that to be the first time that she allowed herself to feed- once she had enough in her to come back to her senses, he doubted that she'd ever be able to recover from slaughtering people to sate her hunger.
Ugh, Jedi.
They certainly lived to make his life harder, didn't they?
The latest of Death Watch's encampments was built over a set of old, twisting mines. Maul could not be certain what they were once used for, as they had been depleted and abandoned centuries ago. Such was the way of a galaxy as old as theirs- things like that had a way of... Dropping out of knowledge. He was old, yes, but hardly old enough to recall something so long ago.
The only thing that remained in the tunnels were rats.
Rats- which, when they realized that the area above their heads was inhabited once more- began to crawl back up from the depths and near to the surface.
It was an infestation and it was a problem. They'd begun to break into their storage units, stealing and destroying rations and supplies. Maul had no need of such things, personally, of course- but, well, he rather liked to have his thralls taken care of. Feeding on them when they weren't eating enough and forgoing other mortal necessities could weaken them to the point where they could no longer fight.
So- the soldiers were hungry, and Maul was also hungry. The rats were a problem.
A problem- that Ahsoka seemed to have endeavored to take care of on her own, judging by the number of tiny, broken bodies that he found inside a mouth of an old mine shaft.
They had been brutalized- not intentionally, of course, merely a side effect of the fact that their predator was meant to be hunting prey much, much larger than them.
Ahsoka's fangs were meant to be able to cut cleanly through the throats of even the largest and strongest of mortals, in order to reach the jugular. Trandoshans, Besalisks- even Hutts if she was feeling particularly motivated. Humans were only their most common prey because they were the galaxy's most common species. These tiny, lower lifeforms- small enough for him to hold just one in the palm of his hand...
Well. It was a galaxy of difference.
Most of them had been decapitated, or nearly so- practically juiced like a citrus fruit, their bodies thoroughly crushed wherever she'd grasped them with her superior strength.
Maul clenched his jaw and quickened his pace- following the trail of bodies by the sharp, musty smell of animal blood much more than trying to track them visually. That would have become impossible, sooner rather than later. The deeper that he got, the more that they had scattered in their desperation to escape their pursuer.
He could remember times when he'd been especially desperate and hungry, enough so that he'd preyed on rodents. That had been while he was Sidious' Apprentice- and Sidious was a man who only saw fit for him to feed on proper prey when he decreed it, which was rare, despite being quite the glutton himself. Maul had been starving- well into being Blood-Addled and halfway to Blood-Mad.
Sidious hadn't cared when he went after little morsels- not seeing them as making any real difference, so he'd taken full advantage of that, and he'd found himself regularly ensuring that his Master's dungeons were entirely devoid of the usual vermin.
It wasn't like that with Ahsoka, though- he gave her every opportunity to feed. But she was stubborn. She was choosing to starve herself rather than give in to her natural inclinations- and he could plainly see where that had gotten her.
She was actively feeding when he finally came upon her, rather than hunting. Her head was bowed over the tiny thing that she held in her hands- one wrapped wholly around the rat's body, the other pulling its head back so that she could have the best possible access to its small neck. His daughter still made a mess of herself- their fangs were carefully formed to create a seal over the wound and avoid wasting blood, but with the rat, her lower canines could not lock on properly. Rather than sinking into the flesh of the beast's throat, they curled around it- and that left Ahsoka's face and front dripping with viscera.
"Those morsels are hardly even worth the energy it takes to catch them." Maul pointed out, leaning up against a wall.
Ahsoka could not answer, not with her mouth full- but the milky, protective membranes that had slipped over the corners of her eyes flickered- acknowledging that she had heard him.
Maul sighed, then bared his teeth at the disgusting, half-rotten stench of animal blood- likely from how thoroughly it had soaked into Ahsoka's clothes. They'd never get the smell out, at this rate- not to mention how it seemed that a good deal of the meager, already-too-little blood had ended up on her rather than in her. "You look like a new fledgling."
His daughter finished feeding at that moment- the rat drained quickly, if not efficiently. She released the dead animal, but her fangs remained extended- they warped the way that she formed her words. "Oh, shhhut up."
"It's undignified." He informed her, primly. "You wouldn't make such a mess if you were hunting properly."
Ahsoka let out a snarl, the noise half-Togruta and half-vampire as she showed him her fangs. "Shhhhut up."
"You know I'm right."
Ahsoka let her fangs draw back into the neat row of teeth that would've looked normal on a human, but only looked wrong on a carnivorous species, like her. Maul got the impression that she would've liked very much to keep baring them at him, but she seemed to want to look him in the eyes- and to make the third eyelids recede, she'd need to yield that threatening edge. "You're not, actually."
Maul raised a brow at her. "Am I?"
The argument was familiar, pointless, and cyclical. Maul knew how it would end- they'd go back and forth, and ultimately, nobody would win. He was aware that was what handling a teenager was normally like, vampire or not.
Ahsoka's lips pulled back, showing off the way that the rat's disgusting blood painted her teeth a pale, wet orange. "Maybe you can try minding your business?"
"You are my business." Maul grimaced. "Your physical well-being certainly is."
"I'm doing fine."
"No." Maul said, plainly. "You are not. You're starving."
That provoked a nasty reaction- Ahsoka's fangs dropped again, briefly- the membranes licking at her eyes- as she turned to snarl up at him. It ended as soon as it started, though- and she returned to her natural position quickly. "And what do you suggest, exactly?"
"That is what thralls are for."
"They're not in their right minds." Ahsoka hissed, drawing back and looking away from him.
"I don't have all of them under my Sway." He pointed out. "Plenty would be perfectly willing. They would see it as an honor."
"That's not any better." She whined. "Have you ever heard of power imbalances? They would feel like they have to accept."
"You are making this more complicated than it needs to be."
"I'm not." Ahsoka glanced back over to Maul- glared at him. "It's not right."
Maul felt a little wisp of annoyance start to build up in his chest. He tried to quash it- that certainly wouldn't help him convince her. "It is the way that things are. We feed on mortals the same way that predatory beasts hunt their prey."
"Maybe it shouldn't be."
"Are you planning to rearrange the natural order, Ahsoka?"
Ahsoka looked away, again. Maul knew that he had come as close as he could to winning their argument- but his daughter would never accept that. She was too stubborn. "Go away."
"Very mature."
She growled. "I said go away."
There was no point in poking her when she was already mad at him- it would only serve to trample over what little goodwill he'd built with her, and she'd only just stopped trying to run off. He didn't need her getting herself killed, out there in a galaxy that she no longer knew how to navigate.
So... He let her have her little, stubborn, petty victory. And he left her be.
Fucking teenagers.
Fucking Jedi.