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Savage has been watching.
Watching is all he can do. He can barely hope. His brother has known nothing but pain, and ever since Savage’s death he has watched him helplessly. There is nothing Savage can do to ease Maul’s pain. He is a failure of a brother.
Maul is his little brother and Savage has not protected him as he ought. If Savage could cry he would be sobbing.
Where had his failures begun?
*When you let him go.* His mind whispers. *You failed him when you let him walk into that cursed forest alone.*
***
Maul tackled Savage, bowling over his older brother, giggling. Savage huffed, rolling over to pin him down, playing. The brothers scrabbled around for several minutes, playfully growling at each other. Suddenly, Maul’s head popped up.
“Do you hear that?”
Savage tilted his head, listening. “No.” Savage had a bad feeling about this.
“I want to check it out.” Maul stood, turned to leave.
“Let’s go, then.” Savage moved to follow.
“No.” Maul’s eyes, brown then, innocent, were distant. “I need to do this by myself.”
***
Savage ran after Maul. The strange cloaked man gripped his baby brother’s arm, pulling onto his ship. Both Maul and Savage were screaming, but then the ship was taking off and Savage crumbled, sobbing, crying for a brother lost.
***
Mother Talzin had called and Savage had answered, as was his duty. “He lives, Savage, your brother still lives. Go, and return to me my son.”
For the first time since that ship had taken off, Savage felt a glimmer of hope.
***
He was healed. Savage had his little brother back. It didn’t feel that way. Maul was changed in ways Savage couldn’t understand. On the rare occasions his brother slept, he writhed and screamed. Maul had mental wounds that would never heal.
Savage wept privately in stolen moments for brown eyes, simpler times, cried for a childhood ended too soon.
The child who had been taken that day was gone, lost forever. Maul’s eyes, yellow (brown), bloodshot (bright), full of pain (joy) and rage (innocence) haunted him.
Savage stood behind him, fought beside him, kneeled before him, and mourned him all the same. Savage would not fail him again.
***
*You failed him again.* The cloaked man who had taken Maul when his eyes were still brown, still sparkling, when his voice was still high, still full of wonder, had returned. Savage had failed again, and he was dying. Savage didn’t want to die. Dying meant abandoning his little brother. His little brother, who was so strong, who had survived so much. His little brother, who had been broken so many times, had suffered so much. His little brother, who would survive this, would suffer this. His little brother, who was stronger than Savage had ever been. His little brother, whose eyes flickered brown for a moment in his grief. His little brother, who would be broken and forge himself anew so many more times.
His little brother, holding his hand, easing his pain as best he could. Savage understood then that he was weak. Understood in that moment that he was a failure, that he had failed the moment he had not pulled Maul, eyes still brown, into his arms and fled from the mysterious voice that drew him into the woods. Maul was a survivor. Maul could make it through anything. Maul possessed a strength Savage had always lacked. Maul was always going to survive, Savage was always going to die.
“I’m not like you, I never was.”
Savage slipped away. The last thing he heard was his little brother's enraged scream as he leapt back into the endless battle that was his life.
***
Savage watched.
Maul was still fighting. Kept fighting; the little Jedi was winning, she would not heed his warnings. She won, captured him, but he would make it out. There was one truth Savage had left, Maul always made it out. He was not always unscathed, but he always made it out.
The clone attacked, and the little Jedi allied with him. Savage’s little brother walked away. The clones did not.
***
Maul was still fighting. Savage watched. His little brother’s adversary had changed in form, but his battle was always the same. The partner was different, but the dance was the same. The dance never changed, and Maul’s feral grace and obstinate resilience never changed either. That feral grace, and obstinate resilience was the only thing that had not changed from the brown eyes to the yellow. Combat was a deadly dance, and his little brother was a beautiful dancer. The Inquisitors could not defeat him. The cyborg the cloaked man had replaced his brother with could, did, but his little brother survived, because Maul, bruised, broken, defeated always rose again.
***
Maul, forgotten, cloaked in shadow, returned to the half-light once again. The little Jedi from Mandalore, grown tall, and two others fought him again. Savage did not know why his little brother wanted the boy for an apprentice, but he trusted his judgement. Maul blinded the boy’s master and fled the presence of the cyborg.
The boy continued to refuse to join his little brother. Why was a question Savage could not see an answer to.
***
Savage watched. Maul had tracked the boy to Kenobi. The only person his little brother hated nearly as much as the cloaked man. Savage watched. Kenobi and Maul fought once more. Savage knew then that this was his greatest failure. He had died, abandoning his little brother. This dance would be Maul’s last. Kenobi held his little brother in his arms.
“Is he… the chosen one?” Maul whispered, hatred gone, eyes once more brown, voice once more childlike.
“Yes.” Kenobi whispered back, gazing at his little brother with compassion.
“He will avenge us.” Maul’s head fell back. His fight was done, his rest had come.
Kenobi gently closed his eyes. “Rest easy, Great Survivor.”
***
“I’m sorry, I failed you.” Savage’s tears finally come. “I left you.”
“It wasn’t your fault.” Maul gazes up at the stars, face and voice unreadable.
“It was, I should have taken and run from the strange voice only you could hear all those years ago. I failed you. Over and over.”
“I don’t blame you, Savage.”
And those words hurt worse than any wound Savage has ever received, because how could his little brother not blame him.
“I should have protected you, as the older brother it’s my duty-”
Maul tackles him, like when they were children, though unlike then, he does not scuffle, merely presses himself into his older brother’s embrace. “There was nothing you could have done, he would have killed you.”
“Still, I should have-”
“You saved me, Savage, in that scrapyard, when I barely remembered my own name. I would have died there, forgotten, if it wasn't for you.”
And if Maul is to be believed, and his little brother is a liar, but as those warm, brown eyes stare into his, Savage knows that Maul lies, yes, but not to him. Not about this, never about this, and if through and despite all his failures, he lived long enough to save his baby brother in that scrapyard, then perhaps those failures can be forgiven.
“Can you forgive me?” Maul asks, and Savage starts, confused. “I led you to your death.”
Savage nearly laughs, but he can’t. “I could never blame you for anything, little one, I wasn’t strong enough, like you were. You've always been so strong.”
The brothers, torn by circumstance and tragedy, have eternity now, time to truly learn to know one another, and time to learn to forgive themselves. With his little brother in his arms again, Savage can believe that maybe it has all been worth it for this embrace.