transboba:

you are a nightsister and fifteen years old; you do not know your mother or your father, as is tradition, because mother talzin is mother-to-all and your father is unimportant. mother talzin cups your face and says daughter, you are a woman now, you will be one of us. a witch of dathomir. 

and you are not. 

what do you say? what do you tell her? 

his name is – it doesn’t matter, not yet. but he tips his head into the hand and averts his eyes and asks her if they can talk alone, and suddenly, they just are, the two of them surrounded by nothing more than the mist. what is wrong, my daughter? 

i am not, he says, blurting it out, before clamping his jaw tight, like a trap closing shut on a mouse just a second too late. 

what do you mean, child?

i am your son, he says, quietly. i am … i am not a nightsister. she looks … curious, then, studying him, and calls him by that name, the name-that-is-no-more. 

are you sure? 

very, he replies, and he is unsure how his voice is steady, but it is. 

she cradles his face. my son, then. are you prepared for the changes that will come? this may be something you cannot turn back from. and he knows, and his chest hurts with fear-of-the-unknown. aches, past his ribs. but he nods. 

they give him his tattoos two days later, and by the time a week has passed, mother talzin runs a hand over his head, and there are tiny sharp points, poking up there, like plants just pushing through the ground after winter. before mother talzin gives him to the other side of the planet, she gives him a name, too. 

animus, she calls him. may you find yourself here. 

his old name dies. the memory of it sinks from all of their minds, the sound of it nothing more than an old echo. he is animus and he is sixteen years old and a nightbrother, now. the old purple tattoos still show up some, under the sunset-color of his skin, looking like old bruises. 

( when he presses them, he pretends that they are. better won in combat than the remnants of being not-right. )

he knows some of the witch-magic the nightsisters use, but he thinks he is not meant to use it, here. when he tried, he burnt his fingers for it, sticking them in his mouth until the soreness faded. 

do you have your own magic, here? he asks one of his brothers, and they laugh, not meanly so, and toss something to him. he catches it before even realizing what it is – a sturdy quarterstaff, almost, imbedded with metal in places. 

sure we do, the other nightbrother says, with a relaxed grin. and there’s your magic wand. stand to, brother. 

when the sun fades over dathomir that night, his chest aches, but from the fair cropping of bruises he received, and there is an arm slung over his shoulders, his own elbow digging into another’s ribs, throat sore for his breath, as well. 

this pain will fade as the bruises do.