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[sleight_of_hand]

For the things that no longer belong in open communities, or can't be continued in thread for various, more innocent reasons.

Otherwise known as the "Appreciating Dio's Muscles Memorial Log".

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[sleight_of_hand]

Adachi fell quiet, his expression becoming stone faced, but his eyes looked almost hollow, like he was looking back at something that haunted him. And it did; he never talked about it, not even with the therapists he had been to over the years. It was still a thing, though; something that niggled at the back of his brain and he hated to acknowledge, but he knew it was there. He knew that a certain teenager had been right about one thing when it came to him.

"My desires had no substance," he finally replied, "and I couldn't feel anything. I hated everything; the world was shit, and I was the shittiest thing in it."

He felt like his heart was being squeezed in his chest.

"...I wanted to die, but I was too much of a coward to kill myself."

Adachi took a deep breath, closing his eyes and counting to ten and Riza hopped off the couch, pawing over to him and resting her head on his lap. He reached for her, petting her head gently, before he finally felt calm enough to focus on Dooku again.

"When I say I was 'Empty', I'm not kidding."

[dun_moch]

"I see."

The Count closed his eyes for a moment and sighed, as though moved by Adachi's admission. But while Adachi felt as though his heart was being squeezed, there was no such pressure on the block of dark ice that rested within Dooku's own chest. Only a vague irritation that he had judged wrongly.

"I had thought that you and I had something in common," he said. "But perhaps I was wrong. While I came to despise the world around me, I never came to feel the same way toward myself. And never did I desire self-destruction, unless it was to tear down the falsehoods that had ensnared me."

Master Dooku had died so that Darth Tyranus could be created. A fair trade, in Dooku's estimation.

"Are you truly happier now?" He asks, ignoring Riza to focus once more on the detective's eyes.

[sleight_of_hand]

Adachi looked down at Riza, smiling faintly as he rubbed her head.

"...yeah," he admitted softly. "Sure, things are a pain in the ass still, but I... I don't need to go through it alone."

He paused at that, finally returning Dooku's gaze then.

"I kind of feel bad for you in that respect, you know," he said. "You're really never going to change, aren't you?"

[dun_moch]

The Count's eyes widen, then narrow. He snorts as he realizes what Adachi is doing, what he is saying.

"You? You pity me?" He sounds somewhere between offended and amused as he shakes his head.

"I have changed more than you know," he insists. The food is now completely forgotten in front of him as he lifts a finger in warning. "I have renounced the Sith. I have abandoned the dream of Porter control. I do not repeat my mistakes. Which is precisely why I will never turn back to the lies of the Light."

His yellow teeth flash beneath his lip as he speaks, the beginnings of a sneer. "I spent far too much time upon that path to ever walk it again. When you reach my age- if you live that long- you may know something of the regret that comes with so many wasted years."

[sleight_of_hand]

"Yeah, I do pity you."

Adachi leaned back in his seat, not looking the least bit bothered by the very clear threat that was Dooku. Then again, he never was, not really.

"You know, for all your 'change' and all your age, you never really learned anything," he replied. "You keep things divided between light and dark, yet you never see the shades of grey in between. All you care about is your power, your pain, what you've suffered, but you never see what other options you have. You can never find your own peace, and you bring about your own misery because of it while blaming everyone else."

Adachi let out a breath, scritching Riza behind her ears.

"So yeah. I pity you."