"I didn't even know that was a possibility," Maul remarked with a small bit of surprise. He had no idea if it was because his master had thought such a method was weak and pathetic or if because Sidious genuinely had no idea about it. Much knowledge had been lost between Imperius's time and Maul's after all.

"I'm not sure it even can be done. But purifying it would require taking out everything that was within the crystals that caused them to be bled in the first place." For Maul, that was going to be difficult. A lot of negative emotions had gone into them to turn them red in the first place. "But I think it is something I now need to do."

"By my time, the tradition was to kill a Jedi, take the crystal from their lightsaber, and bleed it to bind it as your own. But since I was so young, I don't think my master thought I'd be capable of killing one." He sighed in a resigned fashion. "He was probably right." Maul had barely been able to kill a Jedi padawan when he was twenty-one, albeit one who was pretty much done with her training and would have been knighted soon had he not snuffed out her life. "So just took me secretly to Ilum and had me find the crystals that spoke out to me there."

Maul nodded at hearing Imperius agree with him. It was heartening to hear a fellow Sith tell him that what he was doing was the right course of action. "I think I can do so. Much of what I was angry about have been things I can finally let go."

"You and I both already know the amount of knowledge that the Sith possessed which has been lost from your time could fill up an entire library." Maul said the words with a dry tone to them. It really was a damn shame to have lost so much which could have been passed down thanks to all the in-fighting and backstabbing that their order always engaged in.

"That was part of it, yes. I needed to learn not to be afraid of him any longer. The other part..." He hesitated for a moment. "I blamed Obi-Wan for so long for his part in what happened to me. He was an easier target than focusing on my master. But once I actually got to know him in Deerington and here, I..." He was still a bit reluctant to discuss what had happened between them. But he trusted Imperius, at least to the extent he was able to trust any other Sith Lord. "...I fell in love with him. That caused much of the anger I'd held so long towards him to vanish."

"The line between hate and love is a thin one, especially when one becomes obsessed as I did with him. He just wouldn't fall to the temptation of the Dark Side no matter what I did. And even after all I did to him, he still found it within himself to have compassion for me and be kind to me." Obi-Wan had a personality that made him easy to love and so Maul had fallen hard for him, even if he managed to lie to himself for a long time about his feelings. "But he never was able to return my feelings, and besides, I was already happy with Reaper as my husband."

He chuckled when Talwyn mentioned who he'd fallen in love with. "Sounds like quite the tale. I wonder if any Sith anywhere has ever done anything like falling in love in less than dramatic fashion." He doubted it. Sith were drama queens by nature.

This is why they got along. The two of them could understand their intense emotions and how it had shaped their lives as Sith. "Now that truly does sound like a romantic tale. Like a knight coming to the rescue of a damsel in distress. Have I ever told you the story of how Reaper and I met in Deerington? It is very dramatic, just as the pair of us are. And romantic."

"I'd been told not to trust the townspeople when I first arrived. They weren't real people, just figments of a half-Pthumerian's memories exaggerated and brought to life, but I didn't know that at the time. I also didn't listen for they were kind the first month I was there. I thought everyone else was mistaken. They got my guard down.

And once they did that, they drugged me. I woke up groggy, sewn to a dead deer, as the small building they'd put me in was lit on fire. I was still too drugged to get out of there on my own. I would have either suffocated from the smoke or burnt to death. That's when Reaper appeared." There was a soft look that came into Maul's eyes and it showed in his voice as well. "I thought I was dreaming at first. A masked man dressed all in black, holding a shotgun phasing through the wall? Impossible. But he rescued me, knocking down a wall and then dragging me through before the flames could reach me. Very romantic, wouldn't you say? He killed and injured a few of the townspeople as well and so did I once I was able to breathe again. We walked a little and talked after that, learning about one another. Imagine my surprise when he returned the flirtations I tried out on him. There was a spark between us even from that first meeting that simply grew and grew until it was undeniable. Everything that occurred between us since then can be traced back to that."

He smiled fondly at the thought of his husband. How different his life would have been had he not met Reaper his first month in Deerington.

Maul was pleased someone else besides himself found such a story romantic. Others sometimes found it a bit disconcerting when he told of their first meeting. "I do. It took a very long time to realize that and even longer to say the words but I do love him. I want to spend the rest of my life and grow old with him."

Preferably by then, Maul hoped they would have racked up many more piles of bodies through their usual shenanigans. He'd already shed pints of blood and left corpses in his wake when it came to protecting Reaper. He'd never lost a day's sleep about it when it was in defense of his mate.

"Mine as well. Most either die alone, bitter, and betrayed or are content to be alone on top." Sidious was that way and Maul now pitied the old man a little for being unable to ever know the feeling of loving another person. He was pathetic that way.

Maul smiled at the story. Of course they would have met that way. Of course. "That's how it was with Reaper and I at first. It was just meant to be flirting between us, something to pass the time to amuse ourselves with. Fortunately for us both, Pthumerians have a way of throwing people into intense circumstances that force them to bond quickly, so we soon became more than just friends." Being snowed in at a haunted hotel had certainly given them a lot of time to cuddle in their rooms together, happy as a pair of clams to spend most of their time having sex.

Maul sipped his tea slowly, eyes far away as he thought over the last three years he and Reaper and spent together. "It just kept going on with us. Intense situations that kept bringing us closer. It wasn't at all perfect and there was more than one confrontation between us. I even killed him once. But in the end, we have become all the stronger for it. Being married is certainly an experience I never expected to find myself in. But here I am, now with a husband and a last name both." Technically he was Maul Reyes now if he wanted to introduce himself as such.

"Love has been good to experience. I wouldn't be able to even think of purifying my lightsaber if I hadn't learned what I have by loving others and being loved in return." He felt like such a sap saying that but it was true. Going down that path of love had led him right where he was now, on the verge of doing something else he never thought would be possible.

"I hope you do get to marry him someday. What a union that would be." Maul chuckled softly for a moment.

"Such a marriage I fear would be impossible in my time due to how few there are on the Dark Side." Even Ventress had picked a Nightbrother in the form of Savage for her mate rather than anyone on the Light Side. "Although I could imagine my master marrying the tiny old reptile that is the Grandmaster of the Jedi Order if it had somehow served his own purposes." Really, Sidious would have done absolutely anything if it got him what he wanted. "They would have had a lot in common, both old and senile as they both are."