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Topic:
Often Grows the Wolf (AU vignettes, Sidious, Qui-Gon, Dooku, Yoda) (updated 7/14: Wall of Thorns)
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sabarte
Registered:
Sep '05
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Date Posted:
3/1/07 6:07pm
Subject:
Often Grows the Wolf (AU vignettes, Sidious, Qui-Gon, Dooku, Yoda) (updated 7/14: Wall of Thorns)
- Date Edited:
7/14/07 7:26pm (5 edits total)
Edited By:
sabarte
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Often Grows the Wolf
Qui-Gon changed the galaxy on Naboo. Now a Jedi Knight, he means to take on a deadlier challenge.
A series of vignettes over thirteen years tracing the Jedi training of a Sith apprentice.
Nine vignettes are completed - the series will stretch to thirteen.
This is a compilation thread. Constructive criticism is always welcome.
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sabarte
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Sep '05
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Date Posted:
3/1/07 6:09pm
Subject:
RE: Often Grows the Wolf (AU vignette compilation, Sidious, Qui-Gon, Dooku)
- Date Edited:
6/25/07 10:38pm (3 edits total)
Edited By:
sabarte
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Metastasis
73 BBY
When only the two senior members of the Council remained in the room, they brought up the other matter. Dooku's report was terse and emotionless. Qui-Gon's was longer and more of an argument. More of a plea, really. It was with trepidation he finished putting forth his case.
"We can't let him go. He knows too much. And I can't in conscience..." Qui-Gon swallowed. "He is the responsibility of the Order, and should be trained." He stood straighter. "I'll do it."
Yoda's eyes narrowed.
"You're sure about this, Qui-Gon?" Master Dooku asked softly. He hadn't taken a seat, but instead had prowled around the edge of the room as Qui-Gon argued. Now he stood at one of the windows of the Council chamber, staring out on noonlit Coruscant.
"<Of course he's sure>." Master Tyvokka was old enough that his brown fur was starting to show tinges of silver. The Wookiee barked a laugh. "<He's your apprentice. That doesn't mean he's right>." Master Yoda was expressionless now, but his gimer stick tapped arrhythmically on the arm of his chair.
"He's not my apprentice anymore." Dooku murmured. Qui-Gon's Master ...former Master, rather... was today the newest member of the Jedi Council. Not a development Qui-Gon had anticipated, but the world had changed now. They had changed it together, in a more harrowing trial than the Council could ever have devised. "And he usually is right."
"Not the task of a Knight, this is," Yoda said finally. "A Master's task this was. Left undone."
Dooku's eyes narrowed as he turned. He sounded defensive. "It's the duty of a Master to honor commitments made by their apprentice - just as it is the responsibility of an apprentice not to make those commitments unwisely. Qui-Gon did not make the choice you or I would have made, but that does not mean his choice was wrong, Master Yoda."
"We will see."
"I don't see anyone else offering a solution." Qui-Gon said grimly. "You said I was a Knight. That I had earned it. That means I can take an apprentice."
Dooku glanced at him. "Well, to be fair, I think Master Yoda prefers a more final solution."
"It wouldn't have been very final with the both of us dead in some Gungan gutter and nobody the wiser," Qui-Gon snapped. "It wasn't just the right way out, it was the only way out."
"<Don't be impertinent>." Tyvokka growled.
Yoda stopped tapping his stick. "The right to take an apprentice, you have. The right to take this apprentice, you do not."
"Maybe not." Qui-Gon's voice was quiet. "But I have the responsibility."
"I trust Qui-Gon," Dooku said slowly. "And if the boy is willing, I will support them in this endeavor."
Tyvokka lifted his head. "<Is the boy willing>?"
Qui-Gon swallowed. "I haven't asked."
***
The temporary secure housing room was stark and white. There was a shelf-like bed with a nine-year-old blue-eyed child on it. "Hi, Qui-Gon." he said.
Qui-Gon swallowed again, aware of Dooku only a few yards away. "Hi there. Uh....do you have a name? A real name, I mean."
"Not anymore." the kid said. "It's been boring in here. I thought there'd be more people."
"Nobody knows you're here, really." Qui-Gon said.
"Is that a good thing or a bad thing?"
"I don't know. Did you have...parents, or anything?"
The boy thought for a minute, and then shook his head.
"I don't either. Uh...I'm going to try and see if I can look after you a while. Er. You know I'm a Jedi. A Jedi Knight now."
The boy gave him a 'well, duh' look.
"I was wondering if you'd want to be..." don't say apprentice "uh, learn from me? How to be a Jedi?"
"You want to be my Master?" The boy sounded completely confused now.
"Um...sort of...but not like that."
"But what if I don't want to be a Jedi?"
"That might be bad." Qui-Gon said quietly.
"I see." The boy gave him a critical look. "I'm not sure you'd make a good Master."
There was a small almost-amused noise from the hallway. Qui-Gon swallowed. "I'm going to try my best. You helped me when it counted."
"I didn't like him very much." the child said, with the air of one confiding a great secret.
Qui-Gon nodded. "He wasn't very nice." With an effort he remained calm and didn't remember.
"I'm not very nice either," the boy said gravely. "I don't think it's supposed to work like this. Just getting another Master."
Neither does Master Yoda. Qui-Gon thought. "I'll make it work." He sounded more sure than he felt.
The boy stretched. "Well," he said, sizing Qui-Gon up. "You'll do. We'll see how it goes."
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sabarte
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Date Posted:
3/1/07 6:13pm
Subject:
RE: Often Grows the Wolf (AU vignette compilation, Sidious, Qui-Gon, Dooku)
- Date Edited:
7/19/07 8:44pm (1 edits total)
Edited By:
sabarte
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The Naming of Beasts
72 BBY
"This is really rather unprecedented." The stout Drall healer stared beadily at the young boy on the table. "He has no medical records whatsoever?"
"None we've been able to locate, Master Verna," Dooku said. "I want a full physical, inoculations, and blood tests as age appropriate. His file should be locked to my security clearance, with Qui-Gon and yourself also permitted access."
If this surprised the dark-furred healer, she gave no sign."Very well. Name?"
"Ulic." Qui-Gon said. Dooku raised his eyebrows, while 'Ulic' himself, a scrawny child with wispy reddish-blond hair, frowned.
"I see. And how old is this youngling?"
Qui-Gon glanced at Dooku, who shrugged. "About nine?"
"Does he have a Judicial Calendar birthdate?"
"Ulic, what's your birthday?" Qui-Gon asked.
The boy took a few seconds to realize he was being addressed. "Don't know," he said uncomfortably.
"Homeworld?"
Dooku sighed. "Put down Naboo."
"And you are, indeed, male?" Verna squinted at the boy
"What? Yes."
Master Verna noted that down. "Ulic, please take off your clothes and step into the medical imager."
***
"Is that what I look like on the inside?" Ulic asked. His attitude had ranged from tolerant to near-rebellious over the course of the physical, but the translucent blue hologram seemed to fascinate him. Master Verna zoomed in on various internal organs, making noises to herself. "Left kidney slightly abnormal in size, and that's odd....how often have you been in a bacta tank, Ulic?"
"'bout every few weeks."
"Every..." the Drall sounded faintly appalled, but at a curt gesture from Dooku she continued, focusing on the teeth. "Well, Ulic, it looks like your first premolars are about to come in. Also, based on the scan, I'm adjusting your age up to ten Coruscant years."
Ulic nodded absently, still craning his neck at the hologram.
"Today's your birthday, Ulic!" Qui-Gon said, smiling.
"Oh. Okay." His new apprentice frowned. "I've never really had a birthday before. Is it supposed to involve people poking you and making you cough?"
Qui-Gon winced. "Er..."
"That's what I thought." Ulic said. He stuck a finger in his mouth, experimentally poking at his teeth. "Which ones are the premolars?"
"Those ones." Verna pointed them out on the medical scan, then turned away to pick up a blood tester from the tray behind her. "Please hold still, Ulic."
"I'm not fidg...." Ulic's head whipped back as he sensed the woman trying to poke him. Qui-Gon wasn't sure exactly how it happened, but a whorl of fury manifested in the Force, and the lancet exploded. Verna warded off a fragment heading towards her face, all her fur now standing on end.
"Jinn, control your apprentice!"
Qui-Gon's first instinct was to look at Dooku, but Dooku seemed content to let him handle it, instead drawing Master Verna aside and speaking quietly and urgently to her in a language he didn't know. He wasn't sure quite what to do, but he carefully approached the child.
"Ulic, it's not acceptable to attack the healers." he said. It sounded lame even to him.
"She attacked me!" the boy snapped. "That's not acceptable either!"
"She is a healer and you are her charge right now." Dooku said from across the room. Verna's fur was still ruffled, but she seemed to be calming down.
Ulic's eyes narrowed. "She's not my Master, though, so that doesn't matter. I don't want her putting things in my body."
"She wasn't. She was just taking blood." Qui-Gon sighed. "There's a standard set of immunizations that every Temple child gets. You're going to get a set of...five injections, I think, that will protect you from some very nasty diseases."
Ulic sniffed. "That's what the Force is for. Commanding the little creatures to leave you alone."
Qui-Gon tried to be patient. "What the injections do is tell your body to kill bad things for you. It's more efficient."
"You're being stupid about this." Ulic said. Out of the corner of his eye Qui-Gon saw Dooku drifting across the room and opening a cabinet.
"Ulic, that's not...." Qui-Gon felt a tap on his wrist, and then something sliding into his palm.
Qui-Gon looked down. It was a lancet designed for members of a thicker-skinned species, such as a Wookiee. It'd work on a human, but would probably hurt a little. He glanced back up at his former master.
Dooku smiled serenely. Qui-Gon swallowed. "Right." He looked at Ulic, and tried to marshal his face into something like the expression of Dooku's that had always heralded trouble when he had been a Padawan. "Sit still."
Ulic made a face at him.
Qui-Gon sighed, and put one of his large hands on Ulic's shoulder, only pinning him in place long enough to jab him there. He put the blood sampler down and reached for the first of the inoculations. As he did so, his apprentice wriggled from his grasp and slipped under the table.
This was getting ridiculous. Verna called the lancet to her from across the room and began running the blood sample as Ulic ducked from one side of the table to another to avoid his increasingly annoyed Master. Qui-Gon suspected the boy was laughing at him. He crouched down further, but his height made things awkward and he certainly couldn't fit under the examination table. He made a grab, and missed.
Qui-Gon nearly didn't notice the magnetic switches holding the feet of the table to the floor flick open, and ducked back as the table began to rise. While Ulic was looking up, Qui-Gon yanked him out from underneath. Dooku smiled thinly and the table settled again to the floor.
"No games," Qui-Gon said, calling the five syringes to his hand. The first glowed as it ran a disinfecting beam over the injection site, then stabbed in.
"Ow!" Ulic yelped a half-second later.
"I know that didn't actually hurt."
"There's....things in me!" Ulic seemed appalled by the concept.
"Cope." Dooku said from near the instrument bank, effortlessly intercepting the blood test readout before Verna could see it. The healer seemed about to protest, but thought better of it. Wandering across the room as he scanned the flimsy, Dooku's lips compressed into a thin line before he handed the data to Qui-Gon. The flimsy was well above the eye level of both boy and healer, though both attempted none-too-subtly to read it. Qui-Gon looked back up at Dooku, and they had a silent conversation over the others' heads.
This is what you're up against. Dooku's expression was grim, as if he anticipated a threat to his former student, either physically or otherwise.
It's not about my safety, Qui-Gon conveyed with a tiny shrug. I can still teach him. This doesn't change anything. Of course, it did, and he was much less sanguine about teaching a child who by the usual bloodtest outpowered him vastly and even Dooku by a quarter or more.
Dooku raised an eyebrow minisculy. Don't be afraid to admit you're over your head.
And what happens then, Master? Qui-Gon's slight bitter smile indicated he knew full well what the Order would do to "Ulic" if his peculiar experiment was terminated.
"Can I see?" Ulic finally asked, as he realized that standing on tiptoes wasn't going to cut it.
"If you take the rest of your shots." Qui-Gon said.
"Okay." Curiosity apparently overcame rebellion, and Ulic meekly sat still for the other four injections. Qui-Gon paged the exhaustive results to a less relevant section and with the help of Master Verna explained the meaning of some of the test data.
"That's not all, though," Ulic said.
Qui-Gon smiled. "No, not really."
"You're hiding things from me."
"Of course I am."
Ulic frowned and didn't seem to know what to say to that.
"I think we're done here," Master Verna said meaningfully. "I'll see him for another checkup in a year."
The Drall clearly wanted all of them out of the way, and in short order all three of them were shooed out into the hall. "So what now?" Ulic asked.
"Back to my quarters. We'll make a nice meal." Qui-Gon started down the hall, and Ulic tagged along behind him. Earlier he'd gotten a haircut and robes, and now he almost looked the image of a Jedi padawan. One errant lock of reddish blond hair was tucked behind his ear, still too short to braid.
"Your quarters are that way." Dooku said.
Qui-Gon blinked. Oh, right. He'd been assigned new top-level quarters for himself and his Padawan. He wasn't living with Dooku in the depths of the Temple anymore. He shrugged. "I said we were making a nice meal. So we're going to your quarters."
Dooku was clearly unamused. "Qui-Gon, it's polite to ask permission before commandeering my kitchen."
"I'm not commandeering. It's a nice meal, I certainly won't be cooking."
Dooku stopped dead, giving Qui-Gon a look that would have stopped any other errant knight in their tracks. Qui-Gon just grinned back. "You can even start teaching Ulic how to cook. It'll be good for him."
"Qui-Gon, just because your culinary skills are mediocre isn't an excuse to make other people cook for you. It's an excuse to improve them." Dooku's voice was low and ominous.
"It's Selonian night in the kitchens and I haven't moved in to the new rooms. I'm pretty desperate here, Master."
"A Jedi learns to be self-sufficient."
Qui-Gon suspected that Dooku had secretly very much been looking forward to no longer having to share his quarters. "It's not just me I need to feed, it's Ulic. Inflicting my cooking on him would be cruel and unusual. And it is his birthday, after all."
Ulic made big wide eyes at Dooku on cue and looked cute and hungry. Even Dooku cracked a small smile at that.
"Oh, very well. His naming day, at least. Whatever made you settle on Ulic?"
"It seemed appropriate." Qui-Gon said.
"Nobody asked me about being named after some stupid Ulic." his apprentice muttered.
"Ulic Qel-Droma was a Jedi who..." Master Dooku began sternly.
"I know who he was." Ulic said with a superior smirk.
Dooku stared coldly down at the boy at the interruption. "You should be honored to bear his name, then."
Ulic shrugged. "It's weird answering to it."
"You don't like it?" Qui-Gon asked.
"No, it's okay. I have a lot of practice pretending to be different people."
Qui-Gon frowned. "This isn't pretend."
"I didn't mean it like that," Ulic said quickly. Qui-Gon wasn't sure he believed him.
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sabarte
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Date Posted:
3/1/07 6:16pm
Subject:
RE: Often Grows the Wolf (AU vignette compilation, Sidious, Qui-Gon, Dooku)
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Svefnmal
71 BBY
It was dawn in the Jedi Temple, and for the four hundred and fifth day in a row Qui-Gon wished he could sleep in. Instead he faced the new day.
"Hi!" Ulic chirped, the exact second the door opened.Qui-Gon thought it slightly unnatural that his apprentice was so awake and alert this early. It reminded him of Master Dooku, who he'd lived with for eight years. In Dooku’s case it had been unnatural - Dooku's need to be in control of his life had extended to his sleep schedule. They'd ended up sleeping in shifts, both because of preference and because otherwise they would have driven each other crazy. Ulic wasn't like Dooku though. Dooku had reliably meditated in the very early evening, but Ulic slept rarely and lightly. He'd woken up once in the pre-dawn hours to find Ulic sitting in a corner of his room and silently staring at him. Qui-Gon had finally accepted that there were going to be a few hours while he was sleeping when his apprentice would be awake and puttering around doing idiosyncratic Ulic-things.
Right now he seemed to be working on a holocube full of logic puzzles Master Dooku had given him. The Temple did not skimp on basic schooling for Padawans, but the high-security reality of their lives meant that Ulic's choice of instructors was limited. Dooku handled mathematics, the one subject Ulic seemed to struggle with at all. He was still very good at it, but not nearly as good as he was at reading, writing, or science.
“Good morning, Ulic,” he said tiredly. Ulic tucked his padawan braid behind his ear and looked alert.
“Are we doing anything interesting today?”
“Well….Master Yoda’s agreed to introduce you to a youngling clan.”
“Oh, the other people?”
Qui-Gon frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Well, it’s obvious there’s a lot more people than you, and a saw a bunch my first few days, but I’ve only met…” Ulic counted on his fingers. “Twelve,” he concluded happily. “But this place is bigger than a place for twelve, and I can hear them a little.”
“Some of the other people,” Qui-Gon said cautiously.
“What’s a youngling clan?”
“It’s a group of younglings – who have not yet been taken as a Padawan apprentice. Usually the process begins around your age and lasts a couple of years as Masters select apprentices.”
“Oh. Okay.”
Don’t ask me why you’re different, Qui-Gon wished. And for once, his Padawan didn’t.
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sabarte
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Date Posted:
3/1/07 6:19pm
Subject:
RE: Often Grows the Wolf (AU vignette compilation, Sidious, Qui-Gon, Dooku)
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Gnawdoubt
70 BBY
It was five in the morning, Judicial time, and Dooku was playing with numbers.
He found his mind focused better before dawn. No distractions, the mindsparks of his fellow Jedi muted and easily caged off. Best of all, no interruptions.
It wasn’t that Dooku had disliked having an apprentice. But silence was valuable to him, and peace, and while both of those were artificial constructs even in the Jedi Temple, he didn’t mind.
If necessary, one makes one’s own desolation, and inhabits it.
The mind plays games, alone, and Dooku well knew it, and had coaxed his mind into entertaining itself on the public accounts of the Trade Federation.
It was the year’s best work of fiction, after all. The numbers ordered themselves, and there were holes barely sensed, that Dooku leaned at mathematically until they resolved themselves, or didn’t. The perfidy of the Kuati was easily apparent – the less-connected Neimoidians lied better, and less.
There was something uneasy in the air, this night, though. He looked up, his mind distracted, threads of motive and profit tangling themselves in his mind.
Somebody was about to call him.
Then somebody did.
***
The quarters of Qui-Gon Jinn were brightly-lit and empty. There was nothing for it. He picked up a comlink, and entered a combination so familiar he didn’t have to think about it,
There was only one chime, then a soft click and silence after it.
“Ulic’s missing,” Qui-Gon said.
There was the briefest of pauses. “Go find him,” Dooku said mildly. “Before I do.”
There was another click. Qui-Gon’s stomach dropped. He threw on his cloak hurriedly, and looked at the door.
His primary reaction was fear.
Where was Ulic? Was Dooku actively murderous right now, or only annoyed at being interrupted? Now that Qui-Gon considered it, it worried him that he couldn’t tell.
You are a Jedi, Qui-Gon thought. He stretched out his senses. There were only hints and ghosts of Ulic’s presence, most prominent in these rooms.
He closed his eyes and left their quarters, head down. It felt like his path grew before him like a branching vine. He grasped it, traced it with a mental finger. Started walking.
Doors opened ahead of him, and he heard the sounds of his footsteps and those of others, but he kept grimly on the trail. Yet it grew more and more fragmentary with distance. One last door opened for him, and he felt a breeze on his skin.
He opened his eyes. He was on a balcony. The trail seemed to double back from here, and Qui-Gon realized it was an old one. From here Ulic had gone back to their quarters, maybe a week or two weeks before.
That didn’t mean it betrayed nothing, though.
He took a few last steps, and was at the balcony railing.
Where was he going? he asked the Force. He was only twelve, after all. How far could he go?
He was answered with only the certainty that Ulic wasn’t in the Temple. Wherever Ulic was, he was breathing the same industrial Coruscant air, ghosting along the thousands of streets and levels of the greatest of Galactic cities.
He took a deep breath and looked out across the city. Smelled a fragmentary, distant, scent, as if of a thousand alien perfumes.
The Senate Chamber?
***
He’d felt he was getting closer as he reached the Senatorial complex, but it had taken hours of patient tracking to narrow things down further. He sensed in several places that Ulic had been there previously.
The Library of the Republic was almost the last place he would have thought of looking, yet it was there he finally sensed a distracted Ulic-mind, and pinned it squirming with a mental thumb long enough to catch up.
He hoped his disappointment and disapproval were clear in his voice. “We’re going home, Ulic.” The boy nodded, and turned off the terminal he had been using.
Qui-Gon’s mouth twisted. The Library respected the anonymity of its patrons. What had Ulic wanted to do unobserved that he’d escaped the Temple and fled across the many canyons of Coruscant?
As he turned away, he saw Dooku detach himself from the shadows of a bookshelf, and stalk off.
***
Qui-Gon asked later – “How did you know he was in the library?”
And Dooku had laughed and said – “I followed you.”
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sabarte
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Date Posted:
3/1/07 6:22pm
Subject:
RE: Often Grows the Wolf (AU vignette compilation, Sidious, Qui-Gon, Dooku)
- Date Edited:
4/29 10:32pm (2 edits total)
Edited By:
sabarte
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Wall of Thorns
69 BBY
“Ataru,” Dooku said. His face probably betrayed his disdain. “Well, you’re short enough for it.”
“That’s how Master Qui-Gon fights, right?”
“Well, yes.” That was about the only thing Dooku had never forgiven his apprentice for. Qui-Gon had the perfect build for Makashi. The wrong mindset, unfortunately.
He glanced over the rack of wooden practice swords, running a hand across them before selecting the one most to his tastes. He realized it was the blade Tyvokka had used in his own training, and almost smiled.
Usually combat training was a matter for an apprentice’s Master, but Qui-Gon had neglected it in the case of young Ulic. Dooku did not entirely disagree with his reasoning, but Qui-Gon wasn’t here.
He looked at Ulic, then, sizing the child up, before picking a weapon and tossing it at him. Ulic caught it, and adjusted his grip.
Even if Qui-Gon hadn't trained him, someone else had, once upon a time. As Dooku had suspected.
"Do I need to run through the basics?" he asked.
"No."
"Good."
Ulic looked at him. Dooku started to pace.
"The weapon in your hand is not the lightsaber you will build yourself. It is a thing of wood. Neverless, it is as much a part of the Force as you are. Close your eyes, Ulic. Extend your awareness. See if you can make it part of you."
As Ulic closed his eyes, Dooku walked closer and stopped, blurring his presence in the Force, damping down any way Ulic could precisely sense him except touch.
He waited.
"Is this another exercise on patience, Master?"
Glacially slow, Dooku reached out and touched the blade of the sword, lightly enough not to jar Ulic's hand.
No response.
"You need to reach outside yourself, Ulic, not just wait for the universe to come to you. Let the Force flow through your fingers. Make the weapon as much a part of you as your hand, or your foot, or your eye.
The Force shifted around Ulic, the right way, this time. The boy was, as always, an alarmingly quick study. Dooku touched the sword again.
"Oh!" Ulic said, startled, and jumped back, stumbling. "That tickles." He waved the sword around, dragging the tip against the floor. "How weird. I didn't know you could do that."
"You need to know where your lightsaber is at all times. You need to have an awareness of it that is as precise as your knowledge of where your hand is, and more. It's a deadly weapon, and can kill you as easily as an enemy if you're clumsy." Dooku's brows furrowed as he sized Ulic's stance up. "Mind your posture. Don't set your legs like that. You need to be mobile. You need to be able to move at a moments notice to avoid a blow, or move with it. If you stay still with Ataru, you'll get killed."
"I thought you used another form?"
Dooku shrugged. "I know Ataru. Personally, I find it wastes energy and merely annoys the opponent, but Yoda thinks highly of it."
"Maybe I should be learning from Yoda, then."
"Maybe you should be learning from your own Master." Dooku said. "Master Yoda is extremely busy. As am I. Truly, though, the swordsman matters far more than the form he trains in. Any master of the five true forms views them as at best…guidelines."
“You hate me, don’t you,” Ulic said, as he practiced the block again.
Dooku frowned at him. “I don’t hate you.”
"You're always there. Around the corner, a few rooms away. I can sense you always hovering at the limits of my senses. Watching me. Waiting for me to slip up."
Dooku lowered his sword. "A master has a responsibility to an apprentice," he said. "A responsibility to teach all he knows, to guide his charge wisely, to raise up a child into a Jedi. The greatest honor a Jedi can attain is to have taught a Jedi greater than him."
"You're not my master," Ulic said.
A quiet chuckle. "Did I say I was? There is another responsibility a Master has, however. To know when he has failed. The Dark is devouring, and the student who betrays his training is first and foremost his Master's responsibility."
"So…?"
"So the answer is – no. I'm not watching you. I'm watching Qui-Gon."
Ulic seemed to consider that. "And watching me is Qui-Gon's responsibility." He jerked his blade away, trying to gain the advantage.
Dooku moved like a snake, faster than his opponent could sense or counter, a blur of motion that twisted Ulic's sword out of his hand. His wooden sword sliced in, sweeping Ulic's feet out from under him.
"Quite." Dooku said. His voice was flat. "I am here in case he fails."
Ulic gave him a penetrating look. "I still think you hate me."
"It's not personal," Dooku said.
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sabarte
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Date Posted:
3/1/07 6:36pm
Subject:
RE: Often Grows the Wolf (AU vignette compilation, Sidious, Qui-Gon, Dooku)
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Terms of Surrender
68 BBY
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sabarte
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Date Posted:
3/1/07 6:38pm
Subject:
RE: Often Grows the Wolf (AU vignette compilation, Sidious, Qui-Gon, Dooku)
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The Essence of Lying
67 BBY
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sabarte
Registered:
Sep '05
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Date Posted:
3/1/07 6:40pm
Subject:
RE: Often Grows the Wolf (AU vignette compilation, Sidious, Qui-Gon, Dooku)
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Cold Horizon
66 BBY
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sabarte
Registered:
Sep '05
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Date Posted:
3/1/07 6:41pm
Subject:
RE: Often Grows the Wolf (AU vignette compilation, Sidious, Qui-Gon, Dooku)
- Date Edited:
3/1/07 7:25pm (1 edits total)
Edited By:
sabarte
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Ambatt
65 BBY
Her chip buzzed in a soft droid voice inside her head.
“Attention, girls. We have a visitor. Make yourselves presentable.”
She exchanged a frantic glance with Rane. Drill? No? Adjusting her dress, she reached for the comb by the mirror.
Sometimes she envied the Twi’lek girls. Her dark hair was sometimes trouble, and she’d been told to keep it longer than she’d like. It was an uglier sort of man that came in to look at the Twi’lek’s, though.
They were all ugly inside, though, especially the Hutts. Rarely there were women – once, a couple had come through without any warning, cooing unnaturally at them.
That had been creepy, too much like old memories of…
She winced, as a shock passed through. The girls were all closing the sleeping compartments, leaving the ward empty of everything but them. Her face felt numb, and she hoped it would wear off before the visitor came. She’d be punished for half her face drooping.
Her hair was combed out. She looked at the dark hairs on the comb before putting it away. She was lucky hers behaved so well. One of the other girls was still struggling – Zirrone had always had problems. She stared down at the line in the floor, and hoped Zirrone would finish in time. It was bad for all of them for one to be late on a drill. .
“Thirty seconds,” the voice said. She did her best to look alert as she sat on the stool by the mirror.
Cargu himself was there, not one of the matrons. She recognized his shoes.
Somebody else was walking behind him. His shoes looked practical and comfortable, but what she could see of his outfit was brightly colored and garish. He zeroed right in on the Twi’leks.
Typical.
“Does milord see anything of interest?” Corgu asked, simpering.
The voice that responded was oily, and she took an instant dislike to it. It wasn’t just the voice – it was the feeling of something nasty in the room. Not that that was anything new. “Have the green girl stand up”
They weren’t addressing her, so she tuned out. They were monitored all the time, here, and if they started gossiping about anything they weren’t supposed to hear, they were punished. She kept an ear open for something related to her, but as long as they were over there she could zone out a little.
That man was so nasty it itched. In her head. She tried to make herself look ugly to him. It usually worked.
This time, though, she got the feeling someone was looking at her. But as far as she could tell Corgu and the other man were still talking. Haggling, now. They’d moved on to Rane, who was an unfortunate shade of yellow, but very pretty. The man was dubious about Rane’s age. The Twi’lek probably wasn’t as old as Corgu said – she had shown up the last time they’d come here, after all.
She could tell the deal wasn’t about to go through.
“Those three,” the man said. “What are their prices?”
“Fourteen thousand, four hundred for the human. Sixteen thousand for one of the Rodians, or fifteen each for the pair.”
The man drifted closer, eyeing one of the Rodians “Her face is pudgy,” he said.
Corgu shrugged. “She’ll grow out of it.”
“I’m not convinced.” Suddenly she felt his calculating gaze on her. “You, girl. Look at me.”
She looked up. The man addressing her was dressed in dark red, with a shimmering red jacket. Blondish hair. A man, maybe, but very young. His eyes were blue. He was smiling at her, but his eyes weren’t in it.
“Well, maybe this one’s not so bad. Stand up. You can stand, right?”
She stood up.
“Turn around.”
She did so.
“Hmm.” As the man eyed her, Corgu paged to her details on the datapad he was holding and offered them to him. The man read them, seemed to page through a few of the other girls to compare, then handed it back.
She kept herself still as he touched her face. He seemed very thoughtful, as if he was debating something with himself.
“She’ll do.”
Corgu beamed. “Excellent! She shall serve you well.”
“I expect so.” The buyer looked her over. A hint of doubt seemed to cross his expression, but then it was like a mask fell into place. “What documentation will you provide?”
“We will give legal Huttese title on a concealable chip. Do you also wish adoption papers filled out? There will be an extra charge of three thousand credits.”
The buyer looked nonplussed. “Ahhh….Republic? That could save trouble later. How soon could that be handled?”
“Within the hour.” The buyer nodded, leaving. Corgu followed him
“Of course, milord, we charge extra for Republic...”
She was alone with the girls. She felt curiously empty, but not as afraid as she thought she would be. They avoided looking at her as she brushed her hair again, and she felt lonely. A few of them came over to whisper goodbye before one of the matrons whisked her away.
***
And then there she was, with a dress and a small bag, and him. Cargu re-attuned her chip, and gave the strange man what looked like a charm, which he pocketed.
“You’re not to talk to anyone until we get where we’re going," the strange man told her firmly.
Cargu bowed, and the man led her into a shuttle. She watched the ship fall away, and then saw a planet come up behind them.
No, not a planet. It was a big space station, round with a…stick through it. The pilot was a droid, who the new Master paid. As he stepped into the corridor, he hissed at her, “If anybody asks you, you’re my sister.”
“Yes, Master,” she said meekly.
She heard him sigh. “Oh, you’ll fit right in.”
There was something weird going on with the way he was thinking. It seemed to fold in on itself in some ways and unfold in different ways. He didn’t feel nasty and horrible like a Hutt anymore. She stared up at him, nose wrinkled, trying to figure him out - then jerked her gaze down as he suddenly spun to face her.
She felt his finger tap her chin and she looked up.
He winked.
Chuckling, he kept walking. She was very confused, but followed automatically as they weaved through the hallways. There were people there. Humans, some Drall. A couple of Twi’leks, and one or two species she didn’t recognize. She didn’t stare. And she didn’t even think of running this time. She’d learned running hurt.
They came to another ship. It was little, and didn’t look like much. She stopped at the airlock as the young man paged someone inside. The door opened.
“Well, go on,” her new Master said. She hurried through the airlock. It closed behind them.
“You’re late. Where’d you disappear to?” a mild voice came from a room off to the side.
“Things got interesting, Master. I was playing a hunch.”
She was startled, and sneaked another glance at the young man. He didn’t act like a slave. He didn’t dress like a slave. What kind of strange household was this?.
“Did you discover anything?”
“Come and see.”
There was a somewhat exasperated sound, and then a very tall shadow fell across the doorway, and a brown-haired man ducked through. He glanced around, looking at her Master. His gaze passed over her, and then wandered back.
“Explain this,” the tall man said.
“Uh…” The young man seemed to consider his words, then gave a small shrug and smiled brightly. “She was on sale.”
“What?” The initial reaction was more bemused than anything, but it quickly veered towards angry.
“So Freedom’s Hope is letting slavers adopt older children in bulk via an apprenticeship program and I guess take them back to Hutt space.”
“I…thought we were looking at whether they were buying slaves to adopt out.” The tall man’s brow was furrowed.
“I’m sure they’re doing that too. They’re probably taking the older ones in exchange for younger, more adoptable children. I wouldn’t be surprised if the whole set-up was a vast slave-laundering operation. There’s all sorts of false ship raids going on in the area between here and Hutt space…slavers raiding the adoption agency transports, Freedom’s Hope’s alleged anti-slave mercs going after slavers. There’s not nearly enough insurance claims for all that activity, though. The Muuns pay more attention than the Republic, I guess. ”
Now the man looked down at her. “That wasn’t an explanation, Ulic.”
“So, uh, one of the ships just transported kids down, and had filed paperwork to take on about 40 girls aged from six to ten for ‘dancing training’. Hadn’t taken anyone new on board by the time I got there, though. I arranged to introduce myself to the captain and, uh, was shown around and uh, bought her.”
“I see.” The older man’s expression was cold, but it softened slightly as he looked down at her. He crouched a little as he spoke to her. “What’s your name?”
She glanced up at her Master. He nodded curtly at her. “Shmi…,” she said.
“Is that what happened, Shmi?”
“He bought me from Cragu, Master. Um, and I’m his sister.”
Her Master winced, and she flinched in anticipation of pain.The tall man looked at her Master quizzically.
“I told her to say that,” he said sheepishly.
The tall man sighed. “My name is Qui-Gon Jinn. This is Ulic, my apprentice.” He said the last word like it was a dirty one. “We’re Jedi. Do you know what a Jedi is?”
“I think so?” she said. Jedi were supposed to be good people. She didn’t know about these ones, though.
“So I have the record,” the young man – Ulic – interrupted. “ And because they were stupid enough to do it in Talus orbit…”
The older man, Master Jinn, sounded weary. “You’re assuming, Ulic. A Jedi can’t assume they’re being stupid. They could be being smart.”
“I didn’t sense any problems.”
“Maybe you wouldn’t. Somebody with credit to throw around for a slave has more cash lying around. Selling slaves is a death penalty offense on Corellia. But Ulic – listen to me. So is buying them.”
The young man frowned. Qui-Gon stared down at him.
“If your motive here was to put the Order in a very embarrassing position, you have succeeded.”
“We’re undercover. And I used another identity.” Ulic looked wary, though.
“You don’t have a slaver identity, though. Nobody would have sold you anything here unless they were sure of you. Especially since I know you don’t have enough credits for a market purchase”
“They were sure of me. It was an old identity, Master.” Ulic hesitated. “The adopted son and heir of an aged Muun investor.”
The tall man grimaced. “Ulic…”
Ulic shrugged defensively. “I used Master Dooku’s tracer chit for the adoption. He can figure them out. Everything else was with Huttese credit from before.”
“That’s worse. And what adoption?”
“A Republic one. Just in case you got caught in Republic space. Plausible deniability. Somebody’s accepting a lot of bribes. It almost defies belief, doesn’t it? Not through Freedom’s Hope, though I think it was an affiliate. I need Master Dooku to run the finances and figure out who’s bribing who.”
“Master Dooku is not at your beck and call, Padawan. I’m still not sure what you were thinking.”
“I was uncovering a slaving ring.”
“You crossed a number of lines, Padawan. “Qui-Gon looked grimly determined. “Capital crimes against the Five Brothers aside, you’re still not legally authorized to adopt a child.”
“I am if you say so.” Ulic parried.
“I didn’t say so. And that’s not true. I’m not either. What are you going to do with her?”
“She,” Ulic said confidently, “is going to the Temple. She tried to compel me not to buy her.”
She felt the tall man’s considering gaze on her. “Too old,” he said finally.
“She’s younger than I was. And it’s not like she has any...attachments.”
The tall man seemed to reach a decision. “Ulic…confine yourself to your quarters.”
“What about Shmi?”
“I will concern myself with her. Leave me.”
Ulic vanished with alarming speed. Qui-Gon beckoned her into a small room with a low table. The remains of his dinner were on it. “Sit down,” he said, and waited for her to climb up on a chair.
He stared at her gloomily from across the table.
“Why don’t you tell me what happened,” he said. And right then, it seemed like the best idea in the world.
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sabarte
Registered:
Sep '05
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Date Posted:
3/1/07 6:44pm
Subject:
RE: Often Grows the Wolf (AU vignette compilation, Sidious, Qui-Gon, Dooku)
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Queen of the Mists
64 BBY
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sabarte
Registered:
Sep '05
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Date Posted:
3/1/07 6:45pm
Subject:
RE: Often Grows the Wolf (AU vignette compilation, Sidious, Qui-Gon, Dooku)
- Date Edited:
7/20/07 9:13am (4 edits total)
Edited By:
sabarte
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By Fate Mastered
63 BBY
“I think that at this point we have to resign ourselves to the fact you’re probably not going to get much taller, Padawan” Qui-Gon said.
“Huh.” his apprentice said. Ulic was sketching out a missive of some sort and didn’t look up. Possibly a letter to that young Hapan lady. Qui-Gon didn’t read Ulic’s correspondence, but he was aware that Dooku almost certainly did. Ulic was probably well aware of that too. Sometimes he wondered who exactly his former Master thought he was, anyway.
“I keep expecting you to grow another ten centimeters,” Qui-Gon confessed. Ulic gave him a pained teenage look and closed the writing tablet.
“Fortunately freakish height’s not contagious, Master,” he said with a straight face.
Qui-Gon frowned mildly at him. Ulic suppressed a chuckle.
“As I was about to say, my very short apprentice, I think it’s time you gave some thought to constructing a lightsaber.”
Ulic leaned forward, giving him a sharp, interested look. “Really?”
Qui-Gon could almost see the thoughts swirling in Ulic’s head, the same as any young padawan, considering fantastic colors and twenty different controls and bizarre shapes and sizes.
Still, he remembered being young. Thankfully Dooku had restrained himself from laughing outright at his first attempt at a hilt.
Most Jedi Ulic’s age had had a full lightsaber for five or six years, rebuilding as they outgrew or lost theirs. Ulic, however, had only been permitted a training saber. He’d learned to use it in ways that Qui-Gon was certain Master Yoda wouldn’t quite approve of – but nobody had ever doubted Ulic’s creativity.
“You’ll build the hilt here,” Qui-Gon said. “I have basic materials. There’s information in the Jedi Archives at length if you need it.”
“I might take a look,” Ulic said.
“I’d advise as your Master to start with a simple design. What you make of it in the Temple at Ilum won’t be what you bring in. I learned that the hard way.”
A small grin from his apprentice. “Of course you make of it what you bring in. Did you mean to say what you make of it isn’t what you –think- you’ll be making of it?”
Qui-Gon snorted. “Padawans who are being too clever for their own good cook dinner.”
“Clever Padawans know better than to let you try to cook anyway,” Ulic parried. And with that, he wandered off to the kitchen, humming.
***
Ilum was a wall of ice.
Certainly, there was a world somewhere around them, but when the landing platform was halfway up a smooth, featureless, almost mirror-clear wall, one focused on the wall, and one’s precarious footing on it.
Qui-Gon had been here several times before, when crystals of his had been destroyed or cracked. He could see the last Jedi footholds well above, cut a day or so before. They were fresh enough to use.
Because of those, it would be a relatively easy climb today. The cliffs were often lashed with freezing rain, coating them with new ice and making them treacherous. The landing pad cut into the cliff was shielded, but soon it would have to be moved again.
He’d been here once when the air had thawed dangerously, and the cliffs had turned into many sunfed rivulets, rushing down in a thin, freezing-cold waterfall ten kilometers across or more.
“That doesn’t look so bad,” Ulic said.
Qui-Gon remembered his cold weather gear caked with ice, being so cold and wet that it seemed even the Force wouldn’t be able to keep his fingers from freezing. Climbing alone - the ice dangerous, giving way all too easily.
“Ilum is treacherous,” he said.
Ulic nodded. “For a sheer wall of ice, I mean.”
“Usually it’s worse than this. This is good weather. We should try to make time while we can."
Ulic put his gloved hand on the wall, and reached for his cable launcher. He closed his eyes, and fired the cable up the cliff.
They couldn’t hear the thunk, but the line tested well, and Ulic started up, the cable slowly spooling in. Qui-Gon set his own line and followed. They’d need several cables-length, so he would spot while Ulic set a new line half-way up. That was the dangerous part.
He had never actually heard of anyone dying on Ilum. But that was only because the Masters kept a wary eye on their charges.
With care, he made it to the entrance to the Crystal Cave. His apprentice had already entered, which discomfited him. He squinted against the glare of the ice, and stepped inside the dark cave. The wind was picking up, and Qui-Gon would not be surprised if the rapidly approaching sunset brought a blizzard.
After the first ten meters or so, the ice gave way to black rock. Little light trickled through into the cave itself, despite the blinding white glare outside. It was dark, but at least, now that he was a Jedi in his own right, his mind was clear. Time and perception worked strangely in the Crystal Cave. It was a place strong in the Force, and the Jedi who sought crystals from it were tested by the Force and by themselves.
Ulic would meditate as long as needed, and the Cave would focus its knowledge into him, if it deemed him worthy. It might take a day, or weeks.
Qui-Gon would meditate too. But he was not being tested here, for once.
He sat on the black stone floor and leaned against the rock, willing his body not to know cold, and sank into a trance.
And then he heard unfamiliar laughter.
It’s not real, he said to himself. He had been arrogant, and Ilum had recognized that.
He looked up and saw Ulic. His robes were ragged, and there were bloodstains on him and on them. “Master…” he whispered. “I didn’t...”
But this Ulic wasn’t talking to him. He was talking to a corpse on the ground, only half-visible in the darkness. The Muun he had betrayed. The scar of Dooku’s saber was fresh in the Sith Lord’s throat.
He looked back at Ulic, and saw him frozen in place, cold, absolute terror in his eyes. But as Qui-Gon watched, Ulic’s irises shifted slowly to a brilliant, inhuman gold.
Like those of the dead Munn. But when Qui-Gon looked at the corpse again, there was nothing there, only the child-sized robes of a Jedi.
“Master? Are you real?”
Qui-Gon blinked, and looked up, and it was just Ulic. Looking slightly worried, but there was also amusement in his blue eyes.
He checked his chrono. A day and a half. Not bad, except they’d have to climb down at night.
“I think so,” he said. Then, politely “You?”
“Yes.” Ulic said with complete self-assurance. There was a saber at his belt.
“May I see your blade?” Qui-Gon asked.
Ulic offered it to him, hilt-first. He took it, ignited it. The blade was ice-blue, and by that own light, the hilt was beautiful. Metallic, with subtle curves. Not much of a handgrip, but it was shaped to Ulic’s hand.
“I’m impressed,” he said, extinguishing the blade and offering it back. “We’ll see how it performs in combat, but – well done. The visions and voices here speak to your greatest fears, and it takes a Jedi to overcome that.”
Ulic returned his new lightsaber to his belt with the hint of a cocky smile.
“But who’s afraid of ghosts?” he asked.
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sabarte
Registered:
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Date Posted:
3/1/07 6:46pm
Subject:
RE: Often Grows the Wolf (AU vignette compilation, Sidious, Qui-Gon, Dooku)
- Date Edited:
6/8 1:00pm (7 edits total)
Edited By:
sabarte
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Traitor's Gate
62 BBY
Names are powerful. It is often a tool of the Jedi to strip an inconvenient name away and assign a new one. An attempt to remake the person into what they will. The Sith do the same.
From more than ten years before this, I’d gone by the name Ulic, after a long-dead Alderaanian who rejected the Sith, lost the Force, and died by being shot in the back. This was not an example I particularly wanted to emulate.
***
It was an otherwise average evening, and I listened from the other room as Qui-Gon’s old Master dropped in for a little chat.
About me, it turned out.
“There are none who doubt your apprentice’s ability, Qui-Gon,” Dooku said. “Nevertheless, there are areas in which we – and by that I mean the Council - are uncertain of his commitment to the Jedi Order. Master Yoda has decided on a test of his own. He will be taking your apprentice to Korriban.”
“…What?”
“That’s what I said. It shouldn’t take more than a few days. Yoda wants him starting tonight. Alone.”
There was a pause of a few seconds. “It would have been nice for him to tell me himself. We have plans.”
“You may, of course, take it up with him, but the Council is backing him right now.”
“Including you?”
“That’s not your concern, Qui-Gon.”
Mild sarcasm. “Good evening to you too, Master.”
The door closed, and Qui-Gon wandered into the room I was in. “You heard, didn’t you.” His lip twisted.
“Yes,” I said.
“What do you think?”
I tried to think of what Yoda was trying to accomplish, and came up blank, but there was a sick feeling rising in my stomach. “What could he possibly want me to do on Korriban?”
A shrug. “Write 'Ulic was here' on the tomb of Exar Kun?” Qui-Gon’s body language was uncomfortable. As well it should be – despite being my actual master and all, he apparently wasn’t invited.
“Kun’s not there,” I said. “And vandalizing the tombs is a very bad idea.” I shook my head. “I’m not happy about this.”
“I’m not either,” Qui-Gon admitted. “We’ve made a lot of progress and I’m getting tired of the Council’s distrust. But remember, the Force is with you.” He studied me for a moment. “I have faith in you, Ulic. You’ll do well.”
***
I don’t think what I was then is what Lord Plagueis would have made of me, had he granted me full apprenticeship. I learned a lot, and some of it was things he would never have taught me. And some of the teachings were good, and some of them were useful, and some of them were right.
Nevertheless…
-from the Alderaan Holocron
***
Korriban was…different.
Compared to the Jedi Temple, the planet swam with the long influence of the Sith, and felt like echoes of another life. The massive gravity of the world pulled him down, and Yoda seemed even more hunched and frail. On the ramp of their little ship, Sidious hesitated, before he was firmly prodded down. Concealing his annoyance, he gave Master Yoda a wry grin. “Sorry.”
Yoda harrumphed. “Been here before, have you?”
“Yes,” Sidious said.
“There is a place here that bring you to I will. Brought me when I was a child, my master did, and a long time ago that was.”
“Who was your master?”
Yoda kept walking. “A slayer of Sith.”
Sidious stopped. “Who?”
“Come, Padawan,” Yoda said. “Take you to that hall where the first of the new Sith was slain, and where lingers still he does past death into madness.”
The young man just mutely shook his head.
“Fear the dead, do you?”
“I respect the dead,” Sidious said slowly.
“Not a man to be respected, Bane was,” Yoda said, “As misused the Force he did, rightly he feared death. Jedi know better, and are better. There are beings here that dead are, and at the same time not dead, but once their tombs crumble into dust die they will screaming. As nothing return to the Dark Side, they do.”
“Master…”
“Speak to them you will,” Yoda said. He smiled slowly, catlike. “And tell them what you’ve become. Interested to hear it, I am.”
Sidious swallowed. “Master Yoda, that’s an… incredibly bad idea. The Old Masters are not without power.”
“Sense your fear, I do – and no more use for that Jedi have than Sith.” Yoda smacked the back of his calves with his stick. “Harm you they cannot, unless let them you do.”
“That’s not true…”
“As true it is as you make it.” Yoda’s eyes narrowed. “Pass through these lands with me, you will, and come out you will – or you will not. No returning there is now, and to stray from the true path perilous is.”
The shuttle had closed its doors, and was indeed lifting off. Their pilot would not be staying the night on Korriban. Only an idiot would, Sidious thought gloomily.
Sidious was not sure Yoda could sense the rising dark tide washing over the land, Korriban’s mindless anger awakening. The minds in the dark were stirring, and the hounds of the Sith were on the hunt, trailing them, cutting off their escape.
The wind picked up, and swirled the dust of the dead world. It was bitterly cold. Yoda didn’t seem to mind, but Sidious felt it in his bones. His dull sense of foreboding was increasing.
“Have you been here recently?” Sidious asked cautiously.
“At times,” Yoda said.
“You do know about the Sith Hounds…”
A wicked green grin, “Oh yes.”
“And there’s worse things out there….”
“Yes.”
“I just don’t think you’re thinking this through!”
“Very young you are, Padawan.” Yoda said serenely.
Sidious seethed.
They walked for hours, it seemed. The sun set over Korriban and the cold became biting. Sidious could see eyes in the dark, now, and their faint light seemed a beacon for evil. The guardians of Korriban were immortal creations of the most ancient alchemy, irreplaceable once slain, and only emerging upon a grave threat. Some tomb robbers had not even warranted their attentions.
But the night was moving around them, Sidious sensed, and Korriban was…..angry.
“At least wait until the sun is up…” he said. They were nearly there, and far ahead he could see the dark square in one of the side caverns that heralded the entrance to the Hall of Thrones. As they got closer, they could see a dark shape in front of it.
There was a massive Sith Hound blocking the doorway completely, large enough to take Master Yoda in one bite. Its eyes were ageless and intelligent. It seemed to be waiting for them.
Sidious hung back as Yoda marched up. The beast growled, climbing slowly to its feet, its jaws slavering. It stared down at Yoda.
Yoda hit it on the nose with his stick. The Hound yelped, and fled.
The Jedi Master looked back, and smirked.
“I’m not going in there,” Sidious said.
Yoda tilted his head. “Think this power is greater than that of the Jedi? Think that Yoda no strength of his own, has?”
“I don’t think you understand the power of the Dark Side,” Sidious said, frustrated. “In this place, at this time...”
“Understanding you do not possess,” Yoda snapped. “And so allow the Dark to have power over you, you do. Not so much about courage, this is, as about control of your own destiny. Overshadowed you are, deeply, and a difficult thing that is for any Jedi to overcome. In your case, impossible I would have said.”
He waited, sitting in the dirt and tracing idle patterns in the dust.
After about a minute, Sidious took one step forward, hesitated, then took another.
Yoda smiled.
***
The room smelled of dry mummified corpses. Some were seated on their thrones, some were not. This was the last sanctum of the Sith, and no tomb robber had dared tread there long.
There was no dust on the floor, and no sound but his own footsteps and the click of Yoda’s cane on the dark-tiled stone. It was wholly dark except for the small light Yoda carried on the end of his cane, and Sidious’s shadow was cast a long ways in front of him.
There was nothing alive here but the two of them, except the Darkness. It smothered him, so that he didn’t dare touch the Force for fear that he would lose himself in it and never surface again. Here the dark side had mind, here it had hunger, here, even the greatest might be devoured and left as an empty husk among many.
He kept walking. And then the Darkness began to take form.
He saw the first one, a blood-red shadow, stalking behind a throne, pacing them. Another, seated. Whispers started that he couldn’t drown out, and then out of the corner of his eye he began to see the dead – tens of them. Hundreds of them.
And then his own shadow in front of him hissed with red and awoke, and the shade of a massive, tall man was before him, his face a twisting coralline mask of orbalisks.
Sidious jumped back, but the man wasn’t looking at him. He was staring at Yoda with cold and ancient hatred.
“Bold,” Lord Bane said.
“I merely observe,” Yoda replied. He put his cane away and plopped to a seat on the floor.
There was no light now except the glowing of the spectres. Far away, Sidious saw another glint of red, as if from eyes. He swallowed.
“My name is Sidious,” he said, “and I am a Jedi.”
Bane gave him a crooked, cruel grin. “Am I supposed to be impressed?”
“You know who I am,” Sidious said. “I am your legacy. I am your death, and the death of all you stand for."
“You’ve recognized the weakness in yourself and surrendered to it." Bane said. He still had that cold smile. "Not a pity. It proves you always were weak. You think you are the heir of the Sith? You think this means anything? You have sacrificed power. You are nothing, and you know it.”
The spirits crowded around.
“You are not even fit to be a slave,” Bane said, “but I will permit your flesh to be used to serve the Sith. Through me.”
He stepped closer, and the gathered spirits manifested to watch. The whispers grew louder and unreasoning fear rose in Sidious like a choking thing. He tried to step away, but Bane raised a hand and he was rooted to the floor.
The Sith Lord towered over him.
Sidious nearly reached for the Force, but here and now Bane was the Force. This was a place consecrated to the Dark Side, and no Jedi could command the Force here without taking a part of that darkness into himself.
Bane touched his face, and he felt cold, and then numbness, as if he was dead in his own body. The whispers were deafening now, and one rose above the rest.
You must display no weakness before the old Masters, or they will eat you alive. You have no weakness. You are Sith.
It was Plagueis.
But Plagueis was not here – could not be here.
And then Sidious realized it was himself, the strength in his own mind, the part that would never submit.
The heart without fear.
You will regret underestimating me, Lord Bane. That he made as a cold and deadly promise. He looked up into Bane’s eyes, and Bane’s expression darkened.
The whispers died down, but he heard the echoes of great footsteps. Sidious looked past Bane, and whatever hope he had died right there.
Of course they have a Terentatek, he thought sickly, as he saw the shadow of one of the greatest of Sith monsters loom in the dark.
Then he saw the second one.
***
“Seen enough, I have.”
Behind Sidious, Yoda climbed to his feet. He swayed there, raising his hands to the ceiling, and called upon the Force.
Sidious felt him struggling against the inexorable weight of the Dark Side, even his enormous power just a tentative candle in the dark here, a spring seedling searching for the sky. Bane started laughing.
Yoda’s fists clenched.
And then there was light.
The Force had answered Yoda’s faint call, for not even the greatest of the Jedi could fight this battle with his own power. But he was merely a channel now, and the Force poured into Yoda in a sudden burst of power so intense that Sidious wondered if the Master’s body could contain it all. He seemed brighter than the sun, and only his eyes could be made out like bright emeralds. Light drew into him and through him, and the room was cast in sudden stark relief, all its secrets revealed.
“Cage him – cut him off!” Bane snapped. The Sith Lords began to form a circle, appearing washed out against the dazzling brightness. But they began to cast a net of shadow, boiling up into the room, and a black and oozing cloud boiled up, arcing over and around Yoda, who seemed to become even brighter.
Sidious shaded his eyes against the light, but it didn’t help. What he was seeing wasn’t merely- or even mostly- visual.
It seemed for a moment that the two of them were trapped in a cloak of featureless shadow. But Yoda opened one fist, and it became a sunbeam, a blinding spear of bright Force that streaked out through the darkness.
Sidous saw Bane’s head snap up, saw the sudden look of helpless terror and rage on his face as he burned away with a wasting scream.
Yoda turned towards the others, but there was none now willing to face him. Unwilling to risk their leader’s fate, the Sith scattered and demanifested. Some were too late, and Sidious saw the light pass over a corpse in a great black throne and explode it into dust.
Yoda opened the claws on his other hand, palm down.
A ring of light exploded out across the floor. It smashed over Sidious and left him breathless, roared out across the floor, and crawled over the monstrous Terentatek. The greatest of the Sithspawn, they were said in legend to be impervious to the Force, but even they seemed staggered. One threw its head back and uttered a growling roar of pain. Above its great, bloodstained tusks, its eyes were smoking. The other seemed similarly blinded, but the Terentatek did not rely on sight to hunt. They could sense the Force, as they drank the blood of Force-users.
The light reached the walls, bouncing off, reverberating over the hall, burning darkness out of it. Yoda murmured something in a language Sidious didn’t understand, and the light sunk into the walls, and was swallowed.
Darkness again, complete and utter. Sidious reached for his blade, but didn’t ignite it.
Somehow, the blackness wasn’t so choking this time, the weight of the Dark Side less, the whispers of the dead more subdued. Some part of the place’s power had been destroyed.
But below, Sidious felt something howl with pain and anger…and hunger.
***
The pair of Terentatek kept coming, the sound of their long thudding strides reverberating off the walls. Yoda was now only barely limned with the power he had summoned, moving swiftly towards the exit.
Sidious took a glance behind. He couldn't see the beasts, but he could hear them, and he started running.
Then, he was on his back, on the floor, and wondering what had hit him as the earth buckled under him. Behind him there was a roar of alarm, and a very loud thump, as if one of the monsters had lost its balance and fallen to the floor.
Yoda, ahead, had stopped. Still standing, his feet were firmly planted on the ground, toes curled in as if he was rooting himself down.
Another great crash, and the ground heaved again, upwards. Sidious lost his grip on his weapon and it rolled away, down a crevice. There was another sound now, beside the settling of smashed stone and the snarling challenge-calls of the Terentatek. It was a low unearthly growl that made Sidious' flesh crawl, and it was answered by the hissing ignition of a lightsaber.
By the faint green light of Yoda's blade, Sidious saw the Father of Monsters, and wished he hadn't.
Its eyes were a dark, mad gold, its head and shoulders a bony, armored mass. It was a lean thing, more swift and supple than the squat Terentatek, even though it was larger by far, with thin, man-long spines cascading down its back. Each limb had three thick burrowing claws, their ivory stained with a dark, venomous ichor.
The last of old Sadow's creations, the one Nadd had fed him to living, and let loose on the tombworld to mark his memory. Not only a warped creation of the world, but a living malice.
Yoda bounded at one of the two blinded Terentatek, a fast flash of green that scored the hide of one monster, harmlessly gouging it. It swung helplessly at him, and the Jedi Master clung to one of its forelimbs, leaping off at the last second as he hurtled at the other Terentatek’s face. Landing on its nose,Yoda’s saber plunged through the creatures eye-socket. He clung grimly to the monster as it spasmed and shrieked.
In that instant the Father of Monsters moved swifter than flickering shadow, shoving the uninjured Terentatek instantly to the side, bearing down on Yoda. The Jedi master’s blade-arm was elbow deep in the ruins of the monster’s eye.
All Sidious saw was Yoda springing away and then the Father of Monsters backlit by a faint green glow, long white claws slashing out. He rolled to his feet, ready to run.
Darkness. The thump of a Terentatek slumping to the ground, and then a quiet, barely-audible tickle of sound.
Something jumped on his back, and he nearly shrieked. It clambered up to his shoulder, and hissed urgently into his ear.
“Now, the time to leave is!”
Sidious glanced back, and glimpsed a shadowy red form nearly lost in the darkness, an ancient Sith halfbreed with a great antlered helm. It was horned Ragnos himself, master of the Sith Empire long gone, and on his face was a horrible skull-like grin. He sensed the remaining Terentatek turning its head to stare at him, and a larger crouched shadow hunched before the ancient Sith Lord.
Yoda hit him across the shoulders with his cane, and not gently. He fled.
***
Sidious kept running, mindful of the clawed deathgrip on his shoulder. He felt slightly out of breath, and the Force felt elusive. It was still freezing cold and the back of his robes were soaked with something else's blood.
He’d lost his lightsaber in the cavern. They both had. Details like that were important. Details got you killed.
Sidious felt like prey, but he needed to stop. Holding onto the wall, he tried to dislodge Yoda from his back.
It wasn’t working. The Master’s claws were firmly set in his outer robes, and at his first attempt he felt Yoda’s shielding fail and got an idea of exactly how much pain the Master was in.
Sithspawn...
Somehow, he managed to remove the outer robe and get Yoda on the ground.
He knew some first aid. On common species. Yoda wasn’t common, and he wasn’t bleeding quite like any species Sidious knew of. The slice of a claw had ripped across his abdomen and most of the front of his robes had been torn off. Sidious’s own robes were stained dark.
The western sky was beginning to light up in Korriban pre-dawn, and a handful of small moons gleamed in the sky, but it wasn’t enough to see well by. It was very cold, and his limbs felt heavy. Master Yoda looked very grey. Conscious, though not speaking.
They had some supplies in a compact kit, which Sidious rummaged through. The wound didn’t look serious, though Yoda’s shields had slipped and he seemed to be in a great deal of pain. Sidious applied a small amount of bacta as a stop-gap.
The problem was, how long would they be out here? Few things were serious with good medical treatment, but after a few days even wounds commonly perceived as trivial could cost a limb or a life. They needed to get back to the rendezvous soon.
There seemed to be a dark film forming over the wound. Sidious didn’t know if that was normal or not, but there wasn’t much he could do about it either way.
He found a small heat-block, but was reluctant to set it off. The day would be warmer, and they had to save supplies in case they didn’t make it back to the shuttle in time. He didn’t know when the shuttle would be coming back. Yoda hadn’t told him.
“I can’t run anymore,” he said. “Not without attracting every Hound in the valley. If they don’t sense anything, they’ll sleep. It takes a lot of power for Korriban to wake up this much. It can’t sustain it long.”
Yoda’s voice was thready. “Wounded, the world is,” he said, “And angry. Dangerous to stay, dangerous to run.”
Sidious felt his voice raising despite himself. “If you’d listened to me…”
Yoda just smiled, before wincing, and cradling his stomach. A claw was inserted under the hastily applied bacta bandage.
“I was about to bind that - If you need help?..” Sidious asked uneasily. The Master was examining the stain on his talon.
“Do not touch me.” Yoda said firmly.
Sidious rocked back on his heels. “Uh, okay then.”
“Stay, I think,” Yoda added. “Easier to talk.”
“Talk, huh.” Sidious activated the heat-block and placed it on the ground, holding his cold hands close to it. “You mean that you want to talk and you want me to listen.” He sighed, and tried to calm down a bit - he was starting to sound like Qui-Gon in a particularly testy mood.
“Yes.”
“That was close, Master Yoda. Not a fun situation to be in. If they’d have chased us, we’d be dead. And I’m not sure that’s a mistake. I think they’re toying with us. Whatever out there is still coming.”
Yoda shrugged and produced his lightsaber from a sleeve. His cane was out also, tracing idle circles in the dirt.
Sidious relaxed slightly. “Ah. I thought you’d lost it.”
“The head of a tarantatek a honorable place to leave this weapon, would be.” Yoda leaned back, putting his lightsaber away on his belt. He winced, and his free hand went to his stomach. “Still, only a foolish Padawan would do that.”
He must be feeling better, Sidious thought, deciphering that. “This Padawan,” he said sullenly, “had no idiotic ideas about challenging the Lords of the Sith on their own terms. Were you trying to prove something?”
Yoda smiled. “Were you?”
“What do you mean? And that’s not an answer, anyway. I don’t have anything to prove.”
“No –“ Yoda said. “About time you did. And start thinking about what you believe.”
“I don’t see you trying to kill any of the other Padawans.”
“Hmm!” Yoda yawned, putting a hand to his wound. Sidious wasn’t sensing pain anymore from him, just amusement. “But then, different you are.”
Sidious shrugged uncomfortably, trying to suppress a growing frustration.
“Think that, you do not? That you are cleverer than those around you? That simple they are? Weak-minded? Less powerful?”
Sidious’s political mind did not quite engage in time – stress, fear, and frustration having taken their toll. “So you dragged me to hell to prove me right?”
Yoda laughed harshly. Sidious suppressed the urge to try and take back what he had said – he doubted it would help. He got poked with the cane instead by the now serious-looking gnome.”
“Prove yourself right, you must.”
Sidious looked down. Yoda grimaced, and Sidious sensed a stab of pain and the Master’s power uncurling into…he leapt up, reaching for his lightsaber despite itself.
Korriban was not quiescent, and it seemed there was a cage of power around and in Yoda, rooted in his bones and skin and….blood…
Ragnos had laughed.
Yoda thrashed, his teeth bared in a rictus of pain. Frozen a moment, Sidious belatedly moved to assist.
Touching Yoda’s skin, he felt the rooted venom, even as Yoda’s seizure quelled.
“That’s…not good...” Sidious said weakly.
"I know,” Yoda said. He gritted his teeth and propped himself against a cold rock. ”I cannot sense it. Tell me what it is doing, you will."
"Don't you know?" Sidious asked.
"Tell me."
Sidious sighed. "You’ve been…poisoned, I guess. You got too close to the Father of Monsters and he sliced you open and attuned you to him. The Sith venom on his claws takes a while to take full effect, but it should...uh...may attune you to the Dark Side so strongly that you can't hear anything else. You can't touch anything but it. It claims you shortly and from that point forth I suppose you'd say it dominates your destiny."
"Thank you." Yoda leaned back against the rock, looking suddenly very tired and grey and old.
Sidious fumbled in their supplies and offered him water.
Master Yoda accepted the flask without comment, and took a long drink before handing the flask back. Closing his eyes, he seemed then to be meditating. Sidious wished he could too, but instead watched the canyon for signs the Sith Hounds h | |