Prologue

"I want your son," I said to her, my tone carefully neutral though I permitted the intensity of that want to be clear and unmistakeable in my expression. "You wish so desperately to return him to the light, but your dream is futile. He is like Anakin was - he feels too strongly, too much. No amount of meditation will ever correct this."

Her eyes slid shut in despair. Nothing I'd said was a lie but it was nothing she hadn't known. It was also nothing anyone else would have said to her. I supposed that made denying it more simple.

"He feels the pull of the light, but that isn't enough," I continued flatly, callously. "Don't mistake me - I don't need your permission to have him. I will. I am not a Jedi. I want him and I'll have him, regardless of your wishes. This is the only way you will ever have him in your life. I plan to offer the same choice to his father, but don't think of that as an extension on this chance. If you say no and he says yes, you will have nothing to do with him again. Can you put aside your prejudice and accept this?"

She was silent for a moment.

"How are you so sure that you'll turn him to your side?" She asked, and there was strength there, not the General's strength, no. The strength of the princess that had all but spat in the face of the most feared man in the Empire.

I respected that, in some ways more than I had the General's.

"I'm a Sith Lord," I reminded her ruthlessly. "I always get what I want. But more than that, he'll join me, willingly, because I can teach him better than this Stoke, and more importantly than that, I know the man he idolises better than anyone else alive. He'll be my apprentice because I want him to be, and because I can give him what he wants. When we meet he'll fight me and I'll trounce him so soundly he'll see. Stoke would never allow him to equal, to surpass Darth Vader. He'd be too much of a threat. I can and will because should he ever be consumed entirely by the Dark Side rather than control it, I'll be able to put him down."

I could and she must have read it on my face - I didn't mean it simply in terms of power or skill, I meant it in every possible way. If it came down to it, I would kill him because for all that I'd been a normal human being playing video games and fangirling over the movie before, I was a Sith now, and my resolve was unshakeable.

"I come from a time before the 'rule of two' established by Darth Bane," I told her, though that wasn't strictly true in the sense that I meant for her to take it. I'd played through the story line that had become the past of my new reality, and I'd dreamt of it through the Force as though it had been real, but I hadn't truly lived it. The closest I had come to doing so was through HK. "I had a Master, once, as many of my comrades - the comrades I fought alongside with, that I cared for - did. Sith by nature are selfish and arrogant and ruthless, but we were not all evil. Not entirely without honour or reason. We had scholars and ambassadors too, for all that you think us due to the actions of some to be obsessed megalomaniacs intent on world domination. Do you know why Anakin Skywalker gave himself willingly to the Dark Side and took up the mantle of Darth Vader?"

Her lips pursed - of course she didn't know. Who had been left to tell the tale? Who alive had even heard it? Even Luke hadn't had time to learn as much.

"He did it out of love," I told her, not waiting a response. "He fell in love and married Padmé Amidala, one time Queen of Naboo, during her tenure as a Senator. Attachments, as you know, were forbidden by the Jedi Order. So he had no one he felt he could turn to when he began to dream of Padmé's death in childbirth. And who was there to offer him the knowledge, the power to save her but Chancellor Palpatine, his friend, who was the man you knew as the Emperor - who was lesser known by the title of Darth Sidious."

The corner of my mouth twisted into a sneer. I'd dreamt of Anakin too. I even suspected that, through the force somehow, we'd actually made some form of contact. At any rate, I'd grown attached. Of course I hated Palpatine.

"Anakin would have done anything to save Padmé. Anything. Because he loved her." She looked away because she wasn't sure what to think, what to believe. I'd been in that position before - in a different time, a different world. I knew that expression of denial as intimately as I knew the devastation that came with it. "Your son loves you. He deludes himself into thinking he must not. I can give him freedom, General Organa. From the First Order, from any who would constrain him. I can teach him control. To master rather than be mastered by the Dark Side. Anakin used the dark for the light in the end. Being a Sith doesn't make one evil. Only the wrong guiding hand can do that."

"And you think you can be the right one," she muttered, exhaling slowly. "You think you can do what my brother couldn't?"

"No," I told her sharply. "I can do what your brother wouldn't. Your son will never be a Jedi. He might align himself with the light, he might try to go back to it, but there will always be that part of him that feels too much, the threat that will inevitably send him tumbling over the edge again, either to be consumed or die. He will be my apprentice, Leia Organa. The only question left is whether or not you can accept him as such."

She knew she would before she ever considered it because she was a mother first and foremost in her heart, and even the General in her could not resist taking Kylo Ren from the First Order. Even if it meant giving him to a Sith.

"You'll bring him back to me."

It wasn't a question, and order, or a request. It was a statement, her seeking confirmation, assurance of what I'd said. She didn't trust me, which I found rather amusing considering I'd practically been an unofficial member of the Resistance for all that I'd done for them until I unsheathed my lightsaber.

"We might even join your Resistance for a time," I responded with a careless shrug of my shoulders, going so far as to indulge myself in an idle glance around us. "If I find myself so inclined in the future. I do plan on killing Snoke at some point or another, so it isn't unlikely that we will find ourselves allied one day. And in the mean time you may continue to expect the supplies and information you are accustomed to receiving from me. That is, if you don't feel it your moral obligation to refuse assistance from a Sith."

She couldn't afford to and we both knew it, even if she was so inclined. I'd made myself too valuable at this point - I might have had little to do with the bulk of their trading ventures, but I brought in what was most coveted. Brand new hyperdrives and sleek, rapid fire blasters; cutting edge sensor arrays and the newest in black market cloaking technology. I brought all the nicest new toys in and sold them cheap. I brought things they needed, too, when the fancy struck me. Food, clothes, weapons. When they were hurting, I swooped in and saved the day because at the end of it, I was no hero. Even my altruism was channelled into future advantage - I'd been greeted with friendly waves and bright smiles when I strolled onto the Resistance base, had been allowed through to see the General without being checked for weapons.

I had made a place for myself with these people, and now that I had revealed myself a Sith, their instinctive fear and hatred would war with memories of the all the good I had done them.

Civilians would remember food during the winter there was none, medics the costly, rare medicine that spared civilians and soldiers alike from a fever brought in from a scouting trip to Felucia that spread like wildfire throughout the base; pilots would remember parts and upgrades that had given them the extra oomph that made the difference between life and death in a dog fight, and high-ranking officers information that had kept them a step ahead of First Order attacks on several occasions.

"Will you take care of him?" She asked, and it surprised me. I knew she found it difficult to be mother and general, but I'd honestly thought general would win out.

"That's the sort of question one of us would have asked," I told her, a dark smile briefly touching upon my face. The statement made her uncomfortable, more so because she knew it was true. A Jedi would have thought first, asked first, for the sake of the all. As a general, rather than as a person. A mother. "He will be my apprentice. My responsibility. I will do all within my power to teach him, to allow him to flourish."

A humourless laugh escaped her.

"That doesn't answer my question."

Her eyes were serious, tired looking. But they were searching me for answers I wasn't sure I had. I didn't have to give her anything. I didn't owe her anything. I contemplated telling her to take it or leave it, or standing up and walking out, just because she was questioning me when I was being so generous - what did I need to offer her the chance to see her son again? I didn't, I did so because I had decided I would. I did as I pleased and it happened that it pleased me to do so. That was all.

Instead of doing either of those things, I opened my mouth to speak.

"I will take care of him because he will be my apprentice and it is my duty to him to do so." I paused, catching the look on her face, and stared right back at her as I tried to find a way to articulate what I'd gleaned from her expression. "That is not what you're asking of me. You want to know if I'll care for him, which is entirely different."

I expected I would, if only because he was like me, because he would be like the others in the memories that were mine and weren't. I wanted to help him though I hadn't met him - it was unlikely that I would manage to remain indifferent to him as I spent time with him. But I didn't feel like giving her that, giving her any sort of hope or assurance that I was capable of that. Maybe it was cruel, but it was no less than she deserved for the presumption in asking.

"Make your choice," I told her easily, because I had better things to do than sit around for her - for anyone - to interrogate me. Like organising for the shipment of shield generators I'd arranged while collecting my last bounty to be transported here to D'Qar as a neat little reminder of how much I'd done for them, was still doing.

"Why would you risk coming here? Revealing yourself?" She asked, and that was the General, not the mother. "It doesn't make sense."

I laughed.

"I did it because I wanted to," I replied simply, and that was the God's honest truth. "I am a Sith, not because I want to rule the galaxy but because I want to be free. I do as I please, as I always will, and it just so happened to please me to come here and wave my lightsaber around and ask you to give me your son."

I could sense the conflict in her - a writhing, shamefaced battle between morality and sentiment. 'Yes' was on the tip of her tongue, she just couldn't bring herself to say it.

"Was Nahia Bahram even real? You're asking me to trust my son to an façade created by a Sith Lord for who knows what nefarious purpose."

She was only stalling because she'd made her decision - her son meant more to her than anything. (There was still hope for him, after all.)

"Nahia Bahram is as real as Darth Shadis," I stated in affirmation, a half smile playing about my face. Neither one of those people were real - they had been Nadia Bertram first, a third year college student with no money in her pocket and far too much time on her hands.

Leia Organa's closed her eyes as though doing so would make the next words out of her mouth somehow less of a reality.

"Whatever you do," she began, and I gave her credit where credit was due because she didn't pause or stutter and her voice didn't break. "Bring him back to me."

"I don't give my word lightly, but when I do, I keep it," I told her, standing. I had what I wanted. I was done with D'Qar. "I will."

She let out a slow, steady breath.

I saw myself out.

To be continued in Pursuit.