Darth Vader entered the detention area, where the captain slowly approached him.
"She's stronger than most, my Lord. She hasn't given way even in the least bit."
"I'll change that."
He swept into the cell and ordered everyone there out. As always, he was quickly obeyed. Once the door shut, he turned to attention to the young Rebel woman sitting before him.
She was small, no taller than 5' 4", had dark brown hair pulled back in a loose ponytail, and eyes as blue as sapphires. She could be no older than twenty-five.
She looked at him but without fear like he had expected. Her face was blank but her stare intense. Vader couldn't help but feel like she was looking right through the armor at him.
The way she looked at him was familiar, the way it seemed like she was seeing through all the lies to his very core. She herself seemed familiar, but he knew he had never seen her before until now.
A probe with the Force revealed that she was quite strong in the Force, though untrained. Her very signature in the Force felt vaguely familiar.
"So we meet at last."
Her voice startled him, though he didn't let it show.
"I've been waiting to meet you for a long time."
"Have you now?" he asked, almost mockingly.
She frowned slightly.
"You killed my father."
"I've killed many people."
She shook her head, now smirking a little, which irritated him.
"You killed my father even before you ended up as you are now. You killed him before them Empire came to be."
The only killing of one who was the most likely person to be this woman's father was the elder Count Dooku, but Dooku couldn't possibly be her father. He would have been almost eighty when she was born.
As if reading his thoughts, Cas nodded and said, "Yes. Count Tyln Dooku was my father."
Stunned, Vader now studied her with a more perspective. As he studied her, he swore he saw Dooku's face appear, though somewhat transparent, and merge with the woman's face. He now saw the resemblance. She had the same eyes, only hers were blue instead of brown, feminine versions of his aristocratic features, giving her a somewhat noble look, and the same dark brown hair the Count had in his youth.
Now he noted the differences. Dooku had been tall, standing at a good 6' 4" and had been broadly and powerfully built. The girl was a foot shorter and was delicately built.
He then studied her through the Force. Here, she was definitely her father's daughter. She was strong in the Force, almost suffocatingly so, just as Dooku's signature had been.
"His death was necessary."
"Necessary?"
Cas lunged, but Vader was ready. He easily avoided the attack and injected her with a sleeping drug. She was out cold in five minutes.
After laying her on the bench, he probed her mentally. Finding no resistance, he searched her memories and found her earlier memories, her memories of her father.
He found ones that were from when she was too young to even truly be able to remember if asked about them. He started with those.
One year old Cas was running around in what appeared to be a garden. She tripped and fell on the cobblestones. As she cried in pain, a pair of strong arms encircled her, lifted her up, and gently held her close to a warm body.
Looking up through teary eyes, she saw her father and buried her face in his shoulder.
"There, there, my little one. Daddy's here now. Daddy's here," Dooku crooned, rubbing her back soothingly.
Vader withdrew from the memory and looked another, older one.
Cas, now three, ran to her father with a piece of paper in her hand.
"Daddy! Daddy!"
Dooku turned, smiled, and knelt in front of her.
"What have you got there, baby-girl?"
"I dwaw for you!" she declared proudly, holding the paper out to him.
The Count grinned at he looked at the drawing, which looked like scribble to Vader.
"Thank you, sweetheart."
He hugged his daughter and kissed her forehead.
The Sith withdrew and investigatedd another.
Cas, at five years old, was watching a ship, which Vader recognized as the one that took Dooku's recovered body, and hands and head, to his homeworld of Serenno, land at the manor's outside hangar.
She ran out with an older woman, who Vader guessed to be a servant by her clothes, not far behind.
Cas's glee was shattered when the cooling containment that held her father's mutilated body came into veiw. She stared in shocked horror as the servant gasped.
Shaak Ti, a Jedi Council Member, had the grim task of returning Dooku's body.
"Daddy!"
Tears streaming down her face, the girl ran to the containment and tried to open it. The servant woman pulled her away.
"No! Daddy!" she cried.
Shaak Ti approached.
"I'm so sorry, little one."
She pulled something out of a pouch on her belt, and Vader recognized it as a folded piece of paper.
"I guess this belongs to you, then," she said, holding it out to Cas.
The girl took it with shaky hands and unfolded it, revealing it to be the drawing she had given Dooku when she was three.
"I found it in his pocket."
The child sniffled and held the drawing close.
Vader withdrew and surveyed the next.
Cas stood with the servant woman and a man, another servant by his clothes, as Shaak Ti finished laying Dooku's body on the funeral pyre.
"We are here to mourn and bid farewell not to Master Dooku or Count Dooku, but just Tyln Dooku. One of the strongest men I had ever met, he had seen and experienced some of life's worst. He looked death in the face too many time to count. Despite his fall to the Darkside and his crimes, there was still good in him. I pray he has found peace in the Force."
She picked up a torch.
"The soul has gone, and now the earthly remains she return to the dust from which it came in the form of ash."
She lit the pyre, and they all watched the Count's remains burn.
Cas watched with tears flowing down her face. Her father was gone much too soon.
"Daddy," she said in a choked whisper.
The Sith withdrew from her mind completely and looked down at her sleeping form. It would be so easy just to kill her.
He stood, staring down at her, and made his decision.
"Lord Vader, the Rebel prisoner escaped and made the jump to hyperspace."
"Don't worry, Commander. There's always another day."
The commander bowed his head.
"Yes, my Lord."
As Vader headed for his rooms, he could have swore he saw Dooku, dressed as a Jedi, smiling at him. He dismissed the idea.
He had taken a risk freeing Cas, but he knew that if she was anything like her father personality wise, they'd cross paths again soon enough.
She was a rare gift. She was a legacy of light even though her father had been a Sith.