A/N: Followup to "Second Contact." Sith Warrior Chapter 1 finale, skewed slightly AU in that Evren and Jaesa have been talking and planning to join forces against Baras for a while prior to actually meeting in person.
First Glance
o.O.o
It's all gone wrong.
They planned to meet on Hutta; they told Master Karr of their correspondence, asked for his help in dealing with Baras. He seemed wary, but willing. Jaesa trusted him. She trusted them both.
But she walked into a wrecked safehouse, the aftermath of a battle. She found the Sith's Twi'lek associate standing guard over a restrained Master Karr—and the Sith, pacing back and forth across the main room, the Force charred brittle with his anger and fear.
She heard the excuses: that Karr set another trap, ensured Jaesa would be absent on the Sith's arrival, attacked as soon as he entered the safehouse, refused to stand down. That he fell during the fight, or revealed himself to have fallen long ago. She heard them, and didn't know what to believe.
So, lacking other options, she turned her ability on her own Master.
It was . . . awful. Seeing him, the wrongness in him, the self-righteous hatred, the greed, the bloodlust—it confirmed every whisper of doubt she's ever had. Had, and dismissed, because she was merely seeing what she wanted to see, trying to justify her own failings by projecting them onto her Master—and he discouraged her from using it on him, using it as a crutch—
And now that she's finally done it, out of weakness or desperation or necessity, Master Karr is shouting that it's all a trick, that her power has been deceived—for what would be the first time in her entire life. And Straik, the enemy, the Sith, is asking her to trust herself.
"Trust you, you mean," Jaesa says, bitterly.
"No—I mean, yes, but—" He glances at the Twi'lek; she shakes her head and shrugs helplessly. After a moment, he turns back to Jaesa and says, "You've seen your Master for what he is. Now see me."
Jaesa raises an eyebrow. "You don't sound very enthused."
"I welcome it—I have nothing to hide," Straik says. A lie; he couldn't be more obvious about how much he wants to hide. Why? Why lie so blatantly when he knows that she's about to see the truth?
Only one way to find out. Jaesa closes her eyes, focuses, and looks. Her power expands once more to encompass all the room's occupants—Master Karr still oozing jealous fury like venom, the Twi'lek glimmering silver and wary—and the Sith.
He's . . . afraid. Beyond afraid—terrified, of her, of what she'll see, and he's barely resisting the instinct to bolt as he recognizes her touch in the Force.
The lie wasn't for her.
Jaesa sets aside her surprise and looks deeper. Past the instinctive barriers he can't bring himself to let go of, even now. Past tangled anxieties and suffocating guilt, helplessness bleeding into despair, bitter rage, scabbed-over grief, hate turned back on itself in a spiral of hollow misery. Past all of that—
It's only a glimpse, but she doesn't need anything more. Doesn't want it. Because this Sith apprentice is—there is a warmth in him that Master Karr has never shown her, not light but kind, and—
(please, please don't hate me)
And—she can't.
He reaches out to her, shaky and timid, torn between fear and longing even as she retreats back to her own mind. It occurs to her that this may be the first time he's ever felt something of the Light not meant to wound. She can't hate him.
And that isterrifying. When it was just holocalls and abstract plans, she could distance herself to some extent. She could reserve judgement, and keep reserving it, but now—there are no masks to hide behind, not anymore, not for any of them.
Jaesa opens her eyes. Meets the Sith's—Evren. His name is Evren.
She turns to Nomen Karr, revealed at last for the petty, prideful, vengeance-driven liar that he is.
Jaesa raises her chin.
She says, "You are no Master of mine, and you will never use me again."
o.O.o
end