A/N: Just a little one-shot about my Rattataki Jedi knight, in the days before he found his calling.
The wall was slick with rain and wet moss, and once again Arkios cursed the stormy weather of Dromund Kaas. He gripped the stone and hoisted himself higher, finding footholds as he went. The jungle trek here to this estate had been treacherous. Earlier, he had thought himself unlucky. He had tumbled down a muddy embankment, getting his shoes knocked clean off his feet and devoured shortly thereafter by the mud. But now he realized that scaling this wall would have only been that much harder with shoes. He needed to be able to feel the grooves underneath his bare toes. Luck was with him after all.
The lord of this estate had fancied the ancient architecture of the Sith Temple and had built his home out of similar materials. Perhaps his eagerness to display Sith superiority also explained the grotesque statue Arkios had passed on his way through the grounds, depicting some Sithspawn ripping apart a hapless victim. Men like this lord existed on Arkios's native Rattatak too, except their trophies were often real and far more gruesome.
Arkios looked up, squinting against the rain that pelted his face and scalp, and then back down, far, far down, to where the ground had shrunk away beneath him. The bodies of the guards he had killed looked small and frail from this distance. Their deaths had been necessary. He hadn't come all this way only to be stymied so close to his goal. Above him, on the roof of the building, one more guard sat on a turret, gazing off into the distance, never thinking to look for trouble so close to his feet. Arkios had arrived at the highest story of the building and was getting within hearing range now, so he needed to be careful. He closed his eyes and thought to the man on the turret.
I am the wind scraping the trees together. I am your imagination hearing sounds echoed in the thunder, nothing more. I am not worth investigating. He pulled himself up onto the window ledge and risked a glance at the turret guard. The man was yawning and looking the other way.
Arkios knew that going through this little ritual of talking to people in his head was nothing but superstition. Hadn't his family told him this so many times already? But darn it all if it didn't seem to work more often than not. That's all that mattered.
The energy barrier over the window was gone, just as the slicer said it would be. Thank the stars for that, since Arkios had spent his last credits paying off that Nautolan to do the job. The slicer had also assured him that all the windows in the house were made of clari-crystalline, and that he should easily be able to break through them. Arkios hoped the slicer was right about this too. In his pocket Arkios carried a rag, which he withdrew now, doing his best to wrap it around his hand with his teeth. He waited a moment for a few more flashes of lightning, then took a chance, trying to time his break-in with a boom of thunder. He punched the window and it shattered. Not wanting to waste any time, he leapt right in.
He had no sooner found his feet when something slammed into his chest, spinning him dizzy and knocking him to the floor. He sprung up and swung at his assailant with his fists, but there was nothing there but air. He blinked in the dark room, straining his eyes to see, but was hit again before he could make heads or tails of his surroundings. Pain like the stab of tiny knives tore through his body, and he curled inward on himself, aware only of a searing light blinding his vision and the constant sting of pain. Then it stopped, just as suddenly as it had begun.
"Arkios?"
Somewhere nearby, a light came on, and Arkios dared to open his eyes. His sister was there, standing over him, a look of shock stamped on her face. "What in the blazes are you doing here?"
Arkios sat up. It was Dakka all right. There she was, with the same delicate face that he remembered, slight of limb and short of stature, those pale colorless eyes for once looking confused rather than mischievous. But she had changed. Arkios was pained to see that the familiar gray and black tattoos on her face were marred now by slave scars that ringed her eyes and forehead. He looked her up and down, surprised that this lord has seen fit to give a slave like her such luxurious clothing. She wore a brilliant shade of red - a dress of all things! - that had frills around her bare shoulders, and a pair of tiny embroidered slippers.
At last, Arkios found his voice. "I've come to rescue you."
He wasn't sure what kind of reception he had been expecting. Dakka wasn't one to squeal in delight, or to be openly affectionate. Perhaps he had longed to see that half-smile she always wore, or maybe even just stark, honest relief in those eyes. But instead she laughed.
He blinked at her, not understanding.
"Still trying to protect me, huh?" Dakka crossed her arms and looked at him like he was a child who had just been caught pilfering cake. Like he was the younger one! "I'm not a slave anymore, Arkios. I've been apprenticed to a Sith lord, and I live here now." She gestured with her hand at the room around her, a room, Arkios could now see, that was filled with more expensive furniture and trappings than he had ever laid eyes on.
"I have my own servants," she continued, "and I earned my way here, straight up from that trash pit where Varsos tried to throw me. Go back to Rattatak and tell him that, why don't you!"
"Varsos is dead," Arkios said. Dakka had compassion enough to at least flinch at that. Varsos had been a strict tribal leader, but he was after all, their brother.
"They're all dead. After you were…" he paused, unwilling to speak the words, 'sold away.' "...After you left, the raids stopped for a little while, as promised, but then they started up again. We're all that's left now, Dakka. You and me."
Dakka's face grew hard. Arkios waited for the inevitable cursing. He had done the same, when the Ghost of the Desert and his band of raiders had taken everything from him.
"Serves him right. Serves them all right!" Anger seeped out of Dakka like waves of heat, and for a moment she seemed larger than she really was. She had every right to be angry at how the tribe and her family had treated her. Even so, there was a bitter edge to her voice that was sharper than Arkios had ever heard. Angrier. Her gaze bore down on him as the words continued to tumble out. "Survival of the strongest, huh? Sacrificing the weak? Oh yes, I know all about that. Who's the strongest now? Who is the survivor?"
Dakka's eyes were on fire, seeming almost to glow, and Arkios felt a strange tingle pass over his skin. If he had any hair, he suspected it would be standing on end. Dakka jabbed a long nail in his direction.
"They respect me here, Arkios. They give me the dignity I am due! They embrace my gifts, not shun them! And so…" a smile grew across her face, "...I have grown strong in the Force. If the Ghost hadn't killed Varsos, I would have."
"Dakka!"
"That's not my name any longer!" she spat.
Arkios sat in stunned silence. A cold drop of rain slithered down his neck and under his clothes. He was reminded of how far he had come for this, and not just the climb here, not just the days he'd spent in the jungle. He'd lost almost a year to the gladiatorial pits on Rattatak, and months more on Hutta after that. Then he had spent every last credit on the passage to Dromund Kaas, and on the needed preparations to break into this lord's house.
It was all for nothing.
Dakka appeared to notice the rain dripping off of him at that moment too. Her nose wrinkled.
"You're a mud-splattered mess and you've ruined the curtains."
"Dakka, how could you-"
"You are just as guilty!" Her voice was surely loud enough to bring guards now. He scuttled backwards across the floor. It wasn't his imagination, Dakka's eyes were actually glowing. Her face hung before his, angry and distorted. "You stood by and did nothing! You watched them drag me away! You could have challenged Varsos, but you didn't!"
Bringing up that memory, that awful memory that had kept him awake at night for months afterwards, felt like a stab to the heart. "I'm here now," he said. His words sounded lame, even to his ears.
She straightened. "I don't need your help anymore. I don't need your charity."
Arkios looked around the room, and at the gaudy curtains he had apparently ruined. This place was the antithesis of everything that had shaped them as children. Was this all it took to make Dakka give up who she was? Some fine clothes, a wealthy patron, the promise of power?
"You fancy yourself some Sith lord now then, Dakka?" There was sadness in his tone, rather than malice, but it didn't matter. He knew the moment he uttered the words that he had misstepped. Greatly.
Her voice was quiet and strangely calm. "I'll show you what I am."
Dakka raised her hands and a flash of brilliant light sparked from her fingertips. And that's when Arkios discovered what it meant to cross a Sith.