Knight's Trial

Summary: Sometimes, it's not about resisting the Dark Side. Rosh Penin makes a trip back to Bast Castle on Vjun.

Rain beat against the transparisteel windows of the battered old Aethersprite. Scars from countless dogfights pitted the body of the craft and the junkyard dealer had said, "She's been through the Wars, boy."

Rosh Penin fiddled with the controls. "You and me both, girl," he muttered. His left arm ached, below the shoulder. Burned as if it'd been dipped into molten lava. He stared at the gloved hand, flexed it. It wasn't true, of course. He'd chosen not to have the replacement equipped with pain sensors.

But still, it hurt.

He stared out, through the faintly green-tinged rain at the brooding cliffs and craggy expanse of Bast Castle.

The Dark Side was strong here.

The ache didn't go away.

"Stang," he muttered. "Come on, Penin, you've made your choice." He pulled off the crash helmet, wondered if he should keep it and then discarded the thought. Ran fingers through his mussed hair. Once, he'd never have worn a crash helmet because it'd have messed with the gelled spikes of his hair.

Now, he reached for the wide-brimmed rain hat and put it on. At least it'd keep the rain off his head and from his eyes. Vjun's rain was lightly acidic, but geological reports had said it was only getting worse with the passage of the years.

He reached—with his left hand—for his lightsaber, made sure it was still on his belt. Jedi Knight Rosh Penin. It seemed a bit of a joke, he thought, and so difficult to get used to. The Jedi awarded Knighthoods for falling off the wagon, it seemed. Just as they'd given Jaden one for valour.

His breath hissed out from between his teeth. Kyle Katarn, their former Master, had offered to accompany him with Vjun. Rosh had declined. He almost rethought the wisdom of the decision now, as he stared at the menacing stone of Bast Castle.

Vjun was…dangerous. It'd been dangerous when he'd been brought there, as Tavion's newest acquisition. It was still going to be dangerous now, when forces from the Imperial Remnant lurked on the planet, despite the clean-ups that the Order had been involved in. When some of the Disciples of Ragnos no doubt still made the planet their home.

He was a Jedi Knight now. He wasn't supposed to need Kyle looking over his shoulder half the time. Rosh wondered if that was his old arrogance talking. He liked to think he'd gotten it beaten out of him, by Jaden and by Alora.

He wasn't sure it had been. That thought…worried him. Frightened him, even.

He'd fallen once before. Here on Vjun, the Dark Side was strong. It whispered to him. Brought back memories.

He'd fallen once before. The second time shouldn't be as difficult.

He was a Jedi Knight, Rosh told himself again, firmly. If he couldn't face the memories on Vjun on his own, what hope was there for him? He'd have to confront what he'd done, sooner or later. And this was the best way to do it.

He located the satchel of tools and slung it over his shoulder. Then, he engaged the acid shielding before the rain could put even more scars into the Aethersprite, cracked the cockpit seal, and climbed out. For the first time in months, he was on the barren soil of Vjun again.

The rain stung his skin, and he drew on the Force, feeling the darkness swirling just beneath the surface like an oil slick. Tainted.

"Welcome back," Rosh muttered aloud.

There was a well-maintained landing platform just above the raging headwaters of the river that flowed beside Bast Castle. Tavion had used it, when she'd caused part of the castle to collapse as a distraction so they could escape from Kyle and Jaden.

Rosh was familiar with the platform, but had chosen to land his Aethersprite a discreet distance from the castle and make the rest of the approach by foot. He was constantly aware of the spreading taint in the Force, a humming sense of enmity and discord in the background to his Jedi senses, but little other sign of life.

Once, he saw a flicker of movement in the shadows of a rocky alcove and nervously paused, hand reaching for his lightsaber hilt. The Force revealed no sense of danger, and in the next moment, he realised it was a Vjunite carnyip, one of the planet's rodent scavengers.

Stop it, he told himself. You're jumping at shadows and carnyips now.

At least the persistent rain had slackened and then completely abated by the time he'd reached the landing platform. Releasing his constant hold on the Force was, in some way, a relief, though Rosh had almost gotten used to keeping it up in the past hour or so.

The platform was abandoned now, and without regular maintenance. He could see where Vjun's frequent acid rains had scarred and pitted the durasteel. What about the castle? He wondered. He vaguely recalled hearing about how the landscape on Vjun constantly broke down and changed, because of the rains. Something about reversible reactions, Rosh thought. He'd never been much of a planetary geologist.

The access door was right where he remembered it. He'd run from them with Tavion, feeling the shame and resentment burning in his guts, stumbling over a route he'd never known had existed in the bowels of Bast Castle. Tavion had saved him, he thought, back then.

And then she'd given him to Alora, because he'd disappointed her. Because he'd realised in that moment, staring at the useless lightsaber hilt in his hand, that he was in deep over his head.

He'd wanted out.

Rosh stared at the access door and fought off the memories with an effort of will. He'd almost gotten used to the ache in his left arm, and now the pain surged again, as if it'd been dipped in a vat of acid. There was supposed to be an access panel; he didn't have the code cylinder anymore, but Rosh thought he remembered the access codes. If that didn't work, he could always try to hack into the system, and in any case, he had his lightsaber.

He palmed the access panel. No response. He stared at it. The indicator light had gone dead. Were the power generators even working? For some reason, that reassured Rosh. Surely, if any remnants of Tavion's or Imperial forces remained in Bast Castle, they would have gotten power generators back up and running.

He'd begun to reach to his belt for his lightsaber when all of a sudden, the indicator light flashed green and there was a hum of power being restored to the access panel. It beeped and blinked and flashed: INPUT?

"Stang," Rosh muttered. Power-saving, or…? He licked his dry lips and tried to remember the access code Tavion had used. He entered the numbers haltingly, and was certain he'd gotten one or two of them wrong. But he hadn't. The durasteel panel of the access door slid open with a sharp hiss, and the grating creak of old durasteel access doors in presumably-abandoned Imperial bastions.

Inside, the darkness beckoned.

Rosh reached down into the satchel and pulled out the industrial-grade lamp, clipping it to his belt. He flicked it on and blinked at the sudden brightness. The lamp's harsh illumination deepened shadows, gave them darker edges. It also revealed the disused maintenance storeroom that lay right beyond the access door, washing over abandoned storage bins and spilled component parts.

And dust, months of dust. He wondered if he could see his own footprints. Tavion's.

He squared his shoulders, and walked into the sprawling underlevels of Bast Castle.

He'd been a student from the University of Alderaan, trying to get somewhere in computer systems. Eventually, when the call came for Jedi recruits for Luke Skywalker's Academy on Yavin 4, Rosh had thought of bright shining lightsaber blades and how wicked it would be to be a Jedi like Luke Skywalker and the old stories.

He'd signed up for the tests with barely a thought, and had been elated to discover he'd had what they needed. Force-sensitivity, they called it. It didn't matter. He'd had it and was going to be a Jedi. Rosh Penin, Jedi hero, they'd call him. He knew it. No one looked twice at systems specialists. Everyone knew about Jedi.

He'd met Jaden on the shuttle. "Probably military," Ralthara had said, as they looked at the figure sitting in the very first row, who'd kept to himself.

"How'd you know?" he asked her.

The Corellian shrugged. "Look at him." Rosh did. He could see the sharp, heavy planes of muscle—but something still felt off. But there was something to what Ralthara was saying; the ramrod straight way which he sat, and the alert edge to his gaze. Rosh didn't doubt that the trainee was very much aware of his surroundings…and something about that silence intrigued him.

"See you around," he said absently to Ralthara and headed for the first row of seats. He sat down as the pilot announced pre-flight procedures and checklists. Some trainees were settling against the durasteel girders of the shuttle compartment. Others were taking out datapads, their packs settled close-by, at their feet.

He glanced to the side. No reaction. The trainee he'd noticed was content to sit at the last seat of the first row, withdrawn into himself.

"We'll be arriving at the Academy in just a few minutes," the shuttle pilot announced.

Almost there. Anticipation coiled in his guts; he wanted to do something, anything. Even talk to that unapproachable student in the first row. Couldn't be worse than the time he'd tried to fast-talk Em into a date, could it?

"That would be so great," he said aloud. He approached the other trainee—figured he could probably get something out of him. He'd managed with Ralthara, hadn't he? "Aren't you excited? We're going to be Jedi! Learning the ways of the Force, building a lightsaber…Ah of course, you already have one. I'm going to be stuck with one of those stupid training sabers."

The other student—human, Rosh thought, light-colouring, with pale blond hair and sharp blue eyes blinked at him, and shifted in his seat. He had a great sabaac face, Rosh thought. No way of knowing what was going on beneath those thoughtful blue eyes.

"I wouldn't worry about that," he said at last. A quiet, firm voice, with a Coruscanti accent. A little soft, perhaps.

"I can't help it," Rosh muttered. There was something about the trainee's gaze that made him feel as thought…he was playing at being a Jedi. Like he was being measured and found to be sorely lacking. "I want to make a good impression."

Silence. "You seem really nervous," the other student stated.

Rosh got up and took the empty seat beside him. "Aren't you?" he asked, incredulously. "I mean, well, you already have a lightsaber so you're probably way ahead of me. I'm Rosh, by the way."

Silence. Come on Rosh, say something.

"Um. What's your name?"

"Jaden."

"So where'd you get that lightsaber?"

"It's…kind of a long story. I found myself on—"

The shuttle shuddered; Rosh found himself flung down against the armrest. Hard plastic dug into his stomach—there was going to be a big bruise later, he just knew it—and the breath left him in a sharp rush.

Jaden cried out, thrown forward. He barely kept a hold on the lightsaber hilt that rested beside him, or it would have shot out of the seat and stars only knew what that would have done…

"You okay?"

He breathed abandoned dust. The air was musty in the enclosed spaces; cooler in the large open hallways of Bast Castle. But it had been a retreat for Darth Vader once, and even Sith Lords wanted some illusion of comfort, Rosh supposed. If not the Imperial forces who had been stationed here, on Vjun.

His footsteps seemed uncomfortably loud on slabs of volcanic rock. He was grateful for the light spilling from the industrial-grade explorer's lamp—it prevented him from stumbling over his own feet. Here and there, light flooded in through gigantic windows in rooms. But not all areas were well-illuminated.

Rosh was relying on his own memories from his time in Bast Castle. Kyle had attempted to sketch out a rough map of the path he had taken with Jaden when they made their own exit from Bast Castle. Consulting his own memories and the blueprints he'd wrangled out of the old Imperial databases, he was slowly zoning in on the wing he'd been in.

Where he'd fought Jaden. Where Tavion had wrested away Jaden's lightsaber, and then brought down the castle around them with a blast of Force energy discharged from Ragnos' scepter.

Memories crowded these hallways, none of them good. All of them whispering dark promises, dripping rich honey into his ears.

They promised him the shining lightsaber he wanted, Rosh Penin, invincible Jedi Knight.

He kept on moving. It wasn't good to linger in Bast Castle, even after Tavion had drained the Force energy from it. Some places collected Force energy. Planets like Vjun were repositories of the Dark Side, and the previous occupants of Bast Castle had left a permanent brooding air to the building.

Some of the other Vjunite mansions were different. The Force there was a swirling miasma of screaming madness.

The training saber was a pale, weak yellow. "Don't rush," Kyle said, watching him from the side of the practice area. "Get used to how that thing feels. Give it a few swings."

There was no weight. Rosh swung it, listening to the hum of the blade as it moved through the air. He tried a clumsy upper cut. Transitioned awkwardly to a low slash. They'd been given polished wooden sticks to practice on in the first few weeks, just as they'd been put through a series of gruelling calisthenics meant to build up their strength and flexibility. Trainees regularly ran through the jungle, following trails marked out by the instructors.

Jaden cleared most of those requirements with ease. Ralthara had been right, Rosh thought. He was probably ex-military or something.

It was hard not to feel a little jealous of Jaden. They'd been assigned to the same mentor, except Jaden kept getting everything right, effortlessly. The first time he'd spoken to their new Master, he'd gotten stung by Kyle's dismissive put-down.

He glanced over to the adjoining area. Jaden gripped his lightsaber, moving slowly but surely through some of the basic cuts and slashes they'd been taught with the wooden sticks. But of course Jaden already knew how to use that lightsaber. He'd fought off some of those cultists as they'd made their way on foot through the Yavin jungle to the Academy's meeting point.

"A little clunky," Kyle said, as he'd looked over Jaden's first lightsaber. "But well-made. Good job, Jaden."

The ink-blue blade hummed steadily as Jaden practiced, his expression one of focused intensity. Intensity, Rosh thought. That was the word. When Jaden moved, it was as if he was the only one in the room. The only one existing. It wasn't just in the way he spoke, he acted. It was in how he fought and practised. He had this way of shutting the world out, of focusing only on what he needed to do. Where he needed to be.

He stared down at the pale yellow training saber in his hand, and tried to slip into a fighting stance. He tried an overhead cut, and failed. "You're not here to get the movements right," Kyle said, calmly. "You're here to get used to how it feels to use a lightsaber."

Easy for him to say, Rosh thought. He resolutely turned his back to Jaden and worked his way through the overhead cut again.

The sharp snap-hiss of his lightsaber activating surprised even Rosh. The bar of humming plasma extended from his hand in an instant, burning a bright daffodil-yellow, sun-gold.

He froze. Why had he—?

The Force warned him as the shadows between two broken columns parted, and in the next instant, a figure flew at him, blood-red lightsaber blades swinging in a downward slash at his back. Rosh was already stumbling backwards, shrugging off the satchel, and bringing his lightsaber up in a solid block at the same time.

The pain in his left arm grew, blossomed into agony; the joints felt as though they'd been caked with molten lava.

He knew the strike. Knew the acrobatic flip that had preceded it, the exact angle from which the figure had struck from above.

His throat was bone dry as the red-skinned Twi'lek grinned at him, no warmth in her eyes.

"You seem to have missed me," Alora whispered.

It wasn't possible. Jaden had killed her; she'd tried to make Jaden kill him, but Jaden had chosen and fought her and killed her on Taspir III and she'd cut off his arm and now it was aflame and he wasn't even sure how it was possible for a prosthetic with no pain sensors to hurt so much stars—

It's phantom pain, he told himself firmly. The medics told you that might happen. Get over it, Penin.

He parried the twirling slashes clumsily, wished he'd agreed to Kyle coming along. It'd been months and he'd thought his left hand was beginning to obey him, but it felt a hair slower than what he was used to. A hair slower than what he needed.

Alora's style was fluid, graceful. Her two lightsabers were constant blurs of scarlet, and it was all he could do to fend her off. He wasn't the hero, wasn't Jaden…

He was the sidekick, Rosh thought, with bitter humour as he turned aside a slash aimed at his midsection and delivered a series of jabs designed to keep her off him. It wasn't doing much against Alora's elastic defense.

Their lightsabers spat sparks where they met. He drew on the Force, but the darkness was strong here, the oil slick beckoning to him. You can't win, it whispered. You never did win. He tapped into it, choking as it slid into him, burying him. It was rancid, dark acid burning down his throat.

It made him faster, gave him the edge he needed to meet her blows with more force, and to strike some of his own back. The Dark Side was strong here, and as he opened himself and let it flood into him—

—he was drowning—

—in a tide of ice and fire and more than that, the corrosive acid of Vjun, barren bleak landscape of rock and destruction flooding into his veins. He dropped to his knee to block a low cut and came at her from below; lightning coruscated in his right hand (the left was dead; it was raging it was the fire and the poison) and then streaked across the empty space towards her.

She snarled and crossed her lightsabers to meet the lightning. She couldn't let go of one of them, and she couldn't simply absorb the lightning without a free hand. Blue-streaking lightning burning white fire streamed into the bright red blades but Rosh was already moving, already striking.

He leapt—planted a solid kick in her gut and smashed his elbow into her face. The dirty fighting techniques that Kyle had taught them and he'd once thought just didn't seem right were all surfacing, drilled into muscle memory by endless repetition. And then his lightsaber swept through her.

And Rosh stumbled.

The battle-fury fierce exultation that swept through him fled, leaving him suddenly bereft. In the light of his explorer's lamp and his upraised lightsaber blade, he couldn't see where Alora had gone. Hadn't felt the usual sense of resistance as his blade swept through her midsection in a blow that should have cleaved her into half.

It was like suddenly becoming sober after having been drunk. It was like stumbling out of a murky bog and he turned, scanning the floor. But the lamp-light revealed nothing, no trace of Alora's presence. No footprints disturbed the dust—except for his own.

It was like she'd never been there.

No, Rosh realised, his heart sinking into his guts, she'd never been there.

But the Dark Side was strong here. And he'd given in, fallen in a heartbeat. Each time you fall, Jedi, you stand closer to the edge.

One day, you will realise that you've never stood in the Light. That all along, you've fallen into shadow…and you'd never even known it.

He knelt to inspect the dust. Nothing stirred. No scrap of cloth. No sign of any struggle. He suspected that even if he'd come back with a forensics droid, it wouldn't have picked up on anything that could've been traced to Alora.

Just him.

He was drowning.

He breathed. Tried to see if he was rucked too thick in darkness, smears of dark oil for him to extricate himself. Once you've touched the darkness, there's no going back. You'll never be the same again.

"No going back," Rosh whispered.

Despair, too, was of the Dark Side.

He didn't know how long he knelt there in the dust, too tired to move. Thinking. He'd fallen to the Dark Side before, Rosh thought. The darkness was in him, and the dark currents that ran through the castle knew it. Vjun was flush with the Dark Side and the darkness without…recognised the darkness within.

He'd switched off his lightsaber sometime without quite realising it. Held the hilt loosely in his hand. He'd rebuilt himself another as a test of himself and the dexterity permitted him by his new hand. That's your job, Kyle had told him. You're now a Jedi Knight.

Kyle had been wrong. So wrong.

His prosthetic arm ached.

Jedi.

He wasn't sure if the whisper had come from the castle, or from his own mind. He clambered to his feet slowly. A figure stood at the end of the long hallway. Too distant for Rosh to make out the features, but he looked familiar anyway.

"Who?" he croaked aloud, and realised he was bone-dry. He reached for the thermos in his equipment satchel then realised he'd mislaid it. No matter. He swallowed several times and tried again. "Who are you?"

Jedi.

The figure beckoned. Cautiously, Rosh made his way down the corridor. Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw spectres, things darting in and out of sight. White plasteel of Imperial stormtrooper armour. Black moulded durasteel of Darth Vader's armour; he'd recognise the imposing figure anywhere. And as he went further down the corridor—the flight suits and environ-suits of cultists and Reborn.

Himself, for a fleeting moment.

Jaden.

Finally, he stood before the figure. A young boy, Rosh thought, with pale hair and solemn icy blue eyes that he swore he recognised. Instinct told him who it was, the lines of the face still softened by childhood, hair cropped short when he would later let it grow out, jaw not yet obscured by a short, clipped goatee.

"Jaden?" he ventured, and the boy blinked at him, and turned and took off running. "Hey, wait up! Jaden?"

He chased the boy down winding corridors and access staircases, exhaustion forgotten until he stumbled upon a crumbled room he found all too familiar. Part of the ceiling had come down, and the floor was unstable with rubble. He recognised the dark burns of lightsaber gouges. Tavion had brought down the ceiling here, thrown Jaden's lightsaber at—

The small boy came up to him, bearing a lightsaber hilt in two hands. "Present?" he asked, hopefully. It was dusty, battered, and a little dented. A long scar ran along the scratched cylinder but as Rosh took it from the boy and held it, he sensed the echoes of Jaden's presence, sharp and intense in the hilt.

He activated it, and stared at the blade that glowed the dark blue of spreading ink. Or the sky right before dawn. It was still functional. He swivelled his wrist, left and right, listening to the sound the lightsaber made as it cut. He hadn't even expected to find it mostly unharmed. Had thought it destroyed, but Jaden had mentioned during a sparring session that he'd missed his old lightsaber. Had preferred the way it handled, no matter how much more well-constructed his new one was.

And then Rosh knew one thing he could do for his friend. He could come to Vjun, to the silent castle and search the rubble to see if anything remained of Jaden's first lightsaber.

He flicked it off and turned to look for the small boy. A vision, he thought, wonderingly. A Force vision?

"Found what you were looking for?"

Rosh turned, but the Force brought no warning. Nothing at all. The bearded old man, mostly bald watched him. Dark-skinned, and in a plain set of clothing. He wondered how the old man had gotten into the room. If he was even real. "Yes," he said slowly.

The man chuckled. "Don't sweat it, boy," he said. "Most of us fall from time to time. Let me tell you something though—they're right. The darkness stays in you."

Rosh blinked. "What?" he asked, dumbfounded.

"It leaves something of itself in you," the old man said. "But there's the trick, yes? You'll never be the same again. You'll be wiser, more canny to its tricks, and its got plenty of them, oh yes. But you'll never be the same. Maybe think of it as better. You know things some of those lads won't. And that ain't such a bad thing if you think about it."

Rosh stared down at his prosthetic hand. A scar, he thought. So part of the darkness was in him. He'd invited it in, and each time it grew easier because the darkness was already in him. But he'd chosen to step back. That had to count for something. It made him a better Jedi…if he let it.

If he chose to step back.

Some days, he would be shakier than others. But there were days when he was stronger. And that was something that he was going to have to live with. That being a Jedi wasn't about making a single choice to stay with the Light Side. It was about choosing the Light, every day, in every situation. It was about choosing to get up, and to try again.

"How did you…?" he began.

But the old man was gone. Ghosts and spectres, Rosh thought, as he looked for a way out of the partially-collapsed chamber. But he was smiling.

The old man watched the troubled young Jedi leave the castle and smiled.

Troubled, he thought, but they all carried their darkness inside of them.

Interfering again, old man? He'd watched for most of the years, but sometimes, the urge to do something, to give events a little nudge stirred. Most of the time, he paid attention to those urges. Figured it had to do with swirling Force and all that.

In any case, the Force never complained.

It was an old, sad castle, the hermit thought. Bereft of life, it was a melancholy spot in the swirling darkness of Vjun. Howling with loss and loneliness in its empty spaces.

But that, too, was a different kind of darkness. A softer, sadder darkness. No less poisonous. No less debilitating.

He looked towards the distant light of Vjun's setting sun. It was a burning red behind the faint sulphurous yellow-green of the acid clouds. It was, all things considered, a beautiful sunset.