There was nothing to be afraid of.
And it was terrifying.
But she'd faced nothing before; had stood on the precipice of a yawning void of absence and leaped in.
Her nightmares were always about nothing. But something skittered in the empty, bumped and scuffled with an uneven step, injured but not weak. It slithered between her ears, waiting … waiting…
V'loren rested her bare foot on the shoulder of the young man kneeling in front of her. What was his name? She could reach for it … or ask … but it didn't matter. He was hers. As were all the young Sithlings scattered around the cavernous hall, reading, sparring, fighting, fawning.
Ah, such a pretty picture. How bucolic. How domestic!
All mine.
She could have hidden these daily gatherings from her 'superiors.' Sooner or later, someone was bound to get nervous. Sooner or later someone was going to take steps to remove her.
Oh, sooner! Please, let it be sooner…
Crazy bitch!
Ah, what will you do, huh? Will you fight to stay alive, I wonder? Will you rip and shred and tear to keep this heart beating?
She kept her body slack, relaxed. Her teeth, however, ground against each other until she could taste a fine powder in her mouth. She resisted the urge to spit and peeled her lips back into a fierce grin.
Shut up!
She threw her head back and laughed. The trainees closest to her shivered and others paused in their sabre forms.
She didn't think the empty sound phased Tremen, who had been stalking past the room's arched doorway, but he halted and turned to face her. The Twi'lek was in a foul mood. The black rage swirling around him was no assassin's trick. It burned and belched, sputtering from his skin. The Sithlings had felt his approach almost 20 minutes before he crossed the compound's threshold.
That could be cause for some concern.
She kept her toothy grin plastered to her face as he glared at her, knowing she was only making him that much more furious.
Counting on it.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Crazy bitch!
Tremen glared at the small human. Indigo tattoos were visible even beneath the dark stubble of her head, slicing and twisting down the curve of her neck and disappearing under the shoulders of her training robe. She sat, indolent and self-satisfied, surrounded by all of the Force sensitives recruits who had come to the compound in recent months.
One of these days I'm going to rip you apart.
If Jaq didn't do it first.
His mind skittered away from the fresh memory of dead grey eyes. Instead he glanced down at the sopping wet cloth wrapped around his right hand. It did little to soothe his pride, or the broken and blistered skin – a mild side effect, all things considered – from the poison thrown at him by the deserter. Traitor!
Jaq had been the best of them, even then. But he had been driven by a crackling white rage, a sense of single-minded purpose that bordered on fervour.
Tremen – indeed, the entire unit – had been taken to task after Jaq's disappearing trick. Many had died.
The pain had only served to cement Tremen's hatred of his former friend.
But even then, for all Jaq's skill and passion, Tremen had never been frightened of him.
Those grey eyes had turned his knees to water today. As much as he'd like to descend into posturing, the Twi'lek's greatest strength was his tactician's mind. He knew he'd need reinforcements if he ever met up with Jaq again.
The very thought of it pissed him off. He allowed the anger to roll off his body in waves.
V'loren's smile widened as she watched his face, her full lips parting into a sneer.
With a succinct curse, Tremen threw the sodden cloth at her. If he was lucky there might even be enough of the toxin left on it to give her a good rash – maybe blind her if his aim was true.
But the balled-up wad halted just centimetres from her nose and hovered there. The unified glare of more than a dozen young, Force-sensitive Sith hopefuls crawled over Tremen's skin. And that stupid woman wouldn't stop smiling at him.
He bit down on a sigh of relief as her eyes turned from him to contemplate the poisoned scrap before her.
"Playing with koutoxin, Tremen? Not terribly clever of you."
With that, she reached out and wrapped her small hand around the rag, squeezing until dirty water and poison trickled through her fingers. Even as diluted as it was, the miniscule amount of the toxin left pulled bright blisters from her skin.
Tremen watched, riveted, as each and every Sithling tensed silently. V'loren ignored them – and him – and watched her fingers redden and split with a still fascination. One of the recruits – a new one, Tremen thought – broke into a sweat.
The silence filled the Twi'lek and the air seemed to wobble and tilt around V'loren.
Dark-lashed, brown eyes fluttered closed and she held out her damaged hand. The nearest Sithling, the new one, dropped to his knees beside her, clasping her fingers between his. The young man whose shoulder was supporting her foot openly scowled at the newcomer.
"Go ahead, Derxa."
Tremen barely heard her sigh, although he did hear the young human male's grateful whimper as he closed his eyes and poured his attention over her wounds. As the skin paled and mended, minute amounts of tension leached from the air, leaving him feeling oddly weak.
"Thank you, Derxa." V'loren flexed her fingers, watching sinew glide across bone as she made a fist.
Snake-fast, her arm whipped out sideways, catching her healer in the throat. As the man dropped to the floor, choking, his rival at her feet couldn't suppress a chuckle.
"Oh, shut up!" V'loren snapped crossly, slamming her bare heel into the base of his skull. The second Sithling slithered bonelessly to the floor.
A single muscle twitched under her eye and the world slammed back into place. V'loren dropped the now-dry cloth to the floor and sighed, the sound almost … disappointed?
Tremen scowled at the bright smile she aimed at him, as the room shifted to life. Lightsabres snapped on and the familiar, measured shuffle of feet engaged in ritual forms resumed.
He pushed his mouth into a smile, thinking of the contract that had been placed on this arrogant schutta. Maybe he should step back and let his two problems sort each other out. Of course, that wasn't to say he couldn't push them both in the right direction.
"There's a price on your head V'loren. I'll enjoy watching you die."
If he had expected a reaction, he was doomed to frustration. Her idiot grin only solidified.
Crazy bitch!
This time, the laugh that poured from her throat did make Tremen pause. The sound, light and pure, rose up around the hall's stone pillars and pierced the miasma of the air.
"Oh, Tremen, is that where the kou came from? It was meant for me?"
Tremen had never understood his kin who dallied with human females. Without lekku, their expression was obvious and awkward, without grace. But he'd never seen a smile like the one V'loren aimed at him now. Genuine, warm and inviting, the crooked grin promised acceptance, safety and joy. Heedless, he took a step towards her …
And it was gone.
She rose from her seat, stepping lightly across the unconscious form of the Sith, pausing only to kick at it once.
"Well, you're still alive," she laughed, disdain clear in her tone. "Can't have been that dangerous, then, could it? Or did you bargain for your life? Promise to hand me over?"
She snatched a lightsabre from one of the practising Sithlings. It shuddered and dimmed in her hand, but remained lit. Tremen could hear it hum as she walked toward him. Disgust nearly overwhelmed him as she approached.
Her wide, overhand sweep was clumsy, easily – if carefully – deflected. He danced sideways and in, pushing her arm across her body, the deadly blade of light away from him. She switched her grip to her left hand and brought the sabre up in a low arc, again simple to dodge.
Tremen backed up three paces, just enough to draw his own vibroblade – for all the good it would do against the lightsabre. But all he had to do was wait. Without a Jedi's energy to keep the beam focused, it would dissipate soon enough, leaving her unarmed. He could already see the beam cracking and distorting.
If only she would just stop smiling!
Gritting his teeth, Tremen forced himself to focus on her sword arm. The sabre was back in her right hand, and he watched the pivot of her shoulder and elbow to predict the blade's path and easily moved from her reach. She was awkward with the unfamiliar weapon, but attacked with strength and aggression.
It didn't matter in the end, though. As he arched back, allowing one final sweep of the humming beam to slice the air above his face, the blade sputtered and died. With a shout, he dove in with his own weapon before she could realize that hers had failed her. His swing came in from a hard angle, faster than the eye could see, aimed to kill.
But she wasn't there. She had ducked low, rolling sideways and past him, and rose again shoulder to shoulder with him. The discarded lightsabre hilt rolled noisily across the marble floor. When he felt the cold edge of a knife under his chin, he realized what had happened and seethed.
"A name, Tremen. What sorry excuse for a bounty hunter left you alive and thinks to take me on?"
And there, at least, would be his consolation. He thought, for the first time in a very long time, about the young man who had been his friend. Before the Mandalorians. Before Revan.
The blade pressed a little harder.
"Say it!"
"His name's Jaq. He will kill you."
"Never heard of him."
But the words were lost to him in an explosion of pain as her knife left his throat and slashed downward, neatly severing his lekku where it rested on his shoulder.
None of the young recruits had paused in their training as V'loren attacked one of their own. And not one of them so much as glanced in the direction of the agonized howls, as Tremen smeared his own blood across the cold, white floor with his writhing.
All mine.
Her bare feet trailed crimson as she walked back to her seat, giggling softly.