A/N: Thanks to everyone who's been reading this story! Chapter 10 is fully written, and I hope to be able to post it soon.
Chapter Nine: Trapped by the Darkness
"You have the hands of a warrior…Take care that they do not become the hands of a man who revels in the carnage of war." -Oromis to Eragon, Brisingr by Christopher Paolini
Darth Caedus' Office, Coruscant
The two figures faced off over the glows of the two lightsabers locked between them. Hunter and prey stood still, each watching the other for a the slightest hint of movement—for a quick forewarning of attack. They searched not with their eyes, but with intuition born out of a lifetime of practice and discipline. The events that had placed them here had started years ago; no petty trick would end this fight.
Darth Caedus watched Tahiri as he waited patiently for a twitch or a slight movement. That was the one thing that none of the Jedi could rob him of: his patience, tempered only by a never-ending stream of Force visions that dictated his actions.
He suppressed his own feelings of oppression, of the sense that Tahiri understood exactly what was at stake. She turned off her lightsaber, and the glow of his own became the only thing preventing darkness from swirling around them—ironic, that he had now become the light source.
"Do you, my apprentice?" He kept his voice low and soft. "Is that what you really choose?" Caedus winced at the slight wavering of his voice on the last word—he must remain the hunter, remain in control if everything was to run smoothly.
She regarded him with thinly disguised amusement—even a little bit of scorn. Then, Tahiri smiled for a moment.
Was it the hunter revealing her teeth, or the prey insisting on making a last stand?
Could Tahiri have known of the prophecy about her?
He forced himself to discard the idea. The prophecy had come straight to him, and, to his knowledge, Tahiri had never accessed his inner thoughts. Caedus shuddered at the possibility. If she knew of her role in events to come—her role in bringing the Vong into this war—then she would be in position to ruin everything, and Caedus could feel perfectly well that she would try to ruin everything he had worked for if she understood his manipulations. Or, at least, Riina would.
"I do." Her voice neither wavered nor showed any sense of uncertainty. "And you know that, don't you?"
He mused, rather absently, that that was exactly what made Tahiri so hard to turn: Riina. If Tahiri had any other part to play in this war, then he understood exactly where he had to strike and sink his teeth in. But, with Riina still forever a part of the Vong…
Tahiri laughed, and ringing sounded filled his ears and worked its way into his mind until Caedus could no longer focus on anything else.
Blood pounded in his ears, and rage consumed him until his head gradually cleared. She was laughing—laughing!—at everything he had tried to accomplish over the last months, at everything he had sacrificed to bring the galaxy to this moment. Then, he knew only that Tahiri had to understand—had to be made to understand.
There would be many more sacrifices to be made on his part.
While his mind remained mired in the sluggish haze of laughter, and before he regained full control over himself, Caedus watched with semi-detachment as lightning bolts shot out from his suddenly outstretched hands. Tahiri batted away the stream from his left hand with her lightsaber, but the bolts from his right hand hit her full in the chest.
She slammed into the wall with a muffled thump. Even as her body hit the cold durasteel, he could still see the smile lurking on her face, and feel her satisfaction in provoking a reaction out of him.
Caedus did not move towards her to deliver the killing blow. Instead, he stood perfectly still, staring at that frozen smile on her face while forcing his brain to calm. Once he could recall his original purpose, he began walking at a slow, measured pace towards her.
He could feel her summon her lightsaber—could, in fact, feel her summon his as well—but did not break his stride.
His next sacrifice would be himself.
When he stood just beyond lightsaber range of her body, she jerked upright and flung herself into a standing position as her red lightsaber moved in a wild sweep. He saw his own lightsaber, of course, hanging off her belt. Nevertheless, Caedus reached down to his belt, pretending that he hadn't noticed.
He might be the master of events today, but Tahiri did not need to know that.
She was here not to defend, or even to avenge, but to kill, and, this one time, he let that instinct go unhindered.
The lightsaber descended towards him. He watched it in a tired daze, twisting away only as he began to feel the heat from the blade through his robes.
The pain was real.
The lightsaber cut through flesh with a gentle hiss and he collapsed onto the floor with an anguished yell. Clutching the stump of his left arm, Caedus let out a feral scream as wave after wave of pain crashed onto his brain, threatening to tear away his concentration like ocean waves tearing life forms away from the rocks they clung to. He tried to use the lessons he had learned from Vergere and the Vong—to become the master of pain—but it had been too long since he last tried. Besides, Jacen Solo had been the one to learn those lessons, not Darth Caedus.
Even so, his anger far surpassed his pain. No matter his ability to accept the sacrifices wrought on him, no matter the amount of time had had to prepare, Caedus could not avoid a simply truth: he was not ready to die. Not even if that was what was required to bring peace to the galaxy.
Caedus propped himself up, With his vision swimming, he stretched out his good hand and sent a stream of lightning racing towards Tahiri. As the arcs of angry light refracted off his tears, he saw malevolent rainbows sweeping across the room. The power—the subtlety—of that light entranced him, held him captive even as it drained him of whatever energy he had left.
Tahiri did not raise her lightsaber up for a block. Instead, he caught sight of two pale smudges extend themselves to intercept the lightning—two smudges bright against Tahiri's dark robes.
Caedus blinked in surprise, realizing only a moment later that she had intercepted the Force-lightning with her bare hands. This was one of the tricks that he had never taught her, one of the ones that he had reserved for his own arsenal.
It left him with only one conclusion: Tahiri had another Master.
Caedus was no longer in control of her learning. Whether an old holocron, or whether another hidden Jedi or the Force, something had usurped him: something had torn Tahiri away from his just as he had begun to sink his claws in.
He screamed, because he could feel her mind shying away from the Sith—away from him! Everything—his months of teaching, his months of deception, his arm—had been for naught.
The hunted had escaped his grasp, and now she had come to turn the tables.
He cut off the lightning since it had no visible effect on her. However, the moment Caedus stopped drawing on the Force, any remaining vitality deserted him. He slumped onto the floor, eyes closed with exhaustion.
He heard the hiss of a lightsaber reigniting, and the black he saw through closed eyes sudden stained red. Caedus tried to raise his torso off the floor, but an iron clamp of Force-energy chained him to the ground.
If, perhaps, he could convince her to go to Zonoma Sekot despite everything else…if, perhaps, he could nudge her towards the shred of destiny her had foreseen…then she might serve her purpose nevertheless.
Caedus laughed and, once started, he could no longer stop himself. "How?"
Tahiri laughed at him. "You taught me how," she said, her face oddly blank.
He blinked and focused in on her words, using them to bring his mind back into a coherent state. "Don't deceive yourself," he scoffed. "I've taught you nothing compared to what I know."
"You taught me all I needed for today. You taught me how to kill."
Opening his eyes, he found no surprise in seeing Tahiri's lightsaber hovering just above his throat. "Kill me then, Tahiri." His voice came out bitter, angry and full of hatred.
The pain was gone, replaced by pure exhaustion. Caedus knew, in this moment, that his life had already passed beyond his hands. He had squandered precious years—precious moments—searching for how to preserve it, but his time of reckoning had come.
"You turned me into a killer," Tahiri continued, tears running down her face. "It's too bad that you're not the one I'm supposed to kill."
Caedus gaped at her.
"I have a mission to go on," she said abruptly. Tahiri whirled and left, taking both lightsabers with her. The door slammed shut.
For the first time in many months, Darth Caedus felt trapped by the darkness.
Hidden Prison, Corellia
Davin Fel thumbed on his commlink and brought it up to his face. "In position, father," he said, raising his cheek a few inches above the duracrete in order to speak.
His father's voice crackled out, distorted by the multiple transfers the signal must have taken to get to Davin from Chiss space. "You know I do not agree with this."
Davin let out an agitated hiss.
Located just outside Coronet City, the prison he was watching sat right in the middle of a clearing; in order to avoid being spotted by a casual glance, Davin currently lay on his stomach a yard or two outside the first set of perimeter sensors.
However, the indigo tones of nightfall had barely started to give way to inky darkness. In a few minutes, dressed all in black, he would be nothing but a wraith. If the prison security systems picked out the noise from the conversation now, though, his hands—he had taken off his black gloved to operate the commlink—would stand out as bright smudges against the ground. And he did not feel like having to stage a prison break.
"I know," he said stiffly, keeping his voice to a shallow whisper. "But if we can do this, it will give us enough leverage to speed up the war."
"It is not a necessary risk!" Soontir snapped, voice rising.
Davin cut him off before his father accidently let a name slip. "We've already had this discussion, father," he said irritably.
"It is not worth your life!" Soontir continued.
"And the others?" Davin scowled. "Were they necessary risks?"
By "others," he meant his siblings—Cherith dead, Jag in hiding, and the original Cem hidden… somewhere.
"Son…"
"Was this effort worth their lives?" Davin demanded.
Soontir's sharp intake of breath let him know that his point had been made.
He wanted to ask his father whether the war was really worth having his family scattered across the galaxy—having them on opposite sides of the war. He wanted to ask whether power was worth having to know that there would come a day when he would be sighting his own siblings along the end of his blaster, or whether it was worth his mother already grieving for children not yet lost.
He wanted to press his father—to get answers, for once. He wanted to know.
"I will not believe that you held their lives expendable," Davin hissed, now furious. "Never."
"I did not…"
Davin did not want to hear another line of excuses, another series of facts constructed only to force him to remain where he was. "So if you did not stop them," he interrupted, "let me do this."
"Do not get caught," Soontir said curtly. The loss of static told Davin that his father had ended the conversation.
No matter what his father had said, however, Davin somehow doubted that he would have been able to pull away from this mission. What it represented still held too much power over him; it was a way to end this war, this madness.
Sometime, in the interim, the cost had almost stopped mattering.
The Chiss had a policy against pre-emptive strikes, so he had become an Imperial. His relationship with Aula had begun to threaten his pure dedication to his family—to his father—so he had been removed from that as well.
Firstborn of his family, he flitted on the verges of darkness, becoming whatever his father needed for his machinations.
He stood trapped by the incoming of eternal night, knowing that he had been one of the ones pushing the sun until it rested far below the horizon. But, with his mother hidden—safe, secure, and forever used as an unspoken point of leverage—behind Chiss lines, he could never break away.
With a sigh, Davin wiggled his commlink back in his belt and lowered his check to the ground. Picking up the black flight gloves that he had taken off earlier, he slipped them on and flexed his fingers to check that each one was in position.
Then, he waited for pure night to come.
Dagobah
Ben squinted at the both of them. "I've met all of them," he said slowly, looking back and forth from Yub to Wes as if they were playing a horrible joke.
Wes rolled his eyes. "Stop being idiotic. Think."
"I've already met both of them," Ben said.
"But there is a third," Yub murmured, staring into the flames. He had yet to look at either of them since his realization—instead, he remained propped against the wall with brows knitted as the movements of his eyes replayed some scene in his mind.
Something that his father had mentioned once, a long time ago, unfurled itself at the edges of Ben's memory. "Didn't your parents have another son?" he asked Yub. "The one that my parents met?"
"Chak," Yub said after a blink of hesitation. "I assume that you mean him, although I would not know if he had ever met your parents."
Ben sharpened his focus at Yub's tone. Something danced at its edges—something intangible, suppressed: something threatening to take over. There was discomfort, certainly—Ben could have anticipated that—but also just a bit of defensiveness surrounding the response.
"But Chak is most certainly dead," Yub continued, toneless.
To Ben, Yub's voice sounded as dead—devoid of emotion, of feeling—as Chak Fel supposedly was. Somewhere buried in what he had known of his brother, in some memory, was something that Yub did not want to say—perhaps did not want to remember.
Ben probed a little despite Yub's obvious reluctance. "Are you sure?" he asked.
Just one word dropped into the silence. "Yes."
"Yub…" Wes whined. "That's not helpful."
"It was not meant to be!" Yub snapped, standing up.
What could have rattled Yub—rattled his family—so much that he could barely even think about his brother, barely remember that his brother existed? What secrets lay behind the serene portrait of a family shown to the outside world? Driven by investigator's instincts, and by a little nagging through that he should perhaps find out, Ben refused to let the matter go.
"Why don't you want to remember him?" He softened his voice. "He was your brother."
Yub sighed and straightened his posture even though his gaze remained at his hands. "Chak was somewhat more…idealistic than the rest of us," he relented.
Ben caught a flash of wistfulness in the tone before bitterness crept in.
"Unlike Jag, he did not have the discretion to keep his idealism a secret." Yub let out a short, sharp laugh. "Chak died for that."
However, despite having given a response, Yub still refused to meet Ben's gaze.
Wes looked warily at Ben for a moment, but when Ben remained silent, he spoke. "Then which brother did Ben run into?"
Yub finally looked up. His hands stopped twisting together and, for once, he looked relieved. "Davin."
"Davin Fel?" Ben blinked. "But he's dead too, isn't he?"
As Ben said the word "too," Yub flinched.
"Sorry," Ben muttered, realizing the callousness of his own tone.
"I had thought so," Yub said absently. "But if you have meet another Fel…" His voice trailed off for a moment. "I have no more brothers."
"Are you sure?" Wes interrupted, looking at Ben. "Could it have been an imposter?"
Ben stopped to really consider the question.
He had assumed, because of the subtlety of the clue that had led him to the conclusion ,that the stormtrooper was indeed a Fel. Now that he had stopped to think about it, though, the idea of the sock as a plant was not impossible. But, if they had really wanted him to discover the stormtroopers identity, the idea of a sock seam felt a bit…farfetched.
"Yes," he said. "I'm sure."
Yub shrugged, sending a gust of wind through the doorway and towards the fire. The shadows of the flames danced over the walls for a few seconds.
"It hardly matters," he said, his voice a little bitter.
Ben started, jerking away from staring at the walls, and stared at him. "But he's your brother!"
Yub simply snorted. "Oh, I suppose it matters to me," he said without any real conviction. "But as far as I'm concerned, the real Davin Fel has been dead for eighteen years."
"And if he isn't?" Once again, something in Yub's voice felt reserved, and Ben couldn't help but push a little bit.
Yub shot him a short glare and refused to answer.
"Fine," Ben muttered.
"Either way, the thought is worry," Yub mused. "It makes matters much more…complicated, if someone has planned that entire charade." He glanced at Wes with an uneasy expression.
"Well?" Ben demanded.
Yub glanced at Wes again. "It makes me think that I—we—should go take a look through the Imperial records."
"But Coruscant…" Wes started to protest.
"Coruscant can wait," Yub said shortly. "If there's another Davin Fel out there—if there's actually another Fel, or just a Fel imposter—then the last thing we need is him turning up as a hostage, especially when we finally reach Coruscant."
"Darth Caedus is a more immediate problem," Wes argued.
Yub shrugged. "He's not going to disappear. We can deal with him afterwards."
Ben found himself wondering just a little bit why Yub was even fighting in this war. At first, the man had seemed determined to get to Coruscant despite the dangers. Now, he had pulled an abrupt turn and, no matter how much he kept saying that he didn't care for his two dead brothers, he still wanted to find an answer."
"Why do you want to know?" Ben asked.
Yub's head snapped around to face him.
"You've already told us that it doesn't matter to you," Ben continued. "So who does it matter to?"
Yub flinched.
"Who?" Wes cackled merrily. "Who? Tell me or else I won't go," he sang.
"Davin proposed before he died," Yub said heavily. "We promised to find out the truth. That promise transcends anything I need to do in regards to Darth Caedus."
