Chapter Fourteen

"Was that fire from the dudes pursuing us, Dad?" Menelaus asked when they made the leap into hyperspace. Hyperion nodded, letting go of the controls for a moment and relaxing in his chair before he did so. He let the currents of blue fire swallow his view of pretty much everything except when Menelaus was talking.

"They pursue me because I had quite the rap sheet when I was young. Do you remember the Sith I taught you about?" Hyperion asked. Menelaus nodded and then made mention of what he had been taught by Hyperion about them.

"You told me about how they had a lot of empires throughout history. Naga Sadow, Exar Kun, and Darth Revan were a few of the Sith lords who commanded vast legions. You told me that the Sith rewarded strength and inwardly thinking, promoting self-preservation and elevation so that the strong rule and the weak serve. But you also mentioned that because of this, empires of Sith tended to implode once they got big enough and all the Jedi had to do was survive until then and pick up the pieces after the Sith were done with one another," Menelaus said.

"And what did I tell you would be a good way to tell the difference between them if you don't remember anything else?" he asked.

"Their robes and the color of their lightsabers. Jedi sport a white tunic and mostly brown cloaks while the Sith tend to favor grey armor and black cloaks. While the Jedi tend to have green, blue, and sometimes yellow blades, the Sith almost exclusively wield red," Menelaus answered.

"And their codes?" Hyperion continued.

"You told me about how the Jedi would try compassion and lifting up the weak in the hopes that the weakest links in the chain of life could become pretty strong. On the other hand, the Sith believed in a natural order where only the strongest survived and the weakest were meant to serve throughout the rest of their lives. But you also noted how you disagreed with the Jedi having a hive-minded approach to their rules and the Sith being too self-indulgent to stand united," Menelaus explained.

"I tell you these things..." Hyperion said, heaving a heavy sigh before continue. "Because I once was trained by a Sith Lord. Not one who joined the Empire, having foreseen its doom long before the Empire fell. He was known to the Empire as Lord Crassus who found me when I wasn't much younger than you. As his eldest grandson, I was introduced to the tenets of the Dark Side before I was even ten years of age and given missions until I was nineteen.

"From there, I pursued revenge against my brother Dantius when he incarcerated me for crimes I committed against him and those closest to him. I spent nearly another ten years there before I escaped and pursued him before finding my way to Ando Prime. After I failed to kill him and another Jedi in the cave of the specter, I lost my way until I found you. When I decided to adopt you, I vowed to live as a man but the truth is that I was destined to be so much more and now so are you." Menelaus took in everything that Hyperion said, realizing that he had been raised by a killer for nearly all his life.

"Why do you say nothing, Menelaus?" Hyperion asked. The boy seemed to be swimming in thought before he could even muster enough courage to speak. Muster enough courage to find out the truth of how he came to be in the care of a former Sith Warrior.

"Did you... did you kill my mother?" he asked, understandably embittered by his foster father's confession.

"No, she was already dying when I found her. But you were very much alive and at her behest, I was eventually persuaded to take you in. I... I almost left you to die with her but I knew that if I was to find a better way, perhaps to absolve myself of my sins, I couldn't do that. Not when I'd already produced one daughter by forcing myself on a woman my brother loved and then failed to be there for her even as her aunt pursued me across the stars for vengeance. Obviously, she never found us or else you and I wouldn't be having this conversation right now," Hyperion confessed.

"I... I think I'll be needing some time to take this in, Dad. I mean... I knew you were different, you weren't exactly Jedi or Talid material but you always did try to teach me restraint. Whenever I asked you why you were trying to teach me self-defense killing, you would tell me about how I'd become a demon for killing in pleasure. Now, I think I understand why: because you were a killer and you know how it feels to kill for pleasure. Can I... can I take a walk around?" Menelaus asked.

Hyperion nodded, not begrudging his foster son if he never wanted to speak to him again. Frankly, he wouldn't begrudge him if he wanted to remain silent throughout the rest of the journey to Dathomir to disperse his mother's ashes. He watched the controls, watched the distance between the ship and the first stop on their journey continue to diminish ever so slowly. "Dad!?" Menelaus shouted from across the way.

"What is it, boy?" Hyperion asked.

"There's a big grey box with black stripes across the sides and the lid. I could've sworn it wasn't here before and there's a comlink on top of it! Should I open it?" Menelaus asked. Hyperion knew of only one box that matched the description and rose from his chair so fast that he almost hit his head on the starboard above.

"Don't touch that, boy! Stay away from it!" Hyperion shouted. He finally found his son in the supply room and sure enough, he saw the box which had been stored in his safe for eleven years. Pushing Menelaus away, he carefully took the comlink and decided to ask his son for some privacy. He added that this box represented something he'd swore he'd leave in the past when he bought the safe.

Menelaus was respectful of this wish, perhaps realizing how much strength it had taken Hyperion to confess that he'd been trained as a Sith warrior. "What the kriff is this box doing here? Tyro, he must be involved," Hyperion growled, thinking aloud when the boy was gone.

That was a dangerous move, revealing that you are Sith. Are you sure the boy was ready for it? interjected a strange female voice. It took Hyperion a moment but when he flipped the ring over to see the green jewel on it, he noticed it was shimmering to indicate the specter of the mountains speaking to him. When he figured this out, he relaxed a little and then started by replying to her statement.

Our children will never be fully ready for such revelations. The best we can do is hope they're ready enough when we tell them and I was Sith Hyperion replied, correcting her. She laughed briefly, a sinister sound in his head as she whispered back the answer to his comment about having been Sith.

Once you start down the dark path, it will forever dominate your destiny. You've been trained as Sith and that is what you'll always be. The best you can do is control yourself in the face of the flaws presented in the teachings of the Sith or let them control you. If your friend Tyro is responsible for bringing this box aboard the ship, it would appear he knew as much too the specter told him. Hyperion looked over the box and looked at the comlink in his hand, contemplating what to do.

Figuring there was nothing else that could be done, he activated it to hear what could be said. "Hey big guy, we had a good run huh?" Tyro began. So the snake reveals himself Hyperion thought silently.

"Yeah, yeah, I know I wasn't legally supposed to have access to this stuff but I was able to buy off the consciences of the guys down at the saferooms. Anyway, I had a peek inside this baby and I gotta tell ya... the galaxy's changed, buddy. You'd be making a big mistake to take my ship without having this baby on reserve plus something tells me you ain't gonna be coming back for a little while anyway. So I had the boys haul the contents of your safe onto the ship while you and your boy were stocking up some supplies. And hey, if you ever come back, my throat's free for you to slice open if I was wrong, later man!" Tyro said.

The transmission ended thereafter, Hyperion enraged enough to smash the device with his mechanical hand when it was over. See? Even the little man knew that wherever you went, your past would always follow you. The best you can do is embrace who you were without becoming it once more for your son's sake as well as your own. I know it's not simple but as I once was a mother, nothing is simple when it is your child the specter told him.

"The contents of this box are staying but under no circumstances am I opening it again. I'll die before I put on that armor and use that... weapon, ever again!" Hyperion vowed aloud.

And let your child die before you embrace what you were? Let the implications of what you have just said hang for a bit the specter warned him. But Hyperion didn't let it hang nor did he have the chance if he had wanted to: Menelaus came to announce the first stop on their journey to Dathomir would be coming up in a standard hour. Mon Gazza was the first stop before entering the Corellian Run, a major trade route that cut a swath across the entire galaxy. But they would need to reach the intersection leading to the Hydian Way, according to a galaxy map. And their journey was being noted by more vengeful eyes than the Jedi or the Imperial Sith ever had.