The shoreline was at once one of the harshest and most beautiful things Vestara had ever seen. The water was a clear, pristine blue that glimmered in the midday sun as it stretched endlessly toward the horizon, where it met an even bluer sky. Only a few thin white cloud-streaks interrupted the feature-less blue dome that spanned in every direction. The land was a different story. Swathes of smooth black rock, born from the cooled lava of an active volcano, ran downslope until it suddenly plunged into the sea. Thin trails of still-flowing molten rock, seeping down conduits buried by layer upon layer of cooled lava, released sporadic geysers of reeking brimstone through cracks within the obsidian landscape. In the near distance, some fifty meters down the black-cliff shoreline, fresh lava poured into the sea, fueling a never-ending cloud of black steam that rose from the blue water with a constant angry hiss.
She stood on the cliff's edge for a long time, watching the beautiful ocean and the hellish black landscape grind against each other and send an ugly plume into the sky. She didn't know what to make of it, but something told her a Sith should appreciate such savage contrast.
Ben wasn't so impressed.
"We should keep going," he told her. "We need to find food somewhere, and there's nothing here."
Vestara gave him a baleful glare, from which he didn't flinch. It wasn't that damnable Skywalker nobility that kept him from being scared. The young Jedi was a bruised, dirty, sweaty mess. He looked so exhausted he could barely stand, and she could feel his weariness through the Force.
She nodded, and they continued their trek across the island.
At first they hadn't known it was an island, but at this point it seemed pretty incontrovertible. They'd been walking along the coast for the better part of a day, had spotted no land on the blue horizon, and were clearly working their way around the slow curve of a coastline. The face of the black volcano, always on their left side, had gradually changed but the peak itself remained in a constant position.
When Ship had been torn out of the sky, Ben and Vestara both had been tossed around its cabin like children's toys. The sheer violence of their fall should have killed them, but somehow Ship had projected itself into both their minds, keeping Vestara conscious and waking Ben. As it tumbled back toward the planet's surface, Ship had opened its main portal. Moments before smashing into the ocean surface, the ancient Sith meditation sphere had thrown them free, and sent a parting message through both their minds: Together, seek your destiny!
Through luck or intention, Ship had tossed them into the water not far from a coastline. Vestara could barely swim with only one arm, but Ben, noble Skywalker that he was, had reached out with the Force and helped her to the black-sand beach that sat at the end of the broad obsidian plain.
When her exhaustion had cleared, the first thing Vestara felt was grief. She'd never understood what Ship was exactly- ancient machine, living spaceship, overgrown pet hound- but it had been her only companion for years. She'd thought she'd gotten used to a fate of loneliness, but she'd had one good, trustworthy friend all along. She only realized that once it was dead.
Like so many things in her life, it was a lesson too late.
The ocean water on her face hid any tears. She'd pushed the sorrow aside, plucked the lightsaber from her belt, and pointed its violet blade as Ben. She'd told him to march, and he'd complied without a word.
They walked for hours, saying very little. Ben staggered over the uneven black terrain. He was clearly exhausted, thirsty, hungry, and dangerously fatigued. Vestara wasn't much better. The air was much warmer and thicker than it had been in the village she'd taken Ben from. Most likely that had crashed somewhere near Zonama Sekot's equator. The sweat seeping out of her skin deprived her further of precious water and salts. Her lips were getting dry and cracked. Even the salty blue-green ocean water was starting to look tempting.
They walked and walked, and Vestara was starting to think the entire island must have been just a massive plain of obsidian. It was fitting luck, she thought bitterly. You're fortunate enough to survive a crash-landing, crawl up onto a land, and discover the whole thing is a brand-new volcanic island without a single bit of vegetation or fresh water. It seemed like an especially cruel way to die, but then, Vestara's whole life had been repeated exercises and hope and disap-pointment, so why should her death be any different?
Such grim thoughts were rolling around in her mind as she and Ben staggered across the dried lava beds. The black stone reflected and amplified the heat from the sun, making the situation even more unbearable. The only relief was the breeze, and even that came not swift or cool, but in the rolling of one wave of hot muggy air after another.
Some time after the sun had begun its descent, after Vestara had stumbled and nearly fallen twice on the smooth black rock, Ben pointed one arm forward and said, "Look!"
Vestara picked up her head with effort. She saw more ridges of black stone up ahead, and the vast sunny sky, but where to two met, she thought she saw a patch of tempting green, wavering somewhat in the hot humid air.
"Come on," Ben grunted, and picked up his pace.
If Ben could do it, so could she. She called on the Force for a little extra energy, and put concentration into every new step. She neither slipped nor fell the rest of the way. Eventually, finally, they reached the edge of the obsidian plain. Low, mossy green grass appeared suddenly, first as tufts peeking through cracks in the rock face and then quickly overtaking the rocks. Bushes and ferns popped up after that and just a hundred meters from the spread of black stone a complete forest of bora trees raised their boughs to the sky.
Vestara could barely contain her relief. She followed Ben across the green plain and into the forest. They ducked into the shade and she immediately felt better. Ben staggered and half-fell against the trunk of one tree, breathing deeply and savoring relief from the burning-hot sunlight.
"Come on, Jedi," Vestara grunted. "We need food. Water."
Ben turned dazed white eyes at her. "Where?"
"I don't know," she said. She didn't have the energy to get angry at him so she settled for surly.
"This is... different from the forest up north," Ben said. "The boras... younger, I think. Shorter. Tropical."
"Fruit," Vestara said. "We need fruit."
Ben nodded. With effort he pushed himself away from the tree and staggered onward. Vestara followed. Relief from the sun renewed her energy, but only a little. She was still sweaty, hungry, and perilously low on fluids.
After some five or twenty minutes of staggering around the tree-trunks and through low-growing clumps of ferns, Ben bent over and started grabbing at something.
"What is it?" Vestara asked as she staggered over to him.
Ben held up one hand, bearing a round orange fuit the size of his fist. When he turned around she saw he'd already half-stuffed another one into the mouth, spilling foamy juice down his jaw. He looked like an overgrown toddler and Vestara would have laughed if she'd had the energy. As it was, she took the fruit and ate.
In the back of her mind she knew that it could be poisonous, or it could make her throw up what little was in her stomach, but she didn't care and neither did Ben. The fruit had a delicious tang to it, and more importantly it held a lot of water inside. When she gulped the first one down she looked to Ben. He was already starting his second.
A half hour later they'd stripped the bush clean. She was more than sick of the taste by then, but it still felt wonderful to have food and water in her body again. It was almost enough to make her forget the part about being stranded on a deserted island with the boy she'd loved and sworn to hand over to the Dark Lord of the Sith.
When he finished the last fruit, Ben looked at the bush and stared laughing. It was a tired, wheezing laugh that rattled his tired body but he didn't seem to be able to stop.
"What?" Vestara snapped, annoyed but also amused. "What is it?"
"I just thought," Ben said between chuckles, "What if that's the only bush with fruit on the whole kriffing island?"
It was a horrible thought, but for some reason Vestara started laughing too.
"I thought, what if that's it?" Ben laughed. "I thought, we're really in trouble now."
"That's not funny," Vestara said, but she laughed anyway.
"I know. I know. But it's..." Ben's laughter ran dry. He shook his head. "Aw, fierfek. Ves, are we-"
"Stop!" Vestara commanded. She put her hand on the saber attached to her belt but didn't take it out. "Just keep walking, Jedi."
Ben held out his arms and looked around the forest. "Walk where?"
"Until we find another bush. Or some meat, or some fresh water."
"Okay, fine," Ben looked dejected, but no longer deliriously tired.
Vestara heard something rustling overhead. She glanced up, then back down to Ben, but he hadn't made a move. He was looking up too.
"I think I saw a bird," he said. "Maybe two. Had these long tail-feathers, looked kind of like... rainbows."
"Well, if we really need meat, we can catch one of those."
"With what?" he asked.
"I'm a Sith, Ben," Vestara said. "I'm not afraid to kill things with the Force."
He stared at her for a long time before he asked, "Are you, Ves? Are you a Sith?"
"Get moving," she said forcefully.
Ben apparently didn't have the energy to put up a fight. He kept walking, and Vestara followed with her hand on the lightsaber.
As the day wore on the shadows left by the trees slanted and stretched. The sunlight that pierced through the tree-columns grew deeper shades of gold. Vestara was beginning to wonder whether they would end up lost in the dark. Her stomach was already starting to feel hollow again. It ached for protein or anything filling.
Just as the shadows were getting too deep for them to move safely through the forest, Ben led them into a clearing. It was located on a mild slope, where black rock jut out from the incline. They spotted a few bushes on the edge of the clearing with the same fruit they'd just eaten, and each of them grabbed a handful for before starting for the out-cropping. In the last light of day, Ben and Vestara made their way to the top of it and sat down on the black, worn stone.
For a while they ate in silence. From their position they could see the black-stone peak of the volcano, a broad swathe of forest spreading further to the west, and the last glimmerings of light on the ocean in the far northern distance.
When she couldn't take the silence any more, she asked, "Well?"
"Well what?" Ben said.
"Are you going to do anything? Say anything? I kid-napped you, Ben. And then Ship crashed and we ended up stuck on some deserted island and nobody knows if we're alive or dead. And we don't know if they're alive or dead. We could be trapped here forever. Don't you have anything to say?"
He looked at her with a blank expression. She couldn't tell if he was too tired to think or if he was hiding his thoughts. She couldn't sense anything from him in the Force.
"Aren't you at least going to try to escape?" she asked.
"Where would I go?" Ben gestured to the jungle spread around them. "I'm pretty sure nobody's here. We'll both be safer if we stick together. So you don't need to stay up all night with one hand on your lightsaber. But you'll try to do it anyway, won't you?"
"Trust is not the way of the Sith."
"But you're not really a Sith, are you?"
He asked it so easily, so calmly. She felt a spike of anger and said, "If I'm not a Sith, then what am I?"
He stared at her with those dull eyes for so long she didn't think he was going to respond. Finally, he said, "Tell me about the people you're with now."
There, out with it at last. She'd been starting to wonder if he was at all curious as to what she'd kidnapped him for, what she'd been up to since he last saw her. Deep down, a shameful part of her just wanted him to care.
"They're Sith," she said. "They call themselves the One Sith. They've been in hiding for... a long time. I don't even know how long."
"And why did they want me? They didn't go after Jaina, did they?"
She wondered how Ben knew they hadn't. Probably he had some intimate connection with his cousin through the Force, the kind of deep-set familial bond she'd always envied him for. She admitted, "No. They didn't. I was tasked to capture you, specifically."
"Why?"
"Their leader wants you. He seems to have a big thing against Skywalkers."
Ben glanced at the darkening treetops, then back to her. "Is this leader a big man, wearing spiked armor?"
"He fought Abeloth with your father," she said. "He was wounded, and he went to the Yuuzhan Vong for help healing. He has... some kind of armor they built. I think he was their captive once."
Ben considered the information in silence. Vestara didn't know why she'd told him so much detail.
"And once you deliver me, what happens to you?" he asked.
Vestara blinked. Did he care about that? She hardly did. She'd carried out Krayt's order, or attempted to, because she knew she had no other option. The Dark Lord of the Sith was not a being you said no to.
"He said I would join them," she told Ben. "I would become One Sith and help them carry out their revenge on the Jedi."
"Revenge," Ben sighed. "Kind of lame, isn't it?"
"What?"
"Somebody hurts you, you hate them, you hurt them back, they hate you more and try to hurt you again... It's pretty boring, right? Repetitive?"
"All right," Vestara said. "How about your father promises not to get in the Lord Krayt's way? Try it and see what happens."
She realized she shouldn't have mentioned the Dark Lord by name, but Ben didn't seem to notice. He said, "I'm not saying to forgive and forget. I'm just saying it's a waste of energy."
Night was falling fast, and his face had become blurred by deepening shadow. Still, she felt like his gaze was piercing into her.
"Don't try to convert me," she snarled. "I'll never be one of your little Jedi friends."
Ben gave a sigh, deep and sad. For the first time, emotion came into his voice. "I know that, Ves. And I was stupid to try and make you a Jedi. But I don't think you're a Sith either."
Still the same, stupid, idealistic Ben. She'd been born a Sith, raised a Sith and would die a Sith. She'd accepted that long ago. Even in her period of wandering, stranded between the Lost Tribe and Krayt's, she'd never stopped considering herself Sith, just like Ben could never stop thinking of himself as a Jedi.
"Sith is my birthright," she said. "It's all I am. All I can ever be."
"Is it what you want to be?"
She wanted to say yes, of course, but stopped herself. "What I want doesn't matter, and never has."
For so long she'd wanted to please her father and Lady Rhea, and after that she'd wanted to place Ben. Did she want to please Krayt now? No. She obeyed because he terrified her. She no longer knew what she wanted. A part of her had simply stopped wanting because she never got what she desired anyway.
Ben seemed to examine her in the dark. After a while he said, "Ves, you don't have a master any more. The Lost Tribe is gone. The One Sith is somewhere out there, probably, but they're not here now. Right now, you can do whatever you want."
She grunted, said nothing.
Ben stretched out his legs and lay back. "Right now, I'm going to sleep. Like I said, I've got no place to go, so if you want to rest too, be my guest. You definitely need it."
"Don't act concerned about me."
Ben froze and looked at her for a long time. He said, "It's not act, Ves."
Then he lay flat on the rock, face toward the stars, and didn't move.
Vestara sat there for a long time, watching him, waiting for him to try... something. It was very dark now, but she thought she could see the slow, regular breathing of deep sleep. Her eyelids were very heavy. Even her limbs felt like they wanted to melt into the black stone beneath her. She scooted back until her back rested against a chunk of rock. Still facing Ben, she relaxed her body. She tried to stay vigilant, tried to keep her attention on Ben, but her body was too weak. The blackness of night stretched out and consumed her.
She awoke to fresh sunlight and birdsong.
Her eyes popped open and her body jerked upright. Ben was sprawled out in front of her, apparently still fast asleep. Morning light slanted across the treetops and the rock, carving deep shadows in the peak of the distant volcano. The light made Ben look old and withered, but also peaceful.
A pair of birds skipped across the edge of the rock, picking at the small patches of green moss on its underside. When Vestara moved two pairs of tiny black eyes reared up to look at her. Each bird was about half as long as her arm, with additional tail-feathers trailing another half-arm length. Their breasts were white, their backs green, their wings brown. Just as Ben had said, those tails shimmered with a full spectrum of colors. Smaller crests with the same multi-color brilliancy flared on top of their heads.
Vestara moved a leg, and both bursts burst into the sky with a flutter of wings. Ben sat up, stretched, and looked around.
"So," he asked, "Any plans for breakast?"
"No poultry, apparently," Vestara said.
"I guess its back to fruit then." Ben rose and stretched his limbs and back. Vestara forced herself to her feet and did the same.
After that, they went down into the forest again. They tried to keep moving in the same direction, with the goal of circumnavigating the entire island. The task might take another day or it might take a week. At the very least, they lost nothing in exploration. Given that this was a young volcanic island, Vestara doubted it had any fauna besides birds and insects, which made opportunities for protein scarce. At one point they found a brush growing some kind of nuts. They didn't taste very good, but it was all they had, so they dropped them into pockets and kept moving.
The whole time, Ben stayed in front of her. He didn't object to that. He didn't ask for his lightsaber back, even in jest. He seemed, more than anything, like he was waiting for something. Vestara wondered if, even now, he was connect-ed with his cousin through the Force. The thought of the Sword of the Jedi swooping out of the air to fight her was, frankly, terrifying, but she had to believe not even the Grand Master's son had that kind of power.
Maybe he was waiting for her to have some kind of conversion. If so, he was in for a long wait. It wouldn't do much good here anyway. Jedi and Sith were strangely irrelevant concepts when you were alone in the jungle, without the faintest touch of civilization.
After they'd covered maybe three kilometers, they found another bush with fruits and sat down to eat. By then the sun was higher in the sky, and more light shone through the multi-colored leaves overhead.
Ben was halfway through his first fruit when he shuddered and dropped it. For a moment he just stared blankly into space, juice-wet jaw hanging stupidly open.
"What is it?" Vestara snapped. "You felt something in the Force, didn't you? What happened?"
Slowly, his jaw clamped shut and his shock-wide eyes found focus on hers.
"Something... impossible," he said.