Prisoner
Mara Jade who had dropped her surname of Kenobi when she began serving the Empire. And now she was a prisoner. A prisoner of the Jedi! Mara Jade could not stand for this. She had escaped the Jedi and their dogmatic views so long ago, and she would not go back. They could not have her power or her gifts, they were her to use as she chose. She looked around her small cell, and wondered how they could do this to her, her mother and her father, if they truly loved and cared for her. The Emperor had been right all along, If they truly loved her then she wouldn't be locked alone in a cell.
She felt a presence around her. It was a Jedi, that much was obvious to her as she reached out blindly to strike at the presence. She struck out blindly with lightning only to hear an amused chuckle around her.
Tyrone Dooku looked at the mere child before him, the child of Obi-Wan Kenobi and Satine, a child that had been born of light, and he saw a shadow of the past within her. He could tell himself that he had turned to the Dark Side by more noble reasons, but had he really? He had been just as filled with righteous anger and grief as Mara seemed to be?
Tyrone wasn't sure what it was about this mere child that reminded him of his fall to the Dark Side, but he couldn't help but remember the funeral of his apprentice, Qui-Gon Jinn. It had been the last time he had seen the Jedi on friendly terms. He blamed himself for the death of his apprentice, and he blamed the Jedi.
He remembered standing at the funeral pyre as the body of his beloved apprentice went up in smoke as was the Jedi custom. Although Tyrone had kept his Jedi aloofness, something had broken inside of him. He had heard the condolences from Grandmaster Yoda and Mace Windu, and he was sure he had given appropriate response, but he had felt removed from himself, as if a part of himself had died that day.
Then master Yoda had said something that had struck him as odd. "The Chosen One, found we have. Found Qui-Gon did," he said as he nodded over at a young man who still wore his hair in the tradition of a Padawan, and a youngling beside him. They both wore the garbs of a Jedi, and while the elder had eyes of gray, the younger's azure blue eyes shone with tears.
"But grow up he must," Yoda was telling him, "To defeat the Sith, a heavy burden that is, for one so young."
"How old is he?" Tyrone had demanded. They could not mean they were going to wait for that…. child to grow up, were they?
"Ten standard years, young Skywalker is."
Tyrone wasn't worried that he was too old, but they would wait too long. "And the Sith have returned?" Tyrone asked.
"Killed by one name Maul, Qui-Gon was," Yoda confirmed. "Always two there are."
"But which one did Obi-Wan kill, the master or the apprentice?" Mace had asked, but Tyrone barely heard him. Was this Sith to blame for Qui-Gon's death? Weren't the Sith the natural enemies of the Jedi?
Or were the Padawan and that boy to blame. The boy that had been a slave? Such things that had been beneath him. Qui-Gon, however, had always had a petulance for picking up insignificant life forms. Was this boy one of them? Could a slave truly be the Jedi's Chosen One? Tyrone felt himself follow the crowd and found himself standing in front of Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker, and he could see the relationship they would forge, instead of filling Tyrone with joy, it filled him with a sense of loss and hopelessness. He would never again feel that sense of friendship, of belonging with a Jedi.
Master Thame had been right, all those years ago.
"Were you really Master Qui-Gon's master?" the young Anakin said, looking up at him with trust in his blue eyes. He knew life would steal that nativity from him. He watched as Anakin grabbed once again at Obi-Wan's brown robe, seemingly unable to relinquish the newly branded knight from his grasp.
"I was," Tyrone said simply.
"Pardon me, Master Dooku, Anakin has yet to be taught the customs of the Jedi," Obi-Wan said.
"It's quite alright," Tyrone responded offhandedly.
He stood off to the side and watched the pair. He watched the way Anakin had flung himself into the knighted Obi-Wan's arms and he watched the uncomfortable way Obi-Wan consoled him.
"Master Dooku, I am truly sorry for your loss," he heard and turned to his right to see the newly elected Chancellor Palpatine who seemed to be watching the pair as intently as he was. "Pardon me, for asking but, have the Sith really returned?"
"That's Jedi business," Tyrone felt himself saying.
"Indeed, and is Anakin Skywalker really the Chosen One?"
"That has yet to be determined," Tyrone answered.
"What does that even mean?" Palpatine continued as he watched Anakin Skywalker. Just for a moment, Tyrone Dooku had felt something dark and malicious, but it was gone almost as quickly as it had come, and Tyrone wondered if he had imagined it.
"I'm not entirely sure," Tyrone said, before he sighed, convinced that Chancellor Palpatine was harmless and was just trying to keep his mind distracted from the tragedy that had recently occurred. "The Chosen One is said to bring balance to the Force by destroying the Sith."
"And you believe this child is the key?"
"I'm not entirely sure," Tyrone said, turning his eyes to the Chancellor who seemed incredibly excited about something.
"Do you think he's more powerful than you are? A mere slave?" Palpatine prompted.
"Of course not," Tyrone snorted aristocratically.
It hadn't been long after that that Tyrone had relinquished all ties to the Jedi, and after assuming his title as Count of Serreno, he had sought the Sith, unable to leave the Sith in the hands of a child, had he been just as foolish as Mara Jade Kenobi was now?
"Just how is my old master?" Tyrone asked the young girl, as he shook himself out of his memories.
"He's the Emperor of the Galaxy, and more powerful than you could ever dream of," came the dark reply.
"It seems it is you who are mistaken, about a great many things," Tyrone said, softly. "The Sith constantly believe that the Jedi are arrogant and dogmatic, and to some extent you may be right child, but it is the Sith who are arrogant at just what power means."
"And how would you know? You turned your back on true power and the Sith."
"You are wrong, child, about a great many things. For many years, I have been around, been around your parents, been aroumd the Kenobi's and the Skywalker's. I always knew they were the future of the Jedi, but somehow along the way I had forgotten it. I have a truly unique position, I was trained by the greatest Jedi and the greatest Sith."
"And what you are willing to impart this knowledge on me if I become your apprentice?" Mara Jade sneered.
"I never thought I would take on another apprentice, not after the death of Qui-Gon, and then I never thought I would take on another Jedi apprentice. It seems life is not about the successes a Jedi has, but what he learns from them."
"My master will live to see your death by his hand," Mara Jade continued.
"You are filled with such anger," Tyrone observed, "I wonder what you are using it to hide," he added.
"You are nothing but an old man," she screamed at him while shooting lightning.
Tyrone Dooku easily caught the lightning in his hands. It couldn't hurt a person once they had mastered it.
"As seen through the eyes of youth. Tell your master that his time is drawing to a close," he said as he walked away, not as moved by her display of anger as he had thought he would be. The Dark Side no longer held any power over Tyrone Dooku, he had truly become a Jedi master in every since of the word, but neither did he completely belong to the light. He stood alone, he was respected, and feared, he was loved and used as a cautionary tale. He knew that without the support of Anakin and Obi-Wan the Jedi would have never accepted him and so, he was happy to do his part, no matter how minor in bringing Mara Jade back to her family and drive a wedge between the Sith and Mara Jade Kenobi.
Tyrone Dooku had learned the hard way that the Sith brought chains and the Jedi brought freedom. A person couldn't appreciate freedom until they had been enslaved, and Tyrone Dooku had never thought that he would willingly give himself into bondage. Though the chains had been invisible, he had been a prisoner all the same.
