The orders are simple, but then, they always are. Lord Vader has discovered a Jedi cringing on a remote, out-of-the-way world where prying eyes and austere white armor are nowhere to be found. This one happens to be called Ruusan. That black grille in Vader's helmet clenches on the name, squeezing it like the dark lord does all other things, as though it has some kind of significance. She and the other Inquisitors used to share confused glances and odd ebbs in the Force when they were assigned somewhere they had never heard of; quickly, they learned not to when Vader's black glove had ended the life of the last Inquisitor to be so obvious in their ignorance. No, this will be a planet like all the others, a Jedi like all the others, and whether or not the unknowable creature standing before her recognizes the name makes no difference to her. It is of no consequence and no importance and no gravity.
The orders are simple. They always are.
Her quarters in the Inquisitorius Headquarters buzz, though not with the usual, everpresent hum of speeders and Imperial troop carriers, nor with the low groan of Coruscant's underbelly, where billions of beings languish in anguish and feed the dark side energy that wells up through the skyscraper's foundations. The Force crackles in the room, its niggling in her skull growing more and more insistent the more she tried to ignore it. Folding her robes and settling on her berth do nothing to change it. Neither does shrugging on her black bodyglove and plastoid plates of armor emblazoned with the Empire's sigil. Even a few customary hours of lightsaber training only serves to make the press upon her conscious mind more intense.
There is something moving here. An urgent undercurrent in the net of energy. The day wears on, Coruscant's sun sinking beneath its uneven, pillared horizon, and for all of that time she tries to fight it out of pure instinct. Later, deep within Headquarters, against every fiber of her being that tells her that this truly is a bad idea, she listens to it.
Fears fills her as she lets the Force unveil what it will. If Lord Vader senses this betrayal of the dark, this taboo prick of the light on her soul . . . But then, fear is of the dark, isn't it? That is the dark lord's favorite and first lesson, one of the corest beliefs of the Emperor himself, if the written works the Inquisitors were made to memorize meant anything at all.
She uses that, then, let it power her exploration. The foray shows her things. A human man and woman, one blonde and the other raven-haired, cut down by blaster bolts as jagged and furious as the fault lines through the Force that connected her to them. A short man with clipped, dark hair and eyes the color of newborn stars. Blue and green plasma belches to life in his hands, and he flies at a monstrous darkness with all the speed and fury of a Nexu predator. Across his face flashes a spill of red. Those brilliant azure eyes go wide.
Then, the Force's gifts cease. Suddenly exhausted, she slumps back in her chair overlooking the empty, toxic spread of the Works, one of the oldest of Coruscant's industrial wastelands and certainly the most inhospitable. Her sensibilities through the Force go a similar way; collapsing halfway up the peak on her journey towards the light, her tired mind rolls down, down, down into a caustic sea of midnight flames.
Down into the dark side.
She tosses black hair over her shoulder and drapes a scarf of blood-red armorweave over her neck when mental exertion causes the skin to sweat. The cloth was the only possession she's ever had that the Empire or Lord Vader haven't given to her. Its origin remains unknown. Once, she had wondered aloud why they hadn't taken it from her, as is done with anything the Inquisitors seek that isn't lashed to the Empire in some way. Vader had rounded on her, a mountain in the durasteel hallway they had been walking. For a split second, she had wondered if he meant to kill her right there, reach out with the Force and snuff her life out like she's seen him do so simply so many times. Instead, it was only the bulk of his hand that plucked the cloth from her neck and held it up to the transparasteel goggles of his helmet.
"Do you consider this a part of yourself?" Vader had rumbled, voice filling the hall.
"Yes, My Lord."
"And what is it that the dark side exalts?"
"The self, My Lord."
"To mindlessly strip ourselves of our own personas, to be lackies in that way; this is what those we hunt desire." He'd thrown the scarf back at her feet and turned away from her on gigantic boots. "We are not Jedi, Inquisitor."
She tries to fill her mind with that idea, with anger and paranoia and flagrant narcissism. Anything that might be able to banish the visions and make her forget she saw them. They stick to her, even after she channels her rage into shards of Force lightning that fountain from her fingers and singe the ceiling. The energy, her hate, her will, all of it pours over her. Still, the blue-eyed man remains undrowned. If anything, she's making his outline in her memory stronger, more clearly-defined.
Between the bolts, he looks at her, face still doused in red despite the blue aura she casts over the room.
"Mikasa."
She lies awake for a long time that night, troubled.