Darth Tepes flung open the door with a resounding crash. "Eliry!"
"Down here, my sveet," her voice crooned.
His boots rang on the metal walkway, raised half a meter above the filthy floor he kept carefully to the center. The stench and the screams had long ago ceased to bother him, but he could never get used to the bony, scabrous claws that shot from between the bars to clutch at him as he went by.
"Back!" Torek Roth, a burly man in the scarlet livery of Eliry's personal guard, thrust a pronged stick at the sea of haggard prisoners. Energy arced from the end, eliciting a shriek and causing the rest to shrink back.
Their eyes glinted murderously as they watched Tepes pass. He drew his crimson-edged black cape closely around him as the passage narrowed and began its sloping descent.
He found Eliry at the bottom, a slender figure gowned in clinging red, with a tumbling mass of white hair that fell to the backs of her knees. Her skin was as winter-blue as his own. Her eyes, avidly observing the scene before her, were orbs of opaque blackness. Two other guards had just finished securing a gaunt man to a metal frame in the shape of an X.
The man struggled feebly against the bonds that held his wrists and ankles. He raised his terrified gaze to Eliry. "Please, Mistress! Be merciful!"
"Oh, but this is merciful," Eliry replied, giving him a reassuring smile filled with tiny needle-teeth. "You're already dyink. Those sores vill only spread, riddlink you vith infection. The flesh vill rot avay until your bones are exposed, and even then you'd linger. This is much kvicker, believe me."
"I wish to live! I beg you! Let me live!"
"But there is no cure." She raised her hand, rings sparkling on three of the six elongated fingers, the sheen of the enamel that coated her curving nails catching rainbows in the dim light.
The guards responded to her signal and rotated the frame on the wheel to which it was affixed. The man wailed piteously as his legs went up and his head pointed down.
Tepes moved closer to inspect the prisoner. A Prhei, distant kin to the elite race that ruled this world. The only outward differences were in the skin -- pinkish, and in the case of the plague-ridden, blotched along the limbs with oozing crescent-shaped splits -- and the extremities, lacking the sixth finger and toe.
The chamber around them was circular, soaring nine levels high to a domed roof. The walls were lined with cages and catwalks, every cage filled beyond capacity.
Tepes stood alongside Eliry, bending to nip at her smooth shoulder. His teeth left a dozen pinpricks. "Good evenink, cousin-vife."
"How vent your day, my sveet?"
He scowled. "As I feared."
"He does not appreciate you."
She turned as one of her maidens brought her a flat bronze box, and picked daintily through the implements within until she'd found the one she sought. It was a hollow crystal cylinder the width of her smallest finger, one end tapering to a curved blade. The man on the frame writhed with renewed vigor as he saw it. He tried to lash his head side to side, but it was held firmly in place by clamps. He tried to raise his shoulders to his ears, also to no avail.
"There is vun ray of hope," Tepes said, stepping back to give her room to work. "He's granted me leave to pursue our plan."
"Has he?" She affixed the blunt end of the crystal cylinder to a length of flexible tubing that fed into the top of a squat, accordion-sided droid.
The din in the dungeon increased tenfold as the prisoners began to shout. Pleas, threats, and savage glee mingled into a roar. Eliry motioned to the guards. One of them threw a lever, and the frame rose until the man's head was suspended at chest-height. The other trundled the box closer.
"I'll need your help," Tepes continued. "Your expertise. And ve'll haff to re-fit a droid or two."
"You'll have vatever you need." She felt for the man's pulse. "Poundink vith fear. Perfect."
"No, Mistress, no, please, for the love of mercy, please!"
Shh, now," she said kindly. "It von't hurt a bit." With that, she placed the tip of the crystal cylinder against the artery in his neck. One swift push sliced deep, embedding the crystal. Not so much as a drop stained his skin. Rich crimson fluid gushed into the tubing. The man's mouth gaped in a soundless scream as he felt his life's blood pouring from him.
"Nicely done," Tepes said. "Your touch is so light, so skilled!"
"I learned from the best, my sveet," she said, favoring him with a loving smile. "Vould you care to cut the vein?"
"As you vish." He plucked a razor from the box the maiden held, and flicked it in one sure movement. The resultant flood ran along channels in the metal floor and vanished through a grate. The sides of the droid began to bellows in and out, sucking the bright arterial blood with such speed that the man's vessels collapsed. Beneath the grime, his skin went pallid except for his face, which remained reddened. The droid whirred and hummed. A glass bubble bulging from its top began to moisten with condensation.
"This is so much tidier," Eliry remarked, crouching to adjust the droid's controls. "Ven I think of how our ancestors lived, it appalls me. Can you imagine havink to do it ourselves?"
"And havink to ingest so much," he agreed, wrinkling his nose. "Eight to tvelve hours comatose in digestion, and all to filter out the little bit ve needed."
"Yes, I much prefer this." She peered into the clouded glass bubble, where yellowish-clear droplets were forming.
"Vy do you extract them down here?" Tepes asked. "The lab is kvieter, and certainly cleaner!"
"Ah, but it's not as much fun, is it?" Eliry waved to the rest of the prisoners, beaming as they cringed and stumbled over themselves in an effort to avoid meeting her eyes, lest she choose her next victim that way. "I find their fear nearly as invigoratink as the gift they give. It'll be interestink to see if ve can bestir similar fear in the Jedi."
XXX
He opened the door as she neared the landing. Light streamed around him, shining on his golden light-brown hair, while she remained in the shadows of the curved stairwell. Light and dark ... good and evil? Halves of the same whole, sides of the same coin? Or just themselves? Two souls drawn together by Force or fate or nothing more than random chance?
Sabeeth ascended another step. She couldn't see his face, needed desperately to read his expression because his thoughts were carefully closed. So much that needed to be said, so many words hanging unspoken in the air between them. The two years they'd been apart stretched out like a lifetime.
Rather than try to voice her feelings, she slowly extended her hand. As she did so, she dropped the mental barriers he'd taught her to create. Hopes and fears, regrets and remembrances, all there for him to read, if he wished.
Obi-Wan stepped down to meet her, reaching out. Their fingertips touched, their palms pressed together. The violet warmth and wispy smoke of the Soulfire gloved their enfolded fingers.
"I've come," she said softly. "I know we decided it was better that wee didn't see each other ... but I couldn't stay away."
"I know you didn't want to leave. I never wanted that ether. But..."
"The Council." Her voice was sombre, almost cold.
He felt her mental barriers go up as she let go of his hand, and she shut him out, but not before he could sense her fear of rejection. He could see in her eyes how close she was to turn around and run away.
"Sabeeth... please, stay."
She lifted her head and her emerald eyes drowned in his clear blue.
"I have missed you," he said, dropping his barriers and inviting her inside his mind and heart. "Even though we've talked over the com-link I have missed you ..." The way your skin feels beneath my fingers, my mouth... The way your eyes sparkle when you smile...
"I've missed you too", she whispered. I was afraid you didn't want to see me...
He took her in his arms. "I've dreamed of this." His eyes never leaving hers.
"But I'm still--"
"Evil?" He arched a brow. "Do not sell yourself short, Sabeeth. You have much good in you too..." He caressed the line of her jaw with his lips.
Her eyes drifted closed. "Yet your Council won't see me as something other than a danger. Just like Ani?"
"What do you mean?"
"They're worried about the threat Anakin may pose that they refuse to see the person he is. If he does become dangerous, Obi-Wan, it'll be because they drove him to it. Don't you think I know what it must be like for him? If, no matter what I do, they'll denounce me as evil ... why, what a temptation to have the game as well as the name!"
"Or prove them wrong."
"Would it work?" she asked, hearing her own bleak hopelessness.
"Even Jedi can be wrong. I was."
She opened her eyes and looked at him. "When?"
"When I let you leave."
Her inexpert mental foray searched his thoughts, finding no barriers and the truth of how much he'd missed her ... nearly as much as she'd missed him.
"What will we do?" she moaned. "Not allowed to be together, can't bear to be apart."
"Trust our feelings," he said.
"The Council --"
"They're not here." He pressed his lips to hers. She returned the kiss feverishly, giving in to the yearning passion she no longer wanted to control. His hands that pulled her even closer to him, was at once burning and tender, needing and giving.
Her senses seemed all to meld into one, so that she experienced each sensation in a multitude of ways. The feel of his muscles beneath the tunic as she gripped his shoulders came to her as a taste, alluring and sweet. His scent, spicy and salty and entirely his own seamed to whisper secrets, a delicious torment. The sound of his low sigh sent cool blue flames flickering in the darkness of her mind.
"Take me to bed," she murmured against his mouth.
Somehow, they were in his room without seeming to climb the rest of the stairs or break from their embrace. He swept a hand at the door and missed, but it slammed shut all the same.
The years of separation crashed heavily down on her. So many desolate lonely nights in the cold depths of space ... the hours seeming endless, the memories bittersweet torture impossible to resist.
With a breathy little growl, she fell back across the bed and pulled him with her. Old fears at being pinned beneath the weight of a man were long gone thanks to his gentle patience during their few precious days together.
Urgency blazed in their reunion. They both understood that there would be time later for languid and loving explorations; this time they'd been too long denied.
It was all Sabeeth could do to wait until they'd both shed their clothing, a testament to her willpower that she didn't use what meager mastery of the Force she possessed to just shred them from his body the better to get at the smooth warmth of his skin. Cream-colored Jedi garb and her own basic black garments made a hasty pile on the floor.
"Oh, yes, now," she gasped. Her mind was already open to him; now the rest of her was as well, and it was never invasion but a welcome sharing, holding nothing back, taking what was freely given.
She felt as if she was formed of living crystal, dark glass with a heart of amethyst radiance that glowed brighter and brighter still, illuminating her from within.
He said her name again and again as they moved together, steady but quickening toward a conclusion just shy of frantic.
As that moment drew near, he lowered his head to hers, and pressed their foreheads together, eyes tightly closed but each of them still seeing the other as clear as could be.
Their bodies shuddered in one shared exquisite release, souls seamlessly joined for that eternally brief instant, just as two candle flames brought to touch would flow into each other, impossible to tell where one began and the other ended.
The next thing Sabeeth was aware of was the soft brush of his lips, and the realization that in the intensity of her response she had wept without knowing she did so. Obi-Wan gently kissed away the tears, stroking her hair and cheek.
She raised one hand to trace her fingertips along his face, marvelling at what she saw not only with her eyes but with the sight of her mind.
There were still unspoken words between them, but it didn't matter anymore ... even if they were never quite able to say them, they both already knew.