A/N: w00t!

Chapter Twenty-One:

Time passed, and gradually, Maul's strength returned. He spoke very little of his new deficiency, but retained his contentious disposition as soon as he was able. Insisting on being allowed a chance to walk, and stand out on the balcony was something he requested at every available moment, even though his body was far from ready to do so. Anamaria good-naturedly refused him this simple want.

"It's still winter. You'll catch cold. If you were spotted by a Jedi, all hell would break loose. You need to wait for your leg to heal. If you tried to move too much, your stitches would come apart." Were just a few of the excuses she laid on thickly as he grew more cantankerous each day.

Most of the Order had since heard of Vespasian's untimely death by this point in time. Yoda had quickly slapped up a story worthy of a Nobel prize, explaining that he had died valiantly, trying to protect his padawan and fellow shipmates; and with so much detail did he recount the tragedy that no one questioned the fact that Anamaria had survived Raphael's horrifying dungeons without help. Likewise, Shegorad had been quickly dealt with. This was completely true. The vicious woman had been towed off to a secure prison, awaiting an obvious death sentence. No one denied that the story was real.

Nevertheless, Anamaria knew that her secret would not be spared for long. Once Maul was able to properly get himself around, he would have to face the Jedi council for interrogation. The girl hoped beyond hope that, despite his midoings in the past, his selfless forfeiture would counter the blood and sin. It was unheard of for a Sith to do such an altruistic deed, and it just might have been enough to spare him exile.

Finally, three months after escaping his compact hell, Maul's three-hundred-odd stitches were removed one by one. Anamaria herself was the one who took them out. She smiled as she did so, certain that her friend would no longer be so lenient when it came to her refusing him the dignity of walking by himself. On the contrary, she was quite prepared to let him do so, but not without her help.

"You're taking out my stitches," He growled indignantly as she pulled, "Not ripping the lid off a damn pickle jar..."

Anamaria bit her lip momentarily as all of her concentration was limited to removing the white thread weaving in and out of his black flesh. His thin body rocked slightly with each tug of her careful hands, and he remained patiently sitting, despite her gawky attempts at such a professional task.

"Sorry..." She muttered as the last one slid out gracefully, "I've not had much experience with medical procedures."

Maul turned slightly to where her voice had come from, and his nonexistent brows knotted together slightly.

"That much," He said, "is obvious."

For one moment, Anamaria was glad that he could not see his body. Scars littered his velvet flesh in spaces of no less than two inches apart, covering every portion of his body that would be covered, thankfully, by clothing. She took his clawed hand in her own, and laid it upon a pile of laundry.

"Do you need help dressing?"

A cold scowl at the lamp two feet next to her was the apparent answer.

Anamaria conceded, and left the room, standing outside the doorway to brood.

They really had come so far. Four months ago, he was an unrecognizable mass of multi-colored flesh and bone, barely able to defend himself from a dandelion seed, and now he was gaining his fit appearance back (not to mention a rather handsome one), and nearly at a clean bill of health. He could do everything he could before Gattaca, except walk, as his leg was still healing from the abuse it took.

She smiled. There was an unopened package on her kitchen table. Without even thinking, her fingers were skimming the rustic brown wrapping paper, knowing already who had sent it. For that, she was glad. It was considered a definite bonus when Master Yoda was on your side of the playing field.

The package he had sent was long; carefully stuck together in way that only a professional could have accomplished. There was a memory disc lying beside it.

Anamaria removed her holographic indicator, and set the cylindrical object at its base. The screen came to life in a projector, and she proceeded to read the note which had been left there. To her shock, however, it had not been left by master Yoda.

"Heard the story, and knew something was up..." She read softly, "Forced the info out of Obi-Wan after threatening to tell Mace that he'd been going to bars on weekends... Almost didn't believe it until I saw Shegorad's trial last month... so sorry to hear about Vespasian..." Anamaria stopped momentarily to smile. She knew where this was going. "Don't worry about anything... Sha and I haven't told anyone, and we support you all the way... The present's for your roommate... hope you'll come to see us soon...

"With every scrap of love we possess: Ginsa and Shaeden."

The screen faded out. Anamaria put her head on the table, and stifled a fit of laughing. Of course they would have found out. When did they NOT know everything about her?

Ginsa and Shaeden: Two fellow Padawans, and her friends throughout many trying years. Ginsa was a well-built girl, with a temper as volatile, and red as her hair. She was two years older than Anamaria, and nearly ready to participate in the trying exam which would decide her fate as a Jedi.

Shaeden was a quiet, brooding boy with eyes almost as intense as Maul's. He, too, had lost his Master earlier on in training, after trying to take down a band of rogue raiders on Tatooine. They had tortured both of them, and the seventeen-year-old never once spoke about his encounter on the lone desert planet, though he did bear a rather large scar across his pale face.

Anamaria sighed, and touched the package again. It was Maul's, but why would he care if she opened it? He wouldn't even be able to see it.

Lazily, she blinked her eyes, and the force began to unravel the taped brown paper like invisible fingers. At the end there was a small portion of what looked like silver plating, shimmering decisively against the stark fluorescent white of her kitchen. The paper continued to lift, and tear at various intervals, revealing more and more of what seemed to be a stick of sorts. Curious, the girl abandoned the quality with which she had since opened the package with, and opened it with her own hands.

She smiled.

Darth Maul sat in a transfixed musing, quietly striving to conclude what he had decidedly avoided since the beginning of his long recovery. Since he had allowed himself to be touched by caring hands for the first time in his life. Since he discovered that he was capable of feeling...

And he could not see her anymore.

Sidious had taken what he knew would eventually drive his apprentice into madness. He had taken his eyes- his outlets... his voice. Those two orbs which he had depended upon for so long to express what he was feeling.

If ever there was a definition for irony, that would be it.

Anamaria entered the guest room with her comrade's present, still smiling with happiness. She couldn't wait to see his reaction when he finally realized what it was.

"Kalaskein?" She stood in the doorway. He did not acknowledge her presence.

The girl stood silently, waiting to see if he even noticed she was there. He didn't. He just sat very still on the edge of the bed, his back to her; so quiet and motionless that he resembled nothing more than a bizarre lawn ornament.

"Kalaskein?" She tried again. This time, he made a small movement, and lifted his head somewhat. Anamaria went beside him.

"Look. Somebody left you a get-well-soon present." His brows knotted together in confusion, but before he could voice any sort of resentment, she took his slender wrist and laid it gently on the welcoming gift.

Maul did not move for a moment. His eyes tried to focus on where his hand lay, but he could not see it, and it frustrated him.

"What is it...?" He asked quietly, trying to keep his voice even.

"Don't try to picture something by the way someone else describes it." The girl answered simply. She took his hand, and ran it over the smooth edge.

"Feel."

Maul's face softened slightly, and slight stress lines appeared on his forehead as his hand continued moving over the strange cylindrical object. A round, welded metal tip met at the bottom, and he wondered briefly if they had sent him a giant toothpick just to spite him.

'No...' he told himself quickly, 'if it was, then she wouldn't have given it to me.'

Again, his hand traveled up the length of the gift, trying to picture it in his mind's eye. He saw a stick. He saw a mahogany stick with a silver metal plate at the very end, and felt reliefs in the neck as his fingers brushed its dipping edge. When he got to the top, he felt more cold silver, and his fingers twitched momentarily at the sudden change in temperature.

The head was rotund. It peaked suddenly at different intervals, and felt sharp in some places. There were many depressions in its design, all of them leading to a thin pit that cascaded directly up onto another smooth plate... like... like...

Petals...

His hand moved to the central core, and he felt the tinier pieces of the flower connecting into the deepest depression yet, and he knew at that moment that what he was feeling was a rose.

A rose he had seen once in his life, on Dagobah in a marsh pit somewhere near one of the deadlier regions of the planet. It was just sitting there, wedged between several rocks, and rising to the murky sky in ruby ecstacy. Roses were terribly rare. They were rumored to grow only on one planet in a galaxy far, far away, and it was unheard of for such a divine flower to enter the path of a wandering traveler. Maul was in shock that such beauty could flourish in such desolate, wasteful ugliness, much less survive between a couple of rocks, and he swore he stared at it for five hours straight, memorizing every detail of its velvet petals.

"I don't remember her face much." He said very quietly. Anamaria's stare bored through the permanent darkness.

"But... I always imagined that it was as soft as a rose... velveteen..." His elegant hand closed around the head of his new walking stick.

He smiled.

"Sort of like you."

They sat there in silence for a long time. Thought-provoking quiet blanketed the room like an unseen censer, breathing a noise with a calm that was unfamiliar to both of them. It ended when the Sith; sightless, yet with the vision of a reborn life that was his to master alone, stood and took his first rejuvenated steps to a balcony he would never see in his life. Something of an ethic that he had created himself; the pride of knowing his this darkness was his, and something that he would treasure for the rest of his days.

He smiled then, and didn't stop smiling until Anamaria took hold of his arm, and asked if he needed a doctor.

A/N: Hm. I figured I'd end the entire story here, and leave you guys to formulate your own plots for what happens next. Meh. Depends on what everyone thinks. DAMN YOU, REVIEW ME, AND GO LOOK AT MY HOMEPAGE ON MY USER PAGE!

Also: DarthRokdhotnez- Yes, I understand that Darth maul is not a Quinya, but I had assumed that the people at Star Wars were too lazy to actually make a backround for him, so I made my own. It wasn't until later, though, when I actually went to the website, that I discovered he was a Zabrak. ; Silly me.

GOODBYE ALL! MAY THE FORCE BE WITH YOU!