AN: This chapter contains references to the events of the novel 'Maul: Lockdown'.

I see your monsters,

I see your pain

– "Monsters", Katie Sky

When Eldra woke up the next morning, she couldn't sense Maul.

The dark presence that usually lingered in the apartment was absent, and after the events of the previous day, Eldra was relieved. She hadn't known how Maul was going to react to her actions; hadn't known if he was going to punish her in some form. Given that she was the Sith's captive, she'd grown morbidly used to expecting the worse, but she'd still dreaded it.

Her relief was short lived when she quickly reminded herself (and berated herself for being and idiot and forgetting) that Maul wasn't going to stay gone. In the weeks she'd been his captive, he'd left the apartment a number of times, and Venny had informed her that it was mostly to go and speak with his master. Though occasionally it was to go on hunting expeditions.

"But I cannot imagine he would bother himself with those anymore," the droid had said, "since you are now here to keep him entertained."

Eldra knew without a doubt that some kind of hunting expedition wasn't the reason he'd left. She had a dreadful thought that Maul had gone to his master to confer with him on the matter of herself; what was to be done about her after the previous day's incident. Again, she'd grown used to the sense of dread that lingered every second she was a prisoner, but Maul's sudden absence paired with what had occurred… The dread increased.

As she left her quarters to go and find something to eat, Eldra struggled to take in deep, calming breaths. When the breathing failed to help her find peace, she began to recite the Jedi Code under her breath. "There is no emotion, there is peace. There is no ignorance, there is knowledge. There is no passion, there is serenity. There is no chaos, there is harmony. There is no death, there is the Force."

The familiar words were like a balm on her soul, soothing her into a more comfortable state of mind. At the very least, she'd stopped trembling by the time she walked into the apartment's main area. She could see Venny in the kitchen, already cooking the flatcakes she'd made a habit of consuming first thing in the morning.

After taking a seat on the sofa, she picked up the apartment's shared datapad and looked up the latest holojournal. On the third day of her captivity, she'd tried using it to send a message to the Jedi Temple, only to be informed by Venny that it had been specifically programmed to prevent her from doing so by any means. The only means of communications in the apartment was Maul's commlink.

And her slave chip had been programmed to detonate if she tried using it.

Eldra stopped reading when Venny approached with her plate of flatcakes, which he placed on the small table in front of her. "Thanks," she said. "Where did Cranky Pants go?"

"Master Maul has left on an extended mission," said the droid. "He does not know when he will return. I am to attend to your needs until he comes back."

This caught Eldra's attention. An extended mission? What kind of missions did Sith need to carry out, if not to hunt Jedi? "What kind of mission?"

"That is classified."

"Shocker." Eldra let herself relax, if only slightly. If Maul was on an extended mission and unlikely to return anytime soon, then she had time to think of a way to avoid the potential punishment he had planned for her. But she wondered if Maul was even planning on punishing her for the incident in his quarters. If he was, then surely, he would have dished it out before leaving? Unless his mission was time sensitive, but even then, the most basic punishments didn't take that long.

Though regardless of whether or not he intended to punish her, she had time to herself without the worry that she was being watched by the Sith. (The droid mostly kept to himself, but she was smart enough to not drop her guard around him.) It was valuable time she needed to use wisely. Namely, to think up a potential new plan, since she was 99% sure her plan to sympathise with her enemy had backfired, even if it had led to her sympathising with him for real. But she doubted it would work again.

Eldra ate her flatcakes in silence. She was used to the quiet, because Maul wasn't much of a talker outside the training room. But she was surprised that despite the Sith's absence, the atmosphere still felt… tense.

She wouldn't miss him, she told herself. His absence would allow her room to breathe.

Many months later, she was forced to admit that she did miss him. Or at least, she missed kicking his Sith Lord butt in the training room.

It was the loneliness that came with being trapped in a single apartment with nothing but an annoying droid to keep her company. The circumstances made her long for the companionship of even her worst enemy.

Some days she was able to keep herself calm and controlled through meditation and lightsaber practise against the training droids. Other days she felt like the walls were closing in on her, and she wanted to tear her headtails out from sheer frustration. It was a small blessing she could still do some of the things that she used to do back in the Temple; the aforementioned meditation and training, she could research on the datapad, and for the first time in years she was on top of all the latest holojournal updates.

But she missed the fresh air. She missed swimming in the Room of a Thousand Fountains. And she missed meeting up with her friends.

Her thoughts constantly dwelled on her two closest friends, Obi-Wan and Siri. They'd been on an extended mission to Mandalore when Eldra and her master had left for their own mission. She wondered if they were still out there, running for their lives. She wondered if they'd returned and discovered one of their oldest friends was missing.

She wondered if both of them were even alive.

With Maul gone, it didn't take her long to start testing her boundaries. Though she knew she wouldn't be able to make an actual escape attempt, thanks to the slave chip, giving herself options would be wise in case her circumstances changed in the future. She memorised every inch of the apartment (which wasn't hard, given how long she had been there with no change to her environment) and mapped it out in her mind for weaknesses. Maul's Sith master, she found, had been very thorough in eliminating any breaches; there was no way for her to send a message or get help. The water drainage system was filtered, and the air vents were too small for her to crawl through.

The glass window that looked out over Coruscant appeared to be shatter-proof, or it was re-enforced to ridiculous degrees. She tried signalling people driving by the windows, but they never paid her any mind. It took her an embarrassingly long time to realise that the windows were made from one-way glass; she could see the outside world, but no one could see her. And since no one could hear her yelling for help, she concluded that the building was sound-proof, as well.

She tried calling out with the Force in case anyone in the Temple could sense her. Master Yoda at least would be powerful enough to hear her calls. But no one came, which had her convinced that Maul's master had used some kind of Force trick to keep them hidden from prying Force-sensitives, and prevent anyone from investigating the building. It was the only explanation she could come up with as to why the Jedi couldn't detect their oldest enemy living on the same planet as them.

With no immediate way of escape, she could do nothing but wait.

During the time she wasn't being forced to watch holodramas with Venny (which she considered a worse fate than being forced to act as a training partner for a Sith apprentice), she contemplated her captivity. She wondered if she was a bad Jedi for not trying to escape every second of the day; for cooperating with her captors.

Patience, Padawan, her master's voice reminded her. There is no shame in doing what you must to survive. You cannot always find a way out of a situation by fighting. Sometimes, you must wait for one to arise.

But as time dragged on, and no one came for her, she became resigned to the possibility of never returning to her old life in the Temple. The likelihood of being found was decreasing by the day, and her hopes of becoming a Jedi Knight were fading as well. It hit her one day that she was never going back, and watching the Coruscant sunset with tears in her eyes, she briefly mourned her old life and the Jedi she might have been, before releasing her grief into the Force.

Obi-Wan's master, Qui-Gon Jinn, always encouraged the Padawans not to focus on the past or the future, but to live in the present moment; the here-and-now, surrounded by the living Force. And that was what she needed to do. She couldn't dwell on her past nor a future that might have been. She needed to stay focussed on her current circumstances and survive.

Even if that meant making conversation with a droid that clearly hated her.

"How old are you, Venny?"

Their talks had become routine. The droid was standing in the kitchen, cooking her food, while she was sat on the sofa reading the latest holojournal. There were no mentions of what the Jedi were up to; no mentions of her disappearance. The Jedi didn't normally reveal their comings and goings to the press, but it still stung that no one outside of the Temple knew of her existence or that she'd been taken…

Venny didn't correct her on his name. He'd resigned himself to the nickname. "I do not know. My memory has been wiped a number of times. Obviously, I cannot remember how many times it was wiped. But I have no knowledge of where I came from."

"Oh. Sorry," she said. "It's a little bit like that with me. I don't know who my family were. All I know is that I was born on Ryloth and I left when I was little under a year old. I can't even remember what my parents looked like."

In that way, she supposed she was like Maul; given up to an ancient order to train in the ways of the Force, growing up devoted to a higher purpose. And, uncomfortably, she realised that like Maul, the fate had been chosen for her, and wasn't something she chose for herself.

She didn't regret it, though. And there was a huge difference between being raised to keep the peace and being warped into a killing machine.

Warped into a killing machine. The implications of that hit her suddenly, and she wanted to slap herself for not realising sooner. From what little had been taught in history lessons at the Jedi Temple, the training methods of the Sith didn't just border on torture, they were torture. During the great Jedi-Sith wars, captive Jedi were tortured to the point that they either died or turned to the dark side. And it was theorised that any children who were taken by the Sith also endured the same training.

Meaning that Maul was tortured as a child.

Her sympathy for him increased tenfold. He'd had no friends like she had, nor experienced the compassion of a caretaker. Eldra was taken by the desire to be a friend to him, to show him the compassion that had been sorely lacking in his life, but hesitated to act on it. Because there was a strong chance that Maul would reject any efforts she made to do so.

"The Jedi taking Younglings away from their families definitely does not sound cruel at all," Venny snarked.

His words pulled Eldra out of her thoughts. "Not by force; it's the choice of the families to give their children up to the Jedi," she corrected him. Though thinking on it some more, she had to admit that it was always strongly advised by the Republic that families give up their Force-sensitive children to the Jedi – advice that bordered on pressure.

If Maul had been born within the Republic, would he have been brought to the Temple? And given their similar age, would she have met him? Befriended him?

"It certainly explains your accent, though," said Venny, interrupting her thoughts again. "It is from Coruscant instead of Ryloth."

Eldra raised an eyebrow at him. "I don't even know how to respond to that random observation, so I'll just nod my head and pretend you said something interesting."

"I cannot believe I am saying this, but I miss Master Maul. At least he never talked back to me."

"Oh no, he prefers to Force-push you or cut you in half to show his irritation." Eldra rolled her eyes.

She was tempted to ask the droid about Maul. How long had he known the young Sith? Did Maul have any interests outside of fighting, hating the Jedi and killing things? She'd snooped around a few times and found that Maul didn't have much in the way of personal belongings; just clothes and other practical things.

Instead of asking, she let the droid be. He probably wouldn't remember anything useful thanks to routine memory wipes. But she couldn't help but ask herself who Maul was under the Sith exterior. Surely, he wasn't just all Sith?

And she wondered, as the months dragged on for what felt like an eternity, if Maul was even still alive.

He had to be, she decided with a shudder. If he'd died on his mission, then his master would have already come to her to make her his new apprentice.

When Maul stepped into the apartment for the first time in months, he finally allowed his guard to drop, at least to the levels it had been before he left.

For as long as he could remember, he'd been living with the constant fear that his master might dispose of him. He imagined that without this instinct engraved within him, he wouldn't have lasted long in the prison. Being forced to fight in an arena day after day, gruesomely killing anyone and anything that opposed him, had taken its toll on him in ways he didn't think possible. Diving deeper into the dark side than he'd ever been, Maul had relied on his pain to fuel his anger and hate, emotions which he'd channelled into the Force.

Showing even the slightest bit of weakness would have gotten him killed. There were times when he nearly succumbed to his opponents. But there were also times when he'd questioned his mission; times when the pain became almost unbearable and he contemplated giving up on life entirely. And in those instances, it wasn't his anger or his hate that pushed him to keep going.

It was Eldra.

At first, he thought she would be a weakness and repressed her to the deepest corners of his mind. But when he'd been cornered by a particularly difficult opponent and had exhausted all other options, he'd allowed himself to think of her; had wondered if her burning radiance would survive against his master's methods when he sought her as a new apprentice, to replace the one he had lost in the depths of this prison. And something within him had rebelled at the notion of her light being snuffed out, either by death or corruption to the darkness.

The next thing he knew, his opponent was lying dead at his feet.

Maul could sense her somewhere in the apartment, and found her presence comforting. It confused him, that she was a more powerful motivator than his anger and hatred, but he supposed that he was still using his passion, only a different kind. He felt… something for her. What that something was, he didn't know.

He could admit that he'd missed the way she fought, missed the challenge she presented every time they met in combat. He loved fighting her, and he was no longer afraid to admit it.

What shocked him was that he also missed her. Not the fight she could give him, but her presence. It was, for lack of a better word, nice to have someone to talk to other than the droid, even if she mostly just spat insults and snark at him. But he couldn't complain; he enjoyed her wit.

The whole thing was strange, and Maul wanted to hate himself for feeling this way towards her – emphasis on wanted.

Maul forced himself to move slowly as he removed his cloak. He would look a fool, if he sprinted to Eldra and insist she fight him this very instance. Added to that, the wounds he'd received during his escape hadn't fully healed, and he wanted to fight her when he was at his best. He winced when a particularly nasty cut on his arm flared up in reaction to his movements. A quick look at it through his slashed sleeve revealed that while it was no longer bleeding, it probably needed attending to. It was in his best interests to heal himself and wait before he sparred with Eldra again.

But then patience wasn't his strong point, as his master always told him.

"Good. You have returned."

The young Sith instantly drew his lightsaber and spun around, ready to fight for his life.

He relaxed when he saw that it was only the droid. Putting his lightsaber away and ignoring the further inflammation of the cut on his arm, he said, "It would be unwise to approach me in such a manner, droid."

It didn't respond to his threat. The droid actually looked relieved to see him. "Please take your Jedi off my hands before I deactivate myself."

Your Jedi. The words felt right and pleasing, and Maul had a sudden urge to tell Eldra herself that she was his Jedi. MY Jedi. It was disturbing, not least because it was already clear to her that she was basically his anyway. She didn't need him to tell her.

He suppressed the urge, passed the droid without a word and went to seek out his Jedi.