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Narglatch in Shaak's Clothing Chapter 11
63 BBY
Their next mission brings them to a planet besieged with sink holes, some more than kilometers wide, and growing in number every day. Dooku has been here before, with Qui-Gon many years ago, and since then the planet's core has begun to destabilize from deep-surface mining and plasma removal. The death toll from the abrupt collapses has grown into the thousands. Dooku and Palpatine meet with the planet's monarch and ruling council, all of whom wring their hands in desperation and plead for Republic assistance in stabilizing the core.
The planet is beyond Republican jurisdiction, Dooku informs them, feeling their helpless frustration. He shares in it. Nothing should be beyond the power of the Republic, otherwise what is the point of prolonging such an inefficient system? He assures them that he will alert the Republic. Relief will be coming soon from other planets for the refugees and afflicted.
A surface solution for a broken system: what the Republic does best.
Palpatine strides along beside him now through the capital city, watching the broken tiles of the streets and the half-collapsed wrecks of once-residential homes. Only scavengers and the desperately poor now lurk in once-rich sections of the capital.
"Master," he ventures to say at last. "How did they let it come to this?"
"What do you mean, Padawan?"
The young man, nineteen and filling out more with lean muscle and grace every year, neatly sidesteps a small alien beggar. "Their planet wouldn't be in danger if they had managed their resources effectively."
Dooku barks a harsh laugh. "Hindsight is clearer than foresight, Padawan, in every case except perhaps your own."
Ignoring the gentle barb about his visions, Palpatine stops and folds his arms across his narrow chest, a faint scowl passing over his brow. "They brought it upon themselves, Master."
"We are not judging these people, Sheev," Dooku stops as well in the center of the street. No traffic exists to pose a hazard to them. "What's done is done. Allow yourself to feel compassion for the innocents who must endure while the wealthy have long since fled the surface."
"They could have stopped it," Palpatine insists. Something about this mission has snared him, fired something deep in him. "They are far more numerous than the ruling elite, but they allowed themselves to be fooled and led like a herd of shaak."
Dooku raises both eyebrows. "You are feeling generous today, Padawan."
Palpatine should recognize it for the soft warning it is, but he fails to do so, caught up in his thoughts. "I have difficulty feeling sorry for them, Master."
"You have difficulty feeling sorry for anyone." The words slip from Dooku's mouth before he can stop them, and they stare at each other for a long moment. "My Padawan, that was not meant the way it sounded." It is as close to an apology as Dooku will ever come.
Palpatine's eyes narrow, and he sighs. "You are right, Master. I was wrong."
Sometimes the way he gives in so quickly is suspicious, but Dooku can find no fault in his apprentice when he gently brushes the bond between them. Palpatine is as contrite as he ever is. And today, Dooku senses an unusual desire to please.
They continue to walk in silence, until a deep shout sounds from the depths of a partially collapsed apartment complex, and a massive alien bursts from the shadows. "Master Dooku of the Jedi! Too long! Too long!"
Dooku stares, feeling his padawan tighten behind him and reach for his saber. "Stand down," he tells Palpatine when he recognizes the long equine face.
"Fot'rut, it has been some time indeed," he greets the approaching hulk. Fot'rut was the host for Dooku and Qui-Gon when they visited many years past, and the alien has changed little in that time but to grow a little fatter. "How are you faring?"
"Not so good, yes?" Fot'rut rumbles a laugh. "Look around! Look around! How you think I'm faring?"
"Why haven't you left?" Dooku asks, genuinely confused. Fot'rut is wealthy and intelligent, for one of his species. Why does he choose to linger in such deadly places?
"Passed my wife into the next world, abandoned me my children," Fot'rut shrugs. "Home this! I am old, so coffin this."
Ah, he has nothing left to live for. Dooku feels a twinge of pity for the old alien, but the choice is clearly made, and he chooses not to combat it. "I am sorry to see your planet in this state, Fot'rut. It wasn't so the last time I was here."
"Neither was that!" Fot'rut jerks his long nose up at Palpatine, who is standing slightly behind Dooku, curiously eying the relic from Dooku's past. "Where's the boy?"
"This is Sheev Palpatine, my padawan learner," Dooku waves him forward, and Palpatine bows with perfect manners, his expression entirely blank now.
"Not your one," Fot'rut tilts his shaggy head. "One you glowed to see."
Not right now, Dooku winces. Not in front of him. But the alien's words bring Qui-Gon's bright blue eyes to his mind, his winning smile and strong hands. The yearning to see him again, just one more time, and maybe even apologize, surges with a strength not felt in years. It surprises him, because he thought he had come to terms with the boy's death.
The wound tears cleanly open again, the scab rubbed raw.
Palpatine stands rigidly, his own pale eyes fixed on his master, a question in the way he stands and waits for instructions. In this moment, he does not reach for their bond, perhaps afraid of what he will find.
Dooku does not blame him. Palpatine is ice, and Qui-Gon was fire. They should be incomparable. Should be.
Fot'rut seems to intuit that he has caused trouble. Stepping back, he shrugs and bows to Palpatine. "This new one, he is something too! Don't go losing him, yes?"
Dooku scrambles for damage control, but he knows Sheev is a delicate creature, easily offended and hard to entice once wary. "I have no plans for any such thing, Fot'rut. Please excuse us, we must return to our mission at hand. Come, Padawan."
Palpatine hesitates, gazing after the retreating back of the alien before he turns and falls back into step with his master.
The silence is worse than before, but Dooku cringes inwardly when Palpatine breaks it, a curiously hard note in his silky tones. "What was he like, Master? Qui-Gon Jinn?"
"I hardly think this is the best time to talk about it!" Dooku snaps, inexplicably nervous and agitated, and he swipes a cold hand through his beard in an attempt to settle himself.
"I heard some of the other padawans say he was a very good fighter and philosopher." Palpatine pauses, his voice softening. "I think I would have liked to have met him."
Dooku slams to a stop in the middle of the street and turns sharply. "Qui-Gon always knew when to ask questions and when to stay silent. Take a page from his book, Padawan."
Palpatine stares. No reaction but the tiniest flicker in the Force, the bond shivering. "As you wish, Master."
True to his word, he makes no other sound the entire way through the city.
Dooku knows he should not have snapped. It was not a Jedi thing to do, but this place brings back far too many memories, of tragic loss that he cannot push it all away. Why did the Council pick him for this mission?
When they reach the Collapsing Zone, the scene is chaotic. Wounded and dead lie scattered here and there between dozens of medics and soldiers screaming for attention. Palpatine launches into action, disappearing into one of the apartment complexes on the edge of a gaping sink hole. Ignoring the thump of his heart, Dooku moves away toward the desperate cries of trapped civilians. He passes himself and his padawan into the arms of the Force and moves with single-minded purpose.
For nearly an hour they work, rescuing hundreds from the surrounding buildings and gathered rubble. Palpatine seems to avoid Dooku, going where the master does not, throwing himself into the most dangerous locations and reappearing with frightened, living victims. He is working far overhead, in an apartment complex that is dissolving, piece by piece under its own weight, when Dooku hears a terrified cry close by.
"Please don't let my father die!" the little girl screams, her long face contorting in horror as the apartment complex begins to snap apart at newly forming seams. Dooku scoops her up and holds her back, for she will run straight into her death, he can feel it.
Seven floors above them, Palpatine hesitates on the edge, the floor cracking under his boots. His pale eyes, almost glowing, meet Dooku's. Get out of there! The master sends across the bond.
A faint smile.
Is it the girl or Dooku who cries out when the slight figure vanishes from sight?
Is it both?
Is it neither?
With the Force roaring in his ears, Dooku cannot tell. A Jedi shall not know fear, he repeats, over and over, sending his calm into the trembling girl as a large portion of the building sheers away and drops into the widening chasm.
"Papa…" she whimpers.
Sheev. Will this planet forever hold the ghostly bones of his apprentices? Is he destined to forever watch helplessly as his charges plunge out of sight and life? I've grown too attached again. Will I never learn?
A rousing cheer from the watchers around them catches his attention, and he sees a figure struggling up the broken incline of the collapsing floor, seven stories overhead, a limp body on his shoulders. The building shrieks with indignant fury and bucks up before falling. Palpatine thrusts the man away from him with desperate strength and the Force, the body landing on the solid surface now over three meters distant. His eyes fixed on his padawan, Dooku's throat goes dry when Palpatine tries to make the leap himself and fails. A wooden beam, jerked from its supports, swings out and catches him in the left shoulder, pinwheeling him back into the collapsing debris.
The crowd screams.
A cable slithers out and sinks into the solid part of the apartment complex, and when the rubble slides away, Palpatine is there, dangling on the end of the wire, bloody and exhausted, barely conscious. And alive.
When Dooku pulls him gently down and studies the arm and shoulder – at least three broken locations – he almost chides his padawan. Instead, he bites his lip and asks, "Why?"
"It had to be done," Palpatine shrugs, wincing when the temporary splint is pulled tight.
In this at least, Dooku realizes with chilling foreboding, he is a perfect Jedi. When Dooku was bemoaning his fate, his padawan did what needed to be done.
He mulls guiltily over the afternoon's events long into the evening, after Palpatine receives his bacta cast, even after they have retired to the expensive skylift, a gift of gratitude from the king.
Dooku finds Palpatine in the refresher unit, awkwardly pulling out over a dozen small splinters from his left hand. The cast makes it difficult for him. Dooku watches his apprentice work in silence, his face never changing even as the hand grows bloody with his efforts. Finally, he steps in, easing the tool out of the white-knuckled hand and taking the bloody one in his own. "Padawan, why don't you simply use the Force?"
"It seems flippant for such small matters." Palpatine does not look up at him. "I am tired."
It is an unusual admission. Dooku clears his throat. "Your well-being is not a small matter to me, Sheev."
Palpatine looks up.
"You… You did well today. Your quick decisions and actions saved the lives of hundreds."
There is a tiny flash of something – Appreciation? Happiness? – and Palpatine starts to say something before he stops and looks down again. "I am honored, Master."
"I wonder, though," Dooku swallows, does not really know how to approach this. He is the master, and he is supposed to clarify, to guide. Palpatine's actions must be properly motivated.
So he bites the proverbial blaster bolt and asks, "Did you save the girl's father out of compassion or out of a desire to please me?" Dooku takes the young man's chin in hand and turns his face up. Palpatine's eyes gleam with faint irritation.
And something else.
Confusion?
Fascinated in spite of his own anger and guilt over the memory of Qui-Gon, Dooku presses him, "Did you feel her pain when you agreed to help her? Did you understand what it meant to her? Was it compassion that moved you? Or was there another reason?"
Palpatine licks his lips nervously. "Master, I don't understand…"
He looks deep into the bond, convinced now that Palpatine is hiding something. The padawan flinches under his harsh perusal. "You were trying to impress me," Dooku realizes and fights the anger in his chest. He releases the padawan and turns away. "You were trying to compete against a dead boy, someone you fear I will always hold dear, dearer than you."
Behind him, Palpatine has gone completely tense and silent.
Dooku knows he must be freed of this notion, and he knows no other way to do it than hard and fast. He will not drag this out. "You are a fine apprentice, Sheev. Perhaps the finest there is to be found. But there is no place in a Jedi's life for attachments of the sort you are seeking. I have moved past Qui-Gon Jinn. You must as well. Our bond is already forged. You must learn to be content."
No answer for the longest moment, and he doesn't dare to turn around until he is convinced his shields are steady. He turns to find the small room empty.
As empty as himself.
Dooku buries his face in his hands with a deep sigh.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
"Young narglatches make cute pets, but invariably cause problems once they begin to grow." – The Wildlife of Star Wars: A Field Guide
Dooku and Palpatine: Why do you do this to each other? Stubborn rascals that they are. Seriously, Dooku, get over your old apprentice for the sake of your new one. No one likes competing against a rosy memory.
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