Chapter 7
As I traversed the first spaceport I visited after leaving Korriban, I was struck by how it felt to walk among the people. I had such freedom; I could be anyone I chose, do anything I wished, and no one would care or could stop me. It was by my whim alone that the scurrying beings around me survived another breath; certainly they could not have compelled me to pay for docking if it did not please me to remain anonymous. I was not without the consequences of my actions, but in abandoning the position of Headmistress of the Academy, in abandoning superficial titles and responsibilities that no longer served my goals, I was free to pursue that which had first driven me to become Sith. Now nothing would stand in my way.
--The Holocron of Yuthura Ban, a treasure of the Korriban Sith Academy
"Quorian!" He was kneeling, meditating as usual, when I arrived. I glanced around; the Jedi was in a back corner, and none of the nearby cages were occupied, but I lowered my voice anyways. "I got them." I held out my satchel so he could peer inside.
"It's all here," he murmured. "You're going through with it! With all this, once the guards change shifts, I think I can make it out of the academy."
"You're gonna fight your way out with your hand in that state?" I asked. "You are left-handed, I assume?" He shifted uneasily.
"You've already done enough," he said. "The force is my ally. I will succeed."
"Don't bother; I already figured out how to get you out," I said. "Tomorrow morning, before the droids come to drug you, you'll take this." I held up a vial. "It's native to Korriban, and it puts you into a coma. Your vitals will be almost nonexistent, so the droid will think you've died. It'll automatically take your body outside to be disposed of, and I'll be waiting there to give you the antidote. You won't have to fight, you can just slip away."
"Are you sure you want to risk that?" he asked. "I can try to escape on my own."
"At this point, I've done enough that if they catch you, we're both dead," I said practically. I glanced around again, but we were still unobserved. I pressed the button to deactivate the force cage. "Give me your hand."
"I don't want you to use the dark side on me," he said.
"Did it help you last time?" I said patiently, handing him the drug and another ration bar.
"I don't like it, I don't want it, I won't..." His voice was rising.
"Calm down!" I said, "Breathe, I'll just put kolto on then, it's fine." He tried to eat, but eventually resorted to repeating his Jedi code over and over. At least this time he was aware enough to remember the whole thing. I delicately smeared medicine over his wounded hand, mindful of every wince and gasp of pain. I couldn't finish fast enough.
"Remember, drink the vial just before the droids get to you," I said, trying to quash my guilt. "Best be laying down when you do it."
"Thank you," he said.
"Don't thank me yet," I said.
The next morning found me waiting anxiously in front of the incinerators. Located a few kilometers away from the academy to prevent the smoke from perpetually fouling the air, it was the way all dead were disposed of. The facility was run entirely by droids, so they didn't care about my presence. Each load of corpses was dumped in a heap so that the droids could scavenge anything of value before cremation. Every time I held my breath and dug through the bodies, some of which were not very fresh. When my drugged Jedi finally arrived, I was in a very bad mood, my clothes and fur covered in old blood, viscera, and a fine dusting of ash that fell from the sky.
I gave Quorian the antidote. He looked dead, but it only took a moment or two before he was breathing normally again, and within a few minutes his eyes opened. I waited, knowing that his physical body would return to strength before his mind awoke. I was anxious to get out of sight, but he was too heavy for me to drag very far, and I didn't yet have enough command of the force to levitate him for a sustained period.
"Sith," he said eventually.
"Jedi," I replied. "How do you feel?"
"Cold," he replied. "Stiff."
"That'll pass soon," I said. It wasn't yet noon, but the Korriban sun was hot on my cloak. "Can you try to walk?"
"I think so," he said. His eyes wandered, and he realized that he lay in a pile of bodies. He struggled to his feet with a cry of alarm and tripped over a broken acolyte's corpse, catching himself on my shoulder.
"You need to get out of sight before someone spots you," I said. "Come on." He was crying. I'd never seen him cry before, not even when I'd visited him after Zyn's torture. His panicked gaze swept the area, taking in the number of bodies, the building behind me, the ash slowly drifting down, and the ominous plume of smoke rising into the sky. He began stuttering his code.
"Move!" I snapped, shoving him along, away from the crematorium. We walked for several minutes, deeper into Korriban's desert and away from the foul stench of burning corpses. When we reached a group of boulders, I let him sit as I reapplied kolto to his arm and bandaged it as best I could.
"There is no death, there is the force," he repeated. "There is no death, there is the force." His muttering eventually died away into silence.
"Quorian?" I asked, hoping that this wasn't the grain of sand to finally break the slave's back, as the saying went.
"I'll be alright," he said eventually. "Can you give me my comlink?" I passed it to him. He typed in a passcode, and the device beeped. He gave it two more passwords before it finally connected.
"Didn't expect to hear from you again," came a gruff voice. "You finished with your business?"
"I am ready to be picked up," Quorian said. "Sending my position now."
"You're too close to the academy," said his contact. "Head west for a few hours. When you reach the hills, call us again." There was no farewell before the connection went dead. He tucked the comlink in his belt. I gritted my teeth and offered him his lightsaber, hyper aware of the force around us. If he decided to attack me, I needed to blast him with lightning before he killed me. My warblade wouldn't stop a lightsaber for long, even assuming I could draw it in time. But I needn't have worried. He awkwardly clipped it to his waistband, clearly unused to using his right hand for things. He held his left tucked in close to his body so it wouldn't get jostled. I felt guilt again at the part I'd played in his maiming, no matter how repairable it was.
"Well, this is it," said the Jedi.
"Not hardly," I snorted. "You're in no state to defend yourself. I didn't risk my life to let you die in the desert. I'm going to see this through."
"I still don't understand why you're doing this, Sith, but I thank you," he said fervently.
"Come on," I said, my remorse turning my stomach. "Let's get going."
Almost two hours later, I finally gave up trying to walk in silence. "Why did you come to Korriban in the first place?" I asked as we traversed a particularly rocky patch of ground. "What were you hoping to gain?"
"It wasn't revenge for Coruscant, or anything like that," he said. As he went longer and longer without the force-suppressing drugs, his mind grew clearer and speech smoother. "I wasn't trying to infiltrate the academy or gather military intelligence. I just wanted to understand the Sith."
"Understand what?" I asked.
"I wanted to learn more about what made the Sith so different from the Jedi," he said.
"So you came to Korriban?" I asked incredulously.
"A fully-trained Sith or dark Jedi would immediately try to kill me," he said, "I thought I might be able to speak to some of the students away from the masters. I wasn't going to approach the academy."
"And that was worth risking your life?"
"The knowledge I hoped to gain would save many Jedi from the dark side," he said. "And...someone I care about fell to the dark side and joined the Sith, and I thought if I understood what made it so compelling, I could draw him back to the light."
"What makes the light side so much better than the dark side?" I asked. "We all use the Force."
"Well, the code says it best," he explained. Quorian dutifully repeated the entire Jedi code for me.
"Come on, that's obviously not true," I argued. "Everybody has emotions. Even some droids have emotions! And what about the 'no death, there is the force' stuff? Death comes for everybody."
"That's not what it means," said Quorian patiently. "It's a goal to strive for. The Jedi don't let emotion dictate our choices. We try to hold peace in our hearts."
"Yes, that's why you're on Korriban," I drawled sarcastically. "Peace. No emotions involved, of course."
"Well, what about you? I learned the Sith code before I came," he said reasonably. "The first line is false! Peace is not a lie, it's..."
"I only know my own life," I interrupted. "But in my experience, peace means weakness. I knew slaves who were no better than droids. They were mindless animals, and grateful for it! Maybe your code works in the Jedi Academy, where people are kind all the time and weaklings are never thrown out, but here?" I spat in the dirt, one of the strongest gestures of disgust and disrespect I knew. As a slave on a desert planet, you didn't waste any water.
"My emotion gives me focus. It gives me strength. The stronger I am, the more victories I win. Through victory, my chains are broken." I spread my arms. "Look at me! I'm no longer a slave, I'm an acolyte. The Force set me free, and soon I shall be Lady Zash's apprentice and someday a great Sith Lady."
"But will it ever be enough?" he asked.
"What do you mean?" I said.
"I mean, will you ever be happy? Will you ever be able to stop fighting and being angry and just enjoy your life?" The bubble of pride I felt at my own accomplishments was being diminished by his lack of appreciation.
"When I'm powerful enough, I can do whatever I want," I said defensively. Quorian simply nodded peacefully.
"That's probably true," he said. "I hope you are able to be happy when you reach it." Somehow I felt I'd lost the argument, even though he'd agreed with me. There was no time to pursue it though. I felt the danger through the Force, and turned as a small pack of tuk'ata emerged from a nearby crevice in the ground. "Watch out!"
I didn't need Quorian to warn me. I zapped the first one, feeding my frustrations with him and with the entire situation into the Force, which swelled around me like an icy wind. I was easily dispatching them when I felt the Force snap into place around the Jedi behind me. It was as though he stood in the center of some complicated design that I couldn't see clearly. A nearby boulder ripped its way out of the dirt and slammed into the skull of the last beast, instantly killing it. I immediately raised a Force barrier, although I was pretty sure that a blow like that would smash through my meger defenses like a knife through shimmersilk. For the first time, it occurred to me that this was a Jedi, a fully trained enemy of the Sith, whereas I was barely an acolyte, not even apprenticed yet.
But Quorian didn't attack me. Even as I eyed him warily, he let go his grasp of the Force and pressed his good hand against his eyes. He stood that way for a few seconds. "Can we stop and rest for a moment?" he asked. "My head is killing me." I dropped my shield.
"The drugs were intended to keep you from touching the Force," I said as we sat down on nearby boulders. There was no shade, but it was nice to pause and allow the adrenaline of a fight to leave my bloodstream. "You're lucky you've only got a headache."
"I wanted to help," he said.
"Maybe you should leave the fighting to me from now on," I suggested. "Unless things get bad? What do you say?"
"You don't seem to need my assistance," he agreed wryly.
We walked until early afternoon, engaging wildlife along the way. The sun was directly overhead by the time we reached the low hills. This time, when Quorian used his comlink, the voice on the other side of the call agreed to come get him.
"Who are they?" I asked nervously. "Jedi friends?" I wasn't going to go near more than one jedi. Quorian was enough of a risk as it was.
"No, just smugglers," he said. "This trip wasn't exactly sanctioned by the Order."
"I never would have guessed," I purred. He laughed. We waited in the shadow of a low cliff for them to arrive. "What are you looking forward to most when you get back?"
"The Jedi Temple," he said. "It's warm and peaceful and good and kind, nothing like the Sith Academy."
"I can't even imagine that," I snorted.
"Acolyte?" asked Quorian after the silence had stretched a few minutes. "Why don't you come with me?"
"What?"
"Leave the Sith," he said. "Come with me! The Jedi would welcome you."
"Sure, with a blaster and cuffs," I scoffed. "No thanks, I don't want to spend the rest of my life in a force cage."
"We wouldn't do that to you," he said. "That's not the Jedi way."
"I'm a sith," I said, "they wouldn't just let me go free."
"You wouldn't be a prisoner," he said. "You'd be like...a medbay patient. We'd take care of you. You'd have teachers. You deserve better than this place."
"This is exactly what I deserve," I said, the guilt inside me eating away at my soul. He eyed me, and I felt the Force swirl around us as he used it to sense my feelings just as I was sensing his.
"Why do you say that?" he said.
"I belong here, Quorian." I quickly tried to distract him from the real source of my emotions. "I'm not peaceful. I'm not kind. I've lost track of the number of beings I've killed just to get this far. It was them or me, and I don't regret it. I will kill anyone and do anything to become Sith." He stared at me, and for a moment I worried he would decide I was his enemy after all.
"But you helped me," he said. "You didn't have to do that. You can be kind and selfless. Come with me!"
For an instant, I saw it, as clear as day. It was like a vision. I would take his offer. The Jedi would welcome me to their temple, giving me training and care and kindnesses that I'd never known. I saw myself eventually giving up my rage, my fear, spending my days healing others. I wouldn't be anything special. Just another brown-robed jedi. For that instant, I felt the peace that Quorian described; it was almost euphoric, addictive. Then I remembered exactly why I was helping Quorian escape, and the sensation was gone, and reality set in. I was nothing like that being I'd just seen.
"I belong here," I said. The whine of an engine drew closer as we sat quietly. A powerful speeder pulled to a stop nearby. Inside waited a squat human with an astromech droid.
"I should go," said the Jedi. "I still don't know why you helped me, but I thank you. Will you be alright?"
"I'll be fine. I..." I coughed, but my throat was still thick. Kriff it, I was just going to say it. "Be careful of what you recall of your time on Korriban. They say the Inquisitors can twist your memories." I watched the understanding dawn in his eyes, and I had to look away. He sighed, long and deep, and I clenched my fists, my claws emerging to dig into my palms. I had chosen this.
"I'm sorry you grew up in the Empire instead of the Jedi," he said. "If things had been different, maybe you could've been part of the Order."
"Goodbye Quorian," I said.
"Goodbye Acolyte," he said.
A/N: I didn't mean to make a minor side quest be a major plot point for three chapters, but here we are. I find Quorian's story compelling enough to inspire other things. I have written an alternate version of this chapter. You can find it on my profile under the title "To Be A Jedi".
