Asajj slowly comes to, lying on a hard metal floor. As her memories flood back in, her eyes snap open and she reaches for the force, only to freeze as there's nothing there.
Rolling to her feet, her quick eyes take in the fact that she's in the cargo bay of a ship before she registers the design on the floor. Shivering, she stares at a Dathomire magic circle and she starts backing up until she hits a wall. Spinning around she screams when she realises that the wall is nothing of the sort, it is in fact the inside edge of the circle.
Desperately she reaches out for the force again and again, only to find nothing there as she sinks down in the centre of the circle alone again. Just like she was after her master died.
"Hello?"
A child's voice makes her head snap up, and stare at the human boy that's holding a plate of cookies.
"I heard you crying, and Nanny," he indicates the droid behind him, "helped me bake some cookies. Though she only ever lets me eat two at a time, unless they're big cookies, then I might not even be allowed a whole one."
Asajj stares at the child that's rambling about some sort of confection, despite the fact that no witch she's ever heard of would let a child anywhere close to a ritual circle, let alone a male child. "Child, can you let me out of here?"
The child shakes his head, "Uh huh. Baby Mummy said that you can leave whenever you want, you just need to leave the icky stuff behind. Mama cried the first few times she was in the circle too."
"Where is your Mummy?"
The boy smiles, "She's still asleep with Mama. They collapsed after the man left, so I told Nanny to put them to bed. Would you like some cookies?"
Asajj's hold on her temper breaks and she screams, "No I don't want your stupid cookies. Now let me out of here!"
As the boy drops the plate and runs, she slides down the invisible wall that's preventing her from leaving the circle and sobs, "Let me out of here" as memories of reading about the victims of the witches perverse rituals chase through her mind.
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Lily smiles as she wakes up in James' arms, and sighs in pleasure as he pulls her tighter against his chest. A moment later, her eyes snap open as the hardness of the bed filters through her consciousness. Looking around, wakefulness quickly replaces her sleepiness as she realises this is Fay's room.
"Fay, are you awake?"
From further up the bed, Fay's voice says, "I am now. Though I am somewhat surprised to be here rather than a bacta tank."
"How long do you think we've been asleep?"
Fay works her top arm free of Lily's grasp and reaches up to touch a panel on the wall by the bed, "Just shy of 36 standard hours according to this."
Lily pushes herself off the bed with a cry of, "Knol, we need to check on her."
Fay pushes herself into a sitting position with a confused yawn, "Oh, excuse me. I don't remember the last time I slept. We sent Jedi Master Knol to the city before we gave Kenobi the cure."
Lily nods and fails to snap her fingers, "I remember now, I asked D12 to change the symbols in the circle to those needed for an exorcism, and it took you three tries to activate it before we both passed out. What do you do instead of sleep?"
Fay shrugs, "Meditate on the living force, and recently magic."
Lily yawns widely before shaking her head, "Come on, we should see how our guest is doing and let her know why she's here."
Fay shakes here head, "Why is she here?"
Lily looks at Fay with a serious expression, "To give you a reason to practice dissolving silver, and to find out if there is still a person underneath all of that darkside gunk. She called herself a Jedi remember. But first I need to use the fresher. Oh, and while I remember, you said you were going to explain what was special about the lightsaber."
Fay picks up Lily and settles her on her hip as she heads for the fresher herself, "Lightsabers need a special type of crystal to work, most commonly a Kyber crystal or rarely a Kunda stone. While they can be made, Jedi tend to seek out their own crystal as part of their journey towards becoming a knight."
"Well Ollivander, the wand maker, told me that the wand chooses the witch. Given that I must have gone through at least 20 different wands, I can quite believe it. So we should probably try to find some natural ones."
Politely pulling the door mostly closed, so that Lily has privacy but they can still speak, Fay muses, "Well, I got my first crystal from Ilum, but the Adega system was also popular. I hear that the Jedi Order has recently reestablished trade with Dantooine…"
Lily's excited shout interrupts Fay, "There, we're going there."
Fay sighs, "Well, that's a couple of weeks travel as it's on the other side of the galaxy, and we'll need to go round the deep core."
Walking out, Lily steps to one side so that Fay can go in, "I think you said that silver was cheap here, so we should stock up before we leave. We should also check on Knol before we go."
Pointedly, Fay says, "We can stock up easily enough, but it's going to take the droids a couple of days to repair your pressure suit."
Lily winces, "Yes, well… It seemed like a good idea to disguise my features from everyone, and that was the only reliable thing I had to do it with."
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Lily and Fay both walk into cargo hold with a tray of republic ration cubes and a container of water. There they see Asajj lying against the inside edge of the barrier as if it was a solid wall.
At the first sound of their footsteps, Asajj returns to alertness and rolls to her feet, only to stagger slightly as she brushes against one of the invisible walls of her prison. Spotting Fay, she adopts a servile stance, one that once allowed her to get within striking distance of a warlord, "Master Fay, you must release me before the witches come back. Do this and I promise to serve you loyally."
Eyes sparkling with mirth, Lily looks up at Fay to see what she'll do.
For her part, Fay looks at Asajj curiously before saying, "Will you forsake the dark side of the force and let go of your hatred?"
Asajj nods, "Yes, yes, I'll do it, we just need to get out of here before they catch you too."
"Will you keep my secrets?"
"I'll keep your force damned secrets, just get me out of here. I've heard stories of what the night sisters would do, and we don't want to be here when they return."
Fay smiles serenely, "Do you promise to defend those who cannot defend themselves."
"Jedi, does it look like I have a choice? I promise, now get me out of here!"
Fay nods and levitates a bucket of water and a ladle from a dark corner, along with a small packet of silver powder. "Then I will release you before any night sisters come to perform rituals on you."
Stirring the powder into the water, it takes Fay several minutes to successfully mix the powder into the water. As she does, Asajj's eyes widen in terror and she presses herself into a corner of her hexagonal prison, "You're a witch?"
Lily shakes her head, "No, she's a Jedi. I'm a witch, and that is an exorcism circle. It is designed to both isolate and contain dark energies to weaken evil spirits that are possessing people. The potion that Fay is making is a suspension of silver in water. When it touches your skin I would imagine that it will feel like pouring red hot metal over you as it pulls the the tainted… I would have said magic, but there is more than just magic here so I'll go with energy. The only way out of the circle is to be free of the taint of dark magic. I don't know what Fay has planned, but the exorcism ritual will involve D12 here," she indicates her nanny droid, "walking around the circle sprinkling the water into the centre every three seconds until you pass out, or he runs out of water."
Asajj starts to laugh hysterically, "You're a witch?"
Fay stands up, and staggers to one side, as she finishes mixing the water. Picking up the bucket she walks into the circle, "Over the last few years I have been forced to confront some truths that I have held for centuries. Lily comes from a world with very little force, but where they are born with magic." As she enters the inner circle she lifts the bucket, "I have gone through this process myself, and I believe it will be easier on you if you take the ladle and apply the water to your own skin. Once you start you need to do a scoop once ever seven seconds, or in time with D12's chanting."
Asajj grabs the bucket and upends it over her head while growling, "Just give me that and get this over with!" before screaming in agony.
Almost immediately the water turns into a black sludge that soaks into Asajj's clothes and starts to sizzle and pop as the woman screams. A second later she drops to the floor as if her strings were cut and Lily rushes over the boundary of the circle.
"Get her clothes off!"
Fay shakes her head as she grinds out, "I can't, it's taking everything I have to hold her mind away from the pain."
Gritting her teeth, Lily grabs a bit Asajj's arm and uses the weakest cutting charm she can along the whole sleeve. As she winces while peeling the cloth away from the arm, Lily can see the light cut running along the arm showing that it wasn't weak enough. Casting another charm at the fabric on the woman's chest she winces at as the tainted sludge burns her fingers.
It doesn't take long before the woman is completely naked on the floor, her soiled clothes having been pushed up against the edge of the inner hexagon.
Staggering towards the door, Lily falls backwards into the hexagon as the magic of the circle prevents her from leaving. "Heh! I guess we get to find out if I'm strong enough to survive an exorcism ritual."
Fay slumps down on the floor beside Lily and leans against the barrier, "I could teach you to use the force to purify the darkside instead, given that I'm stuck here too. What about Asajj?"
Lily shakes her head, "Honestly, I'm surprised she's still alive. Everything I've ever read says that much silver water should have caused her to catch fire or melt."
Fay shakes her head, "It took everything I had to hold her mind away from the pain. Cut off from the force like we are, I don't think her mind would have survived if I hadn't. Out of interest, why didn't anyone try this on the Voldemort person that killed you?"
Lily looks up at the ceiling, "Two reasons, the first is politics. All rituals were outlawed, but before that, this ritual was illegal unless performed on someone that was confirmed to be possessed. Much like the pure blood exemption to a lot of laws governing law enforcement, that one existed to prevent wizards from stripping someone of the benefits of rituals like Re'em's Blood, that were dark enough to stain you, but weren't really considered dark because it didn't use people as the sacrificial component. The second is that the original participant needs to be willing or unconscious as it takes a while to activate the ritual circle. Once it's activated, it draws it's magic from the person in the middle, but until then it's just a pretty picture on the floor. Also, it's only as strong as the symbols and lines that make it up. Which for us is plenty strong enough unless the participant has a blaster or lightsaber. But at home we used wooden floors and chalk for the symbols. Anyway, what was that about using the force to purify the darkside? D12, could you bring us another bucket of water and packet of silver please?"
"Lily, what are you doing?"
Lily takes the full bucket from D12, "There's no point both of us being stuck in here, and you can't do the exorcism ritual for another three days. Asajj needs at least that long to recover, but we can't leave it any longer without breaking the sequence." She toes a solidified lump of silver water, "I expect that she'll need 3 * 3 * 3 cleanses. I pray to the gods that she doesn't need a 28th, as I've never even heard of someone surviving that many, let alone the full 81 treatments that arithmancy would demand."
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Asajj wakes up shivering and naked on the cold metal floor of a starship cargo hold. The tears falling down her face are just from the pain and the cold, and nothing to do with the nightmares that plagued her sleep, of the warlords slaughtering her parents, and of the same warlords murdering her master for daring to defend the helpless.
As she starts to push herself into a sitting position the voice of the witch says, "I'm sorry about your clothes, but we had to strip you in order to save your life."
Asajj springs backwards against the invisible barrier that's holding her inside this prison, only to crouch down in surprise as she spots the young witch leaning against the barrier on the other side of her cell. With a snarl she says, "I could kill you."
The witch nods, "You could, though I'm not going to just let you do it. I'm Lily by the way, and you probably know Fay by reputation. She's the one who did the most to save your life by the way. My son, Harry, baked some more cookies if you want one." She indicates a plate, before picking up one of the confections herself and starting to eat.
Asajj launches herself across the small cell with her arms outstretched, only to land face first on the floor as her arms and legs snap together, "Let me go! I'll kill you!"
Lily rolls her over onto her back before checking to see if she broke her nose. "No, not while you're still trying to kill me. That was a body bind jinx by the way, a simple schoolyard spell that can be easily countered by any halfway competent witch or wizard. It will wear off in around an hour."
"Why are you even here? Are you mocking me?"
Lily thumps on the invisible walls of the cell behind her as she chews on a cookie, "Nope, not mocking you. I'm as trapped here as you are, because my body isn't strong enough to handle a cleansing ritual. Given your stunt yesterday, I doubt you're strong enough to handle it either."
Asajj sneers, "I can handle any torture you care to inflict on me, even the strongest acid."
Lily shakes her head, and breaks off a bit of cookie to feed to Asajj. "That wasn't acid Asajj. That was a purification potion. If you threw the bucket at Fay it would do virtually nothing. If you threw it at me, it would probably kill me from the shock. Throw it at a Dark Lord, and they'd probably burst into flames. Especially in a circle like this one."
Asajj tries to bite Lily's fingers, but only succeeds in getting a mouthful of cookie. Quickly chewing and swallowing to avoid the indignity of choking, she spits back, "You could have fooled me."
Lily chews a bite of cookie herself at the same time as she feeds Asajj another bite of cookie. "You know, you're not the only one that has lost people and then delved into the dark arts in order to both cope and try to find a way to get back at the people that did it. I was 18 when my mother died of cancer, and my sister started to hate me. 19 when I was embroiled in a war against a Dark Lord, not only because of who I married, but also because I was born to non-magical parents. That's when I started looking at the darker spells, the ones that taint your soul. Not a lot, but enough. To start with they make you feel sick when you use them, but it doesn't take long before you start to feel good. Even if you're only using the dark stuff when you think it's right. It wasn't until we were told that Voldemort was after us specifically that I started to dive into the really dark stuff. That's when James noticed and forced me to undergo a cleansing ritual. Do you know what it taught me?"
Sarcasm drips from her lips as Asajj says, "No, why don't you tell me."
Lily smiles and puts a larger bit of cookie in Asajj's mouth, "It taught me that the dark taint blinds us. In months of searching for a solution I didn't find anything, no matter how much I tainted my soul. In the last few weeks before the Dark Lord found us, I not only found, but also modified a ritual so that it was completely light, and had it implemented ready to go at any point. The difference? The cleansing ritual that James forced me to undergo after he found my research."
Asajj snorts, "What's your point?"
"The point is that you get tunnel vision," At Asajj's blank look, Lily continues, "You become so focused on your goal and the power you have available that you forget that other solutions exist. Take your recent attempt to get the cure from that lab. You could have done that in a dozen different ways, and most of them would have left the lab still available if you needed it in the future. If we hadn't called ahead, you'd have also killed 100's of highly skilled scientists and technicians, as it stands you did kill the people that developed the cure. So why do it the way you did?"
Asajj snarls, "You know nothing, it was the only place that Swamp Gas could be studied safely outside Confederate control."
Lily shakes her head, "Do you really believe that? Or is it just the only place that the Jedi knew existed. Don't look at me like that, it's clear from the holo's that this war isn't the Republic against the Confederate. It's the Jedi and their slave army against the Droids. They're the only people who are everywhere, where's all the other people? The only place they're ever shown is on ships or the planets that supply equipment."
From the door, Fay asks, "You really believe that?"
Lily looks over, "How long have you been there?"
Fay shrugs, "Long enough to hear you talking about that mission."
"Yes, I asked Plex to compile news reports and sort them into three groups. Ask him for the details whenever you want. I know the war's only been going on for a few months, but even so, I think there were only three reports where visibly non-clone, non-Jedi troops were involved, and they weren't the local population on the republic side. The confederacy is doing better with the occasional sighting of someone commanding the droids that doesn't have their own lightsaber. I don't know if it means anything, it just struck me as odd that the only members of the republic army are Jedi or clones."
Asajj laughs, "Ha, you can't even be consistent with what you call them. You just called them slaves before you knew the Jedi was there."
Lily looks back at Asajj, "I'm hoping that the Jedi will be working to make them conscripts rather than slaves. At least that's the agreement I have with Kenobi. At least as conscripts they could desert or ask for better treatment. Slaves, whether mechanical or organic, don't have that luxury. That's before you start on the Jedi. Fay says that they're not warriors, they're peacekeepers, diplomats, and scholars, so why are they the only generals on the planetary battlefields?"
Asajj laughs as she said, "I told you they were false Jedi! Why else would they be fighting like that?"
Lily sighs, "Asajj, I've been living with Fay for four years on a world where we can't get easy communications from the rest of the galaxy."
Fay adds, "Lily, it's been nearly nine years out here."
Lily grimaces, "I forgot about that. So yes, nearly nine years. On top of that, Fay isn't exactly your normal Jedi. So, what's a true Jedi like to you?"
Asajj stares at Lily for a long time, so Lily takes a bite from a fresh cookie, and puts a bit in Asajj's mouth. Eventually Asajj asks, "You're serious?"
Lily nods and continues to eat the cookie, occasionally feeding a piece to Asajj. At the same time, Fay leaves and a faint shiver goes through the floor as the engines start up.
Eventually, Asajj says, "They're saviours. They see a problem and they step in to help, and sometimes that means fighting against people who want to take without giving back. But they always seek to build not destroy, to bring peace and not war, even if that makes those in charge afraid of them."
Lily nods, "That's a lot of expectations to place on people. Did you place those expectations on yourself too?"
Asajj shakes her head violently, "I'm not a Jedi!"
Raising her hand with the cookie placatingly, Lily concentrates on her transfiguration lessons, and turns the bit of cookie into a butterfly, "Neither am I. I'm a witch, and I can teach you how to use magic too. But you have to let go of the darkness. It's ok to grieve, be angry, and hurt, but you can't let yourself be tainted by darkness."
As the butterfly flies off and lands on Asajj's ear she angrily snaps back, "Who says I was grieving?"
Lily looks down at her sadly, "You did when you were dreaming. You don't have to talk about it. Though we're both going to be stuck in here together for at least the next 10 days, so I'm here if you want to talk about it."
Asajj flicks her head to try and dislodge the butterfly that's checking to see if her ear is a flower as the ship makes the jump to Hyperspace towards Dantooine.