Dark Matter: Episode 2

//Author's Note: This story takes place, canonically, within Bioware's Old Republic setting rather than the Empire/post-Empire setting of the films. Star Wars is a setting, a fictional universe, that often serves as a vehicle for big stories; enslavement of the galaxy-type stuff. I've always thought it could do smaller stories too, and what follows is my attempt. This is my first experiment with images like this.

All art done by SkullTitti, and owned by me.//

***

No amount of exposure to Dromund Kaas helped her cope with the fact that this place was real, and that her senses weren't lying to her. The storms were constant. Unyielding. It was a lot to be around, to endure. She had stopped jumping at every strike that landed more than a few kilometers away, but she thought she might never get used to the near strikes.

Kaas City, where they lived, was a large city, but they could reach the edge of it by speeder in thirty minutes and be well outside the city within an hour. By the two hour mark, they were well and truly into the jungle that covered most of the planet's surface. Ruins reared up now and then, seemingly out of nowhere, stone structures that might have been a few hundred years old or a few thousand. Dromund Kaas had a complicated history that Sheefa had spent exactly zero time absorbing.

Most of the time, when Vaux'avh told her to get ready, they stayed within the city. They would leave, meet someone sometimes to talk and sometimes to kill them, and then they would return. Vaux'avh only rarely left alone. There were things she was keeping from Sheefa, and Sheefa couldn't be sure she wasn't grateful to be left in the dark given that what she saw horrified her more often than not.

They crested a hill, having followed a path with marker lights for so long that Sheefa had lost track of whether it was even still daytime, or what passed for daytime on Dromund Kaas, but Sheefa knew as soon as she saw it that these were the ruins they were heading toward.

This had been happening more often. Little blips like an echo of a familiar voice, a childhood friend, half remembered through the years, except that Sheefa had not had that kind of childhood. She'd had peers. Fellow trainees. Younglings she shared classes with. She knew the words to describe what she felt, but in a way that was more theoretical than experiential.

The Force was speaking to her in ways it never had before. She almost wished that it wasn't.

As she had thought, the speeder slowed as they wound their way closer, down the hill and across the valley. On the hillside opposite where they'd come from were steps and an edifice crafted of the same dark gray stone that seemingly every other ancient structure on Dromund Kaas had been constructed from. It was imposing and brutal, as were all such ruins, and Sheefa had paid as little attention to them as possible.

Vaux'avh had not said one word to her since leaving the apartment, and Sheefa was feeling even more unbalanced than usual as they dismounted the speeder. She said, "Are we—"

"Not here," Vaux'avh hissed. "They'll be arriving soon. Come."

"They who?" she asked, as they ascended the steps. The stone beneath her feet was wet, but her boots had sure purchase.

Vaux'avh raised the cowl on her robes, casting a fierce glance over her shoulder as she did, and went into the temple.

"Are we here to kill them? Flirt shamelessly? Throw a celebration in their honor for becoming the one millionth Sith to graduate from the academy?"

The light behind them had been weak and gray to begin with, and it only took a few steps in the door to be subjected to not nearly enough light to see where they were going, but some ancient mechanism in the temple sensed their presence and greeted them with a few faint red lights placed here and there around a room much larger than she was expecting. If there was one piece of her sister's advice she had taken to heart, immediately and without rebuke, it was that she needed to be aware at all times. Her head moved, eyes moved, constantly. She reached out with all of her senses.

"Where are we?"

Vaux'avh surprised her by answering at all, saying, "About as far from prying eyes and ears as one can get without going off world."

There was something else to this answer. She knew it.

"I hate this world," Vaux'avh said, further surprising her.

"Then why do we stay?"

To this, Vaux'avh merely stared back at her.

Sheefa regularly kept her mental defenses up, which was exhausting, but the downside to her method of doing so was that it occupied her whole mind. She had no capacity for attempting to read her sister when she was making the effort to keep her sister out. She didn't even know if that was what Vaux'avh had been doing, but the months together had proved Vaux'avh more adept than most at some level of reading and assessment.

Sheefa sensed an opening. Her sister was thinking, and thinking hard. She could see it in the set of her shoulders, and her brow, and her jaw. Vaux'avh was a creature of impetuous movement, of unpredictable turns, and to see her so visibly vexed was a reminder, however brief, that underneath the curated exterior, underneath the flesh and bones, beat the heart of a mortal. A dangerous one, maybe, but a mortal all the same. Before she could make use of this window of opportunity, however, Vaux'avh's eyes adjusted over her shoulder. Narrowing into the distance.

Whomever they had been waiting for had arrived.

Of the pair that walked in, Sheefa immediately picked out the Master. They moved in close concert, abreast rather than the manner in which she had been instructed to follow a step behind her sister. Neither of them wore the robes most Sith Lords preferred, as Vaux'avh did. Vaux'avh's robes were a red so deep as to look black in most light, with burned orange banding around the cowl and sleeves. Indeed, the Lord before them wore breeches and a tunic like she herself did. Both of them had yellow eyes, and if one of them was a little closer to orange Sheefa could not tell. Her powers of perception did not extend to granular discernments of pigmentation.

Underneath their apparent sameness was a kind of reluctant deference, a slight hesitation to move around corners and control direction. Make adjustments. One of them was following, and it was easier to read once spotted.

If she was being honest with herself, and she wasn't, Sheefa would have realized that she'd done something else her sister had taught her, if only indirectly. Vaux'avh might appear fidgety and impatient on the outside, but her steps rarely included definitive choices. She waited, and in time her enemies revealed themselves. Revealed their plans, and their weaknesses. She was patient.

"Lord Vaux'avh," said the taller one, in a drawling Imperial accent. The one with the wrappings around his wrists and hands.

"Lord Kaine," Vaux'avh replied, spreading her hands microscopically in a show of good faith so transparently hostile to the idea of honesty that Sheefa was surprised they didn't immediately go for each other.

"This is quite the spot." He started moving forward, head tilted up to inspect the gloomy depths.

His Apprentice stood stock still, and it was only in seeing his deference that Sheefa realized the same in her own posture. She paced behind her sister, feeling the need to do something.

"I hope you aren't too disappointed that my Master sent us in his stead."

"Not at all," Vaux'avh said, and Sheefa almost believed her.

Almost.

"I came across this," she said, twisting and reaching into a pouch at her belt, "when I was following a lead on a burial site." She produced a flat piece of stone, about the size of her extended palm and a few centimeters deep, and took two steps forward. Arm extended.

Lord Kaine matched her posture, and the piece passed from extended fingertip to extended fingertip.

There was so much distrust between them. The way the two of them interacted, from such distances and with such posturing. Exposing nothing while trying so hard to appear as if that were not so. Lord Kaine took the stone, stared at it for a moment, and then turned it over.

All his composure stripped away at whatever he saw on the other side. He looked up at Vaux'avh, and then back at the stone in his hand. Up, and then back again.

It was brief, and his smug grin was back soon after. "This was no mistake. You know what this is."

"I do," Vaux'avh said. "I believe that the location will prove to be genuine, once I've disarmed the traps and explored the burial chamber below."

Lord Kaine looked at his hand again, his face tense. "He said he would leave a sign such as this for those who came after."

"And here we are," Vaux'avh said, tersely.

The thin man looked at her more carefully. "It appears we have more in common than I realized."

"We do not," Vaux'avh said. "Your Master reached out to me, and his credits spend."

For the first time, Lord Kaine seemed to let himself become aware of Sheefa. He turned to his own Apprentice, nodded away, and then started walking with an outstretched arm toward Vaux'avh.

"Stay here," Vaux'avh said to her, as she and Lord Kaine moved deeper into the temple. Their conversation picked back up once they'd crossed a distance, but Sheefa made no effort to listen.

Sheefa resumed her pacing, and for a little while it seemed like her and the other Apprentice might not speak at all.

"You were a Jedi."

Vaux'avh had warned her this might happen. Not with this specific interaction, but that some might spot something she was doing, unconsciously. Someone might recognize things she wasn't even aware of. The Sith ranks were full of displaced, discarded, and disgruntled former Jedi at all levels of skill.

This warning did not help. She flinched, and he laughed, and she was already on her back foot. Already defensive. "No, I wasn't."

"You studied. Were a Padawan." He was human, and his grin was getting wider with every second. "This makes you Jedi."

"Former," Sheefa said. She knew her emotions were raw on this note, and tried her best to put her mental defenses back into place. This was nothing compared to the things Vaux'avh had said and done to her, but it had still been an unwelcome surprise.

The man continued, adding "It eats at you," as he walked around the open space. "They cast you out?"

Sheefa decided to let her silence speak for her, fixed her chin in defiance, and hardened her stance.

This approach seemed to bear fruit, as he nodded solemnly. "I too."

She was just considering, in her heart, what to make of the appearance of an unexpected ally, someone who might understand the upheaval she was struggling with, when she realized that his slow meandering was bringing him closer to her. Suddenly, defenses of a different kind were being summoned.

"My Master, former, was posted on Coruscant."

Sheefa nodded, and made a sound in her throat she hoped sounded approving. He was still moving closer. She had a moment of personal insight, at his tone, and replied, "And their teachings chafed you as well?" She was proud of herself for the last minute addition, at the end.

"Coruscant itself, I'm afraid." He held his hands out in mock innocence, and added, "Not a good fit."

"The Republic? Did you... run afoul of... the law?"

As she said it, his smile deepened. He wasn't looking at her, but he was still approaching her if indirectly. Circling her, almost. Spiraling inward. "You could say that."

"I did say that. What would you say?"

"I would say," he said, taking a deep breath, "that Dromund Kaas and the Sith are more appreciative of my gifts. Willing to indulge the eccentricities."

She felt his hand brush the back of her arm, and she flinched away from him. When he continued to circle she matched him stride for stride, no longer allowing him the freedom to pass out of her field of vision. "I've never heard rape referred to as an eccentricity before," she said, voice shaking. "That's new."

Again, he held out his hands. "It is the predilection, you understand. The urge, rather than the act."

"I've heard enough," she said.

"We are conversing," he said, candidly. "This is talk. Comrades, swapping stories." All the while, he was working his way around her.

"I am not your comrade," she said, finding some of her control and conviction. Finally, she thought, something black and white.

"You have me wrong," he said, still smiling, and Sheefa finally started to see how hollow the smile was. Empty underneath. "I would never."

"Mmmhmm," she said, unconvinced.

"You are unclean, you understand? Not human."

"What did you say to me?" Sheefa said, lurching forward.

"This, there is no need," he said. Every word seemed to make him just that much happier. That much more calm. "Sometimes, a lesson is necessary, but I would get no pleasure from such an encounter."

There was no conscious thought, no decision, that the time for words had come to an end. Her lightsaber was in her hand, and she launched herself forward. He had his out and on in time to meet her initial strike, but the smirk slipped from his lips when she planted her boot into the side of his knee. By her reckoning, and in her sparring experience, too many force wielders left themselves open to more traditional combat techniques, and Sheefa was a master of it. Lowercase m, perhaps, but gifted nonetheless.

He went down hard on the injured knee, grimacing as he held her blade at bay, and reached a hand behind him. A large stone shuddered as it answered his call, and rocketed through the air toward her, but Sheefa flowed like water. She bent at the waist, one shoulder dipping, as the stone shot past her to shatter against the far wall. As she did, she let his wild defense push through. All the effort he put into holding her off was turned against him. She turned off her blade, let him swing wide as she ducked this too, and reignited her blade to hover just below his throat.

"Ah," he said, turning off his own blade and staring up at her with a smile that was a bit more green than before. "Well done."

"I should kill you," Sheefa said, snarling.

"Yes," came a voice from deeper into the temple. Her sister's voice. "You should."

Sheefa immediately turned off her blade and returned to a casual stance, feeling the sting of her sister's rebuke, though she kept the handle in her palm and moved beyond where the injured Apprentice could easily reach. "I'm sorry."

Vaux'avh moved closer, striding purposefully now. Her eyes were practically glowing in the dark. "The only reason to be sorry would be if you let him live."

Sheefa blinked. "But..." She knew that arguing for mercy would be a mistake, so she sought an alternative. "He is not a threat. It would be like killing an idiot child."

"Not a threat to you, perhaps, but your inaction places others at risk." Vaux'avh sneered at the Apprentice as he struggled to get to his feet. "He will take out this urge on others, and you could have stopped that. Saved others."

"I thought—"

"This is no time for thinking," Vaux'avu said, looking almost insulted. "You know what to do. You know it in your heart. You knew what to do with him the moment he touched you."

"You were watching?"

Her eyes were liquid pools of magma. "He is a rapist and a murderer, and you are no longer bound by the hypocritical morality of your former Masters."

Sheefa ground her teeth. It was that very same morality that had kept Vaux'avh alive the first time they'd met, back on Dur'Shist, but she did not think that her older sister would take the airing of their history lightly. Instead, she said, "How do I know he was not merely boasting? The brash ego of a small man."

"You are Sith," Vaux'avh hissed. "We are where red tape goes to die. You know the truth. You have better than facts and witnesses to his crimes. You have the Force. Rip the details from his mind if you must, if you require this proof, but you knew him to be a danger. Trust that the Force will guide your actions. Trust in your feelings. Trust in your emotions." She took another step forward, and added, "You know this to be true. You have always known that your feelings were not wrong, then or now."

This hit hard, and Sheefa's jaw went slack. "What do you mean?"

As the sisters talked, the Apprentice slowly crept to the side, to be out from between them. He turned and said, "Master?"

Lord Kaine stood beside Vaux'avh, with his arms folded across his chest, and said, "I would not deprive you of the chance to resolve your own problems. What does the code say?"

The Apprentice turned, slowly, back to Sheefa, looking more resolved. He said, "Through strength, I gain power."

"Seize your power," Lord Kaine said, though he was smirking as he said it.

Vaux'avh had been about to say more, but she stepped away to the side as the Apprentice once more engaged his lightsaber and charged. Red light energy met blue, once. A single, decisive parry. The Apprentice had martialled all his strength, all his momentum, and when Sheefa turned all that aside, he was past her. Past her, stumbling, and exposed.

She saw it, in her head. She saw how if she flinched, he would grab for the advantage again. He would not stop coming unless she made him stop. She spun as she stepped back, blade arcing smoothly, and the Apprentice crumpled to the ground. His head came to a stop a full meter to the side.

"Well done," Lord Kaine said, giving her a clap that seemed completely genuine. "Well done indeed."

Sheefa just stared at the head as it rocked. He had been surprised, at the end.

"I would prefer if you had not hesitated," Vaux'avh said, "but I can hardly spit in the face of success."

Sheefa looked from the body, to Vaux'avh, to Lord Kaine, who seemed the most amused out of all of them.

"I see your mind," Lord Kaine said, shaking his head. "You fear reprisal, but this is not the way of the Sith. He was weak. He picked a fight with a stronger opponent, and he was cut down. As I see it, you have saved me the task of killing him myself."

Sheefa said, somewhat bewilderedly, "You're welcome."

Lord Kaine hefted the stone, bouncing it off his palm, and headed back out of the temple. He looked happy. He even seemed happy. Sheefa stared at him as he went, not trusting that he would not leap to a posthumous defense of his former student, and it was not until Vauxa'vh said, "Blade," that she realized her lightsaber was still on. Crackling. Chewing into the stone floor ever so slightly.

***

Sheefa sighed in frustration as nearly-scalding water washed over her. She was so anxious to be clean that she couldn't get herself soaped up fast enough. The filth never seemed to dissipate completely no matter how long she scrubbed, but she was determined to try.

It didn't matter that the film she felt on her skin was psychosomatic, or that she knew it was psychosomatic. She'd tried meditating to center herself, and she'd tried ignoring it. She'd even tried using fire once, but her mother had intervened. The only thing that seemed to help was to scrub her flesh until it was raw. Near to bleeding.

She could still feel the eyes on her. The spot where his hand had brushed.

After leaving the temple and returning to Kaas City, they had spent no more than fifteen minutes on foot while Vaux'avh met with another contact. The clientele around them in the bar had been overwhelmingly human and their novelty, their otherness, drew leering stares. Vaux'avh ate the attention up. Reveled in it. Used it to her advantage to fleece a leering brute of a man, but it just made Sheefa want to crawl out of her skin.