Dark Disciple

by Christie Golden

  Ventress chose.

  —

  Vos saw Ventress’s eyes open wide. Her body went taut and she seemed to be staring at something he couldn’t see. Fear exploded in him, quivering in the pit of his belly, and he shook her, gently.

  “Asajj?”

  “No,” she whispered, her eyes still unfocused, frighteningly blank. Then, “No!”

  Violently, she shoved Vos away, putting the Force into the movement so powerfully that he was hurled across the room. As he struck the wall, he heard a terrifyingly familiar sound: the sizzle and crackle of Force lightning.

  Dooku stood, his teeth bared in a savage snarl of victory. Ventress was caught in the most violent bolts of Force lightning Vos had ever seen. They danced and crackled about her hungrily, almost like living creatures. Her body spasmed and her face contorted into a mask of absolute agony. Blood trickled from her ears, eyes, and nose.

  “Asajj!” Vos cried, leaping between Ventress and Dooku. He activated his lightsaber, deflecting the Force lightning back onto Dooku. The count’s eyes widened in comprehension a split second before his own weapon turned on him, disloyal, as things of the dark always were. Dooku was flung back and lay on the ground, screaming and trembling, then lying still as the bolts faded.

  Ventress lay unmoving on the floor. Her clothes—and her body itself—emitted wisps of smoke. “No,” Vos moaned. She was breathing, but her pulse was thready and she was still, so terribly still. “Asajj…no…no…!”

  Fury, as intense and primal as the bolts that had nearly killed her, shuddered through him, and the world went red. Vos threw back his head and voiced his rage, whirling on the count as he lay, shivering and gasping for breath, on the stone floor.

  Three strides brought Vos to Count Dooku. He pressed the humming blade close to Dooku’s neck.

  “Do…it,” rasped Dooku. Impossibly, he was smiling. “The lightning wasn’t…for her. It was for you. She just…got in the way. Go on. Take…your revenge!”

  Vos’s heart shook his body with its pounding, its aching, its demands. His gaze flickered to Ventress, lying so terrifyingly motionless. His vision blurred. It took him a moment to realize that tears were falling down his face in a river of pain. The dark, rage-filled tide inside him receded, leaving in his heart only the truth of the tears. The count still smiled, still anticipated the final step that would turn Vos irrevocably to the dark side.

  “I am not your kind,” Vos said, his voice thick. “I do not feed off vengeance.” Truth was quiet. It did not need to shout or to demand. It simply existed. “I am a Jedi.”

  Vos deactivated his lightsaber. Ventress was still alive, and hope, cruel and beautiful and agonizing, flared in his chest as he rushed to her.

  “Vos.” He didn’t turn around at the sound of Kenobi’s voice. Somehow, he was unsurprised that Obi-Wan was here, at this moment. “We’ll take him from here.”

  Vos simply nodded. He might still be executed. He would certainly be taken back to the Council in chains. But none of that mattered. Everything that mattered was here, right before him. He felt raw in this moment—cracked open and laid bare. His senses were heightened and he was almost painfully aware of everything: the smell of blood and scorched flesh; the steady slip of tears down his angular cheekbones, and their salty taste; the coppery tang of blood and fear in his mouth. He saw that strange patterns now decorated Ventress’s bone-white skin; traces of darker flesh that looked like lightning bolts. The Force lightning had marked her for its own.

  Ventress’s breathing grew labored. He wanted to hold her, to keep her alive through the sheer force of his will, but he was afraid touching her would cause her more pain. Her beautiful, ice-blue eyes opened, and she smiled. He tried to return her smile, and failed miserably.

  “Hey, handsome,” Ventress murmured.

  Vos gave a shaky laugh through the tears. “Hey, yourself.”

  “I won’t break, you know.” No. She would never break. Not Asajj Ventress. At the invitation, Vos gathered her as gently as possible in his arms. The movement caused her to cough violently. “I’m…”

  Blood ran from her mouth, soaking his shirt. He bit back a sob. “Don’t try to speak.”

  Ventress gave him a look that was so completely her, it tore him apart. “You don’t…tell me what to do, Idiot.”

  A small smile surprised him. “Never could,” he admitted.

  “Damn right.” Another bout of coughing racked her thin frame, and for a devastating, heart-scalding second Vos thought this would take her. But she continued. “I’m proud of you for…what you did over there. You chose loving me instead of hating him.” Her bloody-frothed lips curved in a smile. “Best choice you’ve ever made.”

  Vos wept unashamedly, cradling her, stroking her face. He wanted to memorize its every curve, sear it into his memory, then realized that he had already done so. “It was,” he agreed. He swallowed hard. “Asajj…you were right. I—I did fall to the dark side. And I’ve been there this whole time. I just…I didn’t…know!”

  “You lied to yourself,” Ventress whispered. “That’s…why I couldn’t tell.”

  “I love you, and I’ve never stopped, not for a moment.” Here, at the end, Vos had to make sure she—

  “I know,” Ventress said. “But you did stop lying.” She shuddered deeply. Vos felt his heart crack. Her fingers dug into his arm tightly and her gaze bored into his. “Remember…you always have a choice to be better. You always have a choice to…to pick the right path.” She smiled sadly. “Even if that choice comes a little late.”

  No, it couldn’t be too late. Vos still had to tell her everything he’d felt. How his heart had jumped the first time she had touched him tenderly, caring for his injury on the Banshee. That seemed like a lifetime ago. When she’d asked him how she looked in the ball gown, he should have told her. And when they had first kissed—Asajj Ventress had changed everything in his world, was still changing it, right this minute. But there was too much to say, and not enough time to say it, and the words crowded his throat and choked him into silence.

  With an effort, Ventress reached to touch his face, tracing the yellow tattoo, lingering over his lips. When she spoke, her voice was so faint that he had to strain to hear it. “And always remember…that I loved you, with all of my heart.”

  He had known it. But he had never before heard it from her lips. Now he found he could speak, the simplest of words. “I will.”

  Ventress took a shuddering breath. The tension left her body, and she relaxed into his embrace as her eyes began to close.

  No.

  “Asajj,” Vos begged. “Asajj. Please don’t go.”

  Her eyes flickered open, and a corner of her mouth turned up. “I have to, Quinlan. It’s my time now. My sisters…are waiting.”

  Fear such as he had never known seized Vos, and he tightened his arms around her, as if by holding on he could somehow prevent death from taking her. “Please…please don’t…”

  “You must let me go, my love,” Ventress said, her voice so gentle, so tender, and she smiled lovingly. “It’s the Jedi way.”

  And she was gone.

  It had been a long, excruciating few months.

  Vos had held Ventress in his arms afterward. How long, he did not know, but at some point he heard blasterfire and Obi-Wan Kenobi shouting his name—calling for help. Vos had gone, and the three Jedi fought together as, yet again, Dooku eluded capture. Darth Sidious, whose identity Vos had sacrified so much to learn, had apparently decided to aid his apprentice after all.

  Vos didn’t remember the trip back to Coruscant. He suspected he had gone a little mad. Anakin had placed him in the ship’s brig. Vos had gone willingly, but when he realized he would be separated from Ventress’s body, he had demanded to be with her. Kenobi had assured him Ventress was in stasis, and would be cared for with respect. Somehow, at some point, Vos had slept.

  As he had known would happen, he was brought before the Jedi Council, and there, exhausted and soul
-sick, confessed every one of his crimes. He told them that he had fallen, but had denied that truth even to himself. His intention had been to use Dooku to get to Darth Sidious, and thus eliminate both Sith Lords once and for all. He accepted full responsibility for the campaign he had led under Dooku’s guidance; for planting the bombs in the asteroid; for warning the count about the attack on the listening post. For killing Bayons and the clones aboard the Vigilance.

  For the murder of his friend Akar-Deshu.

  Vos spoke until his voice was hoarse. He had been calm for most of the interrogation, but when they asked him about Asajj Ventress, he shattered.

  “She saved me,” he wept. “She saved me!” They pressed him for more details, but Vos found himself unable to say anything other than those three words. Then, to his surprise, Obi-Wan Kenobi had stepped forward to speak, not just for Vos, but for the woman who had once been numbered among the Jedi’s greatest enemies. As it turned out, he and Anakin had borne witness to all that had transpired during Ventress’s final moments.

  “Asajj Ventress moved Vos out of harm’s way, taking the full brunt of Dooku’s Force lightning upon herself,” Kenobi said. “She sacrificed her life to save him.”

  “That is commendable,” Mace Windu had said. “For her to give up her life for another speaks well of her.”

  But Kenobi was shaking his auburn head. An odd, unspeakably kind smile was on his face. “You misunderstand, Master Windu. All of you. She didn’t just save his life. She saved Quinlan. And…I believe she may have saved us.”

  Yoda had silenced the questions and protests, and instructed Kenobi to speak what was in his heart.

  “We lost our way,” Kenobi had said. “We lost it when we decided to use assassination, a practice so clearly of the dark side, for our own ends, well intentioned though they might have been. All that has happened since—Vos succumbing to the dark side, the deaths he has directly and indirectly caused, the secrets leaked, the worlds placed in jeopardy—all of this can be traced back to that single decision. Masters, I submit to you that Vos’s fall was of our making. And Asajj Ventress’s death is on all our hands. That Vos is here with us today, devastated but on the light path once more, is no credit to us, but to her. She died a true friend of the Jedi, and I believe that she deserves to be laid to rest with respect and care, with all gratitude for the life she gave and the life she has restored to us, and this bitter lesson that came at so dear a price. We are Jedi, and we must, all of us, always, remember what that means.”

  Vos knew he could never repay Kenobi for that, but he had the rest of his life to try.

  He worked closely with Yoda for a time, doing all that was required of him. Slowly but steadily, he began to regain the Council’s trust. It would never right the terrible wrongs he had done, but Vos was moving into a position to at least begin to atone. Finally, Yoda agreed to release him into Kenobi’s care, to take Asajj Ventress on one final journey.

  So it was that Vos and Obi-Wan had come to Dathomir.

  On a hoverlift between them floated Ventress’s coffin. Vos walked with one hand resting atop it. He noticed his friend’s reaction to the skeletons strewn about as the two Jedi made their solemn way toward the fortress.

  “Dooku slew them all, because they had sided with Ventress,” Vos told Kenobi. “And still, she was able to let go of revenge.”

  Kenobi said nothing, but Vos noticed that he, too, placed his hand atop the coffin. As they approached the open mouth of the fortress, Kenobi said, “Are you absolutely certain about this, Quinlan? The dark side is very strong within.”

  “It is,” Vos agreed, “but for this moment, the dark side is not our enemy. Can’t you sense it?”

  He watched as Kenobi took a deep breath, reaching out into the Force. His eyebrows rose as he experienced what Vos could feel. Puzzlement flitted across his bearded face, and he looked at Vos curiously. “Why not?”

  “Here, the dark side belongs to the Nightsisters. And we are returning one of their own. I—I don’t know how I know it, but I do.”

  “I believe you,” Kenobi said simply. Vos felt a rush of gratitude. They stepped into the cool shadows, walking between pillars carved with the likenesses of strong women. Vos remembered what he had felt the first time he had entered. He had been chasing Ventress with anger in his heart. Now there was only sorrow, an aching sense of loss that he knew would diminish over time, but never completely leave him. And he didn’t want it to. Strange as it was, he understood there was grace and strength in this pain; a reminder of what should never be forgotten.

  “I never expected to find beauty on Dathomir,” Kenobi admitted as they stepped fully into the cavern that had housed the village of Ventress’s kin.

  “She was beautiful,” Vos said quietly. They walked to a fissure in the flat stone that contained a dark, still pool. Unlike the luminous blue pools that provided much of the cavern’s illumination, the pools that had once housed the ancient Sleeper, the water of this one—if water it truly was—was utterly black. No breath of wind or movement of creature disturbed its mirrorlike surface. Different levels carved into the stone served as steps.

  Vos placed both hands on the coffin. Now that it had come time to let her go, he realized that it would take everything in him to do so.

  “I can give you some privacy, if you’d like,” Kenobi offered.

  “Thanks. I—I think I’d like to be alone with her, for a little bit.”

  Kenobi shifted uncomfortably. “I will have to keep you—”

  “In sight, I know,” Vos said, “and I understand why. It’s all right.” He wasn’t angry. Leaving him alone in a place steeped in the dark side was not something Kenobi or the Council could permit. Not yet. One day, perhaps. Kenobi nodded and gave a sad smile before striding a few meters away. Vos turned again to the coffin. Then, steeling himself, he opened it.

  Ventress had been put into stasis shortly after her death and been prepared respectfully at the Temple. Vos knew that Kenobi had recovered some of Ventress’s clothing from the wreckage of the Banshee, but he was completely unprepared for what greeted him when he opened the lid.

  Asajj Ventress’s face was tranquil. Her hair had been washed and combed. Her arms, their injuries repaired, had been folded over her midsection. They still bore the dark tracings of the Force lightning that had claimed her life, but the marks were oddly beautiful, spidery and graceful. Her body was clothed in the elegant black evening gown she had worn on that night when he—

  “I’m so sorry,” Vos said, knowing how inadequate the words were but needing to say them anyway. “I’d give anything to go back. If I could I’d—” A rueful, bitter chuckle escaped his lips. “Where do I begin? There’s so much I should have told you, so much I should have…”

  His throat closed abruptly and his words drifted into the deep silence of the cavern.

  “And now, it’s too late, and I will never stop grieving that. But I’m on the path, Asajj. You bought my chance with blood, and I won’t waste it, I swear I won’t. Every day, every minute of my life, I’ll live it. For me, and for you. I’ll fight, because you can’t, and I’ll laugh, and I’ll do everything I possibly can with everything I have in me to make things better, because this galaxy has seen too much of darkness.”

  Vos gently stroked her cheek. “Rest, now, my love. I brought you to Dathomir. Your sisters don’t have to wait any longer. You told me you were reborn, here, in this pool. I hope it’s all right for me to return you to its waters.”

  He took a shaky breath. He had thought he would dread this moment, but he was surprised to feel more a sense of quiet peace than pain. This was the right thing to do, and he knew it, bone-deep. Slowly, reverently, he lifted his arms as if he were holding Ventress in them. Her body rose into the air in response. Vos bore her in the Force to the still, dark pool and gently lowered her. Slowly, the black water closed over her, accepting her into its embrace. Her face was the last of her to disappear, pale and bearing an expression of serenity sh
e had never known in life.

  He blinked. Was the water…changing color?

  Tendrils of mist began to rise, green and glowing. Green, like the Dathomiri magicks Ventress had spoken of; green, like the Water of Life. Vos caught his breath. Soft susurrations reached his ears, sounding almost like—

  Kenobi was beside him immediately, his lightsaber unlit but in his hand. “Vos, what’s happening?”

  Slowly, incredulously, Vos understood. His heart ached with a bittersweet joy.

  “Listen,” was all he said.

  Kenobi’s eyes widened. He heard it too, now, the whispers of women’s voices. The Force had reclaimed Dathomir’s wayward child, and as Vos reached out in it to send the woman he loved a final farewell, he thought he could make out a single word: sister.

  Asajj Ventress, at last, had come home.

  This book is dedicated to all of us who recognized early on that Star Wars was much, much more than just another science fiction movie—and loved it passionately for that.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  So many people go into helping make a book what it is, from the first glimmer of an idea to the finished work. I’d like to thank, first and always, my wonderful readers, who make it possible for me to do work of the heart.

  Special shout-out to my always fantastic editor, Shelly Shapiro, and to Erich Schoeneweiss, who offered both enthusiasm for the novel and insightful criticism to make it better. I’m grateful to Dave Filoni, for his fantastic work with The Clone Wars and for letting me hang out with two of the richest (and most fun) characters I’ve ever had the privilege to “meet.” Extra gratitude to Katie Lucas, Matt Michnovetz, and Dave Filoni, whose scripts provided such a solid foundation for a great story. To Pablo Hidalgo and Leland Chee, thanks for helping me keep things true and accurate in this new incarnation of an old friend. And to Jennifer Heddle, who has aided my career in so many ways including this one.