Tears stung her eyes. Ventress let them fall. She had not wept since the slaughter of her sisters, and even then she had grieved in solitude. Never had Ventress spoken so to another living being, not even her beloved Jedi Master. She stood, her heart wide open, her soul naked before him. Surely, he would see it, even through the darkness that clouded his mind. Surely, he would understand what this meant. Quinlan Vos knew her in a way no one else ever had. He would see, and understand.
The yellow hue faded from his eyes and he blinked. “Asajj?” he whispered.
“I brought your lightsaber back to you,” she said. “Yours. I kept it safe for you, just like I did on Dathomir. Don’t let Dooku use Tholme to divide us. I wish I could, but I can’t change the past. I just want a future—with you.”
It was the wrong thing to say. Vos looked down at the blade he held, and his beloved face turned ugly with hatred. The awful yellow hue returned to his eyes as he looked back up at her.
“That,” Vos growled, “is the worst lie of all.”
Shattered, Ventress rolled out of the way as he leapt at her, bringing up her blade in a frantic parry as he forced her around the corner. She called his name, again and again, but Vos was now deaf to any plea she might utter. Ventress realized that he would not stop until he had killed her. And for one brief moment, she wanted him to. It would be easier than living without him, knowing that this was where she had unwittingly led him.
No. She would not give up. She would not let Dooku and the dark side have him.
With his fury-fueled attacks Vos forced her to retreat, back toward the exit, and Ventress let him do so. She understood now that he was too far gone to be talked into accompanying her willingly, but if she could bring the fight back out into the open, she might be able to maneuver him toward Fett and the others. The aid of even one of the bounty hunters might be enough to subdue Vos and drag him onto one of the ships.
Even though she retreated deliberately, Vos’s attack demanded every bit of her focus. He seemed to grow stronger, his attacks more powerful, while Ventress had to draw on everything she had simply to stay alive.
Vos barely even seemed to need to breathe, and he threw everything he had at the woman that, Ventress knew in her heart, he had once cared for so deeply. As they turned another corner, Ventress nearly stumbled over the debris of a battle droid she had torn apart but a few moments before. Vos shot out a hand. Several pieces of broken metal rose in the air. Grunting, Vos gestured, and they all launched themselves at Ventress.
She sliced a torso in half with her lightsaber, used the Force to deflect various limbs, and dived out of the path of two severed heads. Ventress landed on her feet and immediately brought up her weapon to deflect the blur of Tholme’s lightsaber. She used the Force to shove it and Vos back, and kept retreating.
It seemed like an eternity before Ventress saw that the dimness of the corridors was growing brighter. Hope surged in her as she realized that they were close to the exit. The emotion made her careless; she found herself suddenly lifted and flung backward out the door.
Ventress sailed through the air for several meters, landing hard and awkwardly, and for a wild moment was unable to rise. Then someone grabbed her arm and hauled her to her feet.
“Where’s your friend?” Fett demanded.
Ventress turned back to the doorway. Quinlan Vos stood there, his cruel face illuminated by the glow of a dead man’s lightsaber. Behind him followed a host of battle droids.
Ventress pointed at Vos. “There,” she said brokenly.
“That’s your friend?”
Suddenly Vos’s head whipped to the side. Following his gaze, Ventress saw something thoroughly unexpected—Count Dooku, trapped in some sort of webbing, lying on the ground with Bossk’s blaster aimed at his head.
Vos threw Ventress one final, hate-filled glance, then turned and raced to Dooku. The droids followed Vos obediently, firing at the bounty hunters.
“Go!” Fett shouted, gesticulating toward one of the shuttles. They needed no second urging. Bossk turned his head as he ran, snapping at Dooku over his shoulder in frustration, but followed Embo, Highsinger, and Latts up the ramp of the nearest shuttle. Embo motioned to Fett and Ventress to hurry up.
“Come on, No Name!” Fett cried.
“I…I can’t leave…” Her gaze was riveted on Vos, who had freed Dooku from the netting and was now helping him up. He glanced up, perhaps feeling her gaze, and said something to Dooku. They stood side by side, a team…a Master and an apprentice. The sight was so devastating that Ventress barely registered that six battle droids were now racing toward them.
Vos smiled.
“We have to go!” Boba yelled. He seized her hand and started running, dragging Ventress along with him. Together they raced up the ramp, which started to close the second they set foot on it. The shuttle had already lifted off as Ventress and Fett flung themselves inside.
Ventress went to the viewport, hoping against hope to see some signal from Vos that told her that he was only pretending; that this was all some kind of bizarre act. All she saw was the two former Jedi Masters, once so different, but now united by the darkness, staring impassively up at the departing ship.
Ventress looked away, no longer able to bear the sight. Her gaze fell on Fett, who removed his helmet and dragged a hand across his sweating face.
“You could have left me behind,” she said quietly.
He nodded. “Yeah, I could have. But I’m not you.”
The words cut Ventress in ways Fett couldn’t even imagine.
—
It was an hour and forty-seven minutes past the appointed meeting time. Obi-Wan Kenobi did not truly expect to see Quinlan Vos, but he held to the ritual of showing up, clad in his bounty hunter disguise, hoping against hope that this time, for this meeting, Vos would be there. Each time Kenobi was forced to depart alone, and that flicker of hope grew dimmer. He debated leaving early, but he was too stubborn. Kenobi would give his old friend the courtesy of waiting the two hours he always had before giving up and returning to the Temple.
The server droid zipped up to him and put another bottle on the table. She gave him a metal-lidded wink. “You’re becoming quite a regular,” she chirped.
Kenobi gave her a wan smile, and as she rolled away he pulled his nondescript, ragged hood farther over his face. A shadow fell over the table and he looked up, smiling with relief, but the words of greeting died on his lips.
Before him stood Asajj Ventress—but not the Ventress with whom he had crossed lightsabers on so many occasions.
She now had short, pale-blond hair, and she looked like she had aged ten years. Her ice-blue eyes were bloodshot and there were deep circles under them. She had changed more than physically; emanating from her was a bleak resignation that failed to entirely mask a deep-set ache.
Apprehension rose in Kenobi, but not for anything he thought she would do. He suddenly, desperately hoped she would not speak.
For a long moment, Ventress was indeed silent, her gaze lowered. Then she took a long, shuddering breath and lifted her eyes to his. When she spoke, it was in the same husky voice he remembered. But it was not filled with fury or cruel amusement. It was the voice of someone adrift…and bereft.
“He’s not coming back. He belongs to Dooku now.”
Kenobi’s eyes widened. No…, he thought. Not him. Not the ebullient, eternally playful Quinlan. No.
Wordlessly, he reached for the second cup he always ordered, hoping Vos would show up to drink from it. Now Kenobi filled it and slid it across the table. Ventress stared at it, then at him, and finally eased herself into the chair slowly, as if even simple movement hurt.
She took a slow sip.
They sat there, together, for a long time.
Asajj Ventress had spent a lifetime living in the moment. She was a woman who had no patience for regrets or what-ifs. She moved resolutely in a single direction—forward.
Except now. Now her dreams were filled with the
images of Quinlan Vos with yellow eyes; Quinlan Vos wordlessly pleading as she watched him be…let him be…dragged away in torment by two of Dooku’s battle droids. Could she have pressed the attack and freed him then? Could she have acted more swiftly, said something to reach him? Regret, hitherto a stranger, now dogged her tracks as constantly as her own shadow.
Though she had never been one who drank to get drunk, she discovered that drinking helped. She had exhausted both her credits and any meager sense of goodwill she’d had with Fett and his syndicate on the rescue attempt that had gone so sickeningly wrong. Ventress took on jobs as they came her way, channeling the guilt and pain into action unleashed on whatever hapless bounty she was after on any given day. Most of the credits were spent on alcohol. Sometimes, if she drank enough, she would have a dreamless sleep. Sometimes.
Ventress lost count as the days merged into weeks, then months. She had a bad shock early on, when she was knocking back a fourth shot of something strong and green and a holovid had come on with first Count Dooku’s face, and then Quinlan’s. They didn’t know who he was, but the vidcasters referred to him as “this unknown new right hand of Count Dooku.” Ventress had managed to get out before snapping and destroying the holoprojector with her lightsaber.
Quinlan’s lightsaber.
Since then, she’d avoided bars with holovids, but she couldn’t escape the war entirely. Soon “Dooku’s mystery man” was “Dooku’s new admiral,” complete with a colorful nickname already: “Admiral Enigma,” and people were gossiping about him as often as not. Ventress was dimly aware that at least one battle had been won by the former Jedi Master, but she left before the number of casualties had been revealed.
Sometimes, when she had been drinking extra heavily, Ventress grew paranoid. She became convinced that Vos was sending people after her, to finish the job of executing the murderous woman who had so hatefully deceived him. Ventress would begin watching the shadows, and more than once she had inadvertently terrorized an innocent passerby.
Tonight, Ventress hadn’t been drinking hard—well, not yet—and she was still getting the sensation that she was being watched. She frowned into her beverage, tossed some credits onto the bar, then looked around with feigned casualness. No one stood out particularly; then again, if this being were good at his/her/its job, she wouldn’t immediately notice. Ventress rose, taking care to wobble the precise amount that would suggest that she’d had a little too much to drink without overdoing it, and left the bar with an exaggeratedly careful stride.
Days and nights down here on 1313 were dark, but there was always someone out on the streets. Most beings gave her a wide berth. As she faux-stumbled down the alley behind the bar, dodging piles of refuse and snoring drunks, Ventress listened carefully. She heard nothing out of the ordinary, but she couldn’t shake the feeling. She turned the corner, pressed herself into the side of the building, and waited.
A few seconds later, a shape emerged. Ventress reached out in the Force, seized her stalker, raised him up into the air and slammed him down. An instant later she had a knee on his chest, and the glow of the lightsaber a few centimeters from his throat revealed the large, startled eyes and furry muzzle of a Mahran. He made no move to resist her.
“Give me one reason I shouldn’t kill you,” Ventress demanded.
“We have a mutual friend,” the Mahran replied.
“I don’t have friends.” She brought the sizzling green blade closer, singeing the fur along his neck.
He stayed motionless. “I have a weapon at my waist. Take it.”
Ventress reached with her free hand, still keeping the lightsaber a centimeter from his throat. Her hand closed on something cylindrical and made of cool metal, and her eyes widened as she looked at the lightsaber.
Slowly, Ventress sat back, removing her weapon but not extinguishing it. She kept his lightsaber.
“Start talking.”
“They didn’t tell me you were quite so fast,” said the Mahran, relief in his voice. He sat up, slowly and carefully lest she change her mind.
“I can be even faster. What do the Jedi want with me?” she asked, adding bitterly, “This time?”
“My name is Desh, and the Jedi don’t know I’m here. I’m…Quinlan Vos was one of my best friends.”
Surprising, how much hearing his name still hurt. “Jedi aren’t supposed to have best friends.”
“Since when was Vos a typical Jedi?”
“You have a point. Go on.”
Desh looked somber. “We know about what happened. With Dooku. And…with you.”
“And what, exactly, do the Jedi think they know about me?”
“Master Kenobi said he spoke with you. You came to him, and told him what happened to Vos.” He was avoiding the question. “Some of us wanted to go after him. We’ve been overruled. So far.”
Now she understood. “And you thought that if I were involved, I could help.”
Desh bared his teeth in what was clearly a sheepish grin rather than a threat, and scratched behind one vulpine ear. “Um…well, yes. I thought that if I could talk to you, I could…well…” His large golden eyes met hers. “Convince you to come back to the Temple with me.”
“Kenobi sent you?”
“Like I said, the Jedi don’t know I’m here. But I am willing to bet that if he did know, Master Kenobi would be glad. Sometimes it’s better to ask forgiveness than permission.”
“How do I know this isn’t a trap?”
“You don’t. And I won’t force you to come with me. But if you walk away from this…Vos won’t stand a chance.”
Ventress appraised him. Desh did seem like the sort of being that Vos would have gravitated toward. It wasn’t anything she could put a name to, but she could picture them getting into scrapes together. She reached into the Force, and sensed from the Mahran only genuine concern.
She thought back on the existence she’d led for the last few months, and her stomach soured. If there was even a chance the Jedi were, indeed, willing to help—
Ventress stood. “What are you waiting for? Let’s go.”
—
Ventress, Desh, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and a clearly unhappy Anakin Skywalker entered the Council chambers just in time for bad news. The Council members were watching a holofeed of a terrible battle. Republic and Separatist fighters and attack cruisers were engaged in combat. As Kenobi watched, a dreadnought came into view, targeting a cruiser. The Republic vessel cracked in half under the onslaught. Fire, fed by the ship’s own supply of oxygen, roiled upward.
Yoda eyed Ventress with mild surprise and pressed a button, pausing the holo. Others reacted in a much more vigorous manner. Mace Windu got to his feet, one hand going to his lightsaber. Ki-Adi-Mundi, Shaak Ti, and Plo Koon, also present, did the same.
“Asajj Ventress,” Windu snapped, “thank you for making the job of arresting you so much easier.”
Ventress threw Kenobi a shocked and furious glance. Kenobi lifted a hand. “No, Master Windu,” he said calmly. “Ventress came here in good faith and of her own free will to offer what help she could. I have given her my word that she would come to no harm within the Temple walls, and I will keep that promise.”
Everyone turned to Yoda. The ancient Jedi Master regarded Ventress steadily, assessing her. Ventress straightened and did not shirk the scrutiny. Kenobi recalled that the last time the two had met, Ventress had used lies and deception in an attempt to kill Yoda, but the head of the Council was his usual calm self. Finally, he nodded.
“Asajj Ventress,” he greeted her. “A liar of Master Kenobi, we will not make. Grateful we are for your help. Questions for you, we have.”
“Get on with it,” Ventress replied, crossing her arms.
“You will speak to Master Yoda with respect,” Windu said.
“I will speak my truth however I please.”
“If it is, indeed, truth,” said Plo Koon.
“Please, Masters,” said Kenobi. “Let’s just get to the business at ha
nd, shall we?”
“Fine,” Windu said. “You and Vos were close, weren’t you?”
“You could say that,” Ventress said, her expression revealing nothing. “We were working well as a team.”
“So, it was a professional relationship, then?” asked Kenobi.
Ventress rolled her eyes. “Just spit it out, Kenobi.”
He took a deep breath. “Very well. Did you become lovers?”
She had to have been expecting this, but couldn’t hide her reaction. A pained look flitted across her strong features, and her body hitched, ever so slightly.
“Yes,” she said, quietly. Everyone exchanged glances.
Kenobi had suspected as much. He felt a stab of pity for the woman standing before them. There had been a time when he would have rejected such a statement as a flat-out impossibility, but he knew she told the truth.
“Did you teach Master Vos the ways of the Sith?” asked Plo Koon.
Ventress closed her eyes and inhaled deeply, pressing her lips into a thin line. Kenobi hoped she would deny it, but feared he knew better.
“Not…as such.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” Anakin snapped. Kenobi lifted his hand and Anakin fell silent.
“Continue, you may,” Yoda said, not unkindly.
Ventress spoke to Yoda directly. “Sometimes, you must fight fire with fire. Vos wasn’t ready to take on Dooku. Managed correctly, the dark side would give him the edge so that we could complete the mission. I know the danger of even the smallest misstep.”
“You tried to ‘manage’ the dark side?” Kenobi asked, incredulously. “Knowing the danger you were putting him in?”
Ventress regarded him steadily, coldly. “It was a calculated risk.”
“But you pushed him, didn’t you?” said Mace. “You pushed him too far.”
Her jaw tightened. When she spoke, her voice was icy with controlled anger. “I was trying to protect him in the only way I knew how!”
“By leading him by the hand straight into hell?”
Dark Disciple Page 19
