Chapter Text
Plo’s fingers twitch as he sits still and watches them. His heart is even, but his talons jerk as a spider’s legs lurch upon the body of a helpless creature caught in its web.
Spinning. Spinning. Perhaps Plo’s hands would be calmer if they could produce silk.
Young Kenobi stands at the edge of the council’s center platform with blackened eyes and dripping tears, buried deep in Shaak’s arms. She hums—it is not a purr, but another noise loud enough to be heard yards away.
Obi-Wan gathers himself while buried in his finder’s comfort; their first bond remains intact after all these years. Shaak’s brow is furious where it is not pressed into Obi-Wan’s hair. She glares at the center of the now-empty platform.
The platform is not the object of her fury, however. No one in this room is.
That would be Master Dooku.
He was a jedi once. He sat within these walls; he taught in them, learned in them, raised children in them. Since leaving them, it would seem that he has begun slowly wrapping his long fingers tighter and tighter into the throat of his very own grandpadawan. He has been whispering in Obi-Wan’s ears, flicking his nails against the bell of doubt in his chest and smiling as it rings through Obi-Wan’s consciousness.
The fall to the darkside is not a gut-wrenching drop. It’s an embrace.
Obi-Wan thinks he is standing on a precipice. During his testimony, he mentioned something about Qui-Gon monitoring the situation and keeping in contact with him throughout so as to help him remember himself and the things which matter to him, but Qui-Gon’s absence in these chambers has spoken loudly enough for the more experienced masters in the room to hear.
He cannot yet bring himself to indict his former master of the enormous betrayals that have been committed here.
Plo knows Qui. He knows the man’s air of tranquility is a carefully constructed and projected façade, built to obscure a mind whirling with analysis and indignation.
The man must be boiling.
Plo sympathizes, but he cannot help but be aggrieved at the fact that Obi-Wan so often becomes a vehicle for his former-master’s plans and emotions when they work together like this—especially when it is not sanctioned by the Council. For all that he has grown into a jedi master of his own, Obi-Wan remains tethered to Qui-Gon, seeking his praise and approval.
Loyalty is Obi-Wan’s greatest strength and weakness. If Qui-Gon suspected that Dooku was a sith, he should have brought the issue to these chambers and its senior members. He should have let them find someone for Dooku to groom. There is a whole roster full of writhing, adrenaline-junkie shadows who would have leapt out of their seats for the opportunity. If it had to be someone from Dooku’s own lineage, Knight Feemor Retasse could have been called back from his duties.
Plo forces his fingers to still. He closes his eyes and sinks, feels the tips of them. Lets the force lift itself through his body.
He wills the frustration to lift with it, and just as it is beginning to, the door slams open. Temple Guards stands there, four of them, all stiff.
“Masters,” the foremost guard says. “Your presence is needed immediately. The Chancellor has been murdered.”
Plo is sinking.
He is sinking. Quicksand under the soles of his feet. Thick black holes, sucking him down, down until his knees are braced against the floor.
There should be a sensation of some kind. Pressure on the bone points of his joints, pain perhaps, discomfort at the very least.
But there is nothing in this place he is in now. Not even darkness. Not even stars.
“Plo, listen to me. Maul wouldn’t do this. He wouldn’t do this.”
But he has.
Maul has killed the Chancellor. And now he is gone, having taken Commander Wolffe with him. It is said that he was shouting. It is said that he held his saber to Wolffe’s throat and threatened to kill him, too. He got past the guards. He stole a ship.
How could he?
“Plo, you’re shutting down. Look at me. Please.”
“PLO.”
“Master Koon.”
“—General—”
There are many bodies around Plo now, crowding the space with the muffled scrapes of plastoid armor. The force throbs around him in a manner that seems to lift the world around it. It keeps lifting. Plo isn’t trying to release his feelings into the force, but everything around him continues to grow lighter.
It doesn’t make sense.
Nothing makes sense.
Maul is nine years old and knocking Plo off his feet into the grass in the Room of a Thousand Fountains. Maul is twelve years old, lax, warm, and asleep with his head resting heavily on Plo’s shoulder in front of their apartment’s window.
Maul is turning nineteen years old and has officially been in the care of the jedi for longer than he’s known Dathomirian magic and the abuse of a sith, and he’s startled by the sparklers that Obi-Wan has stuck into the bowl of chopped rabbit he’s brought him.
He is every age and none at all and, in the force, he is little crystals of light that glitter like diamonds in velvet boxes and stars in the velvet sky.
He would not do this.
And yet the Chancellor lays nearly bisected on the hard paneled floor of his office, surrounded by the broken frame of a datapad, scraps of paper, and the smell of burnt flesh and ozone. His wound is cauterized the whole way down but not evenly, so blood seeps into the ornate rug. Plo stands there, gazing upon the cooling body while the others gaze upon him.
Scrutiny is never a welcome visitor.
Maul did this. Commander Fox was witness. He says he unlocked the door. He can barely speak, the poor man, he thinks he has committed treason.
There is no way of knowing, however, if Fox was mindtricked or if Wolffe was mindtricked or if anyone knew what was happening here except Maul.
“Someone please escort Master Koon outside the building,” Mace’s cool voice says. “He needs a moment to gather his thoughts.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Yes, sir.”
Maul is nine years old, sitting in front of Plo’s wide apartment window, watching the city buzz and heave outside. His arm is bandaged to staunch the bleeding of skin torn by a splinter of baseboard. He doesn’t notice it; he’s looking out the window and dreaming of Bandomeer.
They fed him on Bandomeer, he would often tell Plo without prompting.
“It’s safe where people feed you.”
It was like he had always been trying to help Plo learn how to survive back then.
Plo puts a hand against the very same window now. He cannot let go of the breath that is trapped in his throat.
Maul is his second apprentice. Lissarkh came after him, and he’s so good with her, always bumping shoulders and wiping away her tears before she can. Plo should call her. He should tell her. She will be devastated, unless she already knows. Plo has lost track of time, but in a blasé way, his mind supplies him with the thought that the chancellor’s death is not something which is long-hidden from the republic he served.
She probably already knows.
“General.”
“It seems that I am grieving, Commander,” Plo tells the window, but nothing beyond it. The glass seems to absorb the words.
“My—my apologies, sir. It’s Jackal.”
Ah.
Right.
Commander Wolffe is gone; Maul took him.
“My own apologies, Jackal,” Plo says, turning around. “I am not fit for company right now. Give me fifteen minutes to collect myself, and I will be back down.”
Jackal is quiet for a beat, then looks away and raises his hands. He takes off his helmet and lifts his eyes. They are raw around the edges.
“I am—I’ve been asked to guard you, sir,” he says. “The senate requests that you remain within the Temple. They—they will be monitoring your transmissions.”
Ah, yes. Plo was so caught up in himself that he forgot for a moment that he is Maul’s master and that means things to other people as well. The betrayal is now a matter of lineage. The senate will be investigating them all: Plo, Bultar, Lissarkh. Master Tyvokka is no longer with them, and for that, Plo is filled with sorrow. What he would give for his old master’s wisdom now. How to cope with all that has happened in mere hours?
Dooku’s falling. Obi-Wan’s misery. The Chancellor’s murder. Maul’s bloodied hands. Wolffe’s kidnapping.
When it’s all laid out in a line, Plo no longer wonders why he can’t seem to breathe.
“That’s alright,” he finally tells Jackal. “However, if you would not mind guarding outside the door, Jackal, I think I would like to take off this mask.”
“Of course, sir.”
The door opens. The door closes. The boots do not go more than two steps outside of Plo’s own home. Plo lowers his head.
Lissarkh is brought home first. She arrives to Plo’s apartment door surrounded by the Coruscant Guard. They leave her with him and two of their men outside to relieve Jackal.
Bultar joins them four hours later. She closes the door behind her and struggles to take off her boots, fumbling and swearing until Lissarkh stands to go help her. Immediately, Bultar tells her to sit down. Lissarkh recoils like she has been slapped.
Plo sighs and waves Lissarkh back to join him on the meditation mat. In time, Bultar manages to liberate her boots with a ‘thunk’ and, while Plo is evening his breathing, drags herself over to collapse heavily onto the sofa.
“This is such bullshit,” Bultar says.
“Don’t say that,” Lissarkh hisses.
“BULLshit.”
“He might try to contact us. It’s understandable why they would concentrate us—”
“If Maul killed that man, he did us all a favor,” Bultar says before Lissarkh can finish; Plo can feel the heat of her gaze warming the side of his mask.
“We do not know what inspired Maul to take his actions,” he says carefully.
“Dooku’s a sith,” Bultar spits. “Everyone’s saying it. He’s been fucking with Kenobi’s head for months. Trying to worm his way in there, trying to turn Obi-Wan. Maul must have known.”
“Maul did not kill Master Dooku,” Lissarkh says.
The ladies square off through dark looks.
“He must be under someone else’s control,” Lissarkh says.
“Stop,” Bultar says. “Don’t make excuses for him. He did this.”
“He wouldn’t.”
“Stop.”
“He couldn’t.”
Bultar has always struggled to have patience with her padawan-sister’s soft-heartedness. She bares her teeth at her and then at Plo, asking him silently to intervene. He does not. In the last few hours, the unusual lightness in the atmosphere has left the space around him and what has replaced it is exhaustion. Putting the mask back on to allow the ladies to come in came with a slight whiff of resignation.
“Master, what are your thoughts?” Bultar asks.
“My thoughts are for Naboo,” Plo says, “Who have lost a great diplomat and advocate.”
“On Maul,” Bultar emphasizes.
“I cannot put those thoughts into words as of yet,” Plo says.
“Has he contacted you?”
No, Maul hasn’t contacted anyone. And as much as Plo wishes that Maul would give some sort of clue as to what is going through his mind, he is sure that this status quo will remain where it is. For all of his training, for all of his rehabilitation, Maul spent his formative years starved, beaten, and petrified. Silence and apathy are his weapons against terror. If he is as panicked as Plo is sure he must be, then he is focused only on immediate steps for survival right now.
The window for intervention is brief and will begin the moment Maul finds somewhere safe to stop moving and think. That moment will be over the second he realizes thinking will only lead to greater despair.
Plo evens his breathing for the third time in an hour.
“Master, we can’t just sit here.”
“We have no choice,” Lissarkh says.
“What does the Council think?” Bultar asks.
“I do not know what the Council thinks, I have not stood in it since we received the news,” Plo says.
“What about CO Wolffe? Can we contact him?”
They cannot contact anyone. Every device in the apartment is tapped now. The Coruscant Guard are all over the Temple; the senate has called troops back to patrol the senate floor, the Temple grounds, and the military base, all looking for Maul.
“There has to have been a mistake,” Lissarkh says.
“Or a trigger,” Bultar says.
Plo cocks his head.
Yes. A trigger. Maul could be triggered. That would explain this extreme reaction. Maul has gone on countless missions of great delicacy. Even on his most dramatic days, he knows how to control his body and mind in the face of a threat. But a trigger—something that tore his focus from the here and now and into a past moment—that might do it.
“Master? What are you thinking?”
Plo lifts his face.
“I’m thinking that we need not fight the force where it guides us,” he says. “Bultar, tell Commander Stone outside that we want to help.”
“Help?” Bultar blurts out.
“We will find Maul for them,” Plo says.
“We will?”
“If you are not comfortable accompanying me, then I will do it myself,” Plo says. “I will find Maul. I will make sense of this. He trusts me.”
Chapter Text
The Temple is full to the brim when Plo strides through the halls flanked by Commanders Stone and Thorn. Everyone, it would seem, has been called back from their assignments. Plo glances around him and wonders why.
Why call everyone back? The halls are flooded with bodies; only the festivals of pre-war times used to bring this many jedi to the Temple. The confusion of it all—masters and padawans half-armored, shadows wearing plainclothes, initiates ducking and weaving through the muddied legs and robes of those swimming to and fro the elevators—without meaning to, it creates a sense of giddiness.
It feels like it is truly a fête day. There are children leaping for joy at seeing each other after so many months on campaign. There are lineages clinging to each other, dragging each other to the sidelines of the hall to inspect each other for injuries, broken claws, new and old scars.
It should not be, and yet it is joyous.
How can it be joyous?
What happened?
“Sir?”
Plo pauses and notices that Thorn and Stone are several bodies behind him, tangled up in a crowd of initiates trying to follow their crèchemaster’s calls up ahead. He waits until they’ve all caught up and sets to herding the initiates forward enough that the Commanders can escape their squabbling and anxious clinging.
The Commanders tuck themselves closer to Plo. Their helmets swing left to right in awe at the influx of bodies. Surely, none of them have ever seen this many jedi in one place.
“The Council, gentlemen,” Plo tells them. “We’re swimming upstream for a moment. Don’t get lost.”
They nod and again, the three of them set off down the hall.
Qui-Gon is waiting outside the Council chamber doors with Obi-Wan nearly plastered against his side. Plo tries not to let his disapproval slosh over the brim of his mental cup.
“What have you done?” he hisses at Qui.
Qui-Gon’s face is unreadable. His hair is elaborate today. Obi-Wan looks from him to Plo twice.
“It was my fault, Master. I should have gone with him, with Maul—” he starts.
Qui-Gon shushes him sharply.
“After you, Master Koon,” he says.
The Council chambers are bursting with solid, present members; there are bodies in almost every seat, including those for witnesses and spectators. Plo does not miss the handful of troopers tucked into a line of soft chairs between Mace and Ki-Adi-Mundi’s usual places. They’re all dressed in their formal greys. Commander Fox sits rigid at one end with his wild, long curls arching up from his head and his hands balled into white-knuckled fists on his knees.
The others at his side include Commander Cody—Obi-Wan’s second in command—who Fox keeps throwing glances at and whose breathing seems to become ragged every couple of minutes or so. Plo does not recognize any of the others.
A hand lands on his shoulder and squeezes.
“Well, this is a shitshow,” Kit says fondly.
“What’s happening?” Plo asks him as his guards take up their stations by the Council chamber’s doors.
“Oh, you know, just people the galaxy over calling us traitors and rallying against us at the lead.”
Perfect.
“Has anyone been hurt?”
“A handful. They’re being seen to.”
“The troops?”
“Hard to say,” Kit hums, “The public thinks that they’re in cahoots with us to overthrow the republic.”
Fantastic.
“Any word from Maul?”
“None,” Plo says. “He’s probably frightened.”
“Oh, I’ll bet he’s shitting himself,” Kit says with a grin that isn’t actually unkind. “I’ve got your back when they call for extra hands.”
Relief floods Plo’s spine. He reaches up and grips Kit’s hand on his shoulder tightly before both break away. Kit wades through the crowd to his seat and settles in just as Mace tells everyone to take their places. Plo stays standing with hands tucked into his sleeves.
The chamber arranges itself until he is the only one in the inner circle still risen.
“Master Koon,” Yoda says into the echoing hall, “On trial, you are not.”
“I do not require platitudes, Master,” Plo says.
The rest of the council murmurs.
“I understand that it is my padawan who has committed this act,” Plo continues, “And I will accept responsibility for his retrieval.”
“Admirable, your sense of responsibility is,” Yoda says, “The facts of the situation, you do not have. Again I will ask: sit down.”
The old man does not have patience for dilly-dallying today. Plo would rather hammer a spike through his own foot than cross him in such a mood, so he folds himself into his customary seat. Mace gives him a sympathetic wince from a few yards away.
“May enter, Masters Jinn and Kenobi,” Yoda says in a tone that conveys such exasperation that the atmosphere in the chamber immediately lifts.
This discussion is not about Plo and Maul anymore. This is a public shaming of lineage members, and Yoda is tired.
Qui-Gon sweeps into the chambers with a flourish. Under the lights, his braided hair appears as if it has been sculpted by a master artisan. Obi-Wan follows him in his half-armor. This is the second time he has been pushed into the spotlight in so many days, only this time, embarrassment burns high around his eyes and cheekbones. He is not here as a junior councilmember; he is here as an auxiliary troublemaker.
“Grandpadawan, mine,” Yoda says dryly to Qui, “Explain yourself, will you?”
“No thank you, sir,” Qui-Gon says kindly.
He sweeps around to leave the chamber. Obi-Wan panics and blocks his path, wisely more fearful of Yoda than his own master’s disappointment.
“Qui-Gon,” Yoda drawls dangerously. “Again, I will ask, but only once more: explain yourself, will you?”
Qui-Gon does not turn around. He stares down into Obi-Wan’s eyes. They are conversing intensely through minute facial expressions. Obi-Wan squares his jaw, clenching it so hard that a muscle in it jumps.
Qui-Gon gestures back at the Council. Obi-Wan takes a step backwards and straightens his spine. If he were wearing a robe, he would have adopted the Sleeve-tuck of Resolution. Alas, without it, he can only puff himself up at his master and silently demand that he go through with whatever agreement they’d made outside of the door.
Qui-Gon rolls his eyes and turns around abruptly. He strides forward again to stand before Yoda and Yoda only.
“What is it that you wish to know?” he asks magnanimously.
Obi-Wan deflates in relief behind him.
“Wish do know, I do, why took it upon yourself to uncover a sith, you did,” Yoda says. “Wish to know, I do, why this information has come to the council only now. Not a tool for sith-extraction, are junior councilmembers; nor a tool, is young Knight Maul.”
“You are accusing me of inciting Maul to kill the Chancellor?” Qui-Gon asks. “Grandmaster, I am hurt. Have you so little faith in me?”
“No accusations, did I make,” Yoda says. “Ask you to explain yourself, I have. Perceived, I have, that Master Kenobi and Knight Maul would not act on such matters alone. Not in their natures, it is. Experience in such matters, they do not have.”
“Master, if I may be frank,” Qui-Gon says, “It was you who taught me to explore all possibilities and to gather all relevant evidence before bringing such matters to the Council. I have done my due diligence in this matter; Obi-Wan consented to join me of his own will and interest. We, as a lineage, hoped to determine if my suspicions about Master Dooku were correct. As I feared that my former-master had fallen to the dark, I requested the aid of Maul, which I felt was prudent given that he is the only person with experience in the signs and markings of a sith.
Upon his confirmation that a recognizable pattern was present, Rael and myself began to determine other means by which to confirm that the pattern was substantial enough to bring to the Council’s attention. We could not have gotten that confirmation without Obi-Wan’s participation, and I am of the opinion that we have proven in those documents provided here only hours ago that our concerns were founded with regards to Master Dooku.”
Plo touches his talons together and watches Obi-Wan.
He had said something in the doorway about how he was the one who should have gone with Maul.
He should have gone.
What a specific choice of words.
“Master Jinn, your point you have proven with regards to Dooku,” Yoda says, “Of this matter, I do not speak.”
There is a long pause.
“I am afraid that I am no longer certain what you are asking about, then,” Qui-Gon admits. “If you are asking if I was aware of anything untoward in the works involving the Chancellor, then no. Obi-Wan and I have focused our efforts on Dooku. Occasionally, we wondered if he was the sith master or the apprentice, but our efforts did not go farther than that.
When asked, Knight Opress was not able to discern Dooku’s ranking either. If you are wondering what Knight Opress’s state of mind was at the time of our investigation, he was inquisitive and anxious over the possibility of a sith’s presence, but he did not express any feelings on the Chancellor. On the contrary, he was quite set on keeping the Chancellor out of the situation with Dooku, so as not to cause undue alarm in the senate before the Order determined how to proceed with a sith sitting in a seat of great power behind enemy lines.”
Plo tilts his head in interest.
“Did Knight Opress ever speak to you about the Chancellor?” Mace asks.
Qui-Gon shakes his head solemnly.
“Maul was not especially interested in the Chancellor,” he says. “He never mentioned him, although he did not like the senate, which he expressed to me on multiple occasions. He did, however, express fondness for the Coruscant Guard.”
“What did he say to you regarding the senate?” Kit asks.
Qui-Gon’s attention slides over to him.
“Nothing that my own troopers and fellow officers have not also expressed,” he says, “He often repeated that he did not understand why the Jedi must be the ones to fight this war. It seemed to him that our role is contradictory to the tenants of our philosophy.”
“Master Kenobi,” Yoda says, drawing attention once more to the man who has so far been silent. “Close with Knight Opress, you have been since childhood.”
“Yes, Master,” Obi-Wan says.
“Understand, the council does, that focused your attention has recently been on the unfortunate actions of Dooku towards you. However, time, did you spend, with Knight Opress before the Chancellor’s murder?” Yoda asks.
“I’m afraid not, sir,” Obi-Wan says respectfully.
“You did not accompany Knight Opress to the senate,” Ki-A-Mundi says. “Given your and his closeness, why do you think he elected to take Commander Wolffe with him instead?”
Obi-Wan’s brow wrinkles; the edges of his mustache twitch as he thinks.
“I was needed to present evidence, Master,” he says.
“Commander Wolffe was aware then, of the evidence you intended to present?”
“Yes.”
What?
No.
Plo—
What?
“Who else was aware of these circumstances?”
“To my knowledge, only my commander.”
“Commander Cody, that is?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Commander Cody, is this the case?” Ki-A-Mundi asks, turning around in his seat to where Cody is tucked in tight next to Commander Fox.
Cody’s breathing does not appear to have become any less erratic since discussion opened. He meets Ki-A-Mundi’s gaze, though.
“Sir,” he says.
“Commander, are you feeling able to speak on this matter?” Ki-A-Mundi asks.
Plo understands where the question is coming from. Cody’s skin is ashen; it appears as though he might vomit at any moment.
“Sir,” Cody says again, moving to stand. Fox jumps up at his side.
“I was also aware of the circumstances, Generals,” he blurts out. “They told me. Both Commanders.”
Plo feels his brow rocket up his forehead. It makes his mask dig into his face.
“Say more, Commander,” Mace says evenly.
Fox lets out a shuddered breath.
“I let Wolffe and Maul into the Chancellor’s chambers,” he admits.
A murmur rushes through the council. Yoda’s face is inscrutable as he gazes upon the man who is technically under his supervision, even if Fox’s duties are more aligned to be the Chancellor’s aide.
“What led you to make this decision, Commander?” Mace asks him.
“There was a discrepancy in personnel files, sir, which resulted in a deceased aide receiving the Chancellor’s approval to leave their post. Knight Opress and Wolffe were inquiring about it. I permitted them entry to see if there was evidence of this decision having been made by someone working on behalf of Count Dooku or if it was a mistake on the Chancellor or guard’s parts.”
“A deceased person?” Mace repeats.
Fox nods.
“A Stewjoni aide,” he says.
Plo has to lean all the way back in his seat. Even that doesn’t seem to push him far away enough to absorb the entirety of this situation. He shakes himself and looks for Qui-Gon only to find him standing perfectly poised and innocently in front of Obi-Wan.
Shielding again.
Plo could laugh if he didn’t know that he’d be fighting every instinct to the same thing if it was Bultar, Maul, or Lissarkh in Obi-Wan’s shoes.
“This is all quite perplexing,” Mace says, even though it is anything but that.
The facts have made themselves apparent: Dooku infiltrated the Chancellor’s records. He borrowed an aide to send to Stewjon, a notorious fortress of governmental red tape when it comes to people entering and exiting its atmosphere. He either killed the aide or stole his identity to acquire materials with which to lure Obi-Wan closer.
Maul is generally protective of Obi-Wan, even if they clash on every issue, in every circumstance, regardless of audience or time sensitivity. It was Obi-Wan who met Maul in the mines of Bandomeer. It was Obi-Wan who first shared his meager rations with Maul and ignited the first flame of trust in him. He has never wavered in that trust either; he’s told stories of Maul as a scrawny, overworked child tackling their overseers and sinking his sharp milk teeth into the flesh of anyone who dared to cross his friend. He and Maul have worked countless missions together and while Obi-Wan was wondering if he should ascend the ranks of the Order, Maul was the one jostling and telling him to take the leap.
Plo can see, plain as day, how Maul might react violently if he found something in the Chancellor’s office that threatened Obi-Wan’s life or happiness.
He glances over his shoulder to see Shaak tracing the edge of her cheekbone in thought. She notices him and touches her brow. He leans on a palm in question. She shakes her head.
Can’t be sure.
Need more information.
“Commander,” Plo asks, and Fox startles before looking his way, “How was Knight Opress’s demeanor to you before entering the Chancellor’s chambers?”
Fox tries to conceal a grimace.
“Excited?” he tries. “You know how he is; he’s always trying to get in the way. Snoop around in things. That sort of behavior.”
“Excited,” Kit repeats. “In a manner which you feel may have been hostile?”
“No, sir. Just annoying.”
Some of the spectators guffaw.
“I see. Thank you, Commander. And while this decision of yours was an oversight, please do not feel that it is one worthy of your life,” Plo says. “That goes for all of you.”
The line of troopers keep their heads down in deference. Fox lowers his chin and slowly retakes his seat, pulling Commander Cody down with him.
The Council sits with all of this information for a few long moments, before Qui-Gon asks if further testimony is required of him.
“Free to leave, you are,” Yoda says. “Take your seat, you may, Master Kenobi.”
“Sir, I would like to volunteer to assist in the efforts to locate Knight Opress,” Obi-Wan says.
In response, Yoda gives Qui-Gon a look. Qui-Gon nods solemnly and grabs Obi-Wan by the face—with care, of course—and forces him to stagger backwards with him towards the door. He closes it behind both of them.
Plo waits a few beats before lifting himself from his seat and repeating young Kenobi’s honorable words.
He too, gets thrown out of the proceedings.
Qui-Gon’s long legs are capable of taking him some great distance in only a short period of time. Plo catches him and Obi-Wan bickering in an elevator just before the doors close. Plo stuffs his arm between the doors. The bicker dies into silence as the doors open once more.
Plo enters the elevator and waits again for the doors to close on their own this time.
“You too, then?” Qui-Gon asks.
“Master, I’m so sorry—” Obi-Wan starts.
“Do you know where he went?” Plo asks him.
Obi-Wan recoils. He drops his gaze.
“No, sir,” he admits.
Right. Okay, so be it.
“Cover for me?” Plo asks Qui-Gon.
The man’s eyebrows bounce up.
“How unusual,” he says. “You asking for assistance from the likes of us?”
“Will you do it, or not?”
Qui-Gon’s lips spread into a warm smile.
Plo trusts his people. He trusts the council. He trusts Yoda to get to the bottom of this.
But he needs fifteen minutes of peace and selfishness, and more important than that, he needs to get back onto his damn ship.
There are troopers and guards everywhere in the Galactic City, and Plo is regrettably a celebrity among the general populace now. Getting out of the Temple unseen is not difficult when one is friends with a man unafraid to pull a fire alarm lever but getting across the city to the GAR base proves to be a much greater obstacle.
Thankfully, there are people like Jackal, who see him coming from a mile away and who call their brothers over.
They give Plo a helmet.
He is very tall for a clone trooper.
It doesn’t matter, they push him into the middle of their group and scan their own keys in great haste to get him through the turnstiles at the Base’s entrance.
Plo promises the men that he’ll be quick. He just needs to ransack Maul’s quarters on the ship. It has been a few weeks since he was in them, true, but Maul is prone to disorder when it comes to possessions and paperwork.
He must have left something. A hint, a note, even a coin—Plo isn’t picky.
His talons catch on the threads of the room’s mattress as he overturns it. The drawers he pulls out rattle their wheels.
Something clatters. He ceases his movements immediately and searches the floor until he finds it. A smooth, silver stick-style transceiver lays innocently on the floor. Its tip pulses green light.
Gotcha.
He sweeps it up and stuffs it into his shirt, then sets about setting the room to right as if no one has been there.
The wolf pack drops Plo back off to the Temple with whispered declarations of loyalty and unspoken pleas for the return of their lost brother. Wolffe’s absence sits among them like a hole in the bottom of a bucket. Plo cannot promise that Wolffe will return to them, but he can promise to do everything in his power to try to bring him home safe.
It is enough for the troopers to salute him and to wish him luck.
They say they believe in the jedi. They know the jedi wouldn’t upend the very republic they were fighting tooth and nail to protect.
Plo’s heart expands for them. He slips back into the Temple through Qui-Gon’s flung-open fresher window.
“Welcome back, fellow miscreant,” Qui calls from the kitchen. “Did you find what you were looking for?”
“Not a word,” Plo whispers as he shrugs his robes back on.
He emerges from the refresher and finds Qui-Gon leaning on his countertop with a pot of light-pink tea brewed in a glass pot.
Plo joins him and fishes the transceiver out of his shirt.
“Do you have a charging station?” he asks.
Qui obviously does not have a charging station, it doesn’t ‘fit the vibe’ of his home. When he needs one, he ‘borrows’ one from one of the kids. Usually Anakin. Anakin is at his wit’s end trying to introduce technology into Qui-Gon’s apartment. He gets excited that he’s made headway anytime Qui stops by inquiring about anything that involves wires, only to be disappointed when it turns out that the wires are for old-man shenanigans and not improving the quality of life in Qui-Gon’s home.
Plo feels like someone needs to sit this whole lineage down and have a thorough discussion about boundaries and filial piety, complete with participation points.
Today is not the day for that, however.
Today, he needs a charging station. Qui-Gon goes out for a walk, steals one from Ahsoka’s robe pocket, and brings it back for him.
Plo does not look the gift horse in the mouth; he simply charges the transceiver until its pulsing light turns blue. Then he takes it off the station and activates it.
There are a number of messages, both text and holo, on the transceiver. Among these are a handful from a number of people who appear to be anonymous admirers of Maul, each of which he has responded to with ‘please cease and desist all contact upon pain of unrecoverable limbs.’ The most interesting one comes from an unknown sender with DMR in the title.
The body of the message consists of nothing more than a set of coordinates.
“DMR,” Plo reads out.
“Sounds like a transit terminal,” Qui-Gon supplies.
“DMR,” Plo says again.
“Does he back up his transceivers?” Qui-Gon asks. “Boy walks around with enough in his pockets to be a dispenser. If he backs them up, you might be able to use this to connect with one he’s got on him, still.”
That’s a thought.
Plo syncs the transceiver to his pad and starts hunting for other connections. Qui is right in that Maul likes to carry around ten or so mini-transceivers at all times. This is a consequence of the afore-mentioned disorganized behavior. He loses them left and right unless they’re flashing with ‘URGENT’ lights.
The stick-transceiver isn’t obviously linked with its own recognizable frequency, but it does contain the frequencies of two other contacts in its files.
Plo comms the first one and tries to push the throbbing in his ears into the force.
The line connects on the first try. It’s a miracle.
“Hello?”
It’s Wolffe.
“Commander,” Plo sighs out more than says. “It is good to hear your voice.”
“Oh, thank fuck.”
Qui-Gon grins across the counter and taps the side of his nose smugly.
“General,” Wolffe whispers, “I am so sorry, I can explain.”
“Where are you?” Plo asks gently.
“The Chancellor—”
“Nevermind the Chancellor. Are you okay?” Plo asks.
There is a pause.
“Who is this?” A new voice whispers. It sounds different. Accented. Familiar.
“It’s no one,” Wolffe says. “Shush. Mind your own ass.”
“My?”
A sigh.
“Look. Me and him only for 2 minutes, you got it?”
“No?”
“Come on, man.”
Plo’s mind races as he tries to work out how to approach the next five minutes with maximum efficiency.
“Commander,” He says. “Is that Feral Opress?”
There is a sudden pause.
“I recognize that this looks bad, sir,” Wolffe says. “But please trust me when I say that it is a thousand times worse than whatever you’re thinking.”
Plo can’t help but laugh.
“Where are you?” he asks. “We will retrieve you. Are you with Maul?”
“I was, sir.”
“And now?”
“And now I am not, sir.”
“Where is Maul, Commander?”
There is an awkward shuffle on the other side of the line.
“The Chancellor is dead, Commander,” Plo says. “I am not angry. I want to help, but I can’t help without context. You must give me something to work with.”
“One second,” Wolffe says abruptly. “Here, you hold this, don’t talk. Yeah, thanks. Just hold it.”
“Hello?” Feral says.
“I just said don’t talk to—hey, look at me. No talking. Just holding. Stay there.”
“Hello?” Feral says again after a few beats.
“Hello, Feral,” Plo says conversationally. “How are you?”
“Who is this?”
Feral is a sweet boy with moderate grasp of Basic. He is younger than Maul by several years, but meeker in multiples of a hundred. Plo is positive that he does not remember who Plo is; the last time they met, the boy was too ill to hold himself up under his own power.
“A friend of Maul’s,” Plo says simply. “Are you with your brother, Feral?”
“You know me?”
“I do.”
“Okay,” Feral says nervously.
“It’s alright. I’m friendly. Do you know where you are, Feral?” Plo asks.
“Know where I am?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Yes. We are home.”
Got it. Perfect. Stupendous.
“Thank you, Feral, that is very helpful for me to know,” Plo says. “Are you feeling sick?”
“Sick? No.”
“Did you not like Coruscant?”
“Did I—? Oh. No. No.”
Well, that shouldn’t be surprising. Feral, unlike Maul, has lived on Dathomir since infancy. He’s never known anything but that rural countryside. The rehabilitation center the Temple placed him at, for all its merits, is located in a suburb full of busy families and modern conveniences. Even that must have been a cause of terrific culture shock.
“So Maul took you home?” Plo asks.
There is a longer, thoughtful pause on the other side of the line.
“Fang says it is okay,” Feral says.
Fang. That’s a name. Qui-Gon takes it upon himself to start taking notes by hand on the back of a coaster.
“I see, that must be a relief,” Plo says. “Did Maul come pick you up to take you home, then?”
“Yes,” Feral says.
“What is he doing right now? Is he sick?”
“No, he is talking with Fang.”
“Excellent. I’m happy to hear that. Can you tell your brother to call me back when he gets a moment? Tell him I’m not angry, okay?”
“Tell him?”
“Tell him to call me back, and I’m not angry.”
“Okay, yes. I understand,” Feral says. “Your name is?”
“You can say it was ‘master.’”
“Master? You took Maul?”
“Ah. No, a different master. A jedi master.”
“Oooh. Yes, I understand. You are a—”
“FERAL. You had one job,” Wolffe’s voice snaps. “Come on, kid, work with me here. Give me that. Hello? General?”
“Hello, Commander,” Plo says. “How is Dathomir at this time of year?”
There is a pause and then a sigh.
“He was freaking out, sir. We didn’t mean for it to happen.”
“What did you mean to happen, Wolffe?”
“We have to go,” Wolffe suddenly says.
Of course they do.
“Have him call me,” Plo says. “We can fix this.”
“I’ll try, sir.”
“And Wolffe? You too, are forgiven. Whatever it is, whatever happens. We can work through it and past it. Do you understand?”
There is no answer. The line goes dead.
Qui-Gon clicks the end of his stylus.
“Well,” he says, “That was easy.”
Notes:
Quiggs & Plo dream team. All they need now are matching T-shirts.
Chapter Text
It has been a whole week since the call with Wolffe and Feral, and Plo is still no closer to getting off this overly-lit rock. He must get to Dathomir. Progress cannot be made until he arrives there and persuades Maul to talk to him.
Plo has cornered Mace about it. He has spoken with others in the Council as well. First, they tell him not to encourage Qui-Gon’s famously anti-authoritarian behavior by asking him for assistance during these already-turbulent times. Then, they inform him that they have tracked down the rehabilitation facility Feral was placed in.
The center cannot disclose much about what went on there for legal reasons, but given Feral’s relationship with Maul and the sudden disappearance of their charge, they are willing to work somewhat with the messengers the Temple has sent to investigate the matter.
The center, surprisingly, has a nightbrother expatriot on staff there who had tried speaking with Feral about what life outside the planet might look like for him when Feral first arrived to the residential halls. This nightbrother willing sits with the messengers.
He says that he didn’t notice any especially grievous behaviors from Feral the first couple nights he was at the center. He does say that Feral seemed to be anxious about the prospect of being ‘unmarriable’ after having spent time off Dathomir, which the nightbrothers explains is a cultural ideal stronger in some part of Dathomirian society than others.
“At home, it is the nightbrother who keeps things moving so the nightsister can work,” he says in the recording the Temple’s messengers took. “In the rural parts, they plant, they hunt, they cook and raise the kids. It’s a hard life; most of them work communally just to cope with the sheer enormity of holding down a household like that with next to no purchasing power. Clans help each other, but it comes at a cost. There’s a lot of favoritism and hierarchy between husbands and the like in the bigger clans.”
“Most folks aren’t actually like that,” the nightbrother is then careful to explain. “The further down the hierarchy you go and the more urban, the less people care about like, traditional roles and whatnot. But Feral Opress is the son of a priestess—one might even say the priestess—so he is more or less in a situation where he’s only useful to his clan in so far as whose clan his marriage will bring into it. And that’s made even worse by the fact that it sounds like the older brothers are no longer there to take some off some of that pressure. He’s the only one left, so it’s all on him to keep up appearances to anyone who comes by to observe.”
The nightbrother thinks that Feral became ill in the first place by working himself to pieces. Having no children of his own to rear, apparently, he has dedicates his time to looking after other children—orphaned children—which the local community holds in high esteem. Sadly, esteemed as it may be, it is nearly impossible for a single young man to manage such a thing successfully without his clan’s assistance, and Feral has no family left to offer him such assistance.
Plo feels for the boy, he does. But he worries now. He worries a lot about Maul.
Wolffe has messaged him a few times over the past few days. Plo has been advised by the Council to try to keep things conversational with him in order to try to keep him talking for as long as possible.
It seems that Maul’s show of taking Wolffe hostage was a bluff. Wolffe is safe and is being kept that way by being so far away from the core worlds. Maul is protecting him by smothering him in Dathomir’s marshland mists.
Dathomir is a fearsome world, hostile to outsiders. Plo hopes that, in his panic, Maul hasn’t exchanged his freedom for his or Wolffe’s safety.
It has been weeks (plural) now. Plo is becoming agitated. The senate has begun a republic-wide hunt. Master Dooku is some damn place in the Galactic City standing before an army of jedi led by Master Yoda, who beseeches him to please, please speak the truth.
Dooku has scorned him thus far in all attempts at negotiation. Plo should be focusing on that. He is meant to be assisting the negotiation team, but his thoughts are tied up with his own lineage.
He must keep wrestling his mind away from those dark waters. The sith is the greatest priority here. Maul is not a sith and not in in danger of falling, if Wolffe’s brief messages are to be believed, so Plo’s efforts must be redirected.
For the good of everyone.
For the good of the republic.
For the end of the bloodshed. The cruelty. The starvation and bombardment.
He is sorry, his apprentice.
He’s sorry.
Finally, a break in the negotiations arrives. Dooku says he is willing to talk on one condition: he must speak to Qui-Gon.
This would be cause for celebration if not for the fact that Qui-Gon has not exactly earned the trust of the Council on this issue or any other as of late. Naturally, Obi-Wan volunteers himself to go and negotiate in his stead. The Council decides that this is exactly as shit of a suggestion as it feels like it might be, so Mace sweet-talks his way into going as the primary negotiator with Obi-Wan as his back-up.
That results in Dooku failing to show up to the agreed upon location to talk.
He will accept only Qui-Gon. He repeats this sharply. If Qui-Gon does not make himself available, then this is the last time he will offer negotiations, Dooku says.
For whatever reason, that switches a flip in Qui-Gon’s head that makes him turn into a huge, well-groomed, aggressive owl. He spreads his enormous wings and begins a slow, hostile dance in his former-master’s direction.
Upon receiving word of his former-master’s refusal to come to the table, Qui-Gon writes what must be one hell of a missive to Dooku, the gist of which being that he will only attend a meeting with Dooku if Master Yoda attends with him. Even Master Yoda is taken by surprise by the sudden turnaround. But because Dooku views Qui-Gon as his dearest, sweetest, most malleable apprentice even all these years after Qui-Gon has built himself a reputation as being the exact opposite, he starts to bend.
Not Yoda, Dooku says. He will accept Knight Rael Aveross in attendance.
Qui-Gon refuses. He’s not doing this to Rael. It is he or Yoda, he or Mace, or no meeting at all.
Dooku changes tact and angles for Obi-Wan to attend as Qui’s second. Obi-Wan re-volunteers. Qui-Gon, thankfully, sends the same missive back with with Anakin’s name replaced everywhere Obi-Wan’s had been typed.
Dooku takes that opportunity to turn into a raging star on the verge of supernova. He will not have Anakin. He will not bear so much as the young man’s name in his presence. He accuses Qui-Gon of not wanting to negotiate and only wanting to antagonize him. There is a below-the-belt jab somewhere in there that Qui-Gon has proven himself incapable of empathy, which Qui-Gon responds to by shutting down every emotion he has and writing back that Dooku is correct. He always has been correct.
At this, Yoda calls for a break and enters into the fray Knight Feemor Retasse. Feemor, Qui-Gon’s eldest apprentice, is usually kept in the room with the other shadows chomping at the bit, but today is his day to be a negotiator like his master, his master’s master, and his padawan-brother.
Feemor is a more or less neutral party in this particular lineage, although he would not have been anyone’s first choice for the job. He is charming, yes. Resourceful, yes. Wildly cunning and prepared to take any and all action that results in the success of the mission, absolutely.
Trustworthy? Depends on how far you can throw him.
That tends to be the way with most shadows.
Still, Feemor goes to meet with Dooku and is not spurned, but not necessarily helpful. Rather, his arrival is met with confusion. Dooku shoos him home undamaged, and the result is a temporary reprieve in hostilities.
Plo would like to slam his head into a wall throughout all of this.
By the time Dooku has submitted to the ordeal of accepting Qui-Gon and Ahsoka into his company for negotiations, Wolffe’s messages have turned into images.
It feels like it has been months since the Chancellor was slain when in truth it has only been a matter of weeks. The public is furious that nothing has been done about the jedi ‘traitors.’ The senate is barely able to put off taking action. Day by day, they claim to be ‘beginning an investigation,’ and yet day by day, senators arrive to the Temple and ask in whispered voices if the Council can maintain the current ceasefire. As long as Dooku is arguing with Qui-Gon, new campaigns among the Separatists remain halted. An interim Chancellor can be elected fairly if only they have a little more time.
Just a few more days, please.
In return for a few more days, the Temple demands exclusive rights to capturing Maul.
No one has revealed to any senator that Wolffe’s whereabouts are now known. His missives can be traced to a village on Dathomir, where he is gathering intelligence on Plo’s behalf.
To enter the village without causing further chaos or drawing attention to a people undeserving of violent intervention, the Temple needs data. Or more specifically, Plo needs to know the intricacies of the society Maul has hidden himself in in order to determine how best to extract him from it—if such a thing is possible.
Plo knows that it is possible.
Wolffe’s guilt over what has happened with the Chancellor keeps him in contact with Plo, and, quietly writhing with the oiliness that comes with using one’s most trusted commander as a spy on one’s own apprentice, Plo has attempted to relax the awkwardness and tension between them by asking Wolffe to think of all of this as a vacation of sorts.
Go meet the locals, gain their trust. See what their reality is like, and report back. Plo will handle the rest; Wolffe has done nothing wrong and as long as he continues acting by Plo’s orders, there will be no disciplinary action taken.
Wolffe is not exactly the perfect trooper for this job, but he is the only one to do it and so, he begins by attempting to make friends. He starts with Feral, which might have been successful if Feral could either understand more Basic or find it in himself to be more amenable to being befriended. He instead responds to all inquiries sent his way by giving Wolffe children to hold as if this will distract Wolffe from all of these other things that do not matter.
Wolffe reports within days that the children do not like him. At the end of this path is a pond of failure. He is changing tact.
He begins corresponding with someone called ‘Choler.’
Choler, from what Plo can gather from the messages, is a young nightsister. She has mentioned that she is an old acquaintance of Maul’s from before the sith Sidious took him away from Dathomir.
They were friends once. Best friends.
She met Maul when she was too young to accompany her mother to the nightsisters’ rituals and work on the other side of the mountain. Having been banished from the house by her father for some ‘fresh air,’ she found Maul chasing other children away from a cluster of tadpoles he’d been observing in a slough a few miles away from their home. With Choler’s help, the tadpoles came to be protected by a fort and then by a very confused, frantic Savage Opress who had believed up until that point that he’d lost Maul to the forest spirits and was due a terrible punishment by their mother.
After this first encounter, Choler and Maul quickly learned that life did not have to be Maul against Savage’s threats of grooming and Choler against her father’s insistence that she wear shoes; it could be both of them against Savage’s grooming and Choler’s father’s shoe mandates.
She and Maul stood strong as a unified fort until Maul was ruthlessly dragged away from her by the adults around them.
They haven’t seen each other since that day. Maul’s arrival back to Dathomir, however, ignites a candle of curiosity in her pale bosom, and she cannot help but come down to see if who he has become is anything like the boy she was once so close to.
She arrives to the Opress residence under the guise of visiting Feral and his collection of orphans. That is when she and Wolffe are first introduced. She is hesitant at first but is quickly charmed by how terrible Wolffe is with the children.
She seems to sense a kindred spirit in him.
The two of them hit it off. They message each other often throughout the day and Wolffe sends Plo snapshots of the most relevant pieces of their conversations. From what Plo can gather from the messages, Choler seems to be a mid-ranking nightsister within the local religious hierarchy. She is expected and encouraged to develop her connection to Dathomir’s magic at religious ceremonies and lectures, but she often ‘sleeps in’ instead.
Choler: I’d rather work, you know?
Wolffe: literally zero understanding, but go on
Choler: my cousin works in the city. All she does all day is type numbers into a database and they give her 230 dcr for that. I can type. Where is my 230 dcr? Do you know what I could do with 230 dcr?
Wolffe: build a house?
Choler: no. what the fuck do I want with a house? My dad has a house already.
Wolffe: okay
Wolffe: buy a boulder?
Choler: dude
Choler: I’d buy a boulder so fat. I’d hollow it out and make it a cave
Wolffe: everyone here is obsessed with caves. Have you ever about this thing called duracrete?
Choler: no no listen
Wolffe: you’d need to pay taxes on it.
Choler: on my cave?
Wolffe: yes
Choler: um no? no I don’t?
Wolffe: Yes you do. Knock knock, I am your tax collector. You’re 30 days late on your water bill. You owe me 30 dcr.
Choler: but I only have 230 dcr
Wolffe: now you have 200
Wolffe: whoops knock knock. You’re violating a public nuisance order on account of all these fuckin bats. That’s another 50 dcr.
Choler: no sir, they’re my roommates. You can’t charge them. only I can charge them
Wolffe: oops knock knock. ma’am, it sounds like you’re subletting illegally to all these bats. That’ll be another 50 dcr
Choler: what??? I don’t even know what that is. what if I paid you with my body? Can I pay in sex?
Wolffe: no
Choler: would you
Choler: would you like a piece of this, hunk?
Wolffe: no. you owe me 130 dcr and if you don’t cough it up, the bank is foreclosing on this cave.
Choler: we don’t HAVE banks
Wolffe: that is not my problem, ma’am. That is your problem. Give me my 130 dcr or be foreclosed.
Choler: you’re the worst I hate you my dreams are in pieces
Wolffe: what else is new? Tell me about the orb thing.
Choler: it’s a moon.
Wolffe: tell me more about the moon orb thing.
Choler is somehow cheering Plo up from miles and miles away. She is delightfully humorous, prone to over-sharing, and, as Wolffe tells it, disgustingly in love with Maul.
She does not deny this, except to Maul, who does not seem to notice her awkwardness or painstaking attempts to be ‘sexy’ around him.
Wolffe experiences these complex courting rituals as a form of physical torture.
Unfortunately, Choler’s infatuation with Maul is a double-edged sword. It brings relief, endearment, and entertainment, but also dread. The circumstances that Plo feared would happen are coming to life before his eyes.
He reads the proof one morning before Bultar comes into his apartment.
Choler: Talzin isn’t going to budge. She never budges and she’s doing you both a huge favor here.
Wolffe: I realize that. I just don’t understand why he can’t pick between the sisters.
Choler: because you can’t marry a second son to a second daughter. It’s bad luck.
Wolffe: aren’t you a second daughter?
Choler: this isn’t about me
Wolffe: choler, listen. I mean this. he doesn’t have to do this. I told him he doesn’t have to do this. We’ll figure something else out.
Choler: there is no other way out. You don’t understand. Maul’s important here. He’s so fucking pretty it makes people’s eyes bleed.
Wolffe: We have to go back to the republic
Choler: they’ll kill both of you
Wolffe: maybe that’s what we deserve
Choler: the magics say you deserve to live.
Wolffe: that’s you saying that. Not the magics.
Wolffe: Maul killed the Chancellor.
Choler: why does that even matter??? What did that guy do for anyone but walk you all into a war?? What did he do to stop it?
Wolffe: it’s too complicated to explain and it doesn’t matter in the end. Treason is treason, but if we own up to it, then there might be a way out.
Choler: it’s safer for both of you to stay here.
Choler: Anathema may be a terror but she’s better than being dead. And yeah maybe she’s a violent, domineering freak but we all know she’d lose her damn gourd if something happened to anything she thoroughly pissed on, and that’s including Maul. He’s safe with her. No one will EVER fuck with her. And as long as he’s safe, you’re safe. So just stay here.
Wolffe: Why is that the only option?
Choler: Because Talzin said so.
Wolffe: do you really believe that?
Choler: you have to, to survive here.
Wolffe: we have to stop this. how do we stop it?
Choler: we don’t we DON’T. WHY CANT YOU UNDERSTAND??
Wolffe: but you love him
Choler: and it doesn’t matter, okay? It never has. Nothing matters but what Talzin says. It’s been that way for years. That’s why the only people who are here are starving. They’re the poorest of the poor. They can’t leave. There isn’t money. There isn’t a way to go to the city. Everyone who could leave already did.
Wolffe: Choler. I’m sorry, but that can’t be the only option.
Choler: it IS the only option.
Choler: and Maul is the one who came back. He knew if he came back that he wouldn’t have all the rights the jedi gave him. He knew this would happen.
Wolffe: I need to stop him.
Choler: but why?
Wolffe: because it’s not right. I think he did this for me.
Choler: Maybe. Or maybe he did this for everyone. that guy, that chancellor. You know why Maul killed him don’t you?
Wolffe: I know.
Choler: then you know this is all for the greater good.
Wolffe: I know. But that’s not justice for Maul.
Choler: justice doesn’t exist for some of us.
Wolffe: maybe not. But I want to believe that we can try to make it.
Wolffe drops hints like these.
He isn’t talking to Choler. He’s talking to Plo. Plo knows he is, but he needs more to understand why Wolffe is saying these things.
What happened with the Chancellor?
Why did Maul kill him?
Every set of messages brings the hope that one of them will give him the answer to those questions, and every set leaves Plo’s hands curling. There are marks in the skin on insides of his wrists where his talons have dug into them.
‘Let me speak to Maul,’ he pleads with Wolffe.
Every time, the missive goes unanswered.
Plo holds his head in his hands.
Mace finds him that afternoon. Plo has no doubts that he has come here on the heels of Bultar’s pleas. She and Lissarkh keep visiting him. Every day they come and sit in the living room to drink tasteless tea in silence. They’ve all run out of things to say. Plo lets them read the messages he receives. They ask a question. He cannot answer it.
The next day, they knock on his door.
The cycle repeats.
Repeats.
Repeats.
“Let me see,” Mace says.
Plo blindly hands him the transceiver and sits still while Mace scrolls through the snippets until he’s read enough and sets the transceiver back on the counter with a cold click.
“You’re getting somewhere,” he says. “He’s so close. Don’t give up.”
“How does one halt a marriage from a million miles away?” Plo sighs.
“One trusts in the force that one has taught their apprentice everything they need to know to stop it themselves,” Mace says.
Plo sinks deeper into his hands. It isn’t enough. He flattens his forehead against the counter.
“Has Wolffe received his pardon?” he asks, muffled by the table.
“Nearly there,” Mace says calmly. “Senator Organa says he is expecting a majority decision.”
There is at least this justice in the galaxy.
Qui-Gon halts negotiations with Dooku.
It happens in a fraction of a minute. He steps out of the agreed upon building and calls for someone to come take Ahsoka away from the place with its empty fountains. Plo arrives and holds out his arm. Ahsoka steps towards him with trembling hands and lips. Her force signature chatters with fear like rain; Qui-Gon’s eyes have drained of color.
He says nothing to Plo; he turns around and, as a lone figure, steps back into the grand white hall.
“What’s happened?” Plo asks Ahsoka in a soft voice.
“Dooku said it,” Ahsoka whispers. “He said he’s a sith.”
Okay. Yes, they already knew this.
“He’s the apprentice.”
The skin on the back of Plo’s head tries to shrink in on itself.
Qui-Gon must do this alone.
He is the only one Dooku trusts enough.
Plo is sorry. He and the others who continue to gather in anticipation of the impending moment stand outside the building. Sabers hang on the silver hooks of belts. The artificial sky is darkening. The air grows colder.
The force steadies in the space between it all.
Qui-Gon does not emerge from the hall. He sends a private message to Master Yoda.
Just one message.
The force roars.
Panic spreads through the Temple like floodwaters. It runs. It pours through hallways, saturating one floor and then the next until each set of rooms is fully submerged in icy paralysis.
The hungry coldness moves upward from the crèche to the Council room, up through the forests and grasses and training salles and armor rooms, up, up, up to the master-padawan residences.
The whole Temple freezes over.
Jedi look out the windows of their home in the Galactic City, and instead seeing twinkling lights in an urban sea, an ocean of atrocities heaves below them in the now, in the then, and in the will-be.
The force gathers into a tsunami of grief.
It was the Chancellor this whole time.
Chapter Text
Maul has been gone for 37 days. Wolffe has returned without him, and before the ramp to the returning ship is even properly lowered, Commander Cody is off like a shot to meet it. He throws himself into Wolffe as Wolffe, looking long-haired and exhausted, takes the final steps down to the hangar’s floor.
The two of them stagger as one.
Cody buries his face into Wolffe’s shoulder; smelling him, feeling the warmth of his skin. How he manages to do so through the tears and the fierce grip that Wolffe returns to him is none of Plo’s business. He knew that these two commanders were closer than most, but seeing their reunion drives home the despair that Cody has endured every second his brother was out of his sight.
The two of them stay locked together on the ramp for a long time.
Plo leaves them to process everything that has happened together.
Wolffe is not in too poor of shape; he is looked over by the medical staff and deemed fighting fit. The wolfpack celebrates his arrival with howls that reverberate throughout the base. Wolffe flushes his way through all of it, snapping at everyone to ‘shut up and pack it in.’ He puts on a good show until the 104th leaves him be.
Only then does he lock eyes with Plo. Slowly, he lifts a hand and touches it to his temple. It is a salute, but more than that, it is an apology.
Wolffe’s lips fall in their corners and his eyes drop. He starts to turn away.
“Commander,” Plo says. “You are not thinking of leaving now, are you?”
“No, sir,” Wolffe says.
“I am pleased about your return.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“I’m sure you must be exhausted.”
“Sir—”
“Please take all the time you need to settle back in. Medical is gnashing their teeth in anticipation of your arrival.”
It is strange to regain a commander with no war to fight. Wolffe and Plo circle each other with empty hands for several days. There is nothing to do with the war at a standstill and so little to discuss now that they are both here in the same place.
Plo is reading through the files of evidence the investigatory committee has compiled over the last few days in the light of the command center’s window when Wolffe comes into the room and settles in next to him on the bench. They do not normally sit together. Usually, there is not enough space at the table and Wolffe prefers for his men and general to sit before he does.
Not today.
Today they are the only ones in this now-defunct space. Wolffe leans his forehead onto Plo’s shoulder and lets out a shaky breath. Plo keeps his posture steady but turns his head.
“Why are you crying, my boy?” he asks.
There is no answer beyond stifled, hitching breath. Plo shifts his shoulder. Wolffe pulls away as if burned, but it doesn’t last. Plo’s arm has better uses than as a headrest; for example, in an embrace. Light at first, but tighter as Wolffe allows himself to be comforted.
All of these men are so young in this wide, towering galaxy. In the blink of an eye, the lash of a saber, their purpose has been snatched out from under their feet. The public that once tolerated them now calls them ‘scum’ and ‘freeloaders.’ They do not know about the Chancellor yet, the public. They only know that the Separatists’ leader is in discussions with the senate. It is not the Jedi’s place to tell them any more than that.
“You are safe, young one,” Plo murmurs into Wolffe’s shaking shoulders. “And courageous. Thank you for protecting me and my apprentice for so, so long.”
Wolffe shakes harder than ever. Plo drags his fingers and talons through the corkscrew curls forming on top of his head. They are long, and even longer when pulled. After a few moments, the shaking begins to die off into more isolated shudders. Wolffe uses his rough knuckles to dry his eyes.
“I tried to bring him back,” he grates out. “I tried to convince him to listen. To come home.”
“It was never your job to bring him back,” Plo says.
“I never wanted to disa—disappoint you, sir.”
Plo softens and touches the bottom of Wolffe’s chin in fondness.
“You could never disappoint me,” he says.
Wolffe clears his throat several times and sniffs hard.
“We’ll see about that,” he warbles.
Plo shakes his head and draws his commander into another embrace. He tucks Wolffe’s head under the side of his jaw this time and rubs a hand up and down his un-armored spine. The material of his black shirt rasps with each stroke.
“What will you do now that the world has stopped turning, Commander?” Plo asks the artificial sky outside the window.
Wolffe shifts a little.
“I dunno. Maybe ride a bike or something,” he says.
It is 41 days when Plo decides that he cannot sit here and wait for Maul to bring himself home. Maul has had his chance at taking the first step. Now, it is Plo’s turn. He’s waited patiently through meeting upon meeting, through senator upon senator’s droning suggestions, through votes and group discussions.
His emotions are no longer turbulent as they were 40 days ago. Calmness has set in alongside the roots of resolution.
Wolffe throws himself up to standing the moment Plo enters the wreck room claimed by the 104th to 1) Tell Bultar to stop harassing the men and 2) ask her to join him on this journey to the marshland. Wolffe volunteers to go in her stead. Bultar shoves herself in front of him and announces that she’s ready to leave at once. Wolffe clambers to get around her and insists on going. Plo sighs and supposes that he’ll just have to take both of them.
This results in half of the room volunteering as well, which was not the intended or expected reaction.
Sadly, Plo only has room for two in the craft he has requisitioned for this purpose. Bultar calls shotgun.
Wolffe does not bring his armor with him to Dathomir.
“They don’t know me with it,” he explains as Bultar straps in tight next to Plo in the pilot’s seat. She wants to drive now. Plo personally does not relish the prospect, but he is rather impatient.
“Who is ‘they?’” he asks.
“The kids,” Wolffe says.
“Oh?”
“And Feral. He won’t have it in the house.”
Plo’s mind conjures up an image of no-longer-meek Feral throwing Wolffe off a porch and snarling after him.
“Maul and Feral are living together, then?” he asks.
Bultar tells them over her shoulder that this is the last call to buckle up.
“No,” Wolffe says, “Feral lives in a family home sort of thing. Maul’s living with his bride-to-be’s family.”
Oh dear.
The ship does not give even a warning sputter before Bultar launches them into orbit like a pebble from a catapult.
Bultar is Plo’s only human apprentice. Every day she is a credit to her species. She shaves two hours off the journey to Dathomir; it is by no means legal, but Bultar, like Maul, has never much been interested in things such ‘legality’. Laws and speed limits are things which exist for other people—namely Lissarkh, who will fly no craft so much as half a meter over the designated limit.
Plo, in the midst of training Lissarkh, once found himself pleading for a happy medium between all of these young people.
At least Bultar can successfully land the crafts she turns into flaming chariots. She does so on Dathomir without so much as a hiccup despite the mists that have overtaken the swampland beneath their craft and feet.
The mists are green and gray and warm out here in the countryside. Wolffe staggers out into them and takes a moment to sit on his heels in their midst after Bultar has released them all from the craft. Plo wades through the swirling condensation to stand at Wolffe’s side, surveying the murky surroundings.
Water drips somewhere into more water. Toads croak.
Wolffe gets to his feet and does a few turns to get his bearings.
“This way,” he says, moving towards a tall wall of purple-red reeds.
Plo’s boots slosh through ankle-deep water as the foot of a mountain comes into view. Bultar gags behind him and throws another leech into the middle of the marsh.
“Up?” Plo asks Wolffe.
For a moment, Wolffe doesn’t respond. He stares up at the mountain. The air is cooling as they approach it.
“No,” he says, turning away.
His sights land on a small cluster of trees a shorter ways away, wrapped around the mountain’s foot the way swamp water curls around their own.
Wolffe takes them through the foothills towards the forest. The ground is broken by great pieces of debris from a settlement long abandoned. The forest proves itself to be one made of lichen-covered trees. Wind blows through the lacey webs all around them; the lichen flutters and billows.
Wolffe tromps forward in confidence with little care for the snapping of twigs under the soles of his shoes. Plo follows, unable to staunch his uncertainty.
The pulse of this planet is...strange.
The force oozes here in some places and in others erupts into tangles and eddies that swirl all around him before unwinding themselves and flowing away in currents. It moves with the wind and the mist and the shush of reeds in the distance. Plo shivers.
They are deep in the forest now; behind them are nothing but trees with bearded branches. Ahead there are more. Crows battle overhead for nests and mates.
Wolffe stops. Plo and Bultar freeze in place.
Wolffe turns around sharply and, without missing a beat, sweeps his arms down in a circular motion that ends with them full.
A shriek breaks the oppressive tension.
Wolffe’s face stretches into a grin as Plo realizes that he’s holding a child. It’s a little one with light-green skin and tattoos pouring down its face and arms. It coos for Wolffe, reaching chubby fingers for his face.
“Were you sneakin’ up on me, Chief?” Wolffe asks. “Were you sneakin’?”
The little one squeals and grabs for him more emphatically.
“You thought I wouldn’t notice?”
Chief gurgles. He’s a tiny, tiny nightbrother. Plo’s heart trades fight and flight for intrigue. Wolffe gives the little boy a nuzzle with his nose before setting him neatly back on feet. The child does not approve of this. He holds both hands up to Wolffe and dances on his fat little feet, whining insistently.
“Alright, alright,” Wolffe sighs.
He picks the boy back up and sets him on his hip.
“But don’t be tellin’ any of your brothers,” Wolffe says.
The little one peers innocently up at him through heavy lashes. He slaps at Wolffe’s chest with both hands once and follows that up with one-handed gesture that Plo realizes is an attempt at a salute.
Plo clears his throat; Wolffe remembers himself and flushes.
“General,” he says, “This is Mischief.”
Of course, Mischief. Plo can barely contain himself.
“It is excellent to make your acquaintance, young man,” he says seriously. “May I?”
Wolffe hesitates for a moment before nodding and hefting Mischief up enough in his arms to hand him over. Plo accepts the boy and is immediately thrown into prisms. Wonderful rainbow prisms scattering shattered light every which way. He blinks himself back to the forest and finds the boy staring up into his mask in awe.
“Well, hello there,” Plo says.
Mischief coos and wraps a fist around the edge of the brass pipes of Plo's mask. He can’t be more than 18 months old.
“You are a wonder,” Plo tells him.
Mischief reaches for Plo’s goggles, stops himself, and decides to chew on that hand instead. Plo is blessed to stand in his presence.
“Sir?”
“He’s force-sensitive,” Bultar answers for Plo. “We’re having a moment.”
“Oh,” Wolffe says. “It seems like it’s pretty common around here, huh?”
Plo cannot hear him over his new best friend accepting the pinecone Plo has plucked off a tree branch for him. Mischief seizes it from Plo’s fingers and sinks several pearly sharp teeth into it.
“Chief?”
Plo looks up at the new voice and quickly finds familiar gold skin with familiar ink lines emerging from the brush. Feral startles to see Plo, then startles harder to see Wolffe.
He looks well. His skin is much warmer in hue than it was on Coruscant; even the irises of his eyes appear to be brighter.
“Master Jedi,” he breathes.
Mischief drops his pinecone with a soft ‘ah.’
“So sorry,” Feral says, snapping out of his shock and rushing forward to take the child. “He left me—he walks away.”
He removes the boy and stuffs him into his shoulder, wrapping him up securely.
“You came back?” he asks Wolffe.
Wolffe nods one time.
“For Maul?” Feral asks.
Wolffe doesn’t need to nod. Feral recoils into himself as Mischief grumbles and tries to turn around in his arms. He makes grabby hands at Plo again.
“No, no, little one,” Feral croons.
“He is only reacting to my signature,” Plo says. “It is no harm. I have not come here as a seeker.”
Feral’s jittery stare takes in the whole of him for a long beat. He stoops sharply to pick up Mischief’s pinecone and offers it back to him. The child receives it with a shriek of delight.
“You are Maul’s master,” Feral says.
“I am,” Plo says.
“You will take Maul from here?”
“I hope to give him that choice,” Plo says, “If that is agreeable to you.”
Feral frowns and adjusts Mischief so that he drops the pinecone again. He doesn’t wail, but opts to chew on Feral’s shoulder for entertainment instead.
“It is agree—it is okay with me,” Feral says. “Maul is like you now more than like us. But decisions are not mine. You must speak to Anathema.”
“I would rather speak with Maul, if that might be arranged?” Plo says.
“It must be Anathema,” Feral says.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. She is to marry him.”
“Very well,” Plo says, “May I speak to Anathema?”
Feral’s face contorts suddenly into a mysterious emotion. He turns it onto Wolffe.
“He means it,” Wolffe says.
Feral widens his eyes slightly and tilts his jaw just so. Wolffe holds up a hand and pushes away whatever warning that is meant to be, which results in a huff. Feral re-adjusts Mischief one more time to remove the boy out of range of a low-handing curtain of lichen and Plo realizes that he has a small basket slung across his chest and settled on his opposite hip. A few pine needles jut out from its closed lid.
“If you must,” Feral says. “Come with me to the village.”
He turns around to begin walking, and, over his shoulder, Mischief lights up and give Plo a messy wave.
They follow Feral to the nightbrother village. There is a backroad to it from the other side of the mountain; this path, Wolffe explains, is less steep than the one on the other side About half a mile along the path, Feral halts his footsteps and whistles. Out of a crevasse in the side of the mountain, two heads appear.
So it would seem that there are more children than Mischief playing in the trees, cracks, and caves of these parts.
They’ve got more bumps than horns on their heads, these two. One of the children’s skin is bronze, the other’s is closer to Feral’s in color. Both are tattooed. Both scrunch their faces up when they realize they’re looking at Wolffe. He wrinkles his nose and curls his lip right back.
“Ew, it’s you,” he scowls.
The boys’ mouths stretch into grins, and they chatter back at him.
“Yeah, yeah. Whatever. Can’t hurt me if I don’t know what you’re saying,” Wolffe retorts.
Feral turns to Plo.
“Wicked and Thrash,” he says, “I take care of them.”
Plo inclines his head at the boys, but they give no notice of him. They have to pull their faces wide with the help of their fingers so that Wolffe knows what they really think of him.
Feral chuffs once through his nose—a sound which takes Plo by surprise at how like a purr and a growl it manages to be—and both boys snap to attention with big, guileless eyes. They scramble down from the side of the mountain with a healthy coating of red dust that Feral starts brushing off of them the second they come within range of him.
“Walk,” he instructs.
The boys cling to him and start pleading in Dathomirian dialect.
“I don’t care,” Feral says with a stronger accent than before. “Walk. Or walk with Commander.”
Gods forbid. The children lock hands and rush up the path, careless of its incline. Wolffe shakes his head and looks back to Plo.
“Do you see how I’m treated around here?” he asks.
“I see it,” Plo says.
The nightbrother village is an impoverished one, but its residents have done their best with what little is at their disposal to make it comfortable. Colorful bricks have been set into the ground in front of each residence, and lines of laundry hang over rows of cultivated orange melons. There are small structures attached to the sides of the dwellings with smoke billowing from them and symbols hammered from long strips of gleaming metal suspended and spinning from the strong branches of nearby trees.
Feral vouches for Plo and Bultar at the village entrance where a nightbrother holding a scythe leans against the wooden fence wiping his brow and surrounded by long freshly cut grass. This nightbrother recognizes Wolffe and gestures to him, saying something conversationally.
“Don’t mind me, just here for a kidnapping,” Wolffe deadpans.
The nightbrother frowns at him for a long time before rapidly speaking to Feral.
“He asks how you have not died yet,” Feral translates.
“Bad luck protects me,” Wolffe says.
Feral offers the nightbrother this explanation. It is heartily accepted and Wolffe is granted a big laugh and a slap on the back for it. The nightbrother’s good humor does not extend to Plo and Bultar unfortunately. Plo watches tension straighten out the man’s posture as Feral gestures behind him and repeats Ms. Anathema’s name.
“Fang, maybe?” Feral asks him.
The nightbrother sighs gustily and gestures in a manner that universally means, ‘worth a shot, I guess.’
Feral nods in gratitude. As Plo passes, he repeats the gesture, but the nightbrother simply watches him go.
Fang is the village’s medic and elder. He is a stocky man with a broad nose and a square chin. He speaks Basic fluently if with an accent not unlike the one Maul came to Plo with. While he does not appear pleased to have been approached in the middle of his day, he seems to think highly enough of Feral to humor his temporary companions. He asks Plo if he really means to go all the way up to speak to Ms. Anathema.
“I do,” Plo says.
“There are kinder ways to die,” Fang points out.
“I know them,” Plo says. “Can you introduce us?”
No, Fang cannot. A nightsister must do it, he explains; he asks Plo to wait a moment and steps back into his white-washed home for a short while before emerging again with a pale, middle-aged woman following him. Her nails are sharpened into painted black points and one of her eyes has a dark line draw through it from the top of her forehead to the edge of her jaw. Three more smaller lines branch off it into the blackness that stains her entire ear.
A small pink jewel hangs around her waist on a chain that has long since oxidized but was once a brassy yellow.
Fang nods in Plo’s direction and the nightsister looks him up and down.
“You are a jedi,” the nightsister says. “The jedi have no place or purpose here.”
Plo inclines his head.
“On the contrary,” he says, “There are now three jedi here.”
“You have come for Maul Opress,” the nightsister says after a beat.
Plo gives a small bow of affirmation.
“He tends the Pommel swamp in anticipation of his and their clan’s union,” the nightsister says. “If you must speak to him, it will be there.”
“I must speak to him.”
“So you must go.”
“I have heard that I must speak to one called Anathema.”
“One cannot enter the Pommel swamp without encountering her ladyship,” the sister says. “I’ll let her know you are coming. Have you a light?”
Plo checks the sky to ascertain that it is still broad daylight. Bultar follows suit.
“Have you a light?” the nightsister asks again. “If you do not, one may be bewitched for you.”
“I have a light,” Plo says.
His saber rocks gently as on his hip when he sweeps back his cloak. The nightsister’s lip curls slightly at it.
“Very well,” she says. “Beware of Mother Talzin. She will not act generously towards one who has kept one of her heirs from his rightful place. Follow me. Fang?”
Fang nods and gestures for Feral and little Mischief to accompany him into the dwelling. The nightsister lays her hand on the dwelling’s wall when they have closed the door and a symbol appears under it in green light for a moment before vanishing as she lifts her palm.
“Behind you,” she says. “Keep close.”
The nightsister who does not offer her name leads Wolffe, Plo, and Bultar back through the village entrance to a trail that winds away from the one that Feral walked them up. It drags its way around the side of the mountain, disappearing out of sight only a few hundred meters from the village.
This trail somehow grows thicker with swamp grasses with each step, despite appearing to rise in elevation. The tops of Plo’s boots, once dusty, begin to bead with drops of water fallen from ever-taller trees.
In short time, the trail dips downwards and the trees blend into each other, forming a tunnel. The ground softens and soon Plo understands why the nightsister asked if they had illumination.
Every step dissolves a shade of sunlight until Bultar has reached out and wrapped her hand around a fistful of Plo’s robe to guide her through the darkness. She and Wolffe are already linked. She looks around, nostrils flaring. Sweat beads on Wolffe’s brow; it gleams in the light of the saber Plo holds in front of him.
“Opress was taken from here as a child,” the nightsister suddenly says after being silent for the entire journey thus far. “His return pleases the magics.”
“He has told me little,” Plo says.
“He knows little,” the nightsister says over her shoulder, “He was taken too young to understand. Talzin was irresponsible with him.”
“Oh?” Plo asks.
“She refused to raise the boys, yet accepted no partner or mate to do it on her behalf,” the nightsister says. “They are as coins to her. Look at Savage and Feral. Respectable men left to rot because their mother cannot be bothered to find them mates.”
“I hope that Lady Anathema is a good mate, then,” Plo says.
The nightsister snorts and spits. Plo tries not to let that weigh on the dread building in his stomach.
“May I ask,” Bultar cuts in, “If you all don’t like this Talzin, why do you listen to her?”
The nightsister snorts again but doesn’t spit this time.
“Tradition is a basket as it is a noose,” she says. “It carries us when we are children, nourishes our bodies and soothes the aches and fears of the unknown, but it will also suffocate those who see only the tradition and not the changing world around it. Talzin represents the tradition, and to keep it from dying away like so many in the villages have starved, we must to submit to her whims and decisions. She alone knows how to keep the magic alive. She protects those who submit.”
Frogs croak all around. At Plo’s right, the trees have opened up to a meadow of reeds and sleek, full-leaved lilies. It is deceptive in its softness. This carpet of plants hides inches if not feet of standing water. To tread their way is asking to get stuck in putrefying mud.
“I don’t know if you’ve met him, but Maul isn’t exactly the homemaking type,” Bultar says.
“He will learn,” the nightsister says. “Clan Pommel will be sure of it.”
Chapter Text
The trail splits off into a fork about a mile farther. The left tine weaves back into the tree-tunnel, the right comes to an end at a small dock. The dock is marked by an iron arch at the top of which hangs an orange lantern that swings back and forth, back and forth, like a bell. The iron loops the lantern hangs from are rusted from the swamp’s humidity; they creak with every movement. The light in the thing’s cage somehow remains stable, hovering perfectly still over old wooden planks.
“I leave you here,” the nightsister says. “She knows you’ve come.”
“Thank you,” Plo says.
“Save your sword’s light,” the nightsister says. “You will need it later.”
Plo thanks her again and turns his saber off. It does not need sparing or charging and really, he would rather keep it on, but it seems to him that having it lit might come across as defensive when her ladyship arrives—if she is even coming.
Bultar extinguishes her saber and the three of them wait in the dim orange light for nearly ten minutes. Crickets chirp loudly from the edges of the swamp. Little blips of light—fireflies—glow in and out of existence.
Water is moving somewhere methodically.
“Is there a late-policy?” Bultar asks Wolffe.
“Dunno, never made it this far,” Wolffe says.
“Cool.”
They wait another five or so minutes. Then, the lantern overhead gives a sudden lurch. The force of its swing throws the whole contraption into a neat loop around its station. It continues doing this, over and over, and the orange light begins to shift to green, then yellow then finally, white.
The hollow sound of soles emerges from the darkness, as well as a shadow from the trail.
The lantern seems to jump for joy at the arrival of one of its owners; it swings more wildly and with less rhythm than before.
“Shush, Lighter,” the shadow says.
The lantern grinds merrily to a stop. Its light brightens into that of a small star. Moths attack it from all around with a furious beating of wings.
In the center of the dock now stands a pale figure throwing many shadows. Both of the nightsister’s eyes are centered within solid grey diamonds with lines that taper into neat, thin ones away from each diamond’s point. A small black triangle sits at the edge of her bottom lip and points to the dimple of her chin.
The nightsister is not a tall person, but she is broad in the shoulders with square hips and a thick, athletic build. Her pale hair is plaited and wrapped around itself into two low buns that peer out on either side of her loose red hood.
“Jedi,” she says in a voice that seems to hiss while she speaks.
“You must be Anathema,” Plo says. “My name is Jedi Master Plo Koon. These are my companions, Bultar Swan and Commander Wolffe of the 104th Battalion.”
Anathema shifts her weight from one foot to the other.
“I have heard of you,” she says with that strange, distracting hiss. “You wish to speak to my betrothed.”
“I do,” Plo says. “May I have your permission to do so?”
Anathema blinks slowly. The moths from the lamp have begun to circle her as well, but she gives no sign of noticing them.
“Only one of you may touch the waters,” she finally says, and the moths disperse all at once as if in terror. “The rest will leave here and never return. You bring heresy.” She curls a lip while looking Bultar up from toe to temple. “And stench,” she adds.
Bultar doesn’t rise to the bait.
“I will go,” Plo says.
Anathema’s sharp gaze lands on him for only a moment before it returns to Bultar.
“I will be watching,” she says.
Plo understands, and a beat later he realizes that she means that she is going to stand right there, under the moth-less white lantern, and literally watch him climb into the swamp.
“Where is he?” he asks.
“You’ll find him,” Anathema says, then pauses, “Or you won’t.”
“Bitch,” Bultar says.
Anathema’s attention rips away from Plo. Bultar puts her hand on her saber. Anathema widens her stance.
“That is unnecessary,” Plo tells her. “We will play by her rules.”
Bultar stays put. Anathema’s black lip curls.
“You will leave here. These grounds are holy. Go on,” she says. “Start walking.”
Bultar would rather liberate this lady’s head from her body than follow her orders, but thankfully, Plo has not trained an apprentice to disaster thus far. Bultar takes a step back and falls into the role of guarding Wolffe, who has not said a word this whole time. Plo imagines that he has heard more than he and Bultar have about the secrets and cruelty of nightsisters.
Plo puts it out of his mind and walks to the edge of the dock. The water below appears black. A greenish film languidly weaves along its surface.
He takes off his robe and lays it on the slippery wooden planks. His long dark tunic will not do him any favors here, unless he wants to bring swamp samples back to the temple. Qui-Gon would be delighted, however, and he could use some cheering up lately.
Plo leaves the tunic on and sinks a boot into the water. It is warmer than expected. Shallower, too. When fully standing in it, it comes to about mid-thigh.
It splashes around his legs, making the same sound Plo heard earlier.
Maul.
That must have been Maul.
He strains his ears for it through the croaking and the chirping and the occasional bubble of a jumping fish or hunting bird.
It’s all too loud.
He closes his eyes and reaches into the Force instead, looking for diamonds and stars. Little lights in a sea of velvet. Pinpricks of glittering gems.
The force is murky here on Dathomir. It seeps like saturated soil and rolls lazily like sweltering mists.
Little lights. Little lights, where are you?
The sudden connection reverberates through Plo like a stone dropped into a still pool. It shocks him at first, but the ripples lap at him, compelling him forward.
He takes a step and sends out his own ripple.
It hits home.
Maul has stopped what he’s doing wherever he is in this swamp. He’s searching for Plo now, reaching out, little lights, always reaching.
Master?
Plo reaches back.
Padawan.
Master?
Padawan.
Plo takes a step with every returning pulse. One by one, he moves past bulbous lilies and through tufts of red and brown grasses until the lantern of the dock is more of a lighthouse than a threat.
The swamp goes farther than Plo realized, or perhaps he is simply not well-versed in such geography. There are parts of it that are thick with foliage and parts that are perfectly clear and still until he pulls his boots from the thick mud at the bottom of the pool and ruins those little patches of peace.
Eventually, his eyes adjust to the darkness, and he begins to be able to make out little glints of light reflecting off of the dock a ways away and from what he thinks must be Bultar’s saber as she walks with Wolffe back up the trail towards the nightbrother village.
He heads away from the trail towards the center of the water, straining his ears and still pulsing in the Force.
Maul is closer now, but his presence is clouded.
Plo stops where he is and lets the splashing around his legs settle down. As he does so, he finally hears it—a returning splash.
Master?
Got him.
Master?
I’m here, Padawan. Stay where you are.
He keeps going until he spies a flash of yellow light ahead of him. It flicks in and out of existence.
Eventually, Plo comes close enough to a thickly reeded bank that he is only feet away from where the tiny flash last was. A frog croaks. Through the reeds, a shadow turns around. Two yellow flickers follow it and halt.
“Master?”
Gotcha.
“Hello, Maul,” Plo says.
The water settles into quiet. Plo can’t hear the crickets anymore. Neither of them move.
Finally, the water on the other side of the reed sloshes. There is one step, than another, then another. Plo stays where he is until the water’s ripples begin to shift his soaked tunic around his waist.
Maul stands right in front of him. His eyes dimly reflect that of the lantern on the docks even from a distance, and yet, they do not wish to look directly into Plo’s own.
“Quite a place, this,” Plo says.
“You came.”
“Of course I came.”
“I have failed you.”
“You have done no such thing.”
“So many years of training wasted in one second. What use were they?”
Maul does not sound ill, per se, but his voice sounds...unused. Plo softens and remembers the bandage Maul once wore around his wrist as a child.
“Are you punishing yourself so that I do not have to?” he asks.
Maul says nothing. Soft sloshing is the only evidence of his discomfort in this oppressive darkness.
“Do you think me so similar to your old master?” Plo asks.
A huff. Not a happy one. It is cut off, restrained, as Maul tries to pull his entire presence inward as if to make himself small and still—a bad target.
“Maul. Answer me.”
“No,” Maul breathes.
“Do I have the right to punish you, a full Knight?”
“No.”
“What does the force tell you of the reason of my presence here?”
A slow breath. A harsher one after it. Another. Another.
“Maul,” Plo soothes. “Be at peace, young one. Give me your hand.”
He holds out his and waits until something solid and wet nudges it. Maul’s fingers feel different from how they should. They have always been squarish, but now they feel especially coarse and stiff. Plo flattens his palm and carefully lays his other hand over the top of the lifeline he holds. He is careful to keep his talons extended so as not to break skin.
He turns the hand over between his palms back and forth until Maul’s harsh breathing softens. Maul sniffs softly in the dark. His yellow eyes have vanished; he must have dropped his chin.
“There you are,” Plo says. “There you are. So long out here on your own. What sort of punishment is this?”
“It is not intended to be one,” Maul says.
“Oh?”
“It is a ritual. For ancestors. Her ancestors.”
“I see,” Plo says.
“I think people sink them here when they kick it,” Maul says with the tiniest grimace in his voice.
“Ah. So you are communing?”
“Cleaning the grave?”
“You don’t sound so sure, padawan.”
Maul edges closer. Plo can feel his elbow bending in this proximity.
“Master,” Maul whispers.
“Yes, young one?”
“I am so sorry.”
“Tell me what you are sorry for.”
“I killed him.”
“You did.”
“I failed your teachings, I disgraced the Order, I didn’t even think—”
Maul’s breathing has become ragged again. He is spiraling. Plo isn’t sure, but he doesn’t think he has time for self-hatred spirals right now. Lady Anathema, he suspects, has got him on a timer.
“Come here,” Plo says. “Come closer—there we are.”
He cannot see Maul, but he can still embrace him. He can wrap a hand around his shaking shoulders, his shuddering head. Maul is tall now, but not quite as tall as his master. This is convenient in that it means he can easily tuck his face under Plo’s jaw, careful of his mask. His breath is shaky and thick.
“You could never fail me,” Plo murmurs, rocking both of them from side to side. “It is not my place to hold such power over you.”
Maul wraps his arms around Plo’s back and starts to sink in closer.
“I killed him,” he whispers.
“He meant to kill us all,” Plo says back in a hushed voice. “You know who he really is.”
“Sidious.”
Plo gently pushes Maul back until there is about a foot between them. If he were not worried about potentially scraping Maul’s eyes with his talons, he would have reached out to wipe away the tears he knows are there.
“It must have been terrifying,” he says.
Maul coughs.
“It wasn’t,” he admits. “I didn’t think.”
“You did think, Maul.”
“He was watching the whole time; he knew where I was the whole time.”
“Shhhh.”
“There is nowhere, nowhere that I can go—”
“Maul.”
“There is nowhere that will ever be safe—”
“You are spiraling, padawan.”
“How could I have ever thought that I could do something that he did not allow me to do? He knew I would find Obi-Wan on Bandomeer. He knew I would meet you. He planted me in the Order—”
“I do not know what the sith did and do know and what they did and did not do,” Plo interrupts. “But, Maul, the Order is your home, regardless of if you were planted or not.”
“How can you say that?” Maul asks so painfully softly. “How can you say that knowing that he is the one who put us together?”
Anger is not an emotion Plo often entertains, but he has heard Mace talk about fury. He speaks of it as if it is lightning striking his body. It is sudden and explosive. It is only after the fury strikes that it becomes flames which begin to burn and consume one from the inside out.
“The decision to enter into an apprenticeship with you was mine,” Plo says. “Do you doubt my decision and commitment?”
Maul’s breathing vanishes into silence.
“No,” he says.
“You do.”
“I—”
“Luckily for you, I did not come here to convince you of my sincerity twenty years ago.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I came to remind you of the vows that you took.”
“I know I am a coward. I thought it would be better for everyone if I simply vanished, but all it has proven to me is how selfish I am and have been.”
Plo feels a nerve threatening to snap in his jaw.
“Perhaps,” he says after a long, long breath, “I should have brought Obi-Wan to knock some sense into you in this horrid bog.”
There is a long, long pause.
“Does he think—”
“No, Maul. No one thinks anything about this theory of yours but you. Obi-Wan’s only regret is that he did not come here with you, which I am sorry to say, may actually have become a regret that I now share. Marriage, Maul? You are a jedi.”
“I know, I know,” Maul stammers.
“I thought you wanted to be a jedi,” Plo demands when he perhaps should have asked.
“I do.”
“Then act like a jedi,” Plo snaps when he perhaps (definitely) should have suggested.
He stops himself before this continues. His pulse is too frantic. There is something that is stuffing the top of his chest cavity with pressure, pressure, pressure that writhes in an attempt to escape.
“You’re angry,” Maul says.
Plo needs another minute.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
Breathe in.
“I keep fucking this up.”
Breathe out.
“I don’t know how to un-fuck things.”
“You do,” Plo finally says.
“How?”
“I said you do, not me,” Plo says. “I don’t know how to fix this. Do you want to fix this? Or do you truly wish to marry her ladyship?”
He cannot see Maul in the dark, but he knows the tension of a wince.
“Help me help you, padawan,” he says.
“I don’t know how. I don’t know how. I don’t know—”
“Let us start by not panicking right now. Panicking is what got us here. Come, you are so clever. Think.”
Maul’s force presence goes completely slack. Plo’s heart stops. The hiss of a thousand crickets begins to creep back into his awareness. It does nothing to replace the gradual pull away from him that Plo feels in the Force.
He swallows back on the newfound dread.
“You were so small when you first came to me,” he says impulsively. You were so small and yet so insistent that we send you back to work in the mines. That was the first place you knew kindness after so long at the mercy of the sith, and it was not even true kindness. It broke my heart every time you mentioned it.”
“I did not mean to inconvenience you,” Maul murmurs.
“I wished to be inconvenienced,” Plo says.
“Sidious knew you would be.”
“Sidious is a dead man. Do not give his ghost the power to haunt us.”
The light over the swamp suddenly brightens. It flashes like dry lightning, throwing every object in the area into stark relief with miles-long shadows. It holds its brightness for long enough for Plo to see Maul bare his teeth in the direction of the dock.
Then it goes out.
Plo is struck then with an idea.
“So,” he says. “Anathema.”
“Gods help us all,” Maul groans immediately.
“She’s very...intense.”
“She times everything I do,” Maul says. “Times it, then tells me I’m doing it wrong like there’s a wrong way to wash a goddamn stone floor. No, no, see they want the stones mopped by hand but swept by brush. She wants me to tend the berries, the squash, the goddamn chickens, this hellish cesspool, the monster-children that are these people’s circus of heiresses; then she wants me to come home, lay in bed, and stay conscious until ass o’clock at night when she’s rolled down the summit from the séance or whatever so that she can be pissed off I don’t smell like the fuckin’ aggro-rooster. Apparently, that means I’m undeserving of a fuck I didn’t even ask for—wouldn’t you know it? What am I supposed to do with that? It’s not my fault I’m too hot to suffer medieval hygiene.”
This is familiar territory, and Plo is sorry to say that movement is rapidly becoming necessary. He must make the next thirty seconds as awkward as possible.
“I am sorry for your experiences, young one,” he says, “It must be so difficult given your and Obi-Wan’s relationship.”
The light erupts across the marsh again. This time, Maul is staring with huge eyes into Plo’s mask.
The light goes out.
“My what?” Maul says in the dark,
“He was so distraught before I left. Tears pouring down. Pleading for you to return. Quite pitiful, all told,” Plo says with a slow shake of his head. “You two have known each other for so long now. It is a great hurt for him for things to end like this.”
“To end what like this?”
The marsh lights up.
“You know, if you must marry, then perhaps you and Obi-Wan would not be too bad a match,” Plo muses. “Perhaps we could speak with Master Yoda about an inter-jedi arrangement? Would you come back to the temple if it could be agreed upon?”
“No, no. You’re—we don’t need to talk about this,” Maul decides abruptly.
“Ahsoka would be delighted.”
“No. We’re not talking about this.”
“It has been said that there are some Stewjoni persons out there with two sets of reproductive organs. You would know better than I if Obi-Wan were one such person, but if he was, not only would I certainly never offer judgement on any experiences the two of you might partake in, I would also be more than happy to mind the children—”
“Excuse me? Sir? Who are you? How did you get here? I’m going to have to escort you off the premises, Sir. This is private property.”
“Is that a yes?”
“It’s not a yes,” Maul says. “It’s a ‘shut up and get out, I’m never marrying if it kills me.’”
“Wonderful,” Plo says, “I will follow your lead then.”
Padawan, located.
Panic attack, averted.
Betrothed?
Well, one can’t win them all.
Upon successfully returning to the dock with Maul’s assistance, Anathema begins to express strong and pointed feelings on something that he has done, presumably in the swamp. Maul, for his part, responds by dropping out of Basic to plead ignorance or innocence.
This, Plo does not fail to notice, enrages her lady.
She attempts to seize Maul by the throat, which would work better for her if Maul had not spent hours observing eels and learning their slippery ways. He dips and slips away through several attempts and catches her hand around the wrist when she finally charges him.
There is a beat.
Then a slap.
Plo’s brain takes the opportunity to light up with surprise first, then a towering protectiveness as he watches his former-apprentice raise a hand to his cheek. It barely has the chance to get there before Anathema seizes Maul by his ear, right around the top where Maul’s piercing is. She twists the cartilage and forces Maul’s head lower than hers while she does it.
Plo has seen plenty. He begins to lift a hand to put a stop to that nonsense when Maul ducks low and dislodges the grip on his head.
He swings around once and stops a beam of blue mere inches away from Anathema’s coiled bun. The swinging lantern above them goes absolutely still. Anathema stands, staring directly into Maul’s eyes.
“You would draw a blade on your future bride?” she asks him.
Maul holds steady.
He has kept his lightsaber.
Plo knows from the Chancellor’s wounds that this saber has just made the same arc it had 48 days ago. Only this time, it has not sliced its burning blade through its target. Maul is totally in control.
“You would draw that foul thing in this holy place?” Anathema demands.
Maul keeps his position.
“Your mother brought you here to be saved,” Anathema hisses. “I am the only prospect you have of that. Where is your gratitude, Opress? Show me.”
Plo delicately and, as quietly as he can manage, lowers his hand and goes about gathering his cloak from the edge of the dock.
“SHOW ME.”
The hum of a saber vanishes in the click of its disengagement. Plo shakes the family of frogs that have gathered in his hood out of it and shoos them off over the edge of the dock before slinging the whole garment over his shoulder.
“Why won’t you kneel?” Anathema demands behind him.
“Because,” Maul finally says. “You don’t own me.”
“Not yet,” Anathema says.
“—And frankly, I think it’s really weird that you never even tried to talk to me before our whole situation,” Maul continues on like she hasn’t said anything. “Feels a little like you only want me for my looks.”
Anathema scoffs.
“It is the only appealing thing about you,” she says. “But you can be taught.”
Maul’s brow twitches. He visibly refrains from responding to that. Plo is proud of him, but also ready to go at any moment now, please and thank you.
“Here,” Maul says, reaching into his dark tunic sewn in the same fashion as Feral’s, “This belongs to you.”
He produces a small, white lotus bud. Its pink-rimmed unborn petals shimmer delicately in the lantern light. A faint glow emanates from Maul’s hand as he holds it out. Anathema, for the first time, arranges her expression into something positively gutted.
“What?” she says.
Maul gestures for her to take the bud from his palm.
“Take it,” he says.
“No. NO. No. You can’t refuse me,” Anathema stammers. “I am the heiress of Clan Pommel.”
“And I’m a jedi,” Maul delivers back with a shrug.
“You did this,” Anathema snarls at Plo.
Plo holds his hands up and starts walking with purpose towards the trail.
“What did you expect would happen?” Maul asks. “You let him in here. He is my master. He raised me.”
“No. We are your people. We raised you. We saved you. When the republic hunted you—when everyone else in this galaxy forsook you—we took you in. We protected you.”
“Actually,” Maul says, “The jedi did that first. So?”
“You must forsake him. We are to be wed. Talzin has already agreed. My mother has already agreed,” Anathema snarls.
Maul takes Anathema’s hand from her side, forces the fingers open, and places the lotus bud in the center of them. He curls her fingers around it for her.
“It’s against my religion,” he says. “Tell Mother that Savage is the one who cut off my legs, and I know she’s the one who gave the order to let him kill Feral. We’re all better off without her.”
“I will kill Feral,” Anathema blurts out. “I’ll kill him and those orphans of his.”
Maul tilts his head to the side and purses his lips. He shakes his head at her in pity.
“You won’t,” he says simply. “It’s beneath you.”
“I—”
“Okay, I’d love to argue more, but I actually have a ride to catch. Hate you, have a wonderful life, bye.”
The sudden thudding of Maul’s feet is Plo’s cue to start gunning it.
Anathema attempts to murder them for about four and half miles, which is exciting. Plo’s blood is pumping. He feels very alive. Maul appears to be in good spirits, too, for someone who is soaking wet, muddy, and about to burn the first bridge he ever made.
He enters the village, shouting in Dathomirian for someone who throws open a window from a top floor of one of the houses. It is another nightsister, but this one has a much rounder face with little gray circles under and above each eye. The underside of her nose is completely black, and a thin line leads from it to a similarly filled in top-lip. The effect is one of a split-lip.
Maul makes a peculiar gesture up in this young lady’s direction that sends her into raucous cheering among her flailing bedroom curtains. She makes some equally flailing gestures and slams her window closed to apparently scramble down the stairs of her poor father’s house before flinging open the front door and tackling Maul around the chest.
She might be five feet tall. Maybe.
“Wow, you did it.”
Plo looks over his shoulder to see Wolffe and Bultar watching the celebrations from the steps of Fang’s porch.
“You brought him back,” Bultar says sounding strangely surprised, as if there was any chance that Plo wouldn’t have been successful here.
Rude.
Plo points silently at the young lady celebrating with Maul.
“That’s Choler,” Wolffe informs him.
Ah. Finally, a face to a name.
“She is quite—” Plo starts.
“A huge fan of anything that ruins Anathema’s day, week, life, etc., yeah,” Wolffe says.
Well, that is convenient.
“We’re going to need to be hopping off,” Plo tells him and Bultar. “I may have made an new enemy.”
Bultar gives him a thumbs up. Wolffe salutes.
“Maul,” Plo says gently in Maul’s direction. “I don’t mean to cut the reunion short, but we really must be going.”
“I’ll text you,” Maul tells Choler who nods emphatically.
“I’ll take care of Feral,” Choler promises. “FERAL.”
Feral, Plo realizes, is sitting beyond Wolffe and Bultar in the net-enclosed part of Fang’s porch. He has been bouncing Mischief on his knees the whole time, apparently, and he pointedly does not look out of the open screen door at Choler’s declaration.
“I’VE GOT YOU, FERAL,” Choler shrieks again.
Feral gets up, stuffs Mischief securely on his hip, and closes the door firmly.
Maul smirks at their antics and turns that smirk into a real smile in Plo’s direction.
“Can I drive?” he asks.
“You’ll need to fight Bultar for the keys,” Plo says. “Now please. Let’s go, boys and girls. Hop to it. I do not wish to perish ten minutes into a new era of peace—she is the eldest, Maul, nothing can be done. Goodbye Feral, call if you need anything. Move. Move.”
They all crash into the ship just as a gust of wind hits it hard enough to rock it. The very ground seems to shake with the sound of a reverberating scream.
Anathema, true to her name, wastes no time in cursing the forests and marsh to darken as Bultar and Maul strap in in the co-pilot seats. Plo and Wolffe sling themselves into the passenger ones directly behind these and begin snapping and clipping all things which can be snapped and clicked.
“She’s a real winner, you chose,” Bultar says as she cranks the ignition.
The craft snarls and begins to shudder.
“I didn’t choose her,” Maul says.
“Thank force for that. Cleared on starboard?”
“Cleared on starboard.”
“Ready for lift-off. Sorry, Master.”
Obi-Wan meets them on in the landing dock; he hovers by the entrance until the craft is latched into place, then he takes off in a sprint right at them.
Plo watches from behind as sMaul open his arms, he watches Obi-Wan crash into him, eyes already flooded with tears. The two clutch at each other. They bury themselves into their shoulders the way they did when they were children in a dark mine surrounded by ocean as far as the eye could see.
Obi-Wan brought Maul away from Bandomeer. He brought him home the very first time, and now Plo has returned the honor.
Plo most definitely does not smile as he steps off the ramp while those two shake each other and stammer out half-explanations and overlapping apologies.
He notes that Commander Cody is waiting just inside the Temple’s gate, casually this time, but still waiting for Wolffe.
“Miss me?” Wolffe asks him when they arrive to the gate.
In lieu of answering, Cody presents him with what can only be an oyster shell. It has dried roots on it in addition to the dried clods of mud.
“I found a replacement,” Cody says. “There was enough resemblance that I didn’t notice your absence.”
Wolffe nods, takes the oyster and hurls it behind him into the loading bay. He and Cody fall into step as if nothing has happened. Bultar stares after the far-flung shell. Plo decides that he has endured enough in the last several hours and lets it all wash over him.
It has been 49 days.
He deserves a long, long nap.
The Temple is torn on Maul’s return. The majority is pleased that their hero has come home, but a minority whispers as it has whispered since Maul was clinging to Plo’s sleeves to keep pace with him. The hushed voices hiss that it takes a sith to know a sith; Plo knows that Maul hears those murmurs.
If he hears them louder in the aftermath of his return, he gives no obvious indication. Plo is sure that that is due in no small part to Mace greeting them in front of the council chambers with his hands tucked away in his sleeves.
He calls Maul by his earned title. He gives him a hand to squeeze and a lifts chin in fondness.
The small gesture settles whatever doubt remains in Maul’s chest. Maul apologizes for the state of his clothing. Mace shrugs and tells him to put in an order for a new robe and tunic. He opens the door for both Maul and Plo and stays behind with Plo for a moment while Maul steps into the room to give his official admission.
“You must be proud,” Mace says. “You have reared a sith killer. A hero of our generation.”
“It will pass,” Plo assured him. “I’m sure he’ll break something invaluable in a few days time.”
“Savor it while it lasts then,” Mace says. “And savor this because it will never happen again: you were right about him.”
And so Plo was. And so he intends to continue to be.
Oh, padawan-mine, he thinks, stepping into the gold-lit room beyond the heavy door and seeing Maul standing in that wide circle, speaking in low tones to Ki-A-Mundi. What other wonders do you have to show us?
May the galaxy be your oyster and your faith the pearl. May the force always be with you, and may it forever guide you to where you are meant to be.
Notes:
the end.
This concludes the trilogy. Thank you everyone for coming with me on this journey. Thank you to all the commenters and all the silent readers. Thanks for those of you who logged back on and read this even after it took me months to come back to this verse. Y'all are the real deal. I hope you've enjoyed this series.