Thornwalk (Star Wars, PG, plotless)
Title: Thornwalk
Author: Persephone_Kore
Characters: Dooku
Timeframe: shortly after TPM
Genre: angst, I guess
Summary: Count Dooku takes a vacation on Naboo.
The weather is beautiful; the planet is beautiful. The ocean sparkles almost too bright to look at with sunbeams that gilded clouds and turned the sky to the blue blaze of a lightsaber on the way down. The sand is soft, hot, and white; the wind turns, carrying salt-savor from the ocean and then the moist smell of vigorous green things growing from the land. The Force is strong here, and joyous.
Dooku cannot recall ever being so tired before.
Perhaps this is because he is growing old. His last padawan is lost; so is his first. Pieces of his soul torn loose.
Perhaps it is because he took what was left of his soul and sold it. For a chance at revenge, at remaking the galaxy, he has opened his mouth to the serpent's and sucked venom from its fangs.
He has knelt at the feet of the man who ordered Qui-Gon's death, and has not killed him yet.
He has betrayed Sifo-Dyas, who was looking too far into the future to see his own death, who may or may not have been the traitor Sidious called him; he has taken the betrayal into his own hands and and left Sifo-Dyas's frozen. Dooku suspects it is himself who has frosted over inside, but unlike Sifo-Dyas, he is still moving.
He has left the Jedi, sent word to Serenno, and is preparing to betray the Republic.
He has begun studying the dark side.
He began that years ago, tracing the history of the Sith, considering whether the passions of life might perhaps be drawn upon instead of rejected, whether the dark side (fear and anger: flight or fight -- adrenaline was not evil, if he didn't let it make his hands shake) was really so different and unnatural. He wondered what was in the depths of the Force, should he fall through when skittering across the surface; he ducked his head beneath to look. He followed Mace Windu's Vaapad work with interest, though he found the motions aesthetically distasteful.
Lately, though, he has tasted -- no, drunk deep -- of something different. It is not quite the rush of battle, which he has always enjoyed, though with little enthusiasm for killing at the end of it. It is not the swift flood of greater power that Sidious promised was so easy if he would simply allow himself to reach it; the Force always flowed for him easily, and after sixty-six years as a Jedi the supposed easy path to power through losing one's temper is actually more of an effort to begin. He has to work himself up to it, and he's more inclined to smolder than explode. Most of the time.
He is beginning to think that smoldering is a bad habit, and to wonder why he hasn't killed Sidious yet. Then he reminds himself he's waiting. Then that he has sworn an oath... and doesn't think about being already forsworn.
But the dark side Sidious has shown him is no sunless depth of the Force's ocean, but a strange shallow current, running hot and thin and fast. Reaching it isn't easy, but once he touches it he is swept along, filled and bleeding and ablaze with power, until he finds a shore or stiller water at the end of the exercise.
It leaves him abraded and nervous, the sense of it teasing at his mind and skin even when he has set it aside. He is surrounded by beauty and life, by sunlight and plants' breath, and he itches at the feel of the light.
Perhaps Sidious was trying to make a point, when Senator Palpatine invited Count Dooku to vacation at his family home on Naboo.
He cannot imagine Sidious feeling at home here.
Dooku walks away from the shore, finds a gate nearly hidden under brambles and pushes them aside with a wave of his hand to open it. They are dry and brown, leafless and tangled; several break when he moves them, and a very few show pale green moisture in the center. He leaves them oozing and walks a path between dark hedges twice his height until it opens up into a mass of head-high roses.
These are healthy, firm and supple green stems, scarlet blooms, and long pink-and-gold thorns tipped with the shades of cinnamon and clotted blood. There is no path between them.
Dooku feels the dark and light fretting against his skin, delicate and maddening.
He closes his eyes, sheds his cloak, and walks in among the thorns.
Author: Persephone_Kore
Characters: Dooku
Timeframe: shortly after TPM
Genre: angst, I guess
Summary: Count Dooku takes a vacation on Naboo.
The weather is beautiful; the planet is beautiful. The ocean sparkles almost too bright to look at with sunbeams that gilded clouds and turned the sky to the blue blaze of a lightsaber on the way down. The sand is soft, hot, and white; the wind turns, carrying salt-savor from the ocean and then the moist smell of vigorous green things growing from the land. The Force is strong here, and joyous.
Dooku cannot recall ever being so tired before.
Perhaps this is because he is growing old. His last padawan is lost; so is his first. Pieces of his soul torn loose.
Perhaps it is because he took what was left of his soul and sold it. For a chance at revenge, at remaking the galaxy, he has opened his mouth to the serpent's and sucked venom from its fangs.
He has knelt at the feet of the man who ordered Qui-Gon's death, and has not killed him yet.
He has betrayed Sifo-Dyas, who was looking too far into the future to see his own death, who may or may not have been the traitor Sidious called him; he has taken the betrayal into his own hands and and left Sifo-Dyas's frozen. Dooku suspects it is himself who has frosted over inside, but unlike Sifo-Dyas, he is still moving.
He has left the Jedi, sent word to Serenno, and is preparing to betray the Republic.
He has begun studying the dark side.
He began that years ago, tracing the history of the Sith, considering whether the passions of life might perhaps be drawn upon instead of rejected, whether the dark side (fear and anger: flight or fight -- adrenaline was not evil, if he didn't let it make his hands shake) was really so different and unnatural. He wondered what was in the depths of the Force, should he fall through when skittering across the surface; he ducked his head beneath to look. He followed Mace Windu's Vaapad work with interest, though he found the motions aesthetically distasteful.
Lately, though, he has tasted -- no, drunk deep -- of something different. It is not quite the rush of battle, which he has always enjoyed, though with little enthusiasm for killing at the end of it. It is not the swift flood of greater power that Sidious promised was so easy if he would simply allow himself to reach it; the Force always flowed for him easily, and after sixty-six years as a Jedi the supposed easy path to power through losing one's temper is actually more of an effort to begin. He has to work himself up to it, and he's more inclined to smolder than explode. Most of the time.
He is beginning to think that smoldering is a bad habit, and to wonder why he hasn't killed Sidious yet. Then he reminds himself he's waiting. Then that he has sworn an oath... and doesn't think about being already forsworn.
But the dark side Sidious has shown him is no sunless depth of the Force's ocean, but a strange shallow current, running hot and thin and fast. Reaching it isn't easy, but once he touches it he is swept along, filled and bleeding and ablaze with power, until he finds a shore or stiller water at the end of the exercise.
It leaves him abraded and nervous, the sense of it teasing at his mind and skin even when he has set it aside. He is surrounded by beauty and life, by sunlight and plants' breath, and he itches at the feel of the light.
Perhaps Sidious was trying to make a point, when Senator Palpatine invited Count Dooku to vacation at his family home on Naboo.
He cannot imagine Sidious feeling at home here.
Dooku walks away from the shore, finds a gate nearly hidden under brambles and pushes them aside with a wave of his hand to open it. They are dry and brown, leafless and tangled; several break when he moves them, and a very few show pale green moisture in the center. He leaves them oozing and walks a path between dark hedges twice his height until it opens up into a mass of head-high roses.
These are healthy, firm and supple green stems, scarlet blooms, and long pink-and-gold thorns tipped with the shades of cinnamon and clotted blood. There is no path between them.
Dooku feels the dark and light fretting against his skin, delicate and maddening.
He closes his eyes, sheds his cloak, and walks in among the thorns.