Lesson in Darkness R
title: Lesson in Darkness
author: helgaleena
helgaleenas@yahoo.com
fandom: Star Wars
medium: graphic novel
character/pairing: Quinlan Vos, Dooku
category: character sketch, metaslash
rating: R
warnings: violence, slash implied
prompt: Esoteric
Disclaimer: Lucas, Ostrander and Duursema own them, not me.
summary: based on Clone Wars volume 4. Playing-- or being-- a Dark Jedi does not come naturally to Quinlan Vos. He gets instruction from his new Master, Count Dooku.
Written for the challenge community alphabetasoup, at Livejournal. beta by Phaedra Dahl
Through the ship's corridors, two venerable looking beings were walking. One was tall and silver haired, the other well-muscled and dark. Both were masters of the Dark Side. They wished to hasten its hold upon the worlds they influenced. The Jedi Order they had left behind was alienating ever more Force users, such as the one they discussed now.
"I have a meeting with your old pupil, Quinlan Vos, which I would like you to observe. The events of Geonosis, where we were all three present, have brought you around to the Separatist point of view. Quinlan Vos claims the same. Yet it has taken him much longer to join us. I am not yet sure of him."
The Weequay master, dressed in traditional tan and brown robes, looked up at the black-clad, tailored figure of the aristocrat who led the Separatists. His eyes glinted like dark buttons among the deep brown wrinkles of his visage. He shook his head, making the long tails at the back of his head sway.
"His turn to the Dark may be entirely sincere. The Jedi have expelled him for treason. And I did instruct him in combat forms, during his rehabilitation from the mind-wipe on Ryloth. Though I did not identify the forms to him, what I taught him were Vaapad moves. They could easily have led him to Darkness."
"I will let you be the judge of that, Sora Bulq." Count Dooku's cloak swirled about his tall frame, as they stopped before the door to one of the ship's many salon rooms. This one was part of Dooku's personal quarters aboard his flagship.
The door cycled open to reveal Quinlan Vos, who was turning a small portable holoprojector reflectively in his wrapped hands. He glanced up from under his shaggy dark locks and beetling brow, his face set in its usual scowl behind the yellow stripes, uninformative as a mask.
"It's keyed to my personal signature, Vos; you won't be able to activate it." Dooku's full lips curved into the suggestion of a sneer, framed by his silver goatee. The Kiffar was still so naive-- he knew about the man's psychometric talents, and was not going to leave anything incriminating lying about, for him to read by touch. Behind him, Sora Bulq had his personal shields up as well; the three of them were equally on their guard. A new Dark Side recruit was always suspect.
Vos set the projector down on the table again. "I'm here for my next lesson, Count." Dooku smiled to himself; that was his story, and he was sticking to it. He let the smile visible on his face widen as well, infinitesimally.
"Very well; let's see what you have learned since your last lesson." He did not specify what sort of learning he referred to. Vos stayed still for a few moments before him, evidently gathering his resources. Then, in a flash, his green lightsabre ignited between them, clutched vertically in a two-handed grip.
"Really." Dooku arched one dark brow. "You choose that approach? If you insist." Glancing briefly back at his subordinate, the originator of an entirely new style of lightsabre combat, he activated his own red-bladed weapon. Sora Bulq settled back to watch.
Almost negligently, Dooku launched a few sly attacks at Vos, to draw the Kiffar out of his defensive stance, parrying the ensuing ripostes with minimal expenditure of energy. Externally, their sparring was quite predictable, nearly boring; on the level of the Force, both combatants investigated subtly each other's defenses and strengths.
Quinlan Vos had been tutored by his childhood master, Tholme, in the same conservative "mynock" style of which Dooku was a celebrated practitioner. But, being still a youth in comparison to the count, who had been perfecting his technique for at least half a century longer, he had nowhere near the style and finesse. And he had become much more used to supplementing his fight style with Force leaps, thanks to his re-education under Bulq and Yoda. But these showy expenditures of effort left the count unperturbed, at the center of a swirling pattern of Quin's increasingly energetic attacks.
Finally Sora Bulq could keep silent no longer. He uncrinkled his leathery brown face, gesticulating at the younger being. "Dammit, Vos, I taught you Vaapad," he said, ignoring Quin's momentary look of shock at this revelation. "Why aren't you using it?"
Dooku answered, without interrupting the rhythm of his clashing counter-attacks, red sizzling against green. "He's not using it because he is not fully embracing the power of the Dark. He's avoiding it. You're afraid of the Dark, aren't you, Vos?" And he grinned, displaying all of his long white teeth. Mockery gleamed from his nut-brown eyes.
Quin knew the taunting was merely another attack on him, at the non-physical level. "No, Count," he replied, sinking back into his defensive stance momentarily. Dooku chose to advance a step.
"I think you are. Yoda certainly is." Quin attempted to quell his surprise, that the count would criticize his own master. He reminded himself that Dooku was a renegade, and that leaving the Jedi also meant repudiating those who had once been Dooku's closest kin. Nearly automatically he countered the small attacks with which Dooku punctuated his next words.
"Master Yoda," and somehow he made the honorific seem like an epithet, "is continually harping about how fear will destroy you, let in the Darkness. He was my teacher; I know very well his position. He's afraid."
With a sweeping roundhouse he emphasized his point, causing Vos to Force-leap out of the way of his blade. "The Dark Side is what he fears. And that is his greatest flaw."
Dooku's grin grew impossibly wider. "He will not claim its power! There is power in the Dark Side to transform the galaxy. And he fears it." He had the younger man on the retreat now, and pushed inexorably on.
"The Dark Side is stronger. Feel it, Vos!" And in that moment, Quinlan Vos did feel it. Even as he resisted, his hold upon the Force seemed to shift, the familiar bright core of things upon which he depended twisting and mixing with something more, something greater--- and more treacherous. The change was unnerving. Dooku continued to press, both within and without.
"Quinlan Vos, you have traveled the galaxy much more recently than Yoda. You know the real situation-- what an empty facade the Republic has become. If the Jedi would only embrace the Dark, utilize it, we could right the wrongs, make order again." And Quin could not help but acknowledge the allure of these words. Dooku saw the crack form in the mask of his scowl.
"You could do that, Quinlan Vos. As I am doing," he continued, deflecting the next few swings of the green sabre with his own, without seeming perturbed by them in the least. "Qui-Gon could have done that. He frequently defied the Council, you know." Dooku began to sound almost nostalgic about his former student.. Quin felt his own sympathies being engaged, despite himself, as they were discussing someone to whom he had also been close. Perhaps Dooku did not know how close.
"I taught him everything he knew. You do realize that, don't you, Quinlan?" There was a malicious gleam now in the older man's face; somehow, he had guessed. Vos was uncomfortably reminded of memories his hands had told him, long ago, of Qui-Gon's childhood. Things that perhaps his lover would never have admitted, aloud. They colored in the spaces between what Dooku was telling him now, and what he was not. And he felt his nostrils begin to flare in revulsion.
"Yes, if he had lived, Qui-Gon Jinn would be here at my side. Feel the truth of it, Vos. He would be here today, but for the Council. The Council caused his death; they sent him to be killed, senselessly obeying their dictates--"
How dare he? How dare he imply that that great being, so close to the Living Force, had been killed for nothing? A man who bore the psychic scars of his own master's neglect? How dare he blame the Jedi for what the Sith had done? and say that a man so full of love, whom he had loved, would join the Sith?
Rage flooded through Quin like a black tide. Heat rushed to his eyes, and his vision swam. Without another thought, he let the energy muster his internal resources into a single, bludgeoning attack. He leaped into the air, launching himself at Dooku with a roar. Like a thunder-squall he whirled and cast his accumulated outrage at Dooku--
--and hit the pilaster in the far corner with a rib-shattering crack, as Dooku deflected him.
"Better," smirked Dooku.
Quin stayed where he had landed, in a heap on the floor, face mostly hidden by his unruly hair. After the single grunt wrung out of him by the impact, he would not express himself further. Or was it, expose himself further?
The count extinguished his weapon and replaced it beneath his dark cloak. He showed no signs of undue exertion. "We shall be reaching Tibrin shortly, Vos. Be ready." He turned on his heel and left, Sora Bulq following.
"Well, what do you think, my colleague?" he asked the Weequay, evidently put in a good humor by the session with the Kiffar.
The Vaapad master considered for a moment, as they strode through the ship's corridors. "What I saw was powerful. But it was completely without technique. Mace Windu must have warned him. He did not use Vaapad."
"Perhaps. But no matter." The count's smile of satisfaction remained undimmed. "It was Darkness."
end
author: helgaleena
helgaleenas@yahoo.com
fandom: Star Wars
medium: graphic novel
character/pairing: Quinlan Vos, Dooku
category: character sketch, metaslash
rating: R
warnings: violence, slash implied
prompt: Esoteric
Disclaimer: Lucas, Ostrander and Duursema own them, not me.
summary: based on Clone Wars volume 4. Playing-- or being-- a Dark Jedi does not come naturally to Quinlan Vos. He gets instruction from his new Master, Count Dooku.
Written for the challenge community alphabetasoup, at Livejournal. beta by Phaedra Dahl
Through the ship's corridors, two venerable looking beings were walking. One was tall and silver haired, the other well-muscled and dark. Both were masters of the Dark Side. They wished to hasten its hold upon the worlds they influenced. The Jedi Order they had left behind was alienating ever more Force users, such as the one they discussed now.
"I have a meeting with your old pupil, Quinlan Vos, which I would like you to observe. The events of Geonosis, where we were all three present, have brought you around to the Separatist point of view. Quinlan Vos claims the same. Yet it has taken him much longer to join us. I am not yet sure of him."
The Weequay master, dressed in traditional tan and brown robes, looked up at the black-clad, tailored figure of the aristocrat who led the Separatists. His eyes glinted like dark buttons among the deep brown wrinkles of his visage. He shook his head, making the long tails at the back of his head sway.
"His turn to the Dark may be entirely sincere. The Jedi have expelled him for treason. And I did instruct him in combat forms, during his rehabilitation from the mind-wipe on Ryloth. Though I did not identify the forms to him, what I taught him were Vaapad moves. They could easily have led him to Darkness."
"I will let you be the judge of that, Sora Bulq." Count Dooku's cloak swirled about his tall frame, as they stopped before the door to one of the ship's many salon rooms. This one was part of Dooku's personal quarters aboard his flagship.
The door cycled open to reveal Quinlan Vos, who was turning a small portable holoprojector reflectively in his wrapped hands. He glanced up from under his shaggy dark locks and beetling brow, his face set in its usual scowl behind the yellow stripes, uninformative as a mask.
"It's keyed to my personal signature, Vos; you won't be able to activate it." Dooku's full lips curved into the suggestion of a sneer, framed by his silver goatee. The Kiffar was still so naive-- he knew about the man's psychometric talents, and was not going to leave anything incriminating lying about, for him to read by touch. Behind him, Sora Bulq had his personal shields up as well; the three of them were equally on their guard. A new Dark Side recruit was always suspect.
Vos set the projector down on the table again. "I'm here for my next lesson, Count." Dooku smiled to himself; that was his story, and he was sticking to it. He let the smile visible on his face widen as well, infinitesimally.
"Very well; let's see what you have learned since your last lesson." He did not specify what sort of learning he referred to. Vos stayed still for a few moments before him, evidently gathering his resources. Then, in a flash, his green lightsabre ignited between them, clutched vertically in a two-handed grip.
"Really." Dooku arched one dark brow. "You choose that approach? If you insist." Glancing briefly back at his subordinate, the originator of an entirely new style of lightsabre combat, he activated his own red-bladed weapon. Sora Bulq settled back to watch.
Almost negligently, Dooku launched a few sly attacks at Vos, to draw the Kiffar out of his defensive stance, parrying the ensuing ripostes with minimal expenditure of energy. Externally, their sparring was quite predictable, nearly boring; on the level of the Force, both combatants investigated subtly each other's defenses and strengths.
Quinlan Vos had been tutored by his childhood master, Tholme, in the same conservative "mynock" style of which Dooku was a celebrated practitioner. But, being still a youth in comparison to the count, who had been perfecting his technique for at least half a century longer, he had nowhere near the style and finesse. And he had become much more used to supplementing his fight style with Force leaps, thanks to his re-education under Bulq and Yoda. But these showy expenditures of effort left the count unperturbed, at the center of a swirling pattern of Quin's increasingly energetic attacks.
Finally Sora Bulq could keep silent no longer. He uncrinkled his leathery brown face, gesticulating at the younger being. "Dammit, Vos, I taught you Vaapad," he said, ignoring Quin's momentary look of shock at this revelation. "Why aren't you using it?"
Dooku answered, without interrupting the rhythm of his clashing counter-attacks, red sizzling against green. "He's not using it because he is not fully embracing the power of the Dark. He's avoiding it. You're afraid of the Dark, aren't you, Vos?" And he grinned, displaying all of his long white teeth. Mockery gleamed from his nut-brown eyes.
Quin knew the taunting was merely another attack on him, at the non-physical level. "No, Count," he replied, sinking back into his defensive stance momentarily. Dooku chose to advance a step.
"I think you are. Yoda certainly is." Quin attempted to quell his surprise, that the count would criticize his own master. He reminded himself that Dooku was a renegade, and that leaving the Jedi also meant repudiating those who had once been Dooku's closest kin. Nearly automatically he countered the small attacks with which Dooku punctuated his next words.
"Master Yoda," and somehow he made the honorific seem like an epithet, "is continually harping about how fear will destroy you, let in the Darkness. He was my teacher; I know very well his position. He's afraid."
With a sweeping roundhouse he emphasized his point, causing Vos to Force-leap out of the way of his blade. "The Dark Side is what he fears. And that is his greatest flaw."
Dooku's grin grew impossibly wider. "He will not claim its power! There is power in the Dark Side to transform the galaxy. And he fears it." He had the younger man on the retreat now, and pushed inexorably on.
"The Dark Side is stronger. Feel it, Vos!" And in that moment, Quinlan Vos did feel it. Even as he resisted, his hold upon the Force seemed to shift, the familiar bright core of things upon which he depended twisting and mixing with something more, something greater--- and more treacherous. The change was unnerving. Dooku continued to press, both within and without.
"Quinlan Vos, you have traveled the galaxy much more recently than Yoda. You know the real situation-- what an empty facade the Republic has become. If the Jedi would only embrace the Dark, utilize it, we could right the wrongs, make order again." And Quin could not help but acknowledge the allure of these words. Dooku saw the crack form in the mask of his scowl.
"You could do that, Quinlan Vos. As I am doing," he continued, deflecting the next few swings of the green sabre with his own, without seeming perturbed by them in the least. "Qui-Gon could have done that. He frequently defied the Council, you know." Dooku began to sound almost nostalgic about his former student.. Quin felt his own sympathies being engaged, despite himself, as they were discussing someone to whom he had also been close. Perhaps Dooku did not know how close.
"I taught him everything he knew. You do realize that, don't you, Quinlan?" There was a malicious gleam now in the older man's face; somehow, he had guessed. Vos was uncomfortably reminded of memories his hands had told him, long ago, of Qui-Gon's childhood. Things that perhaps his lover would never have admitted, aloud. They colored in the spaces between what Dooku was telling him now, and what he was not. And he felt his nostrils begin to flare in revulsion.
"Yes, if he had lived, Qui-Gon Jinn would be here at my side. Feel the truth of it, Vos. He would be here today, but for the Council. The Council caused his death; they sent him to be killed, senselessly obeying their dictates--"
How dare he? How dare he imply that that great being, so close to the Living Force, had been killed for nothing? A man who bore the psychic scars of his own master's neglect? How dare he blame the Jedi for what the Sith had done? and say that a man so full of love, whom he had loved, would join the Sith?
Rage flooded through Quin like a black tide. Heat rushed to his eyes, and his vision swam. Without another thought, he let the energy muster his internal resources into a single, bludgeoning attack. He leaped into the air, launching himself at Dooku with a roar. Like a thunder-squall he whirled and cast his accumulated outrage at Dooku--
--and hit the pilaster in the far corner with a rib-shattering crack, as Dooku deflected him.
"Better," smirked Dooku.
Quin stayed where he had landed, in a heap on the floor, face mostly hidden by his unruly hair. After the single grunt wrung out of him by the impact, he would not express himself further. Or was it, expose himself further?
The count extinguished his weapon and replaced it beneath his dark cloak. He showed no signs of undue exertion. "We shall be reaching Tibrin shortly, Vos. Be ready." He turned on his heel and left, Sora Bulq following.
"Well, what do you think, my colleague?" he asked the Weequay, evidently put in a good humor by the session with the Kiffar.
The Vaapad master considered for a moment, as they strode through the ship's corridors. "What I saw was powerful. But it was completely without technique. Mace Windu must have warned him. He did not use Vaapad."
"Perhaps. But no matter." The count's smile of satisfaction remained undimmed. "It was Darkness."
end