Dust and Honor

by Flamethrower

Dust and Honor

Author: flamethrower@deadcatharvest.net

Archive: MA and my half-dead site, one day...

Category: Q/O, AU, SlashityMonkeys

Warnings: Er...

Summary: Part 7 in the 'Lonely Place' universe.

Series: Yep.
In a Lonely Place
Defiance
Shades of Grey
Geonosis
Falling Pieces
Checkmate

Qui-Gon Jinn dropped to his knees as the lightsaber was jerked from his body, and he hissed, for that did cause him pain. He looked up at the face of his friend. He had known Micah Giett for over sixty years, and this made no sense! "Why?" he whispered.

Micah stood over him, his green blade still humming, pointed at Qui-Gon's throat. "For Tahl," he said, his face expressionless, a sharp contrast to the insane light in his eyes. "For her!"

"What?" Qui-Gon stared at him, stunned. Tahl had died long ago, the result of an accident on a mission that no one had foreseen. They had grieved together while Obi-Wan had given them worried looks, doing his best to curb the amount of alcohol they were putting away.

Micah shook his head. "It was never supposed to go this far. None of you should have reached this point, but you raise stubborn padawans, Qui-Gon Jinn!"

The betrayal he felt in that moment was worse than any wound a lightsaber could inflict. "You volunteered. You agreed to help Sidious, even then. Gods, why?" he asked, feeling hot tears roll down his face. All was forgotten in light of this. Not even Dooku's Turning had felt like this, leaving him destroyed inside, for the last friend of his childhood had just stolen his life.

"He said he would give her back to me, Qui-Gon," Micah said, and when he leaned closer, Qui-Gon could see that now Micah was crying, almost sobbing. "He said he knew how to bring people back from death. I watched him rip a man's soul from his body, and I watched him put it back."

Qui-Gon felt his eyes widen. "Micah, that's impossible."

The lightsaber at his throat inched closer. "I saw it with my own eyes, Qui-Gon."

Gods. It went against everything he believed in. Such a thing went against the will of the Force. His heart heavy, he asked, "Is it worth it? You kill me, hoping the Sith keeps his promise?"

"I loved her!" The blade of the lightsaber began to tremble with Micah's words. "She should be here with me! I am willing to do whatever it takes to be with her again."

"Then I will be happy to send you to join her!" Venge screamed, and the blade of Qui-Gon's lightsaber sheared into Micah's chest from the side, burning through his heart.

Micah's face registered surprise, and in the next moment Qui-Gon felt him pass into the Force. Then his body fell, shoved aside by Venge as the Sith darted forward. He dropped to his knees in front of Qui-Gon, his face stricken. "Fuck, I told you that you were terrible at ducking!" he cried, his hands touching Qui-Gon's where he gripped his midsection. Both of them read the wound for what it was - fatal.

Qui-Gon slumped forward, unable to help it, when that coldness spread outward, touching him with heavy, exhausting fingers. It was his turn to be cradled, Venge holding him in blood-slick arms. His eyes were lit from within, filled with feral rage, as if something wild within him was trying to break free. "No, no, no, no-- you cannot do this to me!" Venge whispered, and his voice was breaking, full of desperate pain.

Take away that control and the galaxy burns! Qui-Gon stared up at Venge, hearing the echoes of those words. He sensed Obi-Wan clearly, more present in that moment than he had been since their parting after Naboo. "Don't," he whispered. "Don't... let this... destroy you."

"Dammit, Qui-Gon," Venge uttered a broken laugh. His face was streaked in his own blood, marring the perfect lines of the Sith tattoos. "I am already destroyed. I... I cannot... I can't bear to lose you. You are the only thing I have."

Qui-Gon smiled. "Darkness... can't heal," he said. Though he didn't think even Light could heal this. He knew his own body well enough to know that he was done. The Force was waiting.

Venge shook his head, offering him a terrible smile. "Darkness can heal, Master Jinn. It just always comes with a price." With that he stood up, holding Qui-Gon in his arms. Venge winced in pain, though his grip on Qui-Gon did not falter, and then he stepped forward.

"Where...?" Qui-Gon managed, feeling that heavy coldness press on his chest, stealing his breath.

"Just hold on," Venge said, not looking at him as he walked back out into that long corridor, the smell of old blood and new intermingling. "There's an entire galaxy out there waiting to burn."

To Qui-Gon it seemed as if they walked for hours, or maybe it was seconds. He drifted, half-conscious, held by arms that grew warmer as he grew colder, and there was a siren song in the back of his mind, bringing him more peace than he had known in decades.

But then Venge would whisper, "Stay," and Qui-Gon, hearing the lost threads of Obi-Wan in that request, would distance himself from that song, holding on to the last of his own life with his infamous stubbornness.

Scents had come and gone, but now the air smelled and tasted sterile. He forced his eyes open and found himself still alive, still in the arms of the Sith. They were standing in a room lit with green, eerie light, surrounded by a handful of upright cylinders. Each cylinder had the faint outline of a bipedal being inside. Clones. They were in the room that held Sidious's clones. He tried to ask what they were doing here, and could not manage more than the faint hint of sound.

Venge was looking around, eyeing the tanks as if searching for something. "Once upon a time, a Sith Lord tore me apart," he said, his tone distant. "He offered me everything I ever wanted, anything I could ever want. To that end, he created something for me, trying to give me a gift. Trying to love me."

Qui-Gon stared up at him, feeling the echoes of that destruction, and then he understood the desolation Venge had shown him. The realization brought him a faint hint of strength. "Sith... don't know how to love."

Venge smiled, glancing down at him. "And what of me then, Master? Or am I as terrible at being a Sith as I was at being a Jedi?"

"Not... terrible," Qui-Gon whispered, attempting to smile back. "Brilliant... brilliant fire." That siren song was loud again, almost drowning out the silence that filled the cloning lab. "I... loved you."

Venge swallowed, the motion starkly visible. He stepped forward again, bending and settling Qui-Gon down onto the floor. Qui-Gon's back rested against the cool metal and transparisteel of the cloning tank Venge had chosen. The Sith knelt before him, looked at him with a faint smile touching his lips. He rested his hands against the sides of Qui-Gon's face. His palms were warm, a far cry from the chill in Venge's eyes. Then the chill vanished, replaced by fleeting blue. "I love you, Qui-Gon Jinn, and I made my choices long ago." Venge sighed, closing his eyes, and when he looked at Qui-Gon again the amber was there, flickering with fierce intensity. "I know you can hear the Force singing," he said, his lips close enough that his breath touched Qui-Gon's face. "I've heard it before, too. It's all right. Let go."

Qui-Gon felt his breath still, and let go, and he fell -- not into the light he expected, but darkness.

He sat there long past the time that he needed to, staring at the still form before him, his hands resting on that beloved face. His entire body was tingling, and it wasn't pleasant. He imagined it would be worse, next time.

The choice had been easy to make, for the Jedi within him could not stand to watch a galaxy burn... but he could be hated. He had been hated for years. He lied to himself, told himself it would make no difference.

When the cold began to register on his flayed skin, he shook himself, reaching out with gentle fingers to close staring blue eyes. He stripped the body with merciless, emotionless hands, laying aside clothing and tools, and tried not to remember the last time he had seen this body bare.

He called forth one of the tending medical droids, and his hands were shaking as he motioned for the droid to do away with the body. Another droid trundled forward, politely asking to tend to his wounds, and the Sith let it. The droid knew from long years of association not to use pain killers, and he clamped his teeth together as antiseptic burned his skin clean. No bacta, though. He didn't need that. He had been refused bacta treatment for so long that it was a foreign concept, and he would hardly know what to do if offered the option. Scars were his life, his reminders of what failure brought. The scars forced him to remember.

He glanced down at his arms and touched the Force, and the patterns hidden in his skin emerged, black and stark against pale white and streaks of angry red. "Are they damaged?" he asked, surprised by the hoarseness of his own voice.

"No, my Lord. They are undamaged. Remember that the patterns were imprinted down through all five layers of the epidermis. It would take much greater damage than this to remove them."

He nodded. Sidious had never seen these marks, and even if he had, he would have been pleased, thinking his apprentice was becoming more accepting of his place among the Sith. That thought made him smile.

He found black clothing on a shelf in a nearby storage room, slipping into gentle silk that lay on his wounds without pulling or scraping. He tied on a black strip of belt, a quick grimace his only acknowledgement of the internal damage the Sith Lord had done when fists had struck him, over and over again, in raging fury.

Further back in that same storage room, among boxes of supplies where Palpatine never ventured, he pried open a panel in the wall. When he touched the silver hilt that lay within the dark compartment his head bowed, and grief assaulted him, and he shuddered and blinked away tears that never formed. He shoved the emotion away, for he couldn't afford it now. A quick inspection told him it still had enough power for one last battle. But first... he ignited his lightsaber, the pale blue blade filling the small room with the sound of contained power. He gathered up his hair, long enough to touch his waist, and sheared through it with one quick pass of the blade. Locks reddened with blood fell to the floor, leaving his hair just long enough to brush his shoulders.

Venge had returned to the cloning lab, and was staring up at the tank Qui-Gon had died in front of when he sensed their presence. He turned, smiling, for he was glad to see them, grateful to know that they were still alive. "Hello, Anakin. Senator."

Anakin lowered his lightsaber at the sight of him standing alone, though Padmé was not as quick to lower her blaster. "What the hell is going on?" he asked, and the Sith was amused to hear the hint of their Master in the young Knight's voice.

"That is no easy question to answer. Perhaps you could be more specific?"

"I felt Master Giett die," Anakin said, glaring at him. "What happened?"

"Oh. That." Venge felt his hands curl into fists and forced himself to relax. "I killed him."

Padmé's blaster was definitely pointed in his direction now. "Why?" she demanded.

He ignored her, looking at Anakin. "Did you feel it?" he whispered, wanting Anakin to understand-- Venge needed him to understand. "That current in the Force that should not have been?"

Anakin stared at him, his eyes full of trepidation. He had sensed it, then; sensed it and feared what it meant. "Where is he, Venge? Where is my Master?"

He tilted his head in the direction of the tank. "Right there."

"What?!" Anakin rushed over, any potential enmity between them forgotten. The young Knight stared up into the dim recesses of the tank, spying features that were familiar, yet not. "But that's... you cloned him?"

"No," he said, keeping one eye on Padmé as she joined her husband. Getting himself shot at this stage in the game would not help matters. "Sidious did, years ago. He wanted to use it as another means of control, and was not happy when I did not respond as he expected." Venge gazed at features that were diffused by the nutrient bath in the tank. The clone had been aged to just over thirty standard years. It was odd to see him without long hair, for something about the nutrient feed retarded hair growth, kept the keratin from gaining ground. "Looks different with the nose unbroken, doesn't he?" Venge mused.

"Did you... did you kill him?" Anakin asked, turning angry eyes on him.

Venge was tempted to roll his eyes at the younger man's assumption. "I did not kill him. Master Giett did. Hence, that is why Master Giett is no longer with us."

Padmé's eyes widened, and her blaster dropped away from him to point at the floor. "What? I've..." she glanced at Anakin. "We've known Master Giett for years! Why the hell would he do that?"

"He betrayed the Jedi fifteen years ago. Agreed to hide a transmitter in his wrist that would allow Sidious to hear anything and everything the Council had to say. Nifty little gadget - invisible to scans. He did it because Sidious gave him a false promise to bring a dead woman back to life. Not," he added, his mouth twisting in a bitter smile, "that Master Tahl would have appreciated the effort. I think he had long since lost the ability to remember her properly."

Anakin was still staring up at the tank, which beeped, indicating it had sensed the occupant approaching consciousness. His eyes widened in shock. "I can-- I can feel him. It's really him, not just a cloned body. What did you do?!"

That question made him sigh. "Something he will likely never forgive me for. Listen now: he will be disoriented when he awakens. Stay here with him, help him through it. He may panic, for I don't know how this transfer will affect his abilities." Venge did not tell them that he had never done this before, and it was only the constant presence of Qui-Gon Jinn in the Force that told him he had succeeded at all. He turned away, feeling the reassuring weight of the lightsaber at his side. He couldn't afford to wait any longer.

"Why should we trust you?" Padmé said, though he felt no danger at his back. She wasn't going to shoot him - it was a question driven by curiosity, not anger.

It was too bad the answer was not one she would like. "You shouldn't."

Anakin called after him. "You're going to kill him, aren't you? Sidious."

"Yes."

He heard Anakin sigh. "Obi-Wan."

That stopped him in his tracks, made his mouth fall open in surprise. It had been long years since anyone save Qui-Gon had called him by that name. "What?" he managed, the word far more harsh than he'd intended.

"I can't let you just... walk off to die," Anakin said, soft pleading in his voice. "You saved my mother's life on Tatooine, and I know you weren't supposed to."

"It doesn't matter."

"It does matter!" Anakin yelled, surprising him. "You saved my Master. Hell, I'm pretty sure what you're about to do is going to save the lives of my children. You're my brother, Obi-Wan. I can't let you do this alone."

His eyes burned, and his vision blurred at last from the tears that fell. He turned around and strode forward, stopping before Anakin and Padmé, both of whom looked at him with something that was, if not love, then at least caring. It was a strange thing, to learn that there might be others in the Light that gave a damn about what happened to him. "Come here," he said, his voice rough as he pulled on Anakin's chin-length hair. Anakin, confused, lowered his head, and Obi-Wan Kenobi planted a kiss on the forehead of his brother. "You are the Chosen One," he whispered against Anakin's skin. "You will bring the balance that the Jedi have needed for more than a millennium, and your children will thrive." He had worked hard to see to it that Anakin Skywalker never became the tool that Sidious's Master had meant to create. That, at least, was worth all of the pain, all of the sacrifice.

He stepped back and looked at Padmé, offering her a crooked smile. "Do me a favor?"

"What?" she asked, curious and more than a little suspicious, but that was all right.

"Don't let him name your son after me," he said. "That would be fucked up."

She smiled and embraced him, and he closed his eyes, feeling three vibrant points of light touch him at once. One last comfort in long years where there had been none. That was all right, too.

She backed away, and he nodded at them. "Don't worry, Anakin," he added, taking his leave, throwing the words back over his shoulder. "I won't be alone."

"I feel like we're being led in circles," Shaak Ti murmured under her breath, reaching out with her hand to touch the dark walls of the hall they paced down. She and Mace Windu, Agen Kolar, and Kit Fisto had separated from the others, once it became clear that Palpatine was leading them on a merry chase. They'd hoped to pin the Sith down, and instead had just found themselves wandering the citadel, the Sith Lord always just out of sight, just out of reach.

Mace nodded his agreement, pausing to step out into another of the open air gardens. They were vile things, the Sith's gardens, an affront to the Living Force. He brushed aside the thorny vines that seemed to reach out for him. This particular garden was gigantic, stretching the length of the citadel, and Mace wondered if it hadn't originally been meant as a landing platform. "We shouldn't have split up," he said, though he could still sense the others, if he fought his way through the pervading murk of Darkness. "This is getting us nowhere."

"Master Windu," Kit caught his attention, pointing up. "There's a ship."

"No, there are several ships up there," Agen Kolar said, and Mace saw them as well. They were, if he wasn't mistaken, the transports of the Republic Army.

"What the hell are they doing here?" Shaak wondered, waving her lightsaber over her head three times, signaling the transports. "Do you think the Senate decided that we should have back-up?"

"I doubt it," Mace answered, watching as three of the ships broke away from the main group and veered towards them. They were landing in the garden within moments, and white-armored clone soldiers with green markings began to debark. There was some red and yellow within the mix, but it was the green that intrigued him, for he had never seen a soldier with that particular color before.

One of the red-striped clones marched up to them, saluting. "Generals," he said, before slinging his blaster rifle back up into position. "I am Commander Bly. We are here to assist, per activated Protocol Jenth Isk Nern Nin." Several of the green-striped soldiers joined him, and there was a far more casual air to them, not like the clones. Perhaps the non-clone volunteers had finally been given a battalion and ranking system of their own, he thought.

Shaak exchanged a curious glance with Kit. "Jinn, huh?"

Mace doubted that the man who bore the name knew anything about this. "Who authorized the activation of this Protocol?" he demanded.

"General Windu, that would be the current Supreme Commander of the Republic Army, Obi-Wan Kenobi," Commander Bly responded.

Agen spat out something foul in Huttese. "That... little... ingenious bastard! He really is helping us!"

That might have been true, but Mace wasn't going to let this new element slide past without one more question. "Fine. If you're here to help us, we'll take all the help we can get. But first you're going to tell me what Protocol Jinn is!"

One of the green-striped soldiers stepped up next to Bly. "I've got this one, Bly," a female voice said, distorted by the vocorder. She raised her hands and pulled off her helmet, tossing her head so that her jet black, short-cropped hair swung free. She grinned at their floored expressions, her pale blue eyes sparkling with delight. "Hullo, Mace."

He stared at her, stunned, and could only whisper her name. "Adi."