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“And so, General Anakin Skywalker, the Hero with No Fear, is hereby pardoned from his crimes…”
A’Sharad shut off his hearing aids. He doesn’t need to hear anymore – he’s heard it a thousand times before. Another pardon. Another group in power shaking off the deaths of his people like sand. He couldn’t bear to hear anymore of the Republic’s Leaders who pardoned a Genocide
(LIKE AN ENTIRE CLAN WAS NOTHING.)
Gone forever. A’Sharad closed his eyes, though no sleep could sate his weariness. He felt like a sea dragon drowned in the sands, bleached by merciless beating heat and flesh picked over until nothing remained but bones turning to stone. He opened his eyes to see the Chancellor still blathering, making the usual excuses: aliens were the true enemies, this was a Troubled Young Man, entire lives shouldn’t be destroyed by a mistake
(not a mistake)
The ever needy, ever greedy war. All A’Sharad had heard before. Another Settler shielded from the consequences of his own actions by those in power. Another Tribe with only the Desert left to mourn and A’Sharad
was tired.
Fools watched him, worried about his anger, his fury. The wiser watched with him, and worried about far worse things. The Justice of the Jedi undone with a few words and a flex of the Supreme Chancellor’s power. Obi Wan looked particularly wretched, full of fresh pain as though the Chancellor were personally stomping a boot on his face, over and over again.
The Master of the Order and Grandmaster Jedi watched the pardon with foreboding. Mace stern, the look of someone who knew full well what this flex of power meant and who sought even now for some way to protect the Republic from the disease which already infected it. Yoda had a look of deep, profound disappointment. Every word from the Republic’s leader added another wrinkle to his face. After nine hundred years of Chancellors, he had found the very worst of them.
A’Sharad’s former Master looked lost as Kenobi, as though gravity had reversed itself. A little spark of something Dark rose at Ki-Adi-Mundi’s much belated realization. Had he at last understood the horror of his ignorant words? His praise to Skywalker in the aftermath of A’Sharad’s decision to bare his face.
(Bare faced to bear the shame)
“A’Sharad.”
Eeth. Not Ki Adi Mundi. Definitely not Dark Woman. Eeth came to stand with him, shoulder to shoulder, the sign of his own name sure, if signed slowly. A’Sharad unclenched his fists, flexed rigid fingers a few times before he could answer.
“Do you need help?” Eeth signs.
Such a simple question. Eeth meant it. Any help he could give A’Sharad. Any. Eeth, who always counseled patience, always taught thinking things through, always reacted first with a deep breath and the Knight’s mantra, who turned to meditation before the Lightsaber. Eeth who had been Master to his father, and a good one.
His offer made with full knowledge of everything A’Sharad could need help with.
A’Sharad didn’t spur the offer in haste; may as well spit on it. As Eeth taught, he thought things over. The extra aid. The extra grave. He knew his target’s measure and not too much time had passed between then and now. Yet The Force remained clouded. War. Pain and suffering on all sides. Rising slavery from one empire’s expansion and another’s resurrection. All polluted the Force as smog polluted Coruscant’s sky, and behind everything Sith Lord and Sith mystics turned that dark fog into such a storm as to blind the greatest Seer.
“No,” he finally signed, “Thank you but, this is something I need to do as,” his lips twisted into a bitter expression, “As a Tusken Raider,” he emphasized. “Do you understand?”
Eeth signed back, more slowly than A’Sharad but smooth and graceful, “Sharad told me of Fort Tusken. Like the old Sith Forts, it would have been the first of many, had not those first called Tusken Raider destroyed the place.”
“At the cost of their lives,” A’Sharad signed, “Yes. The alternative would have been to let an atrocity stand, would have been the death of our selves,” his hands faintly trembled, fingers moving with short, sharp movements, “Either in flesh or luminous spirit. Genocide, on a scale that made Skywalker look like a spark.”
“Grand...” Eeth hesitated. The Jedi word for Padawan of my Padawan had no corresponding meaning in the Ghorfa language, where students and mentors almost always shared a familial connection first. “Grandchild,” Eeth finished in the privacy of Ghorfa sign, “You need not dig you grave alone.”
A’Sharad let his hands fall and Eeth cradled them. He meant it, he meant it and the thought is tempting. The two of them would be more than enough and Eeth a Master. Afterwards…
But, he promised to give a Tusken’s vengeance. A’Sharad untangled their hands to sign. He didn’t need to. Eeth knew.
“A farewell then,” Eeth’s fingers shared his tremble. His Grandmaster had already lost his Padawan. They’d shared the same grief, back then. Now...A’Sharad wanted to carve an apology in the air but how could he apologize for this? This is his duty – as Ghorfa, as Jedi and as a Jedi Ghorfa.
Some people needed to be stopped.
Eeth lets him go. Lets go, as a Jedi must, and brings his hands up to sign in his slow, careful way. “I too am sorry, the Republic failed.” A hand clasped his, briefly.
“Failed my people,” A’Sharad managed.
“Failed my people too, failed everyone,” Eeth corrected, “A democracy who fails one fails all.” Hands still, they linger in the moment, together. The last moment.
“Would you care for some tea?”
Tea is important. Tea is one of the oldest drinks in the galaxy. Butter tea a near universal sign of welcome and hospitality among the Ghorfa. The First Teacher of the Jedi founded the First Path sip by sip. Tea was the center of meditation and ceremony.
Eeth led A’Sharad into his quarters. They had nothing to celebrate. War – ever hungry monster which grew hungrier the more it was fed – left little time for anything, let alone the month to prepare a proper tea ceremony. Yet Eeth prepares the tea with all formality due to the promotion of a new Council member. He graced A’Sharad’s cup with all twelve sacred herbs and spices – an honor reserved for only the most auspicious occasions.
A’Sharad pressed the cup to his lips. This was not an auspicious occasion.
“It has been my joy A’Sharad to know you, student of my student.”
A’Sharad can’t break. He is more than his own life. Vengeance is bigger than himself. He sat the tea down and managed, “And mine to know you.” His signs haven’t been this awkward since he was a child.
“Master of my father.”
Jedi taught vengeance was a Path to the Dark Side. Revenge was selfishness – spawned not from a desire to heal a wound as Justice did – to further tear open the wound dealt. Taking revenge was never the Jedi way, would get anyone dismissed from the Order as surely as Skywalker had been for his wrongs.
A’Sharad’s Clan taught different. All his neighbors did. Sometimes, vengeance was the only path to balance. Tattooine called forth dragons to bring back balance. The planet’s people knew sometimes only blood repaid poisoned water. Members of his clan had gone forth to claim vengeance, and against sleights far lesser than Skywalker’s.
But, Elders cautioned, vengeance has a price. Always. His mother loved collecting stories of the Force, but his grandmother had darker tastes, the kind of tales told long after the suns sank beneath the sands and the fires died to barely-burning embers. She spoke of those who rode against another Clan, even another Nation, or in later stories to Settlements, to take revenge for a sibling, a parent, a child – never to return. Seek vengeance, her stories said, but, make your own grave first.
More than any Jedi teachings, her stories taught him to beware vengeance.
Skywalker had done worse than vengeance – had taken more than those who had taken his mother. The women and children, Elders and crafters, babes in arms and those who blessed them, all dead like a tree cut root and branch. His fate should have been the darkest sort of story, told on the darkest of nights when the fires grew cold to make listeners feel the horror of the Dark. Instead, he got away, like so many Settlers. Worse, for he was Blessed by the Force, taught by A’Sharad’s – Sharad’s – people, and tainted those teachings to escape without consequence. He even escaped Jedi justice. Through his connection with the Chancellor, Skywalker paid no price for his vengeance, let alone for everyone else he’d slain; everything else he destroyed.
Now, A’Sharad would pay that price.
The last time they crossed blades, Skywalker had the element of surprise. A’Sharad, otherwise so used to Settler hatred, had never expected such from a member of his family. Yet his reflexes had been quicker than hatred and the Force, however strong in Skywalker, had been a wild, seething thing as easily predicted as a tamed Bantha’s charges. The so-called Hero With No Fear had the element of surprise, had all the ferocity of the Dark Side and still lost.
Bare months after that fateful duel, A’Sharad struck from hiding.
“Anakin!” The Chancellor cried, sounding overly loud through hearing aids cranked up to inadvisable extremes. But, A’Sharad was here to pay the price of vengeance. He would not be around to pay the price of further hearing damage.
The ex-Jedi barely avoided death, green plasma drawing a line of fire from shoulder to hip. A’Sharad followed up with a second strike and Skywalker scrambled back, even now trying to evade the price of vengeance.
A’Sharad was here to collect a debt.
A hiss of kindling plasma. A blade, blazing green as his own, appears in Skywalker’s hand. A blade he shouldn’t have. Unable to do anything else against the Chancellor’s word, the Jedi had ordered him to relinquish his weapon. Yet he bore a Jedi’s weapon, the saber’s kyber singing out of tune with his luminous self.
Stolen. Not surprising the Chancellor was able to get his hands on a stolen lightsaber. An all-too-common horror in the war.
The weapon’s presence hardly mattered. A’Sharad had the initiative. A’Sharad had two pearls singing in perfect tune with his soul. Skywalker had improved in their time apart, had improved more than A’Sharad imagined since his exile. Not enough. For all his continued training, for all Skywalker desperately clutched for the power of the Dark Side, he still held back. He still wasn’t willing to pay the price for vengeance.
A’Sharad was a Tusken. He took a Tusken’s vengeance.
Skywalker’s body fell, warm and burnt in crude matter, cold in Luminous Spirit. And the Chancellor, who hadn’t fled during the battle, who stayed and watched his supposed friend die, stared at A’Sharad with exactly the stare his mother told him to beware. “Most impressive,” he clapped slowly. “And here I thought the Jedi had tamed you.” A’Sharad wanted to turn his hearing aids off again, didn’t need to hear this, but didn’t dare extinguish either of his lightsabers. “Apparently not tame enough.” Twin sabers ignited with a sharp hiss, twin kybers screamed to life. “Good. Now, since you have disposed of my future apprentice, it seems I am in need of a new one.”
A’Sharad spared a brief flicker of regret for not accepting Eeth’s aid. He had thought the price of vengeance on Skywalker would be a lifetime of fleeing, being hunted down by whomever Palpatine could pay to hunt him. He hadn’t, no one had suspected
The Sith Master struck and A’Sharad could spare no thoughts. Had to focus his all on this unexpected battle. Palpatine was fast as Master Mace, powerful as Grandmaster Yoda and his once-Luminous Spirit a void that enveloped the Senate’s hallways, its rooms, poisoning the supposed democracy with a Sith’s insanity. For all A’Sharad’s determination, for all he moved and breathed Jar’Kai, a few months, a dozen years of dedication wouldn’t have prepared him to battle the Sith Master one to one.
He gave his all and could barely force the Sith Master to work for the kill.
“You need to let the Dark in,” Palpatine. No, Sidious, urged. “I know a barbarian like you has it.”
But A’Sharad was Ghorfa and Jedi. He took vengeance, but never selfishly, never spurred only by his own pain and thinking nothing of others. He took vengeance for a Clan he could give nothing else. They had a right to justice, one denied by this man. If the Council couldn’t, if the courts wouldn’t, A’Sharad would. So he fought Sidious as he had Skywalker, with a dispassion that would impress and disgust Dark Woman in equal measure. He wasn’t here for suffering. He wasn’t here to relish in pain. This was duty. To lay the dead to rest. He fought with everything all his teachers taught him. All the wisdom of his ancestors from two clans aided him, A’Sharad could practically hear their whispers in the Force.
Not enough. Not even for a good showing. He collapsed, agony burning in his chest along with a blade. The Sith slowly withdrew his saber, all the better to savor his agony. Overwhelming, all-consuming but A’Sharad sent his own sabers flying from his hands towards the Sith with the last of his strength, a feeble effort to take a victory from the jaws of defeat, to take this terrible foe with him.
Not enough.
“The time has come Darth Tyrannus,” Darth Sidious’ holo appeared, a Jedi’s corpse already at his feet. Finality, cold and heavy, condensed in the pit of Count Dooku’s stomach. “Return to your old home.”
Dooku obeyed. What else could he do? He had already gone too far. Crossed too many lines. Spent years, a decade, more than, as a Sith. Once, he had thought naively no one could go too far. Once, he had been taught and taught others that no matter the lines crossed one could always turn away from the Dark path. Fools! He had walked the Dark path and knew better. Some things no one could make up for. Some lines, once crossed, one could never turn back. His former family’s teachings folly.
Sometimes, there was only forward.
“Yes, My Master.”
“The Jedi have sent an assassin after me,” Palpatine alerted the Senate, “I am wounded but alive thanks to Anakin Skywalker’s valiant defense, and heroic sacrifice. Alas, he perished in that defense. And now I call on all those brave heroes, those who wish to stand with the Hero With No Fear, rise up and defend our New Galactic EMPIRE!”
“Anakin did not kill A’Sharad,” Mace announced to the few Council members present at the Jedi Temple, “We have found the Sith: Chancellor Palpatine.” The worst possible person. “The Republic cannot become a Sith Empire, not while we draw breath to prevent it.”
“I should have gone with him,” Eeth mourned.
“You offered. It was to him to accept or decline,” Shaak Ti returned.
“We go with him now, in spirit,” Depa added.
They were Jedi. They did not take revenge. Not even for family. But Palpatine was a Sith, embraced the hunger of the Dark Side which never could be sated, embraced the disease of the Dark Side and willingly infected all he could. There could be no peace. No negotiation.
Some people needed to be stopped.