"You look troubled, my apprentice."
The voice froze Asajj mid-breath.
Old. Cultured. Achingly familiar.
She spun, lightsabers igniting in her hands before conscious thought caught up. Red blades hummed to life, casting crimson light across her face, painting her tattoos in shades of blood and fury.
Count Dooku stood ten meters away, hands clasped behind his back, posture perfect despite the rocky terrain. His cape stirred in Dathomir's wind, and his expression held something that might have been sorrow. Might have been regret.
Asajj didn't care which.
"Dooku!" His name tore from her throat like a curse. She lunged forward, every muscle coiled for violence, for revenge—
And slammed into an invisible wall.
The Force wrapped around her like durasteel chains. Her arms locked to her sides. Her legs froze mid-stride. She hung suspended, helpless, lightsabers still active but useless.
"How did you find me?" The question came out strangled.
"We are still connected." Dooku's voice remained infuriatingly calm. "The Force binds us, apprentice to master. I simply followed that thread across the stars."
"WHY DID YOU BETRAY ME?" The scream echoed off the cliff face, sent small creatures scurrying from the twisted trees.
"It is not what you think."
"LIAR!" Asajj thrashed against the Force restraints, accomplishing nothing except exhausting herself. "You left me to die! Sent the clones, orchestrated the trap, watched me fall—"
"I did." Dooku's admission stopped her cold. "And I am deeply sorry for it. But before you attempt to kill me—and we both know you would try—I ask that you witness the truth first."
"What truth?" Asajj spat the words like poison. "That I was your tool? Your weapon, useful until I became inconvenient? That's not truth, Master. That's just reality."
Dooku said nothing. Instead, he reached into his robes and withdrew a small holographic projector. He placed it on the ground between them with deliberate care, then activated it with a gesture.
Blue light flickered to life.
Asajj's own voice filled the air, tinny from the recording but unmistakable: "Master, I need your help. I'm surrounded, and—"
Dooku's response, equally preserved: "The battle is already lost. You need to reassess the situation and—"
"No! I almost destroyed the Jedi—"
"You must stop. You will fail again, my apprentice." Dooku's recorded voice held urgency that Asajj remembered from the actual conversation. "You cannot die there. Return to me."
The recording ended.
Silence crashed down like a falling building.
Asajj stared at the projector, then slowly—reluctantly—lifted her gaze to meet Dooku's eyes.
"I did not abandon you, Asajj," he said quietly. "I wanted you to come back. I needed you to come back."
"Then why—?" She couldn't finish. Couldn't reconcile the recording with the clones, the flagship, the feeling of betrayal that had burned in her chest since.
"Listen." Dooku's tone shifted, became harder. "And you will understand."
He activated a second recording.
A new hologram materialized—Dooku himself, kneeling. And before him, robed in shadow, a figure whose presence made Asajj's blood run cold even through a recording.
Darth Sidious.
"Lord Tyranus." The voice slithered through the air like oil on water. Asajj had heard it only once before, when Dooku first revealed his master's existence. The memory of that encounter still haunted her—the suffocating pressure of Sidious's power, the sense that she was an insect beneath the gaze of a god.
"Yes, my master?" Dooku's recorded voice held deference that bordered on servility.
"There is... interference with the Force."
"What manner of interference, my lord?"
"Many things." Sidious's hologram shifted, and even through the blue projection, Asajj could feel his attention sharpen. "But the one you should be most concerned about is your assassin."
Dooku's posture stiffened. "Ventress? What of her?"
"She has become very powerful."
"Yes, my lord. She is important to my—"
"Too important." The interruption was soft but absolute. "She has surpassed our expectations. I hate to think you are training your own apprentice to destroy me."
Asajj's breath caught. Her eyes widened.
No.
No.
"Never, my lord." Dooku's voice carried genuine alarm. "I am loyal to you and only you."
"Then you must prove it." Sidious leaned forward, and even in holographic form, the gesture radiated menace. "Get rid of her."
The words hung in the air like an executioner's blade.
Dooku's recorded form went very still. "My lord, perhaps if I simply ceased her training—"
"Kill her." No room for argument. No possibility of negotiation. "We have more important tasks ahead. I will not tolerate wild cards in our deck. You understand, apprentice?"
A pause. Long enough for Asajj to see Dooku's shoulders tense, to watch him war with himself in the space between breaths.
Then: "As you wish, my lord."
The recording ended.
Asajj couldn't move. Couldn't speak. The Force restraints had loosened at some point—Dooku must have released her—but she stood frozen anyway, staring at the space where the hologram had been.
Not Dooku.
Sidious.
The order came from Sidious.
"You must understand," Dooku said into the silence, "I had no choice. Either I obeyed and orchestrated circumstances where you might survive, or I refused and risked drawing his attention to you directly." His voice cracked slightly. "If Sidious himself had come for you, there would be no escape. No survival. Just... death."
Asajj's mind reeled. All the rage, all the certainty that Dooku had betrayed her—it fractured, reformed into something more complex and far more terrifying.
She wasn't betrayed by her master.
She was betrayed by his master.
And that meant—
"You could have fought back!" The words burst out, childish and desperate. "We could have fought him! Together!"
"Could we?" Dooku's expression held infinite sadness. "Be honest with yourself, Asajj. You've felt Sidious's power. You know what he is. Could you stand against that?"
The memory surfaced unbidden—that single encounter, the Sith Lord's presence crushing down on her like a moon falling from orbit. She'd nearly broken just being in the same room.
"No," she whispered. "I... no."
"Nor could I. Not as I am now. Perhaps not ever." Dooku moved closer, each step measured and careful. "We are both pieces on his game board. Useful, valuable perhaps, but ultimately expendable if we threaten his grand design."
Asajj forced herself to think past the shock, past the revelation. "The dark acolytes. Where do their loyalties lie?"
"Divided." Dooku's mouth twisted. "Some serve me. Some serve Sidious directly. It is... difficult to determine which is which. He planned it that way, I suspect. Ensuring I could never move against him without his spies reporting every detail."
"And me?" The question slipped out before she could stop it.
Dooku raised an eyebrow. "Excuse me?"
She sneered, turned away from him, embarrassed by her own need for reassurance. Childish. Weak.
"The lightsabers in your hands," Dooku said after a moment. "Do you know their origins?"
Asajj stopped. Turned back slowly. "What?"
"Those weapons are not merely tools. They belonged to another who shared your... particular talents." He paused. "Before you, I had two apprentices during my time as a Jedi. One was Qui-Gon Jinn."
The name meant nothing to Asajj, but Dooku's expression when he spoke it—grief, pride, regret all tangled together—told her everything she needed to know.
"Qui-Gon shaped me as much as I shaped him," Dooku continued. "He was brilliant, stubborn, maddeningly idealistic. He questioned everything, trusted the Force above all else, and died for his principles." His voice softened. "Not a day passes that I do not miss him."
Asajj had never heard Dooku speak this way. Vulnerable. Human. It unsettled her more than his anger ever had.
"My other Padawan," Dooku said, "was named Komari Vosa."
Asajj's hands tightened on her lightsabers.
"She was passionate, determined, eager to prove herself. In many ways, she reminded me of you." Dooku's eyes found Asajj's. "But she was also consumed by emotion. Pride. Anger. Fear. I tried to help her find balance, but I failed. Even after she was no longer my Padawan, I hoped she might become an ally. Instead, she fell to darkness without guidance, without control. Her pride destroyed her."
The implication settled over Asajj like a shroud.
"I gave you her lightsabers," Dooku said, "to guide you down a different path. I lost Qui-Gon to righteousness and principle. I lost Komari to unchecked emotion and arrogance. I did not wish to lose you to Sidious's paranoia and cruelty."
"So you tried to fake my death instead." Asajj's voice came out flat.
"Yes."
"Without telling me."
"If you had known, you would have fought differently. Perhaps died differently. The deception had to be complete." Dooku stepped closer still, close enough that she could see the lines of age carved into his aristocratic features. "I am not asking for forgiveness, Asajj. What I did was unforgivable. But I am asking for understanding."
Asajj wanted to rage at him. Wanted to reignite her lightsabers and make him pay for every moment of fear, every second of betrayal she'd felt falling toward that Republic flagship's deck.
But the anger had gone hollow. Complicated.
"He called me a tool," she said quietly.
"He calls everyone tools." Dooku placed one hand on her shoulder—gentle, almost fatherly. "But here is the secret Sidious does not understand: tools with their own will are the most dangerous kind. You are not his weapon, Asajj. You are not mine either. You are your own person, with your own choices."
"Some choice." The bitterness leaked through despite her best efforts. "Serve him. Die by him. Or run and hide forever."
"Or," Dooku said, voice dropping to barely above a whisper, "we find a third option."
Asajj's eyes snapped up. "What are you suggesting?"
"I am suggesting nothing. Not yet." Dooku's hand fell away from her shoulder. "But know this: you are not alone in this cage. We are both prisoners of Sidious's grand design. And prisoners, when properly motivated, sometimes find ways to escape."
The implications hung between them, dangerous and intoxicating.
Asajj looked at her former master—really looked—and saw not the betrayer who'd left her to die, but another slave to Sidious's will. Another piece on the board, moving according to someone else's strategy.
She didn't forgive him. Couldn't. Not yet, perhaps not ever.
But she understood.
And understanding, she was learning, could be even more powerful than forgiveness.
"What now?" she asked.
Dooku smiled slightly. "Now? We return to our roles. You remain 'dead' as far as the galaxy knows. I return to the Separatist cause. And we both... watch. Wait. Plan."
"For what?"
"For our opportunity." His eyes gleamed with something that might have been hope, might have been madness. "Even Sith Lords make mistakes, apprentice. And when Sidious makes his, we must be ready to exploit it."
Asajj deactivated her lightsabers. The sudden absence of their hum left the cliff face feeling very quiet, very empty.
"I'm not your apprentice anymore," she said.
"No," Dooku agreed. "Perhaps you never truly were. Perhaps you were always meant for something more than being a pawn in an old man's schemes."
He turned to leave, cape swirling dramatically. Very Dooku.
"Wait." Asajj's voice stopped him. "Why tell me all this? Why risk Sidious finding out?"
Dooku looked back over his shoulder. "Because, my dear Asajj, I am tired of being a tool. And I suspect you are as well."
Then he was gone, disappearing into the twisted forest with the grace of a man who'd never stopped being a Jedi, no matter what darkness he now served.
Asajj stood alone on the cliff's edge, Komari Vosa's lightsabers heavy in her hands, and wondered what exactly she'd just agreed to.
Nothing explicitly. No pact was made. No plan established.
But something had shifted. Some understanding reached.
She was a prisoner. But prisoners, as Dooku said, sometimes found ways to escape.
The question was: what price would freedom demand?