The Hammer Falls - 8.326

[Lilaena De'Ville]

Terephon was not a special planet to the Hapans, just another to add to their collection. De'Ville had slept through her trip through the Transitory Mists, the transport she was on nearly empty. Not many people visited Terephon, at least, who didn't own their own ships.

Now, in a speeder headed over the moors, she was feeling... itchy. Not literally, but a sensation under her skin of things that needed to be resolved. Things that her master would need to explain.

In the foggy distance a dark shape loomed, off the side of the road she was following, a huge mansion all by itself in the countryside. She pulled off to the driveway, approaching the house slowly and noting that it had no outer wall or gates. Its isolation was its protection, here where the grey sky met the green-grey moor.

Setting the brake on the speeder, De'Ville climbed out, gathering her duffel bag. She had sent him word she was arriving, but no one came to greet her, and she walked up the steps to the imposing front door in silence.

She found a doorbell and rang it.

[Salem Ave]

The bell rang throughout the house as low and mournful as a death knell.

In his study, Salem exhaled and opened his eyes. With a casual flutter of his fingertips, he touched the Force and the front-door swung inward on its hinges. Beyond the threshold was a corridor and at the end of the corridor was the ill-lit study whose walls were lined to the ceiling with bookshelves, the study in which Lilaena's master now spent so much of his time.

Within a matter of moments, Salem's shadow darkened the doorway. He did not wear the mask of Callidus, though charcoal gray robes hung around his shoulders. He looked down the length of the hallway at her, his clawed fingertips curling a fraction tighter around the lightsaber hilt in his right hand.

“Malleus?”

[Lilaena De'Ville]

"My master," she answered, her steady pace bringing her down the hallway toward him, her bag slung across her body and hanging against her backside. A meter away from him she slowed, then stopped, kneeling, her face downcast with respect. "I have come with important information from the Empire uncovered during a recent mission."

[Salem Ave]

With an imperceptible narrowing of his eyes, Salem watched as she advanced towards him, studying her expression, her posture and not least of all the bag she carried. After a moments consideration, he slid his saber's hilt higher into the cuff of his robes and gestured Lilaena ahead of him into the study.

“Come then, my apprentice. You must tell me everything that you have learned.”

[Lilaena De'Ville]

Oh, I will.

Lilaena stood, walking into the study, or library, with Salem at her back, her back straight and head high. "The Empire has been experimenting with a new biological weapon. They call it the Morbus Virus."

She pulled her duffel around to her front, and unzipped it, reaching past her lightsaber and retrieving a datastick. Carefully setting her bag on the ground, she held the stick out toward her master. "All the information I recovered on the project, including the research notes and development experiments.

"The Alliance has all this information as well, though it appears that we were able to destroy almost all of the Empire's work while on Sestooine. Whether they have other stockpiles of the virus, or if a copy of their research was kept elsewhere, I do not know yet."

She met his eyes as he reached for the datastick, fingertips lightly touching his. A flicker of something crossed her eyes, but quickly vanished.

[Salem Ave]

Salem crossed the room to a desk-mounted computer terminal. At the touch of a button it hummed to life and soon it's screen was populated with scores of windows, each one representing a documents folder present on the datastick. He scanned the names of the files, key words and phrases jumping off of the screen at him: confidential; preliminary case data; morbus test batch four. He opened a file at random and was presented with line after line of raw test data. As an Arkanian, Salem possessed an above-average understanding of the sciences – in particular, those studies relating to genetics – but it would take more than a cursory glance to establish the true meaning and worth of what Lilaena had presented him with.

He lifted his eyes to back to her and smiled without a hint of warmth.

“You serve your master well, Malleus. Do you bring any other news?”

[Lilaena De'Ville]

She inclined her head slightly, accepting his scant praise of her abilities, and her eyes tracked down to her open duffel on the ground, the pommel of her lightsaber just visible on top of her spare clothes. When she raised her chin, she raised her eyes as well.

"You told me once you were trained under A'na Eldhil, the same as I." De'Ville's posture changed subtly, shoulders squaring, hips angling slightly, any trace of subservience disappearing from her stance. "Before she took me as a padawan."

He watched her beat me, she reminded herself, lest she lose her nerve. The center of her body seemed to grow warm as she remembered. Before Salem said anything in reply, she pressed on.

"The truth, of course, my master." The words had a slight tinge of mockery to them. "But also a lie. I remember Salemescro." Her green eyes burned into his white ones but she didn't move, only stood where she was, waiting to see what he might say, or do.

[Salem Ave]

The shift would have eluded a lesser man but the change in Lilaena was obvious to Salem; the Dark Side gathered around her like the first stirrings of a storm.

“What is it you think you remember?”

[Lilaena De'Ville]

His tone was not quite condescending, but it was close. "You were there. You saw what she did to me." It was becoming difficult to moderate her tone, but she just managed to hold back her anger, though she knew she would have hardly fooled a child, let alone Salem Ave.

[Salem Ave]

For a long moment, Salem said nothing. He would not deny the truth. He merely waited, watching, anticipating that her words were the prelude to something more - and yet she did nothing, glaring at him with impotent anger.

“How does that make you feel?”

[Lilaena De'Ville]

Her face twisted, the fury plain in her expression but turning into confusion and hurt. "How do you frelling think it makes me feel?! You were older than me! You watched her beat me, and you did nothing."

Lilaena took a step toward him, hands clenched at her sides. "How does that make you feel?"

[Salem Ave]

Salem paced out from behind the desk that had separated them, leaving the data-stick to download its contents onto his computer terminal. Their transition, as children, from wards of the Jedi Temple to fugitives on the run from the Galactic Empire had been marked by a drastic change in the pace of their training. A'na Eldhil had known that their time together was short, that she could not out-run fate forever, and so the limits of her patience had shortened accordingly. Failure to meet her nigh-impossible standards had earned both Salem and Lilaena a multitude of bruises and scars, though it was Lilaena – being younger and thus slower to learn – who had taken the brunt her masters anger.

“Do you think that it was within my power to stop her? What do you imagine that I could have done? Killed her?”

[Lilaena De'Ville]

Her face reflected her roiling emotions, and she shouted, "You left me with her! And then now... you lied to me, told me what you wanted me to believe about your training."

He was close to her now, and Lilaena thrust out her hands to the center of his chest to shove him backwards.

[Salem Ave]

The push staggered him a step, but Salem would not be provoked into violence so easily. Nevertheless, he was alert and poised to strike. The rage that seethed inside of Lilaena was unlike anything he had ever felt from her before.

“I did – as I have always done – what was necessary. I told you what you needed to hear.”

[Lilaena De'Ville]

"So now you know what I need?" Lilaena took another step forward, her body starting to shake from the internal pressure of her anger and pain. He was in arms reach, standing before her with no fear on his face, no anger. Just... blank.

Kill him.

She was breathing through slightly parted lips, still struggling for control, and confused as to why she still hesitated. Was he going to say something that would somehow erase his betrayal? Could he say anything that she would accept?

Once she had remembered him in her past, she had dreamed of it every night. Different scenes, little vignettes of history as seen through a six year old's eyes. Lilaena clenched her fists so tightly her short fingernails bit through the palms of her hands.

"It got...much worse after you left."

[Salem Ave]

It was difficult to think back to the time they had spent with A'na – not because of any trauma that Salem had suffered at her hands, rather because it felt as if he was remembering someone else's life, the circumstances so far removed from those of the present day. In his first years of freedom as a young man, he had been reckless and bold but above all things, he had been scared. Was it arrogance, that he hadn't felt fear in so many years? Or was it a sign that he had finally achieved complete control over himself and those around him? Now, watching Lilaena as she trembled with anger, he sensed that she was so close to slipping from his grasp.

He laid a hand on her shoulder.

“And yet... here you are.”

[Lilaena De'Ville]

She flinched as he touched her, part of her wanting him to comfort her, another part realizing everything he did was just another calculated move designed to- to what? Lilaena kept her eyes on his, not sure what would happen if she looked away.

"I am here," she said quietly, the heat of her fury condensing into ice. "But I do not know why, anymore."

[Salem Ave]

“When you first came to Onderon, you told me your purpose was to fulfil your master's wish and destroy the Empire,” he said, echoing the very same words which had been her mantra, her sole motivation and the fuel for the fire which had kept her moving, and alive, since the Purge. “Don't you long for the downfall of the Empire, still?”

[Lilaena De'Ville]

"Yes." The Empire had still destroyed the Jedi. They had caused her to be raised by A'na Eldhil. They had taken her and tortured her, leaving her broken and vulnerable in the eyes of Hawkins Grime, undermining what little respect he had for her.

"The Empire must pay." Her eyes tracked down to where his hand still lay on her shoulder, and she moved suddenly, grabbing his palm and twisting to lock up his arm and push it to the breaking point.

[Salem Ave]

There was a sickening crack and a spike of pain lanced through Salem's elbow and forearm. In the same breath, a shock-wave of energy exploded from inside of the Sith Lord – throwing Lilaena backwards, sending her tumbling over a low couch whilst the papers on the library's desk scattered into the air like a flock of startled birds taking wing. Salem's now broken arm hung limply at his side as he raked his other hand through the air, hurling a focused burst of energy right at his apprentice as she hurried to regain her footing.

“This is folly, Lilaena. I am not your enemy.”

[Lilaena De'Ville]

The energy slammed into her chest as she got to her feet, shoving her back into the bookcases, datapads and paper books alike falling onto her head from the force of her impact. She cried out, a ragged shout of emotional turmoil, falling forward to land on her hands and knees on the floor.

From deep inside she gathered the Force, exploding it away from her in a circular pressure wave that blew the couch away from her, throwing it toward Salem as the bookcases on either side of her were abruptly and violently stripped of their contents.

[Salem Ave]

Salem twisted side-on and ducked low, his palm thrust above his head as he drew upon the Dark Side of the Force to catch the couch in mid-air. With a wave of his hand, it hurtled into the open doorway and split in two, spitting wooden splinters into the air. Without pause he straightened to his full height and stalked towards Lilaena, anger darkening his features with an ugly scowl. He closed his fist over thin air and the Dark Side snapped around Lilaena's throat in a vice-grip, dragging her to her feet and slamming her back against a book-case, pinning her in place as he advanced on her.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

She kicked her legs in the air and automatically clutched at the unseen hand that choked her, mouth open as she ineffectually gasped for breath. As he came closer her legs were pinned to the bookcase as well, leaving her as helpless as an insect impaled to a card.

Instead of fury in her eyes there was only pain, even as she scratched her own neck, still struggling for survival.

[Salem Ave]

His hand jerked forward and the pressure on her throat doubled. “Am I your enemy?” he snarled, the grotesque death's head of Callidus misting translucently over his features, tracing the gaunt lines of a skull over his once handsome face. Out in the wild moorlands of Terephon, there was no one to come running at the sound of screams, no need to hide the truth.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

She squirmed against the shelves, wood digging painfully into her back as her face reddened. His mask covered his face, but that did not scare her, not as much as the possibility of losing him stabbed fear straight through her.

"No..." Lilaena forced the word out with the last bit of air left in her lungs, an angry tear falling from one eye as everything began to grow dim.

[Salem Ave]

As the last of her consciousness gave way to darkness, Salem finally relented and allowed her body to slump to the floor. He stood staring down at her, his chest rising and falling, his shallow breathing the only sound in a room that looked as if it had been hit by a bomb. Datacards had been crushed under foot; books lay splayed open, their pages crumpled and creased. How had he allowed it to come to this? Had he become complacent...? Drawing in a deep breath, Salem closed his eyes and, shifting his broken arm very slightly, felt cold nausea trickle into the pit of his stomach.

He sat down on the one couch which hadn't been rendered fire-wood and, having shed his outer robes, tore away the shirt-sleeve which covered his lifeless arm. With a little improvisation and tenacity, by way of tying a knot with only one hand and his teeth, the ripped sleeve became a makeshift sling. His arm bound across his chest, Salem sat back and exhaled as he stared across the room at the body of Lilaena De'Ville. Now, all he could do was wait.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

She came to slowly, eyes closed but shifting behind their lids. She could feel his presence, off to the side, a sensation that brought relief followed quickly by anger and then fear. She felt like throwing up.

Lilaena opened her eyes and found herself curled on the floor in front of the bookcase, datapads shifting underneath her as she began to move. Her body hurt, her throat was on fire, but she put her hands to the floor and pushed her shoulders up, lying there twisted and staring at her master.

After a moment she turned her head away, pushed up completely and sat with her knees pressed to her chest, arms folded around them.

[Salem Ave]

It was just as it had been when they were children, just as she would remember it: she sat with tear-stained cheeks, struggling for breath, clutching her knees to her chest for protection while the boy with the white eyes simply watched, either unable or unwilling to see her silent pleas for help.

“Lilaena,” he said. His voice was his own now, not that of Callidus. “Come here.”

[Lilaena De'Ville]

Her head tilted slightly toward him as he spoke, then she untangled herself and got to her feet. She walked with her head down, unwilling to meet his eyes, and once she saw his feet Lilaena painfully knelt.

The inner turmoil was no better than it had been before, except that anger had been almost completely replaced by fear. She breathed slowly and raggedly, her heart pumping rapidly in anticipation of whatever it was Salem was about to do to her.

She hated him, hated that he'd left her with A'na and allowed the bitch to keep torturing her, but she knew he was just a boy himself. She just couldn't accept it yet. And at the same time she needed him, almost more than air, in a way she couldn't even begin to comprehend.

[Salem Ave]

He sat up with a deliberate slowness, taking a moment to savour the fear that radiated from within her. To Lilaena's credit she did not flinch when he reached out to her and cupped her cheek with his hand, guiding her green eyes upwards. He brushed his thumb across the lower half of the narrow scar that bisected her eye as he considered her, and his words, carefully.

“I have no desire to harm you. You understand that... don't you?”

[Lilaena De'Ville]

She met his eyes, the touch of his hand on her face bringing forth a harvest of gooseflesh on her limbs. "I understand, my master." Her voice was raw, each word struggling from her damaged throat.

Her gaze fell upon his bound arm, and she felt a simultaneous flash of triumph and regret. Lilaena closed her eyes, feeling incapable of moving or making any more decisions, as though the rug had been yanked out from under her and now she was in a sort of emotional free fall.

[Salem Ave]

In all of their time together as master and apprentice, Lilaena had presented Salem with a cold demeanour, an exterior that seemed impregnably hard and immune to so many of the methods of manipulation that were his sharpest weapons. She wore her bitter anger like armour and now, for the first time, he saw what was beneath the armour: how damaged she had become by every trial that the galaxy had heaped on her. There was no semblance of similarity between Mandalore of Onderon and the broken woman who knelt before him.

“I have faith in you, Malleus. Faith in your loyalty. You need only do as I command you...”

He brushed his thumb across her lips for a lingering moment, before he drew his hand away. “And in time, you will have your vengeance.”

[Lilaena De'Ville]

Her lips parted slightly as he touched them, and she bowed her head again when he released her. "Command me then," she whispered.

Command me or kill me.

Lilaena took too deep a breath and winced as pain blossomed on her side where she had fallen, but she did not move. She felt that she couldn't trust herself not to fall to pieces, or fly into another sudden rage.

[Salem Ave]

Her pain rippled over her features - and through the Force - like a breeze over still water. Their clash had lasted a matter of minutes but a Sith needed only seconds to deliver the fatal blow that would render their enemy unconscious or worse. Salem's broken arm would take time to heal, and longer still to be forgotten, but it was a mercifully minor injury given what they were both capable of.

“Where are you hurt?”

[Lilaena De'Ville]

She sat back on her heels, turning her head toward her right shoulder. "My side..." Lilaena began to lift her arm, but halted, the pain intensifying as her shirt pulled against her skin.

She slowly lowered her arm, her breathing becoming heavier as she tried to focus on dispelling the pain. "It is nothing."

[Salem Ave]

He could have ordered her to do one-hundred push-ups then and, without a doubt, she would have obeyed, gritting her teeth in agony through every one of them. Pain could be a powerful motivator, but there were instances were a lighter touch was required. Lilaena had suffered enough for one day.

“Show me,” he said, fixing his eyes on hers.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

She looked back at him, the air thick around them as though they were trapped in some sort of capsule that slowed time itself. Lilaena looked down, turning away and letting him get a look at her right side, painfully moving her arm forward. Her shirt seemed to be caught on something, and she looked toward where she'd fallen, at the pile of crushed datapads she'd landed on.

She seemed to be making a habit of getting glass embedded into her.

[Salem Ave]

Salem lifted the hem of her shirt a fraction and felt the fabric clinging to her skin, held in place by sticky, half-dried blood. Lilaena winced, sucking breath between her teeth as he drew her shirt higher, revealing most of her torso and the full extent of her injuries. Dozens of glittering shards had bitten into her flesh like jagged, broken teeth. A larger fragment was buried in deeper, halfway up her side.

He leant forward for a closer examination. It could have been worse, a lot worse – but with only one functioning hand, and no medical droid or household staff to help, it was bad enough.

“Hold still.” She tensed as he, gently as possible, lifted the shirt over her head and got his first real look at the vicious scars that criss-crossed the whole of her back.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

Lilaena pulled her arms free of her torn and bloodied shirt, feeling exposed in front of his gaze in just her bra. His warm fingers probed her injuries gently, her skin breaking out in goosebumps again as a breeze crept through the library.

Salem got to his feet, moving past her and around his desk. She couldn't see what he was doing, but he returned with a medkit in his hand. Lilaena looked up as he walked around her, and felt confused... wary. Off balance.

[Salem Ave]

Salem laid the med-kit open and picked out a roll of gauze. He tore off a length with his teeth then set the strip aside to give further consideration to the task before him, showing none of the uncertainty or self-consciousness that Lilaena radiated.

As a young Jedi Padawan he had been a mediocre healer at best. It was one of the reasons he had been assigned to A'na Eldhil, after failing to make any kind of connection with Serena Laran. Time had taught Salem patience, and to appreciate all the possible applications of the Force, but his studies of the Dark Side had not revealed any techniques which could heal rather than harm. Nevertheless, he held his hand over Lilaena's wounds just as he had done in his healing lessons so long ago.

With precise control of the Force, he extracted each shard in succession until every tiny fragment levitated in the space between his hand and her skin. The biggest piece came last and Salem waved aside the bloody fragments, gravity reclaiming them as they fell to the floor. He dabbed bacta gel gently down her side then smoothed the gauze strip into place.

“There.” His eyes lifted back to her face. She looked.. empty, dead behind the eyes. “You're alright.”

[Lilaena De'Ville]

She nodded, dumbly, her side tingling gently from the bacta as it numbed her skin under the gauze. Then her gaze sharpened, focused on his face as she looked over her shoulder at him. "Do you..."

Lilaena took a deep breath, gathering her thoughts. "You see what she did to me." A flicker of anger lit behind her eyes, but was extinguished with her next words. "And she is dead. There will be no justice."

[Salem Ave]

“I see what she did...”

He traced a fingertip down the length of a scar that ran from her shoulder-blade to the small of her back. Each line of puckered flesh would have a story behind it. Some were deeper than others and stood as evidence that Ana had reached a point at which there was scarcely any unblemished skin left to damage.

“But you are more than what she made you.”

[Lilaena De'Ville]

Her back involuntarily arched as he trailed a finger down it, and she crossed her arms over her breasts, hands on either side of her neck and fingers hooked into her bra straps. "Perhaps."

Lilaena glanced out one of the windows at the grey sky. Fog was rolling in, growing thicker over the house, and she thought she saw a shape outside the window. Watching her. You're dead, she shivered, and purposefully turned away, looking up at Salem. Her master.

"The moral compass she gave me was broken. I realized it when you first came to me, offering me the chance to work with you. But... I never truly understood it. Until now." She felt like a leaf on a raging river, caught momentarily in an eddy but ready to spin wildly out of control again.

[Salem Ave]

He followed her line of sight to the window, frowning faintly. The moors did not stretch far before they faded into grey mist, shrouding whatever lay beyond. Questing his senses outwards, Salem felt... nothing. As if on cue, Lilaena turned to look up at him. He searched her eyes and found no anger, but there was something else there now, emotion still bubbling beneath the surface. He couldn't risk sending her away like this, no matter how sincere he felt her renewed trust in him was.

Brushing aside a stray strand of dark hair from her brow, he favoured her with a smile. “You should rest. You can stay here, for a day or two. Regain your strength.”

When there was still so much to be done, he needed her at her strongest.