Out of the Shadows - 8.326

She had been staring at the ceiling for most of the night, trying to sleep. There was too much going on in her head for that, however, and Lilaena just lay there, her eyes open, searching out the shadows on the ceiling for familiar shapes.

After one in the corner of the room furthest from her had moved several times, a faint outline as though of a being wearing a hooded cloak, she decided she'd had enough. Lilaena sat up slowly, her side bound and restricting her movement, swinging her legs off the side of the bed and finding a pair of pants where she'd left them on the floor.

Tying the drawstring tight just above her hips, De'Ville pulled a tank top on gingerly, finding it difficult to get her right arm through the hole without hissing in pain. Finally clothed, she left the gloomy room, padding barefoot down the rugs in the hallway in search of something to eat.

Downstairs in Salem Ave's Terephon manor she felt like a thief in the night, stealing quietly from room to room, exploring with her senses on alert. In what appeared to be the main dining room - long table set for one, candles present but not lit - she caught sight of something moving in the corner of her eye.

...you disappoint me Lilaena...

De'Ville whirled toward the disturbance, but there was nothing except a lamp. Glaring about her, the Dark Jedi finally found the servants' passage that led to the kitchens, her footsteps silent on the hardwoods.

Salem stood beside the window of his bedchamber, looking out at the bleak, featureless moors of Terephon. Yet... his eyes did not focus on the heather as it stirred in the nights breeze or on the moon as it loomed like a ghostly galleon behind the clouds. His thoughts were elsewhere, willing the Dark Side to draw back the veil that hid the future from him. Everything was progressing as it should be yet he could not escape the feeling that there was some detail that had eluded him, some anomaly that was liable to throw the proverbial hydrospanner in the works and soon.

There was a ripple at the edge of his awareness. Salem turned his head ever so slightly, as if uncertain whether he had heard something. He blinked and looked towards the bedroom door. Yes, there it was again. Movement, downstairs. He paced out onto the landing and made his way down the staircase, the old floorboards creaking and betraying him at every step.

There were modern refrigeration and heating appliances installed in the kitchens, despite the archaic design of the mansion, and she peeked inside the cooler, finding bottled water and juices and an assortment of condiments. Lilaena extracted a bottle of water and let the door close on its own, the light it cast shrinking to a sliver and then disappearing as it sealed.

Closing her eyes momentarily, she sought out the controls for the lights with her mind. Switching one on with the Force she found it did nothing, but the next one she tried turned a light on over the range. The small amount of illumination it offered was enough for her to find the pantry.

Lilaena pulled open the door, letting her eyes adjust to the dimness for a moment before walking in further, taking cans down from the shelves and reading the contents. She wasn't in the mood for soup, but didn't want to actually make anything else. There was a wooden bowl with some hardy apples in it on a middle shelf, and she helped herself to two of them, turning to leave the pantry, but hesitating when she heard movement in the kitchen beyond.

There are no such thing as ghosts, she told herself, pushing the door open wider and walking out of the pantry.

Although the hours of true darkness that the Hapes Cluster experienced were relatively few and far between, when they came they were almost absolute. As it was so far removed from the urbanised areas of Terephon, the house Salem had chosen as his retreat was presently illuminated by nothing more than starlight. It reminded him of Arkania - his home - where there was no moon and the sun was so distant that it's warmth was never felt. The totality of the darkness made the light coming from the kitchen almost obnoxiously bright. Salem held up his hand to shield his eyes, needing a moment to adjust to the glare. A silhouette moved into view.

“...You should be resting.”

Her grip tightened on the apples, and Lilaena turned slowly toward Salem's voice. She felt a little like a guilty child caught out by a parent, after the adrenaline of surprise faded.

"I could not sleep," she said quietly, then took a bite out of one of the crisp fruits. She chewed carefully, closing the pantry door behind her and walking toward her master. That he had startled her so completely was unsettling. She was losing her mind.

"I apologize if I woke you."

Salem's focus drifted behind Lilaena for a moment, to the window above the kitchen sink. The low hills outside were indistinguishable from those he could see from his bedchamber. It was like being lost at sea: confronted on every side by the same sight.

“Is something troubling you?”

He cannot see me, A'na whispered from the shadows behind Salem, moving just enough to catch Lilaena's eye and cause the small hairs on the back of her neck to prick up.

"Nothing," she said stubbornly, taking another huge bite of apple and chewing it noisily. "Just hungry."

Lilaena rested her hip against the counter, and took a deep breath. "I have a lot on my mind." She lifted her eyes to his, a strange tingle in her stomach at the memory of him tracing his finger along her scars. She looked down, feeling confused, and took another bite of the fruit in her hand.

Salem paced to the sink and turned on the faucet to pour himself a glass of cold water. His broken arm was still held in a sling but it didn't appear to bother him. He took a long drink and contemplated offering Lilaena a lesson in how to lie convincingly but thought better of it. Her current mental state was a poor reflection of her true skill where the art of deception was concerned.

“If there's something you'd like to discuss....” He let the words hang in the air. With no one and nothing else to be found for parsecs around them, the situation presented a rare opportunity for master and apprentice to speak at greater length and about matters that couldn't be discussed by long-range transmission.

She pushed herself up onto the counter with a little effort, sliding to sit comfortably on the no doubt expensive granite. "When I was in the custody of the Inquisitorate almost a year ago..." Lilaena's eyes narrowed. Had she told him about it before? Perhaps he did not even know the Empire had captured her, though she had told him of the destruction of the secret lab she and Grime had tracked down. Hadn't she?

Too many secrets.

Lilaena shook her head lightly, clearing the cobwebs of sleep deprivation from her mind. "I was injected with a heavy narcotic that suppressed my ability to touch the Force, and also induced hallucinations." She forced herself to keep her eyes on his face. Salem's face, not Callidus' terrible mask.

"I have residual effects from the drug. I see... things."

More than a year had passed and she still felt the effects of the hallucinogen? Salem's jaw flexed with tension, a barely visible tick. He had spent years with students whose every move was under his surveillance, their duties and desires never carrying them beyond the walls of Iziz, but Lilaena had always been different. Taking her as his student had been an exercise in self-discipline as much as anything else, in teaching himself to accept that he could not control everything.

“What do you see?” His head tilted a fraction to one side. “Something.. here?”

"Yes." She steadfastly did not look at her, keeping her green eyes on his white. A'na prowled out of the shadows, reddened eyes staring at Salem with raw lust, whether for his body or his power Lilaena did not know.

Her breath caught in her throat, and she set the apple on the counter, no longer hungry. "It is A'na. She comes to me like a ghost. Taunting me." Surely he would believe her to be insane. She believed she was going insane.

Lilaena quirked an eyebrow up, a half smile curving her lips. "Sorry you asked?"

“Not quite.”

Salem took a step away from the sink and began to turn in a slow circle. His eyes wandered to the upper corners of the ceiling yet there was nothing but cobwebs and shadows there. The notion of a Force ghost was not unfamiliar to Salem but he had never witnessed one first hand. He stretched his senses outwards, his brow furrowing into a frown as he tried to feel for anything that might have indicated some spiritual presence. All he felt in the Force was Lilaena herself, watching – no, staring at him intently. He turned back to face her.

“She is here with us, now? What does she say?”

Lilaena closed her eyes, taking a deep breath and exhaling it slowly. "What does it matter? It is just a figment of my obviously deranged mind." She tried to make her words lighthearted, but failed.

Tell him I want him.

She opened her eyes and found her dead master standing in front of Salem, hands reaching for his face but passing harmlessly through him. The spectre cackled in a way she'd never heard A'na laugh. Lilaena bit her lip. "She says she wants you."

He smiled without any hint of good humour. In life, A'na Eldhil had not chosen Salem as her padawan; she had been given him. It was a match that had not pleased either of them but which they had begrudgingly come to accept. Although he was not sure that what Lilaena was experiencing with a true vision of their dead master, curiousity prompted him to indulge her further.

“Why? What does she intend to do with me?”

She looked down then, blushing, and hating herself for doing it. She had used her body to seduce others, knew how to deceive and how to tease. She knew how to hide her feelings. She could not, however, even to save her life, mount any sort of mental defense against the smallest incursion on this night.

"She..." Lilaena's voice faltered, and she closed her eyes against whatever might be happening in the kitchen in front of her. "I think she wants," she tried again, more faintly, "to do... you."

Salem nodded, allowing himself a knowing little smile as he glanced upwards. “Such spirits are sustained by their passions. The echo of their emotions is the only thing tethering them to this world. Without them, they cease to exist.”

That A'na desired him was only mildly surprising. Power was alluring and Salem's understanding of the Force had vastly surpassed his masters teachings. More likely than not, however, what motivated her was envy, a covetous need to possess in death what she could not command in life.

“Strange.. that she should choose to reveal this particular desire to you, rather than me.”

Lilaena opened her eyes, and they were alone in the semi-dark kitchen again. She took a deep breath. "It isn't real," she said slowly. "I am just remembering a ... bad trip, as they say."

She canted her head to the side, looking at him. "Unless... you think she is really here?" Lilaena licked suddenly dry lips, a surge of terror - the fears of a child - in her gut. She had rationalized away her visions of A'na Eldhil as residual effects of the hallucinogen the Empire had forced on her.

But if the visions were real...

You begin to understand, A'na said, her body hidden in the darkness. Too late, as usual. He was always smarter than you.

Was it possible, he wondered, that she was creating the illusion of their dead master? Could her fluctuating emotions, her volatile mental state, have manifested in the shape of the tormentor from her childhood? A manifestation so convincing that even she was fooled by it... Salem considered his student in a new light, his eyes narrowing faintly as he took a step towards her.

“Do you feel her, or do you merely see her?”

"I only see her," she said. "Not all the time of course."

Lilaena shifted on the counter top. "I am not crazy."

Yes you are. Stark raving mad. A hooded shape drifted out from beside the refrigerator. A'na matched Salem step for step, both of them drawing closer to her.

“No,” he agreed. Not yet, at least. “Nevertheless, it's clear she holds some sway over you.”

What was causing Lilaena's visions was ultimately less important than what she might do as a consequence of them.

“I could reach into your mind...” Salem began, as if he were merely thinking aloud. The sentence went unfinished as, another step closer, he studied her with a look that verged on predatory.

She blanched, Salem drawing nearer. Though he was not choking the life out of her this time, she felt no more able to move than she had earlier in the day. "That may not be wise," she said, adding quickly, "not that I question your judgement. I... you know I have no telepathy..."

Lilaena licked her lips again, her master taking another step closer. A'na seemed to have disappeared again. "My mental blocks, to protect me from attack... if they fall it will take me a long time to... build them again." Not to mention the blinding headaches she would have to deal with in the meantime.

"If you wish to - I will not stop you." She met his eyes steadily, though her chest felt swollen with fear. Lilaena took a deep breath, regaining some control and quieting the excess of emotions.

Salem halted, his lips pressed into a hard, thin line. It was as though his nearness to her had caused the cacophony of emotions she was broadcasting to rise to a crescendo and then, quite abruptly, the noise subsided. Lilaena's chest rose as she sucked in a breath and fought to hold the turmoil at bay.

“If I can draw her out of you, like venom from a wound... it would be painful but a confrontation may rid you of her presence permanently.”

De'Ville nodded slowly, her face impassive as she regained a semblance of control. "Then do it," she said, huskily. "I would be rid of her if it is possible."

The kitchen was not a suitable venue for an exorcism. Although Salem was not a man inclined to become attached to furniture, he had always been of the opinion that if you could avoid making a mess – whether literal or figurative – you should do so. He lead the way from the kitchen out of the back door onto a flagstone terrace, overlooking the moors. A storm lantern hung by the door spilling sulfur-yellow light onto the paving slabs, doing little to hold back the darkness.

The door clattered shut behind them, the breeze tugging at Salem's night-clothes as he gestured to the illuminated flagstones.

“Kneel.”

She hesitated only a moment, staring out at the shifting night, then knelt at Salem's feet. The stones were cold and hard under her knees, and she bowed her head.

No, child, look upon him! Your savior and your destroyer. A'na grasped Lilaena by the back on the head, wrenching her neck with ice cold hands, and forcing her to look up. Lilaena couldn't help the wince at the sudden movement.

"Hurry..." she whispered. "She is getting stronger...I think."

Her dead master laughed at her, the sound dancing across the moor and then swallowed into the fog.

...savior and your destroyer...

Salem heard the words as if they were a whisper against the back of his neck. He pushed the boundaries of his senses outwards to encompass the entire patio and the deep shadows shrunk away from his gaze, receding into the cracks between the brickwork and flagstones. There was nothing there – and yet he had been certain he'd felt, if only for a fleeting instant, a third presence on the terrace, the source of that rasping voice.

A second later, Lilaena's head jerked backwards and a grimace flashed across her features as she urged him to make haste. Flexing his fingertips, Salem laid his uninjured hand against her forehead and drew in a slow, deep breath. This wasn't going to be easy, for either of them. She had built up safeguards to protect herself against psychic intrusions and although Salem knew she would willingly lay herself bare before him, there was no way of simply turning off the defences she had built up. Not when they'd been so difficult to construct in the first place.

“Prepare yourself,” he said – and then their minds collided.

Lilaena's eyes bulged a bit at an imaginary pressure against her skull, and she felt nearly split in two by a sudden blinding pain. Instead of being confined to her head, the agony rippled down across her entire body, and she clutched involuntarily at Salem's legs to keep from simply collapsing to the ground. She opened her mouth in a soundless scream -


- and then she was sitting on Salemescro's bunk on A'na's ship, feet gently kicking back and forth above the deck plates, her hands folded neatly in her lap. He was gone. He'd always said he was going to leave, and then he finally had.

A shadow darkened the open doorway, and she flinched, looking up and expecting the disapproving gaze of her master, ready to hop off the bed and fix breakfast... Only it wasn't A'na. A tall man with white eyes was looking at her. She shrank away from him with fear, pulling her knees up against her and pressing her back to the bulkhead.

The tall man slid further into the room, not so much walking as gliding. His narrow arms hung stiffly at his sides, his tapered talon-like fingertips teasing the air, as if itching to flash into action. He craned his long neck forward, rolling his head first to the left and then the right. His gaze swung back to the little girl and he blinked his white eyes once, twice.

“Where... isss she?”

She shook her head mutely, covering her face with her hands. "I don't know. Please... don't hurt me."

Lilaena peeked from between her fingers, but the scary man was still there, looking like he wanted to eat her for dinner. She shuddered behind the safety of her hands, and then said, "Maybe in the common room."

Things seemed to muddle together, and then she was standing against a bulkhead, small hands pressed against the wall behind her, looking into the area where A'na conducted their training. The white haired Jedi was not in sight, but the monster-man was standing next to her and Lilaena couldn't help but stare at his strange claw-like hands.

The sound of footsteps approached, clanging angrily down the hallway to the training room. The tall man rotated his head slowly to the left and looked at the open doorway as a dark-haired boy stalked over the threshold. With a hiss of breath, he hurled a hydro-spanner across the room. It bounced against the bulkheads on the far wall then clattered to the floor, a short distance from Lilaena's feet.

“How am I supposed to learn if she's always too tired to teach me?”

His white eyes flashed at Lilaena, not seeing the gaunt figure who stood looming at her side.

“It's because she has to spend so much time with you, laser-brain!”

It took the girl a moment, confusion on her face as the boy who'd left her appeared, then she slid easily into her role.

"I don't want her to spend more time with me," she said in a small voice. "I'm too dumb. Maybe next time she will put me in the airlock, then you can have her all to yourself."

Lilaena stuck her tongue out at the boy, and bent down to pick up the hydrospanner. Straightening she held it out in front of her, and then after a moment she let go, the 'spanner still floating in mid air. "I'm getting better though!"

“Better at failing, maybe.”

Salemescro swiped a hand into the air and the 'spanner was ripped from her grasp. It flew across the room and slapped into his open palm. The tall man moved at the edge of Lilaena's vision, drifting towards the doorway, his claws never still. In the second she'd taken to follow his progress, Salemescro had crossed most of the distance between them. He wasn't much bigger than her, but he managed to look down on her nonetheless.

“You don't even want to be a Jedi, do you?” he asked, shaking his head, bitter disappointment twisting his lips.

“We should have left you at the temple to burn with the rest of the weaklings.”

"I'm not a weakling!" Lilaena stomped her foot, and shoved the boy. He stumbled backwards, and she followed him, catching his ankle with her foot and tumbling him to the deck.

She jumped on him, scratching and punching. "I am strong! You're the weakling! Coward!" Lilaena landed a solid punch on the boy's nose. "You left me! You left me! You frelling coward!"

The tall man paused and, as if he wasn't sure that he had heard some noise near at hand behind him, turned his head a fraction. There was a wet crunch as Salemescro's nose broke, vivid red blood splattering across his lips, teeth and chin. He fought to suck in a ragged breath as Lilaena struck him again, her tiny fists beating him with one wet smack after another, each strike eliciting a strangled grunt or gurgle.

As he moved into the darkness that lay outside of the training room, the tall man heard a drip drip dripping. He trailed one long-fingered hand along the metal of the corridor walls, until metal became clammy stone and the air grew dank and close. Faint blue and green lights pulsed softly ahead, like ignis fatuus to draw a careless wanderer to ruin. In the gloom of the crystal cave, there were covetous figures huddled.

"Don't go in there."

A small hand clutched at his, and Lilaena looked up at him, her face spattered with blood. A drop of it trailed down her face like a tear. "Please," she whispered, "No..." and her clothes were torn and tattered in the back, and the blood covering her was her own.

One of the cloaked figures in the cave raised its head, hood falling back to reveal a shock of white hair. The girl released his hand and fled down the passage into the darkness beyond.

Inside the cave she sat, naked and hobbled by ropes that bound her in place. To her right sat A'na, holding an end of the rope and tugging on it painfully so it pinched and marked her skin.

On her left sat Callidus, his deaths head mask more horrific than ever, complete with curling bone white horns that sprouted from his head. He too held a rope, and both of them turned to look at the intruder.

The crystals studded into the caverns walls bathed the trio in a chilly blue-green phosphorescence but there was no light in Callidus' eyes. The brow of the death's head mask had become a frown. Where his mask ought to have ended, the skull had grown roots which had burrowed like the gnarled tubers of Wroshyr trees into his distended flesh. It strained his flesh, corded and grotesque. He lifted the tail of the rope he held and looped it over the back of his hand then across his palm, taking painstaking care to ensure that each coil sat perfectly straight alongside the one before it. Inch by inch, the slack of the rope was becoming taut.

Bound by knots that others had tied over her, Lilaena lifted her head as much as she could, just barely able to meet the baleful gaze of the stranger in the cave who regarded her. Her face was streaked with black under her eyes, muddled by tears that had stopped falling but still glimmered wetly.

A'na yanked on her rope, and Lilaena tipped toward her, only to be halted as Callidus had brought up the slack and held her tightly. The pain... was excruciating. The ropes around her shifted, rubbing her pale skin raw beneath them. How had she let herself become so helpless?

The tall man's fingertips went snick-snack like the blades of scissors as he watched the sad pantomime. The bound woman was tugged first this way then that, with only a silent grimace in pitiful protest. His white eyes shifted from Lilaena - and the familiar gargoyle to her left - to A'na, who he slid towards with soundless steps. The boy had not been able to see the tall man but A'na was looking right at him and in the cave's dim light she would be able to see him smile - that bloodless, liars smile - as he held out one hand, palm turned upwards, to her.

A'na met the visitor's gaze, ignoring his outstretched hand, and yanked on the rope, its end coiled loosely around her hand and arm. Lilaena cried out as the balance was swayed toward her dead master.

"She is mine," the woman hissed. "She will always be mine."

The other Callidus, the dream monster with horns, pulled relentlessly on the ropes, and then suddenly disappeared into a thick mist that seemed to simple erase him from the cave. The ropes that bound Lilaena similarly dissipated, leaving her bloodied and gasping on the ground as A'na rose smoothly to her feet and approached Salem.

She let her eyes run up and down him, and she licked her lips. "Such power you have..."

He did not speak at first, rather simply allowed her to appraise him. Let her wonder what he was, what he was capable of. Let her mind wander the lengths and depths of what such a man might be capable of. Tall and narrow, he was no brute liable to speak with his fists – but there was a presence to Salem Ave, an aura that both attracted and repelled in the same breath.

“It can be yours too,” he said at last, his smile never reaching his eyes. “For a price.”

"What price can the dead pay the living?" A'na slowly looked over her shoulder at where Lilaena lay, her body laid out much as it had been in the library earlier. Her black lips curled up in a sly smile.

“The girl.”

His eyes followed hers, two empty gazes settling on Lilaena's pitiful weakened form.

“She is broken. You cannot regain what you have lost by inhabiting such a fractured mind.”

"And what do you want with her?" A'na's eyes narrowed, viewing Lilaena more critically. "If you think her broken. Will you fix her, then?"

She waved her hand dismissively. "Take her. I care not." A'na laughed suddenly, dissolving into mist and then to nothing.

“A bargain too easily made,” he muttered beneath his breath, taking a glance over his shoulder before settling white eyes onto Lilaena.

“Can you stand?”

Lilaena pulled herself to her knees, her movements slightly jerky, as though she were a marionette being directed by strings. After a moment she got to her feet, the same uncanny motion making it appear that something had pulled her up by her head and shoulders.

The woman took one step forward, and then another, slowly lifting her head to gaze upon her 'savior.' Mist swirled fitfully around her bare feet, drifting up to her knees and then her hips where it seemed to cling to her skin as though it were made of a hundred grasping hands. Lilaena took another step toward Salem, and her lips curved up in a smile that was just as quickly erased by some imagined sound behind her.

"She wants power." Lilaena put a faltering hand to her forehead. "She does not like being dead. She -" the mists swirled up again, nearly concealing her nakedness. "She is still -"

Something yanked her backwards, and Lilaena gasped out, "-here!"

Then she disappeared back into the fog, as though she had never been in the cave at all.

Salem heard a whimper at his side and found the child was back, staring around herself with wide, frightened eyes.

Lilaena's last gasp of breath still hung misted in the air but when he reached out into the shadows, the tall man found darkness there and nothing more. He turned to look upon the child, her knees gathered up to her chest as her body shook with muffled sobs. Weakling, he'd called her.

“You're safe now,” he said, a serpents hiss in his voice.

The girl stood up, a lanky teenager who was almost her full adult height but skinny and all elbows and knees. The jumpsuit she wore was baggy, but clean, and she wiped the tears from her eyes. "I am stronger than I look," she promised.

"To be free from her..." Lilaena's voice trailed off. "I feel strangely empty."

Salem peered into the shadows which clung to the caverns walls. They moved, receding then advancing once more, like smoke being inhaled then exhaled. Though he could no longer see or sense A'na, she was not empty. Not by a long shot. She had banished two demons from her mind... but still one remained. He smiled down at her, this vision of Lilaena who was neither the innocent child nor the blood-stained woman he knew.

“Take me to a place where you feel safe.”

She looked at him, and chewed her bottom lip, thinking. The cavern seemed to grow transparent, the dank walls slowly disappearing until they were both standing in a youngling training room in the Jedi Temple. Lilaena looked around, and shook her head. "The safety here was an illusion."

The Mandalorian village from Onderon sprang up around them, and she laughed mirthlessly. Hawkins Grime was striding about, his metal body lithe and shining in the sunlight, a corona of blistering fire about him. He turned and fixed her with a bloodshot blue eyed gaze. The scene melted down and puddled into the ground, leaving Callidus and Lilaena in nothingness.

The teen looked at her hands: empty vessels. "What is safe?" She looked back up at the deaths head mask that loomed above her. "There is no safe place."

She gave him glimpses of worlds he knew all too well. Coruscant, whose illusion of safety had been so convincing that thousands of Jedi had perished because of it and Onderon, with its own people on a knife-edge between ignorant peace and an inevitable galactic conflict that was liable to swallow them whole. Coruscant had been the stage of his downfall but by Onderon he would be uplifted. Whether the Onderonians themselves lived to speak of the great triumph that had begun on their homeworld was another matter entirely.

Pulled back into the featureless darkness, Salem considered young Lilaena.

“There is no place safe,” he agreed. “Not yet.. but in time. Trussst me.”

"Trust." She said the word slowly, as if she were tasting it. "I trusted once."

There was a clanking sound in the distance, the heavy step of a droid. Lilaena's eyes tracked toward it, her face smooth, unscarred, and haunted. "There is no trust."

With an almost bird-like tilt of his head, Salem's focus slid towards the sound of another memory advancing upon them: metal striking metal, like the dull toll of a bell.

“What now, then? If not trust, what?”

"Vengeance."

The word had a slight lilt to it, making it almost a question. The clanking grew louder, but nothing pierced the black around them. "She is not worthy of avenging, though."

The assassin droid IG-88 lurched from the dark, red optics glowing, and she leapt at it, a lightsaber suddenly in her hand. Purple blade met red energy bolts, but she did not seem to be able to gain the upper hand against the droid. After a minute she simply stopped.

The droid halted as well, arm extended and blasters smoking.

Lilaena turned back to Salem, a fiery red welt bisecting her left eye. "I cannot win. I cannot trust. There is only death to look forward to."

“Your vision of the future is disappointingly narrow.”

Slow steps carried Salem towards the assassin droid – and through it, the apparition dispersing around him like smoke.

“You'll come to see the galaxy as I do. Not yet, perhaps,” he echoed his earlier words as the shadows began to consume him too. “But in time.”

She grasped at him as he melted away, yearning for something indescribable. For a moment De'Ville stood alone in the darkness, and then she fell to her knees...

...the stones hard and cold under her, her head aching and body stiff. The night still clung to the moors, oppressive and heavy in its domination of the landscape, but the moon had risen and illuminated the shifting fog. She looked up at her master, his hands still on her head, and felt... lighter. A'na no longer lurked behind him, teasing and testing her. Hopefully the bitch was gone forever.

Salem staggered backwards, his hand snapping away from her as if they had been joined together by some powerful magnetism that had suddenly repelled him. Heat burned in his fingertips, in spite of the night chill. Only the screech of the storm lantern swinging in the breeze disturbed the silence. Lilaena swayed too. She looked on the verge of dropping to the flagstones in exhaustion.

Without a word, he moved with slow yet steady steps by her, towards the manor house.

She struggled to her feet, pain stabbing through her from the wounds on her side, following Salem in silence. What was there left to say? Lilaena stumbled at the threshold, managing to catch herself with sore arms before she fell.

Inside the manor with the door closed behind her, Lilaena leaned against the sink, her eyes closed while her head throbbed. She could hear Salem still walking, walking away from her. She opened her mouth and tried to speak, couldn't, and then wet her lips and tried again.

"Thank you," she managed, huskily, eyes still shut.

The only answer to her words was the sound of a door closing, as Salem entered what was left of his study.

The night wore on, though the howl of the wind became more distant as it moved out over the moors. Around Salem, the study still looked as if it had been hit by a storm. Splinters of wood and glass, data-cards and archaic hide-bound books strewn about the place. In the darkness, his white eyes were almost luminous as he surveyed the damage and began to pick up the pieces.

When Salem was done he slept and dreamt of a pale phantom with hair as white as leprosy running ice-cold hands from his shoulders to his hips, her red-ringed eyes full of hunger -

Abruptly, he was awake and sitting up. It was morning. His awareness leapt outwards and he felt Lilaena stirring somewhere else in the house. He paced barefoot into the hall to find her standing there, already dressed.

“You're leaving,” he said, half-statement half-question.

She turned as he approached, her holdall on the floor by her feet. "Did you wish me to stay, Master?" There was a touch of true meekness in her tone, but she met his baleful gaze for only a moment before she looked down the hall to the front door.

"My own apprentice needs tending to," she offered by way of explaination. "The Alliance will be expecting me back shortly and... there is much to do."

Questions hung unspoken in the silence between them as he regarded the back of her head, only able to see the slimmest of profiles. He had banished whatever was inside of her... hadn't he?

“Of course,” Salem answered both her words and his own, silent concern. He sounded certain, at least.

“I will be joining you in the ranks of the Alliance soon. Your training will continue then.”

"I look forward to it," she said softly, and she meant it. Training meant learning more about the Force. More about the Dark Side and how to wield it. More power.

Lilaena turned back toward him, and smiled. "I will see you then, my Master." She bent carefully to retrieve her bag, and pulled the shoulder strap over her head, avoiding her wounded side. As she walked out the front doors her eyes were bloodshot and rimmed with red.