Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/ works/508244. Rating: Explicit Archive Warning: Graphic_Depictions_Of_Violence, Major_Character_Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage Category: M/M Fandom: Star_Wars_-_All_Media_Types, Star_Wars_Prequel_Trilogy Relationship: Ferus_Olin/Darra_Thel-Tanis, Ferus_Olin_&_Tru_Veld, Ferus_Olin_&_Obi-Wan Kenobi, Ferus_Olin/Obi-Wan_Kenobi, Obi-Wan_Kenobi/Siri_Tachi, Qui-Gon Jinn/Tahl_(Star_Wars), Darsha_Assant/Lorn_Pavan, Garen_Muln/Quinlan_Vos, Quinlan_Vos/Shylar, Jenna_Zan_Arbor/Granta_Omega, Malorum/Hydra, Obi-Wan Kenobi_&_Anakin_Skywalker, Obi-Wan_Kenobi/Anakin_Skywalker Character: Ferus_Olin, Tru_Veld, Darra_Thel-Tanis, Obi-Wan_Kenobi, Siri_Tachi, Yoda, Adi_Gallia, Qui-Gon_Jinn, Tahl_(Star_Wars), Mace_Windu, Darsha_Assant, Lorn_Pavan, Darth_Maul, Anakin_Skywalker, Padmé_Amidala, Dooku, Garen Muln, Quinlan_Vos, Shylar, Jenna_Zan_Arbor, Granta_Omega, Malorum, Hydra -_Character, Darth_Sidious, Palpatine, Tarkin, Roan_Lands Additional Tags: War, Jedi_(sacrificial_ethics), Jedi_Code, Hypocrisy, Civil_War, Sith machinations, Sith, Manipulations, Emotional_Manipulation, Mental Disintegration, dark_side, Hate, Love/Hate, Hate_Sex, Unrequited_Love, Friendship/Love, Love, Obsession, Obsessive_Behaviour, Infatuation, Obi- Wan_Kenobi_equals_unrequited_love_(unless_you're_Anakin_Skywalker), Roughness, Rough_Sex, Violence, Explicit_Sexual_Content, Sex_Toys, Sexual Violence, Dreams, Sexual_Fantasy, Psychopathology_&_Sociopathy, Dysfunctional_Relationships, Dysfunctional_Family, Dysfunctional_Jedi emotions/relationships, Jealousy, Attempted_Murder, Murder, near- drowning, Mental/emotional/spiritual_manipulation/rape, Dubious_Consent, Consent_Issues, Secrets, Secret_Identity, Secret_Relationship, Lies, Twisted, Dark, Ugliness, Communication_Failure, Spies_&_Secret_Agents, Secret_Organization(s), Expanded_Universe_Characters, Original_Character (s), Near-human_physiology, Misunderstood_emotions, Chosen_One, Sith'ari, Prophecy, Dark_Lord_of_the_Sith, broken_trust, Trust, Crush, Mentors, Visions, Slavery, Sadism, Torture, Brainwashing, Non-Consensual_Drug_Use, Kidnapping, Psychological_Torture, Torture_toys Series: Part 1 of DARK_Star_Wars_AU Stats: Published: 2008-10-31 Chapters: 2/2 Words: 27476 ****** “Ferus Olin: The Evolution of Darth Kra’taral Out of Vídharr Sáthiet Orumé Myrthinus Yroídas Cuilrych” ****** by Polgarawolf Summary This is one hundred and eleven random but essentially chronological moments from the life of former Jedi Padawan Ferus Olin, who, after being expelled from the Jedi Order and recruited by Darth Sidious, goes on to declare himself Darth Kra’taral. There is an actual story here – one small thread among the vast woven tapestry of life that is the living history of the galaxy, stretched out and twisted, knotted into the whole, curled down among the roots of time, connecting various moments together – but one must read between the lines to capture it. It is not precisely the truth, for the subtle story of these moments is sketched out here in words, and, in the sin of writing down a life, it inevitably changes the shape of things. But it is nevertheless a form of truth. (From a certain point of view . . . ) Notes Warning: This story originally was meant to function as a sort of compressed codex for Ferus’ life, as he has been written (or at least referred to) and is going to be written in my not even nearly complete AUStar Wars series You Became to Me. However, certain stressful personal circumstances warped the writing process until the story became so dark and twisted that there’s basically not a snowball’s chance in a supernova of this piece working as a character study for the individual from that particular AU series. I am therefore regarding this as an inadvertent study in the darkest of all possible potential versions of Ferus, and rather fervently hoping that this particular version of Ferus doesn’t attempt to manifest in any of my various AU stories, as he frankly rather frightens me. So please keep in mind that this is most definitely entirely AU! If anything doesn’t make sense, please, feel free to ask! There are some things I can’t elaborate on much more, for fear of at least partially spoiling some stories still in the works, but I realize that such a radical retelling of some parts of EU history could be somewhat confusing, so I invite questions from readers who’re puzzled and/or curious! Author’s Notes: 1.)For anyone interested, this not-quite-a-story is not compatible with any other story or AU series I have written or plan to write for the SW ’verse (no, not even if you squint at a few things sideways and view a couple others solely through the lens of Ferus’ admittedly not exactly always reliable eyes!), with the possible exception of a rather dark AU story I once wrote entitled “Dormé in Darkness.” 2.) Although this is technically modeled on a prompt set that I borrowed from somewhere on the LJ (I don’t recall from where anymore, though if someone would like to set the record straight, I’ll add the info for the community in question here in my notes), it’s not really meant to function as a response to the challenge associated with that set. I just used the specific prompts to give me a reason to string together a backstory of sorts for Ferus. 3.) Readers need to keep in mind that, while Ferus believes he’s in love with Obi-Wan, it’s a lot closer to obsession than real affection (think Anakin and Amidala, only largely one-sided, with Obi-Wan initially thinking of him only as a very promising initiate and eventually thinking of him primarily as a villain). Ferus permits Darra Thel-Tanis to pursue/seduce him and is pillow friends with (or at least seduces or allows himself to be seduced by) many others in the Order. His relationship with Tru Veld is . . . complicated. He never actually physically meets Roan Lands, any other member of what would have been The Eleven (had the Empire arisen), Trever Flume, or any of the other EU characters Jude Watson writes about in her Last of the Jedi young adult series who aren’t also either Jedi or known to Ferus due to his time in the Jedi Order (or at least he doesn’t meet/know them prior to declaring himself a Sith Lord), with a few exceptions (Malorum, Hydra, and others who would have been members of the Inquisitorius or agents of the Emperor, had the Empire risen), due to the simple fact that the controversy surrounding his expulsion from the Jedi Order attracts the attention of Darth Sidious, who promptly takes steps to recruit him, sending a strongly Force- sensitive agent to him pretending to be a Jedi who has left the Order on account of its increasing corruption and a desire to work towards bringing true order and peace to the galaxy, without interference from the Senate and the politicking High Council Masters, in order to trick Ferus into allying himself with the Sith. His relationship with Malorum, especially following Sidious’ decision to place the whole of the Byss project under Ferus’ control, is, by turns, dangerously dependent, obsessive, abusive, warped, and unhealthy, to say the very least. 4.) Please note that this story is rated explicit due to the following: sex between minors; attempted murder via drowning; murder; a strange, largely unconsciously wielded Force talent that combines aspects of mind trickery and subjugation/domination of the will with a spectrum of closely related offensive and defensive talents known to the Sith as Force drain – largely based on the ability to sap energy and/or the life-force from other beings, creatures, and even places – that essentially allows Ferus Olin both to mentally/ emotionally manipulate many of those around him in such a way as to make them want to love and obey him and to increase his own power at the expense of the energy and strength of his allies/followers and those in close proximity to him; violence; imagined violence; sexual abuse; rape; and etc. I consider this a very dark story, and advise folks to consider that, prior to reading! See the end of the work for more notes ***** Chapter 1 ***** "Ferus Olin: The Evolution of Darth Kra’taral Out of Vídharr Sáthiet Orumé Myrthinus Yroídas Cuilrych"   　 　 01.) Different:He’s always known he was different (special) from the others in the crèche – able to distinctly remember parts of his life previous to being brought to the Temple, unlike the others; able to senseand see and feel the Force at all times, in all things, without having to meditate or concentrate or even particularly try; able to call on the Force and have others moved by its power to give in to him, during arguments, and to like him and want to take care of him and see to the fulfilling of his wants and needs, rather than disliking or ignoring or even wanting to hurt him; able to do many things that others obviously could not – and, like a good Jedi, done his best to act accordingly (to be a leader; to excel at all things; to aim high and never take "no" or "impossible" for an answer; to shine as the Force so patently wishes for him to shine, given its unstinting aid and support) and set an example for others, gathering praise and accolades as well as hearts and leading others firmly but peacefully wherever he goes. 02.) Miraculous:He wasn’t simply found or given over to the Jedi to be taken to the Temple for training, like other initiates in the crèche: no, having been raised among his mother’s people until a rejected suitor, maddened by his inability to win his mother over, made enough trouble over his mixed heritage and therefore suspect loyalties that it became impossible for her to remain with her family and still keep Ferus, he was smuggled off the planet to Coruscant, where his mother’s little brother, on a lark, chose to test his skills by sneaking him into the Temple itself, rather than contacting the Jedi anonymously with tips that would’ve lead them to Ferus without also endangering any full-blooded member of the Firrerreon people, resulting in the seemingly miraculous appearance of Ferus in the crèche one day, prompting stories that the Force itself had led him there and that he must therefore surely be meant to become a great Jedi and to do great things, in his lifetime, and causing the Order to immediately accept him as an initiate . . . despite the fact that, at nearly five standard years of age, he exceeded the cut off date for human norms and many variants of near-human by almost two years (as most such confirmed human and near-human Force-sensitives aren’t accepted as Jedi initiates past the age of three, unless the Grand Master and/or the High Council specifically decides to make an exception to the rule), the failure of the Jedi Healers to identify him as a Theelin-Epicanthix-Firrerreo-human mix, rather than a borderline human norm, and their subsequent incorrect estimation of his age at approximately two standard years, in combination with his silence on the subject, permitting him to enter the ranks of the Jedi initiates unchallenged by any and welcome by all. 03.) Mature:The Epicanthix people are much closer to being baseline human norm than they like to admit, their basic physiology such that they age and mature at essentially the same rate (on average, about two percent more quickly) as human norms; Firrerreons, on the other hand, mature mentally quite fast (faster than human norms), but their physical maturation tends to lag slightly behind the human norm, and their natural lifespans tends to run, on average (if they can manage to die of old age/natural causes), between fifteen to twenty percent longer than those of human norms; moreover, Theelins have a much slower rate of age and, generally, approximately a thirty percent longer lifespan than not only human norms but also most near-human species within a certain range of percentage of differentiation from the human norm: unsurprisingly, the mix of bloodlines is such that, while Ferus’ mental maturation is easily at least half again that of even a strongly Force-sensitive human norm, his rate of physical maturation perceptibly lags behind that of a human norm (and most near-humans whose basic physiology approximates that of human norms), sufficient not only for the Jedi Healers to underestimate his birthdate by nearly three years but for most individuals to consistently assume him to be between three to five years younger than he actually is until around the time he reaches his mid- twenties (an age when the Force begins to perceptibly affect most human and near-human Jedi anyway, so that the aging process seems to slow and even, in some cases, to stall for a decade or two, the near-constant close proximity to and immersion within its energies naturally encouraging the body to remain as fit and energetic and healthy as possible, with the eventual result being an oddly ageless sort of youthfulness that tends to make most human and near-human Masters look decades younger than they truly are and permit them to move like Jedi barely old enough to have been Knighted, even when personal tragedies and/ or excessive wear and tear on their bodies has blunted or even counteracted that affect of youthfulness). 04.) Name:Ferus Olin is the name given to him by his father, not his mother – his father, being of mixed descent and a warrior for hire, is of those whose fame and fortune depend largely upon the wide-ranging renown of their individual names, and so there is no taboo or stigma against the advertisement of such a name, as there is with the name given him by his mother – which is why he doesn’t mind how many beings know it or how many times he’s called by it aloud (he mightgift his Master with his true name, Vídharr Sáthiet Orumé Myrthinus Yroídas Cuilrych, as given to him by his mother. Maybe. Perhaps. If he’s fortunate enough that his Master is someone he feels to be absolutely worthy of being gifted with the trust of that much power over himself, that is), once he’s been accepted by the Temple, though it does take him a while to get used to how unguarded and unthinkingly free other beings so often are with their own true names. 05.) Breathless:Ferus has been in the Temple for about a year the first time he sees Obi-Wan Kenobi up close – an accident resulting in some injury to himself after a bad fall has sent him to the Healers’ Ward, and he’s there having bacta patches applied to his legs while a Master Healer marshals the Force to heal a tiny crack in his right ulna when Knight Jinn rushes into the Ward with his Padawan laid out on a repulsorlift stretcher hovering midair, Obi-Wan attempting to insist that he could have walked and that his Master should go ahead and give their report to the High Council, instead of making the Masters wait, even though he’s clearly anything butfine, so battered looking that Ferus has a hard time believing he’s still conscious (all evidence to the contrary!), much less cognizant enough to be able to argue so clearly – and he’s rendered so breathless by the blindingly bright quality of the Force around Obi-Wan that it’s not until black spots start dancing before his eyes that he remembers he has to breathe again, and it is then, when he realizes that this damaged young Padawan is both of an age to be able to become his Master some day and that he’s like a supernova in the Force compared to the candles or lanterns or mere bonfires of power that all other members of the Order are, that he knows absolutely that Obi-Wan Kenobi mustbecome his Master. 06.) Argument:The argument is eventually won when Adia Gallia sneaks up behind Obi-Wan and touches her hands to his shoulders, somehow sending a wave of the Force down into his body in such a way as to cause him to instantly fall unconscious, allowing the Healers to work on him much more quickly and efficiently than they otherwise would’ve been able to; however, because Obi-Wan is Obi-Wan, the technique doesn’t last nearly as long as it should have, for the Healers assure Qui-Gon Jinn that Obi-Wan will be out for the rest of the evening and so won’t even be able to notice, much less be bothered by, the other occupant of the room, and yet, less than two hours after the room has cleared out (Obi-Wan’s Master departing with Master Gallia and the Healers departing soon afterwards, with a stern injunction to Ferus to rest and allow the bacta and the Force to do their work, so that he will be able to leave in the morning and return to his classes in the crèche), Obi-Wan awakens with a sudden start and, pinning Ferus in place with blazing eyes as pitiless and as beautiful as twin blue suns, irritably demands, "I suppose I’m to stay here for the night and you’ll yell for the Healers if I attempt to get up, won’t you?" 07.) Irresistible:Obi-Wan, as it turns out, is both quite careless of his health and extremely grumpy at being forced to rest and recuperate when he feels perfectly capable (or as if he should already be perfectly capable) of being up and about and working on doing more useful things than just sleeping; however, he’s also quite friendly – especially given someone he feels is in a similar predicament, once Ferus makes it clear to him that he’s been ordered to remain overnight as well, even though he feels fine enough already to go back to his bed in the dormers – and such a marvelous storyteller that he’s quite capable not just of making time go by quickly but of enthralling Ferus to the point where time loses all meaning and interruptions are so unwelcome as to make just the thought of the young Padawan having to fall silent as repugnant and awful as torture, and Ferus feels so deprived, when a Healer conducting rounds comes in to find them both awake and Obi-Wan weaving an irresistible spell of glamor and excitement and action that, fully cognizant of his distress, the Padawan smiles at him (making his heart stutter) and promises that, since the Healer insists they need their sleep, before the week is out, he will come visit Ferus down in the crèche and finish his story, making Ferus feel as though he’s the luckiest individual alive under all the suns of the galaxy. 08.) Politics:There are things about Temple politics that Ferus doesn’t always understand, and the rather bizarre attitude of the High Council Masters towards Obi-Wan and his Master, Qui-Gon Jinn, is one of them, especially once he learns about the mysterious so-called malady (clearly a psychic attack of some kind, in his considered opinion) that put Obi-Wan into a coma for over a year, when he was a boy only a little younger than Ferus is now – clearly, the boy was deliberately injured in an attempt to rob the Order of an extremely valuable member: just as clearly, Obi-Wan’s so remarkably powerful that even such an obviously full-blown attack couldn’t kill or even permanently disable him, though he was patently injured badly enough that, for the life of Ferus, he cannot understand how or why the need could have escaped the Healers and Council Masters to properly retrain him, when he came out of his coma, instead of just throwing him back into the crèche with most of his memory utterly erased, as they apparently did (and if he didn’t know how ridiculous the idea is, he’d suspect that the Healers deliberately sent Obi-Wan back to the crèche like that, to hinder any effort that might be made to bring Obi-Wan back up to the same levels he’d been operating at, before the attack, as though the Masters wanted him to take as much damage as possible and be just as weakened as possible from the whole ugly experience, for some bizarre reason, instead of wanting to help and protect him), just as he also cannot understand how it could’ve apparently escaped the attention of so many Jedi that Obi-Wan had been deliberately attacked – and he can’t help but wonder, sometimes, if there isn’t something that he’s missing, somehow, some vitally important piece of information about Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon or the Masters who make up the High Council that would explain it all and make such otherwise inexplicable occurrences and actions make some kind of sense. 09.) Vision:He gets along with essentially all of his agemates; Darra Thel- Tanis and Tru Veld are the two he usually spends the most time with, though – Darra because she’s both sweetly pliable and easy to influence, in a pinch, and yet brilliant enough that he can already tell she’ll make an excellent Consular, in another three or so decades; Tru because the Teevan is, quite simply, the most fascinating of his fellows among the initiates – and, since they are, thus, the ones who get to act as sounding boards and listen to his musings about Obi-Wan, it’s really not so surprising that Darra’s the first one to suggest that perhaps the amount of interest in and meddling with the Padawan’s life on Yoda’s part may have something to do with a vision the Grand Master has had or some kind of prophecy concerning Obi-Wan. 10.) Chosen One:The prophecies of the Chosen One – even the most basic and widely repeated ones, which could be considered famous enough to be known beyond the realm of the Jedi and extremely highly versed archivists and/or collectors of ancient folklore – are not, precisely, considered appropriate reading materials for initiates who aren’t even halfway through their time in the crèche; Ferus, though, is determined to figure out what Obi-Wan is and the suggestion of visions and prophecies feelsright, to him, so he enlists Tru’s help (Tru already being a fairly skilled slicer, able to finesse ways into all kinds of computer files and holo records that are supposed to be encrypted and/ or protected by multiple layers of passwords) and sweet-talks Kngiht Tahl into sort of helping (as much as he can without her ever becoming aware of just what it is that he’s trying to find) and, eventually, by means of a reference to the prophecies in another file, finds his way to a copy of one of the newest variants, reading with almost greedy eagerness of the one who will be born a pure vessel of the Force’s light, able to cleanse and bring balance to the Force and the universe, knowing without doubt that Obi-Wan mustbe the one. 11.) Deliberate: Darra is the one to suggest that Obi-Wan’s supposed illness, as a child, might have been a deliberate attack – an attempt to kill him by Dark forces bent on stopping the Chosen One from fulfilling his destiny – and Tru responds by suggesting that perhaps they should be trying to keep an eye on him, in case those responsible seek to try it again, which is how the somewhat bemused Padawan suddenly finds himself something of a favorite among Ferus’ agemates in the crèche, his steps in the Temple constantly shadowed by watchful initiates. 12.) Easy:Obi-Wan, though extremely intensely passionate about many things (including the need to protect and watch over his Master and the absolute necessity to always help those in need of aid), is surprisingly easy to get along with, polite and charming and charismatic and cheerfully tolerant of (if also apparently perpetually bemused by the constant presence of and somewhat awkwardly unsure how best to respond to) the younglings shadowing his footsteps, even taking the time to speak with them seriously about their studies and their hopes and dreams and fears, patiently helping with their problems (even while claiming, all the while, that he’s not very good with younglings and that they should please excuse his clumsiness and inability to quite know what to say or do around them) and, in the process, making the initiates love him to the point of worship for his gentle (and occasionally wickedly funny) good humor and unstinting kindness. 13.) Bond:In all honesty, Ferus is far too young for the kind of reaction he’s having to Obi-Wan – he’s heard of how a mate will react to his heartsease, the other half of his soul; knows that his mother’s people considers the pairing of a mated heartsoul bond the highest, most sacred of ties, teaches individuals how to recognize the sensations of such a pairing, and even allows for the formation of temporary contracts that may be broken, in the case of those who have yet to find their other halves; understands that the paradoxical sensation of coming home and of aching with loss is a definite warning sign, one that has been taught among the Firrerreon people for at least as long as they have been Firrerreons; comprehends the phantom sensation of burning in all his limbs as ghosts of pleasure yet to come; knows that the lightheaded giddiness and unrestrained sense of lightness and joy presages the bliss of a fated union; is absolutely certain, the longer he thinks on it, that Obi-Wan is the only one he wants far enough within him to fill every crevice of his mind and reap every iota of his heart and soul – and so he finds it more than a little incredible that Obi-Wan’s smile can make him want to recite romantic poetry, his touch triggering so much heat that his cheeks flame and his entire body aches to lean in, cuddle close, press kisses to every millimeter of pale flesh available for worship, his mere proximity (his presence alone – hell, sometimes even just the thought of him being nearby) enough to make Ferus react like (and want to behave like) an adult so deeply in love that only someone insanely delusional could doubt that he is reacting to the one destined to be his mated pair and complete him on all possible levels (mental, spiritual, emotional, and physical). 14.) Dance:The first time Ferus and Obi-Wan cross ’sabers, he’s barely ten (though the Healers would of course say he’s not yet eight) and it’s not just an instructional session where Obi-Wan watches him and guides him through the steps of a new practice kata and he has to fight so hard not to lean back and let his body mold itself to Obi-Wan’s greater bulk that it hurts (though he will be taller someday, he can tell – and oh, but it’s a delicious thought, to be able to tower over him and to have leverage on his side, when that day has come! – if not for another handful of years, at the very least), and he knows he finally has a worthy opponent, so he lets go of all the restraints that’ve kept him from ever trying to fight to the fullest of his ability, relaxes into the Force as deeply as he can possibly go, and turns loose and flies, his heart and soul singing with joy, aware that Knight Jinn and three others are watching with an increasing amount of shock and awe and simply not caring what any of them think, pushing himself and pushing himself until he can sense a shift in his opponent, Obi-Wan opening up in a way that he knows means the Padawan isn’t consciously holding back any longer, a wildly fierce smile blossoming on his face as he glides past Ferus and draws him up into a flying leap and series of aerials that has them both laughing, Obi-Wan’s effortlessly graceful motions pulling Ferus along into a dance unlike any kata he knows or has ever seen or read about, the motions coming to him through the Force, automatically moving him in time with Obi-Wan, the sparring session ending only when a loud shout from the onlookers draws his attention for half a heartbeat, breaking his concentration enough that he goes down, literally, Obi-Wan sliding in up close, sidling up beneath his guard, flowing like liquid into his personal space and then up around him, free arm looping down around his ’saber arm and, in a bold and unexpected move, sliding down to his hand, ghosting along wrist and fingers, breaking his hold more from shock and sudden arousal than force, a twining leg hooking around his left leg and pulling him off balance, sending him tumbling, Obi-Wan’s body following, caging him, left hand sliding down to hook strong fingers in the leather belt around his sash, holding his weight enough to make it more of a controlled but very fast lowering of his body to the floor and less of a sudden crashing to the ground, Obi-Wan sinuously following him, slim body undulating down over and up across him, ending with Ferus flat on his back and straining against the desire to arch up against the warm body pinning him and Obi-Wan grinning down at him manically, electric blue lightsaber blade gleaming between their bodies like a promise or a dare, humming where it doesn’t quite kiss his neck, actually winking at him when that voice (the Weapons’ Master, who has never seen Ferus perform at more than half his strength and skill level) shouts again, furiously demanding to know how much he’s been holding back in his regular sparring matches and why and recalling him to the present and the potential gravity of his situation with almost panic-inducing suddenness, until Obi-Wan leans in to breathe against his ear, "Don’t worry – just tell him the Force was guiding your every move today, until he broke your concentration. I used to do that all the time, as a youngling," at once making him relax and making him all but twitch with impatience for the future, more sure now than ever that not only does he need Obi-Wan to be the one who will become his Master but that he is the one meant for him, body and heart and mind and soul. 15.) Pair:He spars often with Obi-Wan, after that, and it’s not long before stories about their matches have both drawn a sizable crowd to all of their prearranged sessions (even Mace Windu coming to watch them, the Korun Master commenting with admiration on the way they instinctively compliment each other, seemingly effortlessly blending moves from various of the named lightsaber forms into an unbelievably lovely and potentially quite deadly dance) and spawned rumors about how they must be meant by the Force to become a bonded Master-Padawan pair, given how wonderfully they mesh, and the rumors and Obi- Wan’s attention please him so much that he can’t help but feel a bit of trepidation when he notices that the Grand Master has apparently taken note of their exceptional sparring matches, too, and, from the looks of the dark expression on his wizened little face, isn’t precisely pleased with what he’s seen of them. 16.) Revelation:When Ferus is, according to the age assigned him by the Healers, about ten and a half, Darra talks him into a private sparring match one afternoon when they both have some free time (something he permits her to do without putting up too much of a fuss, because Obi-Wan is away on a mission and it’s occurred to him that the Grand Master’s apparent displeasure with the way he and Obi-Wan have fallen together might be caused by something as simple as Yoda suffering from the misapprehension that all of the attention Obi-Wan has been paying him has given Ferus a swelled head and made him believe that he’s too good to interact with his own agemates anymore), and it is then, halfway through what seems like a fairly interesting match (though he knows she would be no match for him, if he were to fight at anything close to his full capacity), when he gets her in a close bind, the blades of the practice lightsabers crashed noisily together, Ferus using his greater upper body strength to gradually press the blades back towards Darra, that he has a revelation, for Darra, eyes dilated wide and panting even though they haven’t really been at it long enough to work up a real sweat, falters unexpectedly, goes down gracelessly in a sprawling mess that would’ve shamed an initiate even half their age, and, in her uncontrolled flailing about, accidentally knocks him off-balance enough to bring him down squarely on top of her (only just missing knocking their heads together painfully), at which point, as he tries to apologize for crushing her and untangle himself enough to scramble back to his feet, she lets out a little breathy moan, body arching beneath him as she reaches up, twining her left arm around his waist in such a way that her hand ends up resting squarely on his right cheek (fingers molding themselves to him and kneading restlessly at the muscle), and pulls him down into a kiss made clumsy by desperation. 17.) Please:He’s taken for granted the fact that he’s charming and that beings tend to love him; yet, the possibility that others could be physically attracted to him is not a notion he’s thought about in great detail, even though that he knows his body is technically already mature enough for reproduction, given his true age of fourteen, and so he’s surprised by Darra’s sudden ardor, though certainly not so shocked as to fail to take advantage of the offer – Darra is, after all, very mature for her age (and besides, everyone knows that females tend to mature physically – and therefore sexually – more rapidly than males), quite lovely in her own fresh-faced way, and in possession of the most deliciously smokey, husky voice, like something one might expect in an old holodrama – after which he finds that suddenly there are many, many individuals in the Temple and its immediate environs who all seem ready and willing to help please him. 18.) Sense:Obi-Wan has taken a vow of some sort and uses the Force to ensure the keeping of it (it’s a much bemoaned fact amongst not just the residents of the Temple, but visitors – clients and friends of the Order – as well), and so Ferus tells himself that, if he ever wants a real shot at having him utterly (not just as a Master, but in every conceivable sense of the word, as his true partner), he’s going to need to be able to convince him (seduce him, in other words), and so will need as much practice and experience as possible, to be able to wear Obi-Wan’s defenses down and win him over, meaning that it only makes sense for him seduce and/or allow himself to be seduced by everyone in the Temple he possibly can. 19.) Situation:He hears about how Darsha Assant and her Master have both gone missing in Coruscant’s underlevels and, knowing that a recent fluctuation in the Force would seem to indicate the sudden death of a Jedi, begins to have a bad feeling about the situation even before he can be told that the Grand Master intends to send Obi-Wan out hunting for them, the creeping sensation of dread so bad that he accidentally on purpose directs his path through the Temple up to one of Obi-Wan’s favorite gardens, searching him out in the midst of meditation as if he were merely looking for a nice, quiet, warm place strong with the Living Force in which to meditate himself, just so he’ll be able to see him and speak to him awhile (and reassure himself that Obi-Wan is fine and is of course quite capable of taking care of himself, no matter what kind of trouble he might end up finding in the underlevels) before he can be sent out on his solo mission. 20.) Luminous:Obi-Wan quite literally luminesces with power, when he meditates deeply and believes himself unseen/unobserved – his body glowing like a lit lamp, shimmering ethereally in a way that never fails to remind Ferus of Yoda’s famous lecture about how all Jedi are luminous beings and not just mere flesh – and Ferus could easily sit for hours, entranced, enthralled, doing nothing but watch the play of light shimmering within and radiating outwards from Obi-Wan like waves of billions upon billions of miniaturized suns, as though each particle of his body were part of a tiny universe, slowly but surely revolving around the singular core of energy at his heart; today, though, he feels he has great need of speaking to the young man, so he deprives himself of the joy of watching for much more than just a few minutes, settling down into an attitude that mirrors Obi-Wan’s restful posture before reaching out, and, greatly daring, sliding his thin fingers around Obi-Wan’s calmly folded hands, lacing and securing their fingers and gently squeezing until, with a long sighing exhale, the glow gradually begins to fade from Obi-Wan’s body, sinking back into his skin as if being pulled in on the tide of some low ebbing moon, as he rises slowly but surely through layers of deepness of meditation, surfacing back towards full consciousness, the relaxed posture of his body and laxity of his hands (permitting the perhaps overly familiar touch, accepting it, not flinching away in surprise or rejection), as they rest around and against and under Ferus’ gently squeezing grip, warming Ferus thoroughly, despite the presence of what feels like a block of ice lodged deep in the pit of his stomach. 21.) Worry:When Obi-Wan smiles at him and tilts his head slightly to the side, wordlessly inviting him to speak, Ferus’ heart seizes and the breath feels as though it’s solidified in his throat and lungs, and it takes several long moments of struggling to regain control over his body before he can speak, breathlessly murmuring, "I’m sorry to disturb you when you’re meditating, but I – I was hoping to see you, because – because I think the High Council means to send you out after Padawan Assant and Master Bondera, and I – I have a really bad feeling about their disappearances, I – I feel as if there’s a great evil at work in the underlevels, I – I sense a great disturbance in the Force, as though something Dark were present and something terrible were about to happen – as if it already were happening, in part – and I – Obi-Wan, I know you’re very powerful and very clever and very much so in tune with the Force’s will and voice, but I – I just have such a terribly bad feeling about this whole thing, and I really needed to tell you to please, please, for the Force’s sake, pleasebe extra, extra careful, if they send you down there alone!" his delivery (at once rapid and halting, worry making him stumble and stutter slightly over the sentiments he’s trying to convey) raising Obi-Wan’s eyebrows and causing the gentle questioning look to be replaced first by serious attentiveness, next by thoughtfulness, and finally by quietly unwavering bravery and determination. 22.) Careful:At the first hint of a rumor of Sith involvement, Ferus knows, with the kind of unquestionable absoluteness that only comes from the Force, that the Sith only pretended to be wiped out, after Ruusan, to gain time and space enough to hatch some terrible plan of vengeance against both the Order and the Republic, for ever daring to stand against them, and the instant he hears someone mention Naboo, that’s it, he doesn’t even have to stop and wait to try to think it through, he just lets the Force take over his mind and body and direct him to where Obi-Wan is, and not even the fact that he’s apparently one of several beings who’ve been prompted hunt the Padawan down and warn him to be careful or the realization that Obi-Wan surely must intend to truly try to be careful or else he wouldn’t have already promised so many he would do his best to take extra care can really do anything to calm the overwhelming panic suffusing him. 23.) Good:He briefly sees the Tatooine slave child that idiot Qui-Gon Jinn thinks is the Chosen One, just after he’s arrived at the Temple, and is completely unimpressed by the chubby-cheeked little brat – he’s dirty; he’s uncouth; he’s pathetically eager to please (a potentially deadly fault, for a Jedi) and ridiculously possessive of the beings he happens to be attached to (a definite no-no for a Jedi); although undeniably strong in the Force, he burns with the ferocity of a wildfire (all unrestrained destructiveness) and none of the purity or awesome power that Obi-Wan possesses; and, while perhaps somewhat cute/charming in an overly perky and/or pouty sort of way (the boy seems to vacillate wildly between the two extremes, with so much rapidity and frequency that it’s downright alarming), is certainly nothing at all memorable or remarkable – the only good thing about the child’s presence, in his opinion, being that Knight Jinn’s excessive interest in him indicates that perhaps now Qui-Gon will finally let Obi-Wan go, making it possible for him to speak to Ferus at last about eventually taking him on as his Padawan learner. 24.) Desperation:One of the first and only times he initiates a conversation with a Master he really has no legitimate reason to be speaking to occurs when he finds out that Qui-Gon (having apparently become so fixated on the slave boy that he’s dismissing the possibility that the attacker on Tatooine is probably the same Sith warrior who nearly killed Darsha Assant in favor of assuming the Zabrak’s just a bounty hunter sent out by the Trade Federation to track down and take out the Queen of Naboo) has been sent to escort Queen Amidala back to Naboo, with Obi-Wan and the Tatooine slave but no other backup at all, aside from the people the Queen managed to take away from Naboo with her (most of whom are not exactly hardened warriors), and desperation drives him to seek out Master Dooku and beg him not to let them to there alone; unfortunately, the discussion doesn’t go very well, though, ironically, many years later, Darth Tyranus will tell him that he should have heeded Ferus and gone to Naboo with them. 25.) Agony:Ferus feelsit, when Obi-Wan kills the Sith, of course – it’s as though a cloud of darkness has exploded outwards violently into the Force, rushing past at such a speed that it’s gone almost as soon as he feels it – but Qui-Gon’s death causes Obi-Wan so much pain that it literally brings him to his knees, in the middle of a practice kata, the sudden spike of agony so overwhelming him that it’s hours before he can think clearly enough again to even truly understand what’s happened. 26.) Worst:The worst thing, the absolute worstthing, isn’t even that his Master has been stolen away by some utterly undeserving snot-nosed sand-grubbing guttersnipe former slave from the back end of the galaxy: no, the worst thing is that all anyone seems to be able to do is to talk about how wonderful Anakin Skywalker is and how he must truly be the Chosen One, to have been able to destroy that droid control ship and make the Grand Master and the rest of the High Council members change their minds about allowing him into the Order – as though the Force wouldn’t have grabbed any nearby Force-sensitive and used that being in precisely the same way, for that one lucky shot! As if no one is capable of putting together the fact that there’s now probably an extremely pissed off Sith in need of a new apprentice running about the galaxy and wanting revenge with the notion that it wouldn’t exactly be a good idea to leave any stray strong Force-sensitives floating about outside the protection of the Order (especially not if the child in question has built in issues with emotional control and reasons to have anger issues – which having been a slave for the majority of his life has essentially guaranteed – and most especially not if the boy in question is highly likely to carry a grudge against the Order for being refused training) and understand that the hands of the Council Masters are tied and they cannot safely (in good conscience) do anything else but take Anakin in and at least attempt to see to his training – and that no one seems to even begin to grasp how important what Obi-Wan has managed to do, in killing that Sith, truly is . . . not even Obi-Wan himself, who seems just as enthralled with Anakin as everybody else, to the point where he doesn’t even seem to remember Ferus anymore. 27.) Insane:In his considered opinion, the whole of the Order has gone insane, when it comes to this whole Chosen One business – every single time he looks at Obi-Wan, he sees light and life and love and beauty and everything truly good in all the ’verse and he knows, absolutely, that he is the one, that there’s no use doubting or wondering or trying to search out or invent the same characteristics in another individual because Obi-Wan is the prophesied one and that’s just all there is to it, whereas every time he looks at Anakin Skywalker he sees nothing but danger and destruction and the promise of suffering and chaos, a monster in the making, nothing at all to even suggest that he could one day control and contain and balance himself, much less bring balance to the whole of the Force; yet, Obi-Wan is feared and largely ignored (as if the fools hope that, by dismissing him, they will somehow cause both the Sith Killer and the issue of the Sith to truly vanish) in favor of Anakin, who is often called the Chosen One to his face, feeding his already massive ego and encouraging him to behave as if he were special and did not have to obey the rules! – and the whole thing is so infernally maddening that some days it’s all he can do, just to keep himself from screaming in blind frustration and fury. 28.) Swim:The boy’s from a desiccated desert world, meaning that the probability is very high that he won’t even be used to the idea of there being enough free standing water to not only fully submerge a being within but for that being to have to be able to swim, both to avoid sinking it in and be able to traverse it, and so Ferus plans the encounter accordingly, making sure that several younglings nearing the age of apprenticeship are all on hand and testing their swimming skills against each other, that most of them are boys Anakin will not want to appear weak in front of, and allowing the former slave’s massive ego to do the rest, driving him into the pool with the deepest water and most treacherous and not immediately apparent crosscurrents, even though he really has no idea how to swim alone. 29.) Plan:He’s positive that his plan is succeeding and that the other initiates aren’t even going to notice that anything’s amiss in time to do anything to interfere with the outcome he’s prepared for when all of a sudden he senses a sharp spike of fear flaring out into the Force, as someone notices that Anakin hasn’t resurfaced . . . at which point he marshals himself to begin to organize a methodical search of the pool (as it’s better to be safe than sorry, after all, and it certainly shouldn’t hurt if it appears as though he only became involved to try to save Anakin from his own stupidity); almost before he can begin, though, a sensation of barely constrained power explodes into the room, a human-shaped blur blazing with light like the trail of a falling star streaking across the room (moving almost too quickly to be seen) and rapidly diving into the pool . . . after which, perhaps two minutes later, Obi-Wan surfaces with the limp form of Anakin cradled in his arms. 30.) Sight:It’s a magnificent thing to watch – Obi-Wan describes a perfect arch, flying up out of the water, flipping once in midair, and landing lightly on his feet, several meters beyond the edge of the pool, the boy a dead weight in his arms, obviously not breathing, lips already turning an ugly shade of pale bluish purple – as he propels himself and the boy up out of the water, but then he ruins it by gently laying the boy down and, with a look of desperate concentration, beginning to administer CPR to force the water up out of Anakin’s lungs, the sight of Obi-Wan sealing Anakin’s mouth with his own so that he can breathe for him making Ferus’ stomach turn so violently that he almost has to turn aside and vomit, his sight swimming, momentarily giving him a glimpse of a terrible explosion of light spreading out to engulf the galaxy and the universe and the Force itself, a huge, terrifying figure in black with armor and a somehow both skull-like and insectile helmet superimposed over a blossoming field of lava-like fire, Obi-Wan’s face (older, bearded, lined by care and hollowed by exhaustion and grief) contorting in unspeakable agony, tears streaming down his cheeks, and, when the moment passes and he can see again, the boy is convulsing, Obi-Wan moving to help him sit up so that he can spew up the water, and Ferus can no longer control his body, forced to fall to his knees and vomit until not even bile will come up. 31.) Accident:Ferus made sure to cover his tracks completely and thoroughly – the swimming competition was neither his idea nor that of any of his close compatriots, so far as anyone other than himself will ever have any reason to know; he wasn’t even involved in the swimming competition at all, himself, and so not only didn’t do anything to urge Anakin to take part, but only became involved in the scene at all when he was walking through on his way to one of the meditation pools and paused to try to tell the former slave not to try it, since he knew that Tatooine was basically just one big desert; and, as far as anyone knows, the vision that made him vomit was nothing more than the sight of Anakin’s apparently quite dead body – but for some reason Anakin apparently blames the whole thing on Ferus and Obi-Wan (perhaps unconsciously realizing that Ferus has cause to want Anakin dead) agrees, even to the point of trying to argue that Ferus should be put out of the Temple or at lest moved to some other chapterhouse of the Order to get him away from Anakin (an attempt that, thankfully, fails, his care in planning the "accident" out and his excellent reputation causing the High Council to support him, assuming that he’s innocent and barely even bothering to question him about the incident before declaring that Obi-Wan is overreacting out of shock, from almost losing his Padawan, and should perhaps schedule some time with a Soul Healer, to try to talk things out), as though actually worried that Ferus might try to kill the little monster with his own two bare hands, since his scheme to drown him has failed. 32.) Mess:After the swimming incident, his options for dealing with Anakin become severely limited by Obi-Wan’s protectiveness and suspicion (if he didn’t know better, he’d suspect that Anakin, having discovered that it had been widely rumored in the Temple that Obi-Wan would eventually become Ferus’ Master and, being the possessive, paranoid little freak that he is, had somehow arranged the whole incident, just to be able to blame Ferus and so have an excuse to turn Obi-Wan against him. The boy seems too hot-headed to plan things in advance, though, and has no fine control to speak of, though, and Obi-Wan’s shields are so formidable that it’s all but impossible for even Ferus to do anything to influence him, even when he’s already inclined to be receptive to the suggestions, so it’s clearly impossible, though he wouldn’t put it past Anakin to be evil enough to try to do something similar, if he thought he could pull it off) – essentially, he can either try to encourage Anakin to push himself too hard and hope he burns himself out or gets himself killed in some damn foolish stunt or another, or else he can encourage the brat’s worst characteristics and wait for either the High Council to wise up and throw him out or else for him to get himself killed on mission because of his idiocy and arrogance, whichever might come first – and so, after a few months of silently railing against the whole damned mess of the situation and letting both his friends and his acquaintances make all kinds of noises that are properly sympathetic and outraged on his behalf (freely taking advantage of all the offers of comfort that come his way, in an attempt to distract himself from the knotted ball of sick fury and frustrated disappointment sunk deep in the pit of his belly), he braces himself mentally, forces himself to acknowledge the fact that, while Obi-Wan may never be his Master, it certainly doesn’t mean that he can’t eventually still have him, so long as he’s still in the Order and in a position to eventually change his mind, and begins to look hard at other possibilities in the Order for his Master. 33.) Perfect:The Chalactan Knight, Nemaria Tennyai, is as perfect a choice as can be found, under these less than ideal circumstances – enough older than Obi-Wan not to be a particular friend but close enough in age to him to be able to become more of a friend, with a fairly close acquaintanceship with one very close friend of Obi-Wan’s to help give her an excuse to strike up a closer friendship with him; strong enough to be a fairly good Master but not possessed of a very strong set of personal shields and therefore easily enough influenced, if it should become necessary at any point; open to many things and aware of the fact that Ferus is a beautiful boy, which will doubtlessly make many things much easier, since it’s always easier to influence those who’re attracted to him, especially when it’s something that the individual in question might have moral scruples over and so be somewhat ashamed of, as she doubtlessly will be, especially the longer she has to get to know him; highly connected, with her former Master being numbered among the High Council Masters, which will also probably be of use, especially if he can use her to get some answers as to the High Council’s somewhat odder than normal behavior towards the Sith Killer and the so-called Chosen One who’s so patently a fraud – and, as with most things, once he’s made up his mind that he wants something, it’s not long at all before he gets his way. 34.) Talent:He has Nemaria for a year before she starts to become suspicious of his particular talent for getting his way, and, though he personally doesn’t see any problem with it (Jedi use mind tricks on everyone else all the time, for pity’s sake! Why should it be such a big deal to be able to influence other Jedi in much the same way, too? Especially given that the Force itself not only permits it but often warns him ahead of time when he’s going to need to use it. It’s blatant hypocrisy, is what it is! If it’s not considered a big deal to use the Force against non-Force sensitive beings – who, after all, have no real chance of being able to fight back – then logically it shouldn’t be considered something so close to anathema to use the Force against other Jedi, who technically should be strong enough to keep others from meddling with them overly much anyway!), he can tell from her increasing panic and fear that she’s going to be a major problem, so, after meditating on it for some time, he knows he’s going to have no choice but to consign her to the Force and allow it to do its will, if he wants to stay in the Order without any trouble, and begins to plan for the necessary steps. 35.) Grief:He really has been hoping that the Force will spare Knight Tennyai, that she’ll find it in herself to be reasonable and to listen and think and not let her panic-induced fear drive her, and so he’s devastated, when the speeder engine malfunctions and she’s killed in the subsequent crash and explosion, his grief and aggravation entirely real, even the Grand Master himself moved by his sorrow to the point where he takes Ferus aside and speaks to him at great length, with some gentleness, about the will of the Force and how individuals are never really gone but continue to live on in the memories of those who knew them, even going so far as to reassure him that he’ll always have a home in the Order and that they will find him a new Master to continue his training, with the members of the High Council taking turns, in the meantime, at seeing to the proper continuation of his lessons. 36.) New:The moment he learns about Siri Tachi, he knows he’s found his new Master, and not just because she was one of Obi-Wan’s closest friends in the crèche and there have been rumors for years about just how much she cares about him and whether or not her attachment to him crosses the line of propriety and acceptableness, hinting at an avenue of vulnerability through which he should be able to work to secure her loyalty, but because he remembers here, a little, from before, and he’s fairly certain that she’ll want so badly to settle back in and to be a regular Jedi again that she’ll be so happy at the prospect of getting a Padawan like Ferus that she won’t be very likely to listen to any attempts by Anakin or even Obi-Wan to warn her off from him, and so he makes sure to position himself so that she’ll see him almost as soon as she gets back and will be properly impressed by his maturity and his sheer raw talent. 37.) Lucky:There’s a certain earthy sensuality and raw physicality to Siri that, in combination with her striking good looks, moves her beyond the realm of mere prettiness or even beauty to a sort of realm where it becomes very easy to imagine others becoming fascinated to the point of obsession with her, and Ferus counts himself very lucky indeed, not only to share her company, as her Padawan, but to share her bed, as well, whenever her dreams call to him, though he regrets the necessity of keeping her unaware of the time they share, thus, her sense of shame a little bit too greatly developed to run the risk of allowing her to consciously remember the many, many hours they spend on such pleasurable pursuits, though she certainly wants him badly enough and enjoys herself thoroughly enough that he’d feel simply terrible at the thought of not answering to her mental calls, the forcefulness of her need calling him straight out of a deep sleep, sometimes, the Force permitting him to slip into her dreams and into her arms simultaneously. 38.) Read:He’s not all that sure about Tru, sometimes – sure, the Teevan’s a good friend, most of the time, and smart as well as clever, and there are times when he catches the Teevan looking at him in such a way that almost he imagines Tru entertains feelings for him beyond both mere friendship and the shallow, lust-based emotions that comprise the majority of the encounters he shares with most of his casual acquaintances; however, Tru’s also intensely private and quiet, especially as a male, and so serious about some things that sometimes he wonders if the Teevan ever laughs at all – and it worries and frustrates him, a little, that he can’t get a better read on the Teevan, especially now that Tru seems to have struck up a friendship, of sorts, with that damned fraud, Skywalker. 39.) Miserable:The joint missions are often the hardest ones, in terms of emotional turmoil if not actual difficulty or danger: rationally, Ferus knows that the High Council is attempting to foster good working relationships among those who should, logically, be Knighted around the same time and so are more likely to eventually be sent out on missions together, with none other but themselves and each other to rely on to lean upon, and he suspects, too, that they also have reason to want individuals not inclined to automatically shield/ protect/cover for how thoroughly Skywalker seems to have Obi-Wan blinded to his faults and wrapped about his grubby little finger to accompany them on their missions, so that reports will be less likely to be biased; yet, nothing really helps to stave off the pain of having to watch that pretender act like he’s worthy to be Obi-Wan’s apprentice and behave as though he’s already a real Jedi and knows better and is better than everyone else in the ’verse or to salve the hurt constantly inflicted by Obi-Wan’s indifference towards him, and he so often returns from the missions so dejected and miserable that Siri often is driven to attempt to either reassure him of his excellent behavior and chide Anakin for his rudeness and promise to speak to Obi-Wan about his Padawan or else to intercede with the Council for him and try to get out of any more of the shared missions, for his sake . . . actions that, as much as he appreciates the fact that they demonstrate both Siri’s loyalty to him and her care and concern for his well-being and happiness, almost always just end up making things even worse, as they inevitably seem to simply make Obi-Wan actively unhappy (or even actually angry) with him instead of simply coldly uninterested in and unconcerned with him. 40.) Influence:Obi-Wan’s moved too far away from him to do anything but try to bring him back around by proving his worth and disproving Anakin’s, and Anakin, despite all the evidence as to his lack of control, nonetheless somehow has shields of some sort that keep Ferus from being able to do much more than plant some extremely weak nudging little suggestions; thus, he has little choice but to use other means, to try to get to them, and turning as many individuals as possible against Anakin is one of the easiest, most effective methods at hand, for causing the poaching interloper grief, especially given how volatile the former slave’s temper remains, even after most of half a decade in the Order to learn control and clam, so he focuses a lot of his energy on that, even daring (and, almost surprisingly, succeeding, with the Force’s apparent full blessing) to reach out gentle feelers of influence towards the High Council Masters, to help turn their already largely unhappy opinions of the boy firmly against him. 41.) Right:The mission where he and Anakin are forced to pretend to be Obi-Wan and Siri’s children very nearly kills him: Ferus does everything right, manages to uncover proof of the truth behind the plot of the so-called kidnapping, gets himself successfully out of captivity with no help from anyone – Anakin, his supposed backup and partner, having run off without even so much as a word to anyone, to follow up on a supposed lead, even though he knew that Ferus was missing and could very well be in serious trouble or even danger – and back to the compound with all that he’s learned, with nothing much worse than some bruises and a bit of muscle strain from being improperly restrained, in time to warn Masters Tachi and Kenobi of the criminals’ plan and go after Anakin, who has by then landed himself in some trouble; yet, still, Anakin is the one who initially garners all of the praise and, when his Master complains to Obi-Wan that Anakin basically abandoned Ferus and Obi-Wan apparently feels obligated to mention this to Anakin, it puts both Obi-Wan and Anakin in such foul moods that they both feel free to take their discontent and ire out on Ferus, making an already fairly awful situation that much worse. 42.) Ugly:He can hear them fighting from half the apartment complex away (or at least his Master is fighting, yelling with an increasing amount of furious stridency at Obi-Wan, whose voice is far too quiet to hear, though there is a sense of almost tangible frigidity radiating from the room, increasing in intensity and coldness with each new height Siri’s voice reaches), and a thunderously glowering Anakin is leaning against the main doorway, regarding him with an expression half of cold contempt and half of unabashed fury, blue eyes hard and narrow as he watches Ferus flinch his way to an awkwardly uncertain halt, a sneer twisting his face up into a thoroughly ugly expression as he bitterly snarls, "I hope you’re happy with yourself, you sleemo. It’ll be weeks before he recovers from being yelled at, like that," the sheer amount of hatred in the former slave’s voice taking Ferus by so much surprise that he actually starts to fall back a few steps even before Anakin shoves off of the doorway and violently storms past, shoulder-checking him painfully as he pushes by. 43.) Shake:The temptation to either lash out in incoherent rage and pain or else just sit down and cry is so all but overwhelming that his body begins to shake and, wanting desperately to regain his control, Ferus lets himself sink down to his knees in the middle of the hallway, folding in upon himself and desperately casting out to the Force for calm, head bowing as his sight blurs, and he’s still there, shaking uncontrollably, when Obi-Wan storms out of the apartment, striding right up to him before he seems to see him, stopping so abruptly that the hem of his outermost robe flares forward around Ferus, brushing up against him and making him shudder even more violently as he’s engulfed by the clean musky scent of the man. 44.) Supplication:Obi-Wan would never willingly physically hurt anyone, outside the strictures of a fight, would never willingly cause harm to anyone, really, if he could avoid it; yet, knowing that doesn’t keep his trembling body from flinching violently or keep him from instinctively wanting to throw himself flat on the floor at the man’s feet, forehead pressed to Obi-Wan’s boots in silent supplication, and the clearly audible huffing exhale of a frustrated sigh from above him doesn’t do anything to help curtail the instinct, either, his automatic flinch backwards and the tiny whimpering noise he can’t quite suppress, when Obi-Wan reaches out to touch his shoulder, prompting another sigh (this one softer, sadder), Obi-Wan quietly but firmly telling him (immovable iron behind the apparent calm, meaning Obi-Wan will brook no argument), as he gently squeezes Ferus’ left shoulder, "That’s not a good place to try to meditate, Padawan. Come. Walk with me awhile. I can see we have things to discuss." 45.) Want:His legs don’t want to hold him, when he tries to stand, obedient to Obi-Wan’s will, and the young Knight has to catch him by the shoulders when he stumbles, eliciting another little whimpering noise that, after a moment’s hesitation, makes Obi-Wan reach out to bodily turn him about and pull him back flush against the left side of Obi-Wan’s body (making the breath catch painfully in his throat and his body shudder helplessly from the sensation of heat and strength in the slim body so firmly nestled against him, the drape of Obi-Wan’s arm across his back and around his waist bringing his hand dangerously near to absolute proof of the nature of Ferus’ desire for him, hard flesh straining painfully against restraining garments, making him infinitely glad of the concealing folds of his own outer robe and at once making him want to squirm madly to get away, before anything can happen to make Obi-Wan notice the state he’s in, and to take hold of that hand and deliberately shift it over and down, press those fingers down and rub, hard, thrust upwards into that grip, turn and rut furiously, like an animal in heat, against the young man. He desperately wonders what would happen, if he did just that, and he wonders what would happen if he turned around and went up on tiptoe and threaded his fingers through Obi-Wan’s hair and pulled him down even as he lunged up for a kiss. He wonders how it would be, if not for that damned vow of Obi-Wan’s – whether Obi- Wan would let him suck him off in the hallway; whether he would turn Ferus about towards the wall and start pounding into him, like he wanted to punish him for some past transgression by trying to knock him through the wall; whether he’d let him measure his length against Obi-Wan’s but slap his hand away and take them both into his own clever hand, sliding his other hand around Ferus’ hip while jacking them together slowly, surely, drawing it out with torturous patience even as he worked at opening Ferus up, using just enough of the Force to ease his way to soothe away all but an edge of burn, finger- fucking him while Ferus twisted and writhed and pleaded and begged until finally he couldn’t stand it any longer and dropped to his knees to finish him off, before unceremoniously backing Ferus up against the wall and hitching him up until he was wrapped around Obi-Wan’s waist, slamming into him, fucking him with wild desperation, mouth sealed over his to steal away the sounds of greedy, keening pleasure he would make; or whether he would back Ferus along the hallway until they finally reached an empty room, where he could either seat himself on or else lie back across the nearest horizontal surface and pull Ferus down to ride him to completion, holding his hands back and whispering filthy things into his ears in between ravenous kisses until Ferus finally came, without ever even being touched, the clenching of his convulsing body making Obi-Wan go over the edge, too, orgasming with a strangled cry of pleasure), holding on to Ferus to steady him as he guides him off down the hallway. 46.) Hunger:Obi-Wan speaks to him quietly, patiently, and at great length about how stressful it is for Anakin to work with Ferus, due to his inability to trust him, and how Ferus needs to truly dedicate himself to proving his trustworthiness, if he wishes for that to change, as trust, once broken, is not something easy to reestablish, and how he wishes very much that Ferus would succeed, as he would like nothing more than to know that Ferus and Anakin are good friends, and it’s all he can do to keep from moaning in hunger, when Obi- Wan reaches out to gently tip his chin up, fingers curling around his chin, hesitating a moment before sliding up to tuck his Padawan braid back behind his ear (the motion is maddening, trailing fire along his skin. He can’t keep from leaning in to the touch and it takes all of his strength to keep from nuzzling against that hand, feathering kisses along Obi-Wan’s palm, nipping a little at his fingertips, suggestively touching the tip of his tongue to the center of his palm, opening his mouth and sucking one of those digits into his mouth and working at it until Obi-Wan groans and reaches out for him, gives him better things to taste and to suck on), all he can do to keep from crawling up in Obi- Wan’s lap, after he sits them down in the garden, as if for a bout of shared meditation, and show him exactlywhat he wants to be reflecting on, all he can do to keep from begging to be touched again (longer, more firmly, begging to be marked, to come away from the encounter bearing bruises as proof of Obi-Wan’s touches), in many other far more interesting places than just the side of his face and his shoulder and arm; he must have done or said something right, though, even though his brain feels like it’s been turned to absolute mush, because at the end he gets one of those absolutely radiant, blindingly bright smiles, like he used to, back before Anakin ever came to the Temple, and a lovingly gentle caressing brush of the backs of Obi-Wan’s fingers along his left cheekbone, making him tremble so much that the young Knight sighs, shakes his head, and offers to sit and meditate with him for awhile, until he’s recovered at least some of his equilibrium. 47.) Hope:It’s almost like old times, for a little while, and Ferus tentatively starts to hope that things might be changing for the better; unfortunately, though, he’s apparently once again underestimated Anakin’s ability to get his way, because later that same day Obi-Wan is back to essentially ignoring him and Anakin’s got his Master wrapped back around his little finger again. 48.) Solo:The solo mission is such a relief that he doesn’t push as hard as he should, about the miners – he’s so happy not to have Anakin there and to not have the source of such torment and temptation so frustratingly close (though he aches at Obi-Wan’s absence, his whole body hurting as though some physical part of him has been rudely cut off, unkindly severed from the rest of him, the constant dull throbbing sensation of hurt nagging constantly at the back of his mind) – even though he has a really bad feeling about the whole thing and seriously wonders whether or not what they’ve done will end up being of any help to the locals at all, in the long run. 49.)Joke:He and Tru and Darra are all seated at a table in the commissary, chortling (giggling, in Darra’s case) helplessly as they pass the datapad back and forth around the table, trying to come to a consensus as to the final product, distracted by laughter as various suggestions are made, discarded, tried, undone, redone, and, in general, fiddled to death, not noticing Anakin until he’s already intercepted the datapad between Darra and Tru with a curious, "What’s so funny, then?" gaze trained down on the screen, reading, and, even before the blood has drained from his face and he starts shouting about whether the poem is supposed to be a joke and how it’s not funny and whether it was Ferus’ idea, he knows there is going to be trouble, is already mentally reaching for Siri even before Anakin grows so furious that he nearly breaks the datapad with his bare hands and actually uses the Force to shove Darra back down into her chair when she tries to stand up, to take it away from him, and is almost relieved, for half a heartbeat, when Obi-Wan suddenly appears behind Anakin and, with a gentle inquiry of, "What’s all this, then?" seems to defuse the situation, Anakin turning about with a sound almost like a sob and throwing himself into his Master, Obi-Wan freezing for a moment, obviously startled, before relaxing into the desperate clutch, his arms coming up to circle around his Padawan’s back, head inclined down against Anakin’s . . . at least until his vision of them dissolves, again, into hellish flames and phantom shrieks of pain and rage, making him sway sickeningly in his chair. 50.) Poem:The poem really is entirely innocuous – it’s part of a minor group project for a cultural studies class that they’ve been taking, one that Anakin hasn’t been enrolled in because of an active mission, nothing more or less, just an attempt by three beings to collaborate on a work in the style of the Thelosian postmodernists – and there’s no logical reason at all for Anakin to have responded to it as if it were a personal attack on him (it’s maybe a little grim, on the surface, what with all the references to destiny and death and not being able to escape fate and heroes being constrained by certain given rules even to their deaths, but it’s also about breaking chains and the transformative power of belief, of choice, of change, or at least it’s supposed to be. None of them are ever going to be able to make their way through the galaxy as writers or wordsmiths, but it’s a perfectly adequate offering for three Jedi Padawans in a cultural elective in between missions, at least in Ferus’ opinion), but for whatever reason it seriously seems to have negatively affected him, and Ferus, for one, is seriously intending to abandon the effort and try something new, just in case he’s wrong and there is something truly offensive about the piece, when Siri takes the matter out of his hands by rather briskly (almost brusquely) pronouncing the poem, "Derivative and a little too clever, but otherwise fine," and transmitting the thing to their professor, with an order to stop fretting about one person’s overreaction to the subject matter, adding, somewhat acerbically, that just because Anakin Skywalker seems to think the poem is a personal attack, due to his rather egocentric conviction of his own status as a hero, that’s no reason for them to indulge the boy’s ego, by behaving as if the assignment has anything to do with him (advice so stunningly sensible that Ferus can’t help but smile and nod in agreement). 51.) Shatter:If Ferus were just a little bit more ruthless or a little bit less fair, a little bit more uncompromising and a little bit less squeamish, a little bit more fanatical and a little bit less concerned with the long-term effects of using pain as a tool, he could split Anakin Skywalker open and spill out his sanity like a nut being pried open to free the meat – flaws and weaknesses run through that boy’s psyche just as surely and dangerously as seismic fault lines through the bedrock of a city, waiting only for enough pressure to rip open and spill everything down into the abyss, and some of them are so obvious and so deep that he can’t help but know how ridiculously easy it would be, to use one or another to shatter Anakin entirely, destroy him so utterly that nothing but jagged fragments and chaos would remain – but he is fair, and honorable, and does not like to cause others pain, and so he tells himself that won’t do it, even though Anakin is all but deliberately flaunting his faults and his unfitness for the life of a Jedi, practically throwing himself at Ferus and begging to be used, to be broken, to be made entirely unfit to continue to function as Obi-Wan’s Padawan, much less to ever one day function as a full Jedi Knight or Master. 52.) Question:The needs of the many alwaysoutweigh the needs of the few or of the one, always, without question – it’s why there’s such a thing as democracy at all; why they have a Republic in the first place; why there are Jedi guarding that Republic who are willing to lay down their lives in defense of the preservation of the peace and order of that Republic and its democratic processes and its myriad sentient peoples – that’s not even a very clever question or anything approaching arguable, if it’s meant to be taken as some kind of trick, and the fact that Anakin Skywalker is looking at Ferus as if he’s suddenly sprouted another head and begun to rave like a bloodthirsty lunatic seeking out children to spit and roast for his supper only reinforces his opinion that Skywalker isn’t at all cut out for the life of a Jedi. 53.) Lust:It’s not unusual for one of the shower stalls in the basic washing facilities off of the training salles to be occupied, its setting turned from sonics to water – they’ve placed showers near the salles for the simple reason that not even the Force is always enough to keep a Jedi from sweating, especially not if a personal workout is extreme enough or a kata or training bout is sufficiently difficult – but the fact that the being inside it is making constant little low noises of pain (muffled as though the person is ashamed of being hurt, embarrassed to be making noise, but only half choked off, as though the pain is too great to be entirely stifled) is, and, concerned, Ferus automatically reaches out into the Force to try to get a read on the being, to see if it will be safer to try to ask if the person needs help or if it might be necessary to call for a Healer first . . . and, on discovering the unique signature of Anakin Skywalker, chooses to ease around the edge of the stall and use a hint of the Force to ease the curtain back just enough to let him take a peak, to see if the idiot has managed to hurt himself and try to decide if he should be sending for Obi-Wan or what, at which point he gets an eyeful of something he never would’ve wanted to see, under such circumstances (Anakin naked, water pouring over him unheeded as he leans shakily against one of the stall’s walls, left hand full of foaming liquid soap, desperately and somewhat awkwardly working over an almost painful looking erection, right hand behind him, twisting and thrusting, three fingers spearing into an already visibly swollen hole, Anakin moving so much, so wildly, that he seems only a hairbreadth away from losing his fine control and inadvertently fisting himself. He’s biting down with almost enough force to break the skin on his bottom lip, to try to keep quiet, but it’s not working. He’s moaning constantly as he writhes, whimpering little hurt sounding groans catching at the back of his throat with each painfully hitched breath, and, as Ferus is proven right and the whole of the boy’s hand vanishes up his ass, body describing a perfect bow as that intrusion doubtlessly knocks up against the sensitive little bundle of nerves within, left hand clamping tight, cock jerking in that grip, spurting semen all over the stall’s wall, the boy’s legs give out, spilling him down to the floor, and those noises resolve into a gasping cry of, "Obi-Wan!" that makes Ferus’ heart seize and his blood run cold with horror. He’s seriously contemplating killing the boy then and there, and damn the possible consequences – he knows only too well how infernally clever that sly boy is about getting his own way, and if he’s set his sights on Obi- Wan, now, and is determined to find a way to overcome Obi-Wan’s vows, one way or another, so he can get his Master into his bed, then, unfortunately, the odds are terribly high in his favor. And Ferus would never be able to live with himself, if he simply sat back idly and permitted that little whore to corrupt Obi-Wan – when Anakin curls in on himself, chest heaving with heart-broken sobs, and brokenly whispers, "No, no, no! Please, no! Oh, Force! Ferus is right. I ama monster!" the self-loathing in his voice practically a tangible thing) and knows, absolutely, that something has to be done, before it’s too late and they all end up burning because of Anakin’s weakness and his lust. 54.) Addict:Anakin Skywalker is a danger to the Order and potential menace (or worse) to the galaxy at large, and he cannot comprehend the madness that makes the High Council Masters keep him in the Order and continue to train him – the first truly immoral person with even the barest understanding of how to break someone down who manages to capture Skywalker won’t just torture him until he breaks and goes mad but figure out exactly what Anakin’s worst fears are and why he hates himself so much and use that against him until he’s as broken and addicted to pain and dependent on his captor and torturer as any hard drug addict is on his chemical high and his dealer, using that as a way to control him, to make him do truly terrible things, and that will be it, the Order will be blamed for what happens and at least a goodly portion of the galaxy will go up in flames and Anakin will be too busy getting off on his own pain to even notice how much damage he’s doing or understand why he should stop – and it’s that increasing certainty of disaster, more than anything, that gradually brings Ferus around, even though he still doesn’t much like the notion of having to be the one to break the boy. 55.) Suggestive:Garen Muln is just enough like Obi-Wan to be disconcerting, and, even though he knows that it’ll be nothing like being with Obi-Wan, since Anakin likes the man, he goes out of his way to have him (something that isn’t all that hard to do, given that Knight Muln is currently going through something of a rough patch with his regular pillow friend, Knight Vos, and is insanely sexually frustrated, to the point where it takes barely takes more than some suggestive touches and a few small mental pushes to get the man spread out before him), making sure that Anakin will nearly walk in on them when he has the russet-haired Knight laid out on the table, sprawled wantonly back across it, writhing and moaning and panting eagerly after every unforgiving thrust of Ferus’ body, the flare of shock and possessive fury, followed by confusion and shame, almostmaking up for that horrible mission (as he senses Anakin seeing milky white skin and bright red hair and forgetting, for a moment, whose office it is; as he realizes it’s Ferus and that the sight of him pounding into Garen’s body is arousing rather than disgusting him), especially when, in response to Ferus’ growled question of, "So who’s the Master, now?" Garen gasps brokenly and half sobs, "You are! Force, Master, you are! Just, please – stars! – don’t stop, don’t stop!" making Ferus chuckle darkly and an almost tangible wave of lust and horrified shame flood out into the Force from Anakin. 56.) Twist:He has a way in to Anakin, now – a way to get at him, a way to twist him about and make him hurt – and he goes out of his way to twist that knife at every opportunity, discovering fairly quickly that it’s not just that Anakin is ashamed of his response and that he’s both almost violently aroused by men and even more aroused by the idea of Ferus and another man, but that any hint of domination during sex makes him sweaty and shaky and hate himself with a passion. 57.) Susceptible:Ferus teases and taunts and strings Anakin along, giving him glimpses of dozens of encounters between him and several different partners, even taking part in a threesome between Shylar and Quinlan Vos specifically so he can fuck Vos even while he’s fucking Shylar (it takes some doing – he has to put something in Vos’ drink, to make him more susceptible to his suggestions, and, afterwards, has to modify their memories somewhat, to cover up the fact that he was ever there – but it’s worth it even without taking into account what it’s doing to Anakin, to see them together, just for the excuse to finally get his hands on Vos. He has some one-on-one fun with Quinlan, after Anakin has snuck off to take care of the insistent erection he’s gotten from watching them, and, as it turns out, Quinlan is very probably one of the single most talented lays he’s ever had the pleasure of having, more than justifying the reputation he has among the Temple’s gossip-mongers) and give him even more ideas to make Anakin squirm, winding him up and stringing him along until he can tell that Anakin is about to break, and then he cranks it up another notch, invading the teen’s space and laying on the attitude and even, occasionally, indulging in some pushing and prodding, grinning like a shark every time Anakin flushes and breaks out in a sweat or trembles and clenches his hands into fists, alternating between smirking suggestively and narrowing his eyes challengingly whenever Anakin tries to hold his gaze, brushing past him in hallways and making sure that he always removes as many items of clothing as possible when sparring, striking provocative poses and grinning every time the little fraud squirms and sweats. 58.) Bout:Sparring tends to bring out the best and the worst in beings – something about the combination of sheer physicality and the surrender of self to the Force, or to be more precise the balance of the two things, whether one focuses more on the one thing or the other, he suspects, accounting for both kinds of reaction – and, sure enough, Skywalker finally snaps in the midst of a private free-form bout, dropping his ’saber entirely and, with a snarl and an oddly graceful sinuous moment, gliding beneath Ferus’ guard and up under his ’saber to slide up around his body, insinuating himself into his personal space to grab him by his tunic collars to yank him down into a toe-curling kiss so heated that Ferus nearly bisects him from left shoulder to right hip before he finally remembers he’s still holding his weapon and drops the ’saber, blue blade extinguishing automatically, hilt clattering nosily onto the floor. 59.) Touch:Ferus is older, taller, and, despite his slimness, heavier than Anakin, so it’s easy enough to overpower him after savaging his lower lip (the pain apparently sharper enough than the line of burned tunic and singed flesh from the barest hint of a touch from his ’saber, Anakin having taken him slightly by surprise with his sudden change in tactics, to throw him), and the noise Anakin makes, as he sweeps his legs and forces him to the floor, not bothering to be so considerate as to slow or break his fall, is both so aroused and so pained that Ferus nearly forgets himself and takes him then and there, in the sparring room, instead of sticking to the plan and tormenting him with a lot of heavy petting before, with a snarl, tearing himself away, spitting, "You’re not going to use me to work off your frustrations, just because you can’t have Obi-Wan, you little whore!" when Anakin tries to reach out to pull him back down. 60.) Bait:He knows exactly what kind of world Anakin grew up on – a harsh desert world, full of moisture farmers who live hard, short lives, where Hutts and their higher up minions live decadent, glamorous lives by taking advantage of everyone else and Tusken Raiders try their damnedest to kill everyone, survival such a serious, chancy thing that frivolity and leisure are essentially unknown and things like love and respect are considered a lot less important than strength and resources, when personal alliances are on the table, same sex pairings are, at best, considered a waste of resources and not just frowned upon but actively discouraged (and, at worst, considered a perversion and weakness not to be tolerated), lynchings probably not unknown – and where his shame over his attraction to Ferus stems from (on top of everything, having been a slave, Anakin likely knows precisely what it means for individuals to have their bodies used for the pleasure of others and associates the idea of two men together with pain and degradation), especially since he actively dislikes, is jealous and envious of, and fears Ferus, with his own sense of insecurity playing so heavily into that and his dread that he’s not worthy of being in the Order or of being Obi-Wan’s Padawan (which of course he most certainly isn’t, in either circumstance!) that he’s all but obsessed with Ferus (with trying to figure out what makes Ferus tick, so he can either be more like him and so not such a disappointment to his Master and the High Council or else so that he can find a way under Ferus’ guard and expose him as an imperfect being and so not have to feel so damned inadequate in comparison to him), and that both makes it easier, to bait and string Anakin along, and even more deliciously savory, to watch him twitch and squirm and fight with himself over how much he wants Ferus. 61.) Three:Three times, with increasing desperation, Anakin tries to throw himself at Ferus (the first time while they’re sparring; the second time in an empty hallway of the Temple – Anakin hesitating as he’s about to go past him in the corridor, stepping sideways at the last moment to slide directly into his path, kissing him like a drowning man might suck down air miraculously become suddenly available, grinding himself against Ferus desperately and moaning and going limply pliant under Ferus when he pivots and slams him against the nearest wall, groaning with loss when Ferus tears himself away and furiously growls, "I said no, dammit! Stop trying to take advantage of me!" – in between missions; and the third time actually on mission, walking in on Ferus while he’s preparing to utilize the steam room at the facility they’re staying at and, with a whimper, throwing himself at Ferus, scrabbling desperately at the loose leggings he’s wearing and all but sobbing as he gets one hand down the back and is able to palm one muscular sculpted cheek, his other hand working frantically at the tie holding the waistband shut, until Ferus shoves him violently away, smiling when he hears Anakin collide with a bench with a painful sounding cracking noise before falling back across it in a graceless sprawl, a choked cry of, "Please!" only making Ferus snort with laughter and wipe violently at his mouth, as if to banish a foul taste, snapping, "I told you, no! It’s not my fault Obi-Wan rejects you!" when Anakin looks up at him through tearful eyes) before he finally decides to throw him a bone, when the mission has been successfully completed, arranging to take a shower down at the training salles and to just be finishing when Anakin walks in to the attached vestibule to change his clothes. 62.) Come:He lets the former slave throw himself to his knees before him, ripping the towel away to look at Ferus (breath catching in his throat in a sob of desire), so enthusiastic that he chokes himself (clearly having never done this before, eyes streaming) on Ferus’ hardness, Ferus grabbing onto his head and holding him so that he can’t get away, brutally fucking his mouth and throat, ramming forward so hard he knows he’s hurting the boy, smiling and snarling, "Take it then, damn you! You want it so bad you’re gagging for it, then take it! Filthy little cocksucker!" drawing it out as long as possible, refusing either to touch him or allow Anakin to touch himself, grabbing his hands and twisting them painfully back up behind his back, pinning them in place with the Force so he can keep hold of him by either the ears or else his Padawan’s braid and the small queue of hair at the base of his neck, spitting, "Come on, you little fuck, you wanted this so badly, you like being used so much, come, damn you!" and waiting until he obediently starts to climax before finally letting himself go, thrusting deep and staying there as he spasms, making Anakin have to swallow to avoid choking to death, shoving him violently away only when he’s done, sneering down at the crying boy, contemptuously noting, "I should’ve expected no better of you, I suppose. Sniveling little masochistic hypocrite. If you’re going to hate me, at least have the decency to come up with a better reason than that you want me! I have nothing to do with your desires, Skywalker. Oh, stop that! You practically raped me, you little hypocrite! This was your idea. Remember that! And for stars’ sakes, at least clean yourself up before your Master can see you! Obi-Wan is practically an innocent! Don’t you daremake him have to see you or deal with you like this! He doesn’t deserve that!" before turning about on his heel, grabbing a new towel to wrap about himself, and stalking out of the room. 63.) Sideways:Afterwards, Anakin’s preoccupation with Ferus and his violent rebuffs of the boy prior to the incident in the changing room for the showers distracts him so much that, when he and his Master are sent on mission, he doesn’t pay sufficient attention to what’s going on around him, with the result that he nearly gets himself assaulted and killed for his carelessness and his Master takes a fairly serious injury (as well as a few more minor ones) coming to his rescue, with the mission going wildly sideways and the two being forced to run with no time to get anyone to try to see to Obi-Wan’s wounds, after which the mission becomes a matter of desperation and is resolved only after a great deal of unnecessary fighting and bloodshed that leaves poor Obi-Wan exhausted, sickened, and grieving to the point where, on their return to the Temple, rather than argue with the Healers about their prognosis or orders, he simply bows his head in understanding and quietly asks Anakin to please report to Siri Tachi for the continuance of his training for the next month while he is sent to Alderaan to recuperate. 64.) Beat:A month at the Temple with no Obi-Wan to interfere and the boy placed under Siri Tachi’s control and guidance is a situation so completely perfectfor his plans, so helpful for the reaching of his ultimate goal with Anakin, that he cannot but regard it as a sign from the Force itself that he’s doing the right thing and that Anakin’s presence at the Temple is nothing more than a test of his ultimate worthiness to have Obi-Wan, and so he reacts accordingly, waiting until Anakin comes to report to Siri, who, compliant to a suggestion from Ferus, urges the two boys to go meditate together on the notion of living together for a month in Ferus’ Padawan quarters after they go and bring back whatever items Anakin will need from his own room for the duration of his stay, at which point he follows Anakin back to the boy’s room . . . where, following a tearful confession that Obi-Wan is only hurt because Anakin was too distracted by thoughts of Ferus to pay any attention to the mission, he proceeds to order the boy to strip and, upon finding him painfully hard, commands that he not to cry out or come until he’s been given permission to, orders him down on hands and knees, crafts a shape of the same approximate size as Ferus’ own erection out of the Force and then slams it home without warning into the boy, and proceeds to beat him thoroughly, starting with a fairly gentle spanking that makes Anakin writhe and groan and beg prettily to be allowed to come and working his way up to a lashing with his own belt, twisting the Force mercilessly within Anakin the whole while, so that he is sobbing and mindlessly begging to come by the time Ferus is through with him, the whole of his back and buttocks and thighs a bruised, welted, bloody mess, Ferus permitting him to come only after Anakin has pleasured him (deliberately holding back as long as possible, making the crying boy work hard at it, to get him to come) . . . and, to prove to the boy that he only has Anakin’s best interests at heart, becoming gentle and all but loving in the aftermath, tending to the worst of the boy’s wounds and soothing them away with the Force, promising to teach Anakin how to do the same thing, so that he will never be forced to helplessly stand by and watch a wounded comrade go into battle with those hurts untended ever again, reducing the boy to a sobbing mass of fawning gratefulness so extreme that he’s practically shined Ferus’ boots with this mouth and tongue by the time he’s down bestowing grateful kisses on the older boy’s feet, bruising his mouth so badly in the process that, when Ferus rewards him with a kiss, the full lower lip splits under the pressure, giving him an intoxicating taste of the boy’s blood. 65.) Abuse:Anakin’s badly bruised mouth – the full bottom lip actually split, right down the center, the pressure cut so provocatively placed that the desire to grab the boy and slam their mouths together again, press until the wound splits wide open again and he can tongue the split, the muscular tip sliding between layers of skin, penetrating the flesh, makes the palms of his hands itch with the urge to reach out, grab, take, mark, claim – is more than just a sign of his own victory: it’s a visible badge of the boy’s shame, of his utter unworthiness, of the fact that he’s so much a slave to his emotions that, like a drug addict, he returns, again and again, to Ferus to be used, hurt, degraded, fucked like he’s nothing more than a warm body with a convenient hole, and, with each encounter, Ferus escalates his game just a little, inflicting a little more physical pain as well as humiliation, making Anakin a little more complicit, a little more compliant, with his abuse, securing his cooperation with the more violent aspects of their encounters by fulfilling his promise to train him in the healing arts – hurting Anakin so that he can use him as a guinea pig, someone on which to demonstrate certain healing techniques, and then hurting him again, and again, and again, until Anakin has managed to master the skill required to tend to the type and severity of injury in question – breaking him down bit by bit, over time, towards the ultimate goal of reducing him to nothing more than his plaything, utterly incapable of free will or intelligent thought, entirely too stupid to listen to the Force and most certainly too addicted to being told what to do and feel and say to be able to behave as a true Jedi, absolutely unable to continue to function independently enough to be able to keep successfully protecting himself on missions involving actual combat. 66.) Fraud:Anakin Skywalker may test as a borderline human norm, but the moment Ferus claims him he knows that the fraud is, in actuality, only near-human, for instead of an almost painful plunge within the heated confines of a tight, dry channel, forcing him to work hard for every millimeter as he breaches the boy’s body, fragile tissues tearing and the slickness of pooling blood easing his passage further within, there is an almost effortless thrust into a channel as slickly wet and welcoming as the vagina of a thoroughly aroused woman, Anakin writhing and wailing like a woman already in the throes of orgasm just from the sensation of being penetrated, though Ferus’ automatic angling to find the prostrate makes Anakin scream and buck wildly in pleasure, as any regular man would, leaving Ferus at once feeling strangely robbed and yet oddly empowered, given Anakin’s so obvious thorough enjoyment of what is, essentially, a brutal rape, the boy spasming so hard as Ferus pounds into him that the Force- restraints holding him cuffed to the bed cut into his wrists and make a bruised and bloody mess of the flesh there, Anakin’s automatic healing of the marks, when Ferus gets bored with that position and uncuffs him so that he can move him on the bed, giving him an excuse to get creative in his punishment that eventually ends with the both of them so exhausted that he can’t be fussed to care that they’re both essentially covered in a nasty viscous mixture of blood and semen, pulling Anakin in close and kissing him to sleep, to reward him for being such a wonderfully good pet. 67.) Dependence:If the right methods are utilized, it is a surprisingly easy thing to do, to teach a body to crave pain and react to it as if it were pleasure, especially given a subject where self-loathing and shame are already so high that the urge to self-destructiveness lies close to the surface, like drowning waters beneath only the thinnest layer of deceptively solid-seeming ice – teach the subject reasons for shame, for unworthiness; punish the flesh accordingly, given the understanding that the degradation and pain is nothing more than what has been earned, what is deserved; escalate to the infliction of serious hurts while also inflicting pleasure on the body, so that the flesh shudders and aches and finds fulfillment in the mixture of pleasure and plain so thoroughly entwined that the two kinds of sensation cannot be separated out and the mind and the body learn to associate that mix with the release of orgasm, followed by the healing of the body (and, hence, the removal of obvious sources of physical pain); use the Force as a tool, both to erase evidence of the torture and as an implement of pleasure, at once making the Force seem compliant in such lessons (and reinforcing the lesson of deservedness, that the subject has earned such treatment) and reinforcing the subject’s sense of helplessness to resist any such lessons, as the Force itself is intimately involved in them; and, all the while, use a combination of verbal and physical cues to reinforce the subject’s subservience and dependence on the dominant for any/all pleasure, any/all (increasingly necessary, not just for pleasure and release but for actual peace of mind) punishment for mistakes and flaws, failures and misdeeds, steadily building up the relationship until the subject no longer knows how to act, without direction from the dominant, and is utterly addicted to having that dominant’s orders, punishments, rewards, lessons– and that is precisely what he does to Anakin, over the month he’s given, teaching him to look to Ferus in all things and slowly but surely stripping him of all defenses, breaking him down and remaking him essentially as a mindless slave to the pain/pleasure that Ferus gives him. 68.) Damage:It’s a somewhat delicate matter, delivering an increasing amount of pain while subtly using the Force to magnify simultaneously given pleasure without in the process forgetting himself and simply letting the blissed out boy glut himself so thoroughly on the sensations that he dies of it all, letting things escalate past the point of turning back, of healing the physical damage; Ferus rises to the challenge admirably, though, or so he thinks, especially once he’s able to start using devices Anakin himself has made, to inflict damage and pain even while he’s fucking the boy senseless, the teen’s tendency to tinker resulting in some sex toys so completely ghastly that even Ferus is a little off-put by them and finds it a relief to eventually work up to inflictions of pain so serious that he needs too much attention to deal them out without killing Anakin to be able to physically fuck him at the same time and has to resort to a combination of the Force and handmade machines that don’t require another person’s body or indeed even much attention (once they’ve been put into place and turned on) to work, to keep certain parts of the boy properly stimulated during the torture. 69.) Break:Ferus is well on the way to breaking Anakin Skywalker forever – even Obi-Wan has noticed that the boy isn’t acting like himself, now that he’s returned to the Temple, and, worried, taken him to the Healers, resulting in a diagnosis of borderline exhaustion from the boy pushing too hard, too fast, and an argument between the two that ends with Anakin snarling at Obi-Wan that if he’s exhausted then it’s Obi-Wan’s fault and he’s a hypocrite for acting like he cares now, and anyway it’s none of his business what Anakin does in his free time or whether or not he pushes himself to do more when he should be relaxing, so long as he continues to be able to fulfill his duties as a Padawan, and that Obi-Wan should learn to mind his own karking business instead of trying to run everybody else’s, which in turn results in Anakin running to Ferus, who cheerfully takes the boy’s sense of embarrassment and shame and guilt and regret and self-hatred as an invitation to punish him thoroughly for being such a bad boy and such a disappointment and source of worry and pain and sorrow for his poor beleaguered Master, hurting Anakin with increasing seriousness and forcing him to exhaust himself further by making him have to use the healing energies of the Force to mend himself, disguising the whole thing as a sort of twisted object lesson, both in the art of hiding one’s sins and imperfections and weaknesses and (supposedly) in the practice of being a better Jedi – after a month’s time of working him over to break him down, steadily escalating the abuse he heaps on the increasingly self-loathing and masochistic, dependent teenager, warping his character increasingly out of true, which is precisely why, when Anakin is finally sent out on another mission, the idiot hesitates, waiting for orders that never come, at a critical moment in a fight he should have been able to win, and ends up being drugged and captured by Jenna Zan Arbor’s latest hirelings and carried away to her, to be used as a Force- sensitive experimental subject for her latest terrible creation. 70.) Drug:Jenna Zan Arbor ruins everything he’s accomplished with Anakin, for which fact alone he instantly swears he will see her die writhing in agony and begging for forgiveness: her so-called Zone of Self-Containment drug doesn’t work on Anakin, at first, because he is already too heavily addicted to Ferus to be caught by its chemical trap, and so she ups the dosage, to try to see if it’s a natural immunity or just a quirk of his individual body chemistry – twice, thrice, ten times the amount previously established as safe for humans – with the eventual result that Anakin is wiped of most of his memory of the previous half a dozen months, including his addition to and dependence on Ferus, and reduced to a state of blissed out mindlessness, absolutely nothing registering on him until the chemical cocktail starts to wear off, the ecstasy and lethargy eventually leaving him but nothing past a certain level of knowledge of his shameful fascination with Ferus ever returning, the damage inflicted by the drug too great for even the Healers to reverse, when it finally comes out that the drug has erased part of his memory and that they need to at least try to do something to help him. 71.) Sensitive:The boy avoids him like the plague, his shame over his attraction to Ferus and fear over his susceptibility to the drug (which Anakin, predictably, blames on the same weakness and inner flaw that makes him want Ferus, the same supposed darkness of spirit that makes him want anyman) transmuting to an almost irrational anger and hatred that makes it impossible for Ferus to try to get close to him again, to try to give him back his lost memories, and the whole situation is so frustrating and infuriating that even Siri seems to notice something is amiss, taking him aside and subjecting him to such a ridiculously lengthy counseling session about how he must be patient with Anakin and give him time to heal and how he should cut the younger boy some slack because he’s recovering from such a traumatic experience and how Anakin and Obi-Wan will both have to eventually come around and recognize what a wonderful person Ferus is and blah, blah, blah, blah, blahthat finally he can’t take it anymore and lets loose with a blast of the Force that throws her bodily back across the room, slams her violently into the wall, and instantly knocks her unconscious, which makes him feel ever so much better until he realizes that he’s going to have to erase the incident from her memory . . . at which point, figuring he might as well do something worthhaving to muck about with her memory to cover up, he proceeds to use her as a way to work off as much as his tension and anger as possible, tearing into her just as he might have with Anakin before Jenna Zan Arbor interred, fucking her ten ways from Benduday and using a combination of the Force and a couple of nearby weapons to carefully rip off strips of skin from all of her most sensitive places and to beat the rest of her black and bluish-purple, working her over until he’s reached a point of exhausted serenity and then quite calmly and methodically using the Force to erase the evidence of his furious frustration, skillfully healing her body and modifying her memory to reflect the fact that she lectured him but showing him tearfully displaying agonized doubt so that she could comfort him and help him regain a sense of surety in his own worthiness, resulting in the two of them eventually retiring for a sparring match where he wiped the floor with her and, smiling at her when she good-naturedly used that to draw attention to his obvious worthiness, seemed to once again be at peace with himself and content to continue to wait to be recognized by Anakin and Obi-Wan for his true talents, thus erasing any need for her to continue to be worried about him and neatly accounting for any damage to her clothes or lingering tenderness, even after being thoroughly healed, given their supposed sparring session and its results. 72.) Offense:Ferus may have lost what would have been a perfect solution to the problem of Anakin, thanks to that thrice-damned mad scientist bitch (and oh, but he is determined that one day he will make her scream and cry and beg for death, for that offense), but that doesn’t mean that he’s going to give up or that he’s going to let that weak little bastard win, especially not now that he knows just how flawed, just how pathetically weak and easily dominated, the teenager is, and so it’s back to the drawing board he goes, back to being an exemplary example of a good and true Jedi while constantly showing Anakin up and carefully taking note of and reporting on all of his many mistake and flaws to the High Council Masters and other influential Jedi in the Order. 73.) Scenario:He wants to be there when Jenna Zan Arbor is caught (and so be in a position to arrange either an accident during transport, a death while attempting to escape scenario, or something similar, to cover his tracks when he’s done with her), and if chasing after someone like Granta Omega (whose presence in the Force is so wrong – a strange, sickening sensation of nothingness – that it makes his skin want to crawl right off of his body) is the way to do that . . . well, then so be it, even if it means having to work closely with several other Master-Padawan pairs and, potentially, having to eventually dodge all of them, to get at that damned scientist. 74.) Doom:He has a really bad feeling about the whole Korriban thing almost as soon as he hears about it – he knows Obi-Wan is convinced that the second Sith is still out there somewhere, plotting more nefarious deeds, and he happens to agree with the Sith Killer’s opinion, especially given that it makes a certain amount of sense for someone like Omega (the illegitimate son of a rogue Jedi gone Dark, with a major beef against the Order he feels deliberately drove his father to his death) to want to attract the attention of the Sith, in order to make common cause against the Jedi Order; yet, he can’t help but feel as if the whole thing is just a little bit too obvious, like it’s a trap (and on more than one level) – and is worried enough about it to try to both make his opinion known and influence Siri and the Masters of Tru and Darra to profess some misgivings about the wisdom of taking so many young Padawans to a Sith necropolis to search for an insane sociopath and a truly mad sociopath of a scientist on naught more than the word of a black market thief; unfortunately, though, for once the High Council seems to support Obi-Wan’s conclusion about the possibility of the Sith’s involvement and the danger inherent in letting Omega and Zan Arbor join the Sith, so they end up having to go anyway, even though an almost palpable sense of doom hangs over the whole mission. 75.) Lip:Ferus is the senior-most Padawan on the mission and he damn well knows how to put together and/or repair a lightsaber, and that hypocritical little frakker Skywalker can damn well take his holier-than-thou attitude and pretensions of being better than everyone else and shove them up his well- sprung ass, if he thinks Ferus is going to take any lip from the likes of him! 76.) Suicide:He literally cannot believe what just happened – Tru’s lightsaber was just fine one moment and the next it fizzled out like a candle in a rainstorm; his reflexes had him reaching out to the Force immediately, even though his body was still gaping dumbly in shock, to yank Tru back out of the way of the line of fire; and then Darra, as if trying to see if she could get away with committing suicide by making it seem as though she’d been shot in defense of a suddenly weaponless friend, leaped to interject herself between where Tru had been and the bolts that had been aimed for him, blocking three successfully before being hit squarely by the fourth – and the first words out of his mouth, when he reaches Darra’s side, reflect that incredulous shock, the half furious and half frankly bewildered demand of, "What in the Sith hells did you do thatfor? I had him just fine! I was fine! You didn’t need to get in the line of fire!" a little bit less tactful, perhaps, for someone who’s obviously seriously wounded. 77.) Interference:If not for Anakin’s interference (snarling, "Get the hell away from her, you sleemo! You’ve already done enough harm!" while bodily snatching him away from her, just as he was laying his Force-infused hands over the wound, to channel enough healing energy into it to keep her from bleeding out or going into shock from a combination of pain and blood loss), he could have saved Darra Thel-Tanis’ life – he skinned roughly ninety percent of Anakin’s body, once, and regenerated the strips of skin millimeters at a time, without ever even coming close to losing him, and he even vivisected him once, for stars’ sakes, without Anakin taking any lasting harm from it! Given a chance to actually work on the wound, he could have easilyfixed a single damned blaster bolt to the lower side, perforated stomach and nicked liver or not! – and he’s nevergoing to forget that or forgive Anakin for it, for as long as he lives, so help him! 78.) Repair:Tru insists that Anakin didn’t touch the lightsaber, after Ferus repaired it and forbade Anakin from interfering with it in any way, but frankly Ferus doesn’t believe him – he saw the nonstandard modification to the power source and adjusted for it accordingly, in his repair work, and so there’s no logical, rational explanation for the power to have given out on it the way it eventually so disastrously did, unless either someone else sabotaged it or it took more damage again between the repair and that battle where it give out, and, since he knows that the second didn’t happen (unless the damage was either inflicted secretly, somehow, while they were sleeping, or else done deliberately, by the lightsabers’s own owner, which would make absolutely no sense whatsoever), the only answer left is that Anakin somehow managed to get a hold of it and deliberately did something to it to make it malfunction, so that Ferus would end up being blamed for a faulty repair – and the two end up quarreling over it bitterly, with the result being that when Anakin manipulates Obi-Wan into standing behind him and twisting everything about so that it seems like Darra’s death is Ferus’ fault, he has no one to stand with him before the High Council to try to explain what really happened, since Siri wasn’t there for part of it all and Tru insists that it’s not fair to blame Anakin entirely when they don’t know for sure what happened to make his lightsaber fail when it did, and so Ferus has no choice but to try to persuade the High Council Masters otherwise, with the even more disastrous result of Anakin twisting thatall around and making it seem like Ferus is using the Dark Side to glamour everyone into supporting him (which he wasn’t! He was only using his power to make them listento him as he told them the truth about what had happened!) and making them all panic and fear him, to the point where, the next thing he knows, he’s being summarily thrown out of the entire Jedi Order for (of all things!) using the Force to attempt to suborn others to his will and for failing to save the life of Darra Thel-Tanis, even though it was patently Anakin’s fault that she died, given his interference at the most critical of points, when she still could have been healed enough to be saved! 79.) Order:Anakin Skywalker thinks he has won, but so long as Ferus lives he is determined that Anakin ultimately will fail, and so he pretends to go along with the High Council and agree with his banishment for not saving Darra’s life, waiting and biding his time, and, when Anakin comes to gloat, he is ready for the boy, the memory of every single one of their encounters (from Anakin’s first desperate attempt to kiss him up through the incident in the shower room and even their last encounter, before Jenna Zan Arbor ruined everything, Anankin writhing and crying out in ecstasy as a secretly modified laser whip carved bloody, smoking lines along his naked back and torso, curving down dangerously close to straining flesh and along the tempting mounds of rounded buttocks, eventually released from his Force-made manacles to collapse at Ferus’ bare feet and worship them with kisses, working his way from one foot to the next until finally Ferus, with a word, commanded, "Up," at which point he rose to his knees to swallow Ferus’ proudly jutting phallus eagerly down, whimpering hungrily as Ferus traced his hands along wounds scored in Anakin’s shoulders, bringing Ferus to completion after much work and then at another order, "Down. Ready, my pet," turning and bending over, ass in the air and face pressed down to the floor, legs spread wide, hands reaching back to pull the cheeks of his ass temptingly apart, waiting, moaning hungrily in the back of his throat, until Ferus, after a few lazy strokes to make himself hard again, lowering himself down between Anakin’s spread legs and thrust himself unceremoniously in, fucking himself to a second orgasm while Anakin begged him for more, harder, please, his own hardness untouched, Ferus eventually pulling out and commanding, "Up, darling. All the way," waiting until the trembling boy gained his feet and then proceeding to torment his erection with one hand and his wounds with the other, digging his fingers in to make them bleed before using the Force to heal them, ordering Anakin, "Not until I say," and, letting him go to turn him bodily about, thrusting himself – hard again, by that point – back inside, forcing Anakin up against the nearest wall and making him hold still until he was nearly done, pulling out at the last moment to whisper, "Now. Come now," allowing himself to climax all over Anakin’s lower back and buttocks while the boy spasmed helplessly and came against the wall, scraping flesh from several tender areas in the process) held squarely in the front of his mind, prompting him to laugh at the boy’s posturing and sneer, "You think you’ve won? You think you’ve defeated me? I know what you are, Anakin Skywalker. You’re nothing but a fraud, a hypocrite and a whore, and that’s all you’ll ever be. You think Obi-Wan is still going to love you, when he knows what you are? He willknow, someday. I promise you that. He will know it as surely as I know. See yourself as I see you – as I knowyou, Skywalker! – and know that it is the truth of you. Know that, one day, Obi-Wan will know it, too. You may have carved out a victory for yourself here, with your lying and cheating, but it will not last. The truth will out. You’ll show your true colors soon enough. And Obi-Wan will know you for the weakling and the fraud and the monster that you are. I promiseyou that, Anakin Skywalker! You will notwin this war with me," smiling coldly even as he makes the promise, infusing his words with the Force and making the coward go still and silent and listen, unable to try to resist or move away, caught in the web of Ferus’ words as he readies the memories, at the last moment throwing them not into Anakin’s conscious mind (aware that it would, in all probability, seem to drive the boy instantly insane and that Obi-Wan, turned against him as he is, would be all too likely to simply kill Ferus out of hand for causing Anakin pain, rather than try to ascertain what was really happening and why) but instead into that gray area between the conscious and unconscious minds, that in between area where things will subconsciously register but not surface completely for hours, days, weeks, even years, knowing that the images will torment the boy’s sleep and likely keep him from being able to meditate successfully alone ever again and grimly amused at the knowledge of what Anakin will find lurking behind his eyes, whenever he tries to rest or relax, from now until the point when he either acknowledges that it’s the truth enough for it all to rise fully into his conscious mind, remembering those times with Ferus again, despite Zan Arbor’s drugs, or (unlikely to happen, but possible, he supposes) finally learns enough self-control to be able to lock the images away enough to keep them from randomly tormenting him whenever he relaxes his guard or lets his thoughts wander. 80.) Speech:Tru surprises him by coming to visit, once, before he is to be shipped off of Coruscant to whatever distant place the High Council Masters think they can tuck him away where he won’t be able to cause any more supposed harm to anyone, sliding stealthily into the antechamber of the so-called "guest suite" he’s been locked within (a not very cleverly disguised prison, given that there are no real doors, even to the necessary or the shower – only barely semi-opaque, purported privacy curtains – and a transparisteel barrier between the antechamber and the so-called receiving area of the living room, dotted near the top with regularly spaced holes, to allow two individuals to converse without the second having to risk coming within the suite proper) in the middle of the night and calling out until Ferus rouses from sleep and pads out to meet the Teevan, who has transformed from male to female since last they saw one another, waiting only until he’s asked what’s wrong before launching into an obviously prepared speech – "I haven’t got much time, but I thought I owed you this much. I’ve seen you heal, Ferus. You could have saved Darra’s life, if Anakin hadn’t interfered. I know that. I acknowledge it. But I swear to you that, so far as I know, my lightsaber never went further form me than my hand beneath my pillow at night. If there was any tampering, the one responsible would’ve either had to have been good enough to avoid waking me when stealing the ’saber and then returning it or else strong enough to take the memories of the tampering from me. Anakin is many things, but that good a thief or that skilled at tampering with memories he is not. The ’saber failed. If someone caused it, it was not you, or I, or Darra, or Anakin. You should look for that person, if you honestly believe the malfunction wasn’t just a result of all the patchwork repairs, one on top of the other. Don’t seek to place me in one of your conspiracy theories. I have always been your friend and always been loyal to you, while you were loyal to me, Ferus Olin. If I did not stand with you against the Council, you have no one to blame but yourself. You should have told me more about your suspicions. And you should have told me what you can do. You knowhow the Council can be, when the Masters are afraid. You made them look bad. You made them fear. That, more than anything, is why they turned on you. You know it and I know it. You shouldn’t have tried to force them to listen. It was stupid and dangerous and against the rules to tamper with their free wills in an open session, and you know it. You earned your dismissal from the Order with that, not Darra. Don’t ever believe differently or allow others to think otherwise. You have a talent the Order’s never seen before – or if it has, then that knowledge has been lost, either deliberately or otherwise – and you’re verystrong in the Force. That makes you dangerous, Ferus. It doesn’t just make you a potential threat: it means you could become a weapon. The Council Masters are unwise to let you go like this. I knowyou. You don’t forget wrongs and you don’t forget those who’ve hurt others wrongfully. Don’t let their fear shape you, Ferus. You’ve got it in you to be better than all of them. So do that. Prove them wrong. Find someone who can teach you – Djinn Altis or the Silver Paladins or someone– and become a true force for good in the galaxy. Prove yourself a true Jedi Bendu, despite them. Anakin is strong and he means well, usually, but he’s no Chosen One, no matter what anyone may say. I’ve neverbelieved that. If anyone is that one, it’s Obi-Wan. And he’ll need you, later, when Anakin fails to rise to the task. Sometime. Some day. He’ll need you and, if you know what’s best for you, you’ll have taken steps and you’ll be ready and waiting and able to help him. He’ll see you again for the person you truly are and not be blinded anymore by his Master’s last request or Anakin’s charm. Just be patient and be careful and be wise about this. You aren’t ready to be out there alone, with no Master, no teachers, no Order. Find yourself someone who can help finish training you, a place to call home, people you can trust. Don’t isolate yourself. Don’t behave like a martyr. Don’t let the freedom go to your head. And for stars’ sakes, don’t forget the second Sith is still out there! You could be useful to the Sith, Ferus. Veryuseful. Don’t fall into that trap. Don’t let evil beings use you or get the better of you. Do what’s right, for yourself and the galaxy, and just be patient and make ready and trust in the Force. I believe that the Force has plans for you – that it must, to have given you such a gift and so many talents – and I want to be able to see you again, when you’re ready to fulfill that destiny. Don’t let what the High Council is doing to you ruin your life or your plans. Just because the High Council Masters can’t see what’s in front of them, that’s no reason for you to give up. I still believe in you. And I believe in Obi-Wan. I’ll watch over him as much as I can, while you’re gone. It’ll be harder, since I can’t even pretend to be friends with Anakin any longer, but I’ll figure out a way to do it, since you won’t be here. I promise you that. You don’t need to worry. Garen and I are fairly close and you knowhow he is, about Obi-Wan. We’ll keep him safe. Just – just don’t give up, alright? Find Master Altis. Or someone similar. Study. Learn how to control that gift instead of letting it control you, like it did when you tried to use it against the High Council. Be a true Jedi Bendu. Be patient. Wait. Your time will come, so long as you trust in the Force. And remember me, Ferus. I am still your friend. I’ll help you, later, if I can, if you’ll let me. But you have to be able to let me, understand? Don’t let them win. Just – just don’t let them win. Be stronger than they are. Be the person I know you can be. Wait. Wait for the Chosen One to rise. Wait for him to need you, to be ready for you. And then help him. Let him see you. Be there for him to lean on. And remember me. Lean on me, if you need the support. I’ll do everything I can to help, if you’ll just let me. Remember that. Be strong. Be patient. The Force will be with you – always. Trust in that. Believe. Things will come right, in the end, if you just give the Force a chance to set them right again. Take care. I – I will miss you, my friend. It won’t be the same here, without you!" – before, with obvious teary-eyed reluctance, pressing her right hand flat to the barrier separating them in farewell, barely lingering long enough for Ferus (stunned by the outpouring of words and still trying to decide if they’re meant in good earnest or not, if it might not perhaps make more sense, all things considered, for Tru to be compromised, to maybe be an unwitting agent of the Sith, even, gotten to during that horrible time on Korriban when they were lost and fumbling about fairly literally in the dark) to raise his own left hand and press it to the other side of the transparisteel barrier, his longer fingers lapping visibly over the tips of Tru’s much smaller hand print, before whirling abruptly about and departing, fleeing as though actually afraid of being run down by someone or something with sinister designs, leaving Ferus to gape in surprise after the Teevan and wonder whether or not the whole thing might’ve been a trick or if he should indeed attempt to seek out Master Altis or the Silver Paladins or some other similar individual or organization, whether the High Council might want him to do so or not, and continue his studies as if he were still a true Jedi apprentice. 81.) Black:The High Council Masters, ironically enough, have him booked on a vessel run by the Medi-Corps, on a routinely scheduled run through the Core out to at an Agri-Corp world, Bellassa, where he is meant to ultimately disembark and join up with the computer techs who keep that planet’s cycles of planting, harvesting, and trading flowing smoothly; he doesn’t even last a night, on that world, though: a young man with black hair and eyes and a presence in the Force that all but screams of immense power well banked behind formidable shields approaches him in a pub the evening they make planetfall, and, after unceremoniously approaching him with an only thinly veiled offer to recruit him on behalf of an organization that operates according to rules older than the Ruusan Reformations and believes that the establishment of peace and order throughout galaxy is far preferable to pandering to the politicos who seek naught but their own self-aggrandizement and wealth, at the expense of the beings they’re meant to be representing and protecting, Ferus, liking the look of the man very much and thoroughly impressed by the fact that his own particular brand of persuasion and charisma can worm nothing else about this Force-based organization but a smiling promise that it will be far different – and much better – than anything Ferus might expect or imagine, extends his hand and is summarily drawn into an embrace, the young man murmuring, "Welcome to the Brotherhood, Ferus," in his right ear, his hot breath promising so much more than mere welcome or approval that Ferus finds himself reflexively hardening, automatically responding to those enticing hints of "more" with a surprising amount of hunger and longing. 82.) React:Hints of dark promise in the raven-haired man’s voice or not, Ferus is hoping that he won’t notice the overenthusiastic response of his body to that provocatively whispered welcome and the sudden proximity of the man’s warm body, not expecting this stranger to react favorably to having a rampant erection pressed against his side by someone he’s only just met; the man surprises him, though, in the most pleasurable way possible, pulling back in the embrace just enough to be able to smirk at him darkly and gain leverage enough to roll and snap his hips in an agonizingly slow and teasing churn that presses only hints of pressure and heat up against Ferus and has an embarrassing noise of want catching in the back of his throat, making his face flame with mortification even as his body presses involuntarily forward, just in time to catch the full effect of the almost painfully violent snapping thrust up into him at the end of that taunting circling ghost of a grind, the low moan dissolving into a breathy high-pitched whine of want that makes the man (who’s said his name is Saviell, though Ferus has doubts about that, considering the potentially delicate nature of a cold recruitment attempt) grin savagely and lunge in for a devouring kiss, the motion of his mouth (of his lips, his teeth, and, Force, his tongue) so skillful and so demanding that Ferus opens up helplessly, melting pliantly against him, without protest letting him do whatever he wants, with the end result that they end up locked in some random storage room at the back of the pub, dusty shelves digging awkwardly into Ferus’ back as the stranger forcefully manhandles him into place, fucking him raw, giving him the first in a series of orgasms so intense that Ferus actually blacks out during the peak of his pleasure and is more than a little stunned to come back to his senses to find himself kneeling down on all fours on the floor, the man’s hot body draped purposefully across his back, whispering a stream of delicious filth in his ear as he circles the head of his cock teasingly around his swollen hole, coating himself with the seed that’s seeping slowly out of Ferus’ body so that, when Ferus gives in to temptation and begs him for more, he can slide back in with one all but effortless slow gliding thrust of his hips. 83.) Bed:The last person Ferus had in his bed was Darra Thel-Tanis, almost a month previously, but he’s had so many different beings under such myriad varying circumstances that he is more than confident enough of his skill and stamina and flexibility and creativeness and sheer ability in bed to know he could get (practically) anyone he wanted in his bed and keep that being so satisfied and so enthralled that Ferus himself would have to be the one to break things off, as the other person would never even dream of bringing an end to such a pleasurable arrangement, no matter what the specifics of that arrangement might entail; Saviell, though (he gives Ferus no other name, and, though he still has his doubts about the man’s identity, he doesn’t dare call the man out on them, for fear losing his offer – of losing him– and finding himself cast off once again and alone in the galaxy), isn’t quite like anyone else he’s ever met, and the sheer level of want(of need, if he’s being perfectly honest) the man so effortlessly inspires in him is so great, so all- consuming, that not only do they rarely manage to make it to a bed (or if they do manage it, then, barring an actual disaster – and even then, sometimes, that isn’t enough to register as more than a temporary inconvenience – it takes days to pry them back out of it again), but the sheer lack of caring (of concern or shame) about his increasingly obvious level of dependency on the man is so all- pervasive that, even though Ferus knows, logically, that he should be alarmed, he just can’t bring himself to give a flying frak about any of it so long as Saviell continues to keep him by his side and remains willing to keep giving him the most incredible fucks of his life. 84.) Dysfunctional:He’s so used to living his life in a nonstop cycle of missions and training, with little time for personal diversions and even less time for any kind of significant relationship not modeled in some fashion on that of a teacher-pupil bond, that it doesn’t even occur to him that his relationship with Saviell would be considered unconventional, at best, and dysfunctional, at worst, by the majority of the rest of the human and near- human population of the galaxy, until after Saviell stops accompanying him on the majority of his new missions and it occurs to him (eventually) that, since he’s lucky to see the man more than once or twice in the space of a month, it would be insane to turn down any offers he might receive, either while on mission or when he’s returned to his new home and base of operations, since only a fool would expect physical fidelity in a relationship involving as much distance and time spent apart as theirs so increasingly does (and, while he might perhaps be a bit more inclined to be possessive and/or obsessive than normal, when it comes to Saviell, Ferus Olin is most certainly not a fool). 85.) Fight:By the time Ferus begins to suspect that he’s been not just a little bit misled (to make the organization look better to a possible new recruit), perhaps, but actively lied to, about the nature of the organization he’s so eagerly allowed himself to be recruited to, he’s learned enough about the corruption in the Senate and in the Order that frankly it matters less to him whom it is he’s allied with and why than it does that at least they’re doing what they can to fight that corruption and strive for order and true justice in the galaxy rather than simply letting the jaded corporate sharks and the money- grubbing conglomerations and porcine greedy Senators and two-faced, bought off Masters of the High Council run wild and do as they wish. 86.) Harder:He learns, by degrees, to be harder, to be less concerned with fairness than with justness, less concerned with avoiding causing pain than with doing the greatest possible amount of good for the greatest possible amount of beings, to harden his heart against the whining of those who put profit above all else and try to use the law to get away with thievery and rapine, to care less about the letter of the law than that which is obviously right or wrong and to be willing to sacrifice his own conscience and peace of mind for the greater common good, and, only a few years after his arrival on Byss, finds himself looking back on the fair-playing and utterly taken advantage of fool he was, while he was still in the Jedi Order, and wishing that he’d thrown his scruples aside, after the whole thing with Jenna Zan Arbor, and cornered Skywalker, made him remember what they’d been and what he’d been taught of himself by fucking the boy raw and using his self-hatred as a weapon until he once again had the boy begging Ferus to strip the skin off his body and kissing his feet for teaching him how to use pain to cleanse himself of his faults. 87.) Work:His work, as one of the Brotherhood, has, overall, been remarkably like that of a member of the Jedi Order, with a few telling exceptions – no limits imposed by the politicking of the High Council or the Senate politicians who’ve allowed themselves to be bought off by the corporations and so-called "special interest" groups, meaning that there’s no longer any need for him to worry about upsetting anyone’s ambitions or purse strings; no need to be careful of the so-called rights of his targets or the lives of any hired thugs (guilt often very much so being a matter of association, in all truthfulness); no need for the gathering of physical evidence or concoction of clever plans to make the criminals expose themselves (if he’s been given a target, it’s because the researchers of the Brotherhood have found evidence enough of wrongdoing, after all. He goes in; he uses his talents to get the target alone or at least as alone as possible, using the Force to keep anyone from struggling too much; he makes them confess guilt or innocence and, if they’re innocent – a possibility that he hasn’t quite consigned to the impossible file, though it certainly hasn’t happened yet and he finds the probability of it happening increasingly slim. There have been a few who weren’t guilty of all of the specific crimes he went after them for, but they were all guilty of enough others to more than warrant punishment – erases their memories of his visit, but if they’re guilty he makes them record a list of all of their evil deeds and then suicide [Force persuasion really isone of the most useful things in all the ’verse, as he more than has cause to be aware of], though not until after deeding their ill-gotten gains to either their surviving victims or else, if there are no such survivors, to the Brotherhood; and, if there’s anyone at hand still alive and unbroken enough to rescue, he either turns them loose with plenty of creds from those who’ve hurt them and the names of some professionals for doctoring/therapy or else sends them to Byss to be patched up and given truly meaningful work, helping to care for the members of the Brotherhood or helping to track down other criminals for the Brotherhood to take care of), which certainly helps make things go muchfaster; and, best of all, no need to ever leave loose strings or have to worry about criminals using lawyers to get out of ever having to pay for their heinous crimes – and, frankly, the cleanness and simplicity and utter efficacy of his new job so far outweighs the old one that he can’t help but feel even more disappointed and disgusted with the Jedi Order and the increasingly apparent corruption plaguing it. 88.) Overflow:The brevity of most of his missions means that he’s able to go on a lot more of them at much, much less overall risk to himself; yet, because he’s always careful to search out all of the victims of his targets (his gift allowing him to get a recitation of names and/or descriptions all the way back to days of childhood bullying), he gathers far more allies and friends than he did as a Jedi, with the result being that the operation of Byss grows by leaps and bounds and their network of information gatherers and spies manages to spread out through the galaxy with such speed that they quickly end up discovering more targets than they can easily keep up with or take care of, causing Ferus to go out of his way to try to search out more operatives closer to his own levels to try to recruit, to deal with the overflow. 89.) Support:He advances steadily through the Brotherhood’s ranks, his strengths and ability to get things gone permitting a rapid rise that often requires Ferus to call on his particular talent for smoothing ruffled feathers, to keep fellow members disgruntled by both his spotless record and his increasingly meteoric ascension from trying to do anything to get in the way, trip him up, or slow him down, eventually resulting in a fairly solid block of support and power resting squarely behind him, with almost all of the support staff joining in on his side. 90.) Urge:It’s a fairly simple thing to do, to organize a network of spies to keep track of Obi-Wan for him, and the regular reports and holo footage are supremely comforting, most of the time, though increasingly Ferus finds himself having to fight hard against the urge to try to order someone into going after and taking out Skywalker, knowing, logically, that it would be little more than a death order (the boy is a fraud, but he’s clever and powerful and supremely terrified of death, besides which he also happens to currently be protected by the actual Chosen One, who’s thoroughly enamored by the boy’s wiles, meaning that anything short of dropping an actual supernova on the boy is supremely likely to end in messy failure), but so increasingly furious with the idiot that he all but itches bodily with the urge to take Skywalker out. 91.) Ache:He surprises himself by missing Tru, even though he’s still not at all sure that the Teevan ever told him the complete truth about anything, much less that thrice-damned lightsaber, finding himself at odd times turning about to ask Tru something or to share a joke or some small anecdote, only to be reminded all over again that he’s no longer in the Order and Tru isn’t likely to be there by his elbow ever again, the jolt of loss and anger making him twitch and frown with ill will towards those who separated them, the Teevan’s absence like a nagging itching ache from a wound that won’t ever quite fully heal. 92.) Itch:There are plenty of people in the Brotherhood to distract him from his losses and ill-treatment by the Order, and he certainly avails himself of them (and why not? They’re available, and it’s one of the easiest and surest ways to let him work his particular brand of magic, binding hearts and minds securely to himself. Something about such intimate contact, even if it doesn’t particularly translate to anything much more than the scratching of a mutual itch or a way to show strength, helps to solidify his allure, his hold, his power over others, and it’s not as if he’s bound himself to someone to whom he owes faithfulness. Unless he’s right and it’s meant to be Obi-Wan, then he’s yet to find the other half of his soul, if indeed such a single being truly exists); yet, he finds himself often distracted by memories and easily bored, his liaisons rarely lasting even as long as they had at the Temple, given how much harder he finds it to devote enough of his time and attention either to attempts to be courted or attempts to seduce others. 93.) War:When the war starts, he’s faced with the dilemma of wanting to fight for the people and knowing without question that neither side in the conflict truly deserves to win – that it would, in fact, spell disaster for the sentient beings of the galaxy, should either side win – and is relieved to discover that the mastermind behind the founding of the organization is laying plans to sweep in at the last moment, when one side or the other has finally managed to win a definite overall victory, and then crush the winner utterly, so that both Separatists and Republic Loyalists can be removed from the galactic playing board and a new and truly orderly power can be created from out of their ashes and unite the galaxy once and for all behind a truly justrule. 94.) Concern:The first time one of his pathetic targets refers to him (hysterically) as a Dark Jedi, his first response is to laugh; when the babbling fool soils himself and begins to beg and grovel for the "mighty Sith Lord" to excuse his ignorance and spare his poor wretched life (he does neither, of course. The fellow is thoroughly despicable, a thief and a liar and a seller of children. He deserves a slow, agonizing death, and Ferus strains his mercy considerably in order to kill him fairly quickly), though, he begins to wonder, a little, about his methods . . . though his concern last no longer than the identification of his next target, a drug dealer who likes to take his pleasures with prepubescent humans and near-humans and then feed them to his pet rancors when he’s done with them. 95.) Reveal:He has personally identified, hunted down, and killed precisely eleven hundred and seventy-nine unabashed degenerates and their equally vile lackeys and hired blasters before the Brotherhood’s leader sees fit to reveal himself to Ferus . . . and by then, of course, it’s already far, far too late to try to protest or to break free or indeed to do much of anything at all but allow Sidious to name him his star pupil and assign him control over the whole of the Brotherhood that is the Master’s Byss project, accepting the power and trust eagerly, unhesitatingly, without any questions or reservations, swearing to do Darth Sidious’ will and to craft the Brotherhood into a force for order such as the galaxy has never known or dreamed of, before. 96.) Disagreement:His recruiter and still sometimes lover, revealed finally as Malorum, a Dark Adept of exceptional power, ambition, and lack of morality, takes vicious exception to Ferus’ advancement within the Brotherhood, having long coveted such a position of power for himself, and responds by attempting to drug Ferus with a powerful mind-altering substance (similar to some of Jenna Zan Arbor’s monstrous concoctions) that would, if ingested, essentially strip him of his will, addict him to the drug, and render him utterly dependent on Malorum, resulting in a certain . . . disagreement and the dealing of a lesson that begins with Ferus’ hands around the man’s neck and his cock tearing apart the man’s ass, even as he uses the Force to methodically break each and every one of the tiny bones in the man’s hands and feet, progresses to a force- feeding of the drugged wine to the sobbing, pathetic wreck, progresses through what is, to Malorum, no doubt an excruciating three months of withdrawal during which he makes sure to torture and rape the man at least once every day, and, eventually, ends with Malorum quite willingly prostrated at his feet, begging for Ferus to have his way with him and to do anything and everything whatsoever he might will with him, just so long as he might prove to be of some use to Ferus. 97.) Fun:It’s almost as much fun to break Malorum’s protégée as it was to break him, though there is somewhat less satisfaction to be found in her body than in the stripping away of her shields, Hydra having long since taught herself to ignore most kinds of pain and to register very few emotions indeed, in order to survive her apprenticeship to such a sadist as Malorum. 98.) Attention:The truly lovely thing about breaking people is that as long as a modicum of attention is paid to the process(es) by which the specific individuals break, those beings can be pieced back together again in such a way as to preserve all of the best parts (their brilliant minds, for example, or their utterly ruthless methods of operation against properly given targets) while also entirely removing their undesirable parts (personal ambition against Ferus, for example) and forcing them to a certain loyalty (even though, before, such a thing might’ve been absolutely alien to their true natures) that they will neither be able to nor want to deny, and, with this truth staring him in the face again, following his breaking and refashioning of Malorum and Hydra, he once again finds himself cursing the scruples that kept him from breaking Anakin Skywalker and remaking him as something of absolute no use to the Jedi Order while he still had the chance. 99.) Lunatic:Ferus may be in charge of the Byss project, but that doesn’t mean he’s suddenly turned into a raving lunatic wanting nothing but absolute power and not particularly caring how he gets it or how many beings have to suffer for him to get it: he’s a Jedi, as he always has been, a warrior for peace and order and the preservation of the greatest common good, and if he has to use Sith, Dark Jedi, Dark Adepts, and other such Force-benighted corrupt souls in order to do the Force’s will and return sanity to the galaxy, well . . . if the so-called Jedi are too corrupt to help him, then they deserve neither their titles nor any pity, as far as he’s concerned, and, if the scum are all so eager to be used, then who is he to refuse them the chance to be of actual, practical, constructive use? 100.) Easy:It’s easy, so ridiculously easy, to bind them all to his will – break a few to inspire fear; give or promise some others what they most want, to win them over; say what is necessary to make each member of each stupid splinter sect believe that he is one of them and will eschew others and favor them, when all is said and done; and shine so brightly (so darkly, so deliriously) in their eyes that they go all but mad with the desire to follow him – that he almost (almost!) feels the nagging tug of a disturbed conscience, for so clearly taking advantage of beings who’re obviously too stupid to even realize that they need to be trying to defend themselves against him. 101.) Advocate:Sidious, while obviously pleased with the level of control Ferus has asserted over his subordinates (since, after all, his power over them all has dramatically cut down on the amount of lives lost and resources squandered to restless ambitions and petty fears and angers, making them that much stronger and permitting them to do much more than Sidious had ever hoped they could to help pave the way for his Dark Empire), is almost as blatantly suspicious and discomforted by the sheer amount of awed adulation behind most of that loyalty and obedience, and Ferus finds himself having to literally play Sith’s advocate, to stress how important it is that Sidious should triumph in his plans and how much Ferus longs to see the day when the hypocritical, blind, weak, pathetic Jedi Order is cast down in ruins, to distract him and reassure him that Ferus has no designs on his as yet unrealized throne, subtly weaving the Force into his words to divert and dazzle the Sith Master with visions of a future where Sidious rules unquestioned over a utopia of a Dark Empire. 102.) Danger:The very fact that Sidious can be glamoured by his weaving of words and the Force would tell him that the Sith isn’t fit to rule anyone or anything (much less the whole of the known galaxy!), even if the man’s hatred, bigotry, and fanaticism hadn’t already set all of his internal danger senses to screaming with the man’s sheer wrongness, and it is in the aftermath of that meeting (in which he has been forced to so demean himself as to all but pant with eagerness and unctuous, sycophantic gratitude, at the Sith Master’s suggestion that he will have to consider the matter of a new, far more appropriate name for Ferus) that he promises himself that, if the Order doesn’t discover the monster hiding in plain sight and rend him limb from limb from limb for his sheer effrontery, he will kill Sidious himself, with his own hands, rather than permit him to be crowned emperor of anything. 103.) Shock:When Sidious is cast down, it is as if a shriek of joy has torn through the Force, all but deafening him with happiness and relief; yet, when that pretender, Anakin Skywalker, forces the true Chosen One to inflict whatever hideous scourging of the Force it is that Obi-Wan is tricked into performing, the shrieks and wails and piteous keening and awful screaming of curses seem endless, as if every negative emotion ever felt by every being to ever live in the galaxy have all been gathered together and shoved headlong into the Force, making it all but impossible for him to move, much less think or be able to function, for over a week, though his recovery from the massive shock is far quicker and more thorough than that of the rest of the residents of Byss, many of whom are left utterly catatonic or essentially insane from the awful experience. 104.) Fight:The decision to declare himself not only the leader of the Byss installation but the heir to all of Sidious’ plans and power and everything that implies, even if it means having to pretend to be a Sith Lord and take on a Sith title for himself, isn’t exactly a hard one – someone has to take a stand against the insanity of a remade Jedi Order largely under the control of the self-proclaimed Sith’ari and save the Chosen One from his clutches, after all, and it would be foolish indeed to waste such obvious resources, especially given that so many of the residents of Byss have good reason to hate both the Jedi and the Republic and will surely be willing to fight, especially if they feel as if there might be advantage in it for them and, more importantly, for him, since he’s gotten them to all but worship him, by this point – but he finds it harder than he expected, to actually assume a title and take on the mantle, even if the discovery of the strangely menacing black armor makes it easier, in a way, to live the lie, the mask hiding much he might not have been able to properly sublimate, otherwise. 105.) Monster:Tarkin is unquestionably a monster (he knows it as soon as he gets within sensing distance of the man and gets nothing but an overwhelming sense of ravening evil), he still owes that psycho Jenna Zan Arbor a hideous death, and this insane notion of breeding clones of Sidious (who was fairly handily defeated by Obi-Wan and Skywalker, so really, he honestly doesn’t see the point) makes his head ache all the way down to his teeth with the sheer illogic of it; he wants access to the designer disease that’s supposed to target sentient species resistant to the Force (and, thus, likely immune to his particular . . . charms), though, and his army is not yet so large that he can afford to turn down allies with such resources as these individuals command, so . . . the alliance is made, even though he can already tell that it will never (can never) last. 106.) Value:There are certain things that he’s deliberately refrained from ever mentioning to anyone, usually because he expects the knowledge to be of personal value to him someday, and the fact that he not only knows about the so-called Witches of Dathomir but also knows exactly where Dathomir is located in the galaxy, due to an extra project he did once for a history course at the Temple, is one of those things he’s assumed he’ll be glad to know of, eventually, and he’s not disappointed, when the time comes to consider spreading the word that there’s an alternative to this so-called New Jedi Bendu Order and its New Alliance of the Republic: expanding his own forces is the first thing that he thinks of, then, and the possibility that Dathomir could essentially be an unchallenged recruiting ground is the second, leading to the discovery of and persuasion/conversion of a group of such fiercely devote warriors for his cause, in his name, that he essentially gains an army of fanatically attentive, extremely strong Force Adepts to act as his personal guard. 107.) Moment:There are some who, for whatever reason, struggle violently to avoid being captured and swayed by him to serve, but he considers them of little moment: with ten thousand Dathomiri in his camp, what could a few hundred ragged fugitives possibly ever do to harm him? 108.) Nexus:The Dathomiri, despite their fierceness and bizarre superstitions, are a surprisingly spiritual, almost mystical people – he suspects that their disgraced Jedi founder may’ve been Nabooian, despite the rarity of Jedi who hail from that planet, given how closely their ritualized worship of the Force as a living agent of life and of good (or of death and evil) in the universe seems to echo the Nabooian anthropomorphizing of the Force as a goddess of light and water and life – and it is supremely easy to use that, to bind them even more closely to him and his cause, since apparently he appears to them more as a nexus in the Force than as a regular person. 109.) Fortuitous:The Dathomiri, surprisingly enough (or perhaps not so very surprisingly, after all) have legends of a figure that sounds (to him) very much so like the Chosen One, of a figure he interprets to be himself – a leader, a messiah, one who will bring them to the living avatar of life and change and power that is the Force – and also of a Darkness, an opponent, a corrupter and devourer of life, an agent of chaos and entropy and death that sounds an awful lot like Skywalker or Tarkin or both, to him, and, if it weren’t so fortuitous as to plainly be the work of the Force, he would almost suspect that the record keeper of Clan Dancing Springs is either deliberately lying to him or else clumsily attempting to please him by telling him only things she believes he would want to hear, for really, it makes things so very easyfor him as to almost seem too good a thing to be true. 110.) Reward:Hydra and Malorum are a good working pair – they mesh well, compliment each other, and all but complete each other, in a way that almost makes him think of the best Master-Padawan pairs or one of the oft partnered Knight teams, put together time and again because they function so perfectly as a unit – and they’ve done good work for him (working brilliantly and tirelessly to capture and bring him the Dathomiri for conversion, for example), since he broke them to his will; therefore, he decides to reward them by making them the first couple whose marriage he personally presides over and blesses, joining their hands and, with the Force, infusing his voice and his hands, proclaiming them wed, two now forever one, telling them to make each other happy and wishing them many long years together and healthy children to enrich their lives, feeling that wish take an all but tangible form as it passes from his lips to his hands upon their hands, Hydra’s silver eyes flying wide with something like shock as a wave of the Force similar to but not quite the same as healing energy floods down into her, helping to make her ready to conceive. 111.) Familiar:He dreams, sometimes, of a young man – about his height, with pale skin, gray-green eyes, dark hair bleached an almost metallic gold on the top layer, but with darker amber streaks underneath, oddly familiar– who is sometimes with a young boy with bright blue hair and dark eyes and sometimes engaged in activities that tend to preclude other beings, and it happens enough that he wonders, occasionally, if this Roan person (as the boy calls him) isn’t someone he was supposed to have known, in a life where perhaps that debacle with the High Council never happened and Anakin was instead revealed for the fraud he truly is, permitting him to stay in the Order and win over and, eventually, claim the Chosen One for himself, without the need for all of this fuss (all of this pretending and performing, this circus) and bother . . . ***** The New Hero’s Face ***** Chapter Summary Here, again, is the "infamous" poetry assignment that so badly disturbs Anakin. Mid Rim Contemporary Culture - Advanced Seminar The New Hero’s Face By: Ferus Olin; Darra Thel-Tanis; Tru Veld   　 Pour the dream. Speak in myth. Pen words of story to call the hero: transfigure life.   There is no more luxury for modernism. It is out of the question: there is no schizophrenic euphoria, only hard truths (thoughts) leaking out of shadowed corners.   For tragedy, one must have a hero with afatal flawthat will cause hisfall, guided by the hand offate. For tragedy, one must haveempathy. For tragedy, one must havedestiny. For tragedy, one must havelove andbetrayal, but above all, there must bedeath. No, above all, there must be astory. Words shape (distort) what is real. By capturing the truth in words it changes. (We are all shoved into the spaces between the lines.) Words have power. Words can carve (change) create (cheat) solidify a hero out of pure need.   Fight not with fate: ask no questions: it’s how the story goes. (How itmust go.) Be happy: walk alone: die their champion when they scream for blood. (Sacrifice – destiny – darling –hero!) Create your chains, as (mirror mirror O mirror) their need creates (shapes) you.   "O my darling child, you are beautiful." Your soul is a temptation.   There is no need for fiction. Not in this. Dissolution is delightfully easy. There is bone there is broken glass there is lying (phantasmal thoughts) and no perfect endings.   This is the way the story goes. The rules bind like ropes.   Click.   and the hero in the story, the bloodstained cloaked stranger with dark(bright) eyes and full whirl of cape flapping, with soft mouth and iron jaws and a voice too light (dark) to remember or forget, he heard the hitching shrill and turned back, shining   Click.   To escape, all one must do (I defy. I am!) is choose to break (the soul caught alight) the law.   ( . . . )   The only guarantee is balancebut balance canshift.   All things end (say die and I will die; say die and watch me die) we all fall down (bang bang you hit the ground) not with a bang but a whimper.   Heroes die, you see?   (Myths that are believed in tend to become true.)   Heroes die again (and again) and again.   The trick – (Click.) The trick – (Click.) The trick is transmutation by words to (freedom) transformation (metamorphosis) resurrection (creation) the consumption of death – (death, thou shalt die) for change is ownership. (Self-realization.)   ( . . . )   (You hit the ground, darling. I think you just died, sweetheart.)   Bang.   Bang.   (Laughter.) (Dreams.)   Perhaps this is victory, too.   End Notes Clarification Notes: 1.) Readers should pleasenote that the details of Ferus’ backstory as regards to his parents and him being a Theelin-Epicanthix-Firrerreo-human mix are mostly original, as the creator of this particular EU character (Jude Watson) presents him as if he were human norm but describes him as having distinctly two- toned hair (dark brown but with a prominent streak of gold), as though he were Firrerreon or had at least some Firrerreon blood. The decision to give Ferus a Firrerreon mother and a Theelin-Epicanthix- human hybrid father came about largely as an attempt to explain his appearance, his exceptional grace and skill at fighting, and his deceptive/secretive nature. Readers should also please note that, while I don’t typically regard him as being quite as dark as the version of Ferus presented here, I do take a very different view of Ferus as a character than that taken in the EU by Ferus’ creator, Jude Watson, who created him to act as a foil for Anakin and proceeded to paint Ferus as though he were the hero and Anakin as if he were no more than a monster in training. In my opinion, the very fact that the EU writer fails to understand that Anakin came to the Order as a generous and open-hearted and loving and helpful and eager to please child and is gradually turned into something of a megalomaniac by the High Council’s eventual insistence that he’s the Chosen One and that he should be able to “bring balance to the Force” and that Jedi, as a whole, tend to be a lot more egomaniacal and self-righteous and certain of their own right and ability to do whatever the hell they want (so long as they can justify it as the will of the Force or in some way required by the mandate of a given mission) than normal folks, much less a former slave, would most likely be, she has no grounds to complain if her foil is written as such while Anakin is written as the actual hero of the story (as he’s gorram well supposed to be, after all, all things considered!). 2.) The notion that Sidious believed so little in the Sith Rule of Two that he was already deliberately gathering various users of the Dark Side to his side long before he was in a position to ever declare himself Emperor is well established in both canon and EU, and frankly I think it’s ridiculous to assume that he would’ve left someone like Ferus alone, once he’d been turned out of the Jedi Order. The idea that Sidious already would’ve been working on what he eventually intended to become his throne world, on the Deep Core planet of Byss, in the years leading up to the Clone Wars, while perhaps not so precisely established by EU, is at least probable, in my opinion, given that populations were forcefully relocated there to work as slave laborers following the end of the Clone Wars. Thus, I’ve placed Ferus on Byss, as the one who would become the new leader of this gathering of Dark Side Adepts, Prophets of the Dark Side, Dark Acolytes, Dark Jedi, those who would’ve been Inquisitors, Dark Side Elite, various different agents of the Emperor, or etc., and all other lesser Force Adepts (including former Jedi initiates stolen from such organizations as the Agri-Corps), as collected by Sidious prior to his death. 3.) Darth Sidious may not have known about the existence of Dathomir or the Dathomiri, prior to the end of the Clone Wars (though apparently the new Clone Wars animated series is retconning this), but the Jedi most certainly did know all about the Witches of Dathomir, having lost Chu’unthor because of them and essentially been forced to abandon their mobile praxeum program because of it, and, given that Ferus is very good at gathering information (even encrypted data kept in the restricted files of the Jedi Archives, given his friendship with a certain extremely skilled slicer by the name of Tru Veld), that means that Ferus most certainly could’ve known about both Dathomir and its Witches. 4.)As always, readers interested in knowing who the physical models are for EU characters, like Ferus, Tru, Darra, Roan Lands, Trever Flume, Malorum, and etc., or for original characters, like Jedi Knight Nemaria Tennyai, for that matter, should please consult the latest versions of my posted lists of cast original and EU characters and for handmaid(en)s and other important Nabooian characters, which are available on my LJ! Please note that characters who may be alluded to but not referenced by name or only mentioned in passing are considered too minor to be cast at this time, and that readers should feel free to imagine them howsoever they wish (within reason, given their genetic backgrounds)! It’s safe for readers to assume that, once I’ve made the decision to cast a character on a given person from the real world, that character’s physical model does not and will never change, even when moving among different AU series, unless specifically noted in the author’s notes! Please drop_by_the_archive_and_comment to let the author know if you enjoyed their work!