Chapter Text
Only a slight ripple went through the Force the moment Count Dooku died. The power of the dark side remained steady, even though there was one less Sith in the galaxy. Most who were capable of feeling such disturbances wouldn't realize exactly what had caused it, but Asajj Ventress knew he was gone. Someone had beaten her to it.
She'd been just beginning to hunt down her latest quarry, some fool who'd tried to swindle the Hutt clan and get away clean, when she felt her old master's demise, and it brought her every thought to a dead stop. What in the hells was she supposed to do now? Every miserable credit she'd smuggled away, every exhausting hour spent drilling herself on saber combat, every painful blow from a bounty that she'd endured, pushed through… they'd all been in preparation for the day she'd hunt down Dooku and have her revenge. The hatred she'd kept burning in her chest months after leaving the Sith abruptly had no fuel, and its extinguishing ached like a twisted form of grief.
Ventress pulled her ship out of hyperspace, abandoning the jump to Dantooine and her pursuit of the swindler. Floating purposelessly in empty space just off the hyperspace lane, she dropped her face into her hands and let shaky breaths pass through her body for a minute. When she felt tears starting to well, though, she seized control of herself once again with an iron grip, and straightened. Dooku didn't deserve anyone crying for him, even if she did so because she could no longer gut him. Anyone who might mourn had been long ago – by his own hand – driven away, killed, or shaped into something incapable of feeling, and Ventress counted herself firmly in the latter category.
If her quest for revenge was over, she might as well go home. Ventress plotted the jump to Dathomir almost numbly. Landed amidst the wreckage of battle droids and blasters, scattered where they had fallen and starting to rust now. Walked what had once been a narrow forest path, now a wide swath of land lined with charred, snapped trees and stained with blood, towards the village where she'd been born. Pine Point. It had been night when the droid army had slaughtered the inhabitants, and by the light of day, the destruction to the architecture was visible – wooden houses torn down, stone temples charred with blaster marks.
She expected to find bodies, but to her surprise, it took a bit of searching. A trail of blood led her into one of the largest stone buildings, half underground, where someone had clearly dragged each nightsister's body. They were laid out neatly, side by side, in three rows, most still dressed in the red hooded cloaks they'd been wearing during the battle. An energybow or a shortsword was placed on some of their chests, arms draped over the weapon before rigor mortis had set in, forever binding the sisters to their weapons.
The scent of decay was not as overpowering as she expected. The cool air was saturated with a charred, earthy smell, like a pungent summer flower turned burnt offering. Death only lurked as an undertone. Ventress knelt beside the nearest sister and looked closer at her face, already in the gaunt, darkened stage of decomposition. Whoever had laid the women to rest here had also smeared a thick yellow oil across their foreheads – the source of the smell. It was as dry now as the corpses.
Ventress lifted her head upright, searching the Force for any sign of life, but whether it was a survivor or a kind stranger that had done this, they were long gone. Mother Talzin, too, was no longer present. Her spectral form was powerful, and should have sensed Ventress reaching out if she still lived. If none of the nightsisters remained, then laying their bodies out with their weapons like this was pointless. Ventress didn't know how to raise them; her initiation into the tribe had come just before the slaughter. Their secrets were entombed with them.
She turned back to the dead woman next to her and realized with a jolt that, despite the decay, she recognized the tattoos that adorned her face. This was more of a girl than a woman – she couldn't have been more than twenty standard –, and she'd kindly welcomed Ventress into their sisterhood just before the ritual that had returned the former Sith to her rightful place. Ventress could still remember the encouragement in her silver eyes, a quick departure from the formality of Dathomirian culture. She couldn't remember the girl's name.
Ventress tilted her head back and let out a quiet wail of agony. The only answer was her own echo, harsh in the small stone room, and the quick rustle of wings as small birds outside took off into the red mid-morning sky. She dropped to her hands and knees, almost retching on the choked back sobs and the intensity of the smell, before rolling to her back and lying beside the nameless little sister. If she stayed here long enough, maybe whatever cruel fate of the universe had taken them would be kind enough to let Asajj Ventress join them. She closed her eyes and sank as deep as she could into a meditative trance. Let the sorrow swallow her consciousness whole.
When she awoke again it was dark, and her limbs were heavy like stones. Her stomach howled with hunger and disgust. She must have been on the abandoned cemetery floor with the dead for the entirety of the day and much of the planet's night as well. Ventress pushed herself to her feet. The smell of the burial oil was making her dizzy, and she gave the sister's bodies one final look before returning to the fresh air in the village center. She found an energy bow and hunted; she built a fire and plucked the game bird clean before skewering it and settling down to wait as it roasted. Above her, in the parts of the black sky not obscured by smoke or branches, other stars of the outer rim were visible and bright. She knew them by their habitable planets – Mandalore, Yavin, Felucia, Rattatak. Although, she thought with a wry smile, calling Rattatak habitable was a stretch. There were people who said the same about Dathomir, though, and generations of nightsisters and brothers had lived and died on the same earth where Ventress now tore into her carnivorous meal.
There was nothing here for her on Dathomir. Some desperate, lonely part of her, restrained only by the need for revenge on Dooku, had thought maybe there was death. Hoped, even, that there was some reunion to be found in dying alongside her sisters. But despite one of these now decimated homes being her birthplace, and the fact that they'd ritualistically taken her in, this place wasn't her home, and the planet didn't seem to want her offered end.
Maybe the Force had something else in mind for her. Ventress didn't believe in destiny, because if she did, it would owe her a hell of an apology, and she didn't like having unsettled debts. But maybe she had unfinished business elsewhere. She chewed her mouthful of meat and gristle and looked back up at the stars. Despite the sliver of copper starting to appear on the horizon, Rattatak's sun sparkled back down at her, small and distant. If there was any place she ought to return, the planet where she'd been once a Jedi and twice a slave was the one.
Gods damn it.
Ventress finished eating, put out her fire, and returned to the ship, watching the sunlight slowly start to filter through the broken pines and the ferns lining the path. Scarlet light bathed the clearing by the time she finished her walk, and the metal of her ship, the Vindication, gleamed. As she lowered the boarding ramp, she caught a glimpse of her reflection, warped and blurry, in the polished steel above the door. A fresh crop of hair, the same dull blonde it had always been, had started to grow in across the top of her head. She'd been so out of sorts she hadn't remembered to shave this morning, or the day before.
She ran her fingers along one of the tattoos over her skull, muscle memory telling her exactly where it was. The hair there was just long enough to feel beneath her fingertips, stubbly and new. It felt like a promise from her body, that it would offer her a fresh start over and over again, that things could still change if she would allow them. She let her hand drop, tracing along the angle of her jaw and then bringing her fist to rest over her heart, a gesture of reverence. Maybe she'd let it keep growing for a change.