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Ventress has never regretted falling to the dark side. She likes the power that comes with her role, likes the freedom to murder people as she chooses. Likes the impractical and dramatic outfits that best suit her role as a Sith assassin.

But she will admit that she’s never much liked Castle Serenno.

It’s the smell, she thinks as she pushes her way through the heavy front doors. The scent of old age and mothballs and the mustiness of potpourri.

Count Dooku glowers at her from his seat by the needlessly extravagant window. He looks unsurprised at her arrival—obviously, since this is his ancestral home and his guards by the gates keeping him informed—and he raises one dark eyebrow at her exaggerated and only slightly sarcastic bow.

“What news from Ryloth?”

“The Twi’leks are fighting the occupation, united under Cham Syndulla. The tide is turning against us, Master.” Ventress pauses, then wrinkles her nose. “Do you think we could open a window in here?”

“Unfortunate,” Dooku says as though he hasn’t heard her question. “And Tambor?”

“Alive and in command, for now.” Or whatever passes for Tambor’s command. “But with the Republic forces, the Jedi—it’s only a matter of time.”

Dooku stands and his cloak sweeps theatrically behind him. Ventress wonders if he’s noticed there’s a dust-lepi clinging to the hem. “And Grievous is otherwise engaged.” He crosses the room to the strategy table, Ventress following, and flicks on the holoprojector. “Tambor will simply have to make do with what he has.”

Ventress studies the map and drums her fingers against the durasteel edge. It’s not that she has any regard for Tambor and his droid-lust, or for the chronically subjugated people of Ryloth. But she’s so tired of losing to the Jedi, the smug, sanctimonious bores that they are.

What they need is something the Jedi haven’t seen before. Something…unexpected. “What about Vader?” Ventress suggests, already moving holographic troops across the table. “None of the Jedi have faced him before. They’ll never see it coming.”

Dooku scoffs. “Ryloth has valuable resources. I don’t want to see it razed to the ground.”

“If you want the Jedi dealt with, you could do worse than Vader.” Admittedly his showing on Maridun had left something to be desired. But for all his faults, the boy is effective when it comes time for brute strength.

“I can’t see how.” Dooku sneers off towards the middle-distance and his already dark Force signature curls bitter. “The brat might be part of Sidious’s Grand Plans but he’s nothing more than an ill-bred nuisance. He’s always fiddling with the Castle’s wiring—as if I need some Outer Rim vagrant meddling with hundreds of years of Serenno engineering—and he’s constantly underfoot. I wonder if he’s really worthy of the lofty expectations Sidious has for him.”

“Nothing will temper Vader like some trial by fire.”

If possible, Dooku’s lips stretch thinner. “If Sidious wants me to temper Vader, he’ll have to come right out and ask.”

“Right.” As though placing Vader under his tutelage hadn’t been enough of a clue. But Sidious and Dooku’s powerplays are none of her business, and frankly, too creepy for her to try and analyze. “Well, then Ryloth is something of a foregone conclusion. It’s a shame. I didn’t think the Twi’leks had it in them.”

“It’s no matter,” Dooku snaps, and waves a hand so the map flickers off. “All will fall into line, in due time.”

A confident assessment from a man who can’t get out of babysitting duty. “Of course, Master. If that’s all…”

“You said there were Jedi present.” Dooku turns towards her with a dramatic flutter of his cloak. “On Ryloth. Which ones?”

Of course. Dooku knows the Jedi quite well, considering he personally betrayed them. What an awkward declaration of war that must have been. “The disapproving one with the purple lightsaber, mostly. But Kenobi was there too. He liberated several villages.”

“Obi-Wan.” Dooku sighs and stares out the window for just long enough that Ventress wonders if he’s forgotten what they’ve been talking about. “You know, that’s my one regret from Geonosis.”

“Really?” Ventress has read up on Geonosis and can think of at least a dozen things she’d have done differently. For example: “You don’t regret losing a duel to a thousand-year-old frog?”

Dooku shoots her a dark look. “Master Yoda is the finest swordsman the order has ever produced, even if his age and complacency have blinded him to the truth. But I was referring to Obi-Wan’s fate.” Dooku’s face takes on distant, nostalgic air and Ventress prepares herself for some rambling reminiscing. “He was Qui-Gon’s Padawan, you know.”

Ventress swallows a groan. “I know.”

“Qui-Gon knew the Jedi had lost their way. That they’re subservient to an immoral facsimile of a democracy.” Dooku’s voice takes on an arch, almost offended tone. “And I know Obi-Wan is a smart man, a reasonable man, or else Qui-Gon wouldn’t have held him in such high regard. But when I spoke to him, he wouldn’t hear me out.”

“This was while you had him trapped in a hovering prison, yes?”

Dooku continues as though she hasn’t spoken. “I explained the corruption in the senate, the insidious forces at work behind the scenes. I needed him to listen, to see reason.”

Ventress nods slowly. “Which is why you then had him chained up in an arena to be devoured by monsters. To reason with him.”

Dooku’s sour expression pinches further. “What would you have me do? The Republic is failing, and the Jedi with it. It’s only a matter of time. And think of how powerful we’d be with Obi-Wan among our allies.”

“Kenobi seems capable,” Ventress allows. He’s clever, certainly, and handsome in a stodgy, upright sort of way. “I hadn’t thought we were lacking for power.”

“Obi-Wan has power of a different sort,” Dooku insists, with all the barely-restrained pride of a doting grandfather. “The separatist movement has received some…bad press as of late.”

“We have kidnapped quite a few children.”

“To free them from the shackles of a dying, corrupt order,” Dooku retorts. “The point is, Obi-Wan could help us combat the smear campaign. He’s a very persuasive man: if the people were to see the unassailable General Kenobi alongside us, the galaxy would fall into line without need for violence.”

Dooku cuts himself off and twitches his cloak around his shoulders.

Interesting. Ventress hadn’t though Dooku shied away from violence. “I can’t claim to know Kenobi all that well.” In fact Ventress doesn’t think they’ve ever had a conversation without lightsabers drawn. “But I get the sense he’s a loyal, principled man.” She’s seen the way he acts with the other Jedi, the clones under his command and the civilians he protects so nobly. “I imagine it would take more than one involuntary conversation with a traitor to his order to seduce him to the Dark Side.”

Dooku sniffs officiously. “There’s nothing more seductive than the truth.”

Maybe for him. From the way Dooku tells it, his Fall was a simple ideological dispute that escalated very quickly into a deadly galactic conflict. Her own Fall, meanwhile, was the only rational response to the betrayal and murder of her master.

She doesn’t even want to imagine what might have led Sidious to the Dark.

However Kenobi is another breed entirely. She’s heard whispers that he came close after the death of his own master, the sainted Qui-Gon Jinn, when he defeated Sidious’ first apprentice on Naboo. But whatever temptation he might have felt, he clearly resisted and even now after years of conflict, the man’s Force signature remains untainted by the constant bloodshed.

Despite his admittedly capable leadership, his undeniable skill in combat and his high command, Kenobi has always struck Ventress as more a lover than a fighter. A man who seems more natural rescuing war-orphaned Twi’leks and dangerous, exotic creatures than he does on the battlefield. A man who flirts with her mid-duel, who charms every politician he comes across, who only ever loses his composure in defense of someone—

Hmm. Now that’s an idea.

“I don’t know about that,” Ventress says an idea solidifying in her mind like a blade out of the mist. “Have you considered an actual seduction?”

Dooku stares at her, clearly gobsmacked. “I beg your pardon?”

“Come now.” Ventress prowls closer, reveling in Dooku’s obvious discomfort. “Can’t you imagine it? In the aftermath of a pointless battle, adrenaline coursing through his veins—a touch of flirtation, some honeyed words, a warm, welcoming body—” Ventress drags a sharp fingertip across the transparisteel to hear it screech. “After all, the first tenet of our code is that there is only passion.”

Dooku sputters like a failing engine. “That’s ridiculous. Obi-Wan is a Jedi.”

“He’s still a man.” And all men are the same, she’s found, when you dig down to their marrow. Kenobi might be the poster boy for the Jedi Order, implacable, steadfast and composed but beneath all the self-denial and repression, he’s subject to the same impulses, the same weaknesses as anyone else.

What a delicious thought.

“Even so,” Dooku grits out. “What exactly is your plan? You find him, convince him not to kill you, have your way with him and then what? You think bedding you would be enough to convince him to abandon his order?”

“You’d be surprised,” Ventress retorts, and Dooku’s glower slides back into place. “But no, I’m not the right person for this particular approach.”

Not that she’d say no to a crack at the famed general, to testing the limits of his legendary…restraint.

A pity, but Ventress is nothing if not a pragmatist. “Kenobi knows me, for one thing. He’d never trust me. He could only be seduced away from his precious order by someone unknown.” Besides, Kenobi is so heroic, so unflappably good. “We’d need to send someone intelligent, maybe a little unworldly…”

“Then who? This isn’t the Old Republic where we had legions of Sith to call upon for deranged schemes. You can’t possibly mean me when you’re well-aware that Obi-Wan is—was—my grand-Padawan.” No, she doesn’t mean him. What a disgusting thought. “Grievous isn’t even a Sith, despite his affectations”—also he doesn’t have a body— “And Sidious would rather have Kenobi killed outright and fed to his annoying little pet—” Dooku catches sight of her expression and the Force swells cold. “Vader? You cannot possibly be serious.”

“Why not?” The more she thinks on it, the more the idea makes sense. “Kenobi’s never seen his face—no Jedi has. The few times Vader’s appeared in battle were skirmishes against the Republic’s Clone Troopers.” And say what he will about Vader’s tactics, the boy definitely doesn’t leave survivors.

“That is hardly my only objection to this insanity.”

“And you know Vader has been chomping at the bit to get out of here. Something about your brand of hospitality doesn’t seem to be to his tastes.”

“If Vader finds my hospitality lacking, he is welcome to return to Sidious where I can promise he will receive a far colder welcome than anything I’ve thrown at him.”

And Ventress knows Dooku means that quite literally. The cleaning droids are still finding shards of crystal in the carpeting from the last hurled tumbler.

“I suppose Vader’s tastes aren’t especially important,” Ventress muses. Although it’ll make things complicated if the boy’s fascination with droids extends beyond the…socially acceptable. “You just don’t want to discuss where Obi-Wan’s tastes might lie.”

From the look on Dooku’s face he’d rather swallow his lightsaber than entertain the conversation, but either his desire to win this argument or his irrational fixation on Kenobi compels him onward. “From what Qui-Gon told me,” Dooku manages through a haze of scandalized manners, “Obi-Wan’s singular brush with romance came when he spent a year with the Duchess of Mandalore.”

People tell Ventress things too and from everything she’s heard, Dooku’s information is wildly out of date. “So you’re saying that he’s susceptible.”

“To a duchess,” Dooku insists, the puffed-up aristocrat that he is. “Obi-Wan is clever, sensible and erudite. Vader is barely house-trained.”

“Darth Sidious sees something in him.”

“Brute force,” Dooku snaps. “Nothing more. He’s nothing but a slave to his worst instincts.”

Worst instincts are the point of the Sith, but even so Ventress isn’t sure she agrees. “He’s smarter than you think.” Vader is definitely clever with machines, a quick study in all forms of combat and ferociously efficient with battlefield tactics.

Whether those skillsets will translate to the nuances of seduction remains to be seen.

“Vader has spent most of his adolescence in semi-isolation,” Dooku says, as though this truth isn’t largely his own fault. “He’s incapable of polite conversation, let alone the subtleties of—”

“Diplomacy?”

“Precisely. Vader is a lost cause. Five minutes’ conversation with him will be enough to send Obi-Wan screaming back to the Jedi.”

Ventress lets her smile tilt sharper. “With any luck, they won’t be doing much talking.”

Dooku makes a noise like Ventress was sick on the rug. “Now really. I know you favor a furtive approach, but this idea is patently ridiculous. Vader’s virtues, such as they are, lie in violence and rage. Failing that, he’s simply an impediment to—to our greater purpose.”

“I disagree.” Not about the violence and rage, Dooku is absolutely correct on that front. Vader’s temper is something awful to behold. “You have to admit that if nothing else, the boy is quite pretty.”

Shockingly pretty. To the point that the first time Ventress saw Vader brooding his way around the castle she’d assumed—to her disgust—that the boy was Dooku’s plaything. Dooku wouldn’t be the only wealthy, powerful man to keep some nubile, smooth-skinned creature around for his own amusement.

She was disabused of this notion first by Vader’s overwhelming presence in the Force, like a hurricane made flesh, and then again the very moment Vader opened his insufferable little mouth.

And fortunately for them all, Dooku seems horrified at the very idea of Vader’s prettiness. “I admit no such thing. I’m not sure the boy even bathes.”

“So we’ll hose him down before sending him out. Look, you want Kenobi by your side. I want him to stop interfering in my missions.” Ventress shrugs a shoulder, and adds, as an afterthought: “Vader probably wants a companion who doesn’t electrocute him quite so often.”

“If he didn’t mouth off, I wouldn’t have to—”

“Do you have a better idea?”

“Literally anything else is a better idea. Why don’t you try killing another one of Obi-Wan’s friends, see if that works? I always found Ki-Adi Mundi rather annoying.”

“If you like.” It’s no skin off Ventress’s teeth. She isn’t even sure which one Ki-Adi is. “But I still think my plan is worth a try.”

“Maybe if we were trying to corrupt some simple-minded senator. But Obi-Wan isn’t a fool. His own safety, Qui-Gon’s memory and reason couldn’t sway him to our cause.” Dooku steeples his fingers and stares out towards the window again. “It’s impossible that an ill-bred whelp could succeed where others have failed.”

“Where you’ve failed,” she reminds him.

“The details are unimportant,” Dooku retorts, irritation bleeding through the Force. “What matters is that Obi-Wan is far too intelligent to be taken in by anything you or Vader might be able to conjure.”

Ventress hums and leans back against the table. “You sound very certain.”

“I’d bet my life on it.”

What little there is left, given his advanced years. “There’s no need for all that.” Although it would simplify things—as things stand they’re skating dangerously around the boundaries of the Rule of Two. “How about something a little less permanent and a little more…tangible?”

Dooku’s eyebrows draw together as he surveys her posture. “I don’t follow.”

No, he wouldn’t, she’s made sure of that. But these opportunities present themselves so rarely. No matter the odds, she has to try. “There’s a holocron in your possession. It once belonged to the Nightsisters,” she says, and Dooku inhales sharply. “I’d like to examine it.”

“I’m not sure what you mean.” Dooku adjusts his cloak around his shoulders as though the velvet will disguise the obvious lie. “Darth Sidious keeps rare artifacts like that in his personal collection.”

“Please.” Ventress waves a hand and slinks closer, watches her master through slitted eyes. “It’s none of my business, really, but we both know you have a collection of your own.”

Ventress has seen it from time to time, a locked safe in Dooku’s quarters, keyed to his Force signature, perhaps, or maybe his blood. She’s seen him open it before with a pass of his hand, and she’s seen the little devices glimmer from within—has recognized the distinct etchings on one in particular—

“What Sidious doesn’t know won’t hurt him,” Dooku says, which has always been the opposite of Ventress’s own experience. She’s starting to think that Sidious is aware of everything that happens in the galaxy. “You do realize that your plan would fail, yes? Obi-Wan would kill Vader on sight. The brat isn’t exactly subtle.”

Ventress doesn’t think Kenobi kills anyone on sight, let alone handsome strangers he’s never met before. “Then there’s no risk to you.”

Dooku tips his chin up haughtily. “When I win, and you’re tasked with collecting Vader’s mangled corpse from the battlefield”—Ventress assumed they’d leave him there, actually— “I’d have you visit Coruscant.”

Ventress raises an eyebrow. “I often visit Coruscant.”

“Not this area, I promise you that. There is a shop in a small district, very exclusive, very…specialized. I haven’t been back since, well—” Dooku coughs delicately. “And I understand I’m no longer welcome there. But there is an item that has eluded me, has taunted me these past few years.”

“And you want me to get it for you,” Ventress confirms. Knowing Dooku, this is probably some new bioweapon, or maybe just a regular horrible weapon. Or throne polish. She can’t imagine why Dooku doesn’t send her now, without the pretense of a wager, since she’s already at the Sith Lord’s beck and call.

“The shopkeeper is a very suspicious sort (Chiss, actually) and he’s recognized every attempt I’ve made so far to get around my banishment. And truthfully, it’s not worth the resources to…persuade him. Nor is it worth risking Sidious’s notice,” Dooku says, a tension working its way into his shoulders. “But this man uses the finest blue milk in the galaxy, and the rind, the aroma—”

“Pardon me,” Ventress interrupts. “But are you describing cheese?”

“Yes.” Dooku draws himself to his full, impressive height. “What of it?”

Ventress boggles at him. She’d imagined Dooku would ask her to kill someone, someone inconvenient and possibly explosive, probably. Failing that, she’d have expected being asked to retrieve something dangerous.

Maybe she’s underestimating the value and potency of this cheese, but Ventress won’t look a gift orbak in the mouth. “Done,” she says immediately. With any luck, she’ll never have to go this blasted shop at all. Ventress sticks out her hand, offers it to her master. “So it’s a deal? I’ll prepare Vader for his latest assignment?”

The Force trembles for a moment, Dooku’s arm twitches like he’s about to accept, and then: “Sidious will never allow it. He doesn’t like sending his little pet out without supervision.”

‘Little pet’ is a hilarious way of describing the murderous creature down the hall, but Ventress knows capitulation when she sees it. “What Sidious doesn’t know won’t hurt him,” she reminds him, and Ventress feels the cracks widen in Dooku’s resistance. “Look at this way: either I win, and you get Qui-Gon’s Padawan back. Or you win, Kenobi and Vader kill each other, and you get one less headache to deal with—plus a delivery of the finest blue milk cheese your apprentice can barter-slash-steal.”

“Obi-Wan will never fall for this.” Dooku sighs. “But I suppose if nothing else, it will be nice to have that pathetic wretch Vader out of my hair for a time.”

He extends his hand then and Ventress takes it, grinning. “Wonderful. And may the best Sith win.”

---

Left to the privacy of her own thoughts, however, Ventress is forced to admit that this plan is actually insane. First, it’s not exactly much of a plan at the moment. And second, the linchpin of it is unaware of his role and quite possibly their target’s existence.

But Ventress has faced bad odds before and come out triumphant. She gathers herself and starts off towards Vader, following the familiar maelstrom of his presence in the Force through the castle’s long, stone corridors.

She doesn’t know Kenobi’s type beyond, as Dooku rightly pointed out, duchesses. She’s never met Duchess Kryze herself, but she knows the woman to be a firebrand—passionate and unyielding. It’s possible Kenobi likes people who shout at him, which would be very convenient given Vader’s temper. And even if he doesn’t, well, hopefully Vader’s beauty will compensate for his lack of social graces.

But would Obi-Wan Kenobi, famed High General, really Fall for a pretty face?

It seems unlikely—foolish, really—on the face of it. Best case scenario is that Kenobi beds the boy then abandons him, returning blithely to his little cloister and his self-righteous light. Worst case is that he kills Vader and then Ventress discovers the line at the cheese monger’s is excruciatingly long.

Somehow, though, Ventress still wants to see what happens. Her own perspective has always been that the Force is a tool, something to be used to achieve her goals. And since her Sith training began her relationship with it has become ever more complicated. Even still, there’s a surety that she can’t shake, that maybe the Force is telling her something important.

And so she pauses in the hall outside the training salle and watches as Vader slices his way through his katas. They’re meant to be meditative—certainly that’s how her first master tried to teach her. She wouldn’t know it by looking at Vader’s movements, at all that unbridled raw power.

The boy is slashing from pose to pose like there’s a host of enemies at his throat, the scene lit only by a blade of crimson plasma. His hair is damp with perspiration and his lips are pulled back from his teeth in a sort of snarl. Vader looks pent up, restless—as he should be. He’s been confined to the castle for weeks. She can see the proof of it in the collection of newly repaired droids charging in the corner and in the fluid, recently-tuned movements of Vader’s prosthetic arm.

Vader seems to notice her and powers down his saber, flicking on the overhead lights. “Ventress. What do you want?”

Isn’t that the question of the day? Ventress surveys him for a moment, his black, stark clothing sticking damply to his frame. He’s still a bit skinny for her tastes but filling out from when she first met him. Very broad shoulders, a narrow, tapered waist and absurdly long legs. If her own experience has taught her anything, legs like that can be a real asset.

Yes, she can appreciate the boy’s deadly grace—not to mention his sulky pout at her interruption. “Perhaps I was admiring your form,” she suggests. Maybe Vader will respond more favorably to compliments rather than thrown glasses and electrocutions.

“Hmm.” Golden eyes narrow over flushed cheeks. “I guess you could stand to learn something.”

On the other hand, Ventress found a bantha prod on Kilia IV and has been meaning to test it out. “I need to talk to you,” she says, and approaches Vader. He’s rather sweaty after his training—Dooku may have been right about hosing him down—but otherwise looks unbothered by all the recent activity, his breathing steady and even.

Good stamina: a selling point for the galaxy’s most unlikely dating profile.

Vader huffs and scrapes a curl away from his forehead. “I’m busy.”

Yes, fighting no one alone in a darkened room. Truly Ventress is interrupting activities of enormous importance. But instead of snarking at him she reaches into her belt and pulls out a pouch. “So you don’t have time for a snack?”

Vader’s eyes gleam and his homicidal scowl shifts to something almost boyish. “Shuura fruit candy?”

Ventress tosses over the package, which Vader tears into with alarming relish. “I have a mission for you.”

Vader swallows his first mouthful. “From my master?”

“It’s of the utmost importance.” Which isn’t an answer, but Vader is too busy gnawing on a hard piece of candy like a womp rat to notice. “Come with me,” she declares and Vader, to his credit, falls into step beside her.

Ventress watches him from the corner of her eye as he munches happily. He looks young like this, stripped of the glower that usually creases his handsome features. Maybe she ought to feel bad for misleading him but then, he is an adult now. It’s obvious in the set of his brow, the sharpness of his jawline.

Besides, there are many worse missions. Maybe he’ll even enjoy himself.

“Do you know General Obi-Wan Kenobi?” she asks, carefully casual as she leads him down the corridor. Their footsteps are very quiet in the long, dim hallway.

“Master has mentioned him,” Vader says slowly, licking his lips stickily. “He says that Kenobi is constantly interfering in his plans and preventing him from unifying the galaxy.”

Unifying the galaxy. Ventress barely resists rolling her eyes at the boy’s naivete. “Yes, that’s the man. Kenobi is proving to be something of a problem for our operations.”

Vader pops another square of candy. “And you want me to kill him.”

“We’ve tried.” And isn’t that an understatement? Ventress thinks Sidious has spent more credits trying to kill one singular Jedi than he has on the rest of the war effort. “Kenobi has proven uncommonly resourceful.”

“Nobody’s resourceful enough to survive a decapitation,” Vader says, matter-of-factly. “Have you tried that?”

“Have I, the Sith assassin, tried decapitation?” Ventress sneers and Vader has the gall to look uncowed. “It’s not the technique that needs brainstorming, it’s getting close enough to actually make the strike.”

“Hide in a bush.”

“Hide—look, we don’t need him dead.” Debatable, but true enough at the present moment. “We need him. We need him to join our cause. Think of all we could accomplish for your master.”

“Why would we need Kenobi?” Vader asks, which is a fair question. Ventress herself asked it not half an hour earlier. “I’m not even sure why we need Dooku. Or you.”

Ventress, unaccustomed to self-restraint, takes ten long seconds to exhale away the urge to punch Vader in his smart little mouth. “You know they call Kenobi ‘The Negotiator’?”

“I know it’s the name of his Star Destroyer.”

“Yes, no one can say the Jedi don’t have a well-developed sense of irony,” she says, rounding the corner. “But the moniker is apt. Kenobi is a very convincing man. If we had Kenobi, the galaxy might be persuaded to our point of view without the need for violence.”

“I hadn’t thought we were persuading the galaxy,” Vader says, almost lost. “I thought we were eradicating those who opposed us.”

“That too. But eventually the war will end, presumably.” Ventress doesn’t especially care how, so long as she comes out on top. “If the fighting were to end sooner, think of how happy your master would be.”

Vader nods, very slowly, but confusion flits across his features.

Ventress rolls her eyes. “Fine. Think of all the droids we’d save.”

It’s almost tragic how quickly the boy lights up at that. “Right! It’s so hard to repair them after the Jedi are through with them. I’m already having a tough time finding proper logic matrixes that haven’t been melted.”

And what a disaster that must be for all the refurbished mouse droids. “Exactly. A quick end to hostilities benefits us all.”

“So what’s the plan? You need me to get you close enough so you can talk to him?”

“No, Kenobi and I have already met.”

“And you’re both still alive,” Vader confirms, brow creasing as though meeting someone and not immediately killing them has genuinely never occurred to him.

“He’s met Dooku too,” she says, and Vader’s face darkens. “He tried to convince Kenobi of our righteousness already and failed.”

“That makes sense.” Vader chews his candy loudly. “Dooku’s not a very smart or interesting person.”

Ventress snorts, but doesn’t disagree, and she opens the door to the rooms she keeps in the castle. She’s rarely here for long stretches, certainly not if she can help it, but it’s useful for storing her collection.

She’ll need every bit of it to make Vader more convincing.

Vader (at Dooku’s discretion, she assumes) dresses entirely in featureless black. As though Dooku is training him to be a stagehand instead of a Sith Lord. He looks handsome in it, but more by accident than by design. Under the right hand, with the right emphasis to his striking features, this boy could be lethal.

Well, lethal in a different sense than usual.

So she knows Vader’s own wardrobe will be largely useless. Dooku is taller than Vader but not so much that his clothing is totally unsuitable. If Ventress were feeling bold she could pilfer something from its fusty depths.

But Dooku’s clothes look like what someone would wear to their own mummification. Not, perhaps, the best look for seduction.

“Take off your shirt,” she instructs Vader, who has been looking around the room with open bafflement. “Your clothes are all wrong.”

Vader frowns but does immediately comply, stuffing the rest of his candies into his waistband and pulling off his outer tunic. “What’s wrong with my clothes?” he asks, like a man who has never even set foot on Naboo.

Which he probably hasn’t. For a moment Ventress almost feels bad for the boy. “They make you look dangerous.”

“I am dangerous.”

True, but it would carry more weight if Vader didn’t still have powdered sugar on his lips. “Yes, but we can’t just walk up and announce ourselves as Sith.”

“Well.” Vader tips his nose up haughtily, a slightly adorable recreation of Dooku’s signature look of superiority. “You can’t.”

Hopefully Kenobi incorporates spanking into whatever else he decides to do with Vader. “Neither can you if we want this plan to work.” She flicks at his undertunic, and Vader takes the hint, tugging it upwards. “You’re going on a mission, Vader. You’re going to be convincing him.”

Vader’s voice comes muffled through the fabric as it catches on his tangled mass of curls. “I am?”

That he sounds astonished is not surprising given Dooku’s focus on combat above all else. And frankly, Ventress wants to keep Vader astonished. The less the boy knows about this plan, the better. “Remember, Kenobi already knows me. He won’t want to listen to me. You’re new. You’re unexpected.”

Unexpected is how pretty Vader is without his shirt. He’s all lean muscle and smooth skin—smooth aside from the tell-tale scarring of lightning damage and the burn marks where his prosthesis attaches.

He’s also looking unsure, which is curious. Vader is a confident creature, usually to the point of arrogance. To see him chewing on his lip is…unusual.

“I know Master wants me to finish my training before facing the Jedi,” he admits, as though it pains him. “He doesn’t think I’m ready.”

“Before fighting them,” she corrects. Truthfully she has no idea what Sidious wants Vader to do, nor does she care. “This is totally different. Your master will be so impressed with your ingenuity. With your cleverness and ambition.”

Vader’s lip pops free and his pout turns eager. “Do you think?”

Maybe. Ventress isn’t Sidious’s therapist. She’s never even met the man. “Your master despises Kenobi. He’s the paragon of the Jedi Order, a man above reproach. It will be delicious to see him Fall.”

Vader appears to mull this over, extending his arms while Ventress holds a scrap of crimson fabric to his chest. The red brings out the warmth in his skin tone but might be a touch too Sithy for an already dubious plan.

“I guess so,” Vader eventually says.

This hesitance too is new, is interesting. It’s something she’s never seen on another Sith. Dooku seems eager to drag Obi-Wan and the other Jedi down with him. Ventress meanwhile is open to the path of least resistance. What’s Vader’s angle? “Tell me: why did you Fall?

It’s a personal question, one she’s not sure she’d appreciate being asked herself. Vader would be within his rights to storm out on her, or at least say something obnoxiously rude as per usual.

But he shrugs his strong shoulders as Ventress measures the span of them. “I don’t know, the same reason as anyone,” he says, rather vaguely. “Master explained that it was a path to freedom.”

A fair enough opinion. Ventress doesn’t know Vader’s life story and she doesn’t especially care to hear it. But there are many who would change their circumstances, who are trapped beneath the heel of oppression. “Freedom is important to you, then?”

“Yes. I wanted—” Vader breaks off abruptly. Rubs at the back of his neck like it pains him. “More people deserve to be free.”

“Kenobi is bound by the Jedi Code. Imprisoned by it, almost.” She certainly felt trapped by the Code once her master died. Embracing the dark side—it gave her a taste of something she’d never had before. “It dictates every aspect of his life, controls him. With the Sith, he’d be free too.”

Vader nods, very gravely. He almost looks concerned for Kenobi, which is sweet. Misguided, but sweet. “We’ll tell him that.”

Ventress’s fingers find a bundle of shimmersilk—a pale purple affair that ties behind the neck and on her, beneath the swell of her breasts, leaving her cleavage and back totally bare.

Vader has no cleavage to speak of, but perhaps with some adjustments—she nudges the boy to stoop down slightly so she can drape the fabric across his shoulder. “Kenobi won’t believe us,” she says.

“Then we’ll tell him the same way Master told me.”

Ventress eyes his scars, not all of which bear the hallmarks of Dooku’s displeasure. Lingers briefly on the faint lash marks across his shoulder blades. “Perhaps not quite the same way. A more delicate touch is warranted.”

Vader looks down at his hands. Flexes the fingers, both flesh and metal. “And you want me?”

There’s something to be said for Vader’s flashes of self-awareness. The boy really only thinks of himself as suited for violence, doesn’t he? “I know you can be subtle,” she reminds him. She’s been instructed to aid with some of his less destructive training, presumably at Sidious’s bidding since Dooku is apathetic at best. “You’ve been taught to hide yourself in the Force. How to lie.”

“Yes,” Vader admits, begrudging. Ventress has seen him do it. Has seen him wrestle down the supernova inside him, beat it into submission until at a glance he’s nothing but an intensely angry young man.

Vader doesn’t do it often, but under threat of his master’s displeasure—

Ventress fastens the top around his neck, tugs on the strings until his chest is almost bare. “Well, time to put that training to use.” He’ll have to if he wants Kenobi to approach him with anything other than abject terror. “We aren’t convincing Kenobi to join the Sith, or not in those words,” she clarifies, before Vader can argue. “We’re simply showing him what a life outside his restrictive Code would look like.”

And here is proof of that freedom, right before her eyes in pale shimmersilk.

Ventress’s clothes don’t fit Vader but then, that’s rather the point. And he really does look good in a tawdry sort of way. The stretch of his shoulders. The length of his bare throat. His almost offensively tiny waist.

Ventress can easily see this boy writhing under the lights of some exotic nightclub, dappled with sweat and loose with exertion. All too ready to stretch his sculpted frame across some admirer’s sheets.

Kenobi is a perceptive man. Maybe he’ll be able to see it too.

“This shirt is ridiculous.” Vader plucks at the shiny fabric with obvious distaste. “You wear this? Aren’t you a little old?”

Or maybe Kenobi will kill him. If he doesn’t, Ventress might.

“I’m closer to Kenobi’s age than you are,” she points out. Which is actually something they might not want to emphasize, she realizes, studying Vader’s childish pout. They don’t want anything to trigger Kenobi’s self-sacrificing guilt complex.

Vader examines himself in the mirror, twists to frown at his naked back. “Why would dressing as a schutta help Kenobi understand freedom?”

Ventress is actually quite fond of that shirt and is increasingly less fond of Vader. “We’ll find you a different outfit,” she grits out.

“I still don’t understand,” Vader repeats, which isn’t surprising given Ventress has steadfastly refused to explain herself. If the boy wanted unvarnished truths, he might have chosen another career path. “Why exactly is the outfit important?”

“You’re going to be playing a character, so we need a backstory.” At Vader’s blank look, Ventress sighs. “Nothing intricate, don’t worry. But Kenobi acts like a gentleman. We have to assume he’ll ask for your name and profession before…”

Ventress trails off meaningfully, but Vader just purses his lips. “I could be a pilot,” he suggests, his eyes flicking to hers guiltily. “I wanted to be one, before—”

Before becoming a Sith acolyte, Ventress assumes. But a pilot makes sense. “It’s a good cover story,” she allows. “A good reason for, well—” She gestures at his missing arm, lets the polished dark metal speak for itself.

Vader considers this suggestion. “Maybe I lost it podracing.”

Maybe. Ventress didn’t think humans were capable of podracing. Hence the amputation, she supposes.

But this story does mean she ought to alter her approach. Dress Vader in something a little more Corellia and a little less Zeltros.

Ventress rummages through her closet again, this time with more purpose. She killed someone from Corellia not too long ago, actually. A freighter pilot who nearly stumbled his way into a Separatist outpost. She isn’t in the habit of stealing people’s clothing after killing them, but his shirt was of unusually high quality. An off-white fineweave with an open collar and tight sleeves. Far too long on Ventress, of course, but on Vader—

She slips the shirt over Vader’s head, ignoring his grumbling as he shoves his arms in with unnecessary aggression. There’s a spray of dried blood under the left arm which she hadn’t noticed, but that’ll wash. Since Vader got his hands on the castle’s appliances the washing machine has been efficient to the point of concern.

Vader looks…good. Not as overtly sexual as he did in her clothing, but he looks less like a Sith acolyte and more like an athletic young man with anger issues. She yanks the fabric tighter—if they add a belt around his waist, perhaps... “Kenobi needs to be shown that there’s much more to life than the confines of his dying Order,” Ventress says, picking up the threads of their conversation. “You know the Jedi are forced to repress their emotions? Repress their ambition? But deep down, they still feel those same drives. The craving for something…more.”

Vader nods, some kind of understanding dawning across his face. “Master told me some stories,” he says, which sounds like an utterly miserable experience given everything she knows about Sidious. “So we’re going to seduce Kenobi to the dark side with promises of riches or power or something?”

Ventress yanks his simple trousers higher, closer to the curve of his surprisingly shapely ass. “Or something.”

Vader’s hesitance comes through the Force. “There aren’t meant to be this many Sith, you know. I’m already going to have to kill Dooku soon enough. Isn’t this just making more work for myself?”

Vader probably shouldn’t admit to planned betrayal and murder quite so loudly in the palace Dooku himself owns, but Ventress isn’t his mother. “Dooku, yes,” she says instead, deliberately airy. “He was very opposed to this plan.”

Vader’s face clouds over, a muscle in his jaw tightens. “He was?”

Ventress tilts Vader’s chin down, ignores the brewing storm. Should she give him some eyeliner? No, best not to tart the boy up too much, or Kenobi will begin to suspect something’s amiss. “Dooku doesn’t think you’re capable of it.”

“He doesn’t? Why not?” Vader demands, possibly forgetting that he argued against his own suitability minutes ago.

“He already tried to tempt Kenobi to our side. Tried and failed. I don’t think he wants to be shown up by you.” Ventress lets some of Dooku’s usual disdain drip into her voice like poison. “He called you pathetic. A slave to your worst instincts.”

The Force rumbles around them, the air so thick with hatred and buzzing static that one of the droids in the corner chirps awake in alarm before settling itself back down.

Vader drags his mechno hand through his hair, clutching at the nape again, the top of his spine. “I’ll show him,” he snarls.

And now, even with his stolen shirt gaping around his collarbones, Vader again looks every inch a Sith apprentice.

Whatever happens with this plan, at least it won’t be boring.

“You know, I rather think you will.” Ventress tousles his hair, allows a curl to hang loose over his dark brow. “This will work, I know it. But try not to put out until the third date.”

Some of rage clears from Vader’s face as he blinks down at her. “Put what out?”

---

The battle of Ryloth ends (in the Republic’s favor, as expected), the armies disperse, and the remaining Jedi separate. The stern, serious one heads back to Coruscant but Kenobi, very interestingly, is sent off to some random forest moon in the sector to check on an outpost.

Sent there entirely alone.

Well. No one has ever accused Ventress of ignoring an opportunity when it presents itself so eagerly.

And so she finds herself bustling around a small clearing in the woods as Vader glares up at her. He’s kneeling on the ground and is, as promised, fully shielded. His eyes are now a pale blue without the darkness coursing through him and he’s uncannily quiet in the Force.

Outside of the Force, however—

“I’m just saying,” he grouses, shifting his weight on his knees, “that it’s not realistic.”

“Quiet, boy.” Ventress smears some mud across his cheekbone strategically, tears at his collar until the edge of one pink nipple peeks through.

“How would you have beaten me?”—with a truncheon, ideally— “I’m much stronger than you are. That’s why you’re an apprentice’s apprentice.”

Ventress pulls his hair harder. “I knew I should have gagged you.”

Vader bares his teeth. “You can try.”

“Stop snarling at me,” she chides. Like this, bound and kneeling in the dirt, he looks more like an angry tooka than an actual threat. “You’re a hapless pilot, remember?”

“I’m not helpless.”

“I said hap—hold still.” Ventress pulls out a vibroblade, which Vader eyes warily. She should be careful: Vader still has the Force, if not use of his arms, but they do really need to sell this scene. She makes a small cut above his right eyebrow, quite shallow, but facial wounds always bleed so heavily that it will still look dramatic to any witness. Vader, meanwhile, doesn’t even flinch, he just sulks at her like a youngling deprived of sweets.

“You know,” Vader says, like it’s only now occurring to him, “you should be injured too. Here, let me borrow your lightsaber—”

The Force tremors, a pulse of soft light breaking through the foliage, through the swirl of darkness between the two Sith.

“Hush.” Ventress shoves Vader into the dirt harder. “It’s showtime.”

And then Obi-Wan Kenobi himself bursts through the trees, as handsome and self-righteous as ever. His hair catches the sunlight like polished copper and his tidy beige robes show no evidence of his trek through the forest.

He must have sensed her presence, which was absolutely her intention. She’s been broadcasting general ill-intent as loudly as possible since they arrived. His eyes pass over her in exasperated recognition, then flit to Vader, bound and bleeding on his knees before her.

Ventress tightens her grip on Vader’s arms in an attempt to make him wince prettily and holds the blade tighter to his exposed throat.

Instead of reacting, Vader gapes up at Kenobi stupidly, lips slightly parted, his eyes alight with something like awe.

There’s something similar on Kenobi’s face as he takes Vader in, but it vanishes the moment he meets Ventress’s eyes again. “Ventress. What a lovely surprise,” he says, all coy flirtation as usual. “And I see you’ve brought a friend.”

“We’re not friends,” Vader objects grumpily. “She’s tied me up and cut me.”

The corner of Kenobi’s mouth ticks up. “Yes, I can see that. How very rude of her.”

Ventress holds the blade closer to the flutter of Vader’s pulse and doesn’t miss the tension that creeps into Kenobi’s jaw at the sight of it. “Step any closer and I’ll cut his pretty throat.”

Kenobi clearly has no idea what he stumbled across, either the fake scenario they’ve conjured up or the real one, but he adopts the charming, persuasive posture of the famed Negotiator as easily as anyone else might breathe.

“Come now, be reasonable,” he tries. “Your quarrel is with me. Let the boy go.”

Ventress shifts her grip so she can thumb at Vader’s open mouth. This might be a tense hostage situation—it isn’t, but it might be—but Obi-Wan is still a man. Ventress knows what thoughts Vader’s pink, slick lips might inspire in someone who’s never heard the insolence that primarily spills out of them.

“Why should I?” She traces the bow of his upper lip carefully. “He’s been ever so accommodating.”

Teeth close around her knuckle, sharp and sudden, and Ventress withdraws with a hiss, glares down at Vader’s smug little face, and backhands him.

The Force rushes at her, shoving her hard against a tree some meters away. Harder than she was expecting, actually.

Kenobi stands between her and Vader, his lightsaber drawn, and his breathing quickened. Vader spits from behind him—so she split his lip, good, her finger better not get infected—and Kenobi’s blade rises.

Ventress laughs, more of an exhalation than anything, but still. Vader is a total stranger to Kenobi, but she wouldn’t know it to look at him. She’d expect this sort of instinctual protectiveness from a parent defending their child.

Or a lover protecting their spouse. Fascinating. “Goodness,” she says, picking herself up off the ground. “What gallantry. What…vehemence. I hadn’t realized you two knew each other.”

Kenobi’s eyes, even bluer in the light of his saber, widen for a breath and then narrow. “Ventress,” he warns.

“Oh, never mind me.” She dusts herself off, flips carelessly up and back onto a sturdy branch. “I got what I came for.”

Kenobi makes to start after her but Vader squirms unhappily in the dirt, his arms straining against his ties, and the Jedi freezes.

“Until next time,” she says, with an ironic little bow, and leaps back until she’s veiled by the canopy. “If there is a next time.”

Kenobi huffs but powers down his saber, clearly assuming she’s run off as is her wont. Ventress, meanwhile, is fully shielded now, so she slinks around the branches quietly, peers through the leaves to see Kenobi kneeling beside the boy and cutting through his bindings.

Vader, still watching Kenobi like a youngling before a mound of gifts on Life Day, twists his arms free. “I let her win.”

Kenobi helps shake Vader’s arms out and then gingerly picks a fallen leaf out of his hair. “I’m sure,” he says, and he sounds fondly tolerant. “You’ve been very brave.”

Vader’s cheeks pink at that. “I’m a pilot, you know,” he announces, apropos of nothing.

“Are you?” Kenobi says, and Ventress hears the smile in his voice. Ridiculous. “And what did Ventress want with you that warranted such mistreatment?”

“That crazy witch”—rude— “shot me down and chased me through the forest, all because she wanted the location of some old temple I found.” Which is indeed the story they concocted, and easy enough to prove with the wreck they left at the edge of the lake.

Kenobi’s attention finally shifts from an intense perusal of Vader’s eyes to the topic at hand. “A temple? And Ventress was interested?”

“Yeah. If she’s looking for loot, she’s out of luck,” Vader says. Largely because Ventress already cleared it out weeks ago. “I didn’t see anything there but some moldy old rocks.”

Kenobi reaches into his utility belt and pulls out a small medkit, frowning when Vader doesn’t react to the sting of disinfectant when Kenobi dabs it against the cut on his brow.

The boy does, however, shiver when Kenobi offers his hand and pulls Vader up to his feet, holding his forearm for a beat too long.

“There are sometimes treasures for those with the power to see,” Kenobi says. They stare into each other’s eyes (which, really) until Kenobi breaks off with an awkward cough. “Was it a Jedi temple?”

“Maybe.” Vader cocks his head. “You’re a Jedi?”

He knows he’s a Jedi, obviously, that’s the entire premise of this mission. But somehow Vader manages to look genuinely curious. More an ingénue than a mass murderer.

“I am indeed a Jedi,” Kenobi says, almost wistfully.

“But I’m taller than you.”

Kenobi sputters. “Only slightly,” he says, which is true. They’re close enough in height and to each other currently that Vader could easily bite at Kenobi too if he were so inclined. “And what does that have to do with my being a Jedi?”

“Well,” Vader says, as if this topic is at all reasonable, “what if the enemy is standing on a branch you can’t reach?”

It’s a good thing Vader doesn’t talk to more people, because he’s demonstrably awful at it. But then, to Ventress’s shock, Kenobi laughs.

“You’ll find I’m rather resourceful,” Kenobi says, voice low and suggestive. Vader seems not to catch it though, just sways towards him like the damsel in a holodrama. “If you’re a pilot, how do you fit those long legs of yours into the cockpit?”

Ah, so Ventress was right about the appeal of Vader’s legs. She does so enjoy being right.

Vader doesn’t respond, choosing instead to stare at the fall of Kenobi’s hair as if in a trance. “You’re very handsome.”

As flirtations go, this is neither subtle nor charming, but Kenobi hums and steps even closer. “Thank you, darling. So are you.”

The tension between the pair of them is thick enough to cut with a lightsaber—and Ventress would be tempted if this absurd display wasn’t her goal. Vader tips forward, eyes fluttering shut—

Kenobi catches him by the shoulder. “Shall I escort you back to your ship?”

Vader scowls, but it’s less bloodthirsty than the one he so often favors her with. “It was destroyed in the crash,” he says, which is was. It was further destroyed after Ventress pelted it with rocks to ensure it couldn’t be flown any further. “I could steal the witch’s, I guess.”

“Ventress might object,” Kenobi says.

“We could kill her,” Vader suggests. “It’s two against one now. And she did hit me a bunch.”

She did, and given Vader’s first reaction to meeting a new person is to ask them to gang up and murder her, she thinks she ought to have hit him harder and more frequently.

Kenobi clucks his tongue. “Yes. She shouldn’t have done that,” he says, an edge of danger in his smooth voice. “Even so, I’m sure Ventress is long gone by now”—she buries her laughter in her cowl— “And I’m expected to report back. But I can drop you off somewhere?”

Vader steps closer again, erasing the distance left by Kenobi’s retreat. “I don’t have anywhere to go. Things have been tough since the war,” he says, peering up through his eyelashes like a wounded animal.

And Kenobi is famously a sucker for wounded animals. “Don’t I know it,” he says, rather sadly. “Well, I can always drop you at home—”

“I don’t have a home,” Vader cuts in.

And then, disastrously, there’s a very real flare of pain in the Force.

Kenobi, who unlike Vader isn’t a total idiot, catches it immediately, inhales sharply and swiftly. Ventress can very faintly feel the tendrils of his own signature reaching out. “You’re Force sensitive, aren’t you?”

And now the Force is thick with stifled panic. “I don’t—” Vader starts, and Ventress is moments from leaping back down, interrupting this catastrophe and killing Kenobi while he’s distracted—

“No, darling, hush.” The Jedi cups Vader’s cheek, strokes over the smooth skin. “It’s all right. Don’t worry.”

Kenobi doesn’t execute Vader, no. Instead he seems to be thinking very hard, the lines around his eyes tight as his gaze rovers over Vader’s damp, anxious face. The Force trembles for a moment, and then—

“Tell you what,” Kenobi says, “I’ll need to make a call first, but I really ought to check out that temple—before Ventress gets there, if at all possible.”

“It’s possible,” Vader says. It feels like it’s been a strangely long time since he’s blinked. “She has a head start, but she’s not much of a pilot. She barely knows how to do a tailslide.”

“That’s where you come in.” Kenobi says, instead of striking the boy about the head like he deserves. “I need a navigator. I’ve got room on my ship, and this way I can protect you in case Ventress comes back.”

“I don’t need protecting,” Vader mutters. But he leans into the pressure of Kenobi’s hand like a needy tooka.

Kenobi smiles, indulgent and affectionate. His hand gentle and compassionate on a boy who is sworn the service of the Jedi’s greatest enemy. “I know some people who would be very interested in meeting you.”

“Okay,” Vader says, breathless and besotted.

This is going to be hilarious to explain to Dooku when Ventress gets back.

Kenobi abruptly stops petting the Sith’s face and instead sticks his hand out for a more traditional greeting. “Where are my manners?” Which is hopefully a rhetorical question as his manners were clearly discarded the same place as his sense of caution and his sanity. “I’m Obi-Wan Kenobi.”

Vader bites his lip, watches him for long enough that Ventress wonders if he’s forgotten his own fake name, and then he takes Kenobi’s hand in his own. “Anakin Skywalker.”

Which is not the name they agreed on. But the Force trembles, and Ventress feels the oddest sense of foreboding.

---

The galaxy, however, does not stop spinning just because Vader and Kenobi have been deposited into each other’s orbits, nor does the war stop its creeping sprawl. Aside from a brief sneering remark upon her return to Serenno, Dooku seems content to let the matter of the wager pass from his mind entirely, or at least from their conversation.

It’s quieter in the days that follow Vader’s departure. The Separatist army has designs upon Felucia, so that keeps Dooku busy. And Ventress has her own concerns and schemes that keep her occupied. Without Vader, there’s no one to rouse Dooku’s ire, no one to set the castle’s portcullis ablaze and no one to slice into Ventress’s personal ship so the controls are reversed.

The machines are certainly running less smoothly than they used to, though, something she notices the first time a mouse droid shreds one of her socks.

Ventress is in the kitchen one afternoon, ten days or so after the start of Vader’s unsanctioned mission, when Dooku strolls in.

He has the look of a man who has never been inside a kitchen in his entire life, which is entirely possible. The serving droids usually tend to his basic needs, but Ventress suspects they might be on the fritz after the latest software patch.

Dooku doesn’t acknowledge her, just strolls towards the stove with his nose turned up. He has a tiny cut on his cheek, right above the line of his beard. As if he lost control of the razor while shaving.

Dooku turns his back to her and rummages around for a moment. There’s the sound of clicking, of muffled cursing, and then: “I don’t suppose you’ve heard from the whelp, have you?”

Meaning Vader, unless Dooku’s been forced to take in other strays while she wasn’t looking. “No, but I didn’t exactly encourage him to comm me with updates.”

“Hmm.” Dooku faces her and crosses his arms. “Sidious would have said something if he’d been killed.”

“I imagine so.” Ventress isn’t sure how he’d know, depending on where the killing happened, but she’s also learned it’s best not to doubt Sidious’s seeming omniscience. “The Jedi might have mentioned it too, if they’d managed to capture a Sith.”

“Yes.” Dooku drums his fingers on the countertop. “I do still have my sources within the Jedi. No one’s mentioned Vader to me at all.”

If Kenobi smuggled him into the Jedi Temple for an enthusiastic fucking it tracks that Dooku’s duplicitous sources might not be aware. Or that they might not be eager to share the news with a man who is mostly desiccated.

But Dooku’s prim fussiness has Ventress leaning against the wall with a smug grin. “Why do you ask? Do you miss Vader?”

Dooku huffs and puffs like a winded blurrg. “Certainly not. I thought I’d better keep myself informed.”

He turns again, filling a saucepan with water and slamming it down on the heating element. Beside him, Ventress sees an empty mug and the pathetic, shorted-out carcass of the electric kettle.

She returns to the throne room to examine the strategy maps for Felucia. Dooku joins her too, a mug of sad tea in hand and they’ve nearly worked out the blockade when—as though summoned from the Force itself—she feels Vader’s all-too-familiar presence battering against her shields, roaring towards them like a thunderstorm.

So Vader survived. Something in her chest unclenches, oddly. Ventress isn’t sure whether she ought to be feeling so relieved.

Vader stomps his way through the main doors and, without any preamble or conversation, deposits a dark mound of robes on the floor before him.

And Ventress has killed enough people in her day that she feels comfortable asserting that whoever is in there won’t be getting back up again.

Dooku, who had been watching this procession sneeringly, steps closer. Circles the strategy table, his back to the window. He looks down at the obvious corpse with a complicated expression, one Ventress can’t begin to parse.

Dooku strokes his fingers over his beard for a long, slow moment. “I suppose that’s Obi-Wan, then.”

A flash of blue, the buzz of plasma, and then— “You suppose incorrectly.”

Kenobi—for it is Kenobi standing behind Count Dooku despite the unlikelihood, holding his lightsaber against the jut of his grandmaster’s throat—looks very pleased with himself. As he should be: he has the leader of the Separatists at his mercy and when Ventress reaches for her own saber, Vader makes a dangerous, forbidding sound and shakes his head.

So Kenobi somehow compelled Vader to join the Jedi? Ventress will admit, she did not consider that possibility. Vader as she knows him is as ill-suited to the Jedi Order as a bantha is to Mon Cala.

But no. Vader is no longer dressed in his pilot shirt, but neither is he dressed as a Jedi. He’s clad in clinging low collared synthweave, but still in black and his eyes when he looks at her are as golden as before.

“Obi-Wan,” Dooku says, rather warmly given the man is holding him at blade point. “You’ve finally joined us.”

He’s right. Kenobi looks much the same as ever at first glance but on closer inspection, his eyes too are the trademark gold of the Sith, and his expression is a shade crueler. More than that, his posture has shifted too. There’s something different in the way he’s carrying himself, something…unrestrained.

He looks good as a Sith, actually, Ventress thinks. Handsome. He’s always been handsome in a bland, clean-cut sort of way, but now, with an edge of danger about him he’s something more. Titillating in a way General Kenobi never was.

But then Kenobi looks over at Vader, who is still standing officiously overtop a corpse, and his expression melts into one of soppy infatuation.

Ugh.

Kenobi keeps his saber trained on Dooku but steps back far enough to face him. “Joined you? I suppose you could say that.”

Dooku, whose ability to read a room has apparently deserted him in the face of this little family reunion, turns towards Vader. “So you’re not entirely useless after all,” he says. In Dooku’s defense, he missed it when Kenobi was making eyes at Vader. In his condemnation, Dooku ought to have noticed that the pair of them arrived together.

And maybe ought to have noticed the still-healing hickey on the underside of Vader’s jaw.

“He’s not useless at all,” Kenobi says, his voice very stern, but Dooku seems not to hear him.

“The boy is a catastrophe most of the time,” Dooku continues obliviously. “How he managed to persuade you when I couldn’t, when common sense wouldn’t is beyond me.”

It’s not beyond Ventress, but then Dooku never saw Vader in her slutty shimmersilk number.

“He persuaded me,” Kenobi says, with sneering emphasis, “only by being himself. By speaking of the injustices committed against him. His slavery. And your cruelty.”

Dooku blinks back at him, clearly baffled by this interpretation of his Sith lightning usage. “My cruelty?”

“And the cruelty of his so-called master.” Kenobi jerks his chin towards Vader. “Show him, darling.”

Vader stoops down to unwrap the cloak. The face is disfigured with hatred but there’s no denying it: Kenobi and Vader appear to have murdered the Chancellor of the Republic.

Chancellor Palpatine. Vader’s Master. Darth Sidious. Oh.

That explains a lot.

“Obi-Wan taught me that I don’t need a master.” Vader beams at Kenobi, a flush across his cheeks. “And so I killed Master—killed Sidious—so that I could truly be free.”

The open adoration on Vader’s face is sweet, or it would be sweet if he wasn’t standing beside a dead man whose heart has been burned out of his chest. And Kenobi’s own proud smile is just as saccharine.

At least their insane affection is clearly reciprocated. That’s nice, she supposes.

Dooku clearly disagrees. “You fool! How could you?” he demands of Vader, perhaps having forgotten the central tenet of the Sith. “After Sidious gave you everything, raised you up from trash—”

“He isn’t trash,” Kenobi interrupts, and his eyes burn darker.

“Obi-Wan, your taste in playmates is really none of my concern. Perhaps the little wretch is amusing as a bedwarmer, but as a Sith? He knows nothing of patience, nothing of strategy and nothing of the Grand Plan that Sidious and I had perfected.”

“I care nothing for your grand plans,” Kenobi says, evenly, “given what you and Sidious both inflicted on my beloved to attain them.”

“Your beloved? Obi-Wan, be reasonable. We stand on the precipice of something great. With you at my side as my apprentice, we can finally reshape the corrupt senate, the misguided Jedi Council. This kind of wanton impulsivity cannot stand,” he says, flicking contempt across the room. “We have no need for the foolishness of young Lord Vader—”

The rest of his sentence disappears beneath the drone of Kenobi’s saber, the hum of plasma and the heavy thud of Dooku’s head hitting the stone floor.

“His name,” Kenobi says. Almost hisses, “is Anakin.”

Vader clasps his hands to his chest, stars in his eyes, and nearly sprints across the room to throw himself bodily at Kenobi. “Obi-Wan,” he breathes. “Obi-Wan.”

“Anakin.” Kenobi powers down his saber, gathers the boy into his arms as Ventress pulls a face at the familiar smell of cauterized flesh. “My love. I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have presumed. After all he put you through—you should have been the one to kill him.”

Vader coos as he kisses Kenobi’s knuckles. “No, I don’t mind. I killed—killed Sidious, remember?”

Kenobi only clutches Vader’s hands more fiercely. “Yes, but I should have asked. I just got so angry.”

How very Sith of him. Ventress is almost impressed.

And Vader is too if the dilation of his pupils is any indication. The surge of lust in the Force.  “That’s okay. There’s nothing wrong with feeling strong emotions, especially in the face of injustice. Isn’t that what you told me?”

Kenobi simpers and tucks a curl behind Vader’s ear. “Quite right, my clever boy.” But finally Kenobi remembers there’s a third person (well, a third alive person) in the room with the pair of them and condescends to glare in her direction. “Would you like to kill Ventress, then?”

Ventress’s hand twitches towards her lightsaber. She’s gotten away from Kenobi dozens of times, but that was before. Against a more ruthless Kenobi, alongside Vader’s own brand of explosive power—

“No,” Vader says simply, so Kenobi steps closer, moves to strike her— “I mean, we don’t need to kill her.”

Kenobi raises an eyebrow, clearly confused. Ventress can’t say she’s doing any better. It’s not that she wants to die—she’d be quite put out, actually—but when has Vader ever held back from murder when it was presented as an option?

“Really?” Kenobi asks. Perhaps he’s remembering how many of his friends Ventress has personally killed.

Or former friends at this point, she assumes.

Vader shrugs and flutters his eyelashes. “She’s the reason I met you, after all.”

The Force swells with heat, with unfathomable adoration. “Oh, Anakin.” And Kenobi cups Vader’s jaw, twines one hand into his curls and sweeps him into a deep, passionate kiss.

Ventress watches them for a long, dumbfounded moment as Kenobi tries to lick his way down Vader’s throat (she’d expected a little more restraint from the man given the presence of two separate corpses) before she slowly and quietly starts making her way towards the door.

“Still,” Kenobi says, smiling at Vader’s irritated growl at the sudden separation, “isn’t leaving her alive a violation of the Rule of Two? I know I’m new to this, but I wouldn’t want to break the rules.”

Vader scoffs. “Nah, she’s not really a Sith anyway.”

Ventress can’t find it in herself to be offended. It’s probably for the best at this rate, if this is what the Sith have come to. “So that’s it, then. You’ve forsaken the Jedi. I never thought you had it in you.”

“I had no choice.” Kenobi smooths back Vader’s hair, dots a kiss to his forehead. “I gave the Jedi a chance, you know. I explained the corruption and immorality, told them what Anakin had suffered, what we would all suffer. They wouldn’t listen.”

Ventress hums. Perhaps Dooku was right about more than he’ll ever know. “Did you kill the Jedi?”

Judging from the surly look on Vader’s face, probably not.

“No,” Kenobi says, flicking Vader’s nose gently at the boy’s continued scowl, “and we won’t have to so long as they leave us alone.”

It’s not like the Jedi to leave two Sith unchecked in the galaxy, but that’s very much not Ventress’s problem.

Not anymore.

“What now?” she asks. If these two are planning on taking Dooku’s reins as leader of the Separatists, the galaxy is about to become a very interesting place.

Kenobi, now busy pressing down on Vader’s plush bottom lip with his thumb, doesn’t deign to look at her. “We’re on our way to Tatooine.”

Tatooine? That’s outside the purview of both the Separatists and the Republic. “That’s Hutt space.”

“Indeed. My Anakin has a few old friends there we’d like to visit.” Kenobi releases his hold on the boy and smacks his ass affectionately. “Grab your things, sweetheart, and we’ll be on our way.”

Vader does run off towards his old quarters—or Anakin, it would appear. The name suits him, or it suits him more than sweetheart, given his body count.

Ventress surveys the throne room for quite possibly the last time. “I’ll get out of your hair too, then. But first—” She crosses the room, sidles past Kenobi and kneels down at her former master’s side and, without further ado, severs his right hand at the wrist.

She did win their wager, after all.

Kenobi doesn’t ask what she’s doing, either disinterested in further dismemberments or too distracted by Vader’s noisy fussing in the background to spare her the energy. Ventress stands back up in time to see Vader rushing back past them, his arms laden with droid parts.

“Just a minute, Obi-Wan,” he says. There are several small droids already trailing after him like beeping ducklings behind their tall, evil mother. “I think I left the best soldering iron in the crypt.”

Ventress doesn’t even want to imagine what the boy might have been soldering in a crypt, but Kenobi, preposterously, watches him leave with an expression of complete and total devotion.

Ventress shakes her head. “I can’t believe that’s what you fell for.”

Kenobi smiles, a soft, soppy thing. “Anakin makes it easy. He’s such a clever, beautiful boy and far kinder than Dooku or Palpatine—than Sidious gave him credit.” Which, given the boy was responsible for both of their deaths, their assessment of his kindness seems like it was pretty accurate. But then Kenobi’s eyes slant perceptively towards her. Assessing. “Or did you mean Fell?”

The emphasis makes it clear what he means—his Fall to the dark rather than falling in love—when really, Ventress meant neither.

What she can’t believe is that her scheme actually worked. Ventress sent a feral pretty boy to seduce the famed General Kenobi to the dark side, him, the brightest light of the Order—and Vader succeeded. Decades of Jedi training and dogma, undone for a tight ass and a font of random acts of wrathful violence.

There’s no chance the Jedi Council ever saw this coming.

But then Vader comes back into the room with his robotic entourage and his heap of metal and loose wires. He smiles at Kenobi—a smile she’s never once seen from him before. A pure and uncomplicated love.

The Force works in mysterious ways.

“Oh, either one,” she says, waving a dismissive hand. “What’s the difference, really?”