However, the moment the Sith Darth set foot on the planet itself, he sensed her - or rather, Jocelyn's mark on her. He immediately set off on a speeder, homing in on that sense with the force. It was his first solid lead on her since he had begun his personal search, and he wasn't about to let Aittera slip away from him again.
He was led away from the spaceport and villages, and it would be at least a couple of hours before the sense would grow stronger. In fact, for a good while, it seemed as though he wasn't getting any closer - like traveling the desert toward a distant spot on an endless horizon that doesn't seem to be getting any closer.
Just as he started to feel that sense more clearly ahead and to the east, he caught sight of the Devious Hope to the west side of the nose of his speeder. He cut the engines, not wanting to risk that she might realize he was coming and bolt again. Going the rest of the way on foot, he crossed the distance quickly. Getting as close to the ship as he could, as fast as he could, before she would be alerted to his presence.
The ship was closed up, of course. The ramp to the entry hatch wasn't even extended. Near one of the landing struts, there was what looked from a distance like a pile of scrap metal.
Keeping his distance for the moment, he reached out with the force, using it to levitate the pile of scrap metal carefully. If it was a trap for someone he didn't want to take the chance of it being sprung when he was too close, or of it going off and damaging Aittera's ship.
The battle droid activated as soon as he tried to levitate it, its limbs extending as it took shape. The main part of its chassis was insulated with cortosis, of course, to fortify it against lightsaber attacks. A klaxon sounded as its electronic voice loudly announced, "Intruder. This is private property. You have ten seconds to vacate the area before I shove a cannon up your ass."
"I'm not an intruder, I was invited here by your mistress, please contact her and tell her to lower the boarding ramp, I wish to come aboard."
The droid extended its cannons and pointed them directly at Ragious, moving into a battle-ready stance. "You have ten seconds to give the passcode. Ten..."
"Oh, kriff off." Ragious called his lightsaber to his hand with the force, igniting the crimson blade and readying himself for the droid's worst.
The ship's engines roared to life as the droid continued its countdown. "Nine....Eight...."
Hearing the ship starting to come to life, he knew what he had to do. He couldn't lose her again when he was so close. Reaching out with one hand, he felt in the force for the cabling that connected the engines to the ships power supply, pulling hard, he ripped them from their connections, making sure that she wouldn't be going anywhere until she could make repairs. With the droid still counting down he decided to try something. "Davin."
The ship's engines died. "Seven....Six..."
"Kol Arren."
"Five...four..."
"Selus?"
"Three...two..."
"Nope, sticking with Kriff Off!" He leapt at the droid, his lightsaber slashing at the weapon systems rather than the main body. He didn't know if Aittera was fond of it in some way, so rather than take a chance at angering her further (he knew she'd be pissed that he had wrecked her ship...again), he would simply make it unable to attack.
The droid turned out to be an easy target and even though the attack was directed at its cannon, its head wobbled and tumbled off onto the ground when it was struck. It had only been a distraction to give the ship time to take off.
With the droid disabled, he moved toward the boarding ramp. "I know you know I am out here Aittera, don't make me cut my way in. I don't want to damage the Hope any more than I have."
There was no immediate response or activity from the ship. The boarding ramp remained withdrawn. However, the sense he had been tracking through the Force became stronger to the west, presumably growing closer.
Ragious turned toward that sense, waiting. While doing so, he attempted to reach out to feel for any presence on the ship and found none.
A speeder appeared on the horizon - a sleek little black thing - closing in fast, its rider concealed by a high windshield.
He stood his ground, waiting for the speeder, his lightsaber in hand but deactivated. He reached out with the force to ascertain for certain whether it was Aittera or not.
It was definitely her, and he could feel cold rage mounting within her as she sped toward him. As soon as she was within range, a blaster appeared alongside the high windshield, angry red bolts firing in rapid succession on his location. For the speed with which she was moving (and the position of the pistol), her aim was surprisingly accurate.
The blade of his saber came alive as soon as the first bolt was loosed from her pistol. He batted them away, careful not to send any back at her. Reaching out with his other hand, he brought the speeder to a halt slowly, forcing the throttle on it down. His voice boomed, amplified by the force to be clear to her even at a distance when in truth he spoke calmly at a level he would use if she were standing beside him. "Aittera, stop. There is no need for us to fight."
When the speeder began to slow in spite of her efforts to push it to go faster, Aittera brought it to a full stop instead. Rolling from her perch atop it, she found cover behind a nearby tree before she resumed firing. From this distance, her responding shout might have been difficult to hear, but she was sure his super duper forcey crap could compensate. "Fine then! Just stand there and let me kill you!"
He continued to block her attempts to kill him, batting the blaster bolts away with his lightsaber. "Why do you wish me dead?"
"Oh, you know...fool me once and all that."
"I never fooled you Aittera. Everything we shared was genuine. Everything I felt, I still feel."
"Of course, you do," she mumbled disbelievingly. She stopped firing though, realizing that she was only wasting ammunition at this point. "I'm not sure what the game is these days, but you should have left me alone."
"There is no game Aittera. I came for you, and a part of you still believes it. Your mind was altered by a Sith, but it wasn't me. Everything we shared was real, and the day you left the Avenger was one of my worst days."
"Let's explore that for a moment," she said conversationally as she began to sort through her kit - something she was smart enough to take in her hasty dismount from her speeder - between glances in the Sith's direction to make sure he was not approaching her position. "Why don't you tell me how miserable you've been. I really want to hear this."
"If you would come out and speak to me, let me attempt to fix what my sister did, I will be happy to catch you up on everything."
Aittera erupted into hysterical laughter, continuing to sort through her kit, pulling a few potentially useful items. "That's what this is all about! Like I need you people mucking around in my head any more than you already have! Are you really that arrogant, or do you just think I'm that stupid?"
"I never thought you were stupid, but stop and think, why would I waste all those resources, all of this time, why would I come myself to track you if this was all some game. You know me Aittera, you know me better than anyone, why would I come here? And don't you dare say all you know is lies. That is my sister's manipulation, fight it, don't be weak."
"Here's my theory..." she began, taking apart the timer of one of the two explosive charges she had pulled from her kit. "You had me there for a while. I was starting to fall for the whole romantic star-crossed lovers thing. I could write it into a holo-novel! Big, dangerous Sith's attempts to manipulate an enemy's mind get turned around on him by some unexpected complication or clash of Force hocus pocus, leading to tethering their minds together. They fall in love and run off together. It's a classic fairy tale, isn't it?
"Except, that's what it was, Kol. It was a fairy tale that I was stupid enough to start to buy into - just like you planned, right? You weren't succeeding in driving me crazy or asserting control over me in the beginning, so you took another tact and built an elaborate manipulation to gain control another way.
"In the process, you destroyed my life. You got me to leave Selus for you, and now, he's with that damn Twi'lek bitch. You got me to compromise my reputation by manipulating me into strutting around on your bridge in that uniform. And then, you sent your wife to kill me, but that didn't go quite the way you expected, right?
"Still...what's that old saying about it being the things you have to live through being worse than death? Hell of a plan that was. Worked great. I'm alone, wanted just about everywhere, and all I've got left is my damned ship."
Her refusal to be reasonable had started to wear on him. He charged the tree she was hiding behind, leaping the last twenty yards to land on the other side of it as he slid his lightsaber through the trunk, using the force to direct its fall away from her position. "Would you listen to what you are saying. I did none of that. Kiabe attacked you because of the effect of a booby-trapped holocron. She was literally acting on pure rage, directed at you because she knew how much I cared for you. That my feelings for you were starting to rival my feelings for her. Then, my kriffing sister made it worse by implanting in your head the idea that I had been lying, because one of the spirits in my sister's head didn't think you were good enough for me!"
The construction on her improvised grenade was only half complete, and she chucked the device aside to get her blasters back in hand before springing to her feet. "Wait...wait...So, this is supposed to sound more believable? Do you actually hear yourself?" she challenged, glaring at him.
"You know what I think? I think you did all of this so that you'd be the only person left that I could turn to, and when I didn't do that, you had to send out your agents to haul me back in! And since that didn't work, instead of just killing me, you're playing more mind games!"
He reached out with the force to knock her blasters away and deactivated his lightsaber, tossing it aside. "I sent those agents to find you so that I could heal you. You made the choice to murder them. They weren't meant to haul you back in, but merely to report your location so that I could come to you."
She should have expected that. Growling frustration, she took a step further away from him, mentally calculating her chances of reaching the speeder. "I don't believe you. Don't you get it? Even if I did believe all of this impossible, crazy bantha shit, the results are still the same! You ruined my life!"
"I don't believe that, and if I did, then let me start helping to fix it by healing you. I think I can reverse what Mistanis did, but I need you to give me permission."
"Define 'healing', Kol. Whatever she did, at least my mind has been my own. What makes you think I'm going to let you take that away from me too?"
"That's the thing, Aittera. She didn't give you your mind. She altered your way of thinking and sent you running."
This brought her up short, and she looked over at the speeder as she considered what he was saying.
"I think I can reverse what she did. She left her presence there in your head, and I believe I can remove it, fix the pathways she damaged."
Aittera cast a stubborn glare back up at him. "I don't feel damaged. In fact, since you've been gone, I've been abundantly clear."
"Yes, and all of that clarity toward me, it's all negative, correct? Doesn't that seem odd?"
"It seems deserved."
"Only because she's reprogrammed your mind to think the worst of me. You know I've done bad things, Aittera, bad things to you even, but ever since that first shared experience, we have been drawn ever closer. That wasn't my doing, and I never expected to feel what I do about you, but I do. If - when her influence on you is gone - you still feel nothing for me, I will walk away, it will be the hardest thing I have ever done, but I will do it."
She crossed her arms, considering his offer despite what she felt were her better instincts. "I didn't say I feel nothing," she grumbled.
"Yes, I know. You hate me, and you feel I ruined your life."
"Right." There was nothing convincing in that response at all.
He gave her a curious look, but then continued. "Trust me one more time, like you did on the Avenger."
"This isn't something you can have someone else do?"
"I wouldn't trust any other Sith to heal you, too many chances of them doing further damage."
"You realize what you're asking of me?" The edge was disappearing from her tone, but the stubborn defiance still shone brightly in her eyes, somehow intensified by the red curl that hung rebelliously loose from the severe bun the rest of her hair had been drawn back into.
He nodded, reaching out tentatively for that loose bit of hair, but then pulling his hand back. "I'm asking you to trust the part of you that still loves me."
She didn't flinch at the almost-touch, though close as they were now standing, the conflict of warring emotions within her was unmistakable. "If I let you do this, does this mean you'll be listening to my thoughts again? Showing up in my dreams?"
"I don't know. I honestly don't know what comes out the other side of this."
"That's not very convincing," she murmured, pushing her gaze off to the side, because seeing his expression softening was too much, too painful somehow. It was impossible to hate him when he looked at her that way.
"Was it really so bad?"
She answered with an exasperated breath. "No, but that's beside the point."
"Then let's see what happens next, together."
"If I say no?" she asked quietly, still not able to bring herself to look back up at him.
"You won't. I know you. You have to be certain as much as I do."
"That's not why I asked."
"I don't know what I would do, Aittera. I can't stand that you hate me. Probably force my sister to hunt you down and undo what she did."
"I don't---" She cut herself off. "I hate that living without you is every bit as bad as watching my life crumble into pieces while I was with you."
"I wish you would have come back, Aittera. I would fight the entire Republic if they came to take you."
"You think that's something I'd want?"
"I don't know. I know you don't want to live in the Empire, but the Republic has made it impossible for you to live there."
"And there's no guarantee either will survive this war. What good is my loyalty anymore anyway, right?" she asks rhetorically, the fight having drained from at some point since he'd stepped around the tree. "I really don't have anything left but you."
"I promise you, Aittera, I won't ever give up fighting to be the person you deserve." He moved his hands again, putting them to either of her cheeks, his fingers pressing against her temple as he leaned in to kiss her. Her eyes flickered up to meet his when he touched her, meeting the kiss with her lips in that achingly perfect way.
As he kissed her, his mind sought every bit of the residual effect of Mistanis' meddling, burning it away with the force, drawing the pathways of Aittera's mind back to how they originally should have been. In the kiss, things started to become normal again. There were flashes of the two of them in different settings - alone in her quarters on the Hope, her laying on his chest as she kissed him deeply after they had made love. Then on the Avenger, in the turbolift where he had kissed her so passionately before it stopped and they were interrupted. Over and over they flashed to different places, both real and from their shared dreams, until finally he could no longer feel Jocelyn within Aittera's mind, but his connection to her was clear once more.
She melted against him as she slid her arms around his neck, threading her fingers into his hair, kissing him with increasing affection and passion until they both needed to come up for air, so to speak. Even so, she remained as close as possible, the heat of her breath falling heavily against his lips with a quiet chuckle. "Booby-trapped holocrons?"
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