The Fifteenth Brother
After Andor, I reread my favorite piece of Star Wars again: the Revenge of the Sith novelization! It’s great, especially about the way Jedi perceive the world through the Force. It inspired me to finish a piece of Inquisitor - Rise of the Red Blade fanfic that I started more than a year ago, about Tualon Yaluna. About how they break him to become an Inquisitor.
Read it under the cut, or on AO3, here!
As opposed to Iskat Akaris, Tualon Yaluna was a good Jedi before he joined the Inquisitorius. In Inquisitor – Rise of the Red Blade, Iskat leaves him to die on Frong during Order 66, and we meet him again on Coruscant, now fully turned to the dark side. This is the story about what happened in between, about what is required to break a Jedi.
I hope she dies. I hope she dies. Tualon was lying on the cold hard ground, barely seeing the shuttle that carried Iskat Akaris away through his slowly closing eyelids.
He was vaguely aware of the ash falling on his burnt obsidian skin. I hope she dies. A moment ago he had felt intense searing pain, the pain of being shot with laser fire. Now he barely felt anything anymore. I hope she dies. He was alone, in the dark. I hope she dies.
Somewhere in his mind, he realized how unbecoming those thoughts were of him. Jedi weren’t supposed to wish people dead, to hate. Because he hated her, oh how he hated her. Her fiery red form, those long dexterous fingers, her smile that that belied so much hidden depth... He was supposed to accept those emotions, feel them, then leave them behind. But he knew it didn’t matter anymore. Right before Iskat (I hope she dies) had turned on him, on them, on Sunghi too, he had indeed sensed what happened all across the galaxy too. He wasn’t a fool. The Jedi were no more, whatever that meant. What it meant for him, in this moment, was that nobody cared if he stewed in hate and anger and wishing people, her, dead. I hope she dies.
I hope she dies.
I hope she dies.
--
A ship entered the atmosphere. Tualon didn’t know if he had been unconscious, or if the one thought had taken over so much of his mind, but he had completely lost track of time. Before he could recommit himself to his mantra, he startled. The ship carried on it an individual Tualon could feel even from on the ground, weakened as he was (was he still dying? How long had it been?). It was a being that cast a shadow over the living Force of Frong. Its presence made the light shrink away in fright. I hope she dies.
The ship, which sounded an awful lot like another clone transport, touched down near him. Whoever the being was, they made no effort to cloak their emotions. Tualon could feel hatred and rage, though what ran through all of them was an intense annoyance. The feelings were broadcast so clearly he could even tell it was annoyance at underlings for not doing a job correctly.
Now that Tualon was focusing on something other than wishing Iskat dead, more sensations returned to his body, none of them good. While the dark figure was rifling through what sounded like cloth near him and briefly ignited what had to be Sunghi’s lightsaber, Tualon couldn’t help but groan as the cauterized holes in his body began to ache once more. He tensed and doubled over on the ground, his forehead pressing into the dirt. Immediately, the shadowy presence was focused solely on him. Tualon sensed the being reach out in the Force to touch his consciousness and realized who this was: it was a Jedi temple guard, one he met once, who had given him some pointers on his Soresu stance. Why was a Jedi so strongly submerged in the dark side?
“Well, well, well. It seems this little Jedi knight discovered his potential, right at the last minute...”
Tualon was enveloped in a vice-like grip as the temple guard used the Force to lift him from the ground. His head swam as he was jerked upright and now clearly heard the temple guard speak to him face to face, still unable to open his eyes. He felt weak.
“Lord Sidious will be pleased with another recruit.” The voice, vile and sharp, came from a mouth with filed teeth, something Tualon was very familiar with. “You can thank CT- 1123 for neglecting to take your lightsabers, there might not have been anyone to notice you sustaining yourself on hate for days.”
Tualon wanted to react, but only a shuddering sigh escaped his mouth. It tasted like ash. Everything hurt.
He was vaguely aware of being brought on board the transport, the temple guard no longer annoyed, but basking in arrogant accomplishment. Even before they left Frong’s gravity well, Tualon lost consciousness.
--
He awakened in the familiarly claustrophobic suspension of a Bacta-tank. Though he was clearly somewhere remote or sheltered, Tualon was on Coruscant: no other place in the galaxy had that density of sentient life. However, something was off. His home felt different in the Force, like a filter had been put in front of the lenses of a holocam. Colder.
He’d been in the Bacta-tank for at least a few days, judging by the lack of blaster bolt holes in his body. He really had been badly damaged, but now that he was awake and not actively dying, Tualon, for the first time since the clones shot him, could reflect on what happened.
The first thing that hit him was not his brush with death, nor the treachery of his clones. Not even the clear absence of Jedi on Curuscant and probably in the galaxy, thinking back to the wave of despair that washed over the galaxy, before... No, it was Iskat’s betrayal. She left him! She left him to die! Tualon promptly forget to reflect. I hope she dies.
I hope she dies.
I hope she dies.
I ho –
The lights in the medical room suddenly started flashing violently, shaking him out of his mantra. Tualon felt annoyed, but quickly understood this was something done with intention and he closed his eyes. The medical facility he was in might have looked shoddy, but this was not some electrical interference. Someone wanted to torture him.
Years ago, in the months leading up to the war, Master Ansho had taken him to a world controlled by the separatists, on a mission to negotiate the freedom of some prisoner. It had been a barbaric planet with a savage culture, and their charge was held in a gross cell with a sharply sloped floor. Most importantly, the lights in the cell were strobing, just like the ones in this room, and they must have been during her entire stay. The prisoner, a minor dignitary from Hosnian Secundus, had felt completely dulled out in the Force, after being in there for only a few weeks.
Thinking back to that pathetic woman, Tualon steeled himself. He didn’t know what was going on, why he was here... Why had the temple guard been so steeped in dark side energy? No matter. Someone was trying to torture him, and a Jedi was impervious to that stuff. Tualon, despite everything, still was a Jedi. Right? He closed his eyes more firmly and tried to drown out the light still flashing through his eyelids by meditating.
When Jedi meditate, they typically let go of their sense of self, letting the Force pour itself into them, through them. You take a breath and quiet your thoughts, and you let the universe in. But Tualon’s thoughts didn’t quiet, no matter how hard he tried. In fact, the harder he tried, the louder they sounded. They rang in his head. Iskat’s blood red skin refracting the cold light of Frong as she turned around. I HOPE SHE DIES. The touch of her thoughts close to his, then drawing back, in on themselves as she walked away. I HOPE SHE DIES. Her gaze, usually full of fire, avoiding him.
He opened his eyes, and immediately regretted the decision. Squinting at the strobing lights, he twisted against the tubes connected to him in the Bacta-tank. He couldn’t focus. No, that wasn’t true – he could only focus on one thing, but that thing was not how a Jedi meditated.
Tualon closed his eyes again, hoping the dull flashing through his eyelids wouldn’t have the same effect as the full thing, and tried to think. Actually think this time.
Clearly his mantra (I hope she dies) did something. The temple guard had implied it kept him alive. He could use it to shut out the lights, he knew it. I hope she dies. But Tualon also knew that this was pure, unadulterated hate. I hope she dies. How he hated Iskat, the way her body moved during combat. He shouldn’t use this. But as his thought went to the Jedi and their teachings, he instinctively reached out to his fellow brothers and sisters in the Force, and was forced to violently remember, again, what he’d felt when he was dying. The gaping hole in his reality, the void where all that he knew used to be. The Jedi were no more.
I hope she dies.
He hiccuped a sob into the Bacta and let the hate consume him. He was lost, and terribly, horrifyingly, alone. At least his thoughts of Iskat and the way he hated how she smelled when they decompressed together after sparring, would keep him sane. And if they didn’t...
--
They left him in the Bacta for what felt like a long time. The strobing lights were always there, and when he felt like his body had more or less healed, a loud siren came on through speakers he couldn’t see. It was loud, reverberating through the fluid in which he was suspended, and it was irregular, maddeningly so. Sometimes it was silent for long enough that he thought it was finally over. But always the sound ripped through him again. The siren didn’t come off for as long as he was there. And still, he was in the Bacta.
Tualon’s only recourse was to sink deep into himself. The mantra helped at first, but at some point (weeks? months?) it lost its meaning. Who did he want to die? Why? The only through line was the hate. Hate is a very simple thing. Tualon discovered that you can hold hate in your mind and turn it around, examine it. It becomes like an abstract object, divorced from its source, an anchor to bind your being. Until all you have and all you are is the feeling of wanting, needing, willing, someone to die. To kill. To rip to shreds, to murder, to devour. I hope she dies.
--
He realized he was breathing air, not absorbing oxygen through a fluid. His eyes were open and he wasn’t being blasted with light and his ears weren’t bombarded with sound. The ceiling of a darkened room stared back at him. Instinctually, he sat up – or at least, he tried to. He was shackled to a reclined medical chair, and when he reached into the Force to undo the bindings, he found his capacity to do so lacking.
Behind him, he felt a shadow. A hole in the Force he was familiar with. It was right outside his field of view, but it touched his mind.
A finger trailed across his right lekku, tracing a line up to his scalp. Tualon shivered.
“My master has studied up on your past, Yaluna,” the voice of the temple guard said. Nine more fingers joined the first on his head. “You were an exemplary Jedi, right up until the end.” The fingers left, and Tualon was almost sad they did. “You displayed a beautiful capacity for the dark side however, which is what we want.”
With a mechanical sound, the chair harshly changed modes, and Tualon lurched upright, suddenly looking at a dark holoscreen.
From out behind him, the temple guard stepped into view. It was a Pau’an, dressed in the greys and blacks of some kind of uniform. His eyes were shot and yellow, the eyes a child sees right before it wakes up from a nightmare.
“We need to get all those Jedi teachings out of your poor head. So let’s get you up to speed, shall we?”
Tualon heard the repulsors of a floating droid somewhere next to him. The shadow’s eyes flicked up to the source of the sound and nodded.
A shiny black sphere of a droid flew up to his face. From a hatch, two arms appeared, and they fasted something to his eyes, forcing them open. A sickening wave of panic hit Tualon. Then the droid positioned itself above his head. As the holoscreen flickered on, Tualon heard another port in the droid open, and when a logo that was similar to that of the Republic appeared on the screen, Tualon felt a needle pierce the skin on the top of his head between his lekku. His breath hitched.
The recording was to the tune of hokey music, retelling the story of the Clone Wars, but weirdly disparaging the Jedi Order’s part in it. Under normal circumstances, Tualon would see this for the clear propaganda it was. Right now however, a needle had been put into his brain, and as his forcibly opened eyes took in the holorecording, he screamed out in pain.
--
Over the course of his stay there, needles would be put all over his body. They pricked the wrinkles of his brain so that he couldn’t think, agitated muscles to tense them continuously, went into his arteries to fill him up with stims and other things so he wouldn’t die from malnutrition. He came to believe there were creatures in his body, centipedes on the inside of his skull, feeding on his thoughts and flesh. All the while, his perpetually open eyes took in holorecordings of an alternate version of the Clone Wars and the history of the Jedi Order. A version of that history he knew deep down to be false, but the worms in his brain made sure that critical thinking was not possible – both because they manipulated certain parts of his brain, and because all he could feel and think was excruciating pain.
Sometimes, the shadow, the temple guard, was there. Its darkness whispered to him about accepting the pain, using it. It repeated his old mantra back to him. I hope she dies. It retold him the tales of Iskat, her deeds of violence juxtaposed with those of the Jedi on screen. The darkness sweetly promised him he could kill her himself, that he would be allowed to rip her apart with his teeth.
Once, another entity entered. It had a mask instead of a face. Where the temple guard was a mere void in the Force, this was a black hole. A cold star that had burned out. It sucked in any emotion around itself, into an event horizon of pure flashfrozen anguish. Tualon would, despite his delirious state, forever remember the robotic hiss of repeated breath as a gloved hand enveloped his face and looked so deep into his mind Tualon felt like he would never crawl out of the hole Darth Vader had created.
And on the screen, the Jedi murdered civilians of the Galactic Empire.
--
Slowly, deep in the pit, bound to the chair, Tualon regained some control. Following advice from the temple guard, the Grand Inquisitor as he demanded be called, Tualon found his hate again. Crystallized in his soul, Tualon reached for it like he reached for the Force.
He turned it over in his mind’s eye, using the object that it was to silence the worms eating their way through his brain stem, to shut out the images of horror and dogma he saw on the screen. He fed it all the pain he felt, all the anguish from the needles and the betrayal of Iskat. It grew and grew, until Tualon could hang on to it. Like, he realized, he had been doing already. He just needed to feed his hate.
When the Grand Inquisitor visited, he started to talk to Tualon – not whisper in his ear of the death of Iskat, or how to sink further into the pain, but actually talk, like equals. Or something like it. When he visited, the screen darkened, and Tualon could sometimes close his eyes as he talked to his superior.
Sometimes he said something the Grand Inquisitor didn’t like. If that happened, they forced open his eyeballs again, and let the worms back in, forcing him to watch bombings on the screen, showing what happened when Jedi could run their course through the galaxy, the horrors they could inflict.
The more frequently the Grand Inquisitor visited him, the less he had to watch and endure, until it was only a few hours in the day when he screamed as needles pierced his skull and he consumed images of war.
The Grand Inquisitor talked about an organization he was part of, leader of. A group of beings fiercely defending the glorious and new Galactic Empire against the Jedi. Iskat Akaris was part of this Inquisitorius, and if he joined, the Grand Inquisitor told him, he could do whatever he wanted to her. And that sounded like a marvelous deal, Tualon thought, hanging on to his hate.
It was the hate that sustained him through the hours in the chair. He was afraid of that chair, of what they made him ingest in it. But fear was something he could feed his hatred. He was terrified of the chair, but he slowly, unsteadily, he conquered it.
When the Grand Inquisitor finally let him out of the room, finally unplugged from the needles, his eyelids free, he felt a sort of flat elation. He had forgotten more about himself than he cared to admit, but his core was still strong. The hate he felt had seen to that. With his new uniform folded in a neat pile in his hands, the crescent of his new lightsaber on top of it, Tualon was eager about the future. He was going to see Iskat again. He might even get to kill her.
