@forcewilled asked:
but that... that's impossible.
While Dooku's ship had not crashed, and he considered himself a capable pilot, there was little denying that if it hadn't been for a brief warning in the Force and the skill to listen to it properly, said not-crashing would have certainly been a crash.
As matters stand, he had been able to walk away from the damaged little ship, and while his tunic did betray the signs of it, it could be worse. He still looked somewhat presentable, for a man who had left the Temple with nothing but the bare minimum to follow a distress signal less than a day's worth of hiperspace travel away and then not-crashed a ship.
Finding another Jedi in this remote, desolate planet he had found himself in had been relieving, for all he was no-one he recognized.
He would have, years later. But all he had now was the way the Force shifted around him, and Dooku, duelist extraordinaire and diplomat born, did not have the sharpest connection to some areas of the Force. After all, Sifo-Dyas had enough of a connection for three.
It was still not so meager a connection that he did not notice the way the other Jedi's affirmation did not ring of malice.
Nor is it so weak a connection that he has not noticed that something -he doesn't yet know what, but something- changed in the moments before the not-a-crash. And that there was something to the Jedi before him.
"I am following a distress signal." He spoke again, steady and put-together and with the air of one who has mastered peace by sheer strength of internal will. "If your mission does allow for it, I would be grateful for your assistance."
Dooku might be one of the youngest Knights, and he knows he still looks fresh out of Padawan-hood. But if nothing else, the bearing remains. And so does the presence in the Force.