Chapter Text
Three days. It was decided. Three days and then the departure. Three days until the last, desperate gambit. In the name of -- everything. Of everything Dooku had ever worked towards. The dice would be cast, then, and would fall.
The Count broke his fast alone. He had not seen... the General was gone somewhere, no doubt. Off with the troops. Determining the specifics of the plan, no doubt. The sketches of it -- they were simple enough, but the droids must believe, fundamentally , the cover. A daring raid on the heart of the Republic. The abduction of Chancellor Palpatine. Simplicity itself, when the Chancellor himself knew they were coming and would dismiss the guard. A threat to the leadership of the Senate will sow fear in the heart of even the staunchest republican. Dooku recalled his master’s cackle at that.
Should all go awry... Should the scheme fail... It would be as though there had never been a scheme. The abortive strike would be only that, and Sidious need never know how real the threat to his person had been. The Count and the General were sworn together, to this pact.
And yet, Dooku broke his fast alone. He could not have said why that was bothering him. Grievous rarely joined him for breakfast, busy instead with his ceaseless training, his drilling, his oversight of the endless war which they had created. And yet, today... Dooku recalled the pressure of a claw on his shoulder. The curious sensation of being entirely at his apprentice’s mercy. Will Sidious know this feeling, he wondered, when all is revealed? Was this a sensation shared by every Sith who recognized in their apprentice an equal, a rival in power? Dooku thought... Not.
It should not have been him. Ventress, or even Savage, but not...
And yet, when Dooku closed his eyes he longed to open them and fine Qymaen across the table. His shoulder burned where the claw had touched him. The Perfect Machine. Stripped of emotions beyond the energetic, no doubt. So the doctors insisted. Stripped of... sensation. Stripped of biologic apparatus. And yet... what power, conveyed in a single claw. Dooku shivered again, and took a bite. A thin strip of shaak-meat over eggs and toast, a meal he’d grown accustomed to during his time on Naboo. How long , he wonders, does the shaak take to reach Serenno? Were they grown somewhere here, bred -- or was the meat itself imported? Questions Dooku had never thought to ask. There were so many details in the mundanity of his family home that he never thought to explore, a realm of human possibility... banned by the Jedi and ignored by the Sith.
It took him an hour to work up an excuse to drift to the droid barracks in search of Qymaen. By then his... apprentice was gone, and the droids had no answer as to where he might now been, so Dooku returned to his parlor and searched for a book to occupy him. Now that the decision was made time seemed to pass ever the slower. Three days . Dooku wondered if this was premonition -- will this go poorly? Am I being given a few extra hours, or the sensation of a few extra hours? But -- no. He was simply nervous. Tomes on historical diplomacy, his own research into the early life of Chancellor Palpatine... They could not hold his attention. Legends of the ancient Sith seemed thin and hollow now. All those tyrants, all that power... None had solved the problems which faced the galaxy. And none could rival the feeling of a claw on my shoulder, the vibration which hummed through Qymaen’s perfect body.
He set the book down and closed his eyes, letting purely material sense wash over him. Illusion. It is the illusion of memory, that is all. He needn’t worry about Qymaen. These... sensations were something best handled later, once Sidious was... destroyed. For now, let them echo and dissipate. Breathing -- vital. Not only through the lungs, but through the pores. Through the heart. All things must flow. This the Jedi had never understood. All must come and go. Dooku had thought the Sith knew better. All things in movement. Both of them were blind to so much of the world.
The floor of the library was carpeted, but not thickly enough to disguise the rapping of metal claws. The door swung silently, but not silently enough that Dooku did not know who opened it. Click, click, click . Muffled on the carpet. A great presence loomed behind him, almost undetectable, even to the force.
“You were--” Grievous’s voice was shattered by a hacking cough “--looking for me.”
“I was.” Dooku did not turn. He could not turn, could not allow himself to leave the fortified position of his meditation. He had not the strength. He longed, even now, for Qymaen to touch him, to grip him, to hold...
“What did you require?” Grievous’s voice was measured, even. A low rasp which betrayed nothing. Any power which Dooku might have held over his erstwhile apprentice was gone.
“Nothing of import. I meant only to...” A metal joint popped, and for a moment Dooku thought -- but, no. The cyborg was merely shifting. Still, his concentration was broken, was...
“Yes?” asked the General. Dooku’s eyes opened -- slowly. His meditation was broken. His force-impression of Grievous receded. He turned, slowly, slowly. Grievous’s half-cape hung from wide shoulders. His silhouette blocked the light. Grasp me , thought Dooku. But instead he said only:
“Would you dine with me?”
“Tonight?”
“No. Come morning.”
The General hesitated. “You searched for me...” Hrrk , the deep intake of his breath. “Before noon. To invite me to breakfast.” Hrrk . “Tomorrow.”
Somewhere in Dooku’s core, something twisted. He was a fool. The General did not... Not in this way. But there was no other path forward. “I did.” he finally croaked.
Grievous stood silent. For a long moment, he was a statue of himself -- one of the abandoned models-in-progress in his lair on Vassek’s moon. Another sin for which I will not be forgiven, Dooku though. But when Grievous finally spoke it was to say: “Very well.” and sweep from the room.
Two days until the end, and Dooku awoke from his meditations feeling uncertain. He had not slept, not in the conventional sense. Perhaps he would not sleep, until this was all over. Perhaps he would not see it through. What glimpses the force gave him were dark and confused. Himself and the Jedi Skywalker, standing before Sidious with sabers lit. But then Sidious again, surrounded by not one but four jedi. And a final, confused glimpse. Skywalker, again, in black armor. Were these visions of the end? Alternate paths to the same result? Or had he misinterpreted? Surely the Chancellor could not survive so many united against him. Dooku saw snatches, faces -- Grievous and Kenobi. Yoda and Windu. We have been played against each other for two long , he thought. Their ignorance and my... misperceptions. Soon all will be revealed, and in clarity things will be made right.
But there were other things which disrupted the sleep of the count of Serenno.
Grievous awaited him in the dining-chamber, feet clicking against the tiles of the floor. Once again Dooku was struck by the curious juxtaposition -- the cyborg general, unified in his physical economy, against the luxury of the Serenno palace. Perhaps if all went well in two days time they would... depart this place. Find another. Build something new and right, free from the decadence of the old. Or would Grievous desire to return to liberate Kalee? Could Dooku accompany him there? Would it be out of place for him to suggest such a thing?
At the very least, his time on Serenno had come to an end. The people had no need of the aristocracy. Not here and not anywhere, and if that was not an ideal Dooku could live in himself then who was he to proselytize it to the galaxy? At the very least -- in none of his dreams had Dooku seen himself in his childhood home again.
Grievous rose as the count entered. The general seemed nervous, though in truth Dooku still struggled to... read the cyborg, truly. His cloak, the only finery -- or, indeed, textile -- Dooku had known the general to wear since his transformation, was two-toned. The outer a deep, deep green -- nearly black, though as the general moved Dooku thought he saw the shimmer of a pattern there, picked out in colors almost indistinguishable from each other. The inner was gold, a deep gold, far richer than the pale white-golds and tan-grays so preferred in the republican core. I have never seen that cloak before , thought Dooku, and his stomach clenched. All the small things. We will discover them together, if all goes well and Q... and Grievous wishes to continue our partnership.
“You dress well.” Dooku intoned, attempting to summon the gravitas with which he’d once directed the Senate. “Green and gold suits you.” he crossed the room in long strides.
“I...” Hrrk. “Thank you, Count. You look...” Hrrk. “Dashing as well.”
“You are too kind.” It was true. And unschooled in courtesy -- dashing was hardly the appellate for a statesman of Dooku’s age and stature. It comforted him somewhat, to recall Grievous’s failings. He may disarm me, but I have weapons beyond those he understands . They took their places at the table, and both sat. A button, worked elegantly into the wood of the table itself, sent message to the kitchen that they were prepared.
“I must admit.” Hrrk . “I do not see the purpose in dining together. You of all people should understand my” Hrrk . “Dietary complications.”
“Is it not possible that I wished only for the...” Dooku hesitated. “Pleasure of your company?”
Grievous’s rasp was the only answer, and the sound of the doors swinging open as a droid bearing two covered platters entered the room.
“At any rate.” Dooku went on, as the dishes were laid before them. “I believe that, when put to the challenge, my chefs determined a most... elegant solution.”
The noise which emerged from beneath the General’s mask as the lids were removed, revealing their meals, might almost have been a laugh. Not of scorn, I hope . But it was too late to redirect. Compared to the Count’s own meal -- the usual fried strips of shaak, which was imported, as it turned out, after the slaughter -- Grievous’s plate was stark and industrial. A long, narrow capsule, partially translucent, filled three-quarters with an unrecognizable solution. One end was round, the other ended in a puckered nozzle -- an adaptor for the General’s portacath.
“The gesture is acknowledged, but meaningless.” growled the General. “My caloric consumption is a matter of logistics, not pleasure.”
“I am aware.” said Dooku. “But what you see before you is not nutrients alone, but rather a chemical blend which -- although you will forgive the doctors, they could not test it thoroughly -- might provide some of the pleasure of dining, even for one with...”
“Without a digestive tract.” Grievous supplies, looking curiously at the canister. “It is a stimulant. You are offering me...” Hrrk. “A high for breakfast.”
Dooku gritted his teeth. The General was right, of course. It had been a foolish gesture. “Something like it. It is a fast acting, short term euphoric. To evoke, so I have been told, the pleasure of dining. I meant only... If you take offense, Grievous, we may discard it and move on.” Back to the safe realm of planning a war. Away from... this, whatever it is.
Grievous did not answer for a long moment but rather continued to peer at the canister without removing it from the plate. It was not until Dooku was growing confident that the general would never speak that a long, metallic hand darted forward, snatching up the canister. In a movement somehow impersonal and yet intimate Grievous’s other hand swept up, gripping his mask in an alloyed clutch and jerking it suddenly backwards, further than a face should go, to reveal...
A shiver ran down Dooku’s arm at the sight of Grievous’s exposed throat and chin, the cables and connectors which ran in place of muscles, veins, and tendons. There was a grouping of tubes where the trachea and the esophagus might have met the underside of a human chin, and the port itself, into which Grievous deftly inserted the canister. It connected with a soft click and a hiss as the vacuumed seal tightened. When the solution within the canister began to drain, Dooku forced himself to look down at his own meal, controlling another shiver. He reduces you with so little the Count reflected. By the very fiber of his being.
When he looked up after a bite, the empty canister had been returned to its place on the platter. Grievous’s face, too, had been moved back into place, and those orange eyes -- deep as the gold of his cloak -- were observing Dooku, carefully.
“You are a curious man, Dooku.” the general said at last. His shoulders shifted as he spoke, seeming to move of their own volition.
“You are hardly ordinary yourself, Grievous.”
“I thought I said I preferred Qymaen.”
“You--” Dooku almost choked on a bite of meat and was forced to pause to chew. “Of course. Qymaen. I only thought--”
“Your doctors were mistaken, as it happens.” said Qymaen, picking the emptied canister up again. “They have failed utterly to replicate the sensation of dining.” Hrrk . “Though I suspect the illusion would have been,” Hrrk . “Sufficient if I did not myself recall the...” Hrrk. “Experience.”
“I am most apologetic.”
“I did not say the experience was without” Hrrk “Pleasure. Only accuracy.” He stood, suddenly. “I think I wish to train. Enjoy your meal.” The green-and-gold cloak fluttered behind him as he swept from the room, hesitating only at the door. “And... Thank you for the invitation. Perhaps we might do this again, tomorrow. Before the... departure. Or...” Hrrk . “Afterwards.”
Dooku was left alone, with his meat and eggs.
The final day began before the dawn.