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The first time Sidra met him was on a battlefield.
Her troops had managed to close in on a vital point of Separatist strategy — a seemingly harmless droid facility on a nameless moon in the Outer Rim — when Sidra felt it.
A tremble in the Force. A vast swirl of chaos appearing close by and reaching out with sticky tendrils like too sweet honey to lure in unassuming prey.
But Sidra was neither unassuming nor prey.
If she had allowed herself the honesty, she would have described the sight within the Force as beautiful. Controlled chaos with an eerie beauty in it’s destruction.
But she still wore the sand-coloured Jedi robes and wielded a burning yellow lightsaber and her eyes were a deep forest-green. And as such she should not find the beauty in the forbidden.
Passion and chaos created nothing but suffering and violence. Right?
His presence in the Force was followed by his appearance in the mortal realm. Or as mortal as either of them could be, anyway.
He stood blocking the entrance to the facility, clad in dark looming colour from shining boots to multi-layered tunic. The black cloak he wore billowed like a shadow salivating for it’s next victim behind him.
He hadn’t bothered to pull his hood up, his light auburn hair on full display; he was not even trying to hide his identity. Burning golden irises that seemed utterly wrong within his handsome features stared straight at Sidra. A smug smile curled his lips just a minuscule amount.
It sent a shiver down Sidra’s spine and to this day, she wasn’t certain of which kind the shiver was — the fearful kind or the excited kind.
The clones behind her immediately took stance. Blasters lifted and all centred to that one point on a rocky formation a bit above where their route would have taken them into the facility, where he stood like a statue.
But Sidra knew better. Clones were no match for a fallen Jedi. Probably not even she was strong enough to keep him distracted for as long as the mission needed.
“Head to the South entrance and rendezvous with Master Unduli”, she told her Clone Commander then. “This is no fight for you and your men.”
They followed her command, though her commander’s complaints were loud and heartfelt and full of honest concern.
The sound of their steps echoing within the rocky ravine were growing quieter and quieter. Until only the gentle breeze ruffling Sidra’s tunic and his cloak was heard.
Now it was only her and him.
And she steeled her nerves and coiled her muscles for the inevitable fight.
“It’s Master Jo'Kar now, is it not?”
His voice carried easily across the distance between them. It caressed her like a forgotten memory, bittersweet and dangerous. Oh so dangerous.
A curl of his lips. A gleam in his golden eyes.
“You have grown even more beautiful these past years.”
Sidra’s eyes narrowed slightly as she strengthened her mental shields. Like fog creeping along a river bank, she felt him gently prod at her defences.
“And you have grown even bolder than before”, she replied nonchalantly, hiding the storm his words had set loose within her very soul. He was searching for it. Pressing every so often against her mental shields. But Sidra stood steady. She did not want to give him the satisfaction of seeing the chaos he ignited like a wildfire. Did not want him to even glimpse at the angry storm howling and rattling at the foundations of her very believes.
If she hadn’t expected something from him, she wouldn’t have been able to react in time.
He jumped up high, his cloak floating gently to the ground where he had stood and Sidra had just about enough time to raise and ignite her saber. Yellow clashed with red in a violent hum. Sidra’s arms shook under the pressure he put on her lightsaber. Leaning closer still, his warm breath fanned over her skin.
“Oh, only ever with you, my dear”, he said with a lilt to his voice somewhere between mocking and alluring.
Sidra took one of her hands from her weapon’s hilt and pushed it forward. The Force shoved him away from her. Let him slide across the rocky terrain before he found his footing with ease.
“You’ve also grown more powerful”, he commented conversationally as if they were talking about the heavy traffic on Coruscant. “Fortunately not powerful enough”, he added and tilted his head slightly to the side in an almost mocking gesture. Sidra’s lips pulled into a frown as her brows furrowed.
“Well”, he mused pleasantly as he rushed forward with a sharp, buzzing arch of red heading straight at Sidra’s throat.
It clashed with her yellow lightsaber. Keeping them trapped in a struggle of raw strength.
For a moment only the crackling of their sabers was heard as they pressed against each other.
“Fortunate for me.”
His smile was smug and cocky and Sidra just barely sidestepped his kick before she pushed him away again with the Force.
It hadn’t been an entirely heartfelt attack, Sidra was certain of it. She knew him to be precise and calculated. But then again…these days, he was also known for playing with his prey.
As they stared at each other, circling each other, planning their next move, she allowed herself a moment to drink in the sight. His achingly familiar features; the beard that hadn’t been there years ago but made him even more handsome than before; the well-known quirk in his brows; and the unfamiliar golden eyes that screamed of his betrayal and fall.
Sidra’s grip on her lightsaber tightened.
Then her muscles coiled and snapped and she jumped up high to bridge the distance and strike hard at him. He met her strike with his saber, let her yellow blade slide along his and clash against the wall behind him. Rocks tumbled down at the impact. And he shoved her away with a powerful push of the Force.
Sidra stumbled and crashed against the rocky wall. A hard edge burying itself into her side. Pain blinded her for a second.
A snarl appeared on her lips as she lifted her hand and pulled an overhang down onto him.
He was just able to jump away from the rock slide. Sidra’s armour protected her from the small rocks flying her way.
She stared up where he had landed a bit above her on the other side of the narrow ravine. A deep, calming breath rattled through her body.
Then she jumped.
Red clashed with yellow once more as they traded strike for strike and blow for blow. But Sidra knew that she was loosing ground.
She had never been much of a combatant with the lightsaber. And he knew that. He was playing with her.
Anger rushed through her veins for a second. Sidra jumped away from his next strike, held her hand out and commanded the Force to fix him against a wall of rocks next to them.
“Oh? This is new”, he pondered motionlessly. “Are you angry with me, darling?” There was still something amused in his voice, though it had taken on an alluring undertone.
It called to the frustration simmering in her gut. Of course she was angry with him!
He fell!
Sidra’s lips pressed into a tight line, her own emotions warring within herself as she tried to push her anger and frustration and everything else down into the depths of her mind prison. An already dangerously frayed prison, that was. Her eyes were closed in her painful effort.
It hurt.
It hurt so deeply to suppress all she felt. To care but not care too deeply. To help but not get attached. To be compassionate but never truly love.
So many years she struggled with that. Struggled to keep afloat and not drown in her own emotions.
She called forth memories of the temple to ground herself, but everything was hidden behind a veil of red.
Her only lifeline the iron will to not fall.
“Don’t do that, my sweet. You’re hurting yourself and I believe that is my job, isn’t it?”
Though the words were delivered in a mocking tone, there was something beneath his tone that made Sidra’s eyes shoot open. The ghost of sadness…of concern…of…something flitted across his voice. Something that mirrored an old longing Sidra had long but buried deep within the broken prison in her mind and soul.
Her green eyes bored into his golden ones. Either unable to look away.
The feeling was ripped from the deepest depths and roughly catapulted to the surface. Cruel and mocking and so, so painful.
It choked Sidra and made her loose her grip on him.
It was training — and training alone — that made her react and counter his powerful attack. It was pure instinct, that had her side stepping and countering another fast strike.
And while Sidra tried to get a grip on her emotions, he engaged her in a distracting dance of fickle blades and fluidly moving bodies.
Where he took a step forwards with a strike, Sidra took one back to counter and spin and take herself a step forwards. Forcing him to retreat himself to the side and let his lightsaber dance around his body to meet with it’s yellow counterpart.
Strike for strike and blow for blow.
The need to be in the present, lest she got in intimate contact with his red blade, made it easier for Sidra to concentrate and block the raging emotions.
Another almost prancing sidestep of hers had him chuckling. The sound crawling over her skin and travelling straight into her heart, where it froze and stung and hurt.
“I have always admired your grace”, he said, while forcing her into another fluid motion with a sharp arch and quick footwork, simply to see her move as it seemed. Golden eyes fixed on the way she bend and turned and her muscles danced underneath her pale skin.
“And I…”, Sidra replied as she herself jabbed her lightsaber in a quick arc at his unprotected side.
“…have always wondered how you talked more than fought…”
He parried the strike and grabbed her dominant arm. His large hand circling around her wrist. Pulling her off balance towards him suddenly. Her eyes widened in shock. There was a loud humming. The thud of her armour clashing against his torso. And then his lightsaber coming to a stop right next to the back of her neck and Sidra whispered the end of her sentence.
“…during a battle.”
A shaky breath left her lips. It fluttered out and onto his skin.
Almost loud in the sudden silence.
His lips underneath his beard lifted into a smile and his eyes gleamed with the promise of adventures and passion and freedom.
“I always enjoy talking to you”, he said and bowed his head slightly to be closer still to her. “Don’t you?” His voice rolled like a rock slide over her. Dark and tumbling.
Her mouth became dry and her tongue stuck to her palate as she tried to gulp the words at the tip of her tongue down. It was no use.
“I did”, she heard herself say. “Once.”
He lifted one brow. “Past tense? You wound me, my sweet.”
His grip around her wrist tightened as he pulled Sidra closer yet, the hum of his lightsaber a constant reminder of danger in her ears. As if she needed to be reminded, when his dark presence was all consuming. When it washed over her and all around her like a tidal wave chipping away at a rock. Clashing and crashing and prodding with promises of wild freedom and delectable chaos.
There was hardly any space left between their bodies now. His towering above hers, dark and looming and it should have been threatening, but Sidra felt that her heart raced because of entirely different reasons. He leaned down, his burning, golden eyes trailing over the red markings on her face. Travelling across the red line originating from her full lower lip down her chin…her throat…and vanishing beneath the collar of her layered tunics.
He brought his mouth right next to her ear, his warm breath fanning across her neck as he whispered softly: “If I didn’t respect you as much as I do…”
A pause.
She could feel him lick his lips.
“…then I would devour you right here and now, my dear Sidra.”
Goosebumps erupted all across her skin. Raced up and down the length of her body like an electric shock at his voice.
But it also rattled her mind back into action. With one smooth motion, Sidra let her lightsaber fall from her left hand and called it to her right. The yellow blade now threatening to cut him in half at his waist.
She tilted her head slightly towards his face, still dangerously near to hers.
“And you think I’ll let you?”, she whispered lowly, a husky flavour to her voice that had his eyes widening a fraction.
Breath stopped between them.
A beat passed.
Two.
A shaky exhale. Their breaths mingled.
Their body heat mixed and their minds fought a battle of their own. Dark chaos against stead fast walls of iron will. He knew that there was a storm brewing behind those walls just as wild and beautiful as his own chaos.
He knew it.
And maybe he almost wished to say it. Call her out and lure her in.
But he also knew when not to push too much.
So he powered down his lightsaber and loosened his grip around her wrist to step away. His shoulders relaxed and his arms hanging at his sides. His traitorously red lightsaber still in his hand, but in a loose grip and pointed to the ground not towards her. His face a curious mask of carefully hidden emotions, so unusual for a Sith.
Sidra observed his posture for a moment, before she herself loosened her stance and powered down her lightsaber. The loss of the familiar hum charring in the tense silence that hung between them like a heavy blanket suffocating everything beneath it.
“Another draw, it seems”, he said, an amused lilt in his voice and a hint of remembrance. Sidra stood still, eyes never leaving him so she would notice even the smallest of his movements.
An explosion shook the earth suddenly. Bursting the tense silence between them.
A fireball rose into the sky beside them where the facility had been. Then the heat washed over their already heated bodies.
“Ah”, he smirked not too bothered about the fact, that Luminara had been successful. “It seems my work here is done.”
His eyes rested on Sidra for another moment as if he was contemplating something. Sidra — shook to her senses by the explosion — ignited her lightsaber and lowered herself into an offencive stance. All while her emotions were raging within her, rattling at their prison with unmatched might.
But duty came first. Always.
He gave her a last cocky smirk, then he jumped back up to the overhang where his cloak still lay on the ground. In an utterly casual display of power, he called it to him and slipped easily into the dark shadow.
Sidra straightened her posture and powered her lightsaber down. She too knew when not to push.
He looked back down to her, where she stood with a frown on her face and a war in her mind.
“Try and don’t get yourself killed, yes?”, he said with a playful lilt to his smooth baritone. “I’d hate for someone to take what is mine.”
Anger swelled up in Sidra at his words. It built and built and built until it burst the rickety bars of her mind prison open.
It burnt its way hot and thick like lava through her mind as he slid away into darkness and violence. His work here was done. For now.
Sidra let herself fall into a seated position right where she stood, legs crossed and hands resting on her knees. Within seconds she had entered a meditative state. She needed to do a lot of mending to rebuilt the prison bars.
Once more he had rattled the very foundations of her being and it didn’t seem as if he would stop any time soon. Quite contrary…
…Sidra knew that she would meet him again soon on another battlefield. Just like this first time.
Because where-ever else would a more or less upstanding Jedi meet a Sith?
Probably at the library, when two Padawans met by chance or fate over datapads and holocrons. Or maybe in the sparring rooms, where two could cross their lightsabers and measure their prowess to learn from each other. Or perhaps even in the serenity of the meditation niches all around the temple with open minds and open hearts.
But no.
Sidra told herself over and over again; the first time she met him was on a battlefield.