Chapter Text
Plo’s fingers twitch as he sits still and watches them. His heart is even, but his talons jerk as a spider’s legs lurch upon the body of a helpless creature caught in its web.
Spinning. Spinning. Perhaps Plo’s hands would be calmer if they could produce silk.
Young Kenobi stands at the edge of the council’s center platform with blackened eyes and dripping tears, buried deep in Shaak’s arms. She hums—it is not a purr, but another noise loud enough to be heard yards away.
Obi-Wan gathers himself while buried in his finder’s comfort; their first bond remains intact after all these years. Shaak’s brow is furious where it is not pressed into Obi-Wan’s hair. She glares at the center of the now-empty platform.
The platform is not the object of her fury, however. No one in this room is.
That would be Master Dooku.
He was a jedi once. He sat within these walls; he taught in them, learned in them, raised children in them. Since leaving them, it would seem that he has begun slowly wrapping his long fingers tighter and tighter into the throat of his very own grandpadawan. He has been whispering in Obi-Wan’s ears, flicking his nails against the bell of doubt in his chest and smiling as it rings through Obi-Wan’s consciousness.
The fall to the darkside is not a gut-wrenching drop. It’s an embrace.
Obi-Wan thinks he is standing on a precipice. During his testimony, he mentioned something about Qui-Gon monitoring the situation and keeping in contact with him throughout so as to help him remember himself and the things which matter to him, but Qui-Gon’s absence in these chambers has spoken loudly enough for the more experienced masters in the room to hear.
He cannot yet bring himself to indict his former master of the enormous betrayals that have been committed here.
Plo knows Qui. He knows the man’s air of tranquility is a carefully constructed and projected façade, built to obscure a mind whirling with analysis and indignation.
The man must be boiling.
Plo sympathizes, but he cannot help but be aggrieved at the fact that Obi-Wan so often becomes a vehicle for his former-master’s plans and emotions when they work together like this—especially when it is not sanctioned by the Council. For all that he has grown into a jedi master of his own, Obi-Wan remains tethered to Qui-Gon, seeking his praise and approval.
Loyalty is Obi-Wan’s greatest strength and weakness. If Qui-Gon suspected that Dooku was a sith, he should have brought the issue to these chambers and its senior members. He should have let them find someone for Dooku to groom. There is a whole roster full of writhing, adrenaline-junkie shadows who would have leapt out of their seats for the opportunity. If it had to be someone from Dooku’s own lineage, Knight Feemor Retasse could have been called back from his duties.
Plo forces his fingers to still. He closes his eyes and sinks, feels the tips of them. Lets the force lift itself through his body.
He wills the frustration to lift with it, and just as it is beginning to, the door slams open. Temple Guards stands there, four of them, all stiff.
“Masters,” the foremost guard says. “Your presence is needed immediately. The Chancellor has been murdered.”
Plo is sinking.
He is sinking. Quicksand under the soles of his feet. Thick black holes, sucking him down, down until his knees are braced against the floor.
There should be a sensation of some kind. Pressure on the bone points of his joints, pain perhaps, discomfort at the very least.
But there is nothing in this place he is in now. Not even darkness. Not even stars.
“Plo, listen to me. Maul wouldn’t do this. He wouldn’t do this.”
But he has.
Maul has killed the Chancellor. And now he is gone, having taken Commander Wolffe with him. It is said that he was shouting. It is said that he held his saber to Wolffe’s throat and threatened to kill him, too. He got past the guards. He stole a ship.
How could he?
“Plo, you’re shutting down. Look at me. Please.”
“PLO.”
“Master Koon.”
“—General—”
There are many bodies around Plo now, crowding the space with the muffled scrapes of plastoid armor. The force throbs around him in a manner that seems to lift the world around it. It keeps lifting. Plo isn’t trying to release his feelings into the force, but everything around him continues to grow lighter.
It doesn’t make sense.
Nothing makes sense.
Maul is nine years old and knocking Plo off his feet into the grass in the Room of a Thousand Fountains. Maul is twelve years old, lax, warm, and asleep with his head resting heavily on Plo’s shoulder in front of their apartment’s window.
Maul is turning nineteen years old and has officially been in the care of the jedi for longer than he’s known Dathomirian magic and the abuse of a sith, and he’s startled by the sparklers that Obi-Wan has stuck into the bowl of chopped rabbit he’s brought him.
He is every age and none at all and, in the force, he is little crystals of light that glitter like diamonds in velvet boxes and stars in the velvet sky.
He would not do this.
And yet the Chancellor lays nearly bisected on the hard paneled floor of his office, surrounded by the broken frame of a datapad, scraps of paper, and the smell of burnt flesh and ozone. His wound is cauterized the whole way down but not evenly, so blood seeps into the ornate rug. Plo stands there, gazing upon the cooling body while the others gaze upon him.
Scrutiny is never a welcome visitor.
Maul did this. Commander Fox was witness. He says he unlocked the door. He can barely speak, the poor man, he thinks he has committed treason.
There is no way of knowing, however, if Fox was mindtricked or if Wolffe was mindtricked or if anyone knew what was happening here except Maul.
“Someone please escort Master Koon outside the building,” Mace’s cool voice says. “He needs a moment to gather his thoughts.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Yes, sir.”
Maul is nine years old, sitting in front of Plo’s wide apartment window, watching the city buzz and heave outside. His arm is bandaged to staunch the bleeding of skin torn by a splinter of baseboard. He doesn’t notice it; he’s looking out the window and dreaming of Bandomeer.
They fed him on Bandomeer, he would often tell Plo without prompting.
“It’s safe where people feed you.”
It was like he had always been trying to help Plo learn how to survive back then.
Plo puts a hand against the very same window now. He cannot let go of the breath that is trapped in his throat.
Maul is his second apprentice. Lissarkh came after him, and he’s so good with her, always bumping shoulders and wiping away her tears before she can. Plo should call her. He should tell her. She will be devastated, unless she already knows. Plo has lost track of time, but in a blasé way, his mind supplies him with the thought that the chancellor’s death is not something which is long-hidden from the republic he served.
She probably already knows.
“General.”
“It seems that I am grieving, Commander,” Plo tells the window, but nothing beyond it. The glass seems to absorb the words.
“My—my apologies, sir. It’s Jackal.”
Ah.
Right.
Commander Wolffe is gone; Maul took him.
“My own apologies, Jackal,” Plo says, turning around. “I am not fit for company right now. Give me fifteen minutes to collect myself, and I will be back down.”
Jackal is quiet for a beat, then looks away and raises his hands. He takes off his helmet and lifts his eyes. They are raw around the edges.
“I am—I’ve been asked to guard you, sir,” he says. “The senate requests that you remain within the Temple. They—they will be monitoring your transmissions.”
Ah, yes. Plo was so caught up in himself that he forgot for a moment that he is Maul’s master and that means things to other people as well. The betrayal is now a matter of lineage. The senate will be investigating them all: Plo, Bultar, Lissarkh. Master Tyvokka is no longer with them, and for that, Plo is filled with sorrow. What he would give for his old master’s wisdom now. How to cope with all that has happened in mere hours?
Dooku’s falling. Obi-Wan’s misery. The Chancellor’s murder. Maul’s bloodied hands. Wolffe’s kidnapping.
When it’s all laid out in a line, Plo no longer wonders why he can’t seem to breathe.
“That’s alright,” he finally tells Jackal. “However, if you would not mind guarding outside the door, Jackal, I think I would like to take off this mask.”
“Of course, sir.”
The door opens. The door closes. The boots do not go more than two steps outside of Plo’s own home. Plo lowers his head.
Lissarkh is brought home first. She arrives to Plo’s apartment door surrounded by the Coruscant Guard. They leave her with him and two of their men outside to relieve Jackal.
Bultar joins them four hours later. She closes the door behind her and struggles to take off her boots, fumbling and swearing until Lissarkh stands to go help her. Immediately, Bultar tells her to sit down. Lissarkh recoils like she has been slapped.
Plo sighs and waves Lissarkh back to join him on the meditation mat. In time, Bultar manages to liberate her boots with a ‘thunk’ and, while Plo is evening his breathing, drags herself over to collapse heavily onto the sofa.
“This is such bullshit,” Bultar says.
“Don’t say that,” Lissarkh hisses.
“BULLshit.”
“He might try to contact us. It’s understandable why they would concentrate us—”
“If Maul killed that man, he did us all a favor,” Bultar says before Lissarkh can finish; Plo can feel the heat of her gaze warming the side of his mask.
“We do not know what inspired Maul to take his actions,” he says carefully.
“Dooku’s a sith,” Bultar spits. “Everyone’s saying it. He’s been fucking with Kenobi’s head for months. Trying to worm his way in there, trying to turn Obi-Wan. Maul must have known.”
“Maul did not kill Master Dooku,” Lissarkh says.
The ladies square off through dark looks.
“He must be under someone else’s control,” Lissarkh says.
“Stop,” Bultar says. “Don’t make excuses for him. He did this.”
“He wouldn’t.”
“Stop.”
“He couldn’t.”
Bultar has always struggled to have patience with her padawan-sister’s soft-heartedness. She bares her teeth at her and then at Plo, asking him silently to intervene. He does not. In the last few hours, the unusual lightness in the atmosphere has left the space around him and what has replaced it is exhaustion. Putting the mask back on to allow the ladies to come in came with a slight whiff of resignation.
“Master, what are your thoughts?” Bultar asks.
“My thoughts are for Naboo,” Plo says, “Who have lost a great diplomat and advocate.”
“On Maul,” Bultar emphasizes.
“I cannot put those thoughts into words as of yet,” Plo says.
“Has he contacted you?”
No, Maul hasn’t contacted anyone. And as much as Plo wishes that Maul would give some sort of clue as to what is going through his mind, he is sure that this status quo will remain where it is. For all of his training, for all of his rehabilitation, Maul spent his formative years starved, beaten, and petrified. Silence and apathy are his weapons against terror. If he is as panicked as Plo is sure he must be, then he is focused only on immediate steps for survival right now.
The window for intervention is brief and will begin the moment Maul finds somewhere safe to stop moving and think. That moment will be over the second he realizes thinking will only lead to greater despair.
Plo evens his breathing for the third time in an hour.
“Master, we can’t just sit here.”
“We have no choice,” Lissarkh says.
“What does the Council think?” Bultar asks.
“I do not know what the Council thinks, I have not stood in it since we received the news,” Plo says.
“What about CO Wolffe? Can we contact him?”
They cannot contact anyone. Every device in the apartment is tapped now. The Coruscant Guard are all over the Temple; the senate has called troops back to patrol the senate floor, the Temple grounds, and the military base, all looking for Maul.
“There has to have been a mistake,” Lissarkh says.
“Or a trigger,” Bultar says.
Plo cocks his head.
Yes. A trigger. Maul could be triggered. That would explain this extreme reaction. Maul has gone on countless missions of great delicacy. Even on his most dramatic days, he knows how to control his body and mind in the face of a threat. But a trigger—something that tore his focus from the here and now and into a past moment—that might do it.
“Master? What are you thinking?”
Plo lifts his face.
“I’m thinking that we need not fight the force where it guides us,” he says. “Bultar, tell Commander Stone outside that we want to help.”
“Help?” Bultar blurts out.
“We will find Maul for them,” Plo says.
“We will?”
“If you are not comfortable accompanying me, then I will do it myself,” Plo says. “I will find Maul. I will make sense of this. He trusts me.”