#kd-7

She thought he was another droid at first, although he was much taller than any droid she’d seen before. But he was all dark metal and plastic and he moved stiffly and with just the faintest mechanical whir. His breathing was deep and even and mechanical, too, except that was strange, because droids didn’t need to breathe. That was how she knew he must be organic after all.

He slipped into her little room almost an hour after the Ninth Sister had left, and she knew no one else would likely visit her for hours. It was just her and the training droids, and she hadn’t been expecting him, or anyone, so she was distracted. Without thinking she lowered her blade, and all three of the droids took the opportunity to fire on her at once.

Their bolts never hit her, though. They seemed to ricochet from an invisible wall and then dissipate harmlessly into the air.

She stared up at him, at the droidlike face that was probably a mask, and wondered if he was staring back down at her. It was impossible to tell with the opaque lenses of the mask, but she thought he probably was. She felt much the same way she did when the Grand Inquisitor studied her. Like something was crawling over her spine.

She straightened up and did her best to glare at him. She was an Inquisitor, after all, and she wasn’t going to show deference to some droid-man. “Who are you?” she demanded in her best approximation of the Fourth Sister.

He only went on staring down at her. His left hand clenched, just like a droid’s. “What are you doing here, child?” he said.

His voice was deep and rich and it startled her, because he didn’t sound like a droid but he didn’t sound much like the Inquisitors, either. She wasn’t sure what he did sound like.

“This is my place,” she said, glaring up at him. “You’re trespassing in the rooms of an Imperial Inquisitor. So I’ll ask again, who are you?”

There was something strange in the air, like…like the feeling she had when one of her droids malfunctioned but in a funny way and she was annoyed and amused at the same time. It felt like that, a little, except that it wasn’t her feeling.

She’d had moments like that with the other Inquisitors. It was part of her connection to the Force, they’d said. So this droid-man must be connected to the Force, too. Maybe he was another Inquisitor? Oh, she should have thought of that at first! Now she was probably going to be punished and…

“I am Nobody,” said the droid-man, but he made it sound like a name.

She knew that couldn’t really be who he was, but…she didn’t think he was lying, either. It was strange.

“Do you have a name, child?” he said, and that was strange too. Maybe he just wanted to know what her name was, but the thought came to her that he meant exactly what he’d asked.

And maybe she shouldn’t have told him. Probably she shouldn’t have. But he’d asked the question like that, and something in his voice made her think of the distant memories of warmth she could never acknowledge, and in that moment she decided that, just this once, she didn’t want to be the Fourteenth Sister.

“My name is Mara,” she said.

“Mara,” he repeated, and the echo of her name was like an electric shock. She jolted with it.

He nodded his helmeted head once, abruptly, then turned and swept out of her room without a word.

*

Mara didn’t tell any of the other Inquisitors about her strange visitor. She wasn’t fully sure why. She just knew that she’d liked the sound of her name in his voice, and that she didn’t want to share that secret with anyone.

*

He came back some time later, weeks or maybe months. It was hard to tell time here, sometimes. But he came back, and that was the important thing.

“How long have you been here, Mara?” he asked her. There was something funny in his voice, but she didn’t know what it meant.

“I don’t know,” she said, swinging her legs where she sat perched on the edge of a chair that was still too tall for her. “A long time, I think.” She watched him, but he didn’t react to that, and so she asked, “Are you an Inquisitor?”

“No,” he said. It was only one word, but Mara thought she caught a hint of amusement there, and that made her wonder.

“Oh,” she said. “Did the Emperor send you, then?”

He stiffened, just a little, and she thought it was funny, because it made him look even more like a droid. He didn’t answer her question.

“Do you ever leave this room?” he asked her.

“Sometimes,” she said with a shrug, swinging her legs in even wider arcs because he hadn’t told her to stop. “When there are inspections, or” – her voice sank to an awed whisper – “when I have an audience with the Emperor.”

“Ah,” he said. And then, “What is he like, the Emperor?”

Mara peered up at him, her nose scrunching in confusion. Shouldn’t he know that himself? Of course, he hadn’t ever said that he was a representative of the Emperor, but she’d thought about it a lot since the first time he appeared here, and she was certain he must be.

So…maybe this was a test then? “The Emperor is everything,” she said in a pious whisper.

He was silent, and after a long moment she dared to say, “You still haven’t told me who you are.”

“I am Nobody,” he said again, and then he was gone.

*

She did learn who he was, eventually. It was several weeks-months since he’d last appeared, and she was just starting to think she would never see the strange droid-man again, when suddenly there he was, standing at attention just behind the Emperor’s throne at her next audience.

Mara registered his presence there, but didn’t dare to really look at him, afraid of the appearance of staring too long at the Emperor himself. The older Inquisitors had warned her very firmly about that. She had not yet proven herself in the Emperor’s service, and it was not for her to gaze on the august presence.

She demonstrated her progress as ordered, and then remained kneeling, silent and with eyes cast to the floor, awaiting the Emperor’s pleasure. At last, she heard his sibilant voice murmur, “Rise, my young friend. Come forward.”

Heart in her throat, Mara did as ordered. She kept her eyes on the ground.

“This is Lord Vader,” said the Emperor. “He is the Master of the Inquisitors.”

Mara didn’t dare to look up. “Yes, my Lord,” she whispered.

There was more talk, but it was intended for the other Inquisitors. Vader never said anything. Mara kept her focus on the floor and her mind utterly still, until she was dismissed. And then she went back to her little windowless room.

*

He returned only three days later. Her droids all powered down as he entered, but Mara hardly noticed. She’d leapt to her feet and stumbled into a bow, not as deep a bow as she gave before the Emperor but deeper than the one reserved for the Grand Inquisitor. “Master,” she said, her eyes still cast to the floor.

A sudden cold settled over the room, like a hole ripped through the hull of a capital ship, life and warmth left exposed to the endless void of space. Mara shivered.

“Shall I call you Fourteenth Sister, then?” he rumbled from some terrible distance above her.

She pushed aside her strange and sudden disappointment. That was the proper thing, of course. She was an Inquisitor, albeit still in training, and he was the Master of the Inquisitors. It was absurd to want anything else.

“Yes, Master,” she whispered.

“Do you want to be called Fourteenth Sister?” he demanded, and there was something so strange in his voice, so nearly angry, that she looked up in surprise.

The mask looked the same as it always did. She couldn’t see his eyes, but she could feel them boring into her.

It was impossible to respond with anything less than perfect honesty.

“No,” Mara whispered, and cringed back, awaiting the consequences of her failure.

But only silence followed. Silence, and the slow receding of that terrible cold, as though someone had sealed the hull breach.

“Mara, then,” he said, something warm in his voice that she couldn’t put a name to, something that made her think of impossible memories. “And I am not your Master.”

She forgot herself entirely at that and stared up at him in wonder. “But the Emperor said…”

“The Emperor,” he said with slow, almost mocking deliberation, “says a great many things.” She almost thought she could hear a smile in his voice. “But we know how to hold our silence.”

*

Her training became more strenuous, the stretches between her audiences longer. She saw less of the Ninth Sister, and far more of the Fourth. She grew used to bruises and small burns, learned to overlook them, to fight on in spite of pain. Pain gave her focus, and apart from that it was irrelevant. That’s what the Fourth Sister always said.

But today her entire body felt like one giant bruise, and that was much harder to overlook.

Mara gritted her teeth and wiped the sweat from her eyes with a grunt. Too slow. Another laser blast struck her, this one stinging through the already sore muscle of her left shoulder. She winced and staggered back.

No more blasts followed. Instead there was only a sudden silence as the three droids she’d been dueling powered down, sinking lifelessly to the floor. And then the sound of mechanized breathing.

“You are hurt, Mara,” said that deep rumbling voice. She didn’t recognize the tone.

Mara stepped back with a snarl. “I’m fine!” she growled. “I’m not weak! I can handle it.”

He only looked at her, looming and silent. And then, with a slow creaking of leather and metal, he lowered himself to crouch beside the now inert droids.

Mara stared at him. They were eye-level now, and she could just glimpse, through the red tint of the lenses on his mask, the shape of his eyes beneath.

“Of course you aren’t weak,” he said. “But you do have three cracked ribs.”

She sniffed. “Pain gives me focus,” she recited, and was proud of the way her voice didn’t betray any emotion at all.

“Injury makes you vulnerable,” he snapped. “A refusal to heed the needs of your body is not strength but foolishness.”

Mara drew herself up indignantly, forgetting for a moment who he was and the deference he was owed, but before she could speak, he’d stood with a sweep of his cloak and a groaning of metal joints. “Wait here,” he ordered brusquely, as though she had any other option, and then he stalked from the room without giving her a chance to answer.

At a loss, Mara waited.

He returned less than an hour later, and this time he had a droid with him.

The droid was a perfectly rounded shape, about the same size as Vader’s helmet, floating on silent repulsors just beside him. It looked very much like one of the interrogator droids she’d begun learning to work with last week. Mara held herself very still.

“This is KD-7,” he rumbled. “She is a medic.” Before Mara could think of anything to say, he’d turned to address the droid. “Kadee, this is Mara. She has at least three cracked ribs.”

“And a sprained wrist,” said the droid in a metallic monotone. “Will you let me help you, Mara?”

Mara blinked. No one had ever asked her something like that before. Certainly a droid hadn’t.

She glanced uncertainly at Vader, and his helmeted head nodded once.

“I…okay,” she said.

*

It was a strange feeling, to come out of a training session and not hurt. Stranger still to realize that the pain wasn’t necessary for her to focus. That maybe she could even focus better without it.

“You rely too much on your lightsaber,” Vader said, his back turned to her as Kadee tended to her ribs. “You may not always have it.”

“That’s why I must learn to work through the pain,” Mara said, because that was the correct answer. “To grow stronger in the Dark Side.”

The huff of breath through Vader’s respirator was at once disdainful and almost amused. “Is that what the Inquisitors have taught you?” he asked. “They are more incompetent than I had realized.” There was a weighted, staccato pause, and then, “I will show you another way.”

“No strenuous exercises while she’s healing,” said the droid Kadee.

Mara blinked in shock. Perhaps it was only the droid’s monotone that leant the impression, but that had sounded like an order. She couldn’t imagine that the Master of the Inquisitors, whether he allowed her to call him that or not, would take kindly to being commanded by a droid.

But Vader only released another huff of breath. This one might almost have been a laugh. “No, Kadee. No exercises for her at all. Just a demonstration.”

“All right,” said the droid, extending a pincer claw and patting Mara once on the head before drifting several feet away from her.

Mara blinked again. A distant memory flared: warm, soft hands stroking over her hair and a tender voice singing a tune she couldn’t quite understand. She fought the sudden, absurd urge to ask Kadee to come back.

Vader waved a hand, and her training droids reactivated. They were still set at the highest level, and they were programmed for her specifically. Mara leapt back on instinct, reaching for her lightsaber though she knew she would be too late, as a barrage of laser bolts flew towards her.

But not one of them hit.

They seemed to pause, to hang for an impossible second in the air and then to turn back on themselves, ricocheting away from her to dissipate in the scorched walls of her little room, as though she were wearing some kind personal force field. She stared up at Vader in awe.

“The Force is your ally,” he said as, with a wave of his hand, her droids powered down again. “It surrounds you at all times. Even when you have nothing else, you have the Force. Remember that, use it, and nothing can touch you.”

*

The next time the Fourth Sister came to inspect Mara’s progress, she brought the Grand Inquisitor with her.

He watched Mara with a silent, cruel smile as the Fourth Sister reprogrammed her droids and then set them at the new highest level.

Mara’s back still stung from her exercises with the Eighth Brother yesterday, and the cut on her thigh had reopened when she tore Kadee’s bacta patch off this morning, afraid of what the other Inquisitors would do if they saw it. The used patch was hidden away inside the thin mattress of her cot now. She forced herself not to look toward the bed.

The droids activated, and she knew she would not be able to block all of their bolts. At least, not with her lightsaber.

She closed her eyes and centered herself in the Force, in the memory of a cool metal hand patting her head and the barest hint of something she still couldn’t name in Vader’s voice.

Nothing could touch her.

*

“Who taught you to do that, Fourteenth Sister?” the Grand Inquisitor demanded, his eyes dark with fury. But he had never called her anything other than “girl” before.

Mara held herself straight at attention. She dared to look him in the eye just a split second longer than was truly proper.