The Traitor Goddess

Kyla Mim stood upon the wind-whipped landing pad of Cloud City, her eyes raised to the sky above. She watched the familiar lines of her ship break through the clouds, escorted down by a pair of obscenely orange cloudcars. Although her stomach was a twisting mess of trepidation, she held herself in composed patience, approving the economy of thrust Cago used to bring the Darkest Knight neatly down onto the landing pad. 

Behind her, at a distance, Dolph waited. This reunion would be complicated enough, but he would not abandon her to face this moment alone. 

For a moment there was just Kyla and the screaming wind, waiting. Her world had been thrown off-kilter by the events of recent weeks; surely one glance upon her chosen goddess would restore her to balance? Yet there was a terrible presentiment that seemed to steal the air from her lungs. She watched with guarded eyes as the Darkest Night maneuvered neatly onto the landing pad. 

Kyla very much feared that Destiny was coming for her. 

The ramp descended and the pilot, Cago Dorne, emerged first. His gaze sought her instantly. Her old friend was quick and she had no doubt he realized something had changed with her. The circumstances of her abrupt disappearance from Coruscant, followed weeks later by this summons, would only have aroused his suspicions.  The sharp, angry look he leveled over her shoulder at Kueller spoke clearly enough of where he placed the blame. But he said nothing, only stepping aside to wait. 

Then the moment had arrived. The stunning Dathomiri witch appeared in the entrance of the Darkest Night, her red hair pulled back and throwing her features into sharp relief. The instant she saw Kyla, the girl’s eyes lit up into a bright smile. “There you are!”

It was enough to make the frozen core of Kyla thaw in relief. The acid-edged fear splintered as the girl flung herself forward, and was welcomed with an unexpected ferocity. Kyla drew the girl so close that Vasara was pulled off her feet and her mouth met her lover’s with a ferocious need. Uncertain how this reunion would proceed, she relished the sweetness of Vasara’s greeting while it lasted. 

“My Vasara,” Kyla said softly, drawing back enough to meet the young Dathomiri’s vibrant gaze. “How I have missed you.”

The witch smiled winsomely up at her. “You know I’ll always come when you summon me. I nearly killed Cago, though.”

On the surface, it could have been any reunion between the Sith and her Dathomiri. But there was too much change, too fast and simply too much for this moment to be anything but transitory. The knife still hovered above her, trembling with fateful indecision. It was as well that her old friend was here to witness, and crucial that Kueller stood nearby. Their presence forced her to face it head on and she set Vas away from her gently. 

“There is something we must discuss. Things… have happened. I must explain them to you before we go any further.”

Vasara peered up at her in concern. “My Kyla? What is it?”

Kyla inhaled, ripping the coverings from her deepest wound to plunge straight in. “Long ago, you learnt that I’d had a husband. You saw that night, in the jungle. I showed you… his death.” It was always easier to show than to tell. Even now, with her choice made, Kyla felt her throat close against the next words. “You did not know, nobody knew, that there had also been… a child.”

The faintest indrawn breath from the woman in her arms was all the shock Vasara could show. “The child… you never told me about the child.” The Dathomiri’s winsome gaze searched her features unsurely. “I’m so sorry, beloved.”

The fate of that child was nothing she could force past her lips, so Mim allowed the truth to hover between them. An image that sat between their thoughts, of a tiny and terribly still newborn; blanket wrapped and impossibly blue. 

“I had never told anyone that. I could not. She was my greatest wrong.” 

It felt so strange to have these secrets tumbling out at last. Distantly, she was aware of the mute anguish radiating out from Cago at her revelation. It made Kyla feel as though she were being emptied out, as if all the rotten darkness within her was seeping out to taint and corrupt the very air around her. All that pain, compressed and evolved over so many years of silence. She looked upon Vasara as if the girl were her salvation; if Vasara could forgive her, all would be well. 

The Dathomiri struggled to raise defenses against the onslaught of that terrible image, shaking her head as if to will it away. A child was nothing she could relate to, nothing she could want, and she hated to see her lover suffer so. Vasara’s gaze landed firmly upon Kyla, fierce and almost angry. “If the child is dead, you owe it nothing.”

“The funny thing about death is that it’s a subjective term when your friends are gods.” Kueller’s voice interjected for the first time, drawing all that anger in Vasara and finding a familiar target for it. 

Immediately, Kyla tightened her grip on the girl’s arms to hold her in place. Vasara had always been impulsive in her rages and Kueller held a special place of hatred in her heart. 

“The child is not dead anymore. Vasara, I have a Daughter,” Kyla explained softly. Despite her fear of this moment, nothing could restrain the memory of astonished joy for the moment when she finally held her Daughter and felt her move. The feeling of being saved, all over again. It was enough to push aside the shield she typically held over her emotions and Vasara hesitated unsurely at the sight of such strange and unfamiliar light in the Sith’s eyes. 

“What do you mean?” the witch asked slowly. She did her best to ignore the Lord hovering like a darkness behind Kyla’s shoulder but he made it impossible when he spoke again, intruding his smooth voice into the conversation. 

“Kyla’s daughter was reborn.”

Mim watched in alarm as the witch’s eyes flattened and her lovely features contorted into a snarl. Vasara was a hair’s breadth from flinging herself at Kueller in fury, and the rage of her burned like a furnace in the Force. 

“Who is the father?” Vas demanded but her eyes were not on Kyla any longer. Her mouth was twisted as if she’d bitten into something rotten, all the loveliness distorted into darkness. 

Dolph’s laugh rolled mockingly across the landing pad, dancing with the fitful gusts of wind. 

“Two dimensional thinking, Vasara,” Kueller chided. “There was no father in the sense that no male has touched Kyla.” A dangerous edge lined his voice at even the implication of such an event. In this one respect, though they could never acknowledge it, these two were alike in their possession of Mim. “The Sith are not confined to two dimensional thinking. Kyla was dying. Her insides were rotting and killing her. I brought her here, to treat her and nurse her back to health. Took one of her eggs and gave her what she wanted most in life.” There was a brief pause, and Kueller’s voice hardened. “Be happy, little witch. Kyla’s life can be complete now. Isn’t that your fondest wish?”

“Vasara, listen to me,” Kyla snapped sharply, her half-stunned mind lurching back into full working order at the hateful look the girl directed at Dolph. She stepped automatically between the two, shielding him from that glare. The instinct to protect him was bone-deep and always had been, but she would not have done such a thing before. “The child was grown, not born. I’m incapable of giving birth to a child that way. She was created through the Sith arts. I watched her be born from a clone vat.”

Her voice deserted her on the last crucial argument. 

–I have never had sex with Dolph Kueller– she said directly to Vasara’s mind. But her uncertainty was there, and somehow all too clear. 

The technical statement was true enough. But the link between them superseded the physical; lines had been blurred with the new intimacies they’d found together and Kyla could not issue the statement with the absolutism that Vasara needed. 

For a long moment, the Dathomiri said nothing. Kyla waited with trepidation and hope warring in equal measure, until the girl turned her attention back to Kueller. If she’d had a blaster or a blade, the witch would have launched herself upon him in fury, even if she were killed in the process. Vasara knew what hate was, and he was the embodiment of its target. Yet Kyla continued to hold her firmly as if the woman divined her intention. 

“And why are you here then?” Vasara demanded petulantly. “If I needed a boy to bring in our bags, I’d hire one. The only purpose you serve here is her stability and you can do that from orbit. Go find yourself something to do and leave us be.”

A sharp hiss of shock from Kyla was almost lost in the wind gusting across the landing pad. However, it was impossible to miss the white-hot flash of anger that burned out sharply from Dolph Kueller in response, igniting a responding alarm in his student. 

“Vasara, stop it!” Kyla snapped but he was already taking steps to punish the impertinence. 

Dolph’s hand extended swiftly towards the witch, as a single tendril of the Force wrapped its dark fingers around the girl’s throat. It cut off her words, and her breath in a choked cry. 

“Enough, witch! You insult me, you seek to anger me. You wish to see how far you can push Kyla’s master. Kyla was in a coma at the time of the child’s creation, she was dying. And now, you see that she lives. She is happy. You are her Chosen. Even I respect that. Even I respect that you are part of her life.”

It did not signify that such respect for Vasara’s place had been forced upon him by Kyla’s refusal to abandon her toy. Dolph had accepted it, grudgingly, after many years, but he would not tolerate insult on top of the injury of having to share his bond mate with this creature. “If you wish to die, so be it. Throw yourself from the landing pad. But if you insult me again, I will ensure even piranha beetles will not eat what’s left of you.”

Vasara’s knees buckled under the oxygen starvation, her widened eyes staring blindly at the brief, and painful life flashing before them. In a heartbeat of gasping futilely for air, she saw her birth, her parents, her mother’s death, her father’s murder under her own delicate hands. She saw Dathomir, a precious jewel glimpsed from the viewport of a smuggler vessel that carried her away from it and into the greater galaxy. Her vibrant eyes shifted onto Kyla, the woman who had become her home in this wider world, before returning again to the man she knew now had stolen her away. 

Kyla very much feared that she had been remiss to allow the girl to say such things about Lord Kueller in private. Never, never in her life, had Mim harbored the idea that she would dare to utter them in Kueller’s presence. As the witch’s lips turned blue, she spun to level a fierce look at the Sith Lord behind her. 

“Do not break your word to me, Dolph. Do not dare.”

The message was clear and firm, but in emphasis she pressed the memory through the bond between them, reminding him pointedly of that day in the solitude of their sanctuary; of shared submission and his quiet promise to never harm Vasara Sharlynx. 

Kueller looked back at her, the anger still carved beautifully upon his sharp, aristocratic features. There were limits to promises made, but with a dismissive gesture, he released the choke hold on the Dathomiri. 

Kyla caught the girl as she collapsed, holding her fiercely as she gasped fresh, much-needed air down into her lungs. Delicately, she pressed fingertips against the witch’s elegant throat, monitoring the pulse there as it slowed from its frantic beat. 

Yet Vasara did not look at her. Those precious eyes remained fixed on Kueller. “Respect,” she said roughly, rubbing her bruised throat with careful fingertips. Heedless of her lover’s concern, she pushed Kyla’s hand away from her throat. “Respect for whatever trickery you’ve performed on her? You’ll have to kill me first.”

“Trickery?” The word was almost a snarl falling from Dolph’s lips and the anger that rolled off him in that instant was palpable. “What I understand, little witch, is that you think I needed to trick Kyla. You think I needed to toy with her, to change her. You think it’s all a game.”

It was so unlike Dolph to lose his temper in public, but the two Sith were still seeking to find balance in this new life of theirs; a life where he was no longer Emperor with a galaxy of systems his to command and Kyla was no longer merely the loyal Hand that stood at his side. Vasara could not know that she had picked up the very source of contention between the bonded Sith and laid it down at Dolph’s feet. It had been long since Kyla feared his motives, but the wound of that wariness remained. 

“You stand there, with your narrow view of the man you knew once, and you belittle Kyla Mim… not me. Oh no, Vasara. You belittle your mate. So little faith you have in the woman who calls you Chosen, that you believe her so stupid as to be played with, played for a fool? You disgust me.”

Kyla barely dared to breathe as Dolph stepped forward, with all the autocratic arrogance of the man who had been Emperor. But that man had wilfully discarded his power to stand by her side, and Mim watched in shock as Satal dismissed all of that imperial majesty with an elegant shrug; until he stood before them in his simple gunslinger’s coat and blaster rig, with eyes tempered by the exhaustion of his unending patience. 

“Who is the pathetic wretch here? Me? A man who has given up infinity to hold just a piece of Kyla Mim? Or you?” Dolph’s gaze did not waver from his bondmate’s lover and scorn thickened his voice. “Or you, who professes her love on the coattails of saying Kyla Mim is too weak to resist the paltry persuasions of a man who has never crossed that line with her. Some Chosen. I have seen Jedi with more faith.”

The moment was raw with the unbridled intensity of his emotions washing across the landing pad. Even Cago, hovering by the open ramp to the Darkest Night, seemed taken aback by Dolph’s unguarded honesty. 

“You cannot do this anymore,” Kyla said softly to the Dathomiri. “No one has tricked me, Vasara. I wanted this child. I lost her once and he gave her back to me.” The Sith woman frowned at her. “Can you understand why?”

In all their time together, Kyla had never defended Dolph against the Dathomiri’s insults. It was something unusual and foreign and Vas felt a terrible chill invade her heart. Something had changed between Kyla and the beast who called himself her master. The two of them stood before her, newly aligned in some undefinable way. Something fundamental that she could not understand, but the Dathomiri knew it was a threat. Whether it was only this child or something else, Vas could not say. 

The witch looked wildly from the two Sith, to the silent Cago watching nearby, back to the heavy transport hulking behind them all. Her back was against a wall here and she tasted a danger she had never expected to find in Kyla’s presence. Vasara frantically considered her options. 

Beyond the vessel was the edge of the landing pad, and beyond that was her demise. If there were any chance she could take out Dolph Kueller at the same time, she would do it and leave her beloved Kyla with the child. The impossible child for, whatever these Sith said about a process she could never hope to understand, Vasara knew which male had donated the necessary material to create it. Just as she also knew she could not tolerate a creature made of Kyla and this beast. Her rejection of that child was immediate and resolute. 

Carefully, Vas backed away from her lover and forced the words past frozen lips. “I’m glad that he was able to give her back to you. But if I said that I understood, I’d be lying. And you would know that I’m lying. So…” The Dathomiri exhaled slowly and took another step back, coming within a few steps of the pilot waiting at the foot of the ramp.”I don’t understand, I am trying very very hard to understand.” She swallowed hard against the pain lingering in her throat and felt again the terror of Dolph’s Force grip there. The beast would kill her in a heartbeat if she risked Kyla; what else would he do to her to ensure Kyla Mim’s happiness? 

The Sith were capable of sorcery she would never be able to understand. Would Kueller find a way to force her to play the role of dutiful lover if it ensured Mim’s sanity? Looking at the hated man, she saw that there was no compromise in his hard gaze. Vasara swallowed. She could never be safe here. 

Alarmed, Mim extended her hand to reach for the girl. The fear she had nurtured silently since summoning Vasara here was being realized right before her eyes. 

“Vasara, she is a child. Just a child. You won’t need to see her, if you prefer.” It was her last hope, offered up to a heedless universe. But she saw the faint shake of the witch’s head, and tasted the frantic fear washing out from her. 

“No, Kyla. I can’t do this. I can’t.” Vasara was still backing away, each shuffled step blindly taking her further from the reach of her lover; further away from the threat of the two Sith standing before her on the wind-whipped landing pad. “No, it cannot be this way.”

She was beyond Kyla’s reach now, her bare feet edging against the hard durasteel of the Darkest Night’s landing ramp. Briefly, Vasara lifted her head and met the concerned gaze of Cago Dorne who she now stood beside. Within arms reach. Close enough to take the one last, desperate gamble to free herself of this trap that Kueller had laid for her and her Kyla. 

The Dathomiri summoned every iota of strength she possessed and met the emerald eyes of the former Emperor. How could she compete against a man who had given up the throne of Coruscant for Kyla Mim? Who had given her back her child? 

“You win,” she whispered hopelessly. “I love her but I cannot love you too, and that’s what I would have to do to stay here. I cannot.”

For so many years, Vasara had kept herself wilfully blind to the growing connection between Kyla and Dolph, happily denying it with the comforting lie that Mim had chosen her. The truth was now impossible to hide from and there was no escaping the fallout of where her own blind naïveté had led her. 

Vasara took a last, deep breath and met the pure, crystalline blue of her beloved Kyla’s eyes one last time. She saw Kyla’s lips part on a cry of alarm that she did not hear, for only the thundering of her heartbeat filled her ears now. Swiftly, before she had time to doubt – or allow either of these walking gods to prevent her last act of freedom – Vasara spun and reached for the blaster holstered on Cago Dorne’s hip. She felt as though she had all the time in the world and knew it for a lie. 

She wanted to say goodbye and knew there was no time. No point to it. Kyla would survive this because Dolph would ensure it. Clenching her eyes tightly shut, Vasara pressed the muzzle of the weapon to her temple and squeezed the trigger. 

She was dead before her body hit the floor. 

The tableau held for an impossible eternity. Kueller, standing like a shadow at Kyla’s back. Cago, a stunned statue staring at the devastation his weapon had wrought. Mim, caught in the aborted motion of reaching for the Dathomiri girl, breathless and unable to move. 

And the witch herself, a corpse lying twisted and broken, with her brains blasted across the length of the vessel’s landing ramp. 

A rushing sound filled the air and Kyla could not be certain if it was the wild force of Bespin’s high-altitude winds, or the blood pounding in her ears as her body reacted to the sharp surge of now-useless adrenaline. 

Vasara Sharlynx was dead. 

Nobody said anything. The two men had no words for a situation like this. Cago might care little enough for the witch herself, but he flinched in alarm from what he thought it might do to his oldest friend. And Kueller? Dolph had a ringside seat to the inside of the woman’s mind, to the revelation of his soulmate facing a scene that should by all logic have retraumatised her utterly… and finding that instead of succumbing to grief or shock, it was as if some impossible missing piece clicked into place within her. As if Vasara’s last and final choice was an epiphany that locked something away forever. 

Kyla broke the stillness when she straightened slowly, moving like a badly lubricated droid. The fierce air currents tugged fitfully at her hair, seeking to unravel the long braid that fell to her hips. While her thoughts were a tight whirl of chaos and shock, the abyss that seemed eager to drag her down into it was somehow unable to get a full hold on her. 

To Kueller, watching cautiously, she tasted of grief and loss. But layered over that, growing stronger and sharper with each passing heartbeat, was something he had not expected: betrayal. 

Kyla turned to him with dry, aching eyes and there was no shield between them to hide her pain. It washed across their souls and drew a deeper frown from him as he accepted it and welcomed it without reservation. 

“Satal,” she said softly. “Take me home. Please.”

Dolph hesitated for only a moment. A week ago, hell even a day ago, he would have put good credits on her only using the word home to refer to the ship that sat on the landing platform before them. But that was not the need he felt from her now. The only image he had from her questing soul was of their bed in the small, dingy apartment several floors below. 

Something transformational had just happened within his wife and he did not yet fully understand it. 

“Of course,” Dolph answered her, resisting the urge to scoop her up and carry her away. Instead, he took her elbow and guided her gently off the landing pad. Only to pause briefly and glance back towards Cago, still standing stunned by the open ramp. 

“Provision the ship, Tin Man. We’ll come by tomorrow to fill you in.”

The affectionate nickname came from his lips unexpectedly, a remnant of that part of Aren Mim that lived within him now. It amused him to see how badly it seemed to throw the pilot, leaving Cago unable to make a sound in response. 

Dolph’s hands guided Kyla into elevators and down corridors and finally through the small door to their apartment. Her head was full of white static that muted all thought. Only when she stepped into the room and her eyes sought out the child did she feel it begin to fade. Elaysia still slept in her Force-induced somnolence; a vital necessity for one so soon removed from the gestation vat. Kyla approached the child, resting her hands on the edge of the cot, then turned. Her gaze moved from the sleeping Elaysia to Dolph and some shadow within her eased. 

Whatever else, the day had ended with her here, between these two, and that… that was good. That was necessary. Whatever sacrifice must be paid to secure this, it would be worth it. 

Dolph stepped up behind her, his hands resting next to hers. His proximity soothed her on a level she couldn’t explain, yet Kyla’s mind was trapped endlessly replaying the instant when Vasara reached for the blaster. She could have stopped it; the Force was faster than thought, impossibly faster than flesh. She could have prevented the tragedy that happened on that landing pad, and so could he. Yet neither of them had. 

She felt him move as he opened his mouth to draw breath and touched his hand lightly with her own. 

“Don’t.” Kyla’s voice broke the silence between them. “It is done. There is nothing more to say.”

“Ky…”

Her hand tightened against his. “It’s done, Satal. She made her choice.”

The unspoken addition hovered between them. 

She rejected my Daughter. 

Dolph understood her sense of betrayal at last and felt something that was not guilt move within him. Satisfaction? Something that was not quite regret. 

He had known for some time that Kyla Mim lived for the ghosts of her husband and child. Just as he had known that Vasara Sharlynx had become a twisted replacement of what had been lost; an unholy mix of dead lover and stillborn child. Dolph had spent years as her master, striving to reorient Kyla to a greater purpose and fix her ferocious will upon his own end goals. Too often, they had worked at cross purposes as they navigated their path as master and student. 

How humbling, how vexing, to realize that in the end it was not his cunning manipulation as Emperor and Dark Lord that had changed her. His willingness to merge with the essence of Aren Mim, and his determination to restore the child to her were not the motivations of her Lord and master. They were the goals of her husband. 

Yet even he could never have anticipated that Kyla would so brutally surrender her past anchors in allowing Vasara’s death. Had he erred in his efforts to give her purpose, and instead created a new psychosis to replace the old?

“Elaysia is safe now,” Kyla promised him softly. 

Tasting the complex emotions washing through the Bond from his wife, Dolph permitted himself to relax. This was not grief or the old madness stirring. This was… something new and unexpected. Something the galaxy had never seen before. Something as ferocious and terrible as the death-devoted warrior, yet something that offered what she had not known for years: a future. 

Kyla Mim as a mother. 

Dolph nodded and tasted triumph as he echoed her vow. “Elaysia is safe.” 

For perhaps, in the end, this outcome had been inevitable since the day their Bond formed in the darkness of an Imperial Library, a dozen sectors away.