Chapter 3: A Master's Awakening
Consciousness returned to Luminara in a series of painful stutters. A deep, bone-ache throbbed in her chest where the stun bolt had struck. Her head swam, thoughts moving like sludge. The cold bite of a metal deck plate seeped through her robes.
She tried to move her hands and met resistance. Magnetic binders, again, but this time her wrists were fastened to a heavy cargo strap looped around a structural support.
She was in the ship’s belly.
The cargo hold was a tomb of shadows and erratic light. A single emergency strip cast a faltering blue glow over jagged conduit and stacks of empty cargo racks. The air smelled of spilled lubricant and the sharp, clean scent of ozone. And beneath it, the iron-tinge of blood.
Her eyes adjusted.
Barriss sat on an overturned crate ten feet away, her back to Luminara. The harsh lines of the Inquisitor’s armor were gone, piled on the deck like a discarded carapace. She wore only the form-fitting black undersuit, which showed the tense map of her shoulders. Her short hair was mussed.
On the crate before her lay the pieces of her lightsaber.
Luminara watched, silent, her breathing shallow. Barriss picked up the cracked emitter matrix, turning it over in her hands. Her movements were precise, clinical. A hydrospanner floated from a toolkit beside her, summoned by a whisper of the Force, and she began aligning the inner components with a mechanic’s focus. The blue light glinted off the red crystal she’d slotted into the chamber—a corrupted thing, pulsing with a sickly inner fire.
“I calculated the rescue for seventeen days,” Barriss said, not turning around. Her voice was flat, drained of the performance she’d maintained in the corridors. This was just tired. “Every guard rotation. Every corridor camera blind spot. The authorization codes for the shuttle. I even factored in a sixty-three percent chance you’d be too weak to run.”
She tightened a component with a sharp click.
“I didn’t factor in you fighting beside me. I didn’t account for that… ease.” Barriss set the emitter down and picked up the hilt casing, tracing a finger over a fresh scorch mark. “It made things feel simple. For a minute.”
Luminara tested her binders. They were firm.
Barriss finally glanced over her shoulder, her profile sharp in the gloom. “I need you to understand why this is happening. Why I have to do this.”
“You have to stun me? Bind me in a hold? You could have left me in the cell.”
“No.” Barriss turned back to her work, her voice dropping. “I couldn’t.”
The hydrospanner twisted again, a grating metal sound.
“For years,” Barriss continued, “I’ve rehearsed what I would say to you. If I ever saw you again. I crafted whole speeches. They were full of… righteous anger. I was going to list every failing, every moment your wisdom was just silence, every lesson that felt like a chain. I was going to make you see the precise point where your path for me diverged from my own, and I was going to make you hurt for it.”
She paused, her hands going still on the saber parts.
“Then I saw you in that cell. And you just looked old. And tired. And you looked at me not with hatred, or even fear, but with… pity.” Barriss spat the word. “All my anger just… evaporated. Like mist. And that’s worse. The anger was fuel. Without it, I’m just here. With you.”
Luminara shifted, the metal cuff grinding against her wrist. “So you’re angry that you cannot hate me.”
“I’m angry that you don’t deserve my hate!” Barriss snapped, the tool clattering against the crate. She took a shuddering breath, regaining control. “You were kind. You were patient. You gave me everything the Order promised. And it was all a lie. The Order was a crumbling edifice. Your compassion, its beautiful, useless garnish. When the tragedy happened… you offered me meditation. Serenity. The galaxy was on fire, and you handed me a candle.”
“I offered you light in the darkness, Barriss. I failed to see the darkness had already taken root inside you.”
“Don’t.” Barriss’s warning was a low thrum. “Don’t Jedi-splain my fall to me. I chose it. I embraced it. The Dark Side doesn’t lie about what it is. It’s power. It’s clarity. It’s the willingness to do what is necessary, not what is proper.”
Luminara leaned her head back against the cold support. “And what is necessary now?”
For a long time, the only sounds were the hum of the ship and the distant rattle of hyperdrive conduits.
“I don’t know,” Barriss whispered, almost to herself. She stared at the disassembled weapon, a tool of violence taken apart into harmless pieces. “Taking you was a tactical impulse. A gut reaction. I saw you, and a part of me—a stupid, childish part—just said ‘mine’. Like you were a lost datapad. Not a person. A… possession.”
She finally turned fully around to face Luminara. Her expression was naked, stripped of its calculating cruelty. She just looked young, and conflicted, and terribly, utterly lost.
“The Empire will be hunting this shuttle. They’ll assume you turned me, or I’ve gone rogue. Both are death sentences. And I can’t…” She trailed off, her gaze dropping. “I can’t let you go. Not again.”
Luminara felt the confession hang in the ozone-tinged air. It wasn’t love. It was obsession, twisted and raw, but it was real. It was a thread, however frayed.
“Then what is your solution, my old Padawan?” Luminara asked softly. “You cannot keep me chained in a cargo hold forever. You won’t kill me. You won’t release me. The ship’s supplies are finite. This is an impossible equation.”
Barriss stood, stepping away from the crate and her unfinished saber. She walked over until she stood looking down at Luminara, her blue eyes searching the older Mirialan’s face, tracing the familiar tattoos.
“I need you to choose,” Barriss said.
“Choose what?”
“To stay.”
Luminara gave a soft, incredulous laugh. “You think after all this, I would choose to follow you into the dark?”
“No.” Barriss knelt, bringing them to eye level. Her voice was urgent, desperate. “Not follow. Stay. With me. Not as a Jedi. Not as an Inquisitor. Just… here. You said you wanted to make amends. So make them.”
The offer hung in the air, so naive it broke Luminara’s heart. It was the plea of a child who had broken something precious and now held out the pieces, hoping an adult could simply glue it back together.
Barriss’s face hardened, the vulnerability sheeting away like ice.
The moment of openness was over, sealed shut. She stood up, her movements now brisk and purposeful, the previous hesitation scoured away. She crossed to a small storage locker welded to the hull, its door groaning open with a push of her hand.
Inside were standard-issue survival kits and ration packs. Barriss rummaged past them, her fingers closing around a slim, cylindrical metal cup. It was unmarked, cold from the stored air.
She walked back and placed it on the deck just within Luminara’s reach, the metal making a soft tink against the plate.
“Drink it,” Barriss said. Her tone wasn’t a request.
Luminara looked from the cup to Barriss’s face, her senses straining. The cup was just a vessel, giving nothing away. Her mind, still fuzzy from the stun bolt, swam with suspicion. Was it poison? A neural inhibitor? Some Sith alchemy to twist her will?
“What is it?” Luminara asked, her voice hoarse.
She uncrossed her arms, gesturing vaguely, a hint of that desperate sincerity returning to her voice. It felt practiced and raw at the same time.
“You asked me for a solution. This is part of it. Let me have one cycle where I don’t have to worry you’re planning to overpower me or talk me down from a ledge I jumped off years ago. Let me just… work. Please.” Barriss met her eyes. “It’s a gesture. I’m trying to find a way to trust you enough to take those cuffs off. Meeting me halfway would be a good start.”
The manipulation was transparent. Luminara could see the gears turning behind Barriss’s blue eyes, the careful appeal to Luminara’s own confessed guilt, her desire for penance. Yet, knowing it was a trap didn’t stop the hook from setting. Her failure was absolute. Her former Padawan was a wound in the Force, and she was the one who had failed to heal it.
This small, dangerous act of compliance felt like the first drop of payment on a boundless debt.
“Alright,” Luminara said quietly, the word tasting like ash.
With her wrists bound to the strap, she couldn’t reach the cup physically. She focused, the Force flowing through her with a familiar, weary current. The cylindrical cup trembled, then lifted smoothly from the deck. It floated toward her, tilting slowly.
She brought it to her lips and took a tentative sip.
The liquid was warm, unnaturally so for something stored in a cold locker. It carried a spicy, earthy flavor, like root ginger and cured moss, with a bitter chemical undertaste that made her throat want to constrict. It wasn’t entirely unpleasant, but it was alien.
She started to pull back, to lower the cup with her mind.
Barriss moved.
In one swift motion, she was there, kneeling again. One hand clamped firmly behind Luminara’s head, fingers tangling in the matted grey hair, holding her in place. The other hand closed over Luminara’s, still guiding the cup with the Force, and pushed.
“I’m sorry,” Barriss whispered, her voice cracking with a genuine ache that made the violation worse. “It’s the only way. Just drink it.”
The warm, spicy liquid poured into Luminara’s mouth. She choked, trying to turn her head, but Barriss’s grip was iron. The liquid kept coming, a steady, insistent stream that flooded her tongue and burned down her throat. She had no choice but to swallow, gulping rhythmically against the pressure, until the cup was empty.
Barriss released her, letting the cup clatter to the deck.
Luminara gasped, coughing, the aftertaste coating her mouth. A deep, weighted warmth was already spreading from her stomach, crawling up her veins toward her brain. The cargo hold’s shadows began to soften at the edges, blending together.
“What… what did you do?” Luminara slurred, her tongue feeling too thick for her mouth. The warmth in her gut had ignited, spreading like liquid fire through her limbs. It was not an unpleasant heat, not at first. It was a deep, radiating glow that made the chill of the metal deck seep away, replaced by a strange, buzzing comfort.
Her skin began to prickle, every thread of her rough robes suddenly defined against her nerve endings. The faint hum of the ship’s engines deepened into a palpable vibration that traveled up her spine. She blinked, and the shadows in the hold seemed to pulse, edges bleeding into vibrant halos of blue and purple. The taste of the bitter mixture lingered, but now it evoked a memory of sun-warmed spices in a Temple garden, a sensory ghost that tightened her chest.
Barriss watched her, a clinical observer noting the dilation of Luminara’s pupils, the quickening rise and fall of her chest. She retrieved the empty cup, her fingers brushing Luminara’s cheek as she did so. The simple contact was a lightning strike.
Luminara jerked back, a sharp gasp escaping her. “Wha—?”
“Synox,” Barriss said calmly, turning the cup in her hand. “A cortical stimulant. Peptyl for metabolic overdrive. And a touch of glitteryll, for emotional… permeability. Standard Imperial interrogation adjuncts, really. I just recalibrated the ratios.”
“You drugged me.” The statement was obvious, but Luminara’s mind was struggling to frame the betrayal within the waves of escalating physical sensation. The heat was concentrating, pooling low in her abdomen, a slow, insistent thrum that echoed her heartbeat. She squeezed her thighs together, a reflexive, shameful motion.
“I’m unmaking you,” Barriss corrected, her voice detached. She paced slowly in front of her captive, a lecturer to a student. “The Jedi walls. The serene detachment. It’s a survivable philosophy in a tranquil temple, Master. It’s a death sentence on the run. You need to feel everything—fear, anger, want—to harness it. To let it fuel you. This just… accelerates the process.”
Luminara shook her head, but the motion made the world swim. The cargo straps holding her wrists felt like live wires, each minute fray scratching a symphony across her skin. She was acutely aware of her own body in a way decades of meditation had purposely avoided—the dry ache in her throat, the heavy weight of her breasts, the treacherous, growing slickness between her legs. Her breath hitched.
“It’s too much,” she whispered, her composure fracturing into raw, undignified need.
“That’s the point.”
“Barriss, please.” The ‘please’ was a ragged thing, torn from her. She arched her back against the support, seeking friction, relief, anything to quiet the screaming sensitivity. “An antidote. Something to flush it out. Don’t… don’t leave me like this.”
Barriss stopped her pacing and crouched down again. She was so close Luminara could see the finer lines of her tattoos, the faint pulse in her neck. She smelled of sweat, ozone, and the sharp tang of the ship’s air scrubbers. To Luminara’s supercharged senses, it was an intoxicating cocktail.
“Do you remember,” Barriss murmured, her gaze tracing the lines of Luminara’s face, “on Ando Prime, when I fell through the ice? You pulled me out. You built a fire. You held me until I stopped shaking.”
Luminara remembered. The memory was vivid, immediate. The panic in Barriss’s young blue eyes, the fierce protectiveness that had surged in her own chest. That same protectiveness twisted inside her now, corrupted into a desperate, physical yearning.
“This is like that,” Barriss said, her hand coming up to hover just beside Luminara’s temple, not touching, but the heat of it was a brand. “You’re cold and locked inside yourself. I’m pulling you out. You have to feel the cold to appreciate the fire.”
With that, she stood.
“Barriss!” Luminara’s cry was sharp, stripped of all mastery. It was pure, unfiltered supplication. Her body shuddered, a wave of sheer want rocking through her so violently her binders rattled against the strap. The rough fabric of her robes was agony and exquisite torment. Every blink was a strobe light of fragmented color and memory—Barriss as a child laughing, Barriss in darkness igniting a red blade, Barriss’s hand holding the cup, forcing her to drink.
“I’ll be at the console,” Barriss said, her tone frighteningly ordinary, as if commenting on the weather. “We need a new vector. Scream if you need help.”
She turned and walked away, each footfall a timed, measured beat that echoed in the hollow hold. She did not look back. She ascended the short ladder to the upper deck, and the hatch sealed behind her with a definitive, hydraulic sigh.
Luminara was alone.
The silence was not silent. It roared. The ship’s vibrations became a language on her skin. The faint, chill draft from a ventilation duct was a glacial caress on her overheating flesh. She pulled against the binders, not to escape, but to feel the strain in her muscles, the bite of metal, any sensation to anchor her. It only fed the fire.
A low moan escaped her, thick with shame and helpless need. She let her head fall back against the beam, eyes shut tight, but the darkness behind her lids was now a canvas for unbidden images—Barriss’s hands, precise and capable, working on the lightsaber. Barriss’s mouth forming the word “mine.” The possessive pull in her own chest answered it with a throbbing, physical ache.
Time dissolved. It might have been minutes or an hour. She writhed, a prisoner of her own betraying body, every nerve alight, every emotion the Jedi Code had taught her to release now rising in a relentless, crashing tide. Fear. Longing. Regret. A dark, hungry want that had nothing to do with the Light.
Up in the cockpit, Barriss stared at the star-streaked tunnel of hyperspace, her hands clenched on the arms of the pilot’s chair. The only light was from the nav computer, softly blinking, calculating their road to nowhere.
A single, muffled cry from the hold below vibrated through the deck plating.
Barriss closed her eyes, drinking the sound in. Her own breath shuddered out.
This was necessary.
She repeated it to herself, a mantra against the part of her that screamed to go back down, to soothe, to give in.
That part, she crushed. It had no place here. Not yet.
She opened her eyes to the endless blue void, and waited.