Rising From Ashes

Chapter 12 - Unveiled

Author's Note: I'm so sorry. *sobs*

~ Amina Gila

Anakin Skywalker

We've seen the blue Twi'lek off and on ever since the direct threat he gave us, but we've never really spoken since. So I have no idea what he's doing here now, but I have a very bad feeling about it.

Especially when a medical droid follows him in moments later, holding... something, and approaches Aniya. This is weird, but he does seem to be Plagueis' assistant or something. Maybe he sent him to... I don't even want to know what, but I thought Sidious said we wouldn't have to deal with this anymore.

"What are you doing?" I demand anyway, fear clenching me in a vice. All I can remember is that sheer agony of whatever he was doing to me, and I'm not about to let anyone hurt Aniya if I can stop them. It would help if my mind didn't still feel so foggy and hazed over, though.

The Twi'lek gives me a hard look, not responding, but there's something dark and satisfied in his eyes as the medical droid injects the substance into Aniya's arm.

Resistance would be a sure way to make Plagueis angry. I don't care to push him far enough to know what he'd do then. (Sidious seems... scared of him, even if he'd never admit it, and I don't know what that says.)

A sudden flare of pain from my bond with Aniya nearly throws me off-balance, and she draws in a sharp breath, catching her balance on the nearby table.

That's – it's a torture drug. I know it, because I've been injected with them before by the Separatists. And why would Plagueis do that, right after he nearly killed us?! Before we were even recovered? Unless –

There's nothing I loathe more than being helpless while my sister is being hurt, and for a moment, it whites out any fear I have of angering the Sith. Or maybe it's just that Plagueis isn't here right now.

"What are you doing?" I demand, furiously. It might have more of an effect if I didn't feel about to pass out.

"Plagueis didn't send you, did he?" Aniya grits out. She's breathing hard and shaking, sitting on the edge of the medical table now, hands clenched on the side of it. I want to go to her, but if I move, I think I'll end up on the floor instead.

"He is of no concern here," the Twi'lek says, and he's enjoying this. I'm very tempted to reach out with the Force and just – something, because this is going to end now. "He may want you functional, but he cannot stop me."

"Then what do you want?" I growl.

"Have you already forgotten my message to your master?"

What? "Hurting Aniya will do nothing to him."

The Twi'lek scoffs. "I am well aware of what you mean to him."

I – I don't want to think about what Sidious feels towards us. It's so much simpler not to, to pretend it's nothing. That he doesn't care. But I know, deep inside, that he does. That is obvious, else he wouldn't show it so clearly. He couldn't fake that, and he'd have no reason to. But it makes sense. It makes sense now, why Sith always hide that, if they care at all. Sidious didn't as much as he should've, and of course, that means people are trying to find vengeance through us.

It's not as if they can go after the Emperor himself.

"We're nothing but his slaves," Aniya hisses, voice cutting off in a quiet gasp of pain.

It's true, but sometimes it also seems like it's not, and I don't... know, especially right now. We mean something to him, I know, but he flips back and forth between showing it and being so Sithly I can hardly tell sometimes. Not that the Twi'lek needs to know any of that.