Chapter 5: Dooku’s Revelation and Sidious’ Contempt

Aboard his vessel, Dooku and Ventress had gone to their own private chambers. Dooku had looked in the mirror as soon as he had some alone time and looked at his face. He couldn’t believe what he saw. His skin was pale, haggard in his reflection as if he were some foul undead creature of legend made real, and his eyes were a sickly yellow.

It wasn’t the only weird thing he had felt while on that planet. He felt something new stirring in him as he first saw the temple and as the trials had tested him, so too did he feel that same presence creeping inside of him. But once he had touched the Sith holocron, he felt himself changed completely. The things he said to the Jedi, calling himself the avatar of the dark side, it was too arrogant even for him, and he felt as if he had betrayed the very cause he fought for.

Even now he felt dirty. He was no stranger to the pull of the dark side, his eyes had flashed gold under it’s power on many an occasion and like many real Sith before him, had plotted insurrection against his master far before Sidious first force choked him for failure. But now he felt as if something had dug it’s claws into his skin and gashed him before escaping into the night, making him more of a thing than a man. The yellow eyes staring into him from the mirror’s reflection looked diseased and possessed of no power at all. More than a few times he feared that the person looking back at him would smile of it’s own will. As if it were a demon from some story meant to scare children.

So he did something that he never thought he would do again. He closed his eyes and used a Jedi meditation technique. Slowly he found himself calming, at peace. It was a feeling he had not known in some time, but after venturing on foot and being transformed into whatever that was, it felt better than ever. When he looked in the mirror again, he was not yet restored to his former features. Yet the blush of life had returned to his cheeks.

In a way he looked even worse than ever. His pale disfigured face colored red and pink made him look like a garish clown at some grotesque theater. But he knew it was a step in the right direction. The force’s miracles were not to be doubted. He smiled, relieved and communed with the force again. Slowly he felt his face changing again. He was intent on once again brimming with his noble features and nothing of the abomination he had beheld in his reflection.

When he finished, he opened a communicator with his master. At that point, the sky above Naboo was that dark blue predawn light, and Palpatine had called his personal shuttle to take him back to his official offices on Coruscant. Behind him were Mas Amedda and Sly Moore, hidden from view. He was clad in his dark Sith robes, a sight Dooku had grown used to, yet even then as he beheld Sidious, he felt a strange sensation from him through the hologram, as if the dark side scared him.