Song: "The Starkiller" from The Force Awakens OST

A flash of white talons and black fabric met Ronderu. Her windpipe contracted beneath his hand. Pain skirted around her neck, buttressing her vision as she fought the single hand that was ending her life.

"What did you do with them?" he shouted, driving her against the wall further. "Tell me!"

She floundered like a fish dying on the sand. Blood pooled in her cheeks as she pointed to the hand clasped around her neck, and he let her go.

She crumpled to the ground, her regulator picking up again. She gasped a response through her bout of coughing onto the squalid prison floor. "Who?"

"The children," he snapped. "You wished to kill them."

Wouldn't you have done the same thing? Ronderu wanted to respond, but that would have been incriminating. "I....I don't understand. I gave everything I was for them. And even if I wanted to, why would you care?"

His foot swung to knock her down. "Answer me."

"I'd sooner die," she snarled. "I love them."

"So be it." He grabbed her by the shoulders, dragging her out of the cell.

✺✺✺

She was dumped into a long hallway. "Grievous," she snapped, wobbling to her feet. "Where are you?"

Her eyes landed on a statue against the wall: a statue of him. What kind of narcissist keeps statues of himself in his lair? "I don't....understand."

As if she was a marionette, her feet began to move along the floor, taking light steps. She came upon more statues, often in different poses, of him. Each statue was more grotesque. One depicted him on all....six legs? Two smaller arms protruded from his shoulders as he stood like an overgrown insect, scouring the area.

She stopped after a while. This hallway might continue on forever, or maybe the time spent in his prison had driven her so mad she'd begun to walk in circles.

She squeezed authority into her voice. "General, cut to the chase."

She would die whether she continued or not. But curiosity beckoned to her. Why did he want her children? The fury in his eyes had been so personal. He didn't want them because he wanted to kill them. He was worried she had killed them. Meaning, in some way....he cared for them.

Grievous could have loved someone?

Impossible.

Eventually she stumbled upon a difference: he was clad in traditional Kaleesh garb. A headscarf clothed him; a cape, white rather than stony gray, billowed around his shoulders.

As she continued, the statues shrunk in size. Eventually they were somewhere around her own height, no longer so gigantic. The cybernetic limbs began to fade. First the arms—replaced by Kaleesh arms, thin from the famine. Then the legs—scaly, just like her own, clutching a mumuu skull beneath their talons. The chest became organic in the next five sculptures, but the face remained covered.

She continued, her heart banging. Almost afraid of the truth and drawn to it all at once.

At the end of the line of statues, so far she could not see where it had begun....she stared upon the face of Grievous.

The bare, unmutilated face, with round features and a carefree smile across his mouth. The mouth she had kissed passionately in the past—and would have kissed—on their wedding day. A face she had dreamed of for years since their departure, when they had been young.

The face....of her sweet Qymaen.

✺✺✺

A talon pressed around her neck, and the world melted around her. She heard nothing, tasted nothing, smelled nothing. Her vision blurred, pooling into colors vivid as the morning sky.

She sank to her knees. The face was seared like a brand into her memory forever. The face of Qymaen. The face of Grievous.

I should have gone with Arna.

No, I should have been killed by Dooku.

But even that was too late. She should have died at Jenuwaa, before he had turned into....this. Although the truth was that if she had stayed with him, talked sense into him....

This was her fault. She had completely misunderstood Dooku's plan. It hadn't been to kill Qymaen to pave the way for a monster, but to turn Qymaen into the monster....and subdue Kalee in the process. Dooku had never cared for using their people. He had only wanted them to be subjugated.

It was pure evil.

He pushed her face to the floor. "You attempt to usurp my throne. You will be granted the death you desire."

That's why he thinks I'm a usurper. That's why he wants my children.

Because they're his.

And she was sobbing. Her voice came out in a strangled tone. "Tell me it isn't true. Tell me you're lying and kill me."

Sweet Qymaen....couldn't be....

I'm dreaming, or dead and asleep. He'll come to me and wrap me in warm arms, not cold metal ones. He would never hurt me.

"It is so."

His hand left her neck, and her ears picked up the sound of a lightsaber ignition being triggered. But when the blade sang toward her, she ducked it, rolling over onto the cold floor.

His talon crushed her bruised neck again. "Anything more to say?" he snarled.

She swallowed. Arna's words pounded through her skull. Reach beyond the physical.

She closed her eyes, putting every ounce of force she had into a single thought. I loved you. I always did.

✺✺✺

Her mouth spoke those words, outlining them to him. He tore his talon from her throat. Strange feelings descended over him. She....loved me?

He bent down and took her limp gloved hand between two of his own. Dooku had been wrong? Had he intentionally lied, or not understood? Or was Kummar trying to manipulate him?

Why would she tell me she loves me when I'm about to kill her?

Her lips moved to form four words. "Reach beyond the physical."

Hunger for the truth drove him wild. Before she could speak, he pulled her face toward his, directing her lips to the small bit of exposed skin around one of his eyes.

She touched his soft, wrinkled skin—those burns which were so sensitive. Warmth shocked his system. His body trembled with a power even stronger than what he'd been feeling for the past two years.

Love.

Pure, unadulterated love for this woman. It bubbled out of his remains, through every cavity in his armor. This woman he had driven to unconsciousness so many times in the short time he'd known her—whom he'd hit, shouted at, insulted. This woman he had been ready to kill, as if she was a mere Jedi, one of his enemies instead.

Ronderu lij Kummar was alive and warm in his arms. Memories of her that had been long ago locked away surfaced his mind. His ocean—her courage, her laughter, her hair—how fun she was to be around, how his breath would cauterize at the mere idea of kissing her, how he would have given up everything if it meant staying with her forever.

And most of all....how he had lost her before. How it had torn him apart.

He pressed an audio-receptor to her chest, listening to that heartbeat. His touch receptors drew in the sensation of her body heat. The gentle rise and fall of her chest was the most gorgeous thing in the galaxy to him. Racked with tremors, he was speechless.

She scrambled out of his grip. "Stay away." Her voice was frigid. "Get away from me."

What possessed me to act in such a manner toward her?

Her words were sharper than a surgical knife. "If you think that I can just forget all you did to me....to our people—"

"That wasn't me," he interrupted her, and she scowled. "Ru....I need your help. There's something wrong with me. I—" he could not believe he was saying these words— "I need you."

She stood quietly, tears rolling down her cheeks. One hand went to her jaw, the other to her bruised neck. "Well, you're a year too late," she whispered through clenched teeth.

And without another word, she turned and walked down the hallway.

✺✺✺

Night fell on the third moon of Vassek, and Grievous' stasis pod released him from the immobilized state he would have been glad to remain in forever.

The general lay limp on the ground for a long moment, his blood icy. He had dreamed of Ronderu stabbing him—murdering him with dual blades. Just like I've tried to do to her enough times. At this point, it's simple retribution.

He gazed at his reflection in the mirror of the wall—at eyes that saw the world through fury, ears that received buzzing film, and a body that felt everything but pain. His last act of love toward Shia and his children was now a weapon used for a greater evil than letting them die.

Ronderu lij Kummar....alive. The words were almost too beautiful to believe, and yet there she was—a living, breathing woman....who loathed him.

He mustered the strength to stand. He must convince her that he still loved her — there was something in his mind that was fighting against her, something engineered specifically for her destruction—but he could vanquish it for her, with her.

As he stepped out into the corridor of his home, the din of sobbing rushed into his audio-receptors. He tightened his cloak around his shoulders and kept walking.

She lay at the entrance to the statues, shivering in her sleep. She mumbled dizzily, something about how it was all her fault.

All her fault? He gazed at his body. It had been entirely his doing. San Hill had been right, in a way—he had chosen the cybernetics. She was not to blame for any of this mess.

He stepped down and felt her forehead. At his touch, she stopped, letting a breath out through her mouth. Grievous drew his hand away sharply, silently. Don't wake up. Please.

He dropped to his knees next to her, undid the clasp on his thick cloak, and wrapped it around her. The fabric was like a quilt, enormous and impossibly soft—she would rest peacefully in its folds.

He leaned down close to her, tucked a loose lock of ebony behind her ear, and traced the outline of her jaw. His hand trembled as he pulled away. Her lovely frame was living. Breathing, not on an ocean grave, but right within his reach.

"Sleep," he intoned as quietly as his vocabulator would allow. "I'm going to get you something to eat." He pressed the narrow part of his mask to her cheek, made a noise akin to a kiss, and left the room.

✺✺✺

When Ronderu awoke, she trembled in the blackness. She had heard and felt everything he'd done to her when she'd been asleep. Perhaps one day I can trust you again, but not now. If he snapped on her, it would be her own foolishness.

The smell of food caught her nose, and her stomach was weak from hunger. Seeing a bowl of roasted tom vegetables and mumuu meat, along with the utensils they used back home, she took the bowl.

She stopped just before eating, smelled the food. She delicately lifted one of the tomi to her mouth, licking the sauce off of it—testing for poison. Finding nothing, she forced herself to eat the food slowly, shivering in the enormous black blanket that had been bestowed on her.

She lowered her head. "I know you're watching. It must make you happy to see me weak."

Her stomach twisted with bitterness. Why was she accepting gifts from Grievous? What was wrong with her?

Perhaps because it's logically efficient. He left me this food and gave me a blanket when I'm sick. She could still hate him and understand that he was trying to keep her alive.

But she refused to humble herself before him, so she threw the bowl at one of the statues. It shattered against the stone face of her captor. She threw off the blanket and her clothes and curled up in a different location, willing her tired mind not to doze off again, willing her body not to shake from the cold.

Arna's words pounded in her skull. He's a terrorist. He doesn't deserve you. Come with me and I'll treat you better.

"I refuse to listen to you either," she muttered. "You're wrong about him. When he realized what he did....he stopped. Grievous wouldn't do that. It had to be Qymaen."

So she made her choice. She would defy him until he proved himself a liar....or worthy of her again.

◈◈◈

Did you know....

● The first song above is "Forever Still" by Adrian Von Ziegler. I almost used it as the main soundtrack for this chapter, but found that The Starkiller worked better, especially since it's Star Wars music. The second song is "For the Man I Loved" by Karliene, because I find it fitting for the current situation.

● This chapter is the eighth draft of the specific scene where the reveal occurs. I tried many ideas for how it would turn out, but liked this one best.

● Without Arna's training, she wouldn't have been able to reach to the last remnants of Grievous' connection to the Force.

Tell me what you think....

● Was Arna wrong? Should Ronderu have gone with him instead?

● What biases have prevented her from seeing the truth till now?