#couldn't decide if I should give y'all Sifo-Dyas angst or the barfing but opted for the longer snip as I haven't updated this fic in... uh

[charmwasjess]

Last Line Challenge

I got tagged by the lovely @wonderland-s-angel a couple days ago! Thank you!!! :D

I'll tag @bolithesenate + @purple-ant + @rochenn + @dapurinthos And for y'all, how about some of the long overdue next chapter of the Thunder Answered Back? I'm working on it and the time travel au this week.

“But… sixteen years. If I’m counting back, that…” Dooku trailed off, swallowed, and began again with some effort. “When… Sifo-Dyas accepted his seat on the Council, did he still–”

“Get that name out of your vile mouth, Sith!” Jocasta interrupted, surprised to find she was shouting. Her fingers spasmed against the lightsabers clipped at her waist. Black stars, she wanted to kill him all over again. She had been compartmentalizing that particular revelation from their night of wine and horrors. 

The last time Jocasta had seen Sifo-Dyas, he had been in the Temple hanger, prepping his ship to leave on some routine duty. He’d been smiling that small, secret smile of his that could be so charming or wicked, depending on what was behind it. Odd, she’d thought, at the time. Sifo-Dyas smiled so rarely those days. 

Later, Jocasta headed the investigation into his murder. The last, bleak gift she could give her lost friend, though she was as unable to help him in death as she had been in life. In the end, it was Plo Koon who brought his lightsaber home from that lonely crash site, and Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi who had followed the trail back to the Pykes. She read the incomprehensible words in their after mission report but could not believe them. Skywalker and Kenobi were the finest of Jedi, but surely, they’d simply come to the wrong conclusion. That Sifo-Dyas had been duped or used, yes, caught up unknowingly in some tangled, greater scheme that went back to the Sith, yes. That it had led to his death? Even that she could believe. In some ways, it was a marvel that it hadn’t happened to him sooner. 

But Dooku? Even then, even after everything he had done, she could not believe it. She had known the two together for their entire lives, since their boyhood friendship. It did not seem possible that Dooku could have ever truly meant Sifo-Dyas harm. 

Until last night, when Dooku confirmed it all.

Now, she realized she understood that elusive smile at last. Because Sifo-Dyas hadn’t been off on whatever errand he’d lied to her about that day. He’d been going to see Dooku.

It’s difficult, this business of knowing things, Sifo-Dyas had once told her. He’d been smiling then, too.