The fortress was dank, dark and dingy. Outside, the rain pattered down seemingly endlessly, casting ever-moving shadows on the far walls as the dim moonlight shone through. There was no light, no pastel shades; not even a blood-red to break up the black and deep brown of the décor. These Sith took being Sith seriously. Conversations were conducted in whispers in hallways, ideally by ducking into a nook so that nobody would see you conversing at all. Among the true elite, conversation was entirely by telepathy.

One conversation, however, was taking place at a slightly louder pitch than usual. It echoed through the dungeons, reverberating off the thick durasteel walls, filling the corridors with noise.

"What kind of stupid Jedi idea was that? Negotiate with them? Nice going, Revan."

"You're not helping," Revan muttered. She was huddled in a corner under the tiny window, her mask half-raised from her face, resting her chin on her knees as Malak paced back and forth in front of her. He was taking up most of the space in the cell; she couldn't have stretched out even if she had wanted to.

"What was wrong with my idea, anyway?"

Revan sighed. "Malak, you tried hitting everything in sight when they attacked us. Did it work?"

"It would have, if we'd had the element of surprise. Anyway, I don't see your plan doing so brilliantly, either. Why, by all the gods of seventeen systems, did you expect negotiating to work? When we've slaughtered our way across half of their Empire?"

"It was worth a try. Force didn't work."

"If you'd let me surprise them -"

"This conversation's going in circles," Revan interrupted hastily. "All right, I made a mistake. Now how do we get out of here?"

"Kick the door down," Malak said sulkily.

"Malak..."

"Oh, all right. Can you pick the lock?"

She shook her head. "It's manual, would you believe."

"Well, then, clearly we're going to have to -"

"Malak, that door is six inches of solid durasteel."

"Knock," Malak finished, glaring at her. "And hope that you can negotiate with whoever comes to see what we want."

"You are really, really not helping."

"We don't have lightsabers, the window's too small for even you to get through, you can't pick the lock and the door's practically unbreakable. If you have a better idea -"

Revan lifted her mask further off her face, glaring at him from underneath it. "If you'd stop shouting for five minutes -"

A scraping noise from the door made them both jump. Revan pulled her mask back over her face as Malak turned to face the door, which slid open with a very dramatic sound of creaking metal. A sprightly-looking young apprentice marched in with a plate of what was probably meant to be food; there was a crack, and he landed flat on his back. Malak lowered his fist and gestured to the door.

"Ladies first."

"Oh, all right," Revan muttered as she waited for him to close and lock the door behind them. "Force did work."

"Fancy that." "But they're going to discover that we're loose soon, Malak, and I doubt that you have any idea what to do next, do you?"

"Simple. We keep hitting things until we get our lightsabers back, then kill them all, then leave and move on to the next planet."

"No, I didn't think so."

"It's a perfectly effective strategy!"

"It's not a strategy! It's not adaptable, it only covers one angle -"

"It's perfectly adaptable. If they get back up, I hit them harder. And there's only one angle it needs to cover."

"What happens if they run away?"

"I chase them. Then I hit them. Then they stop running. Are you coming?"

"We need an actual plan," Revan protested as she hurried to catch up with him.

"All right. You come up with a plan, while I kill the entire fortress. We'll regroup in an hour and you can tell me the plan."

Malak could tell when Revan was glaring at him, even beneath the mask. He sighed and stopped moving, with several feet of space between them. "Oh, fine. You lead. But if I hear the word 'negotiate' in that plan when it turns up -"

/\/\/\

You had to hand it to her, Malak thought grudgingly as Revan navigated her way quickly through the computer terminal. She did know how to get things done, and they hadn't actually hurt anybody yet. Whatever she was doing to the entire fortress' minds, it seemed to be working. Nobody had noticed either of them yet, and they weren't exactly being inconspicuous.

"There's an exit through the other cell block," Revan said after a moment's pause. "It's in that direction. Looks like a laundry or something."

"You know the way?"

"Yes. And no, you can't kill anything yet."

"I've been counting," Malak said as they set off again. "So far, I've asked to kill something three times, and you've told me that I can't at least seven. Do you not trust me?"

"Do you not trust me to trust you?"

"Why, Kreia, I barely recognised you."

"It's the mask," Revan said, her amusement clear. "Knocks centuries off your age."

Malak laughed. "Only centuries?"

"Millennia, then. You should try one."

"Hey, I'm as handsome as ever. Wouldn't you agree?"

"They'll probably have a checkpoint on the exit," Revan said abruptly. "It's been at least two hours. They must have found that kid in the cell by now."

"Then we'll have to bypass the checkpoint somehow. I suppose this is a bad time to suggest fighting our way through it?"

"If ever there is a good time to suggest that, Malak, I'll let you know. If we're lucky, they might have factionalised over it already and not put the checkpoint up..."

"No such luck," Malak said as they rounded a corner and a gust of wind caught them, from an open door with eight Sith standing guard. "It's only eight, though. We can take them."

"They've seen us!" Revan hissed, and dragged him hastily into a side-room. Malak stared in confusion.

"But we were walking around in the open! Don't tell me you can mind-trick an entire fortress but not those eight?"

"I can't do the entire fortress, only the lazayk, which was most of them on that level. These are the good ones. Har'zik, isn't it? The elites?"

"You're the linguist. I'll take your word for it. So, what do we do?"

"Fight them," Revan said simply. "Except that we still don't have our lightsabers."

"Yes, why did you leave those behind?"

"I was planning to build new ones on the ship then come back and capture the fortress another day, and get the originals back then! I didn't expect har'zik! They don't usually think we're dangerous enough to warrant them!"

"The news is obviously spreading," Malak said. "You're right. I can take two of those unarmed, you can probably take three, but that still leaves three unaccounted for."

"Three too many," Revan groaned.

Malak sighed and sat down on a large wicker basket that had been pushed into one corner. "Might as well get comfortable. They'll have to change shift eventually."

"And then what do we do?"

"Negotiate?"

The lid of the basket collapsed under Malak, plummeting him into darkness and mile upon mile of soft cloth. As he wrestled with it, Revan said, "Stop saying that."

"I think I preferred it when you just tortured me for a bit," Malak muttered, careful not to make it loud enough to hear in case she took him up on the suggestion. As he unwound the cloth from him limbs, he realised what it was. Stories, half-forgotten from childhood, arrived in his mind. Malak frowned, looking at the cloth. Well, it didn't seem terribly implausible...

/\/\/\

"I don't believe this," Revan said, for the eighteenth time. "I simply don't believe this."

"You're just jealous because I make a better woman than you."

"You're two metres tall! You're solid muscle, you've got the most masculine chest I've ever seen in my life -"

"I think the yellow suits me," Malak said, as he tugged at his skirts.

"It doesn't go with your wig. Which is crooked, by the way. How are you planning to hide your jaw?"

"Ah, well, they won't notice my stubble, because - oh. I see what you mean."

"Stubble." Revan groaned and slid into a corner. "This is one of those... pheerie tales, isn't it."

"It always worked for the heroes in those."

"They didn't have prosthetic jaws! I can still see your tattoo, too. Can't you get a better wig?"

"I was lucky to find one at all. Do you think they'll notice if I've still got my boots on?"

"I take it back," Revan whimpered. "All of it. Never, ever suggest a plan that isn't 'hit everything in sight' again. Ever."

"I shall do my best. Get in the basket."

"What?"

"The laundry basket. I'll wheel you out hidden in it."

"Malak ..."

"Do you have a better idea?" Malak demanded.

"Plenty, I just can't think of them right now!"

"In the basket, then."

Revan sighed in defeat and climbed into the basket. Malak handed her his tunic and cloak, then dumped a load of dirty clothes on top of them and shut the lid. The next thing she knew, they were moving.

Malak stopped the basket by the door. Revan pushed the filthy clothing to one side, taking care to get Malak's clean ones muddled up with the dirties. If they made it through this, he deserved at least that much retribution. By the time she could hear anything at all, the conversation was in full swing; but even then she could only hear snatches.

"New here, you see. My old mother, whatsername, she died last week..."

" ... don't need ... life story. How... jaw?"

Malak giggled. There could be no mistaking the noise. It was the most sickeningly-sweet giggle that Revan had ever heard. She hadn't even known that his vocabulator was capable of making that noise, and made a mental note to fix it so that he couldn't pull this again.

"Oh, lawks, well ... long story, see ... cloud, and ... wind ... wet and slippery ... looked up to ... slipped and ripped ... lost the ... it's tragic."

Also, Malak had spent far too much time around Ania lately.

To Revan's eternal surprise, the har'zik seemed to be taking whatever gizkabrained story Malak had told him seriously.

" ... name?"

"Talba, sir." Nice, Revan thought. Not even technically a lie, since it was Malak's surname, but it was sufficiently ambiguous to pass for anything he wanted it to. It wasn't the first time he'd used it, but it always caught her out, somehow.

" ... pretty hair."

What?

"Oooh, thank you, sir," Malak cooed, and let out the giggle again.

Then the basket was moving again. It seemed forever before Malak stopped, opened the lid, and said, "We're out."

Revan, in absence of any other way to express herself, summoned a wind to lift his skirts above his head.