Birth

AN: With thanks to Tiger Sociopath, Aemon, Elseud, Beautiful Winter, TheBattleSage and Enid for editing, pre-reading, and helping me sort my thoughts out.

39 BBY

Corruption, much like water, would strive to flow in and fill any vessel that can contain it. It was inevitable that corruption would seep through the festering cracks of the aging New Republic, and leak down from its vessel into the foundations of the Jedi Order. Once there it would remain invisible and intangible, until one of the greatest among Jedi decided to search it out themselves. Count Dooku had seen it.

He had smelled it.

The rot, the arrogance and dogmatic blindness, the inability of the Jedi Council to change the course they had set upon. All they had to do was to swallow their pride and look past their own noses, come down from their cushioned council chambers to see the darkening cracks spread as the weight of an entire galaxy slowly crushed the Order. All they had to do was to just look, but they deemed it beneath them.

When he left, Count Dooku had hoped for some sense of relief, that his burdens would be lifted and he could think of something else. Find a smaller problem that he could actually handle. Instead he was even more troubled than before.

Originally, Dooku had naively thought that even if he couldn't solve the galaxy's problems, maybe he could do something about his homeworld's. Even here, the corruption that rotted the Republic made it impossible to fix anything. The threats that his people faced, the crippling tariffs, the corporate predation, and the Hutts were all aided and abetted by the Republic.

Becoming the Count of Serenno had only made it all the more apparent that something needed to change. Something big.

The tangled nets of bureaucratic interests were all in bed with the rich and powerful elites of the Core, who were not interested in raising an army. So the slavers and leg breakers grew fat and rich, their appetites growing with them. Ever hungrier, ever greedier. Voting any kind of resolution or act through the Senate was all but impossible. The larger and more prosperous inner rim and core worlds outnumbered the beleaguered barbarians and hillbillies of the Outer Rim several times over. Why would they pay for an army that they didn't need? Not when they benefited from the status quo so much.

When Dooku wasn't angry, he just felt tired. Somedays it seemed like frustrated energy was the only thing keeping him going. Sometimes it was so bad he thought he could hear the singing of the Dark Side, calling to him with its sweet promises and quick solutions. Except anything offered by the Dark Side has its own price to pay. Count Dooku was no longer sure he could pay the price. Even if anything would be better than inaction. Well, anything except that. For now.

"Master." A simulated female voice interrupted his musings. Count Dooku turned his head to regard the RO series nanny droid. Tall, and designed to appear harmless to those under its care, it was a model designed exclusively for child care and nursing. At the moment, this unit was using its self cleaning functions to wipe off its many small appendages, having come here fresh from performing the operation. The small rapid movements of its countless tiny hands rubbing brushes and cloths over and across each other almost made it look nervous.

Dooku dismissed the notion from his mind. Who would be fool enough to care for the feelings of Droids? "Yes?" He said, deep baritone displeased at the interruption.

"The Countess requests your presence."

For a moment, the Count considered waiting, but crushed the notion immediately. It was his duty to go, and go he shall. "So the hour has come."

He delicately placed his wine glass on the reading table next to his seat before standing, a small amount of the substance lingering out the bottom. The weak green light from his plasma heater did very little to illuminate his parlor, the green flicker the size of a thumbnail putting out enough heat to maintain the living quarters at a reasonable temperature. The furniture were all hand-crafted from exotic hardwoods taken from the Serennoan jungles, their luxurious forms nearly hidden in the darkness encompassing the room. Count Dooku hadn't meant to brood for such a long period of time, but the sun had set over his mountain home, and he hadn't cared to turn the lights on, so deep he was in his thoughts.

Serenno Castle was vast, perched on a high cliffside with an extensive garden and a commanding view of the forested river valley below. It was also mostly empty, with great barren halls connecting the two wings and the high tower looming over the entire structure. Dooku had lived, and wasted, most of his life as, and for, the Jedi, and was thus used to the humble austerity of the Order, so Serenno Castle was only occupied by exactly enough droids to keep it maintained. The only sentient inhabitants were the Count, when he wasn't out in the wider world conducting business, and his wife. And now one more.

The echo of his footsteps announced his presence to his wife long before he arrived, so that when he did he found his wife looking expectantly at him as he stepped through the doorway. Unlike the rest of the castle this room was brightly illuminated. The scent of birth permeated the bedroom, and Dooku was surprised at its potency. He had smelled battlefields before, but nothing like this. Blood, amniotic fluids, and even feces now freshly disguised by cleaning products as the nanny droid rushed to make the room acceptable for the Count's presence.

What made the scene odd to the Count's senses was the immense concentration of the Force. It was rapidly decreasing and already it had become barely above the normal of the planet, but the Force was not silent in its machinations. Is this common for all births? A thought for another day.

The Countess was covered in sweat, radiating exhaustion and relief through the Force. Along with, for some reason, a small amount of fear.

Count Dooku had married entirely out of pragmatic need. The Serenno family was large, and full of ambitious men like his brother, Ramil. When Dooku had left the Jedi Order and returned to Serenno, he was shocked to discover his older brother, the then Count, conspiring with pirates to raid Serenno itself. After deposing his brother, Dooku had had no choice but to become the new count, and the head of House Serenno. Being nearly sixty and without an heir, he had discovered a large target painted on his back as all his nephews and nieces started eyeing up his titles and estates. To defend his new holdings it had been necessary to marry.

Athemeene was a distant cousin of his, a young daughter from the Raxus branch of the Serenno family. She also really hadn't been able to say no when her father told her to marry a man nearly three times her age. She was beautiful, even now, with rich black hair and soft brown eyes. Her skin was was pale, flushed and moist with the sweat of exertion. Up to this moment, Dooku had found their relationship… strained. Athemeene was afraid of him, though he suspected he knew why.

He could sense her nervousness from the day they met, and it never went away. Sometimes he found her disappointed with him, and he wasn't sure what to do about it. Beyond doing his duties he had learned to avoid her so she could be at peace. Of late, he had even felt some resentment coming from her in the force.

Well, he was an old man after all. It was natural.

He made sure her needs were being met. She was fed, and had a substantial budget to decorate her rooms and clothe herself, droid attendants and freedom to travel. When it came to doing her duty to the Count, he had been gentle. Childmaking was something he had no prior experience in, but he allowed the Force to guide him. Despite the teachings from the order forbidding such connections, Count Dooku found that the Force reveled in the process of making new life. Her feelings and intentions had told him what she enjoyed, what she wanted, and her voice had been loud enough to leave his ears ringing.

Right now she seemed the happiest he'd ever known her to be, but that lingering chill of nervous fear was still there. In contrast the baby in her arms was radiating bewildered fear and frustration, which Dooku suspected was what most babies felt upon discovering their own birth.

"Would you like to hold her?" Athemeen offered, holding out the child.

Fatherhood had been the last thing Dooku ever really wanted, but a sense of duty carried him across the room. When he took the child and held it in his arms, he supposed maybe some feeling would come. Fatherly pride of some kind, love or whatever else was spoken of. Instead, all he felt was a strange sense of violation. He had created a child. One more connection severed to the Jedi, and all he had ever known.

Across the room, Dooku felt Athemeene's expectant gaze on him, wanting something.

"Well done." He told her, making eye contact. "Our line is secured."

Rage. It didn't show on her face, even now she was too well composed, but cold rage rose up inside Athemeene, and Dooku realized he'd upset her. She was a mother now, of course she wanted him to show love to their daughter. A love he just didn't hold in his heart.

"Well." She smiled at him, tightly. "I'm glad you approve."

He went to return the child to her mother, when something caught his interest. The force was moving in the room. Active. Being used, somehow. Used by someone. The child was calling out in the force in confusion and fear, so loudly that if it were an actual sound it would be a deafening roar. Quickly, he reached out to her and shared feelings of surety, of protection with her and immediately the child stopped.

As Dooku looked down to his new daughter, she gazed back at him quietly, holding unnaturally still for one so young. Something hung in the air. There was a moment of tension that Dooku couldn't explain. Like many were seeing this moment and waiting with baited breath.

"She is force sensitive." Dooku declared, voice steady and calm, but now he was feeling strangely nervous.

Reaching out, he placed two fingers against her forehead. The light side flowed through him, and into her. Their wills met in the force, and hers was shockingly resilient. She was strong in the force, but so was he. She was untrained though, and an exhausted baby. After a moment of resisting, the girl fell asleep, her eyes fluttering shut. "Here." He said, handing the child back to its mother.

She looked at him, shocked. That fear he always felt in her was now inflamed, an icy undercurrent that had bubbled to the surface and was now nearly a flood. "Force sensitive… like the jedi." Athemeen's voice was strained. "The jedi will take her."

"I will make the necessary call." The nurse droid said from the doorway, and turned to leave. Its foot hadn't even crossed the threshold before it froze in place. The pressure in the air changed, causing a faint rumbling to be heard in everyone's ears, as the front plate of the droid buckled and bent in the air. Like an empty can crushed in a giant hand, the droid collapsed, its head rolling away in a shower of sparks.

"That will not be necessary." Count Dooku declared. Rage rose up inside him before he could control it, but he wasn't a jedi anymore so why control it at all? That corrupt, blind order? That collection of self satisfied fools?! Men that he knew, had spoken to and heeded the wisdom of once. Now he didn't trust them, not with the future of the galaxy and certainly not with his own flesh and blood. They had taken many things from Dooku, but this is one thing he would not let them have.

With a thought, Count Dooku sent the wreckage tumbling into the hallway to be dealt with later. He turned back to his young wife, who looked at him shocked.

"This will be our secret." Count Dooku told her. "Once our daughter is old enough, the council will no longer want her."

Athemeene looked up at him from her bed, and for once that cold current of fear he'd always known in her disappeared completely. A warm glow of happiness, relief, and certainty filled her, and she said to him. "Of course. Yes, you can train her."

Dooku nodded, then looked down at the child. His child. A range of emotions and desires ran through him, unlike anything he felt in the Jedi Order. He wanted to continue holding her, he wanted her to be safe. It was irrational, but somehow he was reminded of Qui-Gon.

Shaking these thoughts and feelings away, he returned the baby to his wife, and she stared down at the child, heart overflowing with love and contentment. Overflowing indeed, as some of it now reached Dooku as well.

Tears gathered in the corners of his eyes, until he blinked them away. With the aid of the Force, he pulled up a chair so he could sit next to his wife. "She needs a name."

"...Tan'ya." Athemeene said, then looked over to him for approval. "I like Tan'ya."

Hardly a traditional name, but Count Dooku nodded his head and gave his consent. "Tan'ya Serenno… My heir.