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Are you a Sith? A Jedi? There is no God. There is only the Force. The Force, and the Force alone, and maybe you and a few people you'd give anything for. Nobody else cares about anybody else, you have to admit.
Dooku looks majestic as he watches the cloaked and hooded figure from the shadows. He is sitting at a table in his palace, and the sunlight from a star hidden behind leaden clouds, streaming through the tinted windows, somehow becomes dark and licks the floor with green rays.
The creature falls to his knees. Pathetic, broken by war. It has no strength to get up and speak. His lightsaber clatters on the floor and he raises his hands, but not his face, not daring to show his traitorous face.
Dooku silently rises from his spiky and angular throne-like chair and walks over to the sticky puddle of a figure. His footsteps in the silence of the hall are like volleys of gunfire, and with each shot the creature shudders, wanting to appear small and embedded in the floor, to remain a stone statue, not moving, not feeling.
The count stops and draws his sword almost gently. He turns it on, looks at the blue laser and, after extinguishing it, tucks it under his cloak. He doesn't need to see another man's face to realize who is standing before him. Only one of the Jedi he knew and who are still alive could see his sins, see the rot in the blackened Order, find the strength to carry that burden and come crawling back here. He must have gone mad.
"Master Plo, please rise", Dooku offers his hand, and claws immediately dig into it. The Jedi is clinging to him, drowning in wine, so he doesn't mind a little scratching if it helps. "You can't? It's nothing. It'll pass"
"Was it as hard for you?", the grind that comes from beneath the mask barely resembles words. His guest flicks his chelicerae, unable to remember what the basic intergalactic language sounds like.
He looks like a frightened child, like the boy the Count remembered. He knew nothing but Kel'dorian, didn't understand why he couldn't just go home, but he studied, tried to please everyone, to make the galaxy a better place. The others, growing from younglings, changed, but Plo stayed the same, and that even made him happy, but it made him worse. The Force thickens around him, becoming sadly black, but not evil. You can even feel the bitter taste on your tongue, permeating everywhere.
"At first, yes", Dooku finally answers. I saw the horrible burned bodies and the indifferent eyes that seemed more horrible than anything, even death itself.
"Is it easier now?"
"No, of course not. That pain will always be with you"
He pulls at Plo's arm, and he rises, panting. The hood falls back and the count finally sees his face. The mask and the goggles hide most of his expression, but the furrowed brow and the overwhelming regret leave no choice.
"Am I a Sith, then?" he asks doomedly, staring down at the hard stone of the floor. "If I'm gone, if I no longer believe in the Council and the Republic, if I hate..."
"You don't know how to hate", Dooku interrupts him. For some reason, he's still supporting the Kel-Dor, as if he thinks he'll collapse again if he takes his hand away. "You're better than that. Many would envy you"
"I wish I hadn't felt that"
"Death all around? That pain, that despair, that sense of my own powerlessness and the hypocrisy of the other Council members who swore to protect the world but became executioners, leading an army of slaves into battle and condemning many to death?"
Plo did not answer, but there was no need. His large and kind heart pounded in his chest, clenching and bleeding as he thought of how many dead he mourned after each battle. It was probably the worst fate for a Jedi, a true Jedi, not what the Order had become.
"You are not a Sith", he finally replied, looking straight into the Master's eyes. "All I can say is that you have something in you that many people lack right now if you had the courage to admit your failure and come here"
"Light", Plo guesses uncertainly. He squirms almost palpably at the pain that is tearing him from within. "The Sith and the Jedi have traded places"
"Perhaps. But I suggest we stick to the view that the galaxy holds no hope for any of us"
And he pities the creature. He helps Plo to sit on his throne chair, which doesn't seem so scary now, and looks up at the sun, whose rays don't seem so dead when the clouds are gone. Plo is golden in the soft light, but his suffering suddenly seems redemptive.
Here is the truth. The only remaining goodness here before him, frightened and shrunk into a lump. It must be brought out, like a raven with a broken wing, and then perhaps the Count will finally find what he thought was lost. And neither Sidious and his idealistic lies, nor the Republic, nor even the Separatists themselves, will do anything as great as this stricken, barely alive creature.
"You're cold. I'll get you a blanket and some tea"