What am I?

I feel the darkness within me; I call to it and it comes. It begs me to use it, to unleash it against the weak, the foolish or the enemies that stand in my path. Lillin Varn sat in the port crew quarters of the Ebon Hawk, her legs crossed in front of her as she meditated; thoughts and memories tumbling through her mind like ghost ships adrift in the depths of space.

“You are a breach in the Force that must be closed.”

“In you, we saw a wound in the Force.”

“In you, we saw the death of the Force.”

The Jedi Masters -- the very people she had been doing her best to find, to assemble against the Sith threat -- cast judgment over her once more, just as they had ten years prior, at the end of the Mandalorian Wars. However, this time had been different.

Lillin vividly recalled the passion in her speech when she’d defended her actions to go to war, to protect others. Even though her case had fallen on deaf ears, she had believed it the right thing to do. People had been dying by the millions on the Outer Rim, by the and the Council had done nothing. They preached vigilance and foresight, but when the time had come to take action… they had simply done nothing.

Everyone except Revan.

Lillin felt a wave of bitterness surging as she remembered her one-time friend. Ha, I really am becoming prudish, she thought to herself… There was a time when we were much more, back when we were both Padawans.

Revan had always been charismatic, virtually beaming with conviction and strength. They had all been just a little jealous of him, back then, because the Masters always kept saying how he had been destined for greatness. Greatness… Lillin thought bittersweetly. War doesn’t make greatness… it corrupts it.

She opened her eyes from the meditation and just stared at the empty room around her.

It all starts out with the best of intentions, doesn’t it? she asked herself. The good we did... the right of it. She let out a sigh. Then he started changing… he became isolated, elusive. He stopped associating with his troops and we other Jedi, except from Malak, of course… and he started wearing that mask…

A slight shiver crept up her spine as she remembered the first time Revan had worn that hideous thing, and the way it had twisted his once kind, assuring words into booming, chilling commands.

He fell. Lillin thought back to how her one-time mentor Kreia had suggested that Revan had “sacrificed” himself to the dark side in order to make the galaxy strong against some other threat. She is wrong. I knew when I heard his voice through that mask the first time, just before Malachor.

In the final battle of the war, they had managed to lure the Mandalorians into deploying their entire fleet in the battle at Malachor V against a Republic force, which was in comparison, underwhelming. So outnumbered that the only choice left was to commit an act of genocide...

This time the shiver that crept up Lillin’s spine wasn’t slight: I loathed myself for so long after that, because of the lives I took, and the ones I left in shambles. Her thoughts drifted to Bao-Dur and their conversation in the middle of the night after she had shown him his potential for Jedi training. The Zabrak mechanic still hadn’t forgiven himself for creating the mass shadow generator, which had crushed Malachor V into a dead rock, along with countless Mandalorians and Jedi who had been too close when it had been activated.

Seems like everyone I encounter lost something at Malachor… Mira, Bao-Dur, Mandalore. She breathed out a long sigh as she thought of all of her companions left back on Telos… apart from the droids, who had ended up saving her skin.

I lost something too… She could very well remember the absolute agony she had felt when the massive number of deaths had echoed all around her, and then the terrible silence afterwards when she realized she couldn’t feel the Force anymore.

She had gone back to the Jedi to try to seek help, perhaps forgiveness, though honestly never expecting the latter. But the sheer lack of forthcoming from the Council members had been unexpected. Not even Master Kavar had offered any explanation other than when he said those fateful words: “It is good that you realize this. It means you will understand why you must leave us.”

And Atris had just stared silently at her as Lillin had stabbed her lightsaber into the center stone and left the Council behind.

She had spent the next ten years wandering the Outer Rim worlds, seeking solitude and always moving, until that day aboard the Harbinger.

Lillin still didn’t recall exactly what happened, and all she had to go on was the recitation from an assassin droid and her ex-mentor. And it’s not like I can believe anything that came from her tongue now, is it?

She admitted to manipulating me, but that’s about the only thing I could trust.

Lillin remembered the old woman’s condescending tone as she had gone out of her way to ease the suffering of the people of Nar Shaddaa, Onderon and other places. Lillin’s actions had been quite the opposite of what she had been during her exile. While I was out there, I didn’t care about anyone but myself, and my own pain. But re-discovering the Force had changed that, she had been given a gift few were ever given and she couldn’t stand the thought of not using it to try to help others. Maybe it is my form of atonement, maybe I am naïve, but one thing I am not; is blind and deaf.

The galaxy had been in pain ever since the war… terrible pain. Someone has to try to help it heal. I wouldn’t mind having others to help me, but someone has to start somewhere, she thought. It might not be the Jedi way, but if we don’t act soon, there will not be anymore Jedi. I only hope the others will learn to use the Force for good and teach it to others. She thought fondly of her former companions I know they will…

A rapid series of excited bleeps startled Lillin who had been so deep in thought she hadn’t even noticed T3-M4 approaching. The little astromech droid bobbed its “head” and made a bleep that sounded like a question.

“No,” Lillin began. “I’m fine, T3. I was just… thinking.”

The droid let out a long tone that sounded sad which made Lillin smile. The little droid was always worried about her.

“No, really. It’s all right. So, what did you need me for?”

Another rapid series of beeps.

“Oh, this soon? You got that damage repaired quickly, T3. I’m impressed.”

The little droid bleeped in tones that almost sounded embarrassed to Lillin. If droids could blush, she smiled again.

“Alright, I’d better head up to the cockpit and check our course.” Lillin strode towards the cockpit leaving a befuddled droid behind.

The vortex of hyperspace glowed through the front viewport as Lillin sat down in the pilot’s chair and continued her musings. Hyperspace always seems to soothe me. Guess it’s the void.

“You bind others to you, and feed on their will.”

Many would kill for what I have. They would gladly feed off of the galaxy itself. I can still hear the darkness of the Trayus Academy whispering in my ear, begging me to unleash my “gift.” The thoughts crept inside her mind like vipers, but even as they tried to take hold, she gathered her strength and beat them down.

That is not who I am.

“Why did you do such a thing? Such kindness will mean nothing, his path is set.” Kreia’s scolding on Nar Shaddaa, when Lillin had given some easily spared credits to a refugee, and again on Dantooine, when she’d helped the militia investigate the mercenaries and their activities. “And what is it you think you have accomplished?”

And finally Master Vrook at the ruins of the Jedi Enclave: “You are no Jedi! You feel the Force, but you cannot feel yourself.”

Why do I do these things? Lillin thought with new-found determination. Because I choose not to turn a blind eye to the suffering of others. Because I choose not to use what has happened to me for evil. She stood up and her hand fell to the lightsaber at her belt… her new one with the gleaming silver blade. Regardless of what the Council says, I am once again, as I was long before, a Jedi.