No One is Beneath Redemption

She walks amongst the dead as I watch from afar, searching the tombs for clues to a master lost. I do not walk beside her, but guide her from afar. She is kind, she is loyal, she is wise, and she is powerful.

I am fascinated by her.

She walks in the places I do not go, in the places I will not go. She has been broken from the Force, has fallen from its embrace. She was blinded, deafened, her senses ripped out of her in the most violent way possible. The blind know nothing of her sightlessness. The deaf know nothing of the quite she knows.

That we know.

For I too have seen that place, that place that the Jedi dare not go. That no one who has known the Force can go willingly. It is a place of infinite darkness and endless quiet. It is a void in the Force, it is the death of the Force. To a Jedi it is worst than death. And no one has gone there willingly.

Except her.

I am fascinated by this. The willingness to sever herself from the Force, the willingness to blind herself to all she has known and to see the truth. The truth at long last, for the first time in all her life, to see what the world is like through the eyes of a child, a common person. To see the Force for what it is.

Death.

The Force and all it touches is brought to death. The Jedi, the Sith, it makes no difference. The Force is a power never meant for us. It drives us, bends us to terrible deeds. It is too vast a responsibility and too powerful a temptation for any person to compensate for.

In their efforts to compensate for their innate desires to use the Force for power, the Jedi border on apathy. They weave insubstantial and unnecessary rules and traditions to prevent chaos. They blind themselves to their humanity to evade the darkness within them all. Most of all they become too weak to move into action to fulfill their duties of service, they leave worlds to rot and die out of a fear for consequences.

The Sith are no better. Unlike the Jedi they embrace the pride, greed, and ambition awakened inside of an individual cursed with the Force. They are the other side of the coin. They bring chaos and destruction to all they touch. Like mindless animals they tear apart the universe in their quest for supremacy. In the end they bring nothing but death.

It all comes back to death. The Jedi, the Sith, they bring death. Their eternal conflict brings death. Their very nature brings death.

And yet the Force lives!

It should not but it does. It continues to live and breathe, even as it destroys all that touches it. Even as it brings suffering to all who know it. All blind themselves to this belief in lightness and dark. All the Force is dark, and its darkness has begun to shroud the galaxy in evil.

It must be destroyed.

I have known this for years. I began to suspect even when I was a Jedi. The more I studied the Force, the more I passed on my knowledge to my students, the more I wondered of the nature of the dark side. The question I often asked was why.

Why did the Jedi blind themselves to the obvious, that which they preached themselves, that the darkness is within each and everyone of us and that only by becoming aware of it could it be vanquished?

Why did they as Jedi not practice what they preached? They dared not delve into their emotions, dared not recognize the sentient need for love and compassion. Instead they condemned it as a tool of the dark side.

To this I lost my first student. To this fear of love, this hate of lovers. Blinded by their dogmatic approach to life the Council exiled her and banished her forever from the Order.

In my heart I never forgave the Council and it was only one of their many crimes against my students and the galaxy.

As a teacher, as a mentor I watched over my best student. Revan.

Revan was power. Revan was all that I could wish him to be. He was more than the Council could ever hope to comprehend. But I did not follow him to the Mandalorian Wars, nor for a long time. I believed that my place was with the Jedi, to try and root out their decadence form within.

But I found that the archives had no clear, no suitable answers for me. As chief librarian I had access to all of our holocrons, all of our records, all of our most treasured artifacts. But none held within them what I desired.

That was when I began to look elsewhere for answers. At first I looked through the artifacts of other orders like the Jal Shey or the Baran Do. Surely, I thought, they would possess some wisdom not already contained by the Jedi. I came in a guise, as myself of course, but under the pretense that I was seeking information lost to the Jedi. I suppose I was, in a way, but what I really was looking for were answers the Jedi had deliberately forgotten, not lost.

Of course, the other orders did not have what I sought. All too often their dogmatic approach to the Force was too similar to that of the Jedi, and though their perspectives changed from one place to another, they always were dominated by the overarching devotion to peace, order, stability, and light.

I sought another answer. I sought what the Jedi denied me. I sought the secrets of the dark side. To know the truth I had to know both sides of the Force.

But I did not find it for many years. I still was blinded by the dogmatic approach of the Jedi. The dark side, to me, was evil. Was tainted. It would corrupt me if I so much as breathed on it.

It was not until my exile that I understood.

When the Mandalorian Wars came Revan, as I expected and wished him to, left to fight though the Council had chosen neutrality. His leaving, and that of those that followed him, was a virtual resignation from the Order.

For a committee that had fought my unorthodox teachings for years, it was the final insult. All my students so far had left the Jedi, one way or another. My first student had been exiled, my second had gone to the dark side, and my third had left the Order willingly. To a committee that had distrusted me for years it was the perfect crime. I had proven a failure, my teachings in conflict with the Jedi Order. It was justified that I be exiled.

Bitter, I left the Order without a word. Let the Jedi blind themselves to the truth, that it was their apathy which had wrought Revan's departure. Let them discover the answers I sought on their own, in due time.

No longer trapped by the teachings of the Jedi sought out the dark side. Across the galaxy I found and gathered holocrons belonging to the ancient Sith. I visited the dark places in the world: Korriban, Yavin 4, Dxun.

From the Sith holocrons I began to learn what the dark side really was.

Power. Like Revan.

And that was when he returned. The Mandalorian Wars were nearly over. He had learned of my exile, an exile he felt some responsibility for. But though the guilt of my banishment was a burden on me he came for another reason. He wanted to know. To know what I had discovered.

I revealed to him what the Jedi had denied him, what neither he nor I had known until the Jedi had freed me from their meaningless restrictions. The Force was a tool, an instrument to do good for the galaxy. With it one could save the galaxy.

But he found that though I had discovered knowledge of the powers the Sith possessed, I had not discovered them myself. I had not discovered how Naga Sadow tore stars apart and Exar Kun destroyed an entire army of loyal servants with his will. I knew that they had. But not how.

He asked me:

Where do I go?

I did not know the answer.

Then he left me, with what knowledge I had granted him and yet not enough to fulfill his insatiable curiosity. The same curiosity that had driven him as my padawan, and had driven him to the wars. Now it drove him away from me.

Upon the end of the wars he discovered what we both sought: the sheer power of the dark side unblemished. He found it on the world where the Mandalorians dared not go, and the world which was unknown to all others.

Malachor V.

When Revan left that place he was never the same. He departed to the Unknown Regions, seeking a power greater than that of any Jedi. He found it, and relinquished it. And in my guilt, as I considered what may have been my fault if he had fallen to the dark side and been lost to the light, still unknowingly falling myself, I sought out his last battlefield.

Malachor V.

And like Revan, once I had been there, the knowledge changed me forever.

The knowledge destroyed me. And when I say destroyed I mean it with all possible truth that one can speak of such a thing. There are worst things than death that can be suffered, more horrendous acts of destruction that be wrought upon one's enemies. I have experienced those things. I began to believe, as Revan did, that true compassion lay in the power of the dark side, the action it encouraged rather than the inaction practiced by the Jedi.

And I discovered that the great evil was not yet dead. The Sith were still among us, the Sith had survived the ancient wars. And I finally realized why Revan had left. He had not fallen. He couldn't have fallen. I couldn't allow myself to believe that. After all my efforts to teach him, to train him, I could not believe that Revan had fallen.

He had sacrificed himself. He was preparing for our real enemy. That was what I had to believe.

Did I deceive myself? It is too late to tell.

But I failed the test where Revan succeeded. As I found myself possessed with more and more power I asked myself again the ancient question.

Why?

Why should I give up the power I had now come to possess? Would I not do more good with the power than without it. Who knows what evil would arise next? I would join Revan, and help him prepare for the future.

So it was that I took the ancient title of Traya. As the new Darth Traya I ruled the Trayus Academy and trained a new generation of warriors trained specifically to hunt out Force-users and destroy them. And so it was that I came to possess the fate of the galaxy within my hand.

I do not flatter myself into thinking this. If I had seen the need I could have destroyed Revan, the Republic, the Jedi. I chose not to. I believed in Revan's cause. I believed in it at any cost.

It is such a quiet thing, to fall. But far more terrible is to admit it.

Until they came to me. Two students, two soldiers who had followed Revan to war and afterwards into the Unknown Regions. They were remarkable students, who quickly excelled in their training. It did not take me long to recognize their power, the incredible power that filled them, although I could not discover its origin.

What is important is where they came from. They had seen Malachor on the eve of victory. They had witnessed the death of thousands, and survived.

Malachor V.

It came back to that terrible place.

I took them as my apprentices of course, training them both in the ways of a Sith. One I trained as a Sith Marauder, a master of weapons and true devotee to the martial powers a true Sith would possess. One I trained as a Sith Assassin, the creature who dwells in the shadows and preys on those attuned to the Force, feeding on their enemy's powers.

And gradually, together they became more powerful than I. While I ensured that neither would ever be my equal, I forgot that together they were more than.

They had little reason to love me. I had twisted them into things no longer human, no longer truly alive. As the Assassin's power grew, so did his hunger. No longer was he content with Jedi prisoners and failed Sith. He sought out new prey and it became harder to control him as he lost his consciousness and became a thing of hunger, a being made purely of an insatiable thirst for life and its death. He became the Lord of Hunger.

So too did my brutal methods of training transform the Marauder. His training in combat became so lethal, so deadly that in time his body was damaged beyond repair. Literally unable to hold himself together any longer, he turned to the dark side to preserve him. But the price... oh, the price. With his body shattered and held together only by his hate he became an incarnation of suffering itself, every living moment a horrendous eternity of misery. Through my training he was transformed: into the Lord of Pain.

The only thing that kept them from turning on me sooner was their hate, their hate for the Jedi. And an alliance built on hate is a fragile one.

So it was inevitable that when Revan left us and then turned on Malak, destroying him, that the Sith would break into anarchy. My apprentices saw their moment, and in the moment I was most vulnerable to them, they turned on me.

And their destruction was complete. They destroyed me again, and I died for the second time in my life.

They tore me from the Force, detached me from my power, the one thing that had been constant throughout my life. And the universe was... empty.

I had never prepared for such a moment. Has anybody who has been taught and raised to the Force ever prepared? I had of course taught myself and my students skills necessary to those who could not use the Force, but what I, and all my students as well lacked, was the experience.

And when I lay there, helpless, crippled by those I had taught, I finally realized how far I had fallen.

And it was then that I truly became Darth Traya, the Lady of Betrayal.

Oh, how I suffered. But pain is a teacher, as any Sith knows. Through the betrayals I had suffered, the Jedi's betrayal of me, Revan's betrayal of the Sith, the betrayal of my apprentices, and my betrayal of them all, I learned how potent treachery was. It was a tool, a weapon, more potent than any other. And through it I would have my vengeance.

But what a vengeance. My vengeance would not merely be on the Jedi or the Sith. No, it would be on the entire system from which they were born. The Force would be the victim of my wrath.

Now that I was cut from it, I realized what an evil it was.

Now I knew what the Jedi taught me was true... to an extent. They believe that the darkness is within us all but they are only half right. There is no dark or light side of the Force. The light or dark side are those qualities the Force awakens in an individual. Those corrupted by their ambition find themselves slaves of the supposed 'dark side.' Those corrupted by their pride find themselves slaves of the 'light.'

She does not know. She who walks before me, who walks the dusty valley of Korriban, searching for a lost Jedi in the home of the ancient and long gone Sith. She does not realize the true evil of the Force. She has seen it, she has seen it through the eyes of one who does not know it. And yet she does not see.

Why? Why does she hold so true to the Jedi way though it was they who banished her? Though it was they who punished her for virtue and rewarded those who sinned? She fascinates me.

Why did she turn away from the Force? From the power it offered?

I do not know.

She calls to me again. She desires answers for her questions. She trusts me, though her companions do not. Sometimes I feel pity for her, guilt I would suppose, for what I am to do with her. She does not know, no one knows but I, how I love her. She is to my daughter, my child, as all my students were and still are. I love her as I loved Revan, I loved her as I loved my first daughter, the one that I lost to another's love.

That is why, though I shall eventually sacrifice her, and myself, to finally exact my vengeance, that I teach her, protect her, and reimburse her with power. That is why I have given her back the Force, just as I once regained it through the love of another.

She asks me, of the ancient evil, the one that Revan has left to fight, but that I, in my sacrifice, shall destroy.

'Whose tomb is this?' she asks, looking upon the ruins of a forgotten home of the dead.

I answer.

'This way leads to the Tomb of Ajunta Pall, a fierce Sith Lord. According to legend, the blade proved more fearsome than the Master, leading to his demise.'

I continue, relating to her how my best student, Revan, discovered this same tomb years earlier during his quest for the Star Forge.

'Ajunta's dark specter lived on through the centuries, until Revan entered the Sith Lord's tomb in search of the blade. Revan calmed the angry ghost of Ajunta Pall and showed him the path back to the light.'

Perhaps I spoke too harshly, revealing my distaste for Revan's sympathy. Perhaps it was because he had fallen himself that he felt pity for such a pathetic shadow of a once great lord. Perhaps it was because he had known evil that he had been willingly to forgive evil.

But Revan should not have granted mercy to Ajunta. Too much had been done, too much evil had been exacted by that soul for it to be forgiven. Did not the families of those who had fallen to him not blessed his death? He should have suffered, to know what suffering he had offered.

But this one, she who has been where I have been. She has the same weakness as Revan did, the same foolish optimism to see the best in people. It makes her useful, it makes her trustworthy. But it also blinds her to the truth.

She asks, I would expect her to.

'You sound like you disapprove.'

I answer, I answer from my heart, from the knowledge I have gained by virtue of experience on both sides of the Force. I answer, and in doing so, condemn myself.

'One who has fallen so far, and done so much evil does not deserve redemption. In a way, such a turning from one's nature is cowardly, a betrayal of the self.'

Once again, she shows mercy when she should not. She shows pity when it is not deserved.

'No one is beneath redemption, Kreia. No one.'

A shiver. A chill. And yet simultaneously, a warmth in my heart. I feel her pity for the lost soul of Ajunta Pall. I feel her guilt, the shame she has born since Malachor V, the dark place where once again we must return if all is to be finished. I feel her trust in me, her belief that I am wise.

I am a fool but her feelings, her hope, brings hope to me. I love her even more.

But it is gone in an instant, as quickly as it came. Once again, I see the truth. Hope is a lie.

I answer.

'Perhaps. But redemption is a form of spiritual collapse, a fall few recover from.'

Sadly she moves on, heading ever closer to her destiny. Closer to the path I have laid for her, to bringing all the Council together so that finally, I may destroy them so that no longer they can interrupt my plans. She is closer to bringing together my students as well, so that they too can be destroyed. She is closer to unlocking the hole within her, the hole in the Force.

She is closer to bringing about the death of the Force.

As she walks the dead world of Korriban, her words echo in my thoughts.

No one is beneath redemption, Kreia. No one.

I am