Nothing

He knew it was a dream.

It was just a skewed memory of darkness and terror and truth. It wasn't real, and yet it was more real than any waking moment. His memory, his nightmare.

He stood on a vast plain of battle beaten vegetation turned into ashes and dust by thousands of feet and raging fire. The sky was black, the ground was wet with patches of blood, the air churned around him with the whipping wind of screams. He looked all around him, seeing only the empty plain, and stood still, terrified knowing that he was never alone here; the bodies of the dead kept him company. The corpses would never remain motionless but seemed to float, to twitch, to reanimate and drag their way to his warm body, to twist their heads around to stare at him: the abnormality. Everything here was dead, was supposed to be dead.

He thought that he was dead too, his body forgetting that he belonged here and continuing on into his façade of life.

Something clutched his worn boot, clawing at the fabric, and he looked down to see nothing attached to the grasping, stiff fingers. Suppressing a raw scream he knew would fall on a deaf world, he turned and ran. He pumped his legs as fast as they would carry him, feeling his heart respond with erratic leaps and bounds, pounding against his chest with his terror. He could taste blood in his mouth, knew that it came from the saturated air, and ran faster, trying to escape this landscape of death. The plain whipped by him and yet he knew he wasn't moving. The corpses turned their broken heads and snarled, laughed, screamed at the foolish efforts of a dead man running. They knew he couldn't escape. He knew he couldn't escape.

Chest heaving with panic, he stopped. His limbs were shaking, shivering. Adrenaline coursed through his body, numbing his mind, feeding his panic. His eyes darted from one end of black sky to the next, and they caught the shapeless form of a black mist; a new terror. It was steadily approaching him, twining around the bodies, feeding into the cracks in the earth, bringing final death.

The corpses that could move rolled their eyes and clawed their way away from the mist. They tried to escape, only to be caught up more violently and twisted, crushed, broken, until they faded into the black swirls. The mist continued, intent on its true target.

Him.

He tried to move, to turn and run no matter how futile he knew the effort; his body wouldn't move. He stood stuck, watching with heart pounding, breath escaping in gulps, arms shaking, until the mist hit him. It struck him with such force that it tore him off his feet and dragged him across the stones and cracks, cutting his skin through his clothes. He screamed despite himself and it echoed back on him, hitting his ears with cruel efficiency. The mist had him.

It took him through countless scenes of death and misery. The corpses rebounded off his body as they were picked up and dissolved, as he was transported further into the doomed battle. He then felt the mist lessening, dissolving as its hunger was sated by the bodies. It veered off and deposited him, racing off into the distance as it was called away to another grisly task. So he lay gasping for air, curled on the dead ground, waiting for the nightmare to end. He knew everyone had to wake up sometime.

His battered ears eventually heard a distant voice being carried through the harsh wind and quieted his breathing to listen. He thought he knew the voice.

It was his own.

He stood shakily, trying to find where his disembodied voice was coming from, and saw himself as if from a great distance. He looked like he was standing on the bridge of a starship, giving a command to someone beside him. He could only make out pieces of the words.

Ma...shado...orator...

He knew those words. They were embedded into him, and so his heart sank and he forgot how to breathe, even as he was silently screaming at his past self to stop.

But the order was given. He couldn't take it back.

The Mass Shadow Generator would destroy everything, anything, in its path. It would crush thousands, annihilate the planet, and bring upon him the massive abyss of lives abolished from the Force.

He steeled himself against the power of the Generator, feeling gravity compressing, pulling, tugging, trying to crush him amidst the ash, feeling the massive whole created by thousands dying in an instant swirling in his body, and he could feel his lungs deflating as he was hurled into the endless black of space...

His eyes snapped open to the dark confines of his room, limbs shaking, chest rising and falling with rapid breaths. He sat up and rubbed his hands across his face, feeling the sweat smear over his skin, feeling how cold his fingers were, how fast his heart beat in the stillness. Throwing off tangled sheets he stood and crossed the floor to lean against the cool, metal wall, letting the coldness sap the adrenaline pulsing through him and tried to slow his breathing.

It was only a nightmare, nothing more.

No, don't lie to yourself. This is what you did. What you did to countless thousands who died that day because Revan gave you an order. You murdered those people.

He dug his hand through his hair and closed his eyes. Images of the dead floated across his closed eyelids and he opened them again. He couldn't escape them. No matter where he went or how hard he tried. And he had tried.

The Unknown Regions had been a retreat for him after the war, a way to escape responsibility and guilt. No, not guilt. That followed him no matter where he went, in exile from all he knew. That was even what some called him now. The Exile. At least it was accurate.

He knelt on the floor and breathed deeply, trying to tap into the Force. He felt inside himself for that calm center that Jedi always had, the inner peace and harmony in the Force that had been there for his comfort at the worst of times to erase the lingering images from his nightmare. What he found started him shaking again.

There was nothing.

He reached inside himself, and found nothing. There was no warm feeling, no assurance from the Force, no sense in his even being alive. He realized he had never escaped Malachor. He was void, dead, completely separate from the Force which brought life. So what was he? He had done this so many times he lost track, trying to find the feeling of the Force living in him and yet finding instead a void that he didn't understand. It was as if he was worse than dead. He wasn't just devoid of the Force, he had been robbed of it, completely separated from the entity that had been a part of him for so long. It was death on an entirely new level. Maybe the death of the Force itself...

He stood and pulled on a course robe, feeling his cooling sweat prickling on his skin, and silently made his way out of his cabin. The others should be asleep in their own respective rooms and hopefully he wouldn't wake them. He didn't want to have to explain what he was doing at this time wandering around in a shaking mess to any of the crew, especially to Mira. She would love to make a big deal out of this, make a joke, or tell everyone else about his eccentricities, let everyone know he was messed up. It would be just like her...

He stopped and looked at where he had unconsciously wandered. To Kreia's room. She always loved to counsel him on anything that he said around her, or even thought, maybe she could help with this...these memories. He was wary around her though. For some reason she rubbed him the wrong way, like forgetting something really important and having it dance in front of your face. Seeing it and not being able to touch it. She was...wrong somehow. Maybe that wasn't the right word...

He shuffled in and waited, seeing Kreia in the corner meditating as usual. She raised her head, revealing a glimpse of her milky white eyes, and stood slowly. Her mouth tugged into a small grin.

"Why are you here, Exile? At this time of night?"

"Funny you would call me that...I would prefer if you used my name."

"Of course you would, but Exile is truly who you are. Kryst doesn't put in perspective what you are. A name is a mere collection of words associated with your face. Exile keeps you aware of your past, and your future."

He tilted his head, putting a little sarcasm into his voice. "So now you know my future?"

"I only put pieces together from what I see. My eyes may be dead but you know there are other means to sight." She folded her arms across her chest. "But I can tell that you have something you wish to speak of...a darkness that clouds your thoughts."

"I..." he stopped.

"Come now," Kreia chided. "There's no sense in hiding it. You came here for a reason and it would be foolish to back out of the room like I will forget it by the morning. I am not senile."

Kryst sat reluctantly on the floor and leaned against the wall, knowing he had to tell her now. "When you see me in the Force, what do you sense?"

"I sense danger, destiny, the wear of a difficult road."

"No, I mean what do you really feel? Do you feel the Force in me or..." he trailed off, afraid to speak it to another person out loud.

"So you search for something deeper than mere platitudes? Good." She breathed in deeply. "I sense a black hole, a dead center with the star of life around it. I sense death." Kreia turned her head down to look at him squarely. "Is that what you sought?"

Kryst swallowed hard and clenched his fist around the fabric on his robe.

"I'm supposed to be a Jedi, and yet when you look at me in the Force all you can feel is death...how can I be a Jedi and follow the Force when I don't exist in it?"

"I thought you were the Exile. You seek to be a Jedi also, to be part of the all encompassing Force that binds all life? Why must you look to be something that you aren't?"

He frowned, confused and wary. "But I've always been a Jedi. Why are you talking like the Force is something to run from, like it's better that I'm cut off from the Force?"

"The answer is a simple one and yet you always seem to miss it." Kreia knelt on the floor in a meditative posture and closed her eyes. "Perhaps it is better to become disconnected, to absorb life instead of simply exist in it, to have an objective view separate from the Force. This happened when you took on the death of Malachor, and it has been a benefit to you ever since. Why do you insist that the void is a detriment? It is quite the opposite."

Kryst felt his jaw go slightly slack. "You're saying that all of those people that I killed are beneficial to me somehow? How can you say that?"

"I can say it because it is truth. Death is only a part of the Force, as the Jedi teach."

Silence settled over the room, Kryst feeling like he had just dug up a nasty surprise he should have left buried. Kreia continued to sit calmly, with eyes closed, breath coming in and out steadily not at all bothered by what she had just said. He felt his back stiffening and the hairs on his arm prickle up. Something was tingling at the back of his head, an idea barely formed and one that he tried to force back down unsuccessfully. He had never really invited Kreia along with him and Kreia had never asked to come, she just had, and now she lingered here with the proffered purpose of being his mentor. He had never even thought about why she was actually here or why he kept her around. He didn't even like her and yet he found himself coming to her time and again for advice on matters of the Force and using her counsel in his efforts to contact the remaining Jedi. There was something wrong...

Kryst looked at her with sharp focus and attention, willing her eyes to lift and meet his. They did.

"Who are you," he asked, with creeping suspicion and dread, almost not wanting an answer.

She squared her shoulders. "Who do you want me to be? A teacher, mentor, underling-or perhaps you're looking for me to say Jedi or maybe Sith?"

He flinched as she said Sith, feeling a cold sensation slither up his arms and around his heart. There was such apathy about her as she said those polar opposites, like they had no bearing on who a person could be and what they would do. He swallowed hard. "What I want, what I need, is the truth. No more hidden intent behind vague words and prophecies. Just tell me."

"So you can divide your world into two neat and tidy piles of black and white? Good and evil? You thrive on these simple divisions that feed your need for a false and inadequate understanding, not searching for a greater sense in this galaxy of grey." Kreia spoke with contempt that burned his ears. "You would like me to say that I'm a Sith, wouldn't you? Because if I say I follow the creed of the Jedi your limited world would no longer be so simple-"

"-Stop. I'm not a stupid Padawan Kreia, I've had enough of this. I've seen what good and evil are, I've been on both sides and I can tell the difference, so don't try to confuse me with seemingly grand concepts. I want the truth. Who are you?"

Kreia arched an eyebrow. "If you are so intent on hearing meaningless words of history and what was, then I will tell you, if only so that you may take out of it a larger view of what you assume is this life, is the Force."

She leaned back a little and drew in breath, starting on a story that Kryst listened to with drawn breath and wary ears, and ended leaving him reeling trying to pick up scattered pieces, trying to understand and not wanting to. The story of betrayal and injustices that were inflicted on her by her apprentices, her obviously dark side apprentices, whirling in his head. His mind screamed Sith, told him to throw this woman out the airlock without a second thought, and yet there was another force in his mind that took that idea and sent it so far back into vague memory that he started to forget. It was an outside force that pushed him back and blurred things so fast that as Kryst tried to fight back it was already too late and he forgot why he had been so scared a few moments ago.

Kreia smiled gently and bid him stand, telling him to rest. She said she was tired, he didn't know why as she hadn't done anything strenuous lately, and left her quarters knowing he'd forgotten something but it probably wasn't important. He had more important things to worry about than something she had said.

Kreia sat shakily on her bunk. It had been a larger effort than she had thought to blur the Exile's memory. He was resilient and strong, but it was too soon, far too soon for him to realize what she was.

He had not yet fulfilled his purpose...