Lost and Found Chapters 20-25

"Hold still--"

The little boy was squirming again, distracted. It made it harder for Lydie to concentrate on the Force, harder to trace it to a single sentient and measure the amount, determine the origin--

"Do you speak Basic?" Lydie murmured, opening one eye and smirking. The little boy giggled, a Twi’lek with still short, stubby green lekku. Lydie took that to mean that he did.

If he spoke it, he ignored it too. The little boy clambered up from where he had been sitting and ran off to join the rest of the children playing in the apprentice wards.

Strong in the Force. Then again, they all were. No child was brought to the Jedi Temple unless they were confirmed Force-sensitive or at least showed signs that they might be. When they only showed signs that they might be, it was up to med-droids, the Council, and good old-fashioned feelings to determine whether the Force was really there or not.

And the responsibility of stretching out with their feelings usually fell on elder Padawans or newly appointed Jedi Knights like Lydie Korr.

She unfolded her legs from under her and stretched her arms behind her head, scanning the room for any apprentices arguing over a toy or sitting alone from the rest. The only child not with at least one or two others was the oddity in the room— the only definite Force-sensitive who not to be considered a potential apprentice. Celyn Onasi sat by the side of her bed, head bent down like she was either sad or busy with something.

Lydie pushed herself up from the floor, straightening her robes before walking over to where the little girl sat with her knees up against her chest, for once not busy dismantling a datapad or a lightsaber hilt.

“Hi, Celyn.”

The Onasi girl looked up at her but didn’t say anything.

“Some of the other apprentices are playing trin sticks,” Lydie said, sitting down next to her. “I think they still need a fourth player.”

Celyn shook her head. “I don’t want to play.” She rested her chin on top of her knees.

The little girl’s feelings were fairly written on her forehead, but Lydie had found through her current role as apprentice caretaker that Celyn wasn’t used to others being able to see inside her head, and reacted somewhat violently when people knew something she hadn’t told them.

“Is something wrong?” she prompted the little girl instead.

“I miss my mommy and Father and Dustil. I want them to come back.”

“Oh.” Lydie nodded. “You know, most of the apprentices here haven’t seen their parents or families since they came here. They probably miss them too. I missed mine, when I was an apprentice.”

Celyn glanced sideways at her. “Where was your family?”

“Well, I’m Zabrak, so my family lived on Iridonia, which is the Zabrak homeworld.”

“I know,” the little girl replied defensively, even though she hadn’t. “Zabraks have horns, and two hearts. And inden—indentations in their skin.”

Lydie brushed the palm of her hand over the tips of her horns and across the curved indentations on her cheek self-consciously. “That’s right. And most of us live in colonies all around the galaxy, except for the few that still live on Iridonia. But Iridonia’s not a very nice place to live. The weather’s bad, and everyone tries to farm but they don’t make a lot of money, so sometimes parents like mine send their Force-sensitive children to the Jedi so they’ll have a better life.”

“My parents didn’t send me here,” Celyn insisted. “They’re coming back.”

But the little girl now placed her hands on top of her knees, partially obscuring the frown on her face. She’d been here for a few months now, and if her admiral father or her Jedi mother (the former Dark Lord Revan, it was whispered) were ever coming back, there hadn’t yet been any word on when that might be.

“But you still miss them,” Lydie added. “Just like all the other apprentices miss their parents. Instead of thinking about how they want to be home, though, they’re learning new things and playing with each other.”

“And getting visitors.”

Both Celyn and Lydie looked up at the black-haired man standing over them. He was young, maybe not much older than mid-twenties, and there was a lightsaber hanging from his belt. But he was wearing civilian clothes, and Lydie had never seen him in the Temple before.

“Hello there,” the man said, one side of his mouth lifted. The smirk went just a little more crooked when his eyes moved from Celyn to Lydie.

“Celyn, do you know this man?” she asked, looking at the little girl. Celyn shook her head.

The man scoffed, rolling his eyes. “You mean after whining like a baby mynock that he needed me to check up on his kid sister, Onasi didn’t even tell you I was coming?”

Lydie pushed herself up from the floor. “Are you authorized to be here?”

“Are you?” the man answered back, stepping between where she stood and Celyn sat and plopping himself down on the small apprentice bed. “Dustil Onasi—this girl’s half-brother—asked me to come.”

Despite the clear patrician accent in his voice, the quick, defensive, street smart way he chose his words didn’t seem very patrician to Lydie.

She lifted an eyebrow at him. “And who are you?”

The man cleared his throat, sitting up a little from his slouched position. "Uh, Mekel. Mekel Jin. I'm Dustil's friend."

"Dustil doesn't have any friends,” Celyn said, glancing up at Lydie. “Except for Tova."

Mekel Jin laughed. "That's because your brother's whipped, Celyn. Can you spell whipped?"

Celyn’s brow furrowed, making a crooked sort of squiggle between her eyes.

"I remember you now. You came to see us once, on Telos. Dustil told Father you're a smug son of a schutta."

Mekel snorted. "Well, you can tell Dustil that I said he's a self-righteous piece of—"

“The apprentices here range from three to six years old,” Lydie interrupted quickly. “They really aren’t used to outside visitors. We’re taking very good care of Celyn while her parents are gone.”

His eyebrows lifted in mock surprise. “My apologies, Miss…?”

“Knight Korr. Lydie. Lydie Korr.” Her face felt warmer with every flubbed up introduction.

Mekel smirked as if pleased with himself. “Well, Knight Korr, don’t take this the wrong way, but where Dustil and I come from isn’t exactly a place where the ways of the Jedi are trusted.”

“Where you come from? You mean Telos?”

“No, I—“ Mekel paused, narrowing his eyes and leaning sideways to see around her. He groaned. “Oh, fracking fantastic—“

“Mekel?”

This time, it was HoloNet reporter Tova Vin walking over to them, with a not-so-camera-ready look on her face. Lydie wondered when the apprentice wards had become so popular.

“Swearing in front of children.” The corner of the blonde’s mouth twitched. “I can’t really say I’m surprised.”

“Hi, Tova,” Celyn Onasi said.

Tova gave her a smile. “Hi there, sweetie. Everything all right? Is Mekel bothering you?”

“Is Mekel bothering you?” Mekel repeated in a mocking, high-pitched imitation of Tova’s voice. “Don’t you think I have better things to do with my time than hang around the bloody Jedi Temple daycare center? No offense, of course, to those who do,” he added, glancing at Lydie again.

The blonde cocked an eyebrow, folding her arms. “I don’t know. Do you?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact. But it was your feckless fiancé who asked— no, begged me to come make sure his little sister was all right while he went groping around blindly in the Unknown Regions. And me, being the charitable individual that I am, decided I would take time out of my busy schedule to do so.”

Tova gave Mekel her now-trademark withering stare. "Remind me again why you're invited to my wedding."

“Oh, probably only because Dustil owes me for the ninth or tenth time I saved his hide on Korriban—“

“I don’t think now is the best time for Celyn to have visitors,” Lydie interrupted, stepping forward. “Especially not two of them.”

Tova Vin gave her a perfect, white-toothed smile. “Fine with me. Mekel will have to come back later.”

“Me?” Mekel put his arm smoothly around Lydie’s shoulders. “We were having a perfectly fine visit before you showed up, weren’t we?”

“Enough.”

Lydie sincerely hoped Visas Marr was the last person who would be visiting the apprentice wards today. With half of her face concealed beneath the veil, the Miraluka’s expressions were often hard to read, but her mouth was very clearly in an annoyed frown.

“Celyn and I have work to do,” she told them, turning her head first from Tova, who folded her hands behind her back and managed to keep her chin up despite looking chastened, to Mekel, who instantly dropped his arm from Lydie’s shoulders and cleared his throat into his hand.

“I apologize for interrupting, Master Jedi,” Tova said, bowing slightly. “I’ll come back tomorrow, Celyn.” She gave the little girl a quick smile before turning and exiting down the hallway.

“Please show Mister Jin out, Knight Korr,” the Miraluka said. Even with the veil, Lydie could still feel the direct stare that accompanied the order. She decided she would take the long way, through the meditation gardens. Visas didn’t look like she wanted whatever work she was about to do to be interrupted.

She nodded. “Yes, Master Marr.”

Visas waited until the Zabrak and Dustil’s friend of questionable moral alignment (the uncertainty was a large black spot on him, obscured like it was censored from even the eyes of the Force) were gone to turn her gaze back to Celyn Onasi. The little girl pushed herself up from the floor and wrapped her arms around Visas before she could react.

“I missed you.” Celyn tilted her head back to look up. “You haven’t come to see me for a long time. Where were you?”

“I had a mission,” Visas answered, trying to slowly extricate herself from the little girl’s embrace. Touch for a Miraluka was a far more intense sense than it was for other sentients. Through Celyn’s arms, Visas could feel all of her loneliness, brief excitement at having company, and growing uncertainty as to the fate of her family and, consequently, herself.

It was an emotional place Visas did not feel comfortable residing in. It too closely resembled places she had been before.

“Would you be interested in trying to see your mother again?” she asked. The Council had a summons waiting for her the moment she had landed in the Temple docks, anxious for an update on Revan’s activity and the progress of Sarii and Admiral Onasi’s mission.

Celyn nodded vigorously. “Maybe we’ll see her on her way home.” She sat back down, crossing her legs and wriggling until she was satisfied with her sitting position. Her eyes were already scrunched closed, but she kept opening one eye, looking to see if Visas was ready yet.

The corners of her mouth twitched, and Visas allowed them to turn into a smile as she seated herself across from the girl. A few of the other apprentices glanced up momentarily at them, but were easily distracted by their games or toys.

“Concentrate,” Visas told Celyn. “Reach out with your mind, and try to see through the Force.”

Within an instant, as if she had had the images queued up in her mind, the little girl found her mother.

For a moment, all she could feel was angry. The anger was an acceptable emotion in this place, and Katrina latched onto it, fed it, tried to make it overshadow the tingle in her chest and the momentary arhythm of her heartbeat.

Carth Onasi, her Carth Onasi, was still standing open-mouthed and gaping at her, the horror in his eyes fresh like they were back on the Hawk just moments after escaping the Leviathan. Far more open than his mouth was his mind, every thought and feeling he was having floating free in the air like he had consciously released them. Katrina could feel Sila and the others shifting, becoming more alert in preparation for what was coming.

“He found her!”

Visas winced at the sudden break in the vision, at the high pitched squeal from Celyn Onasi as she clapped her hands in delight.

“I knew he would! He promised he would,” the little girl added excitedly. “Now he’s going to bring her back—“

“Apparently you have not realized the gravity of the situation Revan is currently mired in,” Visas snapped.

Celyn frowned.

“It doesn’t matter if Mommy’s stuck on that planet with Sith or if she was doing bad things anymore. Father’s going to help her get out of there. He saves people all the time. He’s a hero—”

“Your father is only a sentient, and an aging, stubborn sentient at that. He is surrounded by Force users more powerful than any Jedi in this Temple—“

“But he’s Father,” the child said forcefully, closing her eyes again. “He can do it.”

“Katrina,” Carth repeated, swallowing. “What’s going on here?”

‘Katrina’ gave Sila and the others the past, false as it was. It gave them the part of her life when she had really believed she was Katrina Taresi, Republic scout turned newly-inducted Jedi, who had fallen in love with Carth and helped him find his Sith son. More importantly, it brought them dangerously close to the part of her life when she had found out who she truly was, and the actual choices she had made since then.

“Admiral—” She tried to make ‘Admiral’ sound the same to his ears as it did every time she said it; soft and teasing. “That isn’t my name.”

“Revan,” Carth corrected, his voice hard. “What is going on?”

“Lord Revan was interested in learning the truth about the Jedi and the Force,” Sila said. “Perhaps she did not have time to write.”

“The truth?” Carth’s panic was all over his face. “The truth is that they’ve got you brainwashed or…or converted, or whatever it is they do.”

“Conversion is often done to make a thing more useful, to improve it.” Sila’s voice was all seduction and hiss. “Self-improvement should never be viewed as a negative thing.”

“They terrorize this entire system,” Carth snapped, ignoring Sila. “They’re responsible for everything that goes on on Remli Prime. They took Dustil, Katrina. Does that sound like true Jedi behavior to you?”

‘Dustil’ exposed his love for his son, his worry over where he was and what was happening to him, his fear that whatever he thought had happened to her would repeat itself with him. ‘Remli Prime’ and ‘true Jedi’ were connected with disgust, exasperation, determination that the Republic and the Jedi Order—still safely concealed in systems unknown to Sila and the others—would come here and right those wrongs.

The Republic and the Order and the systems they were in wouldn’t be concealed for long if Carth kept talking.

Frack, Carth, please keep your mouth shut—

Celyn Onasi’s eyes opened abruptly. “Why doesn’t Mommy want Father to talk?”

“Admiral Onasi puts himself in a more perilous situation with every word he utters,” Visas answered. “He is inadvertently giving the Sith information about himself—about you, your mother, Revan’s Padawan—information the Sith will use to create nightmarish images that may make him forget why he is there.”

“And he can’t hear her because he doesn’t have the Force,” Celyn Onasi added, sucking in a breath and leaning forward with her hands on her knees. “She has to make him be quiet.”

“It’s easy to mistake the effects of correctly applied power for terror,” One of the others—Lord Pobeda—commented. Basic did not come as easily to his vocal cords as it did to Sila’s, and his words were heavy with air like he was asthmatic. “Surely your son can illuminate you. He knows all too well what fate the powerless meet.”

Carth glared at him, but turned back to Katrina. In his head, she could see what Dustil had told him about this place and these creatures finally coming back. “After everything we did, everything we went through with the others and the…the mission…”

Yes, good, please Carth, realize what the hell you’re doing and omit words like Star Forge and Telos and Celyn and Dustil—

“Now you’re just going to throw it all away? For what? This power they’re showing you?” He was derisive but there was something wild and desperate in his eyes. “You’re a Jedi, Revan. You didn’t fall back before and I’m not going to let you do it now. You’re my wife, and you’re going to have to kill me before I leave you here—“

“Fall?” Maybe if she just talked over him, she could shock him into silence. “I haven’t fallen, Carth. I now know so much more than I did before coming here. I’ve seen impossible things happen through the Force. That kind of knowledge can’t be located anywhere other than on a higher plane.”

“And is it worth it?” Carth demanded. “Is that worth throwing everything else away and letting the galaxy come close to destruction again because you want to find out something new and know more than everybody else?”

“Don’t do this,” he pleaded desperately. “I love you, and that…that might not mean anything to you, but she loves you, and I…I just can’t accept that you’ll turn your back on her too—“

With the deliberate emphasis he was putting on ‘she’ and ‘her’, Katrina wondered why he didn’t just come out and tell them every childhood story he had about Celyn. She struggled to keep them out of his head, to keep them away from following the train of thought.

Frack, frack, damn fracking hell, Carth, shut up—

“You turned your back on her once too, Admiral,” Sila murmured. “Didn’t you?”

Carth’s head turned, and for an instant, Katrina could see it happening: him struggling to make sense of what Sila was implying, unwittingly giving Sila something to work with. It’s not real, Carth. None of this is real—

“Shut up,” he finally snapped, turning back to Katrina. She felt her rapid heartbeat relax slightly.

“Now I don’t know what they’ve done to you, or what they’ve showed you, but I’m here, and I came all this way, and I’m not letting you go without a fight—“

‘All this way’ brought back memories of each planet they had visited, from Krett back to Remli Prime, from Teren to the Outer Rim supply outposts all the way back to Coruscant. ‘Without a fight’ gave them all the times Carth Onasi had been a hero, all the times he hadn’t left people behind, all the times he had fought and won for the Republic, and all the secrets he now knew as an Admiral.

She tried to wire his jaw shut. She tried to force his teeth together, keep his lips from moving, but she still wasn’t very good at physical manipulation. All she succeeded in doing was making his upper lip shake like he was going to snarl at her—

Visas broke the connection, bringing them back to the soft noise of the apprentices playing and the afternoon sun shining in the wards.

Celyn squinted, trying to find the images. She cracked one eyelid open. “I want to watch. Why did we stop?”

Visas stared back at Celyn’s eager little face and calmly rested a palm on the child’s shoulder.

“Celyn, I fear your mother will have to do something drastic to stop your father. She will have to hurt him.”

Celyn thought about this quietly for a moment.

“She’s good though,” the little girl said, glancing up at the Miraluka. “She’s just pretending to be bad. And if she has to hurt Father to make him stop talking, he’ll…it’ll be okay, because she’s just pretending, right?”

There was no sufficient answer in Basic or any other language for Visas to give. She hesitated a moment, and then allowed the child to find the only person who might give her one.

He was going to keep talking. He was going to keep talking and she could feel them now, gingerly poking at his memories, trying to claw through hers and paint accurate pictures of them: the Republic, the Jedi Order. Celyn. Dustil. Morgana.

Carth took a cautionary step towards her, holding his hand out like she might take it and he could whisk her away from all this without so much as a single round of blaster fire.

“Please, beautiful,” he said, almost a whisper. “You’re better than this. You’re a Jedi, rememb—“

The ‘b’ dropped into a sickening grunt when the lightning hit his chest. Through this new, terrible power of the true Sith, she knew that every inch of him felt like it was splitting open and tearing. Stars flew by his eyes faster than a trip through hyperspace and twice as blinding. Carth bit down on his lip involuntarily and tasted his own searing hot blood. Though he didn’t have the Force, she could hear his thought, finally not of Dustil or Morgana or Celyn or the Republic.

Beautiful…please—

“You are a stubborn man, Admiral.” The words came out of her mouth, though it was easier to say them if she pretended they were coming from one of the red-skinned creatures watching silently around her. It was hard to be audible over Carth’s screaming. “But that will serve you well once you realize the truth.”

She lowered her hand, and Carth fell back onto the glossy black floor, coughing and gasping for air, curling inward like there would be less pain if there was less of him.

Let me remove him from the complex, she told Sila. There are aspects of our past relationship that would be useful in convincing him, though not entirely appropriate within these walls.

The laughter of the Sith echoed throughout her head and everyone else’s. If you think it best, Lord Revan.

She suddenly missed being called Katrina.

“Still no answer?” Mira asked, re-entering the cockpit from her small circuit throughout Revan’s ship.

The dead air still crackling over the comm link nearly half an hour after Sarii had called to warn Admiral Onasi and the others of the coming guards didn’t bode well. They had frantically repeated the message over and over, but neither the Admiral nor his son—or Mical, or Atton—had replied. Her only consolation was that out of the dozen or so signatures that had been detected in the body heat scan, none had disappeared on their own. Instead, all of them had vanished from the small ship’s sensors at the same instant, as though the Sith inside had just realized they had the ability to block them.

“Well, there’s nothing else on this ship to help us,” Mira added without waiting for an answer. “If we go in there, it’s going to be just as blind as them.”

“Maybe we should send T3 in,” Sarii murmured, glancing sideways at the droid. “He could at least scout things out and maybe find them for us.”

The droid beeped at Mira, who bent down and ran her hands over the droid’s casing as if searching for something.

“He says Revan stuck a restraining bolt on him that kicks in whenever he tries to leave the ship.” The bounty hunter’s brow furrowed behind her red hair. “But I don’t feel one on him. It must have been programmed into his main subroutines or something.” She stood up straight again. “Looks like if it’s going to be anyone, it’ll have to be us.”

The Jedi master and former Republic general in Sarii knew the odds were against them. If two former Sith, one Jedi Padawan, and an Admiral hadn’t lasted longer than few minutes, chances were another Jedi Knight and a bounty hunter wouldn’t last much more. And there was no way of knowing what had happened to them—if they had been imprisoned, tortured, turned, or were being made to turn. And if they were dead already, then there was no point in Sarii and Mira dying too.

But the part of Sarii that couldn’t help smiling at Mical’s honest interest in, well, everything, or Atton’s sarcasm no matter how inappropriate it was for the situation knew that leaving them behind would never be an option, no matter how much of a surefire suicide it was to go after them. Or no matter how close it brought her to facing Revan.

She pulled her lightsaber from her belt. “I’m going to try and find another entrance into the complex. Maybe they’ll be so tied up with the others than they won’t notice one person sneaking in.”

Mira rolled her eyes. “Right. When has that ever worked? If we’re going to be stupid, let’s at least be stupid together, huh?”

The Jedi Master and former Republic general parts of her were a little embarrassed at how glad Sarii was that she wouldn’t be going in alone. She gave Mira a smile, nodding. The bounty hunter took up her assault rifle and powered down the ship’s computers.

“Don’t get into too much trouble, T3,” she told the droid. “Hightail it out of here on autopilot if we don’t come back, okay? Don’t bother waiting around for HK—he’s probably the one that killed us.”

If a droid could laugh, T3 came close, beeping them a farewell and good luck.

Mira started down the gangplank first. She only made it about halfway before suddenly backing up flat against the side of the ship, crouching down behind the hydraulic lifts with her assault rifle raised close to her face. Sarii ignited her lightsaber, standing back so she was out of sight.

“There’s someone coming,” the bounty hunter reported in a whisper. She lifted the rifle’s scope to her eye, lowered it for a moment, and then lifted it again. But she didn’t fire.

“What the frack?” Sarii heard the bounty hunter mumur.

Sarii stepped a little down the gangplank, trying to see whatever Mira apparently didn’t think was dangerous enough to fire at. She couldn’t see anything at first, her view partially obstructed by the ship’s hull. But she could hear two people arguing, unintelligible at first and then clearer and louder as they came closer to the ship.

“I am not leaving Dustil—“

“Dustil will be fine. There’s very little in there he hasn’t seen before.”

“And the others? Or do you just not care about what happens to them?”

“It’s your fault they’re all stuck back there, Admiral. Do you make blindingly stupid decisions like this everyday?”

“You’re really not in any position to start pushing my buttons, Lord Revan—“

No…it can’t be, she’s…she’s fallen, she’s a Sith Lord, she’s with them, she can’t be here—

“It’s Admiral Onasi,” Mira said, glancing up at Sarii. “And—“

And then they came storming past Sarii, up the gangplank and into the central room. Admiral Onasi, covered in sweat and singed around the edges of his half-unbuckled jacket, his face contorted and his eyes never moving off his wife.

Revan.

She was all in black robes and armor, her lightsaber dangling from her side like it was an extra arm she could pick up and use at any time rather than an inanimate object attached to a belt. Sarii saw no skin, nothing that made her alive, nothing that made her warm, nothing that made her human.

“That was a fracking act, Carth,” Revan snapped, surprisingly clear through the layers of fabric and plastic that formed her mask and hood. “Do you really think we’d be standing here right now if it wasn’t?”

“All I know is that it looks like I showed up just in time,” Onasi replied darkly. “I came all this way to find you and—“

“I didn’t ask you to come and find me!” Revan said, throwing her hands up in the air. She pointed an accusatory finger in his face. “If you brought Celyn out here too, I swear I’ll—“

“You’ll what? Kill me? Force, Katrina, listen to yourself—“

“Where is she, Carth?”

“I didn’t bring her out here. What the hell do you take me for?” the Admiral replied icily. “I left her in the Jedi Temple. She’s safe there. I might not have had to leave her at all if you’d given me some indication that you were ever coming back again—“

“I couldn’t! Don’t you understand? They know everything now, all because of you…” Revan trailed off, putting a gloved hand up to her unexposed forehead and sighed exasperatedly. “You shouldn’t be out here—“

“Neither should you. You didn’t listen, so why should I?”

Sarii extinguished her lightsaber. Both the Admiral and Revan seemed to notice her and Mira at the same time.

“Sarii,” she offered. Revan’s mask, smooth and unscratched, stared back at her. What might be hidden beneath it was unfathomable.

“Sarii Zhen,” she tried again. “Or General Zhen.”

“Am I supposed to recognize you?”

The voice hadn’t changed. It was still the same straight-forward mezzo-soprano that had haunted Sarii since jamming her lightsaber into the center of the Council.

“I…guess not,” she finished weakly.

“She was under your command in the Mandalorian Wars,” Onasi murmured. It was surreal; the way the pair had shifted from passionately yelling at each other to the Admiral calmly explaining the past to the former Dark Lord. “She’s been helping me find you.”

No, I haven’t. I never wanted her to be found-

“Well, I didn’t need to be found, so I guess that makes us even, General Zhen.”

Sarii heard her name and rank like yesterday. She struggled to comprehend that Revan couldn’t remember her, couldn’t have known that the way she had intoned Sarii’s name was just like the last time Sarii had been in front of her, being told to take her troops to a certain section of Malachor.

Mira stepped around Sarii, her assault rifle dangling from her hand. “Mira, Lord Revan. Pleased to meet you. Mind telling us where the rest of our crew is?”

“Your crew walked into a trap,” Revan answered flatly. “The Sith knew you were here. They let you in. They know we’re here right now. They know everything—“

“Great,” Mira interrupted. “Do they know if Atton and Mical are dead?”

“Force-sensitives are their specialty. They’ve been taken to the detention cells for conversion. Converting non-Force sensitives requires interaction with the Sith so that appropriate material can first be perceived and then used,” the former Dark Lord replied, her last few words pointed witheringly in the Admiral’s direction.

She sounds like she knows from first-hand experience—

“I do know,” Revan snapped, turning her masked face in Sarii’s direction.

“What? How to get them out?” Admiral Onasi said. “Because I’m not going anywhere without Dustil, I can tell you that.”

“We can’t do anything right now. I’m supposed to be converting you. I can’t go running back in there with a Jedi and a couple Republic soldiers—“

“I’m a bounty hunter, actually,” Mira corrected.

“Whatever,” Revan snapped. “Everyone just be quiet. I need to think.”

Admiral Onasi watched his wife with a haunted, suspicious look in his eyes that was new to Sarii. “I’ve never known you to snap at people, Katrina—“

“That’s not my name,” the former Dark Lord interrupted sharply.

The Admiral was silent for a moment, as if her words had cut through more than just the air. “Not even when someone called you by the wrong name.”

A cold, heavy silence filled the center of the ship. Admiral Onasi and Revan stared hard at each other.

“T3’s got a lot of information about the trip out here that might be useful to the Republic,” Mira finally said. “I’m going to roll him back to the Hawk. Can’t hurt to have information in as many places as possible. We’ll comm when we’re finished so you can tell us our next move.” She nudged Sarii with her foot.“I think the Exile might want to join me.”

Sarii had never been happier to have an excuse to leave. She quickly turned and fled after Mira.

Don’t believe everything you see down there, Father.

Carth was having a hard time not believing what he saw. Especially when it was accompanied by what he heard.

His hearing in general wasn’t that great at the moment; his ears had been ringing ever since the lightning, and his jawbone ached like there were still aftershocks rattling his bones. He’d watched Katrina and Bastila and Juhani and Jolee all grit their teeth under lightning bolts, and now he couldn’t imagine how they’d done it.

Katrina—Revan—was still leaning over the cockpit control console, her back to him and her fingers tapping on the panel.

“Eight fracking years and you still don’t trust me,” she said, once Mira, Sarii, and T3 had exited the ship. “We might as well be back on Taris, flyboy—”

Flyboy. He couldn’t even remember the last time she had called him that. Still, it did nothing to quell the wrenching in his gut. “I’m still having a hard time understanding what you’re yelling at me for.”

“Now they know you’re here!” Katrina shouted, somewhat muffled under her mask. “They’ve probably known all along but didn’t consider you a threat before—“

“Will you please take that thing off?” he snapped, unable to think of anything else, unable to remember that he was glad to see her while it was on.

She reached up to push her hood back, and he saw her brown hair, greasy and tied back. Her hands grasped either side of the mask, removing it from her face. Carth made no attempt to hide his disgust or the visible cringing his body went through.

Her face was a sickly looking grey, every vein and artery shining like they were permanent tattoos on her neck and cheeks. Her eyes were an ugly shade of mustard yellow, which clashed against the pale lavender color of her lips.

She struck a completely ridiculous looking pose considering her appearance; one hand on her hip and her head cocked to the side.

“What? Did you think I was going to come out here in full Jedi regalia with my lightsaber blazing, loudly announcing my intentions to wipe their evil presence from the face of the galaxy?”

“No,” Carth replied defensively. “But not…this.”

“They were expecting a Sith, Carth,” Katrina finished witheringly. “The Sith I used to be. They were expecting Lord…me.”

She watched him for a moment, still breathing heavily from the force of her tirade moments ago.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be yelling at you-“

“No, arguing’s good,” he sighed, rubbing his neck. “If you’re arguing with me, it means you still care what I think.”

“Why wouldn’t I care what you think?” she said, coming towards him. He involuntarily recoiled.

The hurt in her eyes was obvious even with their putrid yellow color. “It’s only makeup,” Katrina said softly.

“Those lightning bolts were real,” Carth answered evenly.

Katrina folded her arms in front of her, eyes downcast. She suddenly looked much smaller, much less intimidating- like a chastised child dressed up in clothing that didn’t quite fit.

“Are you all right?” she murmured gently, glancing up at him. “From the lightning, I mean.”

“I had to do it,” she continued without waiting for an answer. “You just kept talking, you were telling them everything…I couldn’t think of any other way to make you be quiet.”

Gorgeous, beautiful, Katrina, Katrina Onasi, Celyn’s mother, Dustil’s master, I love her, I’m glad to see her, I am not this damn superficial-

All of that sounded like background noise against what his eyes were telling him.

“They probably know anyways,” Katrina added, sighing dejectedly. “I couldn’t hide everything…I was too panicked trying to figure out how to get you out of there.”

He had imagined this moment every single day since she left. She was usually smiling. Occasionally her hair was down. Every variation on the fantasy included pulling her into his arms and calling her gorgeous—

But she wasn’t gorgeous. She was, to be honest, quite ugly at the moment. He rubbed his neck awkwardly as she grasped her earlobe, pulling on it and looking away.

“I’m sorry,” Katrina pleaded.

Tell her it’s all right, tell her you love her, tell her everything you’ve wanted to tell her for almost two years—

“I don’t like leaving Dustil in there,” he said instead, shaking his head. “He wouldn’t tell me a lot about what happened on Chael, but he…he’s been through enough—”

“He saw some of the worst of what they can do there. He can survive one night.” Katrina gave him a faint smile. “The Sith need to sleep too.”

Carth forced himself to nod. “Where’s HK?”

“He’s in the complex.” She jutted her chin in the direction of the building. “I put a blank memory core in him every day and send him in there to gather information. He comes back when he’s finished and shuts himself down.”

It wasn’t what he wanted to say, what he should say, but Carth’s mouth still wasn’t ready to form the words. “Half the crew of the Ebon Hawk is still with us. The bounty hunter and the Exile plus the droids.”

Katrina nodded, dropping her hands to her sides where they fidgeted with her robes, unsure of what to do.

“We can’t do anything until tomorrow,” she replied, gazing up at him one last time. Finally she turned, moving towards the door to the crew quarters.

It came up over him in one sudden realization that she was walking away from him, that she was about to leave him. Again.

Carth grasped her arm as she tried to pass and pulled her to him without any kind of hesitation.

Knowing his former Sith son was trapped in a Sith compound; seeing his former Dark Lord wife disguised as a Sith told him his heart shouldn’t be pounding, told him his skin shouldn’t be tingling, told him he shouldn’t be this overjoyed that she was finally in his arms after almost two years.

“It’ll go away by morning,” she murmured softly.

“What will, gorgeous?” he asked, imagining her hazel eyes in place of the yellow, her full pink lips in place of the cold lavender. Carth pictured the smooth coloring of her cheeks; the soft lines of her neck and shoulders. He plastered them over the bony contours of her veins and found that it wasn’t that hard to finally lean in and kiss her.

It made his head swim to feel her back in his arms, to feel her hands in his hair, around his neck; to feel her; alive and kissing him back. He fell back up against the door, pulling her with him. Someone—Carth couldn’t tell if it was him or her—maneuvered them towards the small crew quarters.

Beautiful—

Her lips paused under his, and he opened his eyes to meet hers, yellow despite his mind’s best efforts.

But there was nothing foreign about the way she was looking at him. “Still?”

He lifted his hand to brush her pale white cheek. “Always.”

She was right— it all disappeared by morning. Carth had been unable to sleep, restless to get up and get moving and get Dustil and Katrina the hell out of here. He lay next to her now—in bed, next to his wife—and noticed that her skin was again a healthy shade of peach and he couldn’t see any veins except the usual ones around her wrists.

Katrina’s eyes fluttered open, not a hint of yellow or orange or brown or anything in between to be found in their irises. She lifted her hands, tracing over his bare neck and shoulders over and over again. They shook against his chin and danced across his forehead as she bit her lip. Carth watched her for a moment until she finally withdrew them to rest against the pillow.

“Sorry,” she breathed, shaking her head. “I’ve been wishing you were here for so long.”

“Well, I’m not going anywhere. And neither are you. I’ll use my blaster next time if I have to.”

Her fingers ran over his thigh where both blaster and holster would have normally been resting.

“I was half expecting you to use it this time,” Katrina murmured, smiling. Her face was so close to his that he could feel her calm breathing warm on his chin.

“Wouldn’t have done me much good to shoot you, beautiful, even if I was starting to scrape the bottom for ways to stop you.”

“Like what?”

“Would you believe that for about ten seconds I actually considered impregnating you to keep you from going?” he joked.

Her laughter—he had forgotten how much he missed that. Her body shook with the force of it, and her lips curled back farther into her blushing cheeks.

“I hope they were an opportune ten seconds,” she teased. “Another brilliant tactical decision by Admiral Carth Onasi.”

“They could call it the Onasi maneuver,” Carth replied, winking at her.

Katrina smirked, fingers walking up over his shoulder to massage his arm. She sat up in bed, rolling her neck and stretching her arms over her head.

It was impossible to think that this was the same woman who had jolted him breathless with lightning a few hours ago to save his life. But it was impossible not to notice the new definition and tone in the muscles of her back; the thin, barely pronounced but still visible veins she exposed when she lifted her hair off the back of her neck.

“You are a stubborn man, Admiral. But that will serve you well once you realize the truth.”

Katrina’s head turned sharply and she stared at him. Carth looked away.

“I haven’t fallen,” she told him quietly. “I know it didn’t look like that, I know it didn’t feel like that, but…you’d be a Sith by now if I had.”

He reached out and ran his hand across her spine, up to the veins on her neck hidden now beneath her hair. “You’re dancing awfully close to the edge, gorgeous.”

It was Katrina who looked away now. “I didn’t mean to. I was stupid and cocky coming here by myself, just waltzing in there with some black robes and HK like that would fool them…They knew the second I landed here that I wasn’t the Revan who had contacted them.” She glanced over her shoulder at him. “I had to convince them I was. Just looking or acting like a Sith isn’t enough for them. They can see past that. I had to think like one until they taught me how to hide it.”

She looked away again, laughing softly. “I guess looking, acting, and thinking like something pretty much makes you that something, doesn’t it?”

Carth sat up a little on his elbows. “Only if you can’t see that that something is wrong.”

“I always knew this was wrong.” Her voice was quiet enough now that it almost seemed like she was talking to herself. “All of it. But I had to do it. I had to become Lord Revan, or they’d do it for me.”

“Maybe they knew that.”

Katrina sighed. “Maybe they did. Maybe I’ve been playing into their hands this whole time.” She reached for her shirt, pulling it over her head and tying her hair back in only a few smooth movements. “But that ends today.”

Carth sat up straight too, running a hand quickly through his hair and reaching for his jacket. “What’s the plan? Where are they holding Dustil and the others?”

“They’ll be in the west cell block. It spans about a mile, though. They don’t want the prisoners talking to each other or hearing each other scream. Outside influence muddles direct influence,” Katrina said, in a mocking hiss that Carth was pretty sure was an imitation of the creature that had spoken to him yesterday.

“Sarii’s Padawan Mical Jorde and her pilot Atton Rand were taken too,” he said. “Did they single me out because of you?”

Katrina shook her head. “They singled you out because you weren’t Force sensitive. The pilot must be Force-sensitive too.”

Atton Rand with the Force…Carth decided he didn’t want to consider what applications the cocky, sarcastic, former Sith conversion artist would have for it. He swung his legs over the side of the bed, reaching for his pants and boots. “I should contact the Hawk and tell them to start moving back over here—“

“No. I’m going in alone.”

He turned to stare at her, one boot still in his hand. “What?”

“I’m going in alone,” Katrina repeated, wrapping her belt around her waist. “I’m going to find Dustil and the others and release them. Then I’m going to kill Sila.”

‘Alone’ was a word Carth had had quite enough of. He stood, his jacket still hanging open and one boot on his left foot.

“First of all, no one’s going anywhere alone,” he told her, gesturing with the hand that was still holding his other boot. “Second of all, who the hell is Sila, and what makes you think you can kill him by yourself?”

“Sila’s one of them, the one that talked to you in the chamber. He leads their version of the Jedi Council. He’s converted or helped to convert more sents than anyone else. He’s been mentoring me.” There was a loud click when she fastened her belt. “And I’m going to kill him.”

“Oh, you are, huh?” He bent to put the other boot on, hopping a few times before it was all the way on. “You’re going to expose yourself as a Jedi and go up against Sila, one of the most powerful true Sith, in the middle of their complex all on your own, without any help? Don’t you think that’s a little, I don’t know, stupid and cocky?”

“It doesn’t matter anymore.”

His eyes narrowed, every sense suddenly aware and straining to classify the situation based on the ultimatum of that word: anymore.

Katrina extended her lightsaber and twirled the green blade around in front of her experimentally.

“You don’t think you’re going to survive this, do you?” Carth said in astonishment.

She glanced at him for a moment and then her attention was back on the lightsaber as she deactivated it and replaced it on her belt.

Carth slipped his blaster into its holster and approached her.

“You know I’m not going to let that happen—“

“What could you do, Carth?”

Her sudden lack of confidence, her slumped shoulders and soft voice that were nothing like the woman who had torn through Sith on the Star Forge and ripped through Rakatans in The One’s enclave unnerved Carth and made him grasp her elbows, tilting his head in varying degrees to try and get her to look him in the eye.

“I…dammit, I could…” he trailed off into a sigh. “I’m not the best of men and I’m not the greatest fighter, but I’ll find a way.”

Katrina finally looked up.

“I don’t want you in there,” she said, her tone absolute and final. “I don’t want anything to happen to you or Dustil because of me or this…thing I helped create—”

“Katrina,” Carth interrupted. “I promised a little girl I’d bring you back.”

“You shouldn’t make promises you can’t keep,” she answered softly, brushing past him and through the doorway.

HK stood silent and deactivated near the gangplank, as still and copper and lethal-looking as ever. Katrina moved behind him, removing his memory core and crossing the room to exchange it with another from a footlocker full of them.

“On the Hawk, before the Leviathan…” Carth began, watching her rummage through parts, select one, and then walk back over to HK. “You promised you would let me protect you. Now you…you have to let me try—“

“No. You, Dustil, and the others can take HK and T3 and everything we’ve learned back to the Republic.” She grunted as she tried to reinsert HK’s memory core. “Then maybe they can mount some kind of preemptive strike before these Sith figure out a way to sneak in the back door to the Core Worlds.”

“Don’t you think it would be better and safer and smarter to let Sila die with the rest of them, then? Your experience is more valuable to the Jedi and the Republic than anything HK or T3 might have in their memory banks. There’s no reason for you to try and take on Sila on your own—“

“I need to,” Katrina interrupted sharply, looking at him around HK’s head. “You don’t know what he’s done, Carth. You haven’t watched him use people’s loved ones against them, twist their memories to make the Sith look like heroes. You haven’t helped him—“

Her mouth closed stubbornly, and she turned her attention back to HK. The droid’s eyes lit up, and his head lifted, turning sharply in two directions before settling on Carth.

“Observational Query: The Republic meatbag was not onboard when my primary memory core was last installed. Have we returned to Republic space, Master, or is this merely, as meatbags say, a bad dream?”

Carth narrowed his eyes at the droid. “Nice to see you too, HK.”

With HK operational again, Katrina walked back to the cockpit, sitting down in the pilot’s chair and tapping her fingers across the controls. “Say ‘affirmative.’”

“Affirmative? Why? Listen, sister, I’m not—“

“Good,” she interrupted, hitting a few more buttons and turning around in the chair. “The ship’s got your voice activation now too. After I’m in and Dustil and the others are out, take HK and his memory cores. Then turn on the ship’s self-destruct.”

“I’m not going anywhere or doing anything without you,” Carth replied sharply. “I came all the way out here to find you and bring you home, and I’m not going to let you sacrifice yourself just so you can kill one Sith out of a thousand. The Jedi and the Republic will help if you want to bring the fleet back out here. You don’t need to do this alone—”

“You don’t know what Sila can do, Carth,” Katrina snapped, folding her arms in the chair. “If you or the others go in there, he and the rest of them can turn you in an instant. They’ll show you things that didn’t happen but could have, and twist everything around so it’s not Malak and Karath and the Sith bombing Telos anymore, but me or the Jedi. I can’t protect you anymore. The instant they see I’m not actively trying to convert you, nothing I say or do is going to be able to stop them.”

“Maybe I don’t know what they can do to me, but I have a pretty good idea of what they can do to you,” Carth answered. “What they’ve already done to you.”

The silence that fell over the room might have had an effect if HK hadn’t charged his assault rifle. “Interjection: Master, if you intend to mount a solitary assault on the Sith complex, might I suggest that you cease debate and commence action?”

Carth eyed the droid warily as if his words might actually prompt Katrina to act on them. When he saw that she wasn’t moving from the chair, he turned back to her.

“I would have tried to stop you if you’d followed Bastila and Malak on Rakata,” he continued. “And I’m not going to let you do something equally stupid and dangerous now. Let me protect you, gorgeous. We’ll protect each other—Sila can’t get to us if we’re there to remind each other what’s real. Give me a chance to try, even if I…even if I get killed in the process.”

Katrina didn’t answer for a moment, looking away as if she was too stubborn to acknowledge how much sense he was making. At least, that was what Carth hoped.

“We can’t both die,” she finally said, a furrow creating crooked lines across her brow.

He shrugged. “I think I gave up dying in my sleep when I joined the Republic. Personally, I can’t think of a better way to go.”

Katrina nodded, unfolding her arms and placing them calmly on the armrests of her chair. She gestured with her head back towards the control panel. “Make the call then, Admiral.”

Carth pulled the comm from his belt, lifting it to his face. “Ebon Hawk, this is Admiral Onasi. Mira, Sarii, you there?”

“Morning, Admiral,” the bounty hunter answered. “Hope you slept better than we did.”

“Not by much. Is the Exile with you?”

“I’m here.” The Jedi’s reply was so meek and high-pitched that it sounded squeaky over the comm. Katrina snorted.

“Get back over here, quick as you can,” Carth told them. “We’re going back in to get Dustil, Mical, and Atton.”

“Got it,” Mira replied. “Anything we should bring, or you think this pot-luck’ll have enough to satisfy everyone?”

“This is a rescue-and-retreat operation only. We don’t know how to fight these Sith, and the best thing we can do is to return to Republic space and tell someone who might be able to figure it out what we know.” He glanced up at Katrina expectantly.

Revan, his wife, stared back. She finally exhaled, defeated.

“He’s right,” she said loudly so it would be heard over the comm. “We go in and get out. We don’t engage the Sith, if we can help it.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Mira answered. “I’m all for getting the hell back to reality, and I don’t think it’s wise to try and fight blind.”

There was a moment of crackling static on the Hawk’s end of the line.

“But as long as we’re in there,” the bounty hunter finally continued, “Nothing says we can’t at least make life a little more difficult for them, does it?”

Lord Revan wasn’t used to taking a back seat.

Neither, for that matter, was Katrina. Even before the Leviathan and the loss of her authority to shame and memory, she hadn’t liked doing things Bastila’s way. There was always something she thought would be smarter, faster, better, sometimes just because it was her idea and not someone else’s.

Even now, as cocky and stupid as she knew her idea was, she liked it better. It was hers. This was hers—the way she was going to atone for it all, the way she was going to end the nightmares and the memories and the self-hatred that stared back at her in the mirror. It was a way that didn’t involve possible (maybe even probable) danger to Carth, Dustil, or anyone else they had brought with them.

It was a way Katrina had been prepared for, some days even praying for, ever since she had found out Katrina was not her name.

But there was no arguing with a Republic admiral who had already lost one wife because of her and wasn’t about to lose another one. What was more, Katrina didn’t want to argue with him. Not after two years of wishing for those errant strands of brown hair, the leathery scent of his orange jacket, the husky patience in his voice. She only had one wish left unfulfilled, and that was being able to see Celyn one more time before the end.

Don’t think about how maybe this isn’t the end. Don’t think about how once before you thought it was, only to wake up a scout named Katrina on the Endar Spire—

The bounty hunter Mira had a good head on her shoulders. Katrina’s were currently feeling the strain of the explosive charges she was going to set in the main council chambers, packed carefully in a shoulder bag. The plan was smart, if crude: they were basically going to make as messy an exit as possible, tossing grenades and planting charges at a few strategic spots she had identified, and anywhere else they had the opportunity. If it wasn’t a particularly effective method of stopping the Sith, it would at least slow them down. It was hard to find and convert an entire construction and repair crew, and buying or constructing droids to do it took time and credits.

Out of the two redheads, she preferred the bounty hunter. The other—General Sarii Zhen—had whatever Lord Revan had done to her plastered all over her freckled face. At worst, it seemed like a wound that might never heal. At best, it seemed like the same betrayal the entire Jedi Order and the Republic had suffered. Whatever the memories that had to do with the exiled Jedi, Katrina hoped they at least came quietly when she got them back. From the looks the Exile kept giving her, however, that didn’t seem likely.

She had led them on a trek around the complex to an access point HK (who was heading to the Hawk to guard the ships and T3) had discovered on one of his trips. She hadn’t asked how—HK wasn’t exactly an explorer, and he had come back covered in oil like another droid had spit on him—but the entrance he’d found was a small maintenance tunnel used by refuse droids to expel larger quantities of pulverized trash into the air. It was a tight fit, but the dark side had an unfortunate though convenient slimming effect.

“Glad I’ve been keeping up with my cardio,” Mira whispered, crouching down in front of the tunnel and working to pry the cover open with a hydrospanner.

As soon as the bounty hunter finished, Katrina lifted her bag over her head, shoving it forward into the tunnel ahead of her and crawling inside. It was hot and dusty inside, and sneezing only made a new cloud of whatever the residue was settle in a fine film over her skin and clothing.

She stopped at the other end of the access tunnel, twisting in the tight quarters to try and get at the tools in her belt to pry open the other end. Someone’s head bumped into the back of her legs, causing her to lose her balance and fall forward onto her elbows. The tool she’d just managed to free went flying.

“Calm the frack down back there,” Katrina hissed over her shoulder. When Carth didn’t reply and Mira didn’t shoot back any witty answer, it was pretty clear who was behind her.

She covered her mouth and nose with one hand and pawed through the dust for the tool with the other. The closed cover in front of her suddenly opened and Katrina found herself face to face with the lone white eye of a refuse droid.

The droid cocked its head at her. Then it began beeping wildly, backing up away from the tunnel and speeding off in another direction.

Great. This is starting off well.

Katrina struggled to shimmy out of the tunnel, managing to work the upper half of her body out just in time to fry the droid with the Force. The momentum of the droid’s spinning wheels sent it flying into a nearby wall. It bounced off and fell over, sparking a little but definitely offline.

She wriggled the rest of the way out of the tunnel onto the floor. Sarii crept out after her, standing up quickly and brushing dust off her clothes. The dust flew down and pretty much straight into Katrina’s face, and she coughed, waving a hand in the hair and batting the Exile away.

Mira followed, grasping the top of the tunnel and pulling herself out. Carth was last, army-crawling his way out and shaking the dust from his hair after he was finished.

“All right,” Katrina breathed, pushing herself up from the floor. “Carth and I will go find Dustil and the others. You two set the rest of the charges.”

“And after we’re finished?” the bounty hunter asked.

“I’ll be surprised if you manage to finish without someone interrupting you.”

General Sarii Zhen ignited her lightsaber. It gleamed calm and violet between them. “You haven’t seen what we’re capable of.” The words fairly dripped with implications.

Katrina cocked an eyebrow at the Jedi. “Think you’re capable of getting out of my way?” She stepped past her without waiting for an answer, heading down the hallway

“Sorry, gorgeous,” Carth said in a low voice, falling in step beside her. “She’s…the Exile’s got a chip on her shoulder. It’s probably hard not to when you’re known as the Exile.”

“I’m the Dark Lord Revan and I’m still polite,” Katrina muttered, glancing back over her shoulder at the Jedi and the bounty hunter, who were already rounding a corner in the opposite direction.

Carth’s pace slowed to try and search for a way to see through the windowless door of a cell. “You have any idea which one of these is Dustil’s?”

The block of holding cells stretched on for almost a mile, but the Force instantaneously identified cells that were empty and cells that weren’t. Only the fact that Katrina knew (or thought she knew) exactly what hellish mental images to search for told her who was Dustil and who was not.

Though it was hard to distinguish between Carth himself walking next to her and thoughts of Carth floating through the Force, the latter eventually grew stronger and stronger until he was all Katrina could think about too. She held her arm out to stop Carth in front of a cell.

He looked from the glossy black rock to her and back again. “What is it? Is Dustil in here?” Without waiting for an answer, he started running a hand along the door’s seams, searching for some way to get it open.

Katrina grasped his hand. “It’s not real, Carth.” She gave his furrowed brow a smile. “I’ll go in first. I’ll open it from the inside.”

Carth cocked an eyebrow at the wall of rock he saw blocking their path to Dustil, but stepped aside, watching her intently.

What they saw, like everything else here, was an illusion. A trick. Katrina stepped forward and into the cell’s open doorway. Carth’s sudden gasp sounded echoey for a moment in the narrow in-between past the impassable rock door he saw and the wide open cell she knew was there.

Despite there being no real door on the cells, that didn’t make them any better lit. Katrina could barely make out the outline of a figure sitting on the floor in the corner, the upper half of his body hidden in the shadow but his legs and hands (planted flat on the floor) visible in the dim light.

“Dustil?”

For a moment, there was no answer. Then someone laughed; low and slow and sick.

“Another vision,” a sneering version of Dustil’s voice said. “Don’t think I can’t see through this deception. Of course the vision knows my name. It probes my thoughts. But I am learning the tricks, I am. Soon I will block them out entirely.”

“I’m not a vision, Dustil,” Katrina said, slowly and calmly lifting one hand to rest on her lightsaber.

“’I am not a vision’ says the vision.” The voice laughed again. “Well then, I am not Dustil Onasi, son of Carth, no. I am not a Jedi either.”

“Carth’s here, Dustil,” she told him, trying to keep her voice gentle. “He’s right outside. This is real. We’re not visions.”

“The vision speaks of my father.” He was rocking back and forth in the corner now, exposing his trembling chin and the bottom of his nose with each movement forward. “The vision speaks of my father, not knowing I killed him twenty two times, and he has killed me, but I did not die.” His head shook back and forth. “He won’t be coming back for me, not again. With his tricks. His tricks!”

The figure suddenly jerked to the side, smacking his palm hard against the black rock floor. A choked sob escaped from his throat. “Oh, Father…why did you leave?”

Katrina stepped sideways, reaching out for Carth’s arm and pulling him through the imaginary door inside with her. He stumbled a little, glancing back behind him at where the door he had seen used to be.

It lost his attention immediately when he saw the figure in the corner. “Dustil? Are you all right?” He started to move towards his son, but Katrina grasped his arm.

“Yes, questions,” Dustil ranted quietly, almost to himself. “Visions always have questions for Dustil…before the killing starts. I won’t answer.” He whirled on them, exposing his sweat-lined brow and wild eyes in the dim light. “I won’t answer!” he shouted.

Except for Dustil’s ragged breathing, the cell was silent. Carth was silent. His jaw twitched once, blasters dangling at his sides. Katrina watched him swallow the lump in his throat, and forced herself to meet his gaze when he turned to look at her.

Don’t think about how, back when he was your Padawan, Dustil thought he was the greatest thing since orange-flavored juma juice when he managed to parry your favorite attack, and how he couldn’t stop himself from grinning the entire day, even when you got angry and told him no one would blame you if you decided to Force push him out an airlock and he only grinned more, ran around telling Carth and anyone he could find that cared and even some who didn’t how he had finally bested his master, and how you let him because you were proud of him and secretly so damn glad that he finally liked you—

Katrina turned abruptly back towards her former Padawan. “Dustil…” She struggled to think of what to say, how to begin. What might be the magic combination of words or events that would bring him back to reality—

“Dustil, I need you to listen to me.”

The Jedi didn’t respond.

“Dustil,” Katrina repeated more insistently.

“Told you.”

Dustil’s voice was low and mocking. Katrina unhooked her lightsaber from her belt, fingers tensed to ignite it if he was far gone enough to attack them.

“Told me what?” she said slowly.

“Told you someday you’d be the one in bantha fodder up to your eyeballs, and I’d have to come dig you out.” The voice was casual, everyday. A little cocky and sarcastic. It was Dustil.

Katrina smiled, relieved. She offered a hand to Dustil, and he took it, letting her pull him up.

Carth exhaled brokenly. “What— Dustil, are you— are you okay?” His son’s voice might have been back to normal, but his was a little strangled.

Dustil smirked, stepping forward and putting a hand on his father’s shoulder. “Don’t believe everything you see, right?”

Carth threw his arms around his son, gripping him tightly by his shirt. He released him again after a moment, taking an awkward step back and running a hand through his hair. “Right.”

“That was a hell of an acting job,” Katrina told Dustil, watching as he straightened his clothing and checked to make sure his lightsaber was still there.

The Jedi shrugged. “The Sith give you lemons, you make lemonade. Still, I wasn’t really sure you were real until Father came in with you. Making me imagine I’m being rescued from all this isn’t exactly their style.”

“Do you know what happened to Mical and Atton?” Carth asked. “They dragged you three off because you’re all Force-sensitive.”

Dustil didn’t look surprised. “Rand shouldn’t be too hard to find. He’ll be the only one chanting Pazaak card numbers.”

They exited back out of the cell, Carth closing his eyes before he followed them through the doorway.

“I don’t think I’m ever going to get used to this mind over matter stuff,” he said, blinking back at the now open cell.

“It’s actually easier for non Force-sensitives,” Dustil murmured, igniting his lightsaber. “We’re part of the Force. Even if we know techniques for blocking people out, they can see how we’re doing it. They have to really work to get into your head, and make you see or believe something that isn’t there.”

Carth glanced sideways at Katrina like she could confirm Dustil’s assessment.

Don’t think about how good that first victory against the Mandalorians felt, how it killed whatever unconscious threads of doubt that had been struggling to awaken in your rapidly hardening heart, how the first person you truly celebrated with was Malak after all the officers and members of the Republic had gone off to follow your new orders, and how Malak dipped his head slightly in deference to you and you grabbed his shoulders, shaking him and gripping his arms and even kissing his cheek in your excitement, and how you must not have noticed the instant blush that crept into his cheeks because you were too proud of yourself, too excited that you were right and now everyone, even those fools on the Council would know it—

Don’t think about the fact that you didn’t have to work that hard to turn yourself and your friend into Sith.

“It varies,” she said instead.

It didn’t take long for them to find the Exile’s pilot. An almost reverent drone of digits and operators led them to his cell like a trail of breadcrumbs.

When they entered the cell, Atton Rand was laying with his upper body flat on the floor and his legs crossed up against the far wall. His hands were folded behind his head and there was a slight crinkle between his eyes, like maintaining the count required intense concentration. Katrina walked forward until she was standing over him.

Rand’s brow furrowed under her shadow. His eyes opened, first narrowing in half-irritation and then widening in surprise. He rolled over, awkwardly dropping his legs from the wall and pushing himself up from the floor.

“Uh…you’re her, aren’t you?” He glanced quickly over her shoulder at Carth and Dustil and then back at Katrina again. “Revan. Lord Revan, I mean.”

Katrina nodded. “That’s me.”

“Wow, I…uh…” The pilot ran both hands through his hair, straightening his collar and laughing nervously. “I mean, we’ve been trying to find you, right? So I guess I shouldn’t be that surprised that we did…still, I never thought I’d—“ He cleared his throat.

“It’s…it’s sort of an honor, ma’m,” he added quickly. If she wasn’t pretty sure it was just the reflection of Dustil’s red blade off the glossy black stone, Katrina might have swore he was blushing.

Behind her, Dustil scoffed. “Wow, Rand. Way to almost piss yourself.”

Rand glared past Katrina at him. “You think I give a gizka’s ass what you think? Where’s Sarii and Mira? Is Mical with them?”

“They’re setting charges throughout the complex,” Carth answered. “As soon as we find Mical and set a few ourselves, we’ll comm them and get the hell out of here.”

“You wouldn’t happen to know where or how to find General Zhen’s Padawan, would you?” Katrina added.

Rand blinked at her for a moment as though he didn’t know who General Zhen was. “No idea. Mical’s a squeaky clean Republic intelligence officer and as blue a Jedi as they come. Doesn’t give them much to work with at first, you know?”

Katrina didn’t like the knowing look in his eyes. “We’ll just keep our ears open, I guess.”

“I think I’ll catch up with the others,” Rand said, removing his blasters from his belt. “That’ll make three on either end. Balance and all that crap.”

Carth cocked an eyebrow at the pilot. “You’re not worried about being captured again?”

“Hey, if the three of you are running around and no one’s saying anything, what makes you think I’m going to be the guy to set them off?” Rand answered, gesturing at them with one of his blasters.

“Besides,” he added, smirking over his shoulder at them as he exited the cell. “I’m pretty good at getting into places people don’t want me to be.”

Everything was going smoothly. Too smoothly, in Sarii’s opinion. The fact that no guards or droids interrupted them as they creeped along hallways and set charges was a bad sign she was trying not to think about.

“Almost done—“ Mira had a tool in her mouth that muffled her words. She finished setting the next-to-last charge they had brought, and stayed crouched down for a moment to admire her work.

The bounty hunter reached up and removed the tool, tucking it back into her belt and retrieving her assault rifle from the floor. “We’ll set the last one and then throw the grenades as we run, I guess.”

If we have the chance to run.

Mira frowned over her shoulder like she could tell what Sarii was thinking. “Yeah, I don’t like this either.”

“Then why are we doing it?” Sarii mumbled.

The bounty hunter shrugged. “Maybe we’re being paranoid. Maybe they’re all really asleep or something. Maybe pride and arrogance and all those supposed failings that turn people into Sith is making them dismiss us as a non-threat. I don’t really know, and honestly, if no one’s shooting at me, I don’t really care.”

Easy for her to say. Mira wasn’t the one who had given the order at Malachor V. Mira wasn’t the one who had been exiled from the Jedi for someone else’s mistakes.

Mira has moved on from her past, Exile. The voice in her head was not Kavar’s. It sounded like an old woman—or would have, if Sarii didn’t already know how much more a secretive old woman might be beneath her brown hooded cloak.

Mine follows me, Kreia, Sarii replied bitterly. I’m a wound in the Force that can’t be healed. You used me for your own ends, just like Revan.

The old woman’s laughter was bitter too. I thought once you might follow in Revan’s footsteps, but you refused…it seems all paths will take us to the end, whatever it may be, and no matter how strongly we fight against it.

Was that what this was? The end?

“It is done—“ The Sith Lord staggered, leaning up against one of the pillars. “At last, it is done.”

It was more an automatic physical reaction than an emotional response when Sarii extinguished her lightsaber, moving to catch the old woman as she slid down the ancient stone of Trayus Academy.

“You have defeated Malachor.” Kreia coughed weakly in her arms. The old woman felt frail, impossibly light, like whatever weight she had possessed before had left her along with the power of the Force. “This place no longer holds meaning.”

There is no dishonor in a choice made without regret, the old woman told her in the now, her voice cutting through the eerie silence in the Sith complex. Remember that, in the battle to come.

As if Kreia had willed it from the Force, sudden blaster fire began hitting the wall opposite them. Sarii and Mira hit the wall, brandishing their weapons and waiting for the enemy to round the corner.

Instead, Atton Rand came scrambling into view, almost slipping on the smooth obsidian floor and firing over his shoulder. He moved up against the opposite wall, firing back at the droids and human guards hot on his heels.

“Thanks, Rand,” Mira shouted over the din. “This was just what we needed!”

“You know me—“ Atton lifted his arms to fire but quickly ducked instead, sliding a little down the wall. “I like to make an entrance.” He gestured with his chin towards Sarii. “How’s it going?” he yelled.

Sarii wasn’t sure if her face looked perplexed or amused. “Where’s Mical?”

“Beats me,” the pilot shouted back. “The Onasi family’s looking for him.”

Mira stood over Sarii to fire her wrist-launcher and quickly dropped down again. “We had one more charge left, but I’m thinking the hell with it!”

“Sounds like a…” Atton dove across the hallway to where Mira and Sarii were crouched. The frag grenade that had been tossed at his previous position exploded, sending chunks of black rock sliding across the floor.

“Sounds like a plan,” he finished, a little too loudly next to Sarii’s ear.

“We can’t leave without Mical,” Sarii replied, daring to step out into the line of fire so she could maneuver her lightsaber more easily. The action only caused the Sith to do the same, and they were forced to fall back to where their hallway intersected with another.

If the true Sith had been sleeping, they couldn’t still be sleeping now. But there was no sign of anything with a lightsaber, and no time or energy to spare from deflecting shots to try and sense them through the Force.

“You remember the way out? Cause I sure as hell don’t,” Mira grumbled, struggling to free the commlink from her belt with one hand.

“Admiral?” she said over the link, ducking down behind Sarii. “Admiral Onasi, do you read?”

“This is Carth.” Things sounded relatively quiet on the Admiral’s end. “What do you need?”

“We need to get out of here,” Mira replied flatly, standing and bending around the corner to fire her wrist-laucher and then ducking back down quickly again. “Barring that, we could use a little help!”

“Just hang on,” Admiral Onasi told them. “We’ll find you—”

The rest of his reply was cut off as the comm went rolling across the floor and Mira hissed in pain, cradling her hand to her chest. Sarii immediately bent to help her, grasping the bounty hunter’s hand and carefully twisting it so she could see the damage.

“It glowed, like the comm fried or something—“ Mira winced again, gesturing with her chin at where the comm had rolled against the wall. It was smoking, charred and useless.

It glowed…Overheated electronics didn’t glow. Lightning did—

Blaster fire hit the wall just above Sarii’s head, now coming faster and more furious than ever. She ignited her double blade again, stepping a little away from Mira to try and deflect more of the blasts back at the guards. It seemed like she was the only one fending them off—

And it seemed that way because she was. Atton was crouched against the wall opposite Mira, blaster pistol lifted near his face but the other one dangling uselessly between his knees. He was staring down the hallway with a furrow in his brow.

She tried to keep her attention on the guards firing at her and not the empty hallway that was apparently more interesting. “Atton, what are you doing?”

He glanced up at her, and then at Mira. “I’ll be right back.” He turned in the direction of the hallway, and then turned back, as if he was reconsidering. “You have that last charge you were going to set?” he asked Mira.

The bounty hunter’s face was screwed up somewhere between incredulity and pain. “It’s in the bag.” She worked her foot under the strap and yanked the bag towards her, removing the charge and sliding it across the floor to Atton with her uninjured hand.

“All right. I’ll be back,” Atton repeated. “I’ll go set the last charge.” The way he said it, it almost sounded like an afterthought.

“What? Atton, we need you here—“

But as soon as Sarii had a chance to look at the pilot, he had already disappeared.

“Mira?” Carth’s voice echoed in the empty cell block. “Mira, do you copy?”

The commlink only crackled dead air back at them. Katrina met Carth’s gaze.

“We’ll take a shortcut through the Council chambers,” she told him. “We’ll drop our charges on the way.”

Carth and Dustil exchanged glances like they knew as well as she did that three Jedi trying to take a shortcut through the Sith Council chambers was about as smart a move as three Sith trying to take a shortcut through the Jedi Council chambers.

But Katrina knew there was no other option.

She led them through the complex and towards the main hall, as ideal a place to blow things up as any. The room was empty when they entered, and Carth and Dustil immediately began to ground the charges around one of the large pillars supporting the room’s ceiling.

“You know, maybe I don’t know much about these Sith, but even if they do think they can turn anyone, it doesn’t seem that smart to me to leave your stronghold unguarded and allow anyone to dock their ship and walk on in,” Carth murmured. “I guess you’ve got to figure that if you’re located in the farthest reaches of space and the entire sector is either terrified of you or doesn’t know you exist, you probably won’t have a lot of security breaches.”

“They obviously haven’t learned a lot from a couple thousand years of existing,” Dustil answered, though he kept glancing over his shoulder and over at Katrina.

The complex was still eerily silent. If there was a firefight going on where Mira and Sarii were, it either wasn’t very loud or the Sith were blocking them from hearing it.

Unless the distress call, like everything else, was just a trick. Katrina stood guard near the doorway with her lightsaber ignited, holding her breath.

“Got it,” Carth exhaled. “Let’s go.”

He and Dustil rose, turning around to face her. They froze.

Sila was in her head before he was in the room. Carth and Dustil give us little credit.

There was a disgusting intimacy in the way he said “us,” the way his voice, a raspy hiss even in her head, slithered around their names. Katrina didn’t turn around. Instead, she watched the reactions on Carth and Dustil’s faces. Dustil ignited his red blade, lifting his eyebrows at the Sith behind her as if daring Sila to make a move. Carth lifted his blasters, not knowing they were useless.

This is where it must end, I’m afraid. Sila had come through the doorway now, and was slowly approaching her. We have learned much together, you and I. For my part, I taught you to look beyond physical boundaries, to realize perception plays more of a role in determining truth than reality. And you have taught me—

He laughed; the true Sith so seldom laughed that it sounded more like he was wheezing, hacking, expelling some disease. “I suppose I should speak aloud for the Admiral’s benefit.”

“I’m good, thanks,” Carth shot back.

She knew Sila had two single sabers clenched between his long, bony, quadruple-jointed fingers. Their hum grew quieter, as if he was walking farther away from her rather than closer.

Katrina lifted her blade, tensing her body in preparation to attack.

“Go, get out of here,” she told Carth and Dustil. “Both of you.”

“Not a chance,” Carth answered without missing a beat. Despite everything, one side of his mouth lifted. “I’ve never abandoned anyone on a mission, and I’m not about to start now.”

“Besides,” he added, running a hand through his brown hair. “I’m going to need your help.”

Maybe it was inappropriate for Katrina as one of only two known survivors from the Endar Spire now hiding in an abandoned apartment in the Upper City of Taris to want to thank him again anyway. If only to see his mouth form that rakish smirk again.

Katrina smiled at him. Then she tightened her grip on the hilt of her saber and whirled on Sila.

Only to find that he wasn’t there. She stumbled with the force of her movement, which had been made fully expecting to meet a blade pressing down with equal pressure behind her. The Force had told her he was there.

Only Sila wasn’t. He was hurtling towards Dustil from the opposite side of the room.

He didn’t know why he was surprised. Atton Rand had turned, helped to turn, or at least watched others turn scores of Jedi. And, for a while, it had been sweeter and more satisfying than the biggest Pazaak win or a glittering, bare-lekkued Twi’lek calling your name—making them fall, making them see his side of it. Watching your enemy suddenly become your ally.

Still, it was a pretty fracking strange sight to see ice blue lightning lancing out of Mical Jorde’s fingertips and into Mira’s hand.

There was no telling what kind of state the kid was in (although Atton had a pretty good idea), especially if he was frying his former crewmates. Better Mira not find out who had shocked her. She and her wrist launcher probably wouldn’t be too forgiving. Better a Jedi Master not see what had happened to her Padawan. She might do something stupid, like try to redeem him.

He would be the judge of whether or not that was possible. He dropped the charge Mira had tossed at him carelessly on the floor. It clanked almost deliberately loudly on the polished rock, but Mical didn’t turn around from where he stood at the opposite end of the chamber, his back to Atton.

“Hey, Mical,” Atton called, keeping his distance. “How’s my favorite Jedi Padawan?”

Walk slow, stay casual. You’re all friends here. Friends are only looking out for you. Friends are only doing this for your own good—

“We could’ve really used you in that fight,” he continued when the Jedi didn’t reply. “Course, maybe the kind of help you’re giving out these days we’re better off without.”

“You really believe you understand the Jedi, don’t you?” The snide sneer that Atton had always known Mical’s vocal cords were capable of had now taken over the Jedi’s speech. “You really think sentients converted just because you inflicted physical pain?” He finally turned around.

The physical changed were subtle when conversion happened. Not that yellow-eyed, veiny pale skin crap they stuck in all the vids. That didn’t happen until much, much later, when the power of the dark side had had the chance to really suck a sent dry. Instead, Mical’s blue eyes were more intense. Brighter, like they were iced over. His posture and his movements—usually much more subdued, deliberate, as if the kid considered them like he considered everything else—were now calculated, apparent.

Atton knew. He’d watched the kid with a conversionist’s eye—always looking for weaknesses, things to exploit. Buttons to push.

“Your supposed successes were all failures, Atton,” Mical told him, smug. “Giving you the answers you want in exchange for relief from torture is simply and exactly that: an exchange. A trade, and nothing more, made for something a sentient wants. They remain focused on the self, on their own wishes, their own desires.”

Agree with them, at first. You’re their friend. You want to believe them, you want to help them out. They can trust you, you won’t hurt them—unless you have to.

“Instead of the greater good, right? Isn’t that what you Jedi are all about?”

“The greater good, yes,” Mical nodded. “But also the greater, whatever that may be. Enlightenment, self-improvement…a Jedi seeks to develop himself through knowledge and training.”

Then, turn it around. Take what they believe, what they think they know, and flip it. Use it against them. People never like to hear the truth about themselves.

“A Jedi also uses their powers to defend and protect, never to attack others, right?” Atton scoffed. “I guess your code’s getting more and more selective as the years go by, huh?”

For a moment, the kid looked like his old self. One side of his mouth lifted along with one of his eyebrows, forming that brainy, amused face he liked to make at Atton and Atton liked thinking about punching.

Then he swept his arm out, sending a more of a wall than a wave of the Force at Atton. It lifted him up off his feet and slammed him hard into the back wall. He could hear the rock behind him crack, and felt the pieces under him and around him when he collapsed onto the floor.

Damn. Had Mical always been this powerful? Atton hadn’t gotten a chance to observe; the kid was quiet, always taking up the rear, providing support and protection to his master, never in the lead, never showing off, never showing at all, apparently, what he could do—

“Is this how it works, Atton?” Mical was standing over him now. “First I hurt you, to show you I’m the one in control, and then you turn. Simple as that?”

“Yeah—“ Atton grunted, holding his ribs and trying to push himself up to a sitting position. “You’ve pretty much got the gist of it.”

Humor them if you have to, anything to get them to let their guard down, for that brief instant—

The Force now slammed into his shoulders, pressing him up against the wall. Mical’s hand followed, curling around Atton’s neck and following it rather than pushing it up the wall until they were face to face.

“Is this how it might have worked had you gotten your hands on Master Zhen during the war? Did you put every Jedi you captured through this petty, needlessly painful exercise in futility?”

Master Zhen. Sarii.

Distract them. Turn their attention where you want it to go, and away from where you don’t. Sents’ll focus on anything if you give them a reason to.

Even though the kid’s hand was tight against his windpipe, Atton forced a laugh.

“Yeah, I hurt a lot of Jedi. Had to, to turn ‘em. You got a problem with that, or just the way that I did it? Because from where I’m dangling, I can’t really tell.”

“Perhaps we should find out.” Mical’s voice was flat, a soulless echo.

Atton clawed at the kid’s fist around his neck with his gloved hands. “Find out what?”

“If you had to. Your method’s necessity. Its effectiveness.” The snap-hiss of Mical’s lightsaber illuminated the Jedi’s face in flickering shades of blue. “They tried to share their knowledge with you too, you know. But you refused to listen. You blocked them out.”

“Can’t turn somebody who’s already there, kid.”

“Anyone can be turned, Atton,” Mical replied, deathly serious. “I would have thought you, of all people, would know that.”

“Master Zhen would agree,” he added. “Or she will, once she learns what I’ve learned.”

Master Zhen. Sarii.

The Sith’s angle was easy to see now. They’d found out what he wanted: information, research, a fracking evaluation. A brainiac pissing contest. Mical was partially right: it was an exchange. A trade. One thing for another. Or one thing to stop another from happening.

So you’ve got his attention. He’s focused on you.

Let’s keep it that way.

Atton laughed, low and quiet. “All right, kid. Turn me. I dare you.”

“What the fracking hell?” Mira sounded frustrated, to say the least. “Rand, get your ass back here!” the bounty hunter shouted down the hallway, leaning forward on one hand like that would make it easier for Atton to hear her.

He is a fool and an imbecile, and you would do well to keep your eye on him. Until now, Sarii had always thought Kreia was just an irritable old woman. Maybe she had a point.

“What now?” she yelled over the crackle of her lightsaber as she continued to deflect shots. A double blade like hers was more efficient, but the guards weren’t stupid. They were crouched behind and under walls, corners, and pillars, and they didn’t expose themselves for nothing—they let the droids fire from the open.

“We run is what now,” Mira answered, using one hand to push herself up from the floor.

“What about Mical—“ Sarii slammed up against the opposite side of the wall from Mira, where Atton had been before he’d gone running. “And we don’t know where Atton is…we can’t just leave them—“

“Atton ran off like an idiot, and Mical’s going to have to find his own way out.” Mira watched the blaster fire as if trying to time it. “We’re not going to be any good to them dead!”

After one or two false starts, the bounty hunter sprinted across the open hallway, keeping low to the ground to avoid fire. Sarii followed, deflecting shots as she ran.

Mical…Padawan, where are you? For a moment, she thought she had found him. Her pace slowed, trying to pull that sudden familiarity closer to her.

But it snapped free suddenly, and there was no trace of Mical in the Force except her desire for one.

“Do we even know where we’re running?” she asked Mira between breaths.

“Away!” the bounty hunter replied, looking over her shoulder and then quickening her pace. Behind them, four floating sentinel droids and two rolling assault droids were hot on their tails, followed by the slower but no less dangerous human guards who had survived the firefight.

Mira turned on her heel and ran backwards for a moment to fire her wrist launcher. The blast created a momentary fireball of flames and smoke, but the sentinel droids flew cleanly through it, undamaged.

“Now would be a good time to start throwing grenades!” she told Sarii, yanking two out of her pack and hurling them back over her shoulder without looking. Sarii pulled out one of her own and let it drop and roll as she ran. The subsequent explosions rained chunks of black rock at their heels, but not enough to impede their pursuers.

“It isn’t working!” Sarii shouted.

“I know!” the bounty hunter snapped back, skidding to a halt in front of a dead end. The wall of black rock in front of them was several stories high, and there was no hallway close enough to them and far enough away from the approaching guards to backtrack down instead.

“Well, General, I’m fresh out of tactical maneuvers,” Mira breathed, trying to reload her wrist launcher awkwardly with the same hand it was strapped to.

The technicians had run the necessary scenarios and simulations. It was calculated that only a few single-engine fighters would be lost with the detonation of the mass shadow generator. The loss was worth the gain: the defeat of the Mandalorians. The survival of the Jedi and the Republic.

The thought comforted Sarii as she sat outside the Council chambers, waiting to hear her fate for giving the order handed down from the now Dark Lord Revan.

They were cornered and soon to be surrounded, without a comm and without a lot of options.

“Blow the charges,” Sarii said.

The bounty hunter looked up at her, eyes narrowed. “We placed them at strategic structural spots. This place might come down on us instead of just around.”

“We don’t have a choice. Blow the charges.”

Mira glanced at Sarii, then down the hallway, where the sound of blaster fire was growing louder and louder, and back to Sarii again. With one finger from her burned hand, she flicked open a panel on her wrist launcher.

“If I die, the first thing I’m going to say to Bao-Dur is that you told me to do it.”

Carth barely had time to react when Sila came barreling towards Dustil, twin red blades held behind him in each hand like to hold them out in front of him would provide too much wind resistance and slow him down. His son was looking in the opposite direction, totally unaware of what was heading his way.

He reached out and shoved Dustil back out of the way, firing twice at the Sith. His shots deflected harmlessly off Sila’s lightsabers, and didn’t slow him down at all. There was nothing between those two glowing red blades and Carth’s lightsaber-less self.

He instinctively dove out of the Sith Lord’s path, sliding across the floor into Dustil, who scrambled to get up.

“Where is he?” his son breathed, turning around in a complete circle.

Carth hurriedly pushed himself up. “What do you mean ‘where is he’? He’s right there, right—“

“Watch out!” he yelled to Katrina. Sila had both sabers lifted over his head, and they came crashing down onto her single green one. The doubled strength of the blow made Katrina stumble backwards.

Dustil was there in an instant, coming at the Sith Lord from the side. Sila transferred both lightsabers to the hand fighting off Katrina and sent a Force wave barreling into Dustil, which Carth’s son narrowly avoided by turning with the oncoming wave rather than standing flat against it.

The multiple joints of Sila’s long fingers curled around each hilt, forming an angle with the blades. The combined outline of his lightsabers looked almost blurry, a red haze rather than an intense glow. But instead of attacking Katrina again, he took a large, smooth step away from her. To Carth’s surprise, Katrina swung as if he was there. Her green blade hummed steadily as it cut through nothing but air.

A few meters away, Dustil was slowly and steadily advancing on not Sila, but Katrina. He stopped suddenly, blinking. One hand lifted to wipe his face.

Sila stood silent and still between the two, directly in their line of sight. He was motionless except for the sudden jerks of his saber to deflect Carth’s blaster fire.

“What are you waiting for? Take him down!” Carth yelled. Neither Jedi responded. Katrina’s eyes were wild, searching the room and at one point even staring straight at Sila and then moving on.

It’s like they can’t see him, or they’re seeing him somewhere else—

“Do you see him, Dustil?” Katrina asked.

His son shook his head. “No.”

Sila had been taking slow, leisurely steps around both of them. Now he approached Katrina, turning his wrists outward to form a ‘v’ of red light in front of him.

“Behind you!” Carth shouted. On his warning, Katrina turned, slamming her blade down and cutting Sila’s ‘v’ in two. She struck the Sith Lord again and again in rapid sucession, like she was afraid of losing his position if she slowed down.

“Keep going, you’re on him,” Carth called out, firing again. This time, one of his blasts hit the Sith Lord squarely on one shoulder.

Either the shot or the words or both had the unfortunate effect of getting Sila’s attention. The Sith Lord growled, jutting his chin in Carth’s direction. The Force knocked his blasters so hard out of his hands that his knuckles cracked. The weapons went skidding to opposite sides of the room.

This would be a nice time to be Force-sensitive, Carth thought grimly to himself, hurrying to retrieve the blaster closest to him—

But he wasn’t Force sensitive. Being sensitive to anything automatically meant that you were more aware of it, more receptive to whatever it was. More susceptible to its dangers. More likely to see Sila where he wasn’t. He wasn’t Force sensitive, but Katrina and Dustil were.

He quickly grabbed his weapon and turned around, scanning the room for the Sith Lord. He had neatly slipped to the side, away from the corner Katrina had been pushing him into and was now taunting Dustil by allowing their lightsabers to barely touch.

“In front of you, Dustil,” Carth told him, not daring to blink. His son swung hard, connecting with Sila’s blade and forcing the Sith Lord to step back quickly.

The movement made the Sith’s hood fall from his head. His face was thin, elongated, dark red skin stretched over impossible grooves and angles. Two small, beady black eyes turned their gaze on Carth, narrowing and widening again as he spoke.

“I agree, Admiral. It is a curious thing how useful the average sentient can be. That is why we work to save all individuals, regardless of ability.” What had to have been a mouth smiled thinly at Carth. “The Jedi respect all life, in any form.”

Carth’s other blaster, out of reach on the other side of the room, suddenly began firing at them. Carth dove behind the pillar they had set the charge against. Dustil quickly moved towards the malfunctioning weapon, deflecting bolts with his saber and dodging any that he couldn’t.

While the Sith Lord could toy with them by taking his time and moving deliberately, he also knew how to move fast. He turned sharply towards Katrina, the hum of his blade cutting through the air almost faster than Carth could open his mouth.

“Right!”

Katrina spun around just as Carth noticed that Sila had moved behind her. The Sith Lord’s robes curled around him almost gracefully.

“No, left! Left!”

Katrina only managed to get half-way back before Sila’s blade hissed against her clothing. Her reflex was lighting-fast; she flung her arm back behind her so her blade met Sila’s, but that didn’t keep the Sith Lord from sliding it along the length of her ribs.

“Learn your damn directions!” she snapped, switching her lightsaber between hands, her right arm stiff as she clenched it to her side.

Carth tried to take another shot at Sila, but both the Sith Lord and his former Sith Lord wife were moving so quickly that he was afraid of hitting her.

The clashing of Dustil’s lightsaber behind him rung in his ears. He resisted the urge to turn around and make sure his son was all right, knowing that he had to watch Sila—

“Carth?” Katrina yelled, spinning around frantically.

Sila had disappeared. Carth scanned the room—

Something heavy stumbled up against him, and he rolled out of the way. Sila had been right over his head. Now he slammed his blade mercilessly into Dustil, who had stopped the Sith Lord from lopping off Carth’s head.

Sila raised his arm and ripped Dustil’s lightsaber from his hands. The weapon went flying across the room, and the young Jedi Knight raced to chase after it.

“You believe killing me will erase the past, Revan?” the Sith Lord said calmly to Katrina, turning around to face her. His long black robes trailed across the floor as he held both blades in either hand, perfectly straight and parallel to the floor.

“You want to become a Jedi again. I want you to become a true Jedi. We both believe that ours is the true path of the Jedi, the true side of the Force. The only difference is in your green blade and my red. Superficial details, nothing more.”

“Right and wrong is no superficial detail, Sila,” Katrina hissed, slamming her blade up against him. Sila responded with both of his lightsabers pressed up against hers in an X, backing her into the next room.

“And right is the lies of your order? According to them, you’re just as bad as me for your Carth, your Celyn—“

“Don’t you dare—“

“Do I defile them, Revan? Your secrets? The passions your order believes are wrong? You believe they are right. That creates opposing ideologies, doesn’t it? By your limited definitions, that makes you Sith.”

“Not anymore,” Katrina snapped. “You’re hurting people. Showing them nothing but pain, misery, darkness, death—“

“So death is wrong. And yet you’re still going to kill me, aren’t you, Revan?”

Katrina lunged forward and stopped a few inches from Sila’s face, as though she had slammed into an invisible wall. Her mouth gaped open and she began to gurgle.

Carth raised his blaster, firing frantically at Sila. His shots were effortlessly deflected. They bounced off the Sith Lord’s lightsaber like red streamers into the black floor.

Katrina was hanging off the ground now. Her legs dangled beneath her and her lightsaber began to slip from her hand. She hacked weakly, her face beginning to turn purple—

Sila suddenly stumbled forward, letting out a dry grunt and tripping over his two uneven steps. A sharp crack echoed through the room as Katrina was flung against the rocks and hit the floor.

It was Dustil, hurtling into the Sith Lord. Sila now turned on him, slamming both double lightsabers up against his son’s. It looked like they were trying to crush a glowing red star between them.

Carth quickly raced around them, carefully dodging careless swings of their blades.

Blood flowed bright red from the gash on Katrina’s head. She was unconscious and her blade lay uselessly at her side.

From behind him he heard Dustil scream. Carth’s head whipped around.

Sila had managed to make a particularly devastating blow against Dustil’s right arm. His son backed up, clutching the smoking and charred flesh to his chest, his face contorted.

“Dustil!” he yelled in panic, pushing himself up from Katrina’s side.

“Father, stay there!” Dustil bellowed, bearing down hard against the Sith Lord. The young Jedi’s arms were bent and his face contorted as he tried to hold off Sila.

Have to help Dustil, have to save him, have to be there for him—

Carth looked around frantically for some way to make himself useful, for some way he could help Dustil. His blasters were completely ineffective—

Katrina’s lightsaber bumped up against his knee. Carth snatched it up and fumbled, trying to turn it on.

“You’re going to kill yourself! Stay there!” Dustil snapped, noticing what Carth was trying to do.

Carth ignored him and stood, holding the green blade out in front of him. He wasn’t sure if he was more terrified of not being able to help Dustil or the prospect of using the weapon to try.

It was so light, like he was holding a fork or a butter knife rather than a deadly weapon.

He gripped it so tightly he thought it might break into a million tiny metal splinters in his hands.

He took a swing at Sila. Too hard. The momentum of his arms threw his entire body forward, which had been tense and braced for the weight of a heavier vibroblade. He stumbled off to the side, barely missing his own foot with the lightsaber.

“Don’t swing hard! Smooth motions. Pretend it’s a flag or a sheet,” Dustil instructed, the sweat pouring down his son’s face as he blocked another attack from Sila, his injured arm held tightly to his side.

A flag or a sheet would catch in the wind and at least give me something to fight, Carth thought grimly, shaking his head and hefting the blade between his hands. The green beam of light almost seemed to dim, as if the weapon somehow knew it wasn’t in the hands of its owner.

He snuck a quick glance over his shoulder at Katrina. She was still slumped against the smooth black rock, a long trail of blood flowing down the side of her face from where she had cracked her head against the wall. If he had the Force, he’d probably be able to tell if she was all right. Maybe heal her. Maybe not feel so fracking useless—

Carth jabbed the weapon like a spear towards the Sith Lord’s knees. Sila whirled on him, and Carth instinctively raised the blade up to counter.

Sila smashed so hard against him that Katrina’s lightsaber came flying back into Carth’s own face. He turned his head to the side and tried to push back, but Sila knew how to use the weapons much better than he did. The side of the green blade swiped his temple and the edge of his cheek just before his ear. He smelled the burning hair of his beard and felt the skin crinkle under the heat.

“It’s an extension of your arm, not a damn fore-staff!” Dustil snapped, distracting Sila from his momentary stalk towards Carth. “Pressure with your wrists, not your arms!”

Wrists, not arms. Smooth motions. Extension of my arm, Carth recited to himself.

Dustil let out a loud grunt as he lifted his arm to block one of Sila’s lightsabers. He looked exhausted. The arm holding his lightsaber was trembling, but the Sith Lord’s blade slowly moved closer and closer back towards his own face. For a moment, it looked like Dustil had a chance of ending this.

Then Sila’s other lightsaber, which had been hovering oddly idle at his side, struck with the sudden bite of a snake at Dustil’s legs. His son jumped back, losing the leverage he had against the Sith Lord’s blade. Sila twirled the hilts of each blade over his fingers until they were loosely grasped by the last two. Lightning lanced from the Sith Lord’s remaining digits, snaking along the obsidian floor and then leaping straight into Dustil’s chest.

His son fell back onto the floor, screaming through his clenched jaw and gritted teeth.

“No!” He knew now what it felt like—how you wanted to tear all your skin off but you couldn’t stop your fingers from trembling or your jaw from chattering or every muscle in your body from spasming long enough to do it.

Carth watched the last tendril of lightning finally end on the side of his son’s neck, snapping his head to the side, the last movement he made before he fell silent and still.

Two limp, motionless bodies now. His wife and his son. And Carth the only one left, the only one still alive. He had failed them. Again.

Sila was already staring at him as if even that—even killing my son—hadn’t required his full attention or power.

“There is no death, Admiral.” The light from his sabers reflected off the pillar behind him, casting a red spotlight around the Sith Lord’s feet. “There is only the Force. What freedom in that realization, what clarity…” He tilted his head at Carth. “But you don’t know it yet. A pity.”

Every muscle in Carth’s body—most notably his heart—was screaming at him to attack the Sith Lord. And though he tried to reason that Sila was using the Force to restrain or control him, the hesitance was all his. Even if he couldn’t understand it—

Sila laughed, a raspy choking sound that echoed throughout the chamber. “Never fear, Admiral. There is no ignorance. There is only knowledge. And I can help you attain it.”

Then the pillar behind him exploded in a giant fireworks display of broken obsidian and soot. Something slammed into Carth, knocking him backwards and off his feet. There was a loud rumble, and then everything went dark.

Even though Sarii would have liked to see Bao-Dur again, the Force apparently wasn’t ready for them.

When Mira pressed the detonator, at first nothing happened. She pressed it again.

“Wouldn’t that be just our luck,” the bounty hunter muttered.

They heard the results of the explosions before the explosions themselves. Human guards yelling, screaming, dying. Then the ground beneath their fleet began to rumble. Debris and ash fell in spurts from the ceiling. Large cracks ripped through the rocks around them, and Sarii and Mira fell to the floor. Sarii threw her hands around her neck, pulling her legs into her chest and waiting for it to be over.

When the dust settled, Sarii dared to look up, brushing her hair out of her face. The complex walls were no longer smooth or unblemished. Now huge chunks of rock were missing, either half sunk into the cracked floor beneath them or in pieces across the hall. New doorways that hadn’t been there before had suddenly appeared, and when she turned to look around her, the impassable wall that had trapped them here had not exploded, but vanished altogether.

Mira lay sprawled face up near the wall. Sarii crawled over to her. “Mira? Are you all right?”

The bounty hunter groaned, opening one eye and then the other. “I feel like I had a wrestling match with a Gamorrean. And I lost. Badly.”

“You feel all right,” Sarii told her, grasping onto the Force shakily at first and then firmly to try and sense any injuries. “I think you’ve got a broken rib or two.”

Mira winced. “Try twenty-six.”

“You don’t have that many…”

There was another form sprawled on the floor ahead, past where the wall blocking their path used to be. The rumpled robes spread around the body were not Sith. Not to mention the blond hair.

Sarii pushed herself up, hurrying over where Mical was lying unconscious a few meters away. He was a little bruised from the blast, but otherwise he looked fine.

“Mical?” she tried, shaking him a little. Mical?

Someone made a noise behind her, barely audible. Sarii twisted around, trying to peer through the thick cloud of dust. All she could make out was a pile of probably rocks near the back of this new chamber.

She turned and started crawling towards the noise instead. Her hand grasped fingers that were calloused and gloved. She pawed up the sides of a familiar leather vest, which was now covered in dust. The movements of her hand must have sent some of that dust flying into his face, and he coughed, clearing the air so Sarii could see.

It was Atton Rand.

His breathing was erratic and broken. A veil of blood, sweat, and dirt caked the visible side of his face.

Sarii struggled to turn him over, moved her hands towards his forehead to try and heal him.

She couldn’t stop the ragged gasp that came up her throat as she saw that the other side of his face had been flayed to the bone, his brown eye dull and probably no longer functioning.

She tried anyway. The Force rattled through her fingertips, barely touched the pilot’s skin, and shot back into her like a backfiring hyperdrive. Sarii tried again with the same result.

“Don’t…strain yourself…” Atton rasped. His undamaged eye squinted to see her.

“That bad, huh?” He grinned weakly with a set of chapped and torn lips. “Always was ugly…guess the outside matches now-“

“Just hold on, Atton,” she stammered, her hands beginning to shake nervously where they lingered over his body. “You’ve lost a lot of blood…”

Every time she thought she found a wound she could heal, another caught her eye, verdant red or darkening purple.

“Bout time I had some of my own on my hands…” Atton stiffened into a ball for a moment, clenching his fist and wincing. “The kid…he all right?”

Sarii’s head shot up and she stared at him. “The kid…you found Mical.”

The pilot’s neck stiffened like he was trying to nod, but settled for blinking instead. “He shocked the comm out of Mira’s hand. He fell.”

“But don’t worry,” he added. “He’s okay now…passed out when he saw what he did…thought he could convert better than I could…score one for me, huh?”

Sarii looked back over her shoulder at where Mical lay. Even unconscious, there was no indication through the Force that he was possessed by the dark side, no sign that he had fallen—

Except for Atton, lying in her arms, with wounds that no blast from an explosive charge could have made.

“But why didn’t you just say you saw him?” she continued without waiting for a reply. “Why did you go after him yourself…”

“But what about Atton?” Sarii demanded. “Does he love me?”

She hadn’t meant to ask the second question, but still it was softer, quieter. Like she was embarrassed by her own interest. Kreia scoffed in her arms.

“He is a fool. And that should answer your questions. There is no love left in a heart such as that one.”

Atton feebly shrugged. “Can’t leave a Jedi…without a Padawan, right?”

-- -- -- -- -- --

The world was falling apart. Debris and rocks flew everywhere, pinning his arms and legs, blocking out the light, blinding him. Dustil had been here before—only this time, it was eerily silent. On Telos, he could hear people screaming, saw them fall, saw blaster fire from the skies grow larger and larger until it hit, spraying buildings and blood and body parts across his home.

This time, he was trapped with not only the certainty that his mother was dead, but that his father was too. Immediately, the anger came. What the frack was he thinking, picking up a lightsaber? It was like he was trying to get killed. He didn’t think about you, did he? Didn’t think about how it might make you feel to watch him die, didn’t think about the fact that you’d have to live without him, again—

On Telos, he’d been angry too. But it was a different kind of anger, born out of feeling betrayed and helpless, not sad. Not finally and totally alone.

Father, Father, I’m trapped in rubble and Mother’s dying, where are you, Father?

Dustil choked on the thick powder covering his face, coating his lungs and nostrils, groaning and doubling over, more rocks falling over his elbows.

Don’t call for Father. What’s the use when he’s never going to come—

“Dustil?”

He heard his father’s anxious voice, felt him grasping his arms and checking his pulse.

-- -- -- -- -- --

Sarii finally let her hands drop, moving one to Atton’s forehead and the other to support her on his other side as she leaned over him.

There was no healing this. There was no way to fix it.

“Hey…don’t look so sad…”

She struggled to think of a way to position her facial features, some way to hold herself, some words to say that wouldn’t tell him that he was going to die—

“S’tired of living anyway,” Atton’s voice was hard, strangled from the pain. “Too many deaths.”

“He has nothing to offer one such as you,” the old woman continued, voice bitter and disgusted, even now when she was about to die and Atton was nowhere near them. “Even a fool such as Atton is not so ignorant of that fact.”

Sarii shivered, letting out an exhale that made a barely visible cloud in the quickly cooling air.

“S’okay...I’ll haunt you.” He smirked weakly, barely touching her hair where it hung over his face and stuck to his drying blood. Sarii wanted to try and pull it out but was afraid of causing him more pain.

“Didn’t mean for you to see this,” Atton breathed, his hand touching hers where it was attached to her weary and shaking forearm. “Plan was for you to be gone…supposed to save you…”

“I can still help you,” she lied desperately. “I won’t leave-“

“You’re…dreaming, Sarii,” he said, laughing softly. “Thought you were a dream on Peragus…nothing else to call a half-naked woman springing me out of jail…”

-- -- -- -- -- --

It took Carth a moment to realize that everything had gone dark not because he had died, but because there was something lying on top of him, covering his eyes. He grasped the heavy form with his hands, shoving it off of him with a grunt. Filmy light came back, along with a cloud of dust that made his eyes burn. He coughed, waving at the air and rubbing his face.

The body now lying slumped across his legs was Sila. Yellow blood was splattered across his back and on Carth’s clothing. A large part of his skull was missing like it had been bashed away. The Sith Lord was dead.

He kicked savagely at the body, shoving it away from him and pushing himself up from the floor. It was harder to see in the new, cloudy atmosphere of the room, but he managed to make his way over to where Dustil had been lying.

“Dustil?” He was saying his son’s name before he even reached his side, before he even got the chance to press his fingers to his neck and thank whatever gods existed in this galaxy that there was still a steady pulse. “Son, are you all right?”

The young Jedi’s face twisted as if in pain or confusion or both. His eyes opened, and he stared blearily at Carth before letting his head rest back onto the rock underneath him.

“I think I’ve got a concussion,” Dustil slurred like he’d had one too many drinks.

“I think you’ve got a guardian angel,” Carth replied, eying the giant guillotine-shaped piece of black rock that had missed his son’s head by a centimeter or so.

Dustil snorted. “What do I need one of those for when I’ve got my father, Admiral Onasi, following me around?”

-- -- -- -- -- --

Sarii concentrated on trying to put Atton’s breathing into some sort of rhythm, on counting the beats of her own heart-

“...love you, Sarii.”

Both his breathing and her heart were now far beyond any discernable pattern.

“Atton—“

“But you’re…afraid of me…” He tried to turn away from her but Sarii grasped his hand, feeling the rough leather of his glove, the callouses covering his hands and the slippery blood in his knuckles.

“But he would die for you, yes.”

The last words of a dying Sith Lord probably had better applications. But Sarii didn’t care. “Why would he do that?”

“I do not believe he would die lightly for one he did not care about.”

“Never…never would have hurt you…” he rasped. “Never.”

Atton’s hand fell lazily from where it had been reaching for her face. It landed with a smack on his jacket, sending up a cloud of dust and making him grunt. Sarii reached to brush his hair off his wet, sticky forehead.

“Don’t believe me…can’t blame you, I guess—”

His eyes watched her every move, right up until she swallowed hard and leaned in to kiss him.

-- -- -- -- -- --

Carth left Dustil to dust himself off and assess his own more minor wounds, and searched frantically for the other limp body lying somewhere in the rocks.

He finally spotted her. She had practically blended into their surroundings, with her black robes and dark hair. It had broken free of her usual braid and was flung over her face.

He leapt over the largest rocks in his way, moving towards Katrina. She was eerily still, and he knelt at her side, trying to see her face.

She groaned softly, and he suspected he was pulling her dark tresses through wounds.

“Katrina,” He ignored her request to call her Revan, forgot all the times they had discussed and all the fights over it; forgot “Happy R” and everything else. “Katrina, answer me.”

The hand that still lay flat on the ground grasped at the fabric of his pants.

He could hear a slight scratching sound coming front her chapped lips, like she was trying but had no air left.

“Is he dead?” The Jedi finally managed to wheeze.

“He’s dead, gorgeous,” he said softly, touching her bruised cheeks. Her hand