Chapter 1: Apostle
Chapter Text
"War... is a hunger. And there are spirits in the galaxy whose hunger is never satisfied."
- Kreia
Obsidian Command Deck — Chorlian Sector
Year 21,093 of the Age of the Republic
Mute as a ghost, Meetra followed the two guards from her quarters to the bridge of Revan's cruiser. Courteous but reserved, they in turn offered her no conversation. No doubt they knew. A week had passed since Malachor; everyone knew and said nothing. For her part, Meetra felt nothing ill toward them for treating her like she was carrying the Bandonian plague. In fact, she felt nothing, period. She had been content to be left alone and to wait, though she had no idea what she was waiting for. Perhaps it was simply for death to catch up with her.
The Obsidian's bridge was busy—every console in use, every station occupied—and nobody in the twin crew pits showed much interest in the Jedi General as she walked down the command aisle between them. Without a word, her two escorts stopped a few meters short of the gallery which rimmed the forward viewports. At the gallery's center was a lone figure in black who stood gazing out at the stars.
As Meetra approached, she could not help but remember the bridge of her own cruiser, identical to this one, where she had stood in that same spot and watched as the void filled with metal and fire. Feeling distant from everything, as though in a dream, she took her place behind the figure on the gallery.
A single word greeted her. "General."
"Revan," Meetra heard herself say.
Slowly, deliberately, the savior of the Republic turned and faced her. With her elaborate robes, armor, and particularly the mask she had taken from the ash-choked shores of Cathar, Revan had a presence that was imposing and in a way inaccessible, even to the Jedi who had known her on Dantooine.
In the past, Meetra had always felt something strong and unique in Revan's presence, almost a kind of gravity pulling her toward this great woman, whose destiny had so many others bound to it. Only a few beings seemed to have this kind of sense about them; Grand Master Sunrider was another one. Now, of course, Meetra experienced no such pull, no such energy. She only knew that it was there, totally outside herself.
"The galaxy knows that the war is won now," Revan mused.
Her remark hung in the air. Certain beings are said to be able to somehow make another person feel naked simply by looking at them; Meetra felt as though Revan was seeing through her skin as well. All she could manage was a nod.
"There is something I want you to do for me, General. Though it may seem otherwise, it is more important than any mission or battle you've taken part in. I hope you are prepared."
It was obvious to Meetra that she was not and could not be prepared for anything. She was unable to see except with her eyes, unable to feel except with her flesh. The world itself felt unreal to her. Even her own skepticism at Revan's words barely registered to herself. Somewhere in her core, buried and compacted beneath the strata of everything that had happened to her, there were a million things she wanted to say, to demand, to beg.
But she said, "I'm ready to do anything you ask of me."
"Good... No doubt you're aware of the Council's summons."
Meetra nodded again. She still had her beacon transceiver, and had read the order that had been broadcast from the Temple. With the Mandalorians defeated at last, the Jedi Council was demanding that Revan and her Crusaders, all of them, relinquish their military posts and return to Coruscant to give a full account of their actions, beginning with their entrance into the war.
The Crusaders, of course, were waiting on Revan's word. As was Meetra.
"Unfortunately, we cannot comply with the Council's request. There are still bands of Mandalorian recusants, fleeing into unknown parts of space. To ensure a permanent end to this war, the Jedi must remain in command until we've tracked down these stragglers and made certain that they accept their defeat." Revan paused and cocked her masked head. "Nevertheless, it seems to me that we do owe the Council a... response. That is your task."
For the first time since Malachor, since the day she had watched a planet's surface crack like glitterglass, Meetra felt something. It came slowly, as something deathly cold that seeped down through the layers of numbness to finally reach her skin.
Dread.
She studied the black visor that crossed Revan's helmet, but found only a reverse image of herself and the rest of the bridge. "You're sending me back to Coruscant? By myself?"
"I'm asking you to go, but your destiny is yours alone now. And only one person is needed to deliver a message."
Internally, Meetra squirmed as she thought of the Council Tower and the massive gates of the Jedi Temple, which now seemed more like a place from a nightmare than from reality. "What am I going to say to them?" she said, asking herself as much as the woman before her.
"The Council wants an explanation for this Crusade. Tell them why you did what you did, and that will be enough for them."
"And after, when I've given them their message? What then?"
Revan's voice softened just a little. "You know the answer to that—Meetra."
Not "General"—and immediately Meetra understood. Even deaf to the Force, her dread had been a knowing dread, a premonition. In fact, before Revan had spoken of her destiny, before the conversation had even begun, this was what she had been waiting for.
Dismissal.
Obviously.
She still wore her robes, still carried her lightsaber. But what was a Jedi, what was Meetra, without the Force? How could she stand at the head of the other Crusaders, as she once had? What was there to keep her tied to this towering conqueror of a woman, who had redeemed the Jedi Order from stagnation and delivered the Republic from ruin? The only duty that remained for her, the last thing she could do for Revan, was to deliver this message to the Council—and disappear.
On some level, Meetra was aware of the things that she ought to have felt at that moment—trepidation, outrage, despair. Betrayal. But she did not feel those things, even though part of her was trying to. She did not yet see herself as broken, as a thing that had been used; in her own mind she remained a Jedi Knight, a Crusader, a General. As she always had, she would serve Revan until the very end, because she still believed in her. And after the end, she would continue to believe in her for a time.
"I will do as you wish," she said at last.
"Then go. Your ship is waiting." And with that, Revan turned back to the stars. She did not say, May the Force be with you, because they both knew that it wouldn't be.
Meetra rejoined the guards, and without a word they led her off the Obsidian's bridge and down to the hangar, where she went out alone into the dark.
Chapter 2: Outsiders
Chapter Text
Telos — The Jedi Academy
21,102 A.R.
She was about to leave, but the voice of the so-called Last Handmaiden gave her pause. "Please, Exile, before you go—"
"My name's Meetra," she said, her voice taut.
The younger woman inclined her head deferently, and with a promptness that suggested she was used to being deferent. "Forgive me... Meetra. There is something I would ask you, if I may."
Meetra waited. Annoyed though she was by the Exile moniker, she somewhat regretted her coarse tone. She couldn't help it—it was too soon after her reunion with Atris—but this woman was different from the others; she seemed like she was a misfit, too.
"You know what it means to touch the Force… What does it feel like?"
Her brow furrowing, Meetra brought a hand to her belt, to the spot where a lightsaber had hung a long time ago. Having lived one life with the Force and another without it, it struck her as strange that this question wasn't an easy one. "Feel like? I don't... I don't know how to describe it."
"Please, will you try? I wish to know."
Meetra's hand started to fidget. Even if she'd known what to say, part of her thought that the question was too personal to answer. But the desperate, naked hope in the Handmaiden's voice checked her impulse to walk away.
After a moment of useless reflection, she sighed. "It's almost like a sound... Voices. Or music, maybe. But it always seems far away, and you can never be sure where it's coming from."
As soon as she heard herself, it sounded wrong. But the Handmaiden nodded thoughtfully and murmured, "I see. Thank you, Meetra. I appreciate you sharing your knowledge with me."
Meetra forced a smile and turned to go. "Take care of yourself."
Chapter 3: Good Deed
Chapter Text
Nar Shaddaa — The Slums
What was the guy's name again? Lootra. He couldn't stop talking, and neither could his wife, about how wonderful Meetra had been to bring them back together. How brave and how generous and how noble she was. Of course, she had a million other good qualities as well, and so did her intrepid and daring companions.
Meetra looked as embarrassed by the couple's oozing gratitude as Atton felt. Over and over she kept saying things like, I had to help you and It was the least I could do. The sort of bantha snot that every do-gooder with a guilty conscience said whenever they got the chance.
It was a relief when their little group finally said their goodbyes and started retracing their steps back through the confined, labyrinthine hellhole of the slums, out toward the wide-open, airy hellhole of the docks. Ostensibly, the T3 unit was taking point, but the reality was that no would-be assailant was going to shoot the moving trash can first, so it was really Atton who was in front.
It was the least I could do, Meetra had said. Starting a kriffing gang war with the local Exchange underboss and the neighboring Serroco so that one woman could get out of the Refugee Sector and back to her husband—that was the least four people and two droids could do. Yeah, right.
Atton knew better than to be upset, or even surprised, about Meetra getting him into insanely dangerous situations. He knew his days were numbered. What didn't sit well with him was how she didn't always have the best reasons for getting him into those situations.
So they'd all gotten through it alive, somehow, and managed to solve some random guy's problem. And for all their trouble? They'd managed to make sure they were on the Exchange's bad side now, and learned nothing about where Jedi Master What's-his-name could be.
An infuriating voice broke through Atton's thoughts like a brick going through a window. It wasn't addressing him, though. "What good have you done this man, saving him from his struggles? Did you not say you would consider my warning last time?"
"Not this again," Meetra sighed.
Atton stole a glance over his shoulder, past Bao-Dur and the Remote. Already at the rear of the group, the ex-Jedi and Kreia were lagging behind a bit. Side by side, they made an odd pair. There was the robed and shrouded hag cocking her head pointedly toward her victim, looking every bit the witch that she was. And then there was Meetra: in her nondescript spacer's pants, boots, and jacket, she looked like just another nobody on the Smuggler's Moon, though the shirt from the Peragus miner's uniform made her garb a touch more professional. With her businesslike ponytail and the sheathed vibroblade at her belt—too long to conceal—she could have passed for an amateur bounty hunter, maybe.
"For every step you take in this city, its lost souls cling to your heels, and you take their burdens upon yourself," Kreia went on. "But you are not helping these people; you are hurting them. When you act out in virtue so that they do not have to, you weaken them."
"You keep saying that—saying I'm weakening them. But they're already weak, and leaving them alone isn't going to change that. Lootra's not a soldier. What was he supposed to do, fight his way through all those Exchange guards? There's no way he could've gotten Aaida back himself. We barely did it."
Listening with one ear to the argument, Atton was disappointed to find himself on Kreia's side of it. Roughly speaking, of course—he could've done without the philosophy lecture. But he was pretty much sick of playing bodyguard for Meetra just so she could help every luckless sod who crossed her path on Nar Shaddaa. He felt like he was sharing drinking chits with an alcoholic Gand.
Even more frustrating, when it came to the people who had a few credits to rub together—in other words, people who were able to offer a reward for assistance—whether Meetra cared about their problems at all was practically a credcoin-toss. Only the useless victims hit the sweet spot for her every time.
But there was more to her than a straightforward case of charity addiction, and Atton wanted to figure her out. For a Jedi, even an ex-Jedi, Meetra was surprisingly willing to start a fight with little or no hand-wringing. For instance, when it came to Saquesh's goons in the Refugee Sector, she hadn't even bothered with any of the typical Jedi bumblefluff about diplomacy or negotiations. Soon as it had occurred to her that they were going to be in Aaida's way, out came the vibroblade.
Kreia went in for the kill. "Indeed? Now it is you who makes presumptions. How do you know what he could've done by himself? He was in a moment of crisis. It is only in such trials, when the odds are insurmountable—only then do beings find their limits, and in the struggle they see what they are truly capable of. But you stole the struggle from that man. By simply giving him its reward, you cheapened it. So he still does not know whether he truly loves his wife, and now, thanks to your charity, he may never learn."
"No, thanks to me, now he has something worth having in his miserable life—someone to care about. You really do sicken me sometimes." As far as Atton had seen, Meetra was generally about as expressive as a Peragus repair drone. So when a normal person would be shouting, or someone like Atton would be offering an appropriate hand gesture, she raised her voice slightly.
"Someone to care about," the old woman echoed scornfully. "If you cared for such people, truly desired what was best for them, then you would recognize the value in letting them fight their own battles. You would let them learn to rely on themselves, and..."
Still walking along, Atton did his best to tune the argument out by counting down the doors that were left between them and the slum's exit. He didn't like seeing Meetra upset, but involving himself would get him nothing except an earful of Be silent, you fool. Besides, he was a little wound up himself.
That damn, condescending Jedi routine. Atton had always hated it, but hearing Meetra talk that way made him want to turn a random corner and just disappear into the Vertical City, Kreia and her threats be damned. Oh, I feel so sorry for you poor, helpless, little normal people who don't have the Force... Well, at least we're here to take care of you. That was exactly how Meetra had seen Lootra, the beggars, and all the refugees. Was that how she would have seen Atton, had they met back when he was one of them?
The thought was infuriating beyond words, and Atton snuffed it out before it could grow on him. As the Jedi and the witch continued their spat, he told himself that this wasn't really Meetra, that under the surface she was different.
Atton would see for himself. He would figure her out.
Chapter 4: Trust
Chapter Text
Ebon Hawk — Exiting the Y'Toub System
A gentle shudder passed through the cockpit as they jumped to hyperspace. While Atton busied himself with a systems check, Meetra simply folded her hands in her lap and watched the galaxy roil past. "I'm never going back to that planet again," she said after a moment.
"Hey, that's funny. Neither am I."
That made her smile briefly, but silence still reigned.
When Atton was done with the check, he leaned against his chair's armrest. "Wanna—"
"Sure."
The pilot's hand went into his pocket, but Meetra produced her pazaak deck first and dealt onto the console between them. She didn't care much for the game, especially under Republic Senate Rules, but it was too early to go to bed. There was always something to do aboard the Hawk, but after the escape from Goto's yacht, she thought she had earned some idle time. And out of the whole crew, so far Atton was the only one she felt comfortable wasting time with.
"You seem a little different," he said over his side deck. "Things go well with Zizz-Derr Ven—"
"Zez-Kai Ell," Meetra corrected him. "How do I seem different?"
He shrugged. "Hard to say. Calmer, I guess. So what happened with the Jedi?"
"He... wasn't like I expected. You remember the holorecord of my trial? How the Masters were all so..."
"Preachy?"
"More or less. Well, he wasn't. He was reflective. Gentle, even. And very sad."
Atton said nothing to that. They took their time with the game. There was really no winning or losing; that was the point of Republic Senate Rules. Meetra scanned her side deck, worrying the corner of a plus-one card with a finger. Part of her was still thinking back over her long conversation with Master Ell in the flophouse on Nar Shaddaa. It was sort of astonishing, how unpretentious he'd been, from his gloomy ruminations to the way he'd slouched on the edge of his cot.
Right before parting ways on the street outside, Meetra had taken his hand and gripped it tight, as though trying to put some of her own strength into him. Listen, she had told him, I never thought I'd say this to you or to anyone on the Council, but it's good to see you again.
"He agreed to help us," she said, coming back to herself. "He'll join with the other Jedi on Dantooine, if we can find them."
Atton acknowledged that with a grunt. Though Meetra would have appreciated some more enthusiasm from him, she let it slide. She could hardly expect him to be invested in the fate of the Jedi or the Republic when her own concern for them was born out of simple convenience. Meetra had no grand designs—only a hopelessly bad habit of wandering into the middle of things. Changing the course of galactic history hadn't interested her since the end of the war. What did still interest her, as it had turned out, was people. And as far as people went, Atton was...
She studied him as the rounds passed them by. His face kept changing between looks of calculation, confidence, and dismay which seemed to grow progressively more exaggerated and ridiculous. A performance, no doubt, and Meetra admitted to herself that it was funny in a very stupid sort of way. She hadn't yet tired of his affection or his buffoonish ways of expressing it—though she had no idea what to do with them.
At least, she thought it was affection, or something along those lines. Considering how well he got along with the rest of the crew, viewing each of them with either mutual indifference or mutual hostility, she couldn't think of any other reason why he would willingly stay aboard the Ebon Hawk at all.
"Wanted to ask you something," he said after losing three rounds in a row. "Any particular reason you talk with that old witch so much?"
Kreia had a name, but Meetra had given up correcting Atton on that—and vice versa. "Is there a reason why I shouldn't?"
"Well, don't take this the wrong way, but it always seems to get you in a bad mood. Remember that one guy in the Pazaak Den, the bartender? He asked me if you had flitnats crawling up your ion engine. I told him no, she was just talking with Kreia, that's all. When he asked me who's Kreia, I told him ignorance is bliss." He tipped his head back over his shoulder, toward the port dormitory. "What I don't get is why you keep going back for more... And you know, sound really carries on this crate sometimes."
"We're not always arguing," Meetra said. "Besides, there's a lot that I can learn from her."
"Ah, I get it. Mysterious Jedi stuff, right?"
"She knows more about the Jedi and the Sith than anyone I've ever met—certainly more than my own master ever did. And more powers, more techniques. We don't see eye to eye on much, but she's here to help. That's worth having to endure her lectures."
She thought Atton might chuckle at that, but he didn't. "Is it, though? I mean, don't you ever wonder?"
"Wonder what?"
"What she's up to. What stake she really has in all this. So she knows a lot of useful things, fair enough. But people who know things have something to hide. And sometimes it's not worth the trouble."
"Maybe it's not—sometimes." Meetra forgot about the game for a moment and just stared at him until he looked up from his cards. There was something wary and embarrassed in his face. No doubt he knew he had overstepped, but he wasn't aware how much he had.
With Nar Shaddaa finally behind them, one of its less violent incidents now loomed large in Meetra's thoughts: a cryptic warning from a perfect stranger in the Refugee Sector. Do not trust him. He is not a soldier. He is a killer, tried and true.
When Meetra was certain she had Atton's full attention, she said, "Kreia's one of us. She could be anywhere, doing anything she wants, but instead she's traveling with us, risking her life."
"You can see it that way if you want. Just don't say I didn't warn you if there turns out to be more you don't see eye to eye on." With that, Atton seemed ready to drop the subject, but Meetra wasn't done with him yet.
"She's already lost a hand just for me," she said. "I would do the same for her, and I'd do the same for you. And for anyone else on this ship."
After a moment, Atton flicked a card from his side deck onto the pile between them. "I know that, and so do the others," he murmured. "There's no need to brag about it... but thanks."
Chapter 5: Quickening
Chapter Text
Dantooine — Taikaha Hills
The system's primary, Dina, was setting fast, and the shadows of the blba trees lay against the fiery ground like long, black clefts in the earth—as did Meetra's. The breeze and the subtle heat were the same as they had been when she was a girl, and she almost felt like she was home.
A familiar snap-hiss sounded as the lightsaber in her hand ignited. She held it out horizontally, loosely, as she studied its blade. Its glow was orange, but not quite like the sunset here on Dantooine; it was more like Hasaq, where she had fought for a month early in the Mandalorian Wars. A bloody orange, fittingly enough.
It wasn't red, was it? Atton had asked after Peragus, referring to Meetra's first saber. And it had been—red like a laigrek's eye. Of course, it had originally been yellow, the Jedi Sentinel's mark. But when Meetra had heard of how red blades were forbidden or at least frowned on by the Council, she'd felt like changing it then.
Word traveled fast aboard the Ebon Hawk, so once she'd started building a new lightsaber, just about everyone had come by the work bench at least once to look over her shoulder or to offer an opinion. And what would you need with such a thing? Kreia had asked. No one had managed to outdo the old woman in pomposity, but Meetra hadn't particularly appreciated any of the others' visits, either.
She flicked the orange blade this way and that; she pointed it out before her and twirled it like a baton, listening all the while to its sound undulate and waver and ripple, like a chant in an alien language.
Since the beginning of this whole misadventure, Meetra had been forced to make do with a variety of weapons, but none of them had quite been to her liking. Soon after she'd finally discovered a vibroblade she was comfortable with, it had turned out to not have a cortosis weave when Visas cut it in two.
If I'm going to have the Force again, I should have a lightsaber again, Meetra had told Kreia. The old woman, of course, was not satisfied with that, much as she wasn't satisfied with anything. She was a lot like Vrook that way.
The branches of one of the blba trees was hosting a gaggle of zieger birds, which fled into the twilight sky as Meetra drew near. After taking a moment to size up the tree, she raked its trunk with her lightsaber, leaving a long, burning diagonal gash. Upon inspecting the wound, she found that she'd gone deeper than she'd meant to, though not all the way through. Still, she was certain that her feel for a lightsaber would come back quickly enough. And this one, this weapon was truly hers.
A long-ago voice—long-dead, no doubt—roused itself from some deep place in her memory and spoke of her original lightsaber crystal, the yellow one. Of course it's good enough. The Force meant for you to have it. You found it, didn't you?
Without extinguishing her blade, Meetra wandered away from the maimed blba tree. That's my master, she thought gloomily. Always thinking in circles. Ironically, Juroden Tovering had been a Cerean, whose double-brains gave the species a reputation for intellectual sophistication. But he'd had many skills, and mostly had been a practical, sympathetic man. Too much so, according to some.
Her master refuses to properly discipline! Vrook had fumed to Vandar Tokare. Juroden's status as an odd man out among his fellow Masters had not been a secret to anyone. So when Meetra had made up her mind to join Revan on her crusade, she had hoped he would capitalize on the Council's disapproval and do the same.
She had hoped a lot of things back then.
Her meanderings took her down a rocky gully that cut between two hills, gradually hiding her from the sun. She swung idly at her surroundings as she went, slashing through a rock here or a shrub there, until finally she caught sight of a kinrath up ahead, plodding about on its spidery legs. The creature fled at the sound of Meetra's approach, but as she chased it down, it turned about and thrust its long stinger-arm toward her chest. Acting on instinct, Meetra raised her blade as though to parry, going too far on account of its weightlessness but still slicing the animal's limb off. Not caring for the sound of its tortured squeal, she took a careful step forward and bisected its already-maimed head.
She had always hated kinrath.
Danger stirred in the air as several more of the arachnids appeared over the crests of the nearby hills. Even as they scrambled down toward her, Meetra held her lightsaber close and bathed herself in its sunset glow. The kinrath were partially cloaked by the gathering shadows, but she took hold of the Force and had it see for her. Her weapon was exotic and perilous in her grip, just as able to kill her as it was able to save her, but she poured the Force into the channel between herself and the lightsaber's crystal; and though the blade was nothing but energy, intangible as fire, at that moment she began to feel it. It felt like blood beginning to flow back into a limb that had been lifeless and numb for so very long...
The kinrath closed in, and Meetra moved. She was unpracticed and imprecise, but she was also unafraid, free from worry that she might hit someone or something by mistake; she was strong with the Force and growing stronger—and she also hated kinrath. She had nothing fancy in mind, and her saber hummed back and forth in wide, sweeping slashes. They were wider and more sweeping than necessary, but none of them missed a kinrath. When it was over she stood sweating, surrounded by burnt limbs and bodies, and dusk was fading as quickly as twilight had.
After checking herself and finding that she hadn't suffered a scratch, she smiled and began to retrace her steps, crossing the night with her lightsaber before her like a torch. But even as she went, voices from the past chipped away at her sense of satisfaction. Sure enough, they were Jedi voices.
Atris. You have not changed. Acting instead of thinking, putting yourself before others...
Vrook. Always rushing into action without thinking of the consequences. What—you're expecting thanks? There had been a time, in fact, when Meetra had expected thanks, but she thought she knew better now.
Juroden—his last words to her, before she had left. I can't believe you were once that little girl I started to train all those years ago.
Meetra's last words to him. Neither can I.
Chapter 6: Condemned
Chapter Text
Dxun — Outskirts of the Mandalorian Camp
The sentries barely moved as the Jedi and her companions passed between them, heading back out into the jungle in search of trouble. Mira followed close behind the Jedi, shivering occasionally under the rain. It was only a misting, really, but it had never rained on the Smuggler's Moon.
Sharpened by a lifetime of close calls and following people, Mira's eyes picked out an unnatural ripple in the air just ten meters ahead—the giveaway of a second- or third-rate stealth generator. With a hand already on one of her blasters, she opened her mouth to warn the others. She needn't have bothered, though, because Meetra had already come to a stop and cocked her head toward the mirage. A second later it evanesced, revealing the anonymous, blue-armored form of a Mandalorian grunt.
"I knew you'd come this way, Jedi," snarled a voice through the helmet's vocoder. "I've been waiting for you."
Though Mira kept a hand close to her weapon, she let herself relax a little. Whoever this guy was, he couldn't be any less subtle if he had the rakghoul plague, and it was six against one.
The others spread out a little and studied the lone aggressor, plainly incredulous even as they, too, kept their blasters or blades out on display—the Zabrak, Goto's droid, the blind girl. Only the witch made no move toward defending herself; she just watched from a little farther back, by one of the sentries. Of course, Mira knew there was plenty that Kreia could do, whether apparently armed or not. She didn't care much for any of her new partners, but that old woman really gave her the creeps.
And like that old woman, Meetra herself didn't seem alarmed. In fact, she barely seemed interested. "Davrel," she said, apparently pegging the Mandalorian by his voice. "What do you want?"
Davrel drew himself up. "I seek to reclaim the honor that you stole from me in the battle circle. I challenge you again—here, now." A dark-gloved finger stabbed the air. "And this time we will fight to the death."
"Why do you want to fight me again?"
"I was too young to fight in the war against your Republic. With the clans scattered and still rebuilding, I've had no opportunity to prove myself. There have been no battlefields, no armies, only endless drills and training. Only waiting. And now, by defeating me in the battle circle, you stripped me of what little honor I've earned over these years. You shamed me in front of all my brothers—I'm only a whelp to them now. I will not go on living unavenged."
While the Jedi seemed strangely engrossed in all this glory-and-honor ranting, it didn't take Mira long to get tired of it. Weirdly enough, it made her think of Mical. Watches too many holovids. He'd get beaten to death on Nar Shaddaa soon as he landed.
When Davrel paused to breathe, Mira jumped in and said, "Yeah, kiddo, we get it. We're all very sad about your lost honor. Now why don't you blow outta here like space dust and go look for it someplace else?"
The T-visored helmet stayed locked on Meetra. "Does this wench speak for you, Jedi? My quarrel is with you and you alone."
"What did he call me?" Mira scoffed. "Why don't you come over here and call me that again, tough guy?!"
"Quiet," said Meetra, giving her one of those eerie no-arguments-I'm-a-Jedi looks. Then she went forward a few paces, the hem of her cloak brushing the wet grass. "All right, Davrel. Have it your way. You'll get your fight."
While the rest of the party traded a few hushed comments, Mira just stared for a minute as the Jedi rolled one arm, then the other, then cracked her neck. She'd expected Meetra to just tell this guy to go scratch gravel. What was she thinking? What's one more Mandalorian, maybe?
Mira stepped to the Jedi's shoulder as a vibroblade sang its way out of a sheath just meters away. "You seriously gonna do this?"
"I can handle him just fine," Meetra answered, deadpan.
Behind them, there was a chuckle from Bao-Dur, but it sounded a little forced.
Mira rolled her eyes. "Yeah, I'm sure you can, Jedi. But we haven't got all day to watch you slaughter this idiot like a nerf."
"It'll only take a minute."
Mira shook her head and glanced at Davrel, who hefted his vibroblade impatiently but said nothing. The Jedi took the lightsaber from her belt and made a show of inspecting its power cell. When she was done, Mira still hadn't moved, and the Jedi gave her a puzzled look. "Why are you upset? You don't even know him."
"I'm not upset—this is just stupid," Mira snapped as convincingly as she could. "When you've got a fanatic with something to prove, you don't give him what he wants."
"Why not? You heard what he said. I took everything from him. He's nothing but a runt to his people now. Useless." As usual, Meetra's tone was simple, matter-of-fact. "Who am I to condemn him to live?"
That last question got Mira's skin crawling, but she'd be damned if she was going to let it show. "Oh, fine. Do whatever you want, Jedi. It's on you."
Meetra only nodded at that. Feeling an urge to spit, Mira went back to join the rest of the party. She didn't want to watch, but she knew she had to.
Davrel brought his vibroblade to guard as Meetra turned her full attention to him. "Now you face a true Mandalorian on the field of battle!"
Slowly, with ceremonial precision, the Jedi held her weapon up beside her, but didn't ignite it. Mira glowered and thought, Come on, come on, come on, just get it over with. This isn't a holodrama...
Finally the sunset beam of the lightsaber flared to life, and the Jedi got it over with.
Chapter 7: The Errand
Chapter Text
Onderon — Iziz City Merchant Quarter
Although the afternoon was on the wane, the streets of the capital bustled with restless abandon, and the channels of commerce, gossip, and agitation continued to flow in spite of the watchful and perpetually narrowed eyes of General Vaklu's soldiers—not to mention the punishing heat of the Japrael system's primary. But on the edge of the commercial district, behind a couple of vendors' booths, a small slice of merciful shade fell on a niche in the wall of one of Iziz's towers. The bounty hunter had spotted it first, and Meetra, Visas, and Mandalore had joined her there.
"Don't tell me you're having second thoughts, Jedi," the latter was saying. "Going back on your word's not good for business."
"I only want to get to Master Kavar. I didn't come here to get involved in..."
She trailed off as Mandalore tipped his helmeted head back in a gesture of impatience. "What are you in such a big hurry for? We've been over this already."
Meetra's eyes wandered past him, past the merchants' booths and out into the thronging crowd, where she half-expected to catch sight of Anda shadowing her. Vaklu's go-between had put up an immaculate exterior—prim, courteous, and attractive—yet something about that woman was utterly repulsive. It was the way she talked, Meetra decided; too relaxed, too familiar, with a voice as smooth as jhen honey. It was too easy to imagine Anda as a character in some lascivious holothriller, using the exact same tone while seducing someone—or while describing how a flesh-peeler worked to a helpless victim before putting it to use on them.
As she regained her focus, Meetra had to admit that yes, they had gone over this already. Mandalore's preference for Vaklu had been unsurprising, but his other point was a good one: if doing the general a few favors could convince him to not try to blast the Ebon Hawk out of the sky the next time it was spotted, that alone would probably be worth the trouble. Kreia would think it a shrewd course to take, for whatever her opinion was worth.
All the same, getting entangled in the volatile political situation here, and especially in this way... "I suppose you're right," Meetra said with a little sigh. "But we still need to clear Dhagon Ghent's name. That's our first priority."
"Yeah, but credits are our other first priority," Mira put in. "And we can do both at once. If we're going after those captains, then as long as we're not killing them, I'm game."
At that moment, Visas cleared her throat. "That will complicate the mission. Removing them by persuasion or trickery will take more time. If we are to move swiftly, it would be simpler to kill them."
Everyone looked at Meetra, who wanted to be somewhere else. Strategically, she agreed with the Miraluka's assessment. Whether or not they split up, there wasn't time to drag out this mission for Vaklu when she had a murder case to solve—and when the Sith could still turn up in Iziz. What Meetra needed was a solution, now, and yet...
Mira interrupted her thoughts. "Well, if it's gonna be like that, then count me out. I'm no amateur. You can take this one solo, for all I care."
Without hesitating a beat, Visas turned her veiled face toward Meetra. "I can, Exile. If you wish it, complete your investigation, and I will neutralize the captains."
Meetra exhaled and felt a sudden relief, though part of her did not welcome it. "You... You can? By yourself?"
"I can; this matter will trouble you no more," Visas said, and her tone brooked no skepticism. She was not speaking merely from her almost pathological eagerness to please; there was also a sober confidence in her own abilities.
"She's got spunk," remarked Mandalore under his breath.
Mira was silent, regarding her partners with her usual standoffish grimace.
Immense though it was, Meetra's gratitude was reined in by the reality of what she was about to ask Visas to do. She wasn't squeamish at all about killing, but none of these captains had done anything to her. All the same, she might be glad for making an ally of General Vaklu, and she'd already given Anda her word.
There was a third option, though.
"All right," she said, drawing herself up. "But you're not going to kill them. We don't have to, you heard Anda say that. Just hurt them enough to put them out of commission. Is that clear?"
She expected a protest, but Visas bowed from the neck. "I will do as you wish. But I have a suggestion, Exile—"
"Stop calling me that," Meetra snapped.
"Forgive me, Meetra," the Miraluka said, bowing again. "If you think it wise, I would use your weapon for this mission. If the captains are... injured... with a lightsaber, people may believe a Sith is responsible. It could draw attention away from yourself."
"Why not. Simplifies things. Just take off a limb or two." Meetra was loath to part with her lightsaber, but it was the only one on hand, and the logic was sound. Besides, there wasn't another person she would trust with it. She produced the hilt and handed it to Visas, who deftly hid it in her robe before she could blink.
"Is that your wish?"
Meetra tipped her head and asked, "What do you mean?"
"Amputations may not be the best approach. If the Onderonians have advanced medical tech, particularly cybernetics—"
She held up a hand. "Stop. Just go do it. No killing—but use your own judgement."
"I will not fail you, Meetra," Visas said, and slipped out of the alley and into the crowd without another word.
Chapter 8: The Trek
Chapter Text
Korriban — Valley of the Dark Lords
Strangely erratic winds whipped across the landscape, cutting between the broken pillars and off-kilter obelisks that jutted up from the sand like half-buried gravestones. Meetra led her companions down a long, jagged path through the megalithic debris, past the occasional crater or abandoned dig site, and toward the Sith Academy. If seen from above, she thought their little expedition would look like a group of pinch beetles traversing a child's sandbox.
In fact, she felt like someone was watching them from above—or below. Before setting out, Visas had made a remark which, innocent though it was, hadn't helped matters. This place merely tolerates sentients walking upon it. It is pleased to have been left alone.
The Miraluka followed her close along with Mical, their weapons in hand, while Mandalore and Bao-Dur—an odd pair if there ever was one—brought up the rear, along with the Remote.
Kreia had warned that Korriban was a place which attacked the spirit and the body. Making her way deeper into the ruins, Meetra hoped against her better judgement that it would hurry up and get started soon. She needed a distraction. Badly. With the Ebon Hawk as exposed as it was, some of the crew needed to stay behind and guard it—and she had made sure that Atton was one of them. Their last conversation had pulled open a wound which was still raw, and she needed some distance.
How did you even live with yourself after Malachor? Is that why you went back to the Jedi Council? Hoping they'd kill you? Atton had said more than a few outrageous or insensitive things since they had first met on Peragus; Nice outfit had been only the beginning.
But none of it had ever made Meetra angry, really angry, until that conversation. It wasn't like that. You weren't there, and you weren't at Malachor. You have no idea what happened.
Oh, I wasn't, huh? Wanna bet on it? He had read the look on her face and grinned mirthlessly. Yeah, shows how much you know.
I'll tell you something, he'd said a few moments later. Those Jedi at Malachor? They deserved it. Every single last one of them.
That…
No matter how many times Meetra told herself that Atton hadn't really meant it, remembering those words was like a punch to the gut. Somehow in that critical moment she hadn't been able to voice her response, and it continued to fester in her thoughts: I didn't deserve it.
It had been strangely easy to listen to the rest of Atton's story. In the end, she couldn't think less of him for the person he used to be. After all, she had a past that she preferred not to think about; if anything, knowing that Atton had one of his own would make things easier.
It wouldn't make everything easier, though.
I want to learn how to use the Force. I want to learn how to use the Force to help you. That last confession of Atton's hadn't hurt Meetra, but it had stunned her, and perhaps it was the real reason why she needed distance. Training anyone had been one of the furthest things from her mind.
It was still morning on Korriban, but the valley was already turning mercilessly hot. About halfway across it, the group stopped to rest in the shadow of one of the larger obelisks. Though it was as thick around as a Republic tank droid, something had been strong enough to snap it near its base, creating an unfinished stone ramp that aimed into the sky.
Mandalore sighed mightily as he sat down on a rock. Seeing Visas wander nearby, he said, "You, Sith. You ever been to this planet before?"
She shook her head. "Have you?"
"Once, during the last war. So far, I'm not glad to see it again... At least last time, there were some heads to crack."
Meetra still felt eyes on her. Closing her own for a moment, she stretched out with the Force and probed the ruins. It wasn't difficult—she didn't understand how Kreia could have trouble centering herself here—but there was no one she could sense.
Upon leaving off, she noticed Bao-Dur beside her, holding up one of the canteens from his pack. "Better watch it out here, General."
She took it, drank, and handed it back. "Thanks."
The Zabrak only nodded and went to offer one to Mical. Since they had run into each other on Telos, that was about as many words as Meetra ever traded with him in a day. She felt bad about it sometimes, but the reality was that they had nothing in common except the war, which neither of them liked to talk about, and the Ebon Hawk, which didn't need to be talked about.
On a whim, Meetra climbed onto the fallen obelisk-turned-ramp and started to follow it up. Seeing that Mical was watching, she told him, "Just having a look around," and donned her hood to shield against the sun.
Eight meters up, Meetra squatted just before the ramp's jagged end. She spent a few minutes surveying the valley, then looked down into the shade where her friends stood conversing while they watched the sands—the mechanic and the disciple, the warrior and the assassin.
Meetra found her gaze lingering on Visas, the only Sith she had spared—and she was glad for that, though in the moment she hadn't been sure why she'd done it. Visas: never complaining, never backing down from a challenge, talented, calm, and above all loyal. Part of the reason Meetra wasn't sure about opening Atton to the Force was that she wasn't comfortable thinking of herself as a master or a teacher of anything. Yet she already had Visas treating her as exactly that—My life for yours—and such devotion from one person felt strange enough.
Strangely good, but still strange.
If you take her on as a servant, know that the Sith meet their end at the hands of their apprentices.
A glare creased Meetra's face as memories of Kreia's nagging "lessons" intruded on her thoughts.
Aiding them gives you strength by taking on their challenges, but it weakens them. If that is your choice, then use their dependency, feed upon it, until you have exhausted them. Then leave them.
Perturbed, she turned her eyes back to the landscape before her and to the distant academy. In all her years of wandering the galaxy, Meetra had never expected to meet—let alone travel with—someone who was even more jaded than herself. All of Kreia's talk about using others, treating them like pawns on a dejarik board—that was exactly how the Jedi Council viewed people, yet she also criticized them every chance she got. The only difference between her and someone like Atris was a few degrees of candor.
And Meetra wasn't like them; she refused to be. After leaving the Order, she hadn't expected or wanted to go back to having friends, let alone whatever Atton was to her. Now that she had them, though... For all the friction among them and the uncertainty ahead, she was glad to have them. All of them. She wasn't willing to give them up.
And if she eventually had to give them up anyway, it definitely wasn't going to have anything to do with some deranged, esoteric nonsense about self-reliance. If Meetra was destined to become like Kreia, as the old woman had possessed the gall to insinuate more than once, then she hoped she wouldn't live long enough.
Straightening up, Meetra stepped off the side of the ramp. The Force cradled her and set her gently down on the sand below. Rounding the dead monument, she rejoined her friends and found them more than ready to be on the move again.
Chapter 9: Devotion
Chapter Text
Korriban — The Tomb of Ludo Kressh
There was an explosion of movement as they all closed in at once, and Meetra was twisting, hurtling, falling down through a vortex of slaughter, striking and being struck. She killed all of them, starting with Atton—she saw his head go tumbling to the floor, but a only millisecond later her world was a blur of laser fire, arcs of plasma, and other parts of other bodies. She lost herself in the terror and wrath of the moment, her blood-orange blade whirling and parrying and slicing until she could swear it had turned back to scarlet, the same color as the one she'd wielded on Dxun. She smelled ozone, choked on the reek of flesh, and felt cold blood seeping into her robes.
The battle's end startled her almost as much as its beginning had. She found herself with her back wedged into a corner of the room, heaving with exhaustion, lightsaber burning before her in her trembling hands. Her wounds were gone, and only sweat soaked her now. Moments passed as she raked the empty stone floor with her eyes, until finally she convinced herself that the bodies were not there and had never been there. Everyone was still waiting for her outside, either at the mouth of the tomb or aboard the Ebon Hawk. This had all been just a vision, a test. A trick.
She extinguished her blade, peeled herself away from the wall, and shambled down the next hallway. The Force was strong on Korriban, well within reach, and she wrapped it tight around herself; it soothed weary muscles and bones, whetted senses that had been dulled, and yet the deepest part of her felt poisoned by what she had experienced. Using all the mental discipline she could muster, she tried to put the incident out of her mind. Once she was safely off Korriban, once she had some time to rest, her balance would return, and then she would be able to make sense of these visions—if there was any sense to make out of them.
The door at the end of the hall admitted her to a chamber with no other exits, undeniably the crypt. True to the rest of the tomb, there was a brutal sense to its architecture, with a perilously high ceiling and walls marked by blocky, imposing protrusions covered in hieroglyphs. Dominating its center was a stone structure that had to be a sarcophagus.
Dominating Meetra's attention was one of the two figures directly in front of it. Had she cared to scrutinize the first, she would have been frustrated; facing away and bowing almost to the ground in obeisance, his or her features were further obscured by robes of midnight. The second figure, the one being bowed to, was Revan, cloaked and masked—as always. Meetra's shock was dampened by her still-frayed state of mind; she had no questions, no whys or hows, only a ghastly awe at seeing this woman again.
Revan's head was tilted down toward the figure bowing at her feet. At the flick of an armored wrist, the figure stood and turned around.
It was a woman—definitely a Human. On the athletic side, though not strikingly so. Its eyes were haunted and intense, as they should have been, but they were the wrong color; something they'd seen had burned them and left them yellow. Its skin was bloodlessly pale, and it matched Meetra's gaze with a knowing, satisfied smile that Meetra herself had not worn in many long years. That, more than anything, was the proof that it was not her.
Leisurely, Meetra's counterpart stepped forward, and Meetra found herself doing the same. Lightsabers appeared in their hands and ignited. Sunset and scarlet blurred to meet each other.
The thing that looked like Meetra knew her style—Niman, the Moderation Form—and met her blow for blow even as Meetra pressed harder and harder. She sank deeper into the Force as the duel went on, letting her body move itself while her mind's eye cast itself into the soul that directed the red blade, reading her opponent. Whatever it was actually made of, this Sith phantasm had something like a body, which martial skill could overcome; it had something like will and intention, which Force precognition could discern and predict.
But even as Meetra took in these things, her battle sight went deeper still, penetrating the externals of combat and linking her to her opponent itself, to the creature's essence, its what-ness. She fed off of that essence, and it gave new might to her limbs and swiftness to her blade. Surprisingly, it also gave her something like memories, impressions of an alternate life. The life of a Lord of the Sith, standing at Revan's side and sharing in her glory. A conqueror.
Not me, she thought. Not Meetra, but what Meetra could have been. What she should have been.
If she had been strong enough to not let the Force be taken from her. If the Jedi hadn't turned their backs on her. If Revan had seen her as anything more than a pawn, had actually cared about everything that Meetra had sacrificed to follow her...
The lightsabers crossed again. The red blade wavered, and Meetra sent a blow through the Force that struck her opponent hard enough to crack ribs; the thing that looked like Meetra reeled, but didn't make a sound. She took the specter in a Force grip, suspending it in midair, and let her anger have its way. There was one wet crack, then another as Not-Meetra's forearms bent backward. Its mouth opened in a silent, voiceless scream.
Taking a step closer, Meetra turned her clenched fist; there was a grinding pop as the creature's head wrenched around, and she found herself staring at her own ponytail. Blood misted her face.
Before Meetra could even release the corpse from her hold, it vanished, leaving her alone with Revan. Blinking, she looked into the visor of the Dark Lord's helmet and, nine years late, the venom of betrayal that had numbly entered her on the bridge of the Obsidian made itself felt at last. Even the insane grief of thinking her companions had turned on her moments ago was nothing by comparison. Kreia, Bao-Dur, Visas, the droids, and all the rest, including Atton—none of them were so worthy of devotion as Revan had once been; for all her unbending loyalty to her friends, the Exile would never look on them with such a servile and undemanding and completely self-annihilating love.
Only a few beings alive in the galaxy had any memory of the face that Revan had hidden away from it. Meetra was one of those few, however, and she wanted to rip away the mask and make those gray eyes see life the way she saw it. Something inside Meetra told her to hold back, to hesitate, to search for her balance and remember where she really was, but blood was still in her eyes, and she couldn't see clearly. But the Force saw for her, and she charged.
So did Revan, with two lightsabers—one red, the other amethyst. Even as a young Jedi, her prowess as a duelist had been close to legendary. Meetra might have thought twice about engaging her, had she not already lost her mind, and she found herself off-balance as soon as they closed. Revan was constantly in motion, hardly pausing for a millisecond. She attacked in maddening flurries of slashes that seemed to turn her two blades into four or six; she flipped over Meetra's head, stabbing down at her from above. Often, she didn't even bother to parry the sunset blade, strafing away from its arcs with bursts of uncanny speed.
Meetra threw herself into the fight, drawing more and more deeply on the Force to boost her agility as she weathered the assault. Energy coalesced around her, and she thrust her will through it to seize her opponent or else blast her off her feet—or out of the air—but Revan shrugged off every telekinetic blow and broke every hold seemingly without effort. Even as Meetra's power doubled itself and the clashes of blades filled her clouded eyes, the Dark Lord was untouchable, possessed of power that seemed forever out of her reach. Endless frustration spawned endless rage, until finally Meetra wanted to take the universe in her hand and crush it like Malachor V...
After parrying a stab away from her throat, Meetra replied with a slash at Revan's, meaning to part the armored head from her shoulders. But the Dark Lord retreated a step, letting the blade pass her by. Then she leaned forward, sending a thrust inside Meetra's guard and, with a fencer's elegance, flicked the end of the violet saber down through her right shoulder. Before that arm was halfway to the ground, Revan made a flourish and severed the left one.
Meetra heard rather than felt the crack of her knees as they slammed to the floor. Her cauterized wounds smoldered with a fading yellow glow. She dragged a crazed breath into herself and threw her head back to scream into Revan's masked face—but even as the air scorched her throat on its way out, there wasn't a sound. Before she could fall, a telekinetic grip encased her and kept her upright as a beam of crimson energy buried itself in her lung. Even as she marveled at that new pain, another one like it blossomed in her lower abdomen and began to rise.
The two lightsabers met, crossed, and together traced sizzling lines toward Meetra's neck. By then, however, their exquisite heat had already begun to feel distant, and the only real pain was that of the Force as it bled its way out of her. In the last instant before Revan uncrossed the blades at her throat and set her free from life, Meetra wanted to thank her.
Gradually her eyes focused. Before her stood the banal, innocent-looking sarcophagus of some long-dead Sith Lord. Her knees were raw. She felt like she hadn't slept in a week, or a year.
She stood up. Her right hand ached excruciatingly; she relaxed its death grip on the inactive hilt of her lightsaber, but only a little. Looking about the crypt, she thought briefly of reaching out to Kreia through their bond, but decided against it. The old woman had been silent since the beginning of the tomb; if she had anything useful to say about this place, or what it contained, she would have shared it already.
And Meetra was certain she'd had enough of it.
But until she got out, she would be wary of any more dangers. Wrapping the Force about herself again, she turned toward the exit, only to hesitate as her eyes alighted on the sarcophagus once again. Dust swirled into the air as an inexplicable breeze upset the chamber, and she remembered Kreia's observation that this tomb, hitherto, was unplundered. It may well have housed any number of precious artifacts—weapons, holocrons, trinkets. What more obvious place to keep at least a few of them?
Outrage and disgust welled up inside Meetra until she could no longer contain it. Snarling, she lashed out with the Force and brought a telekinetic surge down on the lid of the sarcophagus. With a roar like the impact of a mass-driver cannon, the whole receptacle imploded, scattering chunks of stone across the floor.
The dust had not begun to settle when a series of new reverberations shook the room. Slabs of masonry dropped from the ceiling, shattering against the sarcophagus' remains, and an echoing, multilayered howl of uncertain origin—at any rate, it was definitely not a shyrack—penetrated the miserable air. Meetra ignited her lightsaber and raised a hand, ready to deflect any other projectiles coming from above or elsewhere. But as the seconds ticked by, silence returned, and it seemed she had seen the worst that a Sith Lord could do from beyond the grave.
She took no comfort in that—and, offhand, she felt she hadn't had quite enough desecration for one day. Whirling, she blew the crypt's door out of its archway and stalked back the way she had come, back toward the world.
Chapter 10: Fracture
Chapter Text
Ebon Hawk – Hyperspace, En Route to Japrael System
There was nothing wrong with the security system, the hyperwave suite, or anything else, but Meetra spent several hours drifting about the communications room, going from station to station, setting the Hawk's computers to perform cyclical, redundant diagnostics. The door was closed.
Knowing she had no hope of forgetting everything that had happened on Korriban, Meetra had tried meditation—by herself and with Kreia—as a means of parsing the events and making some sense out of them, but this had backfired. Using the Force to amplify her mental perception seemed to make the memories only more chaotic, more acute, and had left her drained. Contemplating them in a normal state of mind turned out to be more manageable, particularly when she was engaged in some menial task at the same time. That made it doable, though still unpleasant.
The most disturbing memory was also the hardest to shake: that of the crew turning on her and fighting until she'd killed them all. The worst part of it was how the apparitions had fooled her completely until the very end. She didn't see why they should have. She told herself that it probably had to do with the strange energies subsisting in the tomb; they could have altered her state of consciousness, dulling her perceptions in the same way dreams did.
But it hadn't felt like a dream. At least, she didn't think it had.
Despite her best efforts, strange doubts gnawed at her. Why in the galaxy would she believe, while in her right mind, that Atton and Bao-Dur and Mical and Kreia and all the rest were trying to kill her?
She couldn't answer that question—because there was no answer to it—but it wouldn't leave her alone. And all of the long hours she had spent in Kreia's company, listening to and arguing with the old woman... Those didn't help.
Not with them, or you. I don't use my friends like tools.
Such trust promises you nothing except a dagger in the back. Your allies are allies by circumstance, and if circumstances change, they will not hesitate—
There was a twinge in the Force—someone outside the door—followed by a firm knock. An interruption from anyone would have been a relief, but Meetra knew even without the Force that it was Mical; no one else on the ship would have bothered knocking. "Come in," she called.
As always, there was a certain light in Mical's face as he said hello, but it seemed to have grown more pronounced since he had told Meetra of their past history together—such as it was.
"There's something I need to discuss with you, if you have the time," he said, closing the door behind him.
"Sure." Meetra tipped her head toward the two chairs at the middle station, and they sat down facing each other.
Mical laced his fingers together before him. "We'll be arriving at Onderon tomorrow," he said. "From the HoloNet dispatches, it seems the civil war has begun in earnest. If it's still going on when we reach there... we will be on General Vaklu's side, won't we?"
Meetra bit her lip. She'd had a feeling this topic would come up again. "I need his help to get to Kavar."
"Yet Master Kavar stands with Queen Talia."
"I know that," Meetra said quickly. "I'll just have to... reason with him."
"As difficult as that is to imagine, I believe you'll succeed. But your support for Vaklu troubles me greatly."
That was a diplomatic understatement if Meetra had ever heard one, but it was just the way Mical talked. Privately, she had always found his genteel courtesy amusing. Still, she also welcomed it from time to time. It was a breath of fresh air, compared to the moody aloofness of so many others in the crew.
"I've already promised to help him," she said. "I'm not going back on my word now."
"I understand, Meetra, and I would not ask you to do so."
"What's really on your mind, then?"
Mical hardly seemed ruffled by her bluntness. "I happened to speak with Mira, not so long ago, about your time in Iziz before. She told me about what exactly you did to earn Vaklu's favor in the first place. And the way she described it, it seemed that you did it solely to protect yourself and us. Is that the case?"
"Yes, that was the only reason."
"I wanted to be certain, though I suspected as much already. And that is what troubles me."
Meetra's hands slowly fastened themselves around the ends of her seat's armrests. "What do you mean?"
"Consider yourself, and what you have done. You are a powerful user of the Force, and you've involved yourself in the situation on Onderon. Your actions will likely determine the outcome of this conflict, which will have far-reaching consequences. Consequences for that planet and others—Telos being just one of them—and for the Republic itself. Ultimately, quadrillions of lives will be affected. All because you chose to aid Vaklu, and yet you do not believe in Vaklu's cause. Such indifference to the consequences of your actions is dangerous. Destructive. The Jedi Masters would say it is the mark of one touched by the dark side."
"I'm sure they would," Meetra answered, holding back a snort. "But I'm not a Jedi, and I've already done more than my part for peace and justice and All Stars Burn as One. I don't owe the Republic anything, and I'm not responsible for quadrillions of people. Nobody can be responsible for that many."
Not that that stopped anyone from trying to be—or from telling Meetra that she was. As explosive and dramatic as Peragus had been, it had turned out to just be the beginning of a trend.
Ah, so it was an accident, Atris had said. Something beyond your control... You have not changed. Acting instead of thinking. Putting yourself before others, before the Jedi.
Of course it was your fault, Goto had said. If you had simply surrendered to the Sith, then all that violence would have been unnecessary.
Idiots. Like they'd have done anything different, had they been in her place. Like they'd have been noble enough to let themselves die for some greater good. Twelve years had passed since Meetra joined the war, but it was the exact same story; no matter where she went or what she did, there would always be someone in authority watching and waiting to hold her responsible for their own problems, or to blame her for making mistakes while they themselves did nothing.
Despite Mical's plain appearance, he had self-control to go with his strong opinions, and he was not provoked by Meetra's tirade. "You are wrong," he said simply. "If your actions affect so many people, then that means you are responsible, whether you wish to be or not. The Republic has its flaws, but it is still better than galactic anarchy."
"I'm not in this for the Republic, and I never was." Meetra gestured at the walls of the ship. "I'm in this for us—our fight."
Mical hesitated, and his tone softened. "Us alone?"
"What else is there?" asked Meetra, feeling more and more like a kag bug being held under a microscope.
"Sometimes I do not recognize you, Meetra," Mical said, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. "This is not the Jedi I once knew, who followed Revan to war."
"Now you're reaching. You hardly knew me at all back then."
"That is true. But simply by leaving as you did, you showed your truest self in a way. You showed a strength of character—a nobility, even. I've seen the same qualities while traveling with you, when you place yourself in danger for our sake or for the sake of innocents. Other times, though, you seem to forget it, when you show disregard for those outside our circle, as though we can simply use them for our own ends."
"Everyone uses each other." Though she kept it off her face, inwardly Meetra recoiled at her own words; they just seemed to fall out of her mouth.
Mical did not respond immediately. "Though I'm loath to admit it, I sometimes think the same thing. Selfishness comes easily to our nature, and life can be cruel. But that is all the more reason, I think, to cultivate our better parts. To hold on to our principles. Once we abandon them, everything begins to crumble."
Meetra just looked at him for a long time, no less perplexed than he was, until she thought of something that might help him understand. She lowered her eyes. "Mical, at the Enclave, before you left... Do you remember a Cerean named Juroden Tovering?"
"I believe I do, yes," he said after a moment. "Master Tovering... A Jedi Sentinel, I think."
"He was my master."
"Yes... Yes, he was."
"The last time I saw him was the day before I left for the war. I tried to convince him to go with me. He'd always stayed out of arguments about Revan and the Council. I thought he was sympathetic, just afraid to speak up or act on his own, but... he refused, of course. Gave the same tired excuses as everyone else. He told me that if I went, I was going to regret it." Meetra swallowed. "Do you want to know what I said to him?"
Mical nodded, spellbound.
"I called him a coward and said that he wasn't any Jedi at all, let alone a Master, and that he wasn't my master. I told him that when the war was over, Revan and Malak and I, all the Jedi who went on the Crusade—I said we'd be heroes. And everyone would know that he and those like him had tried to stop us. I said even the Council would admit they had been wrong."
She paused, still not looking at him, and her sad, ironic smile gave him leave for a slight chuckle. "That sounds... overly optimistic," he remarked.
"Oh, yes... You know the rest of the story." Meetra looked up, and her next words were as cold as carbonite. "Juroden was wrong. I don't regret going to the war, and I stand by my decisions—all of them. Considering how everything turned out, I'm not sure what good it did in the grand scheme of things. But that's exactly my point. You keep talking about the grand scheme of things, just like the Jedi always did. I used to think the same way, but I don't sell myself to ideas anymore. Ideas... break easily. But if I can find someone—some people who I can rely on... that's what matters to me."
"I can understand why a person might come to think as you do," Mical admitted. "When one puts too much trust in static things like teachings and ideals, or institutions, it is easy to lose sight of individuals. However, I think there's something to be said for balance—"
"I don't want to talk about this anymore."
There was a heavy pause and, true to form, Mical didn't show his disappointment. He stood up. "As you wish. I'll leave you to your work, then. I never meant to trouble you, Meetra—"
"You're not troubling me," she said, shaking her head.
"Then I'm glad. I respect your thoughts, and though I may disagree, I appreciate your sharing them. And no matter what happens, please know that you can rely on me. As long as I'm needed, I will be here to help."
"I know. Thank you."
He shut the door after himself, leaving Meetra alone with the machines. Instead of returning to her work, though, she sat very still, thought about the last thing Mical had said, and held onto it for as long as she could.
Chapter 11: Chance
Chapter Text
Onderon — Iziz Royal Palace
Meetra and Kreia went in first, their blades weaving a lattice of light that shielded them from an onslaught of blaster fire. Many of the bolts went wild, scattering bits of debris as they tore into the walls and ceiling. A few hit shielded power conduits and ricocheted about the confined security room, adding to the confusion. But only a handful needed to be on target, and one by one the Royalist soldiers were struck down by their own shots. At last the frustrated survivors drew vibroblades and closed in on the intruders.
Plasma met cortosis-woven steel. Meetra slashed through a soldier and sent him careening across the room with a flick of her will, then did the same with a second, a third. Fighting had become like breathing. It could have been hours or days since she'd emerged from the Basilisk war droid in the streets of Iziz; she was in the haze of war, where such distinctions and complications were always dissolved.
The pandemonium ended abruptly, as it so often did, and Meetra extinguished her lightsaber. Using the Force to screen her lungs from the smoke, she swept the bodies with a dispassionate gaze. They may as well have been dead already, before she'd even set foot in the palace. With or without her, war would have come back to Onderon. Still, something was troubling her—
The Force tingled in warning, and Meetra brought her sword arm up to defend herself as, behind her, a gruff voice yelled, "Look out!" Just a meter from her feet, sprawled among the bodies, a Royalist officer groaned and struggled to lift a blaster pistol toward her—until a shot from near the doorway put a hole in his head to match the one already in his gut.
"You're getting sloppy, Jedi," Mandalore teased as he marched past her. "Now what'll you do if I'm not there next time?"
Meetra muttered a word of thanks. As she stared down at the finally-dead officer, she realized what had been nagging her from the back of her mind since before her return to Dxun, and which had finally distracted her here.
When she was done in this room, she would rejoin General Vaklu and fight to the throne room, where she would face Master Kavar.
Kavar, who many years ago had taught her more than a few things about lightsaber combat that her own master had failed to impart.
Kavar, who so very recently had sat with her in one of Iziz's cantinas, given her that reserved smile of his, and just listened to her. Or seemed to listen. And now they were on opposing sides in a war.
The thought that Meetra's old teacher might beat her, might even kill her, had already crossed her mind more than once. Though she had fought plenty of Sith, a Jedi Weapon Master was something new and unanticipated. But what really bothered her, she now understood, was simply the fact that she had no idea what to say to him. This had all happened so fast...
"Well, well. What do we have here?" said Mandalore, pulling Meetra out of her thoughts. Following his voice, she rounded the massive computer which dominated the center of the room. On the other side she found him brandishing his weapon at a yellowish green-skinned Twi'lek, who stood plastered against the opposite wall, his hands up.
"You're the slicer," Meetra observed. "Kiph."
Already wound about his neck, the alien's brain-tails tightened further as his agitation mounted. "Ah... And you are the Jedi, Meetra Surik," he stammered in Huttese. "You remember me."
"Yes," she said, and let him sweat for a few seconds.
"Had a lot of fun setting those traps, I bet," Mandalore growled.
"Yet you survived them. I have failed." Kiph swallowed and inched away from the wall. "Meetra Surik, I surrender myself to you as a prisoner of war."
She bit her lip. "I'm not sure Vaklu's taking any prisoners."
"I know we're not."
The glee in Mandalore's voice was not lost on Meetra. Gesturing for him to lower his blaster, she backed off a step and said, "We're not, but you helped us free Dhagon Ghent. Which is why I'm giving you a chance to get out of here while you can."
"You are?" Lowering his hands, the Twi'lek shuddered in relief. Then he cast a dreadful look out into the hall, which still echoed with occasional bursts of laser fire. "But Vaklu's soldiers! They'll kill me if I go out there!"
"Only if they catch you," Meetra corrected, pinning him with her stare. "But I'll kill you if you stay here, so make up your mind. Now."
"Great Jedi! I beg you—"
Kiph's plea unraveled into a scream as Meetra's lightsaber ignited with an electric snap-hiss, and he tore from the room. Kreia was bent over by the doorway, gingerly brushing something from the hem of her cloak. Though the Twi'lek passed within a meter of her, the old woman didn't look up.
"He's got legs like an iriaz, I'll give him that," remarked Mandalore, blaster dangling from his grip. "The weakling. You should've let me blast him."
Meetra's weapon was already back on her belt, and she went to go to work on the security console. "Vaklu's men can blast him. I have bigger problems to deal with."
Chapter 12: And When They Save You
Chapter Text
Onderon — Iziz Royal Palace
Peace had finally come to Iziz, and the fires spawning dense plumes of smoke that soared above its towers and walls had only just been quenched by a sudden storm. The city was exhausted and weary, but it was at peace—most of all deep inside the soon-to-be-king Vaklu's palace, where bombproof ferroceramic vaults and audiologic shielding dampened the claps of thunder to miniscule vibrations.
With the palace's actual detention block ravaged by the fighting, Colonel Tobin had improvised, converting one of the armory's munitions storage rooms into a cell and posting eighteen men outside. Careful not to show her fatigue, Meetra stood a meter from the blast door while a guard disengaged the magnetic seal. She had spent a whole day fighting—first with her lightsaber, then with words, as now she was about to again. Though it would be her second try, she didn't feel prepared.
The door rumbled open. Kneeling in the bare chamber beyond, Master Kavar opened his eyes. For a moment he and Meetra merely studied each other, their faces masked with wary dispassion.
Meetra had lost hope that he would surrender when their blades first crossed in the throne room. Yet at the last moment he had broken away from their lethal dance and taken in the suddenly changed scene around them: the clamor of blaster fire suddenly silent, Vaklu standing before the throne bearing a vibroblade dark with blood, masked soldiers gathering on every side, and one of Kavar's own lightsabers in two smoking pieces on the floor nearby. And then Meetra, pleading with him for the last time, had at last won him over.
For a time.
Meetra kept her voice frank and dispassionate. "Vaklu's given you permission to leave Onderon immediately. I'll take you to your shuttle."
"Nothing remains for me on this world," Kavar replied, equally diplomatic. He rose. "Lead the way."
The soldiers formed a box around the two as they walked slowly out into the main hall. Despite the fact that the Jedi Master was unarmed and they had seen what Meetra was capable of, their apprehension was easy to sense.
Meetra couldn't have cared less. "Give us some room," she ordered them. "All of you."
There were a few grumbles, but the guards separated into two clusters, a stone's throw ahead and behind. After letting a moment pass, Meetra said, "Vaklu was going to execute you, Kavar. I saved your life."
The Jedi Master didn't respond or even look at her, and the hallway stretched far ahead of them. All the bodies had been taken away, but the stink of burnt metal remained, and the spiraled scars of laser fire would stay even longer.
"What will it take to convince you that I'm not your enemy?"
Kavar broke his silence. "You can't undo any of your actions this day, Meetra, and I can't turn a blind eye to them. Because of this war, Onderon will suffer much in the times to come—as it has already."
Frustration ate away at Meetra's calm like acid. "Onderon is also free of the Sith because of me. Doesn't that mean anything to you?"
The look that her old teacher gave her then was terrible; though worse than disappointment, it was not quite contempt... but it came close. "Don't try to justify yourself now. You said yourself that you only came here to find me. You never cared what happened to Onderon, one way or another."
"Why should I have cared? This isn't my war, or yours, and it never was. It was going to happen anyway, no matter what I did."
"Even if that was true, it's beside the point," Kavar snapped. "You still took part in it, on the wrong side. Some things are a matter of principle. And now, the consequences for the Republic—"
"You Jedi and your damn principles," Meetra broke in. "I don't care about the Republic, I care about you. I care that we need each other for help against the Sith. The dark side has nothing to do with me—can't you sense that?"
Kavar hesitated, still gazing at her, and the anger in his face faded a little—though the unease didn't. "No," he said finally. "I sense nothing in you at all."
She looked away from him, not knowing what to make of that. Another moment passed, and they turned a corner and headed down toward a wide silver door. Time was running out.
"You always claimed that it was compassion that drove you to join Revan's Crusade," Kavar went on. "A desire to protect innocent people. And I believed that. I still believe it. But now... Now you go to war for pragmatism? Because it happens to be convenient for your own goals? You've lost much of yourself since Malachor V. More than I would ever have guessed."
The door ahead of them slid open, and the soldiers there formed a rank on either side. Beyond, a walkway led a short distance to a buttressed landing pad on the outside of the palace, where a G-type shuttle waited.
As they neared the opening, Meetra asked, "Are you going to go to Dantooine?"
"I expect I'll end up there eventually, yes." With that, Kavar put his hood up and stepped out into the elements. Meetra did likewise, and the hammering of falling rain filled her ears. With blasters still at the ready, the soldiers followed them out as well, but kept their distance.
With every step toward the shuttle, Meetra's limbs felt heavier and heavier, and she began to accept her defeat. No matter what she said, she would forever be a stranger to Kavar. Maybe this was unavoidable. For all there had been between them in the past, he was a true Jedi—which meant that the Jedi ideals, the will of the Force and the preservation of the Republic, those things had to be the measure of everything for him. They came before everything else. Before an ally. Before an old student, even.
And before a friend.
What bizarre, inhuman things the Order made out of people. Kavar's lightsaber couldn't have cut her any deeper.
An arch stretching over the end of the walkway offered some sanctuary from the rain. They paused and faced each other there, and Meetra pulled her hood back. She fought to keep her throat from closing.
"I didn't mean for it to happen this way." Her words barely carried over the rain. "And I never wanted to let you down, Master."
Looking like he'd aged a decade, Kavar shook his head. "Don't call me that, Meetra. I was never your master."
Thunder roared overhead. Meetra couldn't stand it; she had to get rid of him. Lowering her eyes, she pulled Kavar's remaining lightsaber from her belt, where it had hung beside her own, and offered it to him. Nodding once, he took the weapon and walked into the rain once more.
"Until I see you again," Meetra called, "may the Force be with you."
Kavar looked back at her, but if he made any reply before disappearing into the shuttle, the downpour swallowed it up. Shivering, feeling colder than she'd ever been in her life, Meetra stayed under the bridge and watched until the craft hummed to life, rose on its repulsorlifts, and burned away into the murky sky.
Chapter 13: Grip
Chapter Text
Ebon Hawk — Hyperspace, En Route to Dantooine System
"Stop," Meetra said, drawing near again. "Here, hold it like this, or it'll slip out of your hand."
Atton waited while Meetra reached out and adjusted his hold on the lightsaber—his lightsaber, unbelievably. It had been one of Kavar's, she'd explained, the one she had destroyed while dueling him on Onderon. Even though she'd been on hand to help repair and reassemble the weapon, the blade it emitted was not perfectly stable, with irregular pulses of energy flickering up and down its length. Atton stared at it warily as though afraid it would bite him.
Meetra seemed to think they had missed some imperceptible subtlety in the original craftsmanship of the saber, and that was what caused the imperfection. Atton, though, was pretty sure he'd just used a second-rate power cell.
"Keep your arm like this," she went on, not waiting for him to move it himself. "Put that foot there..."
When she was finished pawing him, she stepped back and said, "Continue." Atton resumed the sequence of basic moves and stances she had taught him—"Shii-Cho," the style was called. The crackling sound of his blade was clearly audible as it parted the air; he was going slowly at first, trying to get his form right before increasing the speed. Meetra paced about the garage, her hands clasped behind her back, observing him from different angles. Over her tunic, which had once been white, she now wore a black armorweave cloak in place of the old brown one. It was a morbidly thoughtful gift from Visas, who had taken it off the corpse of a Sith on Dxun.
On Atton's insistence, both the doors were kept closed during these sessions. If he happened to screw up and cut something (or himself) in half, he'd rather as few people see it as possible.
He went on for a while, and once or twice Meetra corrected his movements again. Eventually she asked, "Can you feel it yet? The blade?"
Atton shifted his guard around, blocking an imaginary chop to his left, then his right. "Not really," he admitted. "Sometimes. Just a little."
She nodded. "Your abilities will grow incrementally as your connection to the Force deepens. The only way to accelerate it is to practice more; it's the same as exercising a muscle."
Atton was in completely uncharted territory, so the analogy was at least superficially helpful. It wasn't what he'd expected, but then again, that was probably the point. "You're not very philosophical about this whole Force thing," he remarked.
"No, because that's not how I experience it. The Jedi and Sith have their own codes and doctrines. But ultimately, I think those are only shells. Kreia's not powerful with the Force because she thinks clever thoughts or knows a lot about philosophy. Neither is Visas. And neither am I."
The mere mention of the old witch brought a crease to Atton's forehead, and he deliberately wiped it off.
Meetra continued as she ambled behind him. "The Force isn't about orders and their rituals. It doesn't have parts or sides. It's not something you study... It's something you use. You just feel it. You just do it. And sometimes you do it without knowing how you did it."
Atton squinted down the length of his blade. "What's all the light-side-dark-side stuff about, then? What are they actually supposed to be?"
Out the corner of his eye, he saw Meetra pausing by the door which led to the rest of the vessel's starboard section. She didn't look at him, but her head was bowed as if in contemplation. "I'm not sure," she said at last. "But I'm starting to believe that the Jedi and the Sith make them out to be much more than they really are."
She didn't explain what she meant by that, but they went on discussing things while Atton practiced. He was grateful that Meetra had finally given in and agreed to train him, but more than that, he was simply glad that she was talking to him again. Since getting back from Onderon, she'd been even more withdrawn than usual, and her silence was definitely the disturbed kind. It didn't take a genius to figure out that Meetra might be upset after almost having to kill an old friend, but somehow it seemed off. She and Kavar—they hadn't been that close, had they? Then again, if it really wasn't about the Jedi, and something else had happened on Onderon, Atton didn't have a clue what it could be. All he knew was that he had a bad feeling about it.
That was what he'd always called them, bad feelings, but they were more than that. It was a tried and true instinct that he had, so that he purely, indisputably knew when something wasn't right. It hadn't surprised him very much when Meetra told him that this instinct had really been the Force all along. Even prior to training, Force-sensitive people could exhibit some low-level ability, usually something related to sensing or precognition.
Atton chose a sequence of chopping and blocking motions and stuck with it, repeating again and again, slowly speeding it up but also trying to make it instinctive. As his blade whirred and hummed like some crazy, electrified pharynx flute, he tried to gather the Force around himself and focus it on the lightsaber. Meetra said when he got it right, he'd know where it was the same way he knew where his hand was. He tried to focus, tried to banish his suspicions and his curiosity and just do it...
Nothing. The Force swirled around him, but that's all it did—swirl, and sprinkle his mind with curious sensations that he couldn't describe. In one split-second, he felt the deck he was standing on as if he was the deck; in another, he observed the weightless vertigo of the dust motes that floated about the room.
Frustrated, he left off the maneuvers, fell into a guard stance, and closed his eyes. His perception steadied itself, and gradually the Force sculpted the shape of the room around him in his mind's eye. The beam of his lightsaber remained faint and intangible; rather than trying to capture it again, however, he thought his way through the wall behind him and out into the main hold.
He seemed to bump into something there—Mira. It was hard to say where exactly she was in the main hold or what she was doing, but he recognized her. Interestingly, it was easier to pick up her mind than her physical presence. There was a little stream of information and perception, almost like speech, as if she was talking to herself and Atton was listening in... except that he couldn't quite make the words out. He guessed that he could press in a little deeper, get a closer look at the surface thoughts, if he concentrated. He thought about it.
He opened his eyes and was back to just being in the garage, with Meetra studying him intently from over by the swoop bike. "Stay focused; don't be pulled away by distractions," she said, but there was a twitch of a smile on her face.
Atton lowered his saber a little, but didn't extinguish it. "Why is a mind somewhere else easier to sense than this thing right here?"
She shrugged, and more of her smile showed itself. "Does it matter?"
Though he wasn't the ex-Jedi who seemed to know everything, Atton had thought that it might. Since opening himself to the Force, he'd developed what felt like a million new vulnerabilities and thought of a million more unanswered questions. A lot of it had to do with being—who he was and what he would become, how everything would change around him. The rest of the crew had hardly said a word to him since his training started, but he was certain they looked at him differently. He looked at them differently, that was for certain. He could look at them through walls now, sort of.
He realized as well that he would look at Meetra differently, too. He'd tried the sensing thing on her a few times, and for some reason, he had a much harder time even knowing she was there—when it came to the Force, anyway. His eyes still did a decent enough job.
"I guess not," he said, bringing up his guard again and wondering, not for the first or the last time, just what the hell he had gotten himself into.
When the training was over, Meetra lingered in the garage by herself and wished it hadn't ended. Atton seemed irritated with himself for his slow progress, but she'd told him he had plenty of time; they had four more days to reach Dantooine, at any rate. Drifting to the room's center, she looked about until her eyes fell on the work bench, where he had toiled for a day under her supervision, rebuilding Kavar's primary lightsaber.
Since he had first asked her, Meetra had agonized so much over her answer—yet by the time the Ebon Hawk had left Dxun's surface for the second and hopefully last time, she'd come to a certainty that it would be a yes. She would train him. She wouldn't be his master, but his...
His what?
Even with so much out in the open between them, Meetra wasn't sure what to call their arrangement. What Atton wanted was clear to her—both what he'd said and had not said—but what she wanted wasn't always clear to herself. To one degree or another, there was always a part of herself that she held back—always, with everyone—and that had never confused or frustrated Meetra so acutely as it did now. Even as a Jedi, she'd never truly assimilated the Order's Code and its loathsome disciplines—distant selflessness, non-attachment. But she realized that her external adherence to the rules had left its mark; it had left her mind clouded on things that ordinary people understood naturally, so much so that she was almost afraid to name them.
Darkness flowed into the doorway to her left. For some reason she no longer had to steel herself; she merely turned and found Kreia lurking. "You've made a curious choice, indeed," the old woman murmured.
"You can think what you want."
Kreia took a silent step into the room. "And amusing, to be sure—to see that one hold a lightsaber, to hear his thoughts bumble about this ship even louder than before."
"I'm sure you'd make a better instructor than I," Meetra suggested.
A condescending smile bordered the shadow that cloaked Kreia's face. "I? Oh no, Exile, there is no need to flatter me so... but curiosity overcomes me. Why would you take him as an apprentice when you have the blind one: no less devoted to you, and living in the Force already?"
A few responses went through Meetra's mind—He's not an apprentice and I don't rank my friends among them—but she knew those were useless. "He'll be more helpful this way, once he's had some more time."
"And unlike the Miraluka, he has no other masters."
"I'm not Atton's master," Meetra said before she could stop herself.
"Perhaps you are, and perhaps not. The fool is not his own master, that much is certain." Kreia half-turned to go, and her tone emptied itself of disdain—partially, at least. "For your own sake, I hope this was not a decision you made lightly, Exile. The Force can be a marvelous gift, or a terrible one, and it is not easily taken back."
"I know what I'm doing."
"We shall see," the old woman said, and left.
Chapter 14: Home
Chapter Text
Dantooine
Dantooine was pretty much exactly as they'd left it, quiet and quaint, but after two local days of waiting around, everyone seemed tired of the place. Meetra insisted that she or Kreia would know when the Jedi had all arrived, which was assuming they hadn't taken a wrong turn and ended up on Alzoc III, but Atton kept the latter thought to himself.
Faced with so much free time and so little direction, the Ebon Hawk's crew took the opportunity to decompress. They all had little personal-time things to do, such as meditation, exercise, training, or repairing their weapons, armor, and other gadgets. Mira and her grenade launcher hogged the work bench for a long time. There were also chats, spats, and a couple games of pazaak. Tinkering and repairs went on with the ship and the droids. Some of the crew visited Khoonda to mess around with the citizens there. Others took walks. One afternoon, Mandalore went out hunting for kath hounds; in the evening he came back with a sack full of horns and a ridiculous story about doing it all with nothing except his hunting knife. Overall, everyone managed to not go crazy.
Only two people stayed continually aloof from everyone else. One was the old witch—no surprise, and good riddance.
And the other, of course, was Meetra. There was still something wrong with her. During the long hours she'd spent drilling Atton on Jedi tricks while in hyperspace, he had thought that she was coming out of the gloom that had followed her from Onderon. But it had turned out that outside of the training sessions, which had stopped upon reaching Dantooine, she would barely say two words to anyone at all. And she was proving very elusive, always out wandering somewhere and never taking her comlink. Atton wasn't sure if she even came back to the Ebon Hawk to sleep.
Some time after lunch on the third day, Atton took a walk of his own out past Khoonda. A couple of settlers and militiamen were milling about near one of the defense turrets. They only glanced at him, but for some reason he was extra careful to keep his distance. He felt a little awkward as he walked; his jacket felt heavy and strange with the lightsaber hilt jammed into one of its pockets.
Further out where there was no one around, wild breezes troubled the rolling hills. The sky was streaked with clouds and the temperature was perfect, but for Atton there was no kidding himself; he wasn't taking a walk, he was trying to run into Meetra. Hopeless as it seemed, he made an effort to stay centered in the Force, listening for even the slightest whisper of her whereabouts.
Despite himself, he was repeatedly distracted from looking for her by thinking about her. He wondered if someday she might tell him everything, just like he'd told her everything.
Meetra remembered that for some time after Malachor, she had felt numb and indistinct, almost to the point that she hadn't been sure that she still existed.
Part of her almost missed that.
In hyperspace, she had been able to keep from thinking by throwing herself into Atton's training. On Dantooine, however, she'd lost interest in it. It was something about how they were no longer in motion, maybe. She'd thought of other activities on the Hawk that could keep her busy, but the planet had pulled at her, called to her, and out she went.
She went almost everywhere she could think of, drinking in light from Dantooine's primary or else gazing at the night sky and trying to remember the names of the constellations. She threw stones into creeks. She killed a few kinrath. She climbed hills and walked around blba trees, watching the birds ensconced among the leaves, and thought of how she had seen all these same things back when she was a Padawan. Several times she snuck by the salvager camp and watched the Enclave for an hour or two, but it was pointless; when the last of the Jedi arrived, she would know.
Since returning to Dantooine, she hadn't slept. For some reason she couldn't, but she wasn't exactly tired; the Force gave her what she needed. She hadn't eaten either, but although she felt hunger, it wasn't really for food.
Late in the afternoon on the third day, she started to retrace an old path that wound its way southeast of Khoonda. It led to a place she had thought of revisiting, but forgotten about after getting mixed up in the battle against Azkul's mercenaries. The weather was pristine, but its normalcy only troubled her.
Meetra had spent a long time wandering out in the stars. Now she was home, and there was nowhere to run and hide. Dantooine knew her too well. And somehow it was helping her learn things about herself.
The month that had passed since Peragus felt like a decade. So much traveling, roaming, running, searching, waiting. So many new faces. So much fighting and killing. All to gather the last of the Jedi—but now that she'd finally done it, now that she thought she could feel their approach even through the cosmic folds of hyperspace, she found herself hoping that they'd never arrive. She wished she'd never found them. Any of them.
What was it all for? Why had she bothered?
She needed their help against the Sith, or so she had thought. But it was equally true, perhaps more so, that the Jedi needed her, and she didn't want to find out what exactly they "needed" her for. She didn't want to go and stand before the Council to listen to them, to hear them make a decision, or a judgement, or a pronouncement. She didn't want them making plans involving her. They had shown their true colors on Onderon, when Master Kavar had seen her as an enemy. Kavar, the one who she had thought would welcome her, would forgive her, might even be proud of her for saving a planet from Sith rule. But now she was just another deranged, misguided, fallen Jedi.
Just the Exile.
She thought of the holorecording showing the aftermath of her trial, showing the Jedi talking and deliberating about her, hiding their grand schemes, shaking their heads over what little they could do with such a miserable, wayward soul. It was now clear that Kavar had never stopped seeing her that way. Vrook and Atris certainly hadn't. Zez-Kai Ell, whatever his misgivings, would obviously fall in line with them, assuming he had ever really been out of line to begin with. That was how the Council worked.
Why did it matter, what their alliance could accomplish? It would only be an alliance of convenience, nothing more. They could easily turn on her as soon as they got what they wanted. Who knew, maybe they'd turn on her as soon as they heard from Kavar about what had happened on Onderon.
Atton's tirade against the Jedi had been right. They were liars. While claiming to be selfless and compassionate, they used people—and they did it because they didn't see people at all. They saw goals and ideals. Principles. They broke themselves, broke their apprentices, broke their own friends for the sake of principles.
And really, now that Meetra thought of it, she had known this all along, ever since the war had ended, when she had humbled herself before Revan and the Council, only for both to reward her with dismissal.
Not again, she told herself. She wouldn't just stand there obediently and let the Jedi use her. Not this time.
The twists and turns of Meetra's route were so old and familiar that she could have made them blindfolded. Upon reaching its end, she looked up from the path, stopped, and her broodings receded for a moment.
A stone's throw ahead of her, nestled into the cleft of a verdant knoll, was the Grove, partly shadowed by the bare limbs of a gnarled, century-old blba tree. A collection of ash-colored stone tiles and columns, weathered by time, were all that remained of a temple, shrine, or whatever it was that had been built there and abandoned millennia ago. It was a mysterious place, beautiful in a tragic sort of way, and generations of Jedi had favored it as a place of meditation away from the Enclave. Meetra had loved the place. In fact, the day she had left with Malak and the others, visiting the Grove was the very last thing she'd done before running to catch the transport.
And now she found that some idiot had set up a camp right in the middle of it. Between the ancient columns, the smooth dome of a standard-issue plastent bulged up from the ground like a huge, copper blister.
Not much caring whether she was about to startle somebody, Meetra stalked closer. A few meters from the plastent's mouth was a black smear of ash where a fire had been. Inside the shelter was only a sleeping pad, a few tousled blankets and articles of clothing, and a smattering of dried dirt. The light wouldn't come on; its energy cell had been removed.
Looking around the Grove more closely, Meetra found it sprinkled with items, all sullied with a few days' worth of dirt and almost none looking like they'd been left where they were deliberately. Caught in the grass, a wrapper from a ration pack. Behind the plastent, several empty equipment bags of differing sizes. Tangled with one of the blba tree's low-reaching branches, a scarf. Back by the fire pit, an overturned camp chair. In the grass nearby, a small pot and a few cooking utensils.
Dully perplexed, Meetra took the largest equipment bag and went around, gathering up the refuse and mentally cataloguing possibilities. Salvager, mercenary, outlaw? Chased off? Dead? At any rate, nobody still using this camp would keep it in such a state.
When the ground was clear of debris, Meetra dropped the bag up against a column. After glowering at the plastent for a moment, she faced away, sat down cross-legged, and put her hands to the earth. For a brief moment she felt her own flesh's weariness, its craving for rest, and her shoulders slumped. Emptying herself of thoughts, she let her head bow and her eyes drift shut; the Force flowed into her emptiness, and she mingled with the stone and shade of the Grove. Echoes from other lives came to her, tingled in her perception, and faded—past visits by Jedi, including herself, as well as other beings. There were voices—whispers, cries, shouts—and Meetra tried to grasp them, tried to coax them in closer so she could hear them more clearly, but Dantooine was keeping its secrets.
When she opened her eyes a quarter hour later, the taste of death was in her mouth. Whether it was a recent death, one years past, or several layered atop one another, she couldn't say—but there was no peace in the Grove anymore. Bringing her hands to her lap, she sat up straighter, more alert than before, and looked out on the hills with hooded eyes.
Her thoughts returned to her dilemma, to the Jedi, and to her need to protect herself. The funny thing, if that was the right word for it, was that Kreia was the only one who had tried to warn her. Not about the Jedi specifically, but her words still applied.
Such trust promises you nothing except a dagger in the back. Your allies are allies by circumstance...
And if it applied to the Jedi, to Kavar, and to Revan...
One thing to be said for Kreia, she had some nerve. From the beginning, the ancient harpy had been following Meetra close enough to be her shadow, sneering at her good deeds and cursing her friendships, telling her to trust no one, warning that sooner or later everyone would let her down, and Meetra had grown to hate her for it.
Now that she had started to believe it was true, she hated her even more.
In a way that was very strange but also very real, that eerie, arrogant, sanctimonious, bitter old scow seemed to be the only person Meetra could trust. The only person who would just tell her the plain truth.
Everyone uses each other, Meetra had said to Mical not long ago. She'd squirmed to hear herself say those words, but there they were.
And as they slowly burned her from the inside, she sat there in the Grove, listening to the breeze and wondering what she was going to do.
For some hours, Atton got no reward for his vigilant search except a dry mouth and a pair of sore legs. When hunger threw itself on top of the other irritants, he started to think about dragging himself back to the Hawk. It was getting late. Dantooine's hills had turned a glorious, fiery orange as the sun began to tuck itself away behind them, but he wasn't about to stop and enjoy the scenery. Arguably the plains around Khoonda were basically safe even at night, since they'd wiped out the local kinrath hive during their first visit. But if one of the bastards had been out at the time and was now prowling around looking for revenge, it'd be Atton's luck to have it get the drop on him in the dark while he was dead on his feet.
But after only a few minutes of trudging back toward the ship, he stopped as he felt a weird sensation. It was one that words couldn't make much sense out of, which told him immediately that it was a Force thing. He took a breath, sharpening his focus, and realized that it was something like when he got close to another person's mind—like a voice, muffled as though by distance. But instead of Atton listening for it, it was coming to him. And it was Meetra.
And he knew which direction she was in, as if she was broadcasting a beacon. He couldn't help but be a little frustrated; he'd spent half the day going in circles, and suddenly now he could sense her clearly, even more so than he had anyone else? Anxious and pleasantly surprised, he made a sharp turn, drew on his bottomless heroic resolve, and dragged himself over some more hills.
Meetra sat vigilantly in the thickening darkness of an obscurely cozy-looking grove. A little behind her stood a plastent; its door was open, but the light inside was off. Atton might not have spotted Meetra there at all, except for the fire she was tending. Its fierce glow shone against her face and somehow made it seem paler than it actually was. She watched Atton draw near with a playful, knowing little smile, as though amused with how much he had tired himself out looking for her. She looked so at ease, in fact, that Atton began to doubt his own worrying. Maybe things with her were all right after all. Maybe she'd just been sorting herself out.
She got up, and her presence in the Force seemed to recede; in doing so, it drew Atton the rest of the way to the grove, where he was grateful to be out of the sun. Grinning lopsidedly, he gestured to where Meetra had been sitting and asked, "Got anything better than just the ground?"
"Yes." Taking hold of the lapels of his jacket, Meetra pulled him in and kissed him. Hard.
The next morning, Atton was still wondering what he had done right.
Chapter 15: Dark Hope
Chapter Text
Dantooine
I don't know how you know so much about what's going on when you never seem to leave this room, the Exile had happened to say on one occasion.
Indeed, Kreia missed nothing. At any rate, she missed nothing vital. Long years ago she had shed carnal sight like an old garment, but through the Force she had eyes and ears everywhere—watching, listening, teasing out fragments of insight and intrigue, calculating avenues of leverage and defense. The web of fault lines that linked the Exile to her accomplices, and each accomplice to one another, was a maze within a maze. To manage it, to manage them, required constant vigilance.
And it was a taxing labor, to be so deeply entangled in the affairs of such small beings, even invisibly; to swim through the mire of their fleeting thoughts and fancies; to watch their feeble struggles with enemies, with one another, and with their own impulses. Much of what she observed was not discernibly useful. There were also limits to what the Force could show, which was ultimately for the best. And where the Exile was concerned, Kreia could manage to dampen their connection for a time, and thus insulate herself from the woman's sometimes dour musings, as well as from other experiences that might be inadvertently transmitted. Though it would not help in the case of a mortal injury, it was mercifully sufficient in the case of other unwanted sensations.
As for the Exile's companions, they could be amusing in the typical course of events, Atton most of all; squirming and wriggling, his every reach for freedom only entangling him further in the net that he had laid out for himself.
I told her, he had snarled in his supreme moment of posturing. I told her everything... So no more of your threats, no more of your requests. You and me, we're done.
Of course the fool would think so. He had no idea how "done" he really was.
Atton and the droids and all the rest, they were marionettes. All they needed was someone else to pull their strings.
But not the Exile.
She stood alone because she was free, and because of her freedom, she alone could cause Kreia pain. Often it seemed like she wanted to hurt her, the way she threw herself into the dross of her own passions and terrors again and again; how she comforted herself by clinging to those in her thrall, letting them goad her and wound her and use her like she was one of them.
And all the while, Kreia had to watch as this beautiful creature sullied herself, knowing that she was not like the rest of them. That she was still the only hope for all life in the galaxy. That there was still a chance that she would simply choose to recognize the truth. That a part of her still wanted to, in spite of everything.
To be sure, there was no greater suffering than to love someone else and to let them be free.
Because Kreia was not as iron-willed as she needed her student to believe; she, too, contended with temptation. Each and every time the Exile threw caution aside or relaxed her guard in order to indulge herself, Kreia was tempted to stop her. To save her. To make her choose rightly—because she could.
Kreia was strong with the Force, and the Force could do terrible things to a soul. The pilot and the tiny Jedi were fine examples of that. Compared to their minds, the Exile's was as unbreakable as a Corusca gem, but even spirit was not invulnerable. It was only a matter of finding the critical point, the locus of fracture, and then Kreia could break her into pieces and put her back together the way she should be. She could make the Exile see.
And yet she couldn't. She wouldn't.
She would not triumph by strength. Not ever. She had to win because she was right. And the Exile had to see because she chose to see.
In the meantime, darkness was gathering in the galaxy, and there was not long to wait—another local day at the most. And in the dark, Kreia saw all the more clearly: in the shafts of hyperspace, two Jedi drawing near; in the Taikaha Hills, another one waiting...
And much farther off on Dantooine, a fourth... but a tiny light indeed, that one, and she was not coming to the Enclave but simply hiding, ignoring everything outside of herself and being ignored in turn, except by Kreia in that brief moment. A curious thing—so much war and so many deaths, yet even on this world, the Order's grave, there were more Jedi alive than anyone suspected.
Still, that little one had no role to play here; she had no power to affect what was about to happen. And neither did Kreia.
Kreia, who had sat with the greatest of the Jedi Masters and taught their most gifted Padawans.
Darth Traya, who had anchored herself in the abyss of the dark side and brought forth monsters.
So much power, so much knowledge, and she could do nothing.
Nothing at all but watch the Exile and wait for dawn to break in the universe at last.
Chapter 16: Spirits
Chapter Text
Dantooine
Though Meetra wasn't pleased with it, the sky was clear, and all the baleful glow of the moons and stars fell pure onto Dantooine's surface, sending pale shimmers across the dew-streaked Taikaha Hills. It fell on Vrook Lamar as he sat motionless in meditation, suffusing him with a subtle glow like a specter in the night. Meetra was particularly disturbed by the likelihood that the moonlight would make herself easier to spot as well; it wasn't the fight she was after. In any case, she was just a stone's throw away when a stick snapped under her boot.
The Jedi Master cocked his head and cast a steely look through the darkness. Moonlight glimmered in his eyes, and Meetra froze in a crouch as he spotted her. His voice came, gruff and rumbling as usual, but there was also a familiar irony to it, as though he'd been waiting for her. "So you've come back for revenge after all... or have you?"
Meetra's heart was in her throat as she stared back at the Jedi, her face empty of meaning. Her lightsaber was in her hand, her thumb on the activation plate, but now Vrook had seen her first, and doubt shot through her singular intention like a crack through a marilite gemstone. She realized then that she had not yet acted. If she attacked, she might lose. Or win. Words formed inside her, struggling toward her tongue—an excuse, perhaps, as if she was simply a youngling caught outside after curfew again. She ached for Atton. She missed her friends. She missed the cramped, battered, grungy confines of the Ebon Hawk and its half-functioning machinery.
She leaped. Her lightsaber came to life as she fell through the night. Its arc of sunset plasma sliced deep into earth, but by then Vrook had already rolled backward, sprung to his feet, and drawn his own blade—a brilliant emerald. Not about to give him a moment, Meetra charged and battered the Jedi's defenses, forcing him to give ground. The power and ease of his blocks was ill-boding and threatened a tedious, drawn-out duel. Though Vrook was an old man and famously disdainful of fighting, the Force was strong with him—but even that Force pulled Meetra forward and lent more strength to her attack with each passing moment.
Again and again their sabers met in discordant hums and cracks of energy. Vrook stayed on the defensive, but started hurling telekinetic pushes between blows, trying to blunt Meetra's offense. She shunted them aside with little effort, but in time they slowed her down a step, and the Jedi took the opportunity for a backward somersault, putting more distance between them.
"Enough of this madness!" he bellowed. "See reason; see light!" With that he raised a hand, and what looked like a supernova exploded from his palm. Meetra gasped, shutting her eyes too late, and fell to one knee. Holding her lightsaber close in a desperate guard, she ground her teeth against the pain and tried to sharpen her Force sense. Something was wrong, though; whatever Vrook had done seemed to have weakened her hold on the Force itself, and she could barely perceive his presence just meters away.
Still, no counterattack came. There was nothing to hear but the hum of their blades and Vrook's labored breathing.
"I cannot see into your heart, Exile," he half-muttered at last, "but you can. Is something in there with you? Some dark hunger, goading you on? What is it?"
Once again Meetra's thoughts reeled as shame fell on her in a torrent. The hilt of her weapon began to shake in her hands. She must not answer; she must not speak. Jedi lie, she told herself. Jedi manipulate. He is not your friend. He will use you. They will all use you unless you stop them. All she could do was keep reminding herself as she crouched there. Gradually her eyes cleared, the Force flowed strong again, and all the while Vrook continued to wait for her, holding himself back.
He'd regret it.
When she could bear it no longer, Meetra got to her feet and stalked toward the Jedi. For a bare instant Vrook seemed startled; perhaps he had not expected her to recover so quickly. But then they clashed again, and this time his intent was as lethal as Meetra's. His emerald blade whirled and flashed through the night, fast and unpredictable like the tentacles of a water cyc; every blow that landed sent Meetra off-balance, and she ducked or rolled out of the way whenever possible. She recognized the style as Juyo: the deadliest lightsaber form, according to Kreia, and the most chaotic.
They spun and strafed around each other, dueling faster and faster, and in the haze of combat Meetra almost—it could be said—relaxed. It was the same as in war: exhilarating, pure, uncomplicated. She drew deeply on the Force, taking it into herself from the earth and air, from the glaring beams of the lightsabers and the focusing crystals that projected them, from flesh and sinew, and slowly, inevitably, her grip on the duel's conclusion tightened.
Meetra ducked, allowing the Jedi's cleaving blade to flash overhead. Her battle sight showed her that he had overcommitted just a little, that his hold on his lightsaber was about to loosen for a fraction of a second. Before he could follow up, she slipped in close and slashed hard to the side. The green saber went spiraling into the dark and vanished.
Vrook was defenseless, and Meetra didn't hesitate. She stabbed him right in the heart, then pulled the sunset blade out through his left shoulder as he collapsed to his knees. His arms hung limp, his head sagged, and he began to fall forward, but Meetra caught the Jedi and held him up with telekinesis. In that moment, as she saw him cast there in the bloody glow of her lightsaber, her mind returned to her, to what she had done and was doing.
The exhilaration and triumph left her. In their place she felt a horrible, gaping, sort of hollowing-out sensation, as though a cavern had suddenly opened within her, and everything in her life that she'd ever been proud of was swallowed by its blackness. Meetra wanted to believe that she didn't know what was happening, but even that deception was beyond her. It was not pure, and it was not war. It was murder. It was starting to scream inside of her. The starless abyss in her soul filled with the sound, trembled with its echoes; it was the sound of Malachor.
Meetra could not bear it long; she could not stand there and listen to it...
Meanwhile her victim was convulsing in her grip, his body racking itself, and she caught the scent of the Living Force. It was the stuff of Vrook's soul starting to leak out of him that drew Meetra's attention; it drew her like fire in a frozen wasteland. She thought it could bring an end to whatever monstrous thing she was feeling. She saw then that Vrook was right about something: there was a hunger in her.
And more than that.
With her free hand she reached down, dug her fingers into the old man's throat, and wrenched his head back.
I'll tell you something, Atton had said to her. Those Jedi at Malachor? They deserved it. Every single last one of them.
Meetra couldn't speak, so she let the Force take what she felt and drive it like a dagger into Vrook's mind: So do you. You deserve it.
All she did then was breathe in; there was a muffled flare of reddish light behind her palm as she took the Force from the Jedi and gave him what Malachor had given her in its stead.
The corpse flopped heavily to the ground and Meetra stood alone, winded but undeniably steadier than before. The tension in her body began to ease. For some time she gazed down at the man she'd killed as though she had just stumbled across him, and her mind raced as the magnitude of the act and its repercussions sank in. Not everything was well, but there were no more screams.
Whatever she had done, she could not take it back. The Jedi would find it out, and she had become their enemy. There would be no more masks, no more games with them now.
She had no words for what she had done, but she was free.
Chapter 17: Absolved
Chapter Text
Dantooine — The Jedi Enclave
Meetra rounded yet another bend in the blackened, rubble-strewn corridor, quietly brushing her way through a curtain of dangling vines. Down at the very end, a crumbling archway opened into a large, circular chamber with moss-slicked walls, where two broad-shouldered figures stood waiting. Laying eyes on the pair, Meetra paused solemnly as though making a promise to herself, then strode out to meet them from the opposite edge of the Council Chamber. It was the middle of the day, and the domed ceiling was long gone; the light that spilled in onto the fractured floor was harsh.
Zez-Kai Ell took the first word, his tone pensive as always. "It has been a long time since I let myself truly listen to the Force, to life. But even on this planet I can hear the dead as clearly as I ever did... I heard Vrook in the same way, and I know it was you who took his life."
On his right, Kavar looked at Meetra the way she had known he would—as a stranger. "But the blame lies with me," he added, so very nobly. "He would still be alive if I'd been strong enough to stop you on Onderon."
In unison, the two Jedi stepped apart, each tracing the circumference of the room's inner circle where the thrones of the Council had once stood. Neither of them had their lightsabers in hand, but peace's moments were numbered. If they were waiting for an answer, they would be disappointed; Meetra had nothing to say, but this time it wasn't because of fear.
She traded looks with one, then the other, trying to play the battle out in her head. Though her blade and Kavar's were reacquainted already, she'd only sparred with the other Jedi on Nar Shaddaa, and briefly at that. She left off when it occurred to her that there was no sign of Atris. Why wouldn't she join forces with the other Masters? But that was only a fleeting curiosity; Atris was not there, and there was nothing more to it. The truth would become clear soon enough.
The Jedi stopped halfway down the circle, forming the ends of a pincer, and reached for their weapons. "We will see what our strength together amounts to, then," said Zez-Kai Ell.
Kavar spoke again, but not in answer to his partner. "It's too late for words. But I'm sorry it has to end this way."
Meetra wasn't. She was past that.
The air roiled as four beams of plasma hissed to life and flew to meet each other.
The Jedi Weapon Master may have been short one blade, but he hadn't lost an ounce of his deadly skill; Kavar and Ell came in as a team, launching flurries of quick strikes from opposing angles. Meetra put up a cautious, outer-ring defense, giving herself room to dodge one opponent while blocking another. Before the Jedi could hem her in, she backed off and strafed around Zez-Kai Ell, letting his saber-staff test her defenses on its own. Ell was aggressive and unrelenting, carrying the fight to her; each time Meetra parried a violet blade away from one side of her body, its twin instantly came at her on the other.
The exotic weapon's weakness was its more limited range of maneuvers, though, so Meetra tried to tighten her guard even as she defended herself, bringing the point of contact closer to the saber-staff's emitters with each block. Before she could try to actually cut through the hilt, Kavar flipped overhead, landed in a crouch, and slashed at her knees from behind. Meetra's cloak turned to a black whirlwind as she spun to block the blow, then twisted away as Zez-Kai Ell tried to kick her in the spine.
Again and again they repeated this exchange with the Jedi circling her, almost trapping her between them, then having to chase her down. Lightsabers crashed together and snarled. Gradually Meetra did less and less retreating. Though never more than a millimeter from a fatal, agonizing shear of plasma, she slowly, smoothly took control of the duel. She'd grown stronger since facing Kavar on Onderon—and Vrook the previous night.
But more than that, she suffered from no tension, no clawing, seething, accusing doubts. Her own mind was as singular and clear as the crystal in her lightsaber, and the Force flowed through her in torrents. Its power guided her through the vectors of attack and defense, millisecond by millisecond. It warned her about the Jedi's tactics and stratagems before they put them into play.
It also brought her whispers of what was in their hearts. Though banked behind walls of discipline and fortitude, their minds were not completely opaque; they each gave off a sort of outer glow that Meetra could sense acutely, even as they all danced together with their swords of light. She felt their invincible, irreversible determination to take her life. She felt the practiced resignation which allowed them to not hesitate, to hold nothing back even though they wanted to.
Kavar hadn't been lying; he was sorry to kill her, and so was Zez-Kai Ell. Meetra knew it. She felt it.
And by the Force, she hated them.
She hated them the most.
Vrook and Atris were nothing. They had never doubted themselves, never offered her any grace, but these two were different. They had wavered and been vulnerable. They had treated Meetra kindly. They had listened to her, and she knew that it hadn't been completely deceitful. Part of them had cared—and that was the worst thing about them.
Jedi Masters. They had meditated, studied, trained, contemplated. For decades and decades they had allowed the Force to mold them, to make their will uniform with its own, to clear their vision and calm their souls and quench their passions. They had struggled through fear and hate and conquered them. They had weathered a lifetime's worth of frustration and temptation and suffering and conflict, all so that the Force could have its way with them and fashion them into living vessels of bottomless, self-immolating, unconditional love. And yet even then, at the end of their journey together, that entire tremendous bounty of hard-won and carefully guarded virtue was so paltry and cold and lifeless and meek that it weighed nothing at all.
Meetra hated them the most because they were the best, and they still weren't good enough. The best were never good enough.
The duel took itself to the middle of the Council Chamber. Again the Jedi attacked from both sides, but with new tactics; they frustrated Meetra's attempts to escape from the pincer with flashes of preternatural speed and agility, sliding, rolling, and flipping overhead to head her off each time. A phalanx of azure and amethyst closed in, tighter and tighter, and smoking molten stripes appeared in her armorweave cloak as she spun about, pressing back against the assault.
Though undoubtedly just as powerful with the Force as Kavar, Zez-Kai Ell was the lesser duelist, and so he was the first one to tire. While parrying one of the Weapon Master's sweeping slashes, Meetra sidestepped a whirling power attack that would have split her shoulder to hip from behind. Sensing Ell's fatigue and the fractional lag it imposed, Meetra rounded on him before he could follow up. There was an explosion of yellow-white sparks as her blade split the saber-staff in two and severed his left arm at the shoulder.
She had to turn to defend herself then, letting Kavar drive her away from Ell. After a few strides she stopped and held her ground. They traded a few blows there, but it was hopeless; the Weapon Master was hollower than Meetra had ever been. Her lightsaber squealed as it stopped a savage blow right before her chest. With the Force she shunted it aside, then responded in kind and left a deep burn through one of Kavar's lungs. She thrust out a hand, and her will blew him off his feet and sent him sprawling to the broken floor meters away.
Not far from him, Zez-Kai Ell was on his knees, his remaining hand clamped to his side just below the missing shoulder. His eyes were welded shut, his whole face drawn with tension; he looked very much as though he needed to be put out of his misery. Kavar lay on his side, convulsing, but his expression was unchanged—the perfect, stoic Jedi mask. His eyes kept away from Meetra's.
She watched them for a moment, her wavering blade angled toward the ground as her whole body trembled with exhaustion—and with hunger. There wasn't any desperation in it, as there had been with Vrook, but there was no point in prolonging things. Her free hand rose, feeling almost weightless, and she fancied she saw ribbons of crimson light streaming from the Jedi to herself as she bled the Force from them.
Meetra exhaled in strained relief as she powered down her lightsaber. A subtle ecstasy pervaded her spirit, and for some moments she did nothing but stand and stare at what she had done. As the sensation faded, however, anxiety seeped in to take its place.
There was no pity or regret for what she'd done to Kavar and Ell; Vrook's death had made this battle inevitable. She'd likely saved her own life by taking theirs first, and in any event she no longer had anything to fear from the Jedi... except, as she remembered again, Atris still remained, presumably still lurking in the arctic hideaway on Telos.
There was another, much bigger problem, however, the gravity of which had somehow eluded Meetra until that moment: she had no idea how she was going to explain this to the crew.
Blinking, still staring at the corpses as though afraid she might wake them up, she slowly and carefully returned the saber to her belt.
With each passing moment her trepidation increased, and she grew more and more certain. She couldn't tell them. She could not let them find out—especially not Mical.
Sometimes I do not recognize you, Meetra, he had said not long ago. This is not the Jedi I once knew...
Her stomach tied itself into a knot as she tried to imagine what his reaction might be to this.
As for the others... True enough, most of them had no love for the Jedi, but all this time she'd been telling them that they were looking for the Masters as allies. What was she supposed to say now? Change of plans? They would think she'd lost her mind. They would leave. Or turn on her.
Barely noticing herself, Meetra began to pace. She brought her hands together and scraped her nails against one wrist, then the other. What about Atton? He hated the Jedi as much as anyone, but he also looked up to Meetra—that was probably the reason he loved her—and he knew that she and Kavar had once been friends. What would he say? Guess I should expect that kind of treachery from a Jedi, or ex-Jedi, or whatever you are.
Meetra stopped, clearing her throat to fight the tightening feeling in her chest, and gazed down at the Masters yet again. Something was strange in the Force; she had killed more people and seen more dead bodies in her lifetime than she could possibly remember or count, but somehow these two looked deader than all the others.
Her whole body stiffened as she felt eyes on her.
"And so death comes to Dantooine again," said a weary, downcast voice, "like a killer in the night."
Meetra turned as Kreia skulked out from the shadows of the ruins.
Chapter 18: Eleventh Hour
Chapter Text
Telos — The Jedi Academy
Atton cursed and drew his third backup pistol from the back of his belt as he fell back down the narrow steel-blue corridor. The ghost women had long reach with their electrostaves, though, and one of the two that were after him gave a thrust before he could get off a shot. The staff barely tapped against the blaster, but that was enough to zap it out of Atton's hand and send a jolt up to his shoulder. Grimacing against the pain, he yanked out his vibroblade and awkwardly parried their follow-up attacks with his other hand. Silver arcs of energy snaked their way up the blade, but stopped at the specially insulated handle.
Just out of arm's reach to Atton's left, his partner in this fool's errand was in a similar predicament. He had only one of the Handmaidens on his case; while the middle of the three occasionally snuck a stab at him, she really had it out for Atton for whatever reason.
She wasn't alone in that.
Barely a week had passed since Atton and the Force had been introduced, but already he was seeing signs that things weren't going to work out between him and it. He'd started to think that his sensing abilities were already beginning to sharpen, and in ways that he hadn't expected them to. As soon as they landed back in this ice hole, for instance, he'd started to have another one of his premonitions—but it wasn't one of the more common, general we're-all-probably-about-to-die ones. It was stronger and more specific than that.
Kreia's not here. I can sense it, Meetra had said. I'm going to talk with Atris and find out where she is.
And that had set off the alarm in Atton's head. Bad idea, bad idea, it went. Don't let her go alone. Bad idea, don't let her— He had let her, though, and so had the rest of the crew. Most of them seemed content to do as they were told and stay put; Meetra could handle herself in a fight, after all... except that wasn't the kind of danger that the Force seemed to be mumbling about. Atton had struggled to distinguish its vague impression from his own random guesses. Maybe Meetra was about to make some mistake, something that was going to kark everything up—assuming they could get any more karked up now that Kreia had killed the Jedi and gone rogue.
Speculation was a waste of time, though. Only one thing was crystal-clear: he couldn't let Meetra confront Atris alone. No matter what. And as it turned out, the only other person in the crew who was crazy enough to just "trust the Force" and go with him was Mical.
Again, though, Atton wasn't sure that this whole Force thing was going to work out. Case in point, when he supposedly needed it to warn him about some esoteric, mystical danger? Sure, no problem. But when three Echani warriors armed with electrostaves were about to jump him and his partner? Nope, too much trouble. Not a blip on the sensor screen.
And if that was too much for the Force to help Atton out with, he sure as hell wasn't going to trust it to guide his lightsaber.
A glance over his shoulder told him that they were meters away from backing into the door at the end of the hallway—and the controls for it weren't on his side.
"Mical—door!" Atton barked over the crackles and hisses of the staves. After batting aside a stab from each of his friends, he feinted at the third Handmaiden, making her flinch back. He very nearly got shocked in the kidney for his trouble, but it bought Mical a second to slap the panel. The door beeped and hissed open, and the two men practically tripped through it. The room beyond was spacious; even with the conference table and chairs in one corner, it offered plenty of room to maneuver. Which was good, because the other three Handmaidens were waiting for them in there.
Atton found himself in the middle of a cyclone, blocking and parrying—now he had three of them to deal with on his own. No doubt Mical did as well, but Atton couldn't keep track of him. He was whirling, feinting and parrying, occasionally managing a hasty counter-chop, but getting nowhere fast; the ghost women were just taking their time, letting him burn himself out with all this fancy, ridiculous swordplay.
Outrage welled up in his mind and spread, gnawing away at his concentration. For a while now—ever since Peragus, really—he'd known that his days were numbered, and out of all the hopeless, skrag-shoveling, misfit murglaks to be found in the galaxy, he was one of the last ones who'd look out at the stars and tell them that he deserved a better deal than they'd given him. But to die now, without knowing what would happen to Meetra, or even figuring out the stupid omen that had gotten him into this fight in the first place? That was just too much. He had always believed, needed to believe, that he would be there at the end of this mission. And that Meetra wanted him to be there.
Swallowing his pride, he took one hand from the vibroblade's hilt and thrust it into the jacket pocket where his lightsaber was hidden. In that blazing split second as the Handmaidens' electrostaves flashed in at him again, he reached out to the Force in his own clumsy, stupid way, not asking or begging or bargaining, only trying to get out of his own head and be what he had to be.
The Force is not something you study, Meetra had told him. It's something you use. You just feel it. You just do it.
Without looking, Atton sidestepped, and the arc of an electrostaff missed his spine, sizzling harmlessly past him. At the same time, he tossed his vibroblade toward the Handmaiden to his left. While she smacked it away in a crackling flash, he drew his lightsaber and blocked a staff on his right.
There was an awful electric squeal as the weapons ground together. Lightning coiled around the electrostaff's pole, and the already-crazy oscillations of the lightsaber blade intensified. Surprise shone in the ghost woman's eyes, and Atton sensed a ripple of distraction pass through the other minds in the room.
After another second he surrendered the lock, ducking under the follow-up slash. Things were different; he could sense his lightsaber now. But instead of stopping to be amazed, he moved, and the roiling blue-white blade seared through the middle of the woman's electrostaff and her left shoulder. As she fell to the floor with a scream, Atton spun around and met the other two's assault. The Force joined with muscle memory, and he found himself slipping into one of the dueling sequences Meetra had taught him, smoothly parrying and striking in turn, and before he knew it the two Handmaidens were backing off.
Looking to his right, Atton spied Mical over by a far wall. Having lost his vibroblade, he'd rushed one of the Handmaidens and grabbed her electrostaff, twisting about and wrestling for it even as another one tried to circle around and shock him from behind. Meanwhile, the third over there had disengaged and was jogging over to help deal with Atton.
Atton's jaw clenched as he took in the scene. He didn't have any more time for this. Finding his eye drawn to the conference table in the far corner, he threw his focus over there and gave a twist of his will. The table lurched, and three of the chairs shot into the air. One almost bowled Mical over with his two assailants; at the last second they scattered and dove out of the way. The other chair hit the Handmaiden who was still crossing the room, hard enough to send her rolling across the floor. Her electrostaff went flying. The third chair landed behind one of the ghost women in front of Atton, skidding and knocking against a heel. It tripped her up, but she managed to catch herself against the floor instead falling on her face.
The last of them hesitated, looking over her fellows in dismay, and Atton backed off a few steps, placing himself beside the one whose arm he'd severed. The Force was slipping away from him, his mind plunging back into his skull—he'd done too much too fast. He'd impressed himself, to be honest, but it just wasn't enough...
Desperately, he reached back into the hallway that he and Mical had come from, dragging the last of his power in a wave down its length. Two of the blasters he'd dropped there came skittering into the room, and he snatched one up with his free hand. But the other pistol went well past him, and the Handmaiden he'd tripped with the chair snarled and grabbed it. Atton raised his saber toward her, but it was already back to feeling alien in his grip, and none of Meetra's lessons had included blaster bolt deflection.
Luckily, he knew better than to count on Jedi tricks. Scoundrel tricks were his stock-in-trade, and when a scoundrel was in a tight spot, the only better thing to have than a good blaster was a good bluff. He trained his pistol on the maimed one who lay nearby and bellowed, "Hey, HOLD IT! TIME OUT!"
The whole room froze in front of him. Over by the wall, Mical was on his knees, an electrostaff in his hand. One of the Handmaidens was quivering on the floor before him, favoring a smoking black mark on her leg.
While everyone stared at Atton like he had three heads, he continued, "You all have enough yet? Huh?" He nodded at each of the wounded Handmaidens. "This one, those two—not dead yet. Gives you a choice, it seems to me. Keep scrapping with us and probably die—or get them to some kolto tanks, or whatever you've got, and let your master deal with us. What do you think?"
The two nearest Handmaidens held him in a murderous gaze that seemed undying. But even as he watched them, the one with the blaster cracked, the intensity visibly draining from her face. Her eyes flitted to her sister. "Cliona," she said in a low voice. "Cliona, please..."
Cliona hissed back, "Quiet. Help Rhea. I'll get Genevieve." With a click, the poles of her electrostaff switched off and collapsed back into the hilt, and she slowly tucked it into her belt. Her sister did the same, set her blaster down, and backed away.
"Step back," Cliona said to Atton. Extinguishing the saber, he did so, and a short moment later the ghost women had collected their wounded and swept from the room, leaving him alone with Mical.
As they recovered their dropped weapons, Atton thought Mical would want an apology for almost crushing him with a flying chair, but the half-Jedi only told him, "Let's go. Quickly."
Which they did, heading the rest of the way to the central hub, and from there through a strange replica of the Jedi Council chamber on Coruscant (Atton recognized it from the recording of Meetra's trial), then finally to a bridge leading to what looked like a meditation chamber. They shared an uneasy look as they started across the walkway. The chamber's door was wide open, and through it they could see no sign of Atris or Meetra. Spanning its circular wall were two rows of pyramidal ornaments, each one giving off a steady crimson glow. A strange tingle came into Atton's mind as he drew near. Though he'd exhausted his use of the Force, he was instinctively reacting to something in that room.
Mical spoke, his voice inexplicably trembling with dread. "Atton, those devices on the walls—I think they're..." He trailed off as soon as they had crossed the threshold, because now they could see both Meetra and Atris off to the right.
The ex-Jedi stood with her back to the entrance, her inactive lightsaber in her right hand. Her left one was raised, the fingers curled toward the wall, where Atris was pressed flat by an invisible hold. The Jedi Master looked fragile as ice; her skin was inhumanly pale—glowing, even—and somehow she looked thinner than she had in the recording of Meetra's trial. White robes draped loosely from her splayed limbs.
The first thing Atton thought of was a Gorsian dragonfly pressed between two panes of glass. But then he noticed the tremors and spasms that roiled through Atris' frame, like her body was trying to shake itself apart even as the Force held her in place. His gaze traveled down her right arm and found that it ended in a charred stump, still aglow but cooling fast. Her left eye was gone, as well; in its stead was a steaming black streak that traveled back almost to her ear, then down over the cheek.
Grisly as this sight was, it wasn't the type of thing Atton would lose sleep over. He'd seen worse—hell, he'd done worse. When he tried to speak, though, Meetra's name died in his throat, and he found himself paralyzed by a grotesque mixture of fascination and horror. He had felt the exact same thing from an incident in his adolescence, in which he had witnessed a nerf being eaten alive by a manka cat. Why that feeling should return to him there, at that moment, was incomprehensible; it was like his brain was seeing something that his eyes could not.
Mical found his voice before Atton could. "Meetra!"
With a jolt, Meetra dropped her hand and Atris slid to the floor, writhing and whimpering. The ex-Jedi spun. Something wild and frantic was in her eyes, and her chest rose and fell as if they'd stopped her in the middle of a sprint. "What are you doing here?"
"We thought you needed a hand," Atton said mechanically as he emerged from his daze.
"What happened?" demanded Mical. "What is this place?"
For a moment Meetra stared at them as though she didn't understand Basic. "I... I'll explain." Stepping closer, she put her lightsaber back on her belt—right beside a second, similar hilt which was already there. After another strange pause, she cocked her head toward Atton. "You felt something just now, didn't you?"
"I... Yeah, it was..." He left off. The afterimage of whatever he had experienced loomed large, and it got his skin crawling. All he knew was that it was a Force thing. The fact that he had no words for it told him that much.
"These things," Meetra supplied, gesturing at the little pyramids around them. "Sith holocrons. Atris's little secret. Shows what she thinks of guarding against the dark side."
Mical took in the room with an appalled look that came to rest on the pitiful robed form a few meters away. "Atris fell to the dark side?" he breathed, though it wasn't really a question.
"You could say that," said Meetra, an uneasy chuckle running beneath her words. "She and I, we couldn't reach an agreement... but I know where Kreia is now. We're going there after we've dealt with the Sith here." Her face went rigid as a haunting croak came from behind her.
Atton barely heard the exchange; he was still trying to make sense of what he'd felt in the Force. He wanted to believe Meetra's explanation, but it didn't add up. If the weird little psychic tingling was some kind of aura being generated by the holocrons, that was one thing. But the other thing, the one that had left Atton stunned with an inexplicable fear—it sure as hell hadn't been triggered by a couple of spooky old trinkets. It was the sight of Meetra and Atris that had done that. And Atton had been led to it by his bad feeling from before, his blind certainty that Meetra was in some kind of danger. But what did it actually mean?
And why would Meetra try to keep him from figuring it out?
He almost snorted out loud. This crazy mission, his involvement with Meetra, Kreia turning on them all, the Jedi dead, and he was still new to the Force—it had all gotten to him, and it was twisting his brain into a knot.
After everything they'd been through, he decided that he was ready to trust Meetra more than he trusted himself. She was actually there, in front of him. Given the choice between her and some cryptic, uselessly vague instincts and omens, he'd follow her. She was the only one who could train him, and she was not some cold, scheming, devious Jedi witch, hiding things from him. Whatever the hell he had seen, there was an explanation, and she would help him figure it out—later.
Having finally buried his doubts for a time, Atton leaned a little to the side to get a better look at Atris. The strange light that had seemed to exude from her body a moment before was gone. "Well, the ship's ready to go," he ventured. "What are we doing with her?"
Meetra clenched a fist, then unclenched it. "She has her servants. They can take care of her."
Atton and Mical glanced at each other. The pilot shrugged.
Mical grimaced and turned back to Meetra. "What about the holocrons?" he asked.
Meetra looked up wistfully, and red light gleamed in her eyes. "We'll come back for them soon enough."
Chapter 19: Epicenter
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Malachor V — Trayus Core
Three pairs of footsteps started down the narrow stone bridge spanning the darkness; hearing them, Meetra opened her eyes and stood. Haloed by the bloody light that rose from the floor of the meditation dais, she turned and watched for a moment as Atton, Visas, and Mical approached. Behind them, their escort of Sith assassins stood at attention, flanking the entrance.
Meetra was happy to see that her friends were still armed. She had told her new followers, They aren't prisoners. Just bring them as they are. The three drew nearer, and she savored their mental auras: Visas's muted satisfaction, Mical's agitation, Atton's wary relief.
Trayus Core was a locus for the Force. Kreia—Darth Traya—had claimed that it allowed her to look into the future, to tell what would become of them all, and Meetra had been intrigued—for a brief moment.
The one you love? the old woman had rasped. He will keep his murderer's heart. Many deaths will that one cause in the dark places of the galaxy, always hunting, always finding prey... But Meetra had stopped her there. She wasn't going to let prophecy decide her friends' futures. She would decide, and they would, together.
The bridge ended in a wide tunnel hollowing the middle of one of the megalithic claws on the outside of Trayus Core. As Atton and the others passed through it, he called, "Cozy place. How much is the rent?"
Meetra didn't laugh, but a smile twitched across her face. Leaving the dais to meet them halfway, she asked, "How's the ship? And the others?"
"Fine," said Atton.
Visas indicated the guards. "They told us that Kreia is dead."
Briefly, Meetra's eyes skimmed the abyss that surrounded the Core. "Yes. Finally."
"You spoke with her," said Mical, his voice tight. "Why did she do all this?"
"I'm... not certain. She said a lot of things that I haven't made sense of yet, but I think part of it was a test for me. Maybe even for all of us."
His eyes narrowed. "What do you mean? What test?"
Meetra spread her hands. "Mical, I know what this looks like, but you can relax. It's still me. We're all still here."
"Then what is happening?" he asked. "What is going to happen?"
"Another war. That's what's going to happen, and we have a part in it. This academy, these Sith here, what's left of them—so do they. We're going to need them."
Visas cocked her head. "Who is the enemy in this war?"
"Another Sith Empire, one that's been waiting beyond the Outer Rim. Kreia told me about them, and about how Revan went looking for them." Meetra took a breath. "We're going to stay here for a while, until you three are ready. Trained. And then we're going to find Revan and this war."
A deathly quiet encircled them for a long moment—until Atton shifted on his feet. "So... are we Sith now, or what?"
"In a way," Meetra said. "But no, not truly. I know this is a lot... but I can explain everything."
Notes:
For those who've been following, I apologize for this last chapter coming after such an egregious delay, especially considering its extreme brevity. I've been busy in real life with moving and other things.
Again, "Critical Points" is only the prologue to my "Fate of the Lost Jedi" series, which kicks off with a novel entitled "Torchbearer", set six years after the events of TSL on the eve of the true Sith's arrival. Those chapters will begin uploading in the near future.
I wish to thank all of you who have read thus far and especially those that have thoughtfully left feedback. Hopefully at least some of you will stick around and enjoy what's to come.
triunfoelmal on Chapter 1 Thu 21 Aug 2025 01:23AM UTC
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triunfoelmal on Chapter 2 Thu 21 Aug 2025 01:33AM UTC
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triunfoelmal on Chapter 3 Thu 21 Aug 2025 02:51AM UTC
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triunfoelmal on Chapter 4 Thu 21 Aug 2025 03:06AM UTC
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triunfoelmal on Chapter 6 Fri 22 Aug 2025 01:46AM UTC
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triunfoelmal on Chapter 7 Fri 22 Aug 2025 09:11PM UTC
Last Edited Fri 22 Aug 2025 09:13PM UTC
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KittySamurai on Chapter 11 Tue 06 Jun 2023 01:58AM UTC
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Memelord_oftheSith on Chapter 11 Tue 06 Jun 2023 02:34AM UTC
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beehoony on Chapter 12 Mon 12 Jun 2023 01:03AM UTC
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Memelord_oftheSith on Chapter 12 Tue 13 Jun 2023 12:48AM UTC
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Ana (Guest) on Chapter 18 Sun 23 Jul 2023 08:18PM UTC
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miladythewinter on Chapter 19 Sat 02 Sep 2023 10:13PM UTC
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