Silence
Silence had followed him out of the Jedi Council Hall and to the Outer Rim, shadowing his every step. That dogged dead air had emptied entire ships of noise. It had damped his dreams and days and nights for years on end.
He had begun this journey to exorcise the mute ghost that haunted him. It had taken him to a royal palace that he had known about on a nearby moon in another lifetime. Men and women were dying around him to determine a trivial question of succession, but he did not see them. He was deaf and blind to everything but Kavar.
The Master had been many things when they'd last seen each other; friend, mentor, judge, jury, and though they had not known it that day, executioner. He could see that Kavar realized that the Jedi he had known was gone. The man that was left was the Exile.
While the Exile was not much, he was always pragmatic. Stagnant royal lines were part of the past. Rulers that hid in palaces were weak. Accident of birth never guaranteed good leadership. He'd chosen his side and, once again, it was not Kavar's side.
He would not fill up the silence between them. Though their last chance to speak had been interrupted, those things unsaid would not have changed anything in the cantina and would not change them now. The time for words was past.
The Exile had watched the recording of his trial over and over in the bay of the Ebon Hawk; the light flickering around him long into the night when the rest of his companions had slept. Each time he had watched it, he had watched Kavar - he watched him kill the Jedi he had been with his muteness.
A scrap of hope. A word of redemption. A breath of forgiveness. A whisper of any of these might have saved him, but Kavar had only spoken after he'd left. That had been too late for either of them.
The Exile slid around the angles and corners of Kavar's mind and tried to feel his opponent out. Kavar was either sloppy or indifferent; he made no attempt to hide the disappointment he felt. It all felt very familiar. He'd stood before this man before in very similar circumstances. At that time, he'd submitted to the decision made. He'd walked away from that fight.
This time, though, there was a difference. The Jedi was dead; long live the Exile. There would be no walking away, no submisson. He looked his Master in the eyes and saw the silent judgment there. It was too much.
His lightsaber flared as all ties with his past twisted and snapped. The silence that dogged him was filled with the echo of a howl. The thing inside screamed everything that he had never said, everything he had ever felt.
Kavar had no right to judge him.
His lightsaber sang his question for him; he struck as the howl inside screamed whywhywhy. Kavar answered in kind. The responses were quick and varied, turning the Exile's point into counterpoint. Asked and answered. Asked and answered. That was their dance across the slick, expensive floor in the palace.
When his lightsaber cut across Kavar's breast, hesawquestions in his enemy's face, but the Exile offered nothing in the way of words.
Instead he caught the Master by the front of his robes. They flowed around the dying man and softened the dull thud as the Exile eased him to the marble floor. There was no death rattle, no sighing last breath; there was nothing but the slow fixation of dilated pupils and the absence of the Force.
He stared at Kavar's body, waiting for something to fill him up, to bubble out and over into the space the howl had occupied during the fight. The howl faded away but nothing came to take its place.
The only sound in the cavernous throne room was the sparking of blade on blade. It tore at his ears.
He had thought he would be able to stop here. He had thought that he could end the killing with Kavar's death and his revenge would become complete on Onderon, but he was not satisfied with his victory.
His lightsaber hummed back into existence. He was not satisfied with this victory, but there was still the Queen.
Author's Notes: Written for the rejection challenge at I was struck with how you learned that Kavar had considered taking you on as a padawan in the middle of a fight. I wondered if he honestly believed that would makethe Exileless angry at the universe.