How long had it been since they'd joined Revan? Months, he thought, though the time seemed to slip by as if it were nothing. She'd been distant, too distant, and he felt her slip away as the days and then the weeks blended into a blur. When had it changed? He remembered how it was before as if it had been a different person who'd lived those memories. Maybe it had been. As the distance grew, she seemed to change herself, though she still was so beautiful and still glowed so much from the light in her that it sometimes hurt his eyes to look her way. When she kissed him now, it was only perfunctory, and when he tried to hold her, she'd stiffen before she'd dissolve into a river of tears. Why had it changed? He only knew that he didn't dare look in the mirror too long, that he didn't dare touch that linked-ring chain he once wore so proudly—the one that marked him as forever hers. Yet, despite the distance, he felt stronger, more powerful than he ever had before, and he wanted to use that power to protect her as they confronted the hierarchy of true Sith leadership on world after world here where the darkness gathered its strength.
I miss you, Jay. He missed her laugh—for she didn't laugh any longer when he tried to show off his wit. Revan laughed, but she just stared at him with the once-sapphire eyes that had turned amethyst with the tears she held back. He missed her smile—the devil-may-care grin. He missed her company, her own wit. He missed the way they had once crossed words as they had once crossed vibroblades when she used to train him. He missed the happy lilt in her voice when he'd curl up next to her on one of the too-small bunks that still felt just the right size for both of them.
He couldn't yet admit to himself that she had tried to speak to him, to tell him why she grieved. She'd tried once after a particularly grueling fight, mostly grueling because she'd refused to join in. He'd been eager for battle—it had been days since he'd had a chance to swing his lightsaber about. Days of intensive diplomacy with that rust heap translating with too many sarcastic asides about killing and maiming. Revan had snickered more than once as the slagheap spewed more of the swill it called speech into the air, while Jay had glared at the thing as if she wanted to dismantle it then and there. He sat and listened and made his own occasional comment that had Jay glaring at him too. And then, the last day, Revan had sighed mid-translation, as if the endless speaking had done no good at all, and then he struck, both lightsabers out in a flash too quick for his eyes to see.
Stop! she'd yelled. We're not through talking yet!
These Sith had drawn wicked poisoned blades that cut through even the toughest Mandalorian-style melee shields Jay had been able to cobble together, and they struck with the dark fury of their kind. Revan felled three of the ten with quick swipes of his twin lightsabers, and he'd joined in the fray with whoop. But she stood back and let them attack, and when the last fell, and he felt his life slipping away from the poisons that ate at his wounds, instead of healing him, she'd just glared at him and let him heal himself. He'd noticed then just how tiring it had become to summon the Force to seal his wounds, where once it had been nothing.
You murdered those men, she'd said after, when they'd retired to the cockpit for their ritual pazaak game. Now it was little more than the silent slapping of cards down on the metal deck rather than the mutual flirting and teasing that had once led to wild nights and even happier mornings. Why, Atton? Why, when we were so close to a breakthrough?
Revan needed backup.
Revan needed to keep his sabers sheathed. And he should have fought alone if he was going to be such a murglak! Those men were about to agree to help us! We're here to fight a war of belief, not a war of blades. He's getting darker—can't you feel it? And you… I… I'm worried about you, Atton. You're not the man I married.
I don't want to talk about it.
You never do, do you? When will you? When you're as dark as Revan is? When violence is your first instinct when you're faced with a challenge? When you decide one day to strike me down the way the Sith destroy their Masters?
He'd turned away then, leaving his cards on the floor, and her in a heap beside them, sobbing. He didn't dare let her see that each hitched breath of hers cut him deeper than her own lightsabers could. Before he could force the door behind him to roll with just the right amount of crashing, he heard her say, her voice little more than a gasp, I love you! Don't leave me—not like this!
She hadn't been the one to turn away. He could admit that much to himself. She still went through the motions, still tried to talk to him as if nothing had changed. She had still tried to train him before Revan cut their sessions short a month before. You're no trainer, Jane! You're teaching our Padawan bad habits, and even worse discipline. And, Force help him, he'd listened to the man, rather than his own wife, his own lover, and his own Master. And what makes you think you can train anyone properly, schutta? You're almost as dark as you were at Malachor V. Atton isn't your Padawan, nerf herder, and he never will be.
But he'd still trained with Revan the next day, while she watched him from her perch atop the Hawk's workbench, her thoughts nothing but an endless scream she let out unrestrained into the air. He hadn't dared touch her mind after that. And when he trained with Revan, he felt the Force swell within him like an ocean. An ocean that needed to be released in a flood of pure power against a target, otherwise he'd drown in it. It was nothing like training with her, learning how to restrain the urge to let loose with the power that flowed within him like lifewater, laughing with her as she corrected a small flaw in technique even as she let loose with a barrage of warm and sensual thoughts about the shape of his arm or the strength of his chest. He embraced this flooding, much as he'd embraced the loosening of the chains he thought her teachings had wrapped around him. But they weren't chains, he sensed now as she sat with her back to him, staring at the map Revan had brought up on the hold's display. They were landing in a few minutes, and Revan wanted to scout ahead.
"Go," she said. "You probably don't need HK, but you should take him anyway, just in case you come across one of those languages you can't pick up."
"You're not coming with me, Jane?"
"I hope you can handle a little exploration without unleashing your carnage on this new planet."
"And you, Padawan?"
"Atton and I have a little something we need to take care of," she said. "And maybe a little something else…" She looked his way for the first time in hours and she raised her eyebrow in that old way that had once set his heart to slamming. He dared to touch her wide-open mind for the quickest of seconds and caught a faint undertone of her old desire. Well, if that was what she wanted, who was he to argue?
"Yeah, I'm staying on the ship." Good, he felt her say.
"Hmph. Whatever happened to Jedi discipline?" Revan's voice had always sounded muffled behind that ugly mask. He hadn't worn it at first when he'd surprised them on board, but after a month or two when he'd started looking especially tired, the mask returned, and now he never took it off, not even to sleep. The man even ate in the fresher to keep his secret!
"You're one to talk, schutta. Now leave us alone!"
He noticed she wore her robes open again with the pair of necklaces that marked her as his on clear display. He'd caught her more than once when she'd claimed she was "meditating" with her whitened hand clutching both pendants as if they'd run away if she dared let go. She followed him to the cockpit and took what he still thought of as her seat in the co-pilot's chair, though she hadn't parked herself there in… days? Weeks? She still hadn't bothered to ask him about learning to pilot, though she'd badgered him to teach her almost everything else he knew. She'd once had a voracious appetite to learn anything and everything about explosives, about stealth, about shooting, about Echani battle techniques, even about the different varieties of juma, though she never tasted any of them.
"What's this about, Jay?"
"I just miss you, that's all."
"You've never been a good liar." He switched a few levers and brought them out of hyperspace just outside the system.
"Maybe not. I have something to teach you that I think will come in handy, if you'll let me." Guarded, just as she always was with him lately. "And I was hoping… It's been so long. Too long… I do miss you, even if you don't trust me or believe me."
He had no way of hiding his own pain this time, though he tried to resume his pazaak game, and though he focused hard on the controls as he brought them in to the landing pad the sensors had picked up. Not trust her? He was the one he didn't trust. He wondered again why he bothered with his mental shield—she'd never read him, and he doubted she'd started now, even if there was something she needed to know.
"Have you been reading me? Because you're dead wrong. I trust you with my life as I always have."
"You still think I'd do that? I love you, fool, and I'm not about to start violating you if you don't wish it."
As he thought. The shield was for Revan, who could probably penetrate it as easily as Darth Traya had.
"No, not you."
"Well, at least you still give me that much credit."
"Jay…"
"I'm not going to fight with you. Today isn't about fighting—it's about remembering and seeing. And maybe about a Force technique I should have taught you a long time ago."
She was going to teach him a new power? Hunh. He'd wondered why she hadn't yet challenged Revan to a sparring match. Or a duel. Had he been in her shoes, he would have. And he knew she'd probably wipe the floor with Revan if they fought—it wasn't without reason that he'd heard Darth Traya say in her memory, You are the greatest I've ever trained. Well, he was all about growing in power these days, so he just tried to give her his old smile. It seemed to work, for she didn't recoil.
"All right—teach away, Master." That, at least, brought a flash of her old grin back and he tried to hold on to the warmth and the sudden familiarity he thought they'd lost forever.
She reached across the bank of instruments that separated them, and for a moment her hand lingered in his hair. His black hair—one of the changes he hadn't foreseen when he started training with Revan. Did he dare to touch her mind again? Yes. So soft, still. So warm… These were exactly the sorts of thoughts he wasn't expecting though he'd expected the keening wail that tinged those thoughts and made them razor sharp. Ah, Jay… She sat with him in silence, though it wasn't the strained silence he'd grown used to after he started training with Revan. There was a hint of the old comfort, and the old understanding that used to come when they'd just curl up together and feel each other's breathing as the tin can droid piloted them off into the unknown. He missed that kind of silence, just as he missed her warmth, though, if the zakkeg's words had been right two years ago, she still meditated beside his bunk as she had after they'd left Nar Shaddaa.
"I'm sorry," she said suddenly. "I never should have allowed you to come with me. I should have lied more, should have let myself fall… Whatever it is that happened to us is all my fault."
"I told you once, Jay, don't ever think of apologizing to me about anything ever again. You have nothing to apologize for."
"I do, though. I failed myself, and I failed you most of all."
They landed softly, without even a small jolt. He had to give himself a little credit—few pilots could land a ship without even a faint shimmy. She gave him a sudden grin.
"Well done, flyboy! I wish Kreia was here just to see that landing!"
"Well, I don't."
"Even if she had to eat her words?"
"Even then."
She snickered, and for a moment it did feel just as it used to. "I wonder how long it'll take that damned schutta to leave? Get the hell off our ship, mynock spew!"
Our ship? What was she planning? For a moment, he hoped she'd slam the ramp shut after Revan and the slagheap left and they'd take off again to return to Republic space. Did he dare break away? If she asked it. But only if she asked it, and only if she really meant it. Some clanking of droid feet, and they were gone. She did raise the ramp after they left and locked it for good measure, but when he touched her thoughts again, all he heard was, Finally, some privacy at last! Except for the little wheeled trash compactor. But he was better company than that orange junkpile.
