I stood before the Jedi Council, lightning crackling through and around me. The pressure within the Force built, as if to a breaking point, then rose still higher. They wanted to constrain me. They wanted to rewrite me.
Again. They wanted to destroy me again.
"NO."
My voice thundered, echoed with the Force that amplified it into a near-physical presence. The echo shattered the statues, cracked the floor, sent the ceiling into a near-complete collapse. Stone rained down around us, none landing on me, none landing on the Council members. We were all strong in the Force, strong enough to survive a mere building collapsing on us.
The dim evening sunlight shone across the ruined Council chambers.
I stood, light bending to darkness around me.
The Council members stood, four old fools, golden light casting their shadows long across the floor, trying to encroach upon me.
The glow of lightning sparked around me. Arcing out, forming a globe at whose center I stood.
"This is not who you should be!"
I didn't bother identifying the speaker, it was the voice of an enemy. I didn't care. I couldn't afford to care.
Ice filled my blood, my mind. The world shone gold. I could see the Force, see it in its intangible form, see it as held and directed by these fools who would oppose me. They would not allow me to leave this place as myself. I would not allow them to change me.
"You don't have to fight us," another Jedi fool said.
My Force pressure was rising still, theirs holding steady. I couldn't possibly overwhelm four Jedi masters myself.
The darkness within me would not accept defeat, brooked no denial. This was my final defiance. Too long had these fools meddled in my life, exerted control over my destiny.
No longer.
I felt myself sliding backward, step by step, as the combined Force of the Council members tried to entrap me, tried to touch my mind, my soul.
Lightning sizzled and crackled around me. The bubble of protective force held them off, but I couldn't attack without my defences shattering. I felt Bastila, a shining core of uncertainty. She was nearby, I could tell, watching in horror unable to choose a side.
You are mine, I told her in my mind, in her soul. I needed her.
If we were to survive to defeat Malak, if we were to escape Dantooine with my self intact, I needed her.
I gave myself over to power. Immersed myself wholly in the Force, pulling Bastila under with me. She gasped aloud, inaudible over the crackling of lightning and the deep vibrating hum of the combined pressure the Jedi were exerting, but I felt it.
I'm sorry, I whispered in the still silence that suddenly overcame us both in that frozen instant. I would do the same again. We cannot submit.
The moment shattered, like a crystal struck just wrong. Bastila's eyes glowed with the same gold fire that I felt within myself. She held out her hands, stared in wonder at the veneer of power that gathered.
"Now, my apprentice," I whispered to her. "Stop holding back your emotions. Now is the time. Live."
It shouldn't have been so easy. Her thoughts followed mine, echoed back through her. Long-buried resentment, anger, hope, despair. . . Everything a Jedi was supposed to suppress flooded through her like a wave of pure cleansing fire.
I laughed, screamed my defiance to the sky, then pressed the entire force of my electrical defence bubble into a wave of crackling lightning that struck Vrook full in the chest.
He tried to block it, tried to absorb it with a Force barrier of his own, but his attention had been diverted. He was working together with the others to control me, not to protect themselves.
They had fallen into a standoff state, pushing while I pushed back, not expecting me to abandon defence completely in a desperate and foolish attempt to disrupt their attack.
Vrook screamed as the lightning thundered into him, threw him backward, and shattered his Force protections. He slammed hard into the wall, slumped to the ground with his robes smoldering.
I felt their attack lessen by one fourth, even as the combined power of the remaining three Council members compressed upon me in retaliation.
"NO!" Bastila shouted, and jumped in front of me. She too was surrounded by her own bubble of darkness, anti-pressure holding away the Force attacks of the Jedi.
"Bastila, do not do this," Zhar said. "We can still save you both. Stand aside, padawan."
I took a step forward, placing myself firmly within Bastila's defencive bubble. "We are no longer yours to save or command," I said, my voice coming out as cold and hard as the darkness I had given myself to. "I gave you warning. I told you she was mine, I told you I would not be controlled again. I would have left and demanded nothing more of you for many cycles. This confrontation was your doing."
"Your mind is being warped by the power you hold," Vandar said. "Release it, and let us talk instead of fighting."
I laughed, and joined my recovered Force shield to Bastila's.
"Talk? Talk? You who destroyed me once would meddle still yet further? HOW DARE YOU?! I wanted NOTHING but to be FREE of you and your foolish Council. Instead, you would demand my obedience forever, would bind me to a destiny I never chose. No. NO! I will not submit. I will never again submit to anyone, for any reason. I am not your puppet!"
My breathing was sharp and rapid, my fury unrelenting. I didn't care about anything but proving beyond doubt that I would not sit by and allow my destiny and self to be shattered again. These fools had forfeited all right to their continued existence.
"How do I destroy them?" Bastila's voice was quiet, harsh.
She understood, with all of herself and all of me, right now there was hardly a difference. The Force bound us together, mind and spirit.
"Anger," I whispered, and drew forth the lightning. Bastila reached up, as though to grasp the skies themselves. I felt the charge in the air, laughed in exultant joy.
"We are not yours any longer," I told the three remaining Jedi. "You should have listened to my warning."
They withdrew their attacks, concentrated on shields. They were old, 'wise', and well-trained. But Bastila and I were the two greatest prodigies of the Force in a hundred years. Individually, we could have matched any Master.
Together, we were unstoppable.
The world shone golden. Lightning gathered, thunder waited.
Master Dorak took a single step backward, as though to flee.
Then we unleashed our fury, and the ground shook with the sound and the power of it. The already-damaged ceiling completed its collapse, the far wall crumbled in a rush and rumble of stone.
Four broken bodies lay upon the ground, three still sparking with the electric power that had overloaded them in a single instant. They had no time to resist, their shields were unfinished and too weak.
I laughed, and Bastila laughed with me. We were free. Malak was only a minor player in this dance of destiny, though we would still destroy him as well.
Those who deigned to take upon themselves the responsibility for my life had meddled their last.
Finally, my vengeance, accomplished.
"The galaxy will be ours, my sister," I said quietly, as the thunder and laughter faded to complete still silence. "We need only to take it."
Bastila nodded. "As it should be, my lord."
We walked away from the ruin, side by side as the last light of sunset disappeared from the horizon, leaving us in shadow.