Chapter 1

Shayla Breyis watched the shuttles move between the modules of Citadel Station and was encouraged by the amount of life that seemed to exist on the station. It was good that the people of Telos were returning. It was good that the Ithorians would complete their project, that Visas' master was not allowed to destroy them all, that she had accomplished something on her journey. Sometimes she forgot that.

Now, however, Shayla was waiting outside a different room in the medical bay than the one where she had spent the last week and a half. She was waiting to see an old friend, someone she had promised to come back for. Someone that lost herself—a feeling Shayla could definitely relate to. The ache in the pit of her stomach told her it was all for nothing, that she was too late. That it was too late to save Atris months ago, when she didn't recognize the corruption during that first visit. That somehow, she had lost her chance to save her when she didn't even try.

Bao-Dur's remote beeped woefully behind her, expressing his concern. The exile closed her eyes and shook her head, murmuring that she was alright. It wasn't fair that Bao-Dur was not there, that he no longer stood behind her, the tiny droid at his shoulder. It wasn't right that the Force had taken him. It wasn't right that he was dead.

"Master Breyis?" a human healer called, and Shayla perked up.

"This is she."

"You can come in. She's willing to see you." The healer smiled as she opened the door, but Shayla could feel herself shaking like a leaf as she entered the room. The gash on her arm was beginning to ache, and she could feel every stitch in her head. Her broken leg had not yet healed properly, and she still walked with a pronounced limp. Maybe she should have waited to leave her own bed for awhile longer. But she needed to see Atris, to try to put things right.

She was broken, perhaps more broken than when Shayla had last seen her. Her icy blue eyes stared vacantly at the ceiling, and her alabaster skin had taken on an ashy tone. The smell of kolto permeated the air, and the simple square room contrasted sharply with the great chambers that Atris had left on the planet's surface. When Shayla closed the door behind her, Atris turned her head. She looked far older than her years, lying there in that bed. The only thing Shayla could think was that she looked so different from the older padawan that she had met on Dantooine, that she looked so much different from the Atris she had known since childhood.

"Why did you come here?" Atris whispered, turning her head back to the ceiling. I came to save you, Shayla said. But that is not something that one says aloud.

"I came to see you," she said lamely. The urge to cry seized her, but she fought off the tears. She had shed too many tears of late.

"But why?"

"Because we were friends, once. Long ago."

"Were we? I suppose you were my friend. It seems like an eternity since I was a Padawan and you were that small apprentice. You were so good, so light, even then."

"It does seem like a long time. We were all good then."

"Not me. I was a selfish child, I was ambitious. I stayed because I was scared. I stayed because I was obedient. You left because you were good." Shayla stared at her, unsure of what to say. She loved you, as one loves a hero. Her voice echoed in her head still. Shayla wondered if she would ever be free of the old woman that had made her whole and then broken her, that had brought her to her friends and then ripped them away.

"Atris, we were all afraid. You did what you thought was right. I did what I thought was right. What more can we ask of ourselves?"

"We can ask for the wisdom to know right from wrong." Shayla had no argument for that—it was something that she too had wanted. But certainty seemed to be an unattainable ideal. In the end, life is a game of chance. No person, not even a Jedi, can know where the coin will fall. She almost chuckled—now she was thinking in gambling metaphors. She needed to spend less time with Atton.

"I still don't know why you are here. If there is something you need to say, say it and be gone," Atris said. Her words were angry, but her tone was exhausted.

"Atris, I just want you to know—this isn't the end. You can recover from this. You can still be a good person." Atris laughed then, a hollow and frightening thing.

"You came here to save me? There is no saving me. I am not a Jedi, and I am not truly a Sith. What am I? The empty shell of a woman. The shadow of myself."

"But it doesn't have to be that way forever. You can move past this."

"Can I? Can you?" Shayla froze as Atris' hollow eyes fixed onto her own.

"Wh-what do you mean?"

"I sense a shadow in you that I have never sensed before. Even as I condemned you so many years ago, I did not sense it. I thought the aura I felt from you then was some trick of the Dark side of the Force. But I was wrong. What you have now, though, is a shadow. You seem to me more gray than blue." Shayla shivered. She recalled the anger that flowed through her as she had cut down Kreia. She remembered the hurt as she cradled Bao-Dur's body. Did that add a shadow? Was a shadow better than a wound?

Atris murmured something too quiet for Shayla to hear.

"What did you say?" Atris turned toward her, the eyes burning holes in her skull.

"Such a quiet thing, to fall. But far more terrible is to admit it," she repeated a little louder.

"I haven't fallen, Atris."

"No. But I have. A quiet thing. It could happen to you, too."

"You can get up after a fall, you know."

"It would take someone a lot stronger than myself to do so."

"You are strong, Atris. You are the last of the old Jedi Council. Be strong." Atris did not respond for a minute, and the silence hung heavily in the air.

"Leave me now. I am tired," she said suddenly, turning away again.

"Goodbye, Atris," Shayla Breyis, last of the Jedi, murmured.

"Such a quiet thing," Atris whispered one last time. Shayla shivered as she limped away, brushing past the healer to return to her own bed and hoping beyon reason that she didn't hear Kreia's voice in her dreams again.