"In having survived, Yoda and Obi-Wan aren't exceptions to the rule. I'm certain that dozens of Jedi escaped with their lives, and in due time you will have the pleasure of killing many of them. But of greater importance is the fact that their order has been crushed. Finished, Lord Vader. Do I make myself clear?"

- Emperor Palpatine to Darth Vader

Prologue

I am a Jedi.

The proclamation didn't seem to carry much weight when made inwardly. The sopping Knight struggled against the crushing weight of failure and untended wounds that pressed against his chest.

"I am a Jedi," he whispered hoarsely to empty space, trying to convince himself of the half-truth.

How had everything gone so wrong so quickly? He had only been trying to do what he felt was right. He had only wanted to save her….

The thought of her elicited a guttural moan. No. He couldn't afford the luxury of dwelling on that glaring weakness. He had to fight. He could not fight for that which was potentially already beyond help. He had to focus on the present—for now. He had to live. He had to escape.

The Knight—or at least, that is what he used to be called—levered himself onto his forearms, craning his neck to get a glimpse of the warehouse. In the pitch black darkness, he attempted to use the Force to pierce the blackness and give him insight into a way out of the sticky situation that he had somehow blundered into.

But the Force was as elusive as ever. He reached out to the Force…and was rejected with stone-cold denial.

The Knight shuddered violently from a cold that came from beyond the puddle he had landed in. Had the Force finally abandoned him after so much betrayal and so many failures? Clenching his eyes tightly shut, he had to concede that it was indeed possible that the Force had refused him and had finally sang it's last song in his ears.

In truth, he had started to believe months ago when this whole fiasco began that he was indeed Force-forsaken, but his comrades and friends in the Order had assured him that was not possible. But at moments like this, when the darkness began to close in around him in every way possible….

The Knight tugged at his coarse Jedi robes that the Temple quartermaster had given him a year ago to make sure that they still existed, a remnant of his past. "I am a Jedi." And Jedi do not give up…Even if they want to. He could not afford the luxury of giving up. He had to live…because the one he loved was not going to be given the chance to do so unless he tried.

With that proclamation, he pushed his body past what he believed his limits were and managed to stagger to his feet. He stumbled to where his lightsaber had fallen and clipped the blade to his belt with trembling fingers.

The Knight moved with heavy footfalls, tripping every few steps as he fumbled in the darkness to reach the door casting light across the end of the chamber. His head lowered, he moved mechanically toward the faint light that seeped under the old doorframe. Just as he was about to reach and palm open the door, it slid open without his command.

Mechanical breathing echoed in the previously silent warehouse and it turned the Knight's blood to ice in his veins. His eyes blearily focused on two large, black booted feet and he drug his gaze up to meet the uncompassionate blackness of Darth Vader's masked face.

The Knight stepped backward, reaching for his saber but not igniting the blade. "I am a Jedi," he said simply, clinging to the phrase as if it were his salvation and not his curse.

The Sith Lord was silent for a moment, as if considering the young Knight's words. Vader gave a minimal shrug, momentarily revealing the humanity that had been Anakin Skywalker that still lived somewhere deep inside the mechanical shell. "You were a Jedi. Now you are vermin. But you still have some use to me yet." With that proclamation, Darth Vader flung the Knight across the room with a noncommittal flick of his hand and the Force.

A Jedi shall know not anger. Nor hatred. Nor love. The Knight's last coherent thoughts before he gave in to agonizing, blissful oblivion was that possibly—quite probably—the Jedi philosophy against attachment had been correct all along.