In the desolate halls of the Trayus Academy, there is a woman at work.
The gleaming marble and obsidian is meant to keep out the chaos, the wildness and danger of Malachor V. It's a place designed to mimic a seat of power; the Jedi Enclave on Dantooine or the Senators' forum on Coruscant. But there are cracks in the fissure; if the woman could focus on anything other than her task at hand, she would notice them. She has made them herself.
It's something to be proud of, but for now, her face is blank with the necessity of her task. Her scarred hands, covered by a pair of discarded Sith gauntlets, handle the splinters of wood gleaned from the once-ornate pillars scattered about the anteroom to hell. She has destroyed them herself, igniting her lightsaber and cutting them all out of the wall like she once removed the Force from her mind. It's the only wood in the polished room, but it will serve its purpose. It's the last gift of a doomed planet.
In almost the exact centre of the room there is a discarded, broken body, almost literally broken by the weight of cracks and tears in the crabbed flesh. He is grey, the color of burning paper, and she does not touch him. He has earned this. He will melt along with the core of the planet, and she thinks that for him, it is a good death. A merciful death. Does he deserve it? whispers that traitorous, that Sithian voice at the back corner of her mind.
No, her work is for the other body in the gleaming room. She is deliberately behind it. Her face has to remain calm. Hard. Her hands and face are those of a Jedi; it's only her heart that is gasping, wrenching as though it was the muscle to be severed instead of her comrade's arm (though that is not what he was). She builds the pyre still, laying the faggots at angles so they will burn fast. She doesn't have much time.
He was a Jedi, her comrade, though if one asked him he would have called himself a scoundrel first and foremost. He'd known what he was. He'd been a murderer. A drone, a liar, a cheater, a thief. But he'd been honest with her, so none of it matters now. He died for her, but she's never been one for romantic gestures, and he'd known that. She can't help the fury bleeding under her mask.
The pillars now lie on the floor like dead men, arranged with a slight depression in the middle. The woman is still at work, though, notwithstanding the booming noise from outside seeping through the stubbornly defiant marble walls. She lifts the body by its remaining arm, heedless of the spatters now on her robes. Her face is just as much of a shell as the body; it's only her motor reflexes doing the job. She drags the dead man to the woodpile, almost dropping him too fast and disarranging her careful construct. She curses once, rich, ripe and sweaty, hearing it echo in the room like something he would have breathed. Another scheme gone awry.
Once he's atop the layer of wood, it's final, though. She closes his eyes. Fixes his legs. She pries his lightsaber from the clenched tendons of his solitary hand - too much like Kreia, she realises, and knows he would have laughed. But the lightsaber is hers now, clipped to her belt. In its place she fixes her own. Her own crystal and the Solari crystal glow even in this oppression. It is fitting, though, and she closes his hand around the still-warm hilt.
There is no time. The booms are getting louder; she knows soon the planet will implode. She picks up the flamethrower from the corner; the Sith Lord she'd murdered would have no use for it anymore. It still matters to her where she aims, though the entire edifice will wind up engulfed. She aims low, willing the flames to begin like babies, then grow. She almost chokes on the scent of the smoke, even as the fire is barely beginning; the ancient, decaying paint and the dyes of his Jedi robes seem to mix like oil and water.
She sinks to her scarred knees, her own robes staying curled against her legs like a second skin. She watches his start to burn, the rough cotton molding the flame like a Master and their Padawan. She has smelled the scent of burning flesh before. It doesn't faze her, especially not when a fellow Jedi is burning. She knows the teachings; how one's body is just a cage for their spirit until they become one with the Force. Her eyes stay closed; her head stays bowed. It's a duty.
Outside she hears Hell approaching, hears the tumbles of falling rock, even through the walls of this Brobdingnagian fortress. The Shadow Generator, she knows, must be approaching full power, but she still doesn't move. In some ways, she has always been a wraith, as if she was born on Malachor itself instead of her tiny home planet at the heart of the Republic. He was the best wraith of them all, though, until he chose to break cover.
Soon, it's over. There's nothing left but ash, the same color as the other body in this room, but it's not his ash. It's the reeking, stinking pillars, flecks of their ancient paint still clinging to the floor and her hand when her fingers rest on a fragment of unburned bone. Her face may well be the same color as she rises. She has no way of knowing.
She walks away without a glance, knowing the dead man is with the Force. Trayus is a wasteland of corpses and scattered weapons. She can feel the red miasma in the air, the dark side reaching for her throat like a demon. But she is no longer at work. Her part of the job is complete. She wants to have done more.
Like a beacon the open front door lures her through until she's face to face with the Ebon Hawk. She's limp, exhausted, being pulled aboard like a child's doll sewn from old clothes. Her friends cosset her, hold her, attempt to console her. She doesn't feel it.