Jaina has barely touched down on Azeroth before she senses him, his presence an odd shade on the edge of her senses but undeniably a Jedi master.
She had been told about him of course, the Sith were rare enough, but reformed Sith were even rarer, they had warned her about him, tried to convince her to choose a different world for her first post as a Jedi Knight, but she had fought for her place on this world, if it was enough to inspire a Sith to return from the Dark Side then it was a place that she could make a difference.
Azeroth is utterly average as far as worlds go, she discovers, but Lor'themar is anything but, and she asks him once, in a moment of reckless curiosity, why he went to the Dark Side, the look he gives her is pure regret, and she almost apologizes, but he answers then, softly, and tells her a story of heartbreak and guilt and madness, and how easy it is to fall against your own ideals.
Azeroth wasn't the world of change she thought it was, the place where she could make things better, but watching everyday as Lor'themar brought strength in gentleness to everything he did, she thinks that maybe it is the place where she could be made better.
When Jaina had first left her apprenticeship she had hardly thought that one day in the future she would be sharing her duties as the Jedi Knight of a planet with a reformed Sith. But here she was, standing in a backwoods spaceport in Azeroth with Lor'themar.
Jaina had grown accustomed to relying on Lor'themar for so much more than support as a Jedi though. He was a steadfast friend, a guide to the intricacies of Azeroth she hadn't been told about on Coruscant, and—perhaps most importantly—he was someone who would never judge her. It was very different from the temple, where every tiny slip was met with a lecture about the dangers of emotion, when she decided what was right for her to do he didn't question, didn't point out that it could lead to folly or remind her of what a Jedi 'should' be while quietly insinuating that she was not.
She had heard endlessly about why it was such a bad idea to associate with Lor'themar, and was frankly tired of it. That the Jedi order could try and condemn someone who had turned away from the Dark Side and truly worked to atone was almost a betrayal to her, when they taught that the Light was different to each person and the Force itself was created of both Light and Dark.
Lor'themar was possibly the most Light person she had ever met, and even having heard of his past from him, and knowing at least a small portion of what he had done when he had finally told her the name he had been known as during his time as a Sith, Jaina found it impossible to think of him as the Order seemed to want her to.
He had told her once that he worried for her, that her great empathy brought her places she shouldn't be. She had disregarded his warning, perhaps foolishly, because now, while her faith in the Light was as strong as ever, she had begun to lose faith in the Order itself. She struggled to remain true to the tenets; to be serene, and live in harmony with the force, to close herself off from the strong emotions that led people to fall. But all the while Lor'themar was beside her, she watched as he was just as strong in the Light and the Force as she was while holding true only to himself.
She asked him how he did it, finally, when she had struggled with her own conscience until she had reached a state of what could only be called frustration.
"I was a Jedi for a long time before I went to the Dark Side," he answered contemplatively, "You know why I left, and why I came back, and how different the two sides are, but you haven't truly experienced them both. There are different balances to be struck on the Dark Side, we say to ourselves that passion gives us strength; that the Force will set us free, and it's true. But freedom can be a length of rope, and only a balance between both the Light and Dark—between peace and passion, between knowledge and power—brings true freedom and understanding of what the Force is."
Jaina knew that she would consider this for a long while, the idea that it was possible to sit astride the line and be both weighing heavily on her mind, even as she acknowledged that Lor'themar did exactly that every day.
Notes: Jaina's blossoming existential crisis. As I have said before about the Jedi order, "when you get a group of people together and tell them that all strong emotion is bad you have to expect problems."