Coruscant, Jedi Council
She was to go to her trial in that cursed chamber. How could they judge her? They, who had not been there, who had not went through what she went. It was outrageous. And yet all she felt was the consequences of her actions. She knew that this trial was naught but formality. It was each and every dead person at Malachor who judged her and found her guilty. Every death had been a stab in the heart, and very often she would find herself losing herself in the thought, in the pain that it all caused. It was still present within her, just like that fateful day. She hardly believed there was a single moment where the pain wasn't present. It was always there. But now not alone anymore.
She entered the room, the pain present within her as always, but now accompanied by the rage at the idea that someone who hadn't felt that very pain would think of judging her. They were there - Kavar, Atris, Zez-Kai Ell, Lamar and Vash. A pitiful shade of what the Council once was. Most every seat was empty, and the room felt lifeless. The Jedi were being driven to extinction, hunted by the returned Revan, and yet they sat there, judging her. With a dark thought, she realized that it was their way of doing things - just sitting around and doing nothing. They would not endanger themselves, now would they?
The Jedi council was supposed to be a place of wisdom, a place where the most staunch protectors of the Republic would arrive to decisions about how to react to the threats that existed in the galaxy. Yet in its current state, the council could well have been composed of a bunch of gizka and it would not really change all that much.
-Do you know why we have called you here? - Vrook asked. The anger rose within her: formality though it could be, she was not about to respect him. He had never had too much patience with her, and the feeling was all too mutual.
-I came here because I chose to, not because you summoned me. - The words left her mouth without her thinking them, yet they were exactly what she would have said had she thought about it.
-As Revan summoned you, so have you come full circle to return to the Jedi. - Came the reply of Kavar. She always had respected him and considered him a friend, and damning though his words might have been (she was too immersed on herself to truly think of what she was being told), she kept silence. Zez-Kai Ell continued.
-Why did you defy us? The Jedi are guardians of the peace and have been for centuries. This call to war undermines all that we have worked for.
He dared question her. He dared do what she'd done to herself a thousand times before, for a different reason. She had convinced herself that she was right, that everything she'd done, from the moment she joined Revan to the command of activating the Mass Shadow Generator, even the massacre she'd brought about, was the right thing to do. She'd told herself repeatedly that the Mandalorians would have crushed the Republic had they not taken that crucial decision. She could not have lived with the thought that she might have been wrong, that there might have been other solution. It would have broken her. She knew it, and it did not diminish the pain, but it kept her going. Somehow.
-Is Revan your master now? - Atris spoke. - Or is it the horror you brought about at Malachor that has caused you to see the truth at last?
She had reached her point. Atris dared say the words. It was the limit. She would stand by that insult no more.
-You were not at Malachor. - Came her swift reply, venomous enough to kill a terentatek. - And you will never understand.
-You refuse to hear us. - Zez-Kai Ell spoke again. - You have shut us out, and so have shut yourself to the rest to the galaxy.
Like there was a point in listening to them. They pledged for peace and reasoning, for a deeper analysis of the situation, for sitting down and thinking, both in the past while the Outer Rim burned both figuratively and in some cases quite literally, and then while Revan was killing them all.
"I'm honestly surprised they're doing so badly at the war." She thought. "With their line of thinking, probably a single of the turned padawans could cleave them all in half while they shout 'We have to think about this!' and 'We should debate on what to do with this one!'." It was Vash who spoke next.
-You are exiled, and you are Jedi no longer.
Like there was a point in it anymore.
-There is one last thing. - Vrook interjected suddenly. - Your lightsaber. Surrender it to us.
That was overstepping. The lightsaber she'd built - her very own green blade - was hers and hers alone. None could claim it but her, and yet there was Vrook, claiming that that was not the case any longer. How dared he? Out of all the council, him. It stoked the fire within her, to the point that for a second she actually forgot about Malachor. For a second, she was naught but pure rage and disgust to that horrifying worm of a Jedi Master. She could have refused. She probably would've, but suddenly an idea went through her head.
"So you want my lightsaber? Very well, you shall have it."
She walked to the central stone and stabbed her lightsaber in it firmly before leaving it there and walking off in a hurry, not wanting to listen to any further ramblings from the deluded fools who were convinced they had the moral high ground.
To her, there was no moral high ground anymore. There was only the ever-present shadow of Malachor, ominously standing above her.