Author's Note: When writing this story, I actually ended up writing two endings. I chose the first one because I felt it fit with the tone that I desired for the ending. Here is the second ending I wrote, one that should be read right after Tevos' thought, "I . . . I love him."
I . . . I love him.
"I can't," she said, every part of her being crying out in agony. "I am sorry . . . but . . ." She stared into those blue, crystalline eyes. So many times had she found herself dreaming of the future they could share. But, like so many wishes Tevos had since she was a maiden, they were not to be.
Saren's face twisted into a grimace, his eyes now darker and fiercer than before. "You . . . after all I had done for you. After I had fully given myself to you . . ." Tevos braced herself for his hand against her cheek, but no blow came. Instead a sharper wound sliced into her skin and to the bone. "You only used me for pleasure . . . your own political vices . . . I should have known you wouldn't understand . . ."
"Saren . . . I . . ."
"Shut up!" he screamed as he tore his face away from hers. "Just shut up . . . no more . . ." He shook his head and Tevos could see his desperate attempt to quell his tears.
"Saren . . ."
"To think . . . you . . . to think you were my . . ." He choked on the words and pressed his lips tight together. "It doesn't matter anymore. What I wanted, what you wanted, what I wanted for us." That tore out a part of her she feared she might never get back. "I thought you, of all people, would understand. I treated you as someone close, I can see that mistake clear as day."
Tevos shook her head and began to walk towards him, he rose his hand up in defiance. "It's . . . over, Councillor. Please accept an apology for my advances. I did not know if the feelings were still . . . reciprocated as they once were." He delivered a sharp salute, to which Tevos ground her teeth. After few moments later, he had left and Tevos stood alone once again.
She turned towards the window, the expansive nebula scattered out before her in all its glory. It was as if the goddess herself created all this splendor just to mock her in her agony, the beauty a bitter medicine for the mistake she had made. A mistake . . . was it a mistake, to reject him? She could not deny her feelings, even after what he had said. Even after what he had said, the claims he had made, she still loved him. Nothing will change that, she affirmed. I knew that when I first lay eyes on him.
And so the councillor, the steadfast and icy Tevos, shut her eyes and lowered herself to the floor. She lay on her back as the stars drifted from one edge of the window to the other and as the nebula scattered about in all its glory. To historians this would have been a victory considering what was to come. However, the taint had already made its way into the heart of the councillor and the Citadel. The poison that would threaten to unravel the galaxy still ran in the blood of the matriarch, Tevos. Though she had rejected his advances once, her feelings remained alive. The lust that burned inside her worked only to increase the acidity of the taint as it spread through her body.
The widow, gazing down from the nebula with its spindly tendrils of light and cloud, watched and waited for the poison to take hold. The promise of its prey sweet to its gluttonous eyes and the vengeance that swelled in its core ready to be unleashed upon an unsuspecting galaxy.