Chapter 10: The Last Temptation of Korriban
Shira entered the last chamber of the tomb confident that the worst was over. Her body was bruised and battered, her mind wracked by the horror of the visions the crypt had presented to her, but she was still standing. Now it was simply a matter of clearing one more room, scavenging any useful items she could find and following the hidden passage back to Mical and T-3 in the cave.
The room was dark and rectangular with a small dais in the center. A datapad lay on the platform near a scattering of bones, the yellowed remains of shyrack and human mingled in the moldering pile.
Shira hesitated for a moment, then picked up the datapad and read its message. It told a sad story but one that fit well with her own experience of the strange tomb. The visions had warped the fallen Jedi's mind as they had scarred hers.
The staring red eyes of a hssiss appeared before her, as she had anticipated. She lunged at the reptile with her lightsaber, slicing at its scaly head.
The hssiss recoiled from the fierce beam and snapped at her with its jaws, just missing her arm.
She struck it again and again, aiming quick blows at its sides and back.
Hissing at her, the creature swiped at her right shoulder, cutting through the sleeve of her robe and rending flesh. There was pain, but it was dulled by the adrenalin rushing through her body, the joy of her lightsaber rushing through the air.
She curved her arm back and struck the hssiss between the eyes with a powerful swing of her weapon. The massive beast keeled over at her feet, his body stirring up a thick cloud of dust from the tomb floor.
Shira coughed, and her hand pressed against the wound on her shoulder, staunching the slow trickle of blood. It wasn't too deep. The pain would go away soon enough.
She was fluent in the language of pain, reading its marks like hieroglyphics scrawled across her body. It had become music to her, a desperate symphony driven by the urgent beating of her own heart.
Aside from bones and hssiss, she thought, this room doesn't seem to have much to offer me. She sidestepped the hssiss' corpse and started moving out of the room towards the main passage. She was looking forward to seeing Mical and T-3 and receiving reassurance that her companions weren't actually set on killing her.
"Shira."
She reeled around and saw Atton leaning against the platform. He was looking better, more rested than when she'd last spoken to him on the ship. He actually seemed to have combed his hair and slept in a real bed instead of just dozing off in the pilot's seat. For some reason, he was bare-chested, revealing several bandages criss-crossed over a lean, sinewy torso.
She remembered seeing him like that once before on the ship. He'd been sitting alone in the starboard dormitory, tending to his own wounds because he'd gotten it into his crazy head that he didn't want Mical helping him. She caught a glimpse of him in that moment, so suddenly vulnerable, and her breath had caught in her throat. She'd immediately ducked back into the shadows, all too aware of the guilty blood surging through her veins and rising shamefully to her cheeks.
If she'd been smart, she would have demanded that he march straight over to the medical bay and get himself fixed up properly. That was what a real Master would have done. Instead, she'd darted away like a thief down a back alley, feeling a rush of adrenalin thrill through her.
She had run from the sight, but it had come back. It always comes back, she thought.
"These visions are getting stranger and stranger, imaginary Atton," she said with an exhausted sigh. "If you're planning to try and kill me like you did in that last vision, you'd better put a shirt on first."
"It's distracting… for the mining droids, right?" he smirked.
"I didn't know cave visions came with a sense of humour."
"Who says I'm a vision? Come over here and you can find out how real I am."
She took a few tentative steps toward him, circling around the dead hssiss.
"You're very convincing," she said. "Maybe even better than the real thing. Too bad this is all in my head."
"Closer still," he coaxed her. "I promise I won't bite."
"Even if you do, it won't mean anything," she said, inching towards him. "You're not real. You don't have teeth."
Suddenly he launched forward and caught her in his arms. His searching lips found hers. It was the same kiss they'd shared on Dantooine, a powerful insistent connection that sent jabs of desire through her body. He loomed over her, his arms encircling her like a prison of flesh. She shut her eyes, inhaling the spicy traces of juma and sweat still lingering on his skin.
How was it so real? Surely even the much-vaunted power of the dark side couldn't simulate the taste of his mouth, the grasp of his hands that well, she thought. But even as the idea came to her, she knew that it was fatal to underestimate the ancient Sith or their ability to penetrate into the minds of even the most resolute Jedi. And she knew that when it came to Atton, she wasn't the most resolute of Jedi.
Atton pulled back to look at her, relaxing his grip around her waist. "Was that real enough for you, sweetheart, or do you want to try again?"
Her hands trembled. She tried to wriggle free of his arms. "You're a vision and the real Atton is my student. Nothing more, nothing less. The only kiss I experienced was one I remembered from a long time ago."
Hands hooked around her, he held on to her squirming body. "I'm going to keep you here until you listen to me. I know a way for us to have what we want."
She stopped struggling and glared up at him, her gaze an unspoken challenge. "What is it exactly that we want?"
He stroked her hair lightly with his hand as though she were a child who needed comforting. "Don't play innocent now. I know you feel it, too. Give up your Code, Shira, and this can only make us stronger. You can't fight it anymore than I can. You know I want you. I would give up my life for you if you asked me."
Her eyes stung with the tears she would not cry and her parched lips burned with the kisses she could not enjoy. "You may want me, but you don't love me. If you loved me, you would never be so selfish. I'm a Jedi. I don't possess anything or anyone - least of all, you."
She tried to calm herself and connect back to the Force, but it was like an echo sounding in distant rooms. It had betrayed her now, when she needed it most.
Looking into his eyes, she saw her own image lurking in the ominous depths of his pupils, a prisoner bound.
"I've already seen darkness in you," she whispered. "I've tried to deny it, but I know that just a few missteps could take you back to that place."
"You don't get it, do you?" Atton growled.
He let go of her waist, recoiling in disgust. "I don't give a damn about your 'dark side' or your 'light side'. All I see is you. And all I know is that if you keep pretending that I'm only your student, if you keep standing there telling me you don't want me, you're going to kill me someday. Maybe today."
Shira stumbled away from him, almost tripping over the dead hssiss. "You don't mean that. The dark side is what would kill you. If we were together in that way, we might have passion, we might have power, but we'd have hate and fear and jealousy too. We'd rot from the inside out. The dark side promises so much, but believe me, Atton, it will steal it all away."
"And what's your precious light side gonna get me?" he scoffed. "I can poison my liver slowly with juma, watching you, waiting for you, or I can turn into a block of ice and die while I'm still breathing."
His hand darted into his belt, withdrawing an Arkanian heavy pistol. He spun it quickly, adeptly, around his fingers in mimicry of a sharpshooter. It was a party trick he'd performed for her many times before, a vain flourish, but this time it came with an ugly twist.
Atton slowly drew the pistol up towards his head. He pressed the muzzle so hard against his temple that she could see a circular red mark beginning to form upon the skin.
A sardonic smile played around the edge of his lips.
"I'm not a patient man. I don't want a slow death. I don't love life, but I loved you enough to hold on to it for a while."
"Please, don't do this." Tears seared down her cheeks, blazing over her skin like the tails of comets. "I've loved you! I still do. Against my own will, against everything I was taught to believe. Damn it! Is that what you want to hear? Are you happy? I'd give up the Force again to have you, to stop being so alone."
She sighed, wiping the back of her hand across her wet cheek. The gash on her shoulder was bleeding, the wound open like screaming mouth.
"It kills me too," she murmured. "Little by little, every day."
Her only reward was his terrible, triumphant smile.
"Good," he said.
The pistol fired, its shot jolting through her body, seeming to split her skull in two.
The vision melted before Shira's eyes, a mist taunting her with its slow dissipation.
She stood alone in a dark rectangular room containing a freshly killed hssiss and the bones of a fallen Jedi.
And she sobbed, knowing that it had been her last test, a final temptation, and that she had failed.