Chapter Fifty-three

"And so you arrive." Darth Sion did not bother to turn around and face Aeryn as she cautiously entered the room, but his gaze instead remained focused out the massive window before him that revealed the ravaged, broken landscape of Malachor V. "Just as she said you would."

"She and I have unfinished business," the Exile said carefully. Though she'd met no resistance as she'd walked the deathly silent halls of the Academy, she was nervous and alert, and she kept a good distance between herself and the Sith Lord. "I need to see her."

Sion shook his head and glanced her way, his one good eye revealing a cool, aloof expression, though Aeryn could sense an undercurrent of tension through the Force. "You know I cannot allow that."

"Why not?" The broken man did not answer, his eyes fixed out the dark glass again as if lost in his own thoughts. She couldn't exactly place what it was about the shattered shell of a man before her, but Aeryn didn't fear him. There was a calm, resigned air about him, but he was clearly content to keep things civil between them for the moment. He seemed somehow changed from the man she'd seen twice before, and if she'd been willing to admit it to herself she might have conceded that she felt drawn to him. Looking at him brought neither fear nor disgust to her mind, but rather a deep sense of empathy, as if she were looking at a reflection of herself as what she might have become. Aeryn frowned and edged closer until she was standing before the window as well, still several feet from him. "Stop protecting her."

His face was so ravaged by time and violence that his expressions were nearly impossible to read, but Aeryn had a feeling the look Sion flashed her was completely incredulous. "What could possibly make you think I would want to protect her?" he growled.

"Because…you're standing in my way," she replied as thought that should be perfectly obvious. Sion's expression relaxed and he turned his body away from the window to face her fully. Silently he studied her, his one brown eye thoughtful and expectant, and after a moment Aeryn began to wonder if she'd missed something.

"What is it like for you?" the Sith Lord asked abruptly.

"What is what like for me?" Aeryn asked with a confused shake of her head.

"Being bound to her."

Aeryn blinked in surprise, her thoughts a jumble for a few moments as she fished for an answer to the sudden question. "I…don't know how to answer that," she admitted.

"Do you hear her, every moment?" Sion's voice was harsh, and Aeryn tensed as he took a quick, angry step toward her. "Her whisperings in your mind, her teachings, her wretched voice filling your every thought until you can think of nothing else, can dream of nothing else but her and what she desires?"

Aeryn refused to back down as he approached, her eyes fixed on his face until he stopped less than an arm's length away from her. Fury fizzled around him like static, prickling Aeryn's skin, but his wrath was not focused toward her. "No," Aeryn whispered in reply, but her voice gained volume as she spoke. "It's not like that for me. She is there, yes, but I can keep her out if I want."

Sion shook his head and turned to pace away from her. "So she would have you believe. You underestimate her, just as I did, just as we all did, and it will mean your ruin."

Aeryn scowled. "You're wrong. I'm not like you, or Nihilus. I have no intention of giving in to her because she has nothing I want."

Sion shot her a cold look over his shoulder, but it wasn't her inference that he'd bowed to Kreia's will that seemed to offend him. "You are naïve to think you have a choice. She already has you, though she hesitates to bend you as she has others in the past."

"Why is that?"

"She believes she can make you see the truth," Sion murmured with a note of dark amusement in his tone as he faced her again. "Turn you to her cause willingly."

Aeryn frowned deeply and shook her head. "Her 'cause' is madness."

"Yes. It is."

"If we agree about that," Aeryn said slowly, impatience creeping over her, "then why keep me from stopping her?"

"You will fail," Sion stated without a shred of doubt. "She will break you and I cannot allow that."

He turned his back to her and strode slowly toward the middle of the room, but not before Aeryn noticed the glint of his lightsaber hilt in his hand. "So you mean to kill me," she said with a touch of disappointment.

Sion turned to face her again, his crimson blade hissing to life in his hand. "I mean to protect you."

There was no time for Aeryn to consider his words or to think of any reply as the Dark Lord drew the Force to him like a cold shroud then thrust it out toward her in a violent wave. Aeryn swallowed a cry as the power washed over her and bit at her skin like hundreds of tiny blades, but she leaned into the throw and maintained her footing even as the glass window behind her shattered with an earsplitting crash. On a sudden impulse, Aeryn reached out to the glass fragments through the Force before they could fall and hurled them recklessly past her own body toward Sion.

A harsh crackle of brilliant lightning arched from his fingertips just as the shards slammed into him, slicing and embedding themselves in his dead flesh with enough momentum to send him reeling back a few paces. Aeryn tried to roll aside, but the lightning collided with her left hip and spun her off balance onto the floor, the electricity sending numbing waves through her whole frame. She shook her head to clear away the pain, but barely managed to whip her double blades up in time to block Sion's 'saber as he bore down on her relentlessly. He leaned back, his blade raised above his head as if to crash it down upon her again, and Aeryn lashed out with her still partially numb legs and managed to unbalance the Sith Lord with a wild kick that sent him sprawling onto his backside.

"It doesn't have to be this way!" Aeryn cried out as she reeled to her feet, willing the Force to aid her trembling limbs. "I can stop her, we can stop her! Help me instead of fighting me!"

"I will not see you destroyed by her," Sion snarled as he regained his feet, glass fragments tinkling to the floor as they were pushed out of his body by the dark side through his will. "I will not see you crushed!"

"I will not break!" Aeryn insisted, anger flashing in her eyes. Sion stayed rooted in place, his face tilted down but his attention fixated on her face as she tensely paced the room to loosen the numbness out of her legs before he decided to strike again. "Get out of my way! I know damned well you want this over as much as I do!"

Sion murmured in a low voice laced with rage and hatred, softly as though he was invoking a curse, "You are so beautiful." Aeryn stopped pacing to stare at him, completely taken aback by the sudden statement as well as the burning and utterly contrary emotions behind them. "You shine so brightly that I can barely stand to look upon you."

Stunned, Aeryn could find no answer to the bitter, loathing words that seemed ripped from the broken man's lips. By the time she opened her mouth to respond, Sion growled under his breath and lunged toward her with his weapon raised. Aeryn blocked the blow with a skillful parry, as well as the flurry that followed, but she didn't notice the darkness creeping around her until it folded itself over her like a cold, oily second skin, bleeding her life out through her very pores. With a cry, she shoved Sion's blade aside and thrust her hand toward him, sending him hurling back with a powerful Force push. The dark side slithered away from her and the Sith Lord dropped to his knees a dozen feet away from the panting Exile. Slowly he rose to his feet once more.

"No darkness touches you." Sion's voice was so quiet that Aeryn had to strain to hear him. "It tears at you, rages around you, but never becomes part of you." He lifted his face to stare at her fully. "I hate you. I hate you because you are beautiful to me."

"That is the stupidest line of logic I've ever heard!" Aeryn blurted out in exasperation. "You do not protect someone you hate!" At her words, Sion flinched and fell back a step, his legs unsteady as if he might collapse to his knees again. Watching his reaction, Aeryn nodded in slow understanding. "But that's the problem, is it? You have to hate to keep going. If you admit to yourself that you feel anything but hate for me, or anything else, you will…."

"Die." Sion shuddered but kept to his feet, his one eye fixed on her face, holding her rapt attention. "I am hatred. I am rage. I am lust and greed and pain, and I am death. This body would have long ago failed if not for my hatred…my will…and you make my will falter, Exile. That I cannot allow."

"Why the hell not," Aeryn spat at him, suddenly taking a few quick steps closer to him. Her guard was down, her emotions running high and distracting her, and yet the Dark Lord simply gazed at her. "You're obviously sick of this place, sick of this life – if you can even call this life! Let go, Sion."

"Let go?" He turned the words over as if they truly mystified him. "You believe it is that simple."

"It is that simple!"

"That I can just let all I have done, all I have earned, all I have taken slip away into nothing? Or worse, pass to one of the weaklings fawning at my feet here in this wretched academy?" Scornful, he shook his head at her and stood up rigid, unyielding. "The dark side is mine to command. You cannot sway me."

Angry as she was, Aeryn saw the attack coming and braced for it. Sion threw himself at her in a frenzy, his 'saber raised high over his head, and their blades crashed together in a macabre dance of color and grated sound. Aeryn remained calm under his assault, aware that any damage she could do to his wasted body would be meaningless, so she focused only on defending herself. The flashing blues and reds spun together with such fury that a deep violet haze filled Aeryn's eyes, but she never wavered, and Sion never paused. Aeryn deflected each crashing blow until she began to tire and when Sion showed no sign of relenting his barrage, Aeryn knew she had to do something to break the stalemate. With as much concentration as she dared give to something other than parrying Sion's blows, she gathered the Force to her and threw it out from her body in a violent burst.

Sion never flinched. The Force rolled off and away from him like a gentle breeze and his 'saber danced with even more deadly speed. Aeryn cursed herself for revealing that she was tiring. There was no satisfaction or glee in the Dark Lord's expression, but Aeryn was confident that if he managed to wear her down, he would indeed kill her.

Her arms burned from the unrelenting pounding of his lightsaber against hers. As he prepared an especially forceful downward slash, Aeryn twisted aside instead of parrying the blow and the power of his momentum sent Sion's face straight into Aeryn's waiting fist.

It was like punching a solid metal wall, and Aeryn bit back a cry of pain as she felt a few small bones give way with a nauseating crunch, but her rash action had the desired effect. Sion reeled back, not from pain or because she'd done any actual damage, but out of surprise at the sudden contact. Aeryn leaped back several feet to keep a good distance between them, her throbbing hand buried under her opposite arm as she tried to balance her 'saber one-handed. She wanted to heal the damage, but she feared he would take advantage of her distraction and attack again.

"Why do you persist?" Darth Sion snarled. "The only way to kill her is to die yourself, this you know! Why do you fight what must be?"

"Because I can't accept that it's inevitable! Because I refuse to admit that there is no other way, that the path before me is set in stone no matter what I do!"

Sion laughed, a cold, sinister sound. "You seek to defy the will of the Force."

"No," Aeryn denied, finally daring to send a trickling of healing to her injured fingers. "I simply refuse to accept that there is only one solution to every problem. Just because Kreia must be stopped doesn't mean it has to end in death."

"And if you are wrong?" Sion pressed, his fingers flexing on the hilt of his 'saber, his entire being laced with tension.

"Then…" Aeryn sighed and her shoulders sagged a little. "Then I will do what has to be done. I will kill her, or myself if I must. She cannot be allowed to succeed, no matter the cost." Something about Sion's aura gave Aeryn a sliver of hope that perhaps he might listen to her this time. "Help me."

"And how would you have me help you, Exile?" the Dark Lord mocked bitterly.

"You could start by getting the hell out of my way," Aeryn said with a vain attempt at a wry smile.

Sion frowned in concentration, his eye narrowed as he stared off at some point off to Aeryn's left. "I…I cannot," he said with a strange weariness. "Her will flows through me still, vile though it is. If I let you pass, she could use me to harm you or those who follow you even if I did not desire to do so."

Those who follow me? Could Revan have arrived so soon? "Why do you choose to live this way?" Aeryn asked in a tone that she hoped he would understand was compassionate and not contemptuous. "How do you stand to be her puppet, her fool? Wouldn't death be better than this?" she gestured at the cruel coldness of the academy around them.

"You do not understand," Sion hissed with an angry shake of his head. "In this life, I know what I am, that I am in control. If I let go…" his voice trailed off, his gaze unfixed once more. "I fear death, Exile. I fear what awaits me if I let go of my hate, let go of who I am. You do not know what you ask of me."

Sadness washed over Aeryn as she watched him. In his single good eye, she saw a perfect reflection of her own fears, fears that had kept her alive through events that should have killed her. "It's not too late," she murmured. Sion tilted his head at her, seeming confused. "The Force is all around us, Sion. All you have to do is ask."

The Dark Lord stared at her in breathless silence for several heartbeats before he found his voice. "No. I cannot be redeemed. Not after all I have done, all I have destroyed. I am a beast, a monster…I am an abomination of the Force."

Aeryn shook her head. "Ask. You can be redeemed."

"But I should not!" Sion growled, but his tone was strained with anguish. "I deserve no forgiveness!"

"That's not for you to decide, unless you refuse to ask, and if you refuse to ask, you'll never know the answer." Aeryn waited several seconds, hoping Sion would relent, before she pressed, "What's the harm in asking? At worst, nothing will change."

Aeryn lost track of how long they stood there, staring at one another, but it wasn't long before she realized that Sion was shaking. His whole body began to tremble as if all his muscles were twitching at once, and the longer she watched, the worse it became. Finally, with a shuddering cry, Sion collapsed to his knees, his lightsaber clattering noisily on the hard floor, then pitched forward onto his shaking arms.

"Forgive me…" he whispered so quietly that Aeryn crept toward him, drawn to witness what, if anything, would happen to him. "I regret. Oh, how I regret. Forgive me. Forgive…forgive me…I am so tired…."

The broken man's body shuddered and Aeryn was amazed to feel the hatred flow out of him, bleeding from him in invisible rivers, dark and ominous. A soft groan rose up in Sion's throat and Aeryn could feel his pain through the Force, a dull festering pain, like that of an infection being drained from a gaping, ancient wound. Several long seconds passed but all Aeryn could sense was the suffering of the man in front of her, and she began to wonder if he would be denied forgiveness after all.

A sudden brilliance filled the chamber, the light so bright that Aeryn gasped and whipped her arm up to shield her eyes. It wasn't simply a physical illumination either, but something deeper that touched a longing inside of her and made her want to laugh inexplicably. Lowering her arm, she gazed around in amazement, trying to locate the source, but this light bathed everything evenly in the same pale radiance. The air itself crackled with power.

On the ground near her feet, Sion cowered and groaned again, but after the first initial shock, he straightened slowly, and stared around in wonder. "I never thought…" he breathed, "…never…."

Aeryn could not help but smile, her eyes falling shut on their own accord as she inhaled deeply. The air tasted cool and clean and renewed her strength. She could do this. She could finish this. She could make all the sacrifices of so many people worthwhile.

Almost giddy with newfound assurances, Aeryn opened her eyes and looked down at Sion still kneeling on the floor. He stared around as though he expected at any moment to awaken from a dream, but as soon as Aeryn's eyes fell on him, he met her gaze. Not really sure what she meant to do, Aeryn reached out toward his face.

He did not shrink from her touch as her fingertips slid over the broken planes of his cold, fragmented cheek. Visions flashed through her mind in rapid succession, scattered remembrances and shattered memories, but a single image rose above the fray: a tall, proud man with dark hair and eyes, and a sardonic half-smile. There was a hungry gleam in his eyes, the look of one who longs for power, but also passion and kindness and intelligence in equal measure. He could so easily have become anyone that Aeryn could not help but wonder who Sion might have become if he had chosen another path.

Pushing the thought and the visions aside, Aeryn smiled sadly down at the Sith Lord. "They forgive you. Be at peace."

Sion's hand shook unsteadily as he reached up and gently touched the back of her hand. "Thank you," he whispered.

His body stiffened suddenly, his back arched painfully, and Aeryn retreated a few steps as the broken shell that had once been Darth Sion slumped motionless onto the cold, stone floor. For a moment, the brilliance that filled the room flared so bright that Aeryn was forced to shield her eyes once more, but to her it seemed as though the Force were rejoicing in the return of one of its own. Then, as suddenly as it had come, the light faded and left the academy feeling even more dark and oppressive than before.

Weary beyond comprehension, Aeryn sank down to sit several feet from Sion's body, her eyes unfixed at some point on the floor. She needed rest, desperately, but she was certain that even a week of sleep would not better prepare her for what awaited in the next room. There was no preparing for this. Either she would succeed or she would fail, and there were no second chances. I cannot fail.

Aeryn felt tears sting her eyes when she looked at the broken body beside her, but she ruthlessly dashed them away. If she could not cry for Bao-Dur, she would certainly not waste tears on Sion. She told herself it was exhaustion that made her emotions run high, but that knowledge was hardly comforting.

It was several minutes before Aeryn realized she was not alone in the room. "Well done." Aeryn scrambled to her feet as a single, luminous yellow eye watched her from the shadows for a pause, then emerged to reveal the female Sith commander. "Using his own weakness against him. You would make a fine Sith." Aeryn snarled at the bone-chilling smile on the other woman's face, but bit her tongue to keep from replying. "What, nothing to say? Have you wasted all your words on our fallen Lord? What a pity…."

Run.

Aeryn stiffened and took a sharp step back as the commanding voice echoed in her mind.

They are too many for you, Exile. It was their hope that you would kill their immortal lord so that one of them might take up his mantle. You stand between them and their power. You must run.

I don't run from Sith, Kreia.

But you do not have the time for a needless battle, do you. Come. I have waited patiently for long enough. It is time.

Aeryn longed to argue the point, but when several dozen shapes materialized from the shadows behind the fierce commander, she knew the old woman was right. Readying her 'saber, Aeryn shifted her weight as if she were correcting her stance, then with a burst of the Force, vanished down the narrow hallway behind her, toward the source of Kreia's power.


A/N: My husband is to blame for the delay of this chapter. He bought me a few new games that have distracted me like mad, but I'm still hell bent to get this story done soon. Thanks for reviews, and for putting up with my stupidly sporadic updates. :)