It felt strange being on Voidwalker's bridge. In all the hours Davek had spent here, he'd never once seen it like this. The overhead lights were turned off, the crew pit empty. The seats at the upper-level consoles were unoccupied. He stepped onto the empty command deck and listened to the hum of the sublight engines, still faint. They were still drifting through the Malador system on the edge of the Alliance fleet but none of the adjacent ships were visible from this angle. Only stars filled the viewports. There seemed to be more of them now than ever before. For so long he'd thought he'd never see stars again. Now he wanted to stand on a planet. He wanted to see if blue sky and streaking clouds were as beautiful as he'd remembered.

He heard footsteps on the bridge. He was unsurprised to see Marasiah walk onto the deck. He started walking toward her and asked, "Did you talk to your family?"

"I did," she said. "They had a lot to say."

"I bet."

"They said news about Voidwalker is all over the Empire. Everyone is calling us heroes." She sat down at the edge of the empty crew pit so her legs hung over the side. Davek sat down next to her, their hands not quite touching.

They watched the stars for a while. When the engines-flares of a few paroling Tri-wings drifted into view she asked, "Do we have a final casualty count?"

The hours since the battle's end had been busy ones. Alliance crews from Starless had come over to inspect the ship, help secure damaged decks and bulkheads, and provide badly-needed medical assistance. They'd also tallied the number of crew lost in the most recent battle.

"Overall," he said, "We brought seven-hundred and sixty-four people home. When we left Bilbringi we had one-thousand and forty-seven. Of course, some of those people we have now came from Shieldbreaker, so Voidwalker's death count is going to be even more than three hundred..."

She grabbed his hand and squeezed it. "Seven-hundred and forty-six Voidwalkers are alive because of you, Davek, not to mention everyone on Malador. That's what's important."

"And you." He squeezed back. "At the end there, when you knocked out the corvette, was that what I think it was."

She sighed and looked at the stars. "It was. It just… came to me."

"It saved us all."

"I know. And I know I can't just push this away, whatever it is. This power… it's part of me, even if I didn't ask for it."

"What do you want to do now? Still be a pilot?"

"I don't know. Nothing's the same any more."

Nothing would be the same for anyone on Voidwalker. They'd all been ready to die and found themselves alive again. Davek didn't blame Marasiah for uncertainty; he didn't know what he would do next either.

He glanced sideways at her, watched her profile watching the stars. Extreme situations produced different responses in different people. Sometimes, when situations returned to normal, they fall back to their normal ways of acting and consciously cut themselves from everything they'd done and been during more perilous times. There was nothing wrong with that; most beings needed a sense of normalcy. But it had been nagging at him the whole time during post-battle clean-up and evaluation that perhaps Marasiah would be one of those people. Perhaps she'd try hard to put all of this behind her, including Davek. Yet here they were now, alone on the bridge, holding hands and watching stars in silence. He decided he didn't want to be anywhere else.

"What will they do with the worldship?" Marasiah asked eventually.

"I don't know. I heard Admiral Antilles talk about running it into Malador's star."

"That's one way to make sure it never gets used again."

Davek waited a little while before saying, "My uncle died on that worldship."

She squeezed his hand a little more. "I heard rumors. I'm sorry."

"I didn't know him as well as I should have. Ben Skywalker was a Jedi Master, the Jedi Master. I was always… something else."

"What will the Jedi do now?"

"I don't know. Whatever it is, I'm sure my mother and Arlen will be a part of it."

Still holding his hand, she inched closer and leaned against his shoulder. He leaned back, let his head rest against hers, smelled her hair. He closed his eyes, breathed in and out. He didn't know what his future would be when he stepped off this bridge, but he wanted Marasiah to be a part. He needed it.

He realized what he'd never told her. What he thought he never would. He opened his mouth but only a little bleat got through.

"What?" she said.

"I, ah..." He'd never been good at being open with his feelings. Maybe he never would, but he still had to try. After six weeks walking the void, he should at least be able to do this.

So he forced it out: "I love you, Marasiah."

He waited. Silence dragged on and seconds became agonizing before she squeezed his hand again. "I kind of figured that."

He finally exhaled and sagged against her a little more. She said, "You're going to have to work on public speaking for when we get back to Imperial Space."

"What do you mean?"

"According to my parents you're hero of the hour. There's pictures of you on the news-nets all the time. They'll be begging for interviews when we get home. It's a big win for your father too, and for Reige and the legacy they laid down."

Davek hadn't even thought about that. "I was just trying to get this crew home. I didn't want any of this to happen. And besides, you're more of the hero than I am. Everyone in the air group and Razor Company are. You were on the front lines all the time. You all lost so much."

She let him think in silence for a while. Eventually she asked, "What will happen to Voidwalker?"

"I don't know. The Alliance techs are still evaluating the condition. Chief Daharr says the hyperdrive core is still intact after the last fight but structural integrity might be shot. But I hope we can get it home. I don't want to see it scrapped." He ran his free hand against the deck's lightly-ridged metal. "This ship was everything for us. Even if most of it was awful…"

"Voidwalker got us where we needed to be," Marasiah said.

"It was home," he said, and looked around the dark and silent bridge. He wondered whether, years from now, whatever the future brought, it would remain a home for his heart. He believed it would. Even if they scrapped it, tore it apart, or tossed it into a sun, a part of him would always be here.

-{}-

After everything it had been through, Starlight Champion had come out with only minor damage. Somehow, Arlen wasn't surprised; Champ had always been a lucky ship. It sat now in Starless' auxiliary hangar. Arlen had just finished talking with his parents and Davek and he lingered now outside the ship, wondering where else it would take him and hoping it was through less dangerous straits than those of the past few weeks.

Most of the Alliance fleet remained in the Malador system, but a few ships had jumped back to the core. Chance had gone with them, claiming that he had company business that was long, long overdue. Arlen didn't hold it against him; he'd dragged his friend into more than enough messes lately.

That left one more person to deal with. Arlen went into Champion and found her where they'd first met: in the engine room. She had pulled out a bench and was looking over her beskar armor one plate at a time.

"Still looks good to me," Arlen observed from the doorway.

Tamar let the chestpiece rest in her lap. "Never hurts to take good care of your clothes."

"Good point." His hand went to the silver lightsaber still at his hip. He detached it from his belt and held it out. "I think you should have this back now."

"Are you sure?" she asked softly. She'd been weirdly subdued since the fight on the worldship. She seemed to be treading light around him, not wanting to upset him after the loss of his uncle. It was a new side of her, one he hadn't been expecting. But then, they always said Mandalorians were big on family.

He walked over and sat down on the bench beside her. He held the saber out and waited. Eventually she took it.

"I'm sorry you lost the other one," he said.

She ran her fingers across the lightsaber, tracing familiar metal curves. "Any more news about the Mandalorians?"

"As best we can tell, there's no more in Senex-Juvex. We have a map to the Shroud now to make sure, but my guess is they found out their employer was dead and decided the contract was terminated."

"Knowing Gevern Auchs, he's probably heading back to Mandalore."

"You still have cousins, don't you? A clan?"

"Aliit, we call it. But the Skiratas are also Mandalorian. If I tried to go back there, plead my case…" She sighed. "I don't know. I'll need to wait and learn more. If Gevern Auchs still has solid support as Mand'alor I don't think I'd be welcome. Even if Clan Skirata sheltered me, and I think they would, it would turn the rest of Mandalore against them. I don't want to do that to them."

He waited a while, watched her stroke her great-grandmother's weapon, then asked, "What will you do instead?"

"That's the big shabla question, Jedi." She slapped the saber into her open palm. "I wish to hell I had an answer."

"You still think of yourself as Mandalorian."

"Of course I do. But… apparently that's not all I am. Back when I was in Krux's ship, hibernating, before you revived me, I had a dream about my ba'buir. The Jedi's son. Or maybe it was a Force-ghost vision, I don't know. He told me the Force was a gift. He said I shouldn't just look away from it."

He knew better than to come out and suggest she train as a Jedi. He wasn't sure it would work for her anyway. She still had Mandalorian ruthlessness in her core, a willingness to embrace spite and anger, but she had a fundamental goodness too. Without she wouldn't be here. Neither would Davek, the crew of Voidwalker or, most likely, a couple billion people on Malador. She'd told him Mandalorians had no word for hero and she clearly didn't want to be seen as one, but she was starting to see herself as something more than a Mando for the first time. He didn't know what that was the start of, but it was a start.

She kept rolling the lightsaber around in her hands. She said, "You'll just build yourself another one, won't you?"

"That's the plan."

"Hmmm. What's going to happen to the Jedi, now that your uncle is gone?"

"I don't know. The Jedi Council will have to elect a leader. There's talk about my mom taking over."

"I see." She stopped moving the saber and let it lay flat in both palms. "I'd like to meet your mother."

"Really?"

Tamar picked her head up and looked at him for the first time. "I've heard about her. From my ba'buir. I was always… curious."

"She's aboard Starless right now. We can go see her if you want."

"I don't want to bother her. I'm sure, right now, she'd busy."

"I just saw her on her way to her cabin." He got to his feet. "She sounded interested in meeting you too. We should go now."

She looked up at him. The hesitation in her eyes was also new. She swallowed, stood up, and hooked her great-grandmother's lightsaber on her belt. She looked down at it for a long moment and Arlen could feel her pride in the Force.

Then Tamar looked up and said, "Okay. Let's go meet her."

He wasn't sure what it felt like the start of, but it was definitely a start.

-{}-

As Intruder sailed through hyperspace, Darth Kheykid sat in the cockpit of his craft, thinking. He'd felt it when his master had died. Her dying anger had surged through him and felt as real as his own; then it had suddenly died. That anger had saved him. It had given him strength to pick himself up, push past the pain from all his wounds, and make his way back to the ship.

The anger wasn't what echoed in his mind; it was the sudden stop. He'd killed enough to know that the end of life often came fast and brutal, but somehow, deep down, he'd never believed a Sith could be terminated like that.

Darth Xoran had taken him as a child and trained him to become a full Sith Lord. Now he would have to make his way without her. He should have been eager; instead he felt hollow inside.

Melancholy was unworthy of a Sith. Eventually he brought Intruder's comm system online and tried to connect. He waited patiently until the holo-image of a Chagrian woman in dark robes appeared above his console.

"Ah, Darth Kheykid," she said. "I thought you'd survived."

"I've escaped the worldship and removed every trace of our presence there," he told her. "Did you feel Darth Xoran's passing?"

"We did. Her loss is great, but at least it was a worthy one."

"What do you mean?" As far as Kheykid knew, everything had ended in failure: the worldship dead, the Senex-Juvex revolution fizzled to nothing, the Alliance and Jedi triumphant.

"You haven't heard, then? Ben Skywalker, Grand Master of the Jedi Order, is dead."

Kheykid's eyes widened. "I didn't know. What happens to the Jedi now?"

"They'll find a new leader, but that doesn't matter. The Skywalker line is sundered. The only one left is a frightened girl. The Jedi will be vulnerable now."

"That is great news."

"It is indeed. So don't act defeated, Darth Kheykid. You've done well and will be treated accordingly. Make haste back to the Hapes Cluster."

"I already am, Darth Wyyrlok. You should know that I also have a passenger."

She frowned. "What sort of passenger?"

"An apprentice Jedi from the Chiss. Darth Xoran expressed an interest in him before she died. We battled together on the worldship."

"And you took him captive?"

He nodded. It was easier than explaining that they'd pitched into a shaft together and fallen dozens of meters into blackness. "I felt his anger during our battle. Darth Xoran said he has a great need to control and make order."

"That sounds like what would interest her. You did well to retrieve him, Darth Kheykid. Bring the Chiss to Hapes. We'll see if we can make a Sith of him."

"Yes, Lord Wyyrlok," he said, and killed the connection.

When the holo shut off Kheykid looked over his shoulder. The Chiss lay unconscious and strapped to the couch at the rear of the cockpit. Kheykid knew Jedi had turned Sith many times before. He did not know this apprentice enough to say whether it was possible or not, but greater Sith than he had deemed it worth a try. If he wouldn't turn, he could always be killed.

Darth Xoran had told him that things had be broken before they could be remade. Kheykid suspected this young Jedi had a lot of breaking in store.

-{}-

"Darth Kheykid is bringing a captive Jedi apprentice back to Hapes," Darth Wyyrlok said. "It will be interesting to see what comes of that."

"Will you let him train the Jedi himself?" Darth Kroan asked as he sunk into his chair and watched the Chagrian's holo-image.

"It will be worth a try. It will be interesting to see how much of Xoran has rubbed off on him."

Wyyrlok said it in a very neutral tone, and Kroan nodded in agreement. Darth Xoran had been one of their most powerful and accomplished lords; without her they'd have never established their current base in the Hapes Cluster. Still, Xoran's passion had always been for Senex-Juvex, the place that had made her. Even after she'd become Sith, a part of her had also remained Savyar, the battered and brutalized Falleen orphan. That core had been the source of her power but also a weakness. Had Kroan been in charge of the Senex-Juvex rising he'd never have brought the worldship out to Malador when it was vulnerable. Xoran had tried to be Sith Lord and revolutionary at once and it had gotten her killed. In a way he regretted the loss of Vilath Dal more than Xoran's. The master shaper had saved Lord Krayt's life and created many tools for the One Sith to use. There were other Yuuzhan Vong still serving the One Sith, but none as brilliant as him.

"At least," he said aloud, "Xoran took Ben Skywalker with her. The Jedi will have a hard time recovering from that. Tell me, do you think it would be worthwhile to go after the girl now?"

Wyyrlok considered that one. An attempt to kill Ben Skywalker thirty years ago had nearly cost the One Sith everything. Lord Krayt's monomaniac hatred for that family line was both the source of his power and his blind spot; he was like Xoran in that way.

"We will wait for now," Wyyrlok said at last. "More important is what happens on Coruscant."

Kroan fought a frown. "The situation is in flux. Lannik Sevash had stepped down as Chief of State, which means in election is imminent. There's been a groundswell of support for Darth Caedus' spawn. She urged the Senate to stop Xoran and when they didn't she went to the worldship herself and nearly died. She couldn't look more heroic if she tried."

"A pity she didn't die," Wyyrlok muttered. Like the Skywalkers, that woman had figured importantly in Darth Krayt's visions. Like them, she'd proven very difficult to dispose of. It sometimes felt like the Force itself was trying to safeguard her.

But then, they were Sith, Wrenching their will from the Force was their reason for being.

"You'll use every resource at your disposal to keep Allana Djo from winning that election," Wyyrlok said sharply. "Her ascension cannot be allowed."

"I can't guarantee anything. I've told you that. I did everything I could for the last election and even then the Alliance barely voted to stay out of Senex-Juvex."

"A vote that wasn't even honored. It seems we underestimated Sevash's personal bravery."

It seemed to Kroan he wasn't the only one they'd underestimated. "We can always kill her."

"Martyr her, you mean, and wed the Jedi and the Alliance even more closely together." The Chagrian scowled. "No. Do whatever you can to guarantee she loses that election, Darth Kroan. I don't care how many senators you have to bribe. Do it."

"I will do as you say." He tried to hide his exasperation; if Wyyrlok wanted someone to control the senate she should have seduced a politician the dark side, not a businessman.

The holo winked off. Kroan sighed and sat for a while in his office, thinking, watching the lanes of speeder-traffic drift through Galactic City. He said he'd done everything he could, but that wasn't entirely true. He could have done some things smarter; placed a homing device on Arlen Fel's ship, for instance. He'd had the perfect opportunity but he'd balked at it, afraid the Jedi might find the tracking device, figure out who'd sent it, and uncover the One Sith's most highly-placed man in the capital. At the time it had seemed like a gamble with risk and uncertain reward. Retrospect told a different story.

Still, he tried not to dwell. The Senex-Juvex operation had failed because of Darth Xoran's actions, not his. They'd set out to widen great cleavages in the Alliance, set it against the Empire, and establish another Sith-friendly puppet state in Senex-Juvex as they had in Hapes. All of things had seemed within grasp, only to be snatched away at the last minute. It wasn't just because of Jedi meddling either; the bravery of small beings like those rouge Alliance captains and the Imperial frigate crew had turned the tide. An unhappy side effect of being a Sith, Kroan thought, was a tendency to underestimate the vermin.

Kroan rose from his chair, went over to his closet, and began to dress. He slipped into the formal suit he'd brought from Kuat and checked himself into the mirror to make sure he it was as pressed as it should be. He nodded at his own image, the image of a successful and stylish businessman. Then he made his way to the living room of his estate, where his servant droid was busy cleaning up the drinks he'd left on the table the night before.

"Good morning, Master Retor," the droid said. "How are you this morning?"

"I'm well enough, all things considered," Darth Kroan said. "Remind me again, what's on my schedule today?"

"You have a meeting with the senator from Malastare at 0900, lunch with the Taim & Baik board members at 1300, a shareholder conference at 1500."

"Of course, thank you."

"You've also received a request for tomorrow. Chance Calrissian says he'll be returning to Coruscant then and would like to share a drink at the Iridian Spires. He suggests an early evening time."

"All right, set something up," Kroan said, then went over to his kitchen to brew a cup of caf.

Calrissian could be amusing, for a vermin, so Kroan didn't especially mind the meeting. He'd hoped all along that his connection to the businessman would in turn provide him with an inside vector on the Jedi. That hope had finally paid off, only for the Mandalorians and Darth Kheykid to botch what should have been an easy kill-or-capture mission. He'd had to hastily fake the suicide of one of Calrissian's underworld contacts to throw the Jedi off his trail, too.

Kroan sighed and started brewing his caf. One lesson he'd picked up from his life as a businessman was that sometimes you had to shake off your mistakes and keep going like they'd never happened. He'd meet Calrissian and try to do that tomorrow. A Sith, like a businessman, had to take small defeats but keep on working toward the grand design.

-{}-

The first funeral Jagged had ever been to had been one without a body. It had been a solemn service, laying an obsidian plaque in the great war memorial hall on Csilla with his brother Davin's name on it. He's been a child then, barely as tall at his father's hip. He was an old man now, almost seventy, and he'd been to many more ceremonies, with bodies and without. The ones with no remains had always been in wartime, and he'd long hoped memorials like that were long past. Then had come the Senex-Juvex rising and the massacre at Karfeddion, and he'd resigned himself to holding a memorial with no body for his son, whenever his family could spare a single day together.

It felt strange, then, to stand with Davek on one side and Arlen on the other, watching his wife light a great bonfire in the center of the ancient arena on Ossus. The tiers were filled with Jedi gathered from all corners of the galaxy to pay tribute to a Grand Master who'd left no body to burn.

The bodyless pyre flared high and Jaina stood close, watching the flames reaching for a starry sky. Then, finally, she turned and walked away.

More went up to the flame to pay respects. Jagged and Davek, two of the few non-Jedi on the crowd, remained on the side and watched the procession. Some tossed mementos into the fire. Some made gestures of respect from their native cultures. Some stopped, stared at the flame for one long moment, then kept walking.

Jaina slipped in where Arlen had been. Like the other Jedi she wore her brown robes, hood pulled high to obscure her face. As they watched Lowbacca and his children pass before the pyre she leaned close and said, "You can go too, you know."

"I'm fine here," he said.

"You wouldn't intrude. You're family."

"I know. But I'm fine." He didn't want to explain how difficult it was. Being Jaina, she probably understood already.

If anything, his wife understood better than anyone. Her litany of lost was as long as Jagged's. Chewbacca, Anakin, Mara, Jacen, Zekk, and now Ben. He and Jaina had lost loved ones early, and all this time he'd hoped, even trusted, that his children would not have to go through the same trauma. That they would grow up in peace.

They watched as more familiar figures passed by the pyre. Allana moved slowly after being wounded during the fight on the worldship. They said the Yuuzhan Vong poison had been neutralized, though some still remained in her system. She shuffled forward with Tenel Ka grasping her arm tight, and Jagged couldn't tell who was supporting whom. Perhaps it went both ways.

Jaina whispered, "She'll be going back to Coruscant soon. For the vote."

Jagged nodded. He'd heard all the buzz from the capital, the way Allana was being feted. Other candidates had thrown their names out to replace Lannik Sevash, but none had become sudden heroes as Allana had. He wondered what Princess Leia would have thought of her granddaughter following her footsteps. He wondered what Jacen would have felt.

Jaina locked her arm around his. "It'll be a hard road for her. There's still so much to reconstruct. And there are Sith still out there. I wish I could say we've hurt them as badly as they hurt us, but I just don't know."

Allana and Tenel Ka moved on. More Jedi passed the fire, ones he didn't know. He knew that, just as Allana was being feted as the next Chief of State, his wife was being talked about as Ben Skywalker's successor. He didn't want that for his wife; in his mind she'd endured more than enough awful responsibility half a lifetime ago and deserved nothing but peace and rest with her family. But Jaina was Jaina; she might no longer be the Sword of the Jedi but she still carried every weight the Order placed on her without shirking, without complaint.

As more unfamiliar Jedi passed, he asked her, "What about Jade? How is she holding up?"

"She's managing, I think. In her own way."

Jagged wanted to point out that not being visible at her own father's memories service might send the wrong signals. It was a callous political comment so he held it back; still, she should have been here.

Maybe Jaina read his mind. She reached down and squeezed his hand. "She is here, Jag. Just let her be. Let her do it her own way."

"She'll have a hard road ahead of her." They all would.

"She has a fine example to follow. And good people left to help her."

Jag nodded and kept holding her hand. It had occurred to him, not long ago, that with age all his concerns had winnowed into one: the desire to leave a legacy behind. The reformed Empire was his legacy and so was the next generation. They'd have to be safeguarded, now more than ever.

-{}-

Her father's memorial pyre looked impressive, even from a distance. The arena on Ossus looked its four thousand years in the daylight but here, in the night, filled three-quarters full with hundreds of Jedi, it felt like a grand place, a place worthy of a last goodbye to Ben Skywalker.

Jade didn't go down by the flame. She didn't need to; everything that had needed to pass between her and her father had passed on the worldship, when his body had vanished into nothing but their connection in the Force had blazed strong and true until the fight was won. When she closed her eyes, mediated, and allowed herself to fall deeply into the Force, that was what she felt now. She couldn't recall the agony of her mother's death even if she tried; her last sensations of her father had replaced them.

Still, memory was no recompense for loss. As she sat on the arena's highest rim, perched atop four-thousand-year-old stone, she couldn't help the hollow feeling inside her. Both her parents were gone. Not dead; they survived in the Force and had not abandoned her, she understood that, and in the realm of the living she still had people to help her. The galaxy was full of beings who didn't have even that, especially after all the agony the Sith had wrought in Senex-Juvex.

Much of the melancholy she felt watching the memorial flame came from the young man beside her. In the week since the battle on the worldship, the color had come back to Jodram's face but his arm was still in a splint and he moved awkwardly for the new prosthesis fitted on his left arm.

Their bond in the Force was as close as it had been before. She knew that, as much as he grieved for Ben Skywalker, his thought really dwelt on another Jedi, whose loss had been tragically overlooked in all that had happened.

They watched the fire for a long time. Sometimes they looked up at the stars. Eventually Jade said, "You did all you could for Wharn. It's no one's fault except the Sith's."

"You know," he sighed, "I didn't even like him at first. He just seemed..."

"What?"

"Like he was trying to be a Jedi Master when he should have just been an apprentice."

"He was carrying a lot of weight. And trying very hard."

"It's not fair it ended like that. I mean, your dad..." He trailed off.

"Go ahead. You can say it."

"It's sad what happened to him, but he had time to do great things. Wharn never got the chance." Jodram sighed. "He was my friend. In the end, I got that. I wish I could have made sure he understand too."

"He knew." Jade found his hand on the cold stone and squeezed it.

He tilted his head back and stared at the stars, the cooled stardust of the Cron Drift, the one moon half-visible in the eastern sky. It would be a while yet before both moons turned full at once, but Jade wanted to be here for it.

"What will you do now?" he asked.

"I want to be a Jedi," she said without hesitation. "It's going be different without Dad, without Master Mjalu, but I'll do it. And I know I have people who will help me. Aunt Jaina, Allana, Arlen."

"You can count on me too, you know."

"I know. I count on you the most." He looked away, almost embarrassed. She smiled in the dark. "I don't want to go down. Can we just stay up here for a while?"

"I won't leave you," he said.

They remained there on the rim, perched on old stone under endless stars, and watched in silence as the procession ended, the Jedi drifted out of the arena, and her father's memorial flame dwindled and died, leaving cooling embers behind. Darkness swelled and filled the arena, but Ben Skywalker's light wasn't gone. Jade understood that, finally. That knowledge gave her strength like she'd never known.

-{}-

Watching herself in the mirror, Allana carefully adjusted the shimmersilk robes as they spilled off her shoulders. She shifted the green and white fabric, then ran both hands through the red-gold cascade of her hair. A tremor of pain ran through her back as she lowered her arms; a remnant of the wound left by the Yuuzhan Vong blade. She lingered on the reflection of her face: it looked paler than before, her eyes heavier. She looked older and felt older. She wondered if she'd ever fully recover.

Allana shook her mind free of that grim reflection. She was alive. With life anything was possible. She turned away from the mirror and lowered her hands to her sides. With a careful one-handed grip, Tenel Ka placed the blue Galactic Alliance insignia on the collar of her daughter's robe.

"It is done now," her mother said, stepped back.

"Well, how do I look?" Allana glanced at herself in the mirror.

"Like my daughter," Tenel Ka said with a smile.

"Well, I'm glad I don't look like a Wookiee. What I wanted to know is-"

"You look like the newly elected Chief of State of the Galactic Alliance."

"Ah. That's why I look so tired." She exhaled; her shoulders slumped. She knew how much of a toll leadership had taken on her mother, knew even more how losing it had devastated her. "I didn't want this responsibility, Mom. There's so much ahead. Reforming Senex-Juvex, rebuilding out relationship with the Empire, watching out for the Sith-"

"You won't be doing it alone. The Jedi Order will be behind you every step of the way."

She sighed again. "You know, when he found out I'd been elected, Lannik Sevash left me a message. He said that I was best suited for the office because I didn't seek it out."

"Perhaps. Your grandmother didn't seek power for its own sake either, and she was a great leader."

"Jade explained to me about this conversation she had with Jodram and Wharn, back when all this was starting. They argued about how maybe Force-users aren't meant to have this kind of power because it corrupts them." As she said it she had to think of her father; Tenel Ka did too.

"It didn't corrupt Leia," she said carefully. "I think that those corrupted by power are prone to corruption already. You're not one of those, Allana. You're more like your grandmother than anyone else."

"I was hoping you'd say that. Still… I remember something I heard about my father. He'd seen a vision of me, standing beside a throne of balance, surrounded by adoring followers from all over the galaxy, reigning over a period of peace."

"There's no throne waiting for you out there."

"I know, but if you don't look at it literally, do you think this is it? Is that what Dad wanted all along, what he did those… All those things for?" All those awful things to others and himself.

Tenel Ka touched her daughter's hand. "Jacen did what he did for many reasons, a lot of them bad. But he did love you, Allana. And I think he wanted nothing more than this moment."

Her vision blurred at the edges. "I know, Mom. So is this it, then? Is this what he… what he killed and died for?"

"And if it is?"

"I don't know. It makes the responsibility even bigger, doesn't it?"

"You'll have to be worthy of it. I think you already are." Tenel Ka let her hand fall to her side. "We should be going. You've kept them waiting long enough."

"All right." Allana dabbed her eyes dry with a cloth, checked her face one more time in the mirror, and said, "There's just one thing left."

She walked over to the shelf on the wall and opened the small metal case. She picked up her lightsaber and hooked it to the sash across her waist.

Tenel Ka arched a gray brow. "Ah. Aha. That is a bold statement."

"They elected a Jedi Knight. They'll get a Jedi Knight. We shouldn't have to be ashamed of what we are. That's why the first thing I'm going to do is ask the Jedi Order to help rebuild Senex-Juvex. The more we can get the galaxy to accept us the harder it will be for the Sith to sow discord."

"I hope you're right," Tenel Ka said. They both knew what Jedi leadership had cost their family and cost Hapes. "Now are we ready?"

"I think so." Allana raised her voice and called, "Come in."

The door slid open. A young man and young woman wearing the blue uniforms of senatorial guards stepped into Allana's salon. Jodram moved with only a tiny limp and Jade held herself straight and proud. Both had lightsabers visible at their waists.

"More bold statements," Tenel Ka observed.

"Don't worry." Allana hooked her arm on her mother's. "I can run things with a soft touch too."
Jade and Jodram led them down the hallways and into the senate chamber. Applause swirled around the arena like a whirlwind; the noise was so great it took Allana's breath away.

Jade leaned close and said, "It's all for you, you know."

"No." Allana gently touched her arm. "It's for your father too."

Jade nodded bravely. She and Jodram stepped aside so Allana could walk with down the scarlet aisle to the center the arena, where the speaker's podium was waiting. Compared to the path that had brought her here it was so short a walk. As to the path that lay ahead, it was a long one too but she knew it had to be walked, regardless of the weight now heavy on her shoulders. It was the only way to pass through shadow and into a brighter day.

Raising her head, Allana stepped forward into the light.