"Mee-trrraaaaahhh."
It's a man's voice saying her name softly, from far away. It must be Sion. Only Sion draws out the second syllable that long. Plus, she thinks she can sort of sense him. There's a buzz in the back of her sleepy brain that feels vaguely like awareness.
"Mee-trrraaaaahhh. Wake up, Mee-trrraaaaahhh."
She refuses to open her eyes. She's afraid of Darth Sion and the possibilities he presents. She has successfully avoided succumbing to Darkness this long. It's too late to give in now that Revan's Empire has fallen. What's the point?
"Mee-trrraaaaahhh, I know you know I'm here. And look, I brought cookies. They're warm. Smell."
Wait. That's not Darth Sion, it's Tony the jailor. The affable guy with the cookies.
Meetra opens her eyes. Is she in her cell? Yes. And there's the auburn-haired jailor peering down at her lying on the bench. He looks concerned, and that's all wrong. She's fine. He's the one who's hurt.
"You look worse than I feel," she groans as she struggles to sit up. Meetra squints at the man who now sports a second, even more lurid bruise on his cheek to match the punishment he received yesterday.
The jailor flushes. "We're late leaving. Sion wasn't thrilled with the delay. The ship isn't ready yet."
"And that's your fault?"
"No, but I was in the vicinity when he was told."
"That guy's such an asshole," she sighs.
"More like he has high standards," the jailor brushes off his treatment. And that attitude speaks volumes about the way Sion interacts with his people that they have come to accept such arbitrary behavior.
"Are you alright?" Tony frowns. "He said you fainted in the greenhouse."
Now, it's her turn to be embarrassed. "I didn't faint."
"It looked like you fainted."
"I didn't faint!" Generals do not faint. "I don't faint."
Tony gives her a patient, understanding look. "It's alright to be a little fragile now and then."
"Here? With you people?" she scoffs at her enemy. "I don't think so."
"Will cookies help?" he smiles, declining to be drawn into an argument.
Cookies. Right. Tony said he brought cookies. Suddenly, her mouth is watering. "Yeah, they might."
Tony hands over a napkin with fresh cookies tucked inside. She opens them eagerly and begins munching. "These are just what I need."
"Cookies make everything better," Tony agrees. "The cook baked a fresh batch for the Master's mission."
"Sion takes cookies on his starship?"
Tony smiles at her surprise. "Don't people in the Republic eat snacks and junk food on road trips?"
"Yeah, yeah, they do. But I didn't expect that of him." Meetra smirks. "Maybe he should be the Lord of Sugar."
"He doesn't have many pleasures in life. Just his roses and his cookies."
"So don't judge?" she mutters with her mouth full.
Tony nods. "As far as Sith Lords go, trust me, those are tame indulgences. Well, gotta go. He'll be set to take off by now."
"You're going too?"
"I'm in charge of prisoners."
"He'll be taking prisoners?"
"He always takes prisoners. Why kill straight away when you can make someone suffer? Quick, clean deaths are a waste in his eyes."
Meetra makes a face of distaste. Her captor is living up to his reputation for bloodlust.
Tony reacts by sticking up for his boss. "For Lord Sion, it's a matter of survival."
Meetra raises an eyebrow. "So torturing prisoners is like the cookies? Don't judge?"
"That's right." Tony looks her over for a long moment. "So, you're sure you're okay? The Master said you fainted doing Force experiments with him."
"I'm fine." She feels like she has a gargantuan hangover, but otherwise she's alright.
"Did the experiments work? Did you feel the Force again?" he asks hopefully.
"Not really." She is glum. "I only felt Sion's pain. How does he live like that?"
"It's not pretty, is it?" the jailor sighs. Tony looks almost as dejected as she feels about her Force. But he gamely tries to cheer her up. "Well, maybe you will feel the Force again soon if you keep trying. The Master says you two are Force bonded like in the fairytales."
She shoots layman Tony a look. "What do you know of Force bonds?"
"I know that a dyad is a rare and magical gift bestowed on favorites of the Force. Great leaders receive them as a tool to enhance their power. They say Marka Ragnos had a bond with his Empress, you know . . . ."
Clearly, Meetra is supposed to be impressed by this fact. But she's clueless about who he is referring to. "Who's Marka Ragnos?"
Tony's response is coy. He points to the datapad he gave her. "Read your homework while we're gone and find out. Ragnos is a great hero of our people." The jailor cracks a smile and confides, "You'll like him. He's just your type. Well goodbye, Meetra. Vis vobiscum."
She doesn't recognize the foreign tongue. "What does that mean?"
"Force be with you. It's our customary farewell in Kittat, the Sith mother tongue."
"Oh. May the Force be with you. We say that too."
"Well, naturally. We were all Jedi once, weren't we?"
"What?" Again, she's not following.
"Read your homework," the jailor chides before he leaves. "Learn about the Sith."
Meetra takes this instruction to heart mostly because there's nothing else to do. She spends hours reading the datapad to alleviate the boredom and loneliness of solitary confinement. For days on end, she only sees the droid that brings her meals and towels.
She starts with the history files. It is a strange, eye-opening exercise to read about your people through the eyes of their enemy. For while the files she's been given detail the political, military, and social history of the Sith Empire, that story is told with constant references to the villainous bogeyman Galactic Republic. As far as Meetra can tell, opposition to the hated Republic has been the motivating cause for most Sith policy decisions for centuries now. And that feels weird since, for the most part, the Republic was officially blind to the existence of the Sith Empire until a few years ago. It's like finding out that your paranoid obsessive neighbor who you've never met hates you enough to plot to burn down your house.
Boy, the Sith sure can hold a grudge. Meetra reads the story of the exile of the so-called Dark Jedi in a long-ago religious schism that split the Jedi Order. The Dark Jedi were transported to the then farthest known reaches of the galaxy and unceremoniously dumped. The world they were marooned on turned out to be occupied by a humanoid species of tribal Force users. Those red skinned warrior people—the original ethnic Sith—intermingled with the fully human Jedi exiles. They pooled their resources and shared their knowledge. And from those Dark curious outcasts and Dark Force-strong natives, eventually the Sith Empire arose.
The story of how the fledgling Empire expanded to outlying worlds is familiar. The Sith experience setting up agricultural and industrial colonies reads closely akin to the Republic Core worlds' settlement of the Mid Rim and Outer Rim sectors. The difference is that the Sith arrived to conquer. They proceeded to enslave local labor and began to direct all economic activity. In time, they created a complex, fully integrated economy that spanned more than a hundred star systems.
Meetra learns that there is no free market invisible hand at work in the Empire. The Sith are not capitalists, they are fascists. From what she can tell, they are also micromanagers on an epic scale. Control, naturally, is a core value of the Dark Side. But clearly, the Sith have organized a sprawling military industrial complex with considerable power.
The focus of all of that effort—the uniting principle of the Sith through a long succession of Dark Lord leaders—is vengeance. Meetra reads multiple lofty odes to what is euphemistically called the 'revenge of the Sith.' What does that goal mean exactly? It's one part military subjugation of the Republic, one part religious inquisition to murder Jedi, and one part political culture war seeking to eradicate the democratic values of the soft, whiney, freedom loving, equality committed Republic society. The animus motivating the revenge of the Sith is noteworthy. The Sith are still super pissed about what happened to their forefathers over a thousand generations ago. Time has done nothing to lessen their vitriol.
That original sin—'the Exile' as it's called—was compounded by the Sith loss of the Great Hyperspace War many centuries ago. That bitter conflict ended in the fall of the first great Sith Empire and, as far as Meetra and most Republic citizens knew until recently, it was the last time anyone ever heard of the Sith. But the Dark Side survivors regrouped under new leadership, retreated back into the Unknown Regions, and plotted the rise of their current Empire. They are still led by that same revered messiah Lord, the reclusive sorcerer Darth Vitiate.
What does she glean from all the dry history she reads? Well, a few things appear to define the Dark Side ethos through all its eras. First, the Sith adore a strongman father figure leader. In fact, the patriarchal power structure seems to permeate all levels of society, public and private. Next, the Sith are a people focused on the past. They have developed a strong unifying identity based on their culture of grievance. Unlike in the Republic, there is comparatively little talk of the future. No one waxes eloquently on how to make things better for succeeding generations. It's all about settling yesteryears' scores and triumphing at last over the Republic. Finally, these people are obsessed with status and control. From their rigid social classes and archaic gender roles, to their almost feudal chain of command that establishes military and civilian authority at all levels, the Sith prize power. Who you have power over and who has power over you matters. The Empire is one enormous pyramid and at its apex sits Emperor Vitiate. Where is Sion in the hierarchy? Meetra has no idea.
And where are the women of the Empire? They are conspicuously absent in public life. Alarmed Meetra barely skims the datafile that addresses the role of women and girls on the Dark Side. It's just so repressive and backward compared to what she is used to. From the tribal notions of family honor, to the arranged marriages, to the emphasis on virginity, fertility, and child rearing, Meetra can't begin to relate to the Sith sisterhood. Disgusted, she closes that file and moves on.
The treatise on Dark power is far more interesting stuff. Meetra knows the Jedi version which teaches that fear is the path to the Dark Side. As a Padawan she learned that fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, and hate leads to suffering. And that wisdom tracked closely with her own lived experience during the war, watching friends, mentors, and even herself flirt with the very real temptation to misuse the Force.
But the Sith apparently teach something entirely different about the Shadow Force. They focus on desire that fuels conflict and ambition. Emotions—passions, to use the Sith's preferred term—are key. The Dark Side is selfish in this respect. It's all about what you want, be it revenge, achievement, control, possession, or power. And that individualism makes it very different from the altruism of the Light Side. The Jedi got the suffering part right though. Meetra reads a lot about how pain is the root of power. About how that which doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Determined underdog grit is a recurring theme.
For an approach to power fueled primarily from emotions, the Dark Side turns out to be surprisingly cerebral. The violence of the Sith might be brutish, but their strategy is undeniably brainy. The Dark Side thinks as much as it feels, Meetra learns, for the Sith love to plot and to manipulate. They can be painstaking in their efforts. Patient too, for all the best Lords of the Sith evidently play the long game.
Frankly, learning the forbidden Dark Side as described by the Sith is very reassuring to Meetra. She decides that she's not Dark, no matter what Sion says. After all, what she did at Malachor V wasn't selfishly motivated. Using the mass shadow generator wasn't for her own benefit. It was to end the destructive conflict and bring order to the Republic. She certainly didn't enjoy using it, but she did what she must. And she gathered no power from using it. In the end, she was fired, exiled, and cut off from the Force as a result. But she achieved her goal: the war was won and the Republic saved.
Maybe using the mass shadow generator was a bad decision, but that doesn't make it a Dark decision. And even if was a Dark means, it was for a Light end. At worst, that makes it grey in character, surely? That super weapon was a mixed bag ethical quagmire for certain, but not Dark per se . . . At least, Meetra hopes not.
Had the weapon destroyed just the Mandalorians and not the Republic fleet as well, would everyone still be as outraged? She posed that question to the Council and they didn't answer. Is it better or worse that both sides suffered tremendous losses? Does that make it even in some respect? The Council had no opinion. Some seemed offended by the question. And that attitude is all well and fine for Jedi Masters in their ivory tower Council chamber on Coruscant, but on the battlefront pragmatic discussions about acceptable losses are unavoidable. War is deadly by necessity.
Was it the magnitude of the loss of life all at once what made it wrong? Because Meetra could easily construct a timeline with equivalent Republic casualties spread over several months of warfare that no one would point fingers over. The deaths were all combatants on both sides, too. There were no innocent civilians. It's not like she pointed the thing at Alderaan or Hosnia and fired.
Why did the Republic even let them build such a weapon, if not to use it? What makes a weapon Dark anyway? Is there such a thing as a good super weapon or a bad super weapon? If so, is it determined by how you use it? By who uses it? Meetra challenged the Council to explain in what circumstances would using the mass shadow generator be justified. But no one had a real answer. They were annoyed by the question. Mostly, the Council Masters were concerned with the corrupting Dark Side energy they believed to emanate from the remains of Malachor V. They worried it would spread Darkness.
But even before Meetra spent three days reading the foremost tome of the Dark Side, she was skeptical of the Council's paranoia that Malachor V—or any place else for that matter—could involuntarily corrupt a Jedi to the Dark Side. The Sith teaching she reads now tends to support that view. Dark power comes from deliberate choices you make, it's not a disease you catch. The Dark Side is an ideology that you choose, not some bad karma you accidentally absorb. What's more, the Sith religion clearly requires much training and discipline. In its own way, it strikes Meetra as similarly serious and scholarly as the Jedi Order.
Are there truths to be found on the Dark Side? Is there more than evil at work among the Sith? Meetra tends to think yes. At least, she hopes the answers are yes. Because she doesn't like to think that Revan, Alek, Kreia, and the others doomed themselves for nothing. But that doesn't mean that Meetra herself wants to go Dark. She's seen enough to know that, at least for a Jedi, that is the path to ruin.
And here she goes again . . . making it all about the war . . . about her situation . . . Everything Meetra reads on the datapad she inevitably twists around to Malachor V. Years after that fateful battle, she is far less certain that she made the right decision, but no one other than Bao Dur knows her doubts. And well, what's done is done. Except it's not done. It feels like it will never be done because there is no way to atone for that sort of action. All she can do is seek forgiveness.
Meetra isn't foolish enough to approach the loved ones of the fallen for their absolution. She is hated now as much by the Republic military as she is by the surviving Mandolorians. Instead, the forgiveness she seeks is from the Force. Will she ever be reconciled with her god? Can she make things right with her creator? Getting her Force back seems symbolic of that milestone in Meetra's mind. But is this so-called bond with Darth Sion a step forward to that goal or a step backward? Meetra can't decide. But maybe it doesn't matter. She's willing to try anything at this point.
Meetra shakes her head now as if to shake away those negative thoughts. Her habit of depressive introspection is a dead end, but hours alone in a cell seem to promote it. For now that she has washed up on the unexpected shore of Darth Sion's fortress moon, she can't stop looking back at the shipwreck that brought her here. Meetra knows that she's trapped in the past. Is Sion her future? Will he be the one to help her make sense of her life? The man clearly has a plan for her, but he's not being entirely forthcoming about it.
It's day seven of her seclusion when in the middle of the night Meetra abruptly awakens from sleep. Her cell is pitch dark and she's fine. What has awakened her? Meetra's unsure. But she has a vague, unsettling sense that she's not alone. Again, she senses a buzz in the back of her brain that feels like awareness. But awareness of what? It doesn't feel like the dread of danger. Still, it takes a full hour before she relaxes back into slumber.
The next time she awakens, it is to the sound of a bloodcurdling scream. Someone is hurt, terribly hurt, and they need help. Groggy, Meetra sits up and looks around. And there it is again—a man's scream that lapses into a pitiful moan. It's coming from right next door.
Suddenly, Meetra understands what woke her earlier. Darth Sion has returned. Did the bond surreptitiously wake her? The Lord of Pain is close, she instinctively knows. And he's torturing a prisoner.
It is awful to listen to the man's torment. It's even worse knowing that Sion is probably reveling in it. For once, Meetra is thankful that she doesn't sense the Force because that insulates her from experiencing a whole new level of distress about what is happening. Plus, if she did have her Force back, she'd probably feel Sion's gross gloating pleasure in his cruelty. But even without the heightened awareness of the Force, the poor man's screams are hard to listen to. Meetra is disgusted and appalled. With nothing else to do, she begins to pace her cell.
It goes on and on. Meetra becomes increasingly outraged. She starts to finger her lightsaber hidden in her pocket. She's tempted to whip it out, light it up, and carve a hole in the wall so she can confront Sion. But then what? Meetra doesn't want to start a fight that she knows she cannot win. Because then she might end up the one screaming in agony. But, oh! How she hates being a bystander to this unknown prisoner's misery. Surely, this is excessive even by Sith standards.
Frustrated, angry, and uncomfortably helpless, Meetra finally decides to vent her disapproval by standing on her bench and slamming her fist repeatedly on the shared wall of the two cells. She pounds long and hard to express her extreme displeasure.
It makes no difference. The poor prisoner keeps suffering.
So, Meeta leaps back on the bench and starts pounding again. This time, she contributes a few choice words as well. "Sion, you Force-damned asshole, stop! Just stop! That's enough!"
This second attempt yields results. The torture stops. But wait—is the prisoner dead? Has he passed out? Or has Sion finally relented?
Evidently, the Sith is taking a break. Meetra hears his amplified speech giving orders outside her cell. It seems Sion has turned his attention from the prisoner to her.
Meetra is ready for him. She leaps down from the bench and squares her shoulders. When her cell door slides open, she explodes on entering Sion.
"What THE FUCK are you doing to that man?" It's not the most elegant opening line for intervention in a conflict, but it gets the point across.
Sion's response is clipped and grim. "You don't want to know. Let me finish. Do not interrupt my work." Sion turns with a swirl of his cape and begins to stalk out.
"Your work?" He's acting like she's disturbing some conference call transmission, not a torture session. "Your WORK?" she hollers after him. Meetra's long been a screamer when she's upset, and she doesn't hold back now.
Annoyed, the Sith whirls to snarl, "I'll show you." He strips off a glove and shoves his bare hand in her face. "Take a look."
Meetra blinks at what she sees. "It's better." A lot better. His hand looks nearly healed. It's astounding. "Is that from uh next door?"
"Yes."
Her brow furrows. "And will it heal more?"
"If the prisoner doesn't die first."
Meetra cringes as she begins to fully understand what's going on across the wall. "I see."
Sion shrugs. "If he dies, I will move on to the next one. We brought back plenty this time."
Meetra gulps. She asks, "How many is plenty?" before she thinks to stop herself.
Sion bristles. Again, he shoves his bare hand in her face. "See this? This is who I am! I don't take pleasure in torture. But I need it and so I will do it. Healing will take however many prisoners' lives it takes. I don't bother to count."
Fuming and appalled, Meetra says nothing. She just purses her lips in silent disapproval. She's hoping the bond is conveying exactly what she thinks of his behavior.
It must be because Sion is as indignant as he is defensive. The modulated voice from the mask is an electronic hiss as he informs her, "This is how I live. Get used to it." Again, he stomps for the door.
"How did you become like this?" she hollers after him.
Sion hesitates on the threshold at her question. It prompts her to press, "You weren't always like this, were you?" And wait, that came out a bit too hopefully.
"I was once normal," the Sith answers. He's still facing away. It's clear he doesn't want to talk. He's anxious to get back to his torture and, Meetra senses, anxious to avoid her question.
"What happened?" she prods.
Will he leave? No. Again, Sion hesitates.
That feels like an opening. "Tell me. Please." Trying to tamp down her censure, Meetra argues, "You say you want me to understand your perspective—you give me a datapad full of Sith history and culture. That's all fine, but I don't really care about official ideologies. I care about people. I have always only ever cared about people." She has long believed that that best way to bridge the differences which exist throughout the galaxy is to build personal trust and rapport among its leaders. Because lectures from Senate podiums and moral pronouncements from the Jedi Council do nothing to change people's minds. You will never persuade an adversary if you do not listen to them first. Everyone deserves empathy, even the enemy. And so while Sion might not show empathy to his torture victim, Meetra will be empathic for Sion. She's striving mightily now to take the high road and give him a chance to explain.
This isn't really about her, but she artlessly babbles out her own experience. "It's why I joined Revan . . . it's why I broke with the Order . . . the regular Jedi were too concerned about themselves as an institution . . . they had strayed from their true purpose . . . it was all pointless rules and fear mongering, and not good works that made a meaningful difference in people's lives . . . People ought to come first . . . people matter most . . ." Enough about that. Cringing, artless Meetra shuts up fast. She's uncomfortably aware that in attempting to pry out Sion's secrets, she just revealed some of her own.
"What I mean is that to understand your perspective—not the official Sith perspective, but your own mind-I need to understand you . . . why you do the things you do . . . why you are the way you are . . . how you became this—this—"
"Monster?" Sion turns to regard her, his arms crossed.
"—person," she immediately amends. But the word he supplies certainly fits. In this moment, Darth Sion, the Lord of Pain, strikes her as Darkness incarnate. This selfish torturing murderer seems indifferent to suffering. He's only interested in what he can gain from it. That attitude repulses her. But gamely, she tries to understand.
"How? How are you this way?" She keeps demanding an explanation, all the while knowing there's no excuse Sion can make that will fully justify his actions. But just hearing his thoughts might help, right? Intent matters for crimes, as she herself once argued to the Jedi High Council.
"Do you really wish to know?" the Sith counters coolly. "Or, are you looking to pile on your contempt?"
"You compared yourself to an animal before. A hawk, was it?" Yes, that was it. He was a bird of prey. "Are you really an animal when acting like this?"
"Spare me your moral outrage. I do what I must." Sion waves the cell door behind him closed with the Force. They are alone now as he accuses, "You would do the same in my position."
"I would not!"
"You would." Sion is smug in the face of her scorn. "You especially would."
It's an oblique reference to Malachor V that doesn't sit well with Meetra. She glares hard at the Sith Lord, annoyed that he gets to hide behind a mask for this confrontation.
"Fine," she relents, recalling now how frustrated and misunderstood she herself had felt when the Jedi Council hadn't wanted to hear her own explanation. They asked her questions but didn't bother to listen to her answers. She won't do the same to Sion. "Then tell me. Why are you like this? Who made you this way?"
Is there a sadistic Sith Master in his background who groomed him thus? Maybe a domineering father figure who twisted young Sion's lust for power into this serial killer life? Meetra's certain that there will be finger pointing forthcoming. But Sion surprises her by accepting full responsibility.
"I made myself like this. I have always had an unusually high pain tolerance relative to others. But I took it to unprecedented levels out of frustration and failure."
Failure. Did he just say failure?
"You did this to yourself . . . From greed for power?" she guesses.
"In a way, yes," Sion allows. "Long ago, I was gravely injured while seeking revenge. I failed in my objective. I lay dying and left for dead from my wounds."
The expressionless mask that speaks is as inscrutable as ever, but the inflection of Sion's voice tells Meetra that the memory is still confounding. His words are composed, and yet it's very apparent that the Sith is upset. And wait—could this be more of the bond leeching through? Meetra wonders how she knows that.
"I was so aggrieved by the way things had turned out," Sion glumly recalls. "My family was slaughtered, our home looted and burned, and myself slain in my attempt to get even . . . I raged against the injustice of it all. With my dying breath, I beseeched the Force to let me live to sow Darkness. I refused to die until I achieved my vengeance."
Meetra squints in confusion. "How is that possible?" Did the Sith experience some kind of Dark Side resurrection miracle?
"I can't explain it. But the Dark Side has long been a pathway to abilities some consider to be unnatural. I lived that day when I clearly should have died. I rallied from my agony, channeled the pain for power, and dragged myself to safety."
"So . . . you recovered?"
"Never fully. The wounds were mortal. No amount of medical treatment will ever heal them completely. I have given up attempting to understand my predicament scientifically. It will take an act of the Force to fix me permanently. For now," he explains, "the Force keeps me alive, but the original wounds reappear and my body continually decays even with constant vigilance." He laments, "Be careful what you wish for. I lived, but I am not alive in the normal way. Much of my life is consumed in sustaining my existence."
"Torture . . ." she surmises grimly.
"Yes."
"I'm sorry for your family," Meetra feels obliged to say.
"My pregnant wife and four children died in the raid that day, along with all of the servants. None had any involvement in the underlying dispute, but they were victims all the same."
"Who killed them?" Please don't say a Jedi, Meetra thinks to herself.
Sion answers vaguely, "Another Lord. It is all too typical of my people to fight each other in vicious, petty conflicts. Vitiate says he forbids it even as he encourages it."
"Did you get your revenge?" Meetra wants to know. She's wondering if zombie Sion's terrible bargain with the Force was worth it from his perspective.
The mask slowly nods. "My wrath was terrible."
That's all Sion will say on the topic, and Meetra is glad for it. Because if Sion's torture today is merely the routine stuff, she doesn't want to know what qualifies as 'terrible.'
"I didn't expect to live beyond fulfillment of my vendetta," he admits, "but I did. I spent many decades afterwards mired in confusion and survivor's guilt. I became a marauder mostly as a convenient vocation to kill regularly." Sheepishly, he explains, "I needed pain to live. I didn't care who I killed or why, so long as they suffered greatly."
The mask now looks away to quietly relate in slow, uncomfortable words, "Pain became a way of life. I began to hurt myself just to make sure I could still feel. Pain fueled my power and reassured me. Over time, pain became less of a means and more of an end. It took a very long time for me to get past that place in life. For a time," he confesses with a voice choked with shame, "I was too Dark."
Too Dark. Meetra nods slowly as if she understands, but she doesn't. But clearly Sion thinks this is a meaningful admission.
The bizarre mask turns to regard her now. "Like you, I know loss, I know regret, I know aimlessness, and I know solitude."
"We're nothing alike!" she interrupts to object. But he ignores her.
"I am the foremost expert on pain, whether it be emotional or physical. There's nothing you or anyone could do that would shock me. But there's much that I have done and will do which you will abhor. Deal with it," he growls. "This is who I am."
Meetra says nothing. It's mostly because she's not sure she can do that.
"I did not set out to be who I am today, but it happened all the same. And truthfully, were I to live it over again, I suspect I would make the same decisions. I'm not sure any were real mistakes."
Meetra thinks of her own circumstances. She whispers, "I can relate."
From behind the mask, his hidden eyes lock with hers. "I know you can. That is why I chose you. That must be why the Force bonds us together. Because while we hail from different perspectives and have traveled separate paths, we have much in common."
Ugh. "Do not romanticize my situation," Meetra grinds out.
"Too late," Sion answers simply, adding, "If any can bridge the Dark-Light divide, we can."
She's about to object again when he preempts her by continuing. "To make sense of it all . . . to give meaning to my existence . . . I look to the Force. It is, after all, why I am here still. These days, my only loyalty is to the Force. Vitiate is not my Master. I only serve destiny."
"Okay . . . " This conversation is really starting to wander. But it also feels very honest. Sion might be talking grandiosely, but he at least believes it.
"The traditional teachings of the Sith long ago ceased satisfy me. In searching for alternatives, I have flirted with cults, mystics, and fringe groups through the years. I also make regular pilgrimages to places strong with the Dark Side to seek enlightenment and healing. That is why I traveled to Malachor V to meet Lady Traya. And through her, I learned of your existence." Sion pauses before he adds, "Even before I met you, I knew you were the perfect person to help me."
"Just how long have you been stalking me?" Meetra worries.
"Since Korriban. That was no chance meeting, it was fate at work. I set out to find you afterwards. It wasn't hard. The Force led me to you. I knew it for a sign."
Meetra frowns. Sion's always been creepy for his zombie body, but now he's creepy in an entirely new way. Plus, he's uncomfortably reminding her of Kreia's zealotry the more he speaks. "So . . . are you some sort of heretic or fanatic?" she wonders aloud.
"Probably some of both," he replies. "I revere the Force in all its majesty, but I do not love the orthodoxy that surrounds it. More and more, I believe the guidance I seek comes less from uncovering obscure teachings of the Sith and more from learning wisdom from the Jedi."
"Let me guess. That's where I come in," Meetra responds dryly.
"I hope so," Sion answers. "I brought you here to help me. I intend to help you. And then perhaps together we can bring about the will of the Force."
What does that vague statement mean exactly? Before Meetra can ask, Sion announces, "But before any of that can happen, I must heal. So let me finish my work. I am doing this for us both."
What the Hell? "Don't blame this on me!" she snarls. "That man's suffering is from your actions!"
"The more I heal, the less pain I feel. And that means you will feel less pain when we next connect in the bond. I have no wish to overwhelm you like last time. That does neither of us any good." The Lord of Pain now takes his leave. "I will see you tonight. Do not bother me before then."
"Wait! Stop!" Meetra sputters as she frantically searches for an alternative to more torture. "Let me at least try to heal you through the bond! You might not need to inflict pain! Here—let's try now!" She offers over her hands. "I will try harder-I promise! I will do better!"
Sion shakes his head no. The Sith tells her plainly, "That man's pain will start the job which you can finish tonight." The mask looks her over and rumbles softly. "When I am done here, I will be ready for you, my dear."
"But—"
"You have already demonstrated that you are not up to the task of my current pain level."
Meetra has no rebuttal to his logic. She just bites her lip and scowls.
"This is the only way," Sion assures her. He exits and moments later, the screams from the neighboring cell resume.