The difference between the stale air of the ancient temple and the relatively fresh air of the open summit hit Kagi the moment he stepped out onto the plaza. He squinted into the bright sunlight, while Jolee shaded his eyes with one hand. Juhani's eyes, on the other hand, adapted more quickly than the humans', and she quickly recognized the figure standing before them in the shade of a pillar.
"Bastila!" she called, and ran forward to greet the missing Jedi.
As she moved, something sharp drove itself into Kagi's mind, and he reached out a hand toward Juhani. "No, wait!"
Too late. A sudden surge through the Force, and Juhani was instantly flying through the air toward Bastila as an all-too-familiar snap-hiss sound came from the lightsaber handle in her hand.
And then, to the horror of both Jolee and Kagi, the red blade of the lightsaber appeared, protruding through Juhani's back. Just as quickly, the blade retreated back into the lightsaber, and another surge in the Force sent Juhani flying back against the near wall.
For several long moments, no one moved.
"Revan," Bastila said suddenly, breaking the silence. "I knew you'd come for me. Malak thought you might be too afraid to enter the temple again, but he doesn't know you like I do. Not since you've changed."
"Bastila, don't do this," Jolee said, his hands tightening around the grip of his lightsaber. "Come back with us, before Malak returns."
"Escape?" she asked, a mocking tone in her voice. "You don't understand. I have sworn allegiance to Lord Malak and the Sith. I am no longer a pawn of the Jedi Council."
He knew. He had felt it through their Force bond. The darkness that corrupted her. The same darkness that had held him in its grasp, until she had pulled him from it. His hands tightened until his knuckles turned white, until his arms trembled with the feedback energy built up.
A little voice inside him, the leftover darkness from his days as Darth Revan, welled up and whispered into his ear. She has betrayed you, Revan. Betrayed your love for her and gone to your enemy. Make her pay for it, Revan. Give her pain to match your own pain!
He closed his eyes tightly against the voice, willing it back down into the depths of his mind. In the wake of its departure, a cooling tranquility washed over him, steeling his resolve, steadying his shaking hands, and loosening the grip of rage upon his mind.
"Don't do this, Bastila," he said quietly, barely beating out the breeze swirling around the temple summit. "Don't turn to the dark side."
A cruel smile twisted her lips as she turned her eyes to him. "You say that as if the dark side is some terrible entity. The Jedi Council has brainwashed you like all the others. Like they once did with me. They speak of the dark side as if it is something to be feared. But in reality their only goal is to manipulate those who are strong in the Force. The fear of the dark side is a tool to maintain control."
She turned away from him then, stalking a few paces away, then turning, and recovering those steps, inspecting the handle of her lightsaber as she did so. "Why do you think they forbade you and Malak from joining the Mandalorian Wars? They knew you would realize your true potential and break free of their domination. Malak has shown me how the Jedi Council have been using me the same way they once tried to use you. They were holding me back because they knew some day I would surpass them all."
Ignoring her words, he reached into her mind, stretching along the Force bond they shared. He could feel her rising up her mental barriers to try to shut him out, and he allowed her to block him for the time being.
"It isn't too late, Bastila. Come back to the light."
She paused, as if surprised she had resisted him so easily. "I…resisted at first," she said hesitantly. "I endured the Sith torments with the passionless serenity of a true Jedi, emptying my mind. But after a week of endless tortures I finally saw the truth. Malak forced me to acknowledge my anger and pain. He showed me the liberating power of those emotions. Then he made me see how the Jedi Council has denied me what is mine by right!"
Unbridled anger rose in her voice, and she clenched her free hand into a fist. "The Jedi Council gladly used my Battle Meditation in their wars, but they still treated me like an inferior – like a child! They were jealous of my power, of what I could become." Her tone became spiteful and she laughed, a cruel, hard sound. "They wanted me to bow and call them Master and follow their Code and obey their every order. But all the while they were exploiting my Battle Meditation for their own use."
Once again, he attempted to probe her mind, this time directly, not along their bond. And again, she put up barriers that he could have broken on the worst day of his life. But once more, he allowed her to believe she had bested him.
"Fight it, Bastila. You're stronger than this. I will help you."
"You are a sad little fool," she said condescendingly, and laughed again. "You speak as if I were the same Bastila that you've known all along. But freed from the control of the Jedi Council, I have become much, much more. I almost wish you could see things as I do now. I wish you could join me and taste true power once again. Sadly, I doubt you are even capable any longer."
She took a deep breath, lowering her eyes to the ground. When she lifted them again and met eyes with Kagi, something animalistic lurked behind them. But where other men would've withdrawn a step, he simply stood his ground, and let her read the emotions in his eyes. The betrayal, the anger, and, ultimately, the pain.
Something in her gaze faltered.
"With the power of the Star Forge Malak will destroy the Republic and conquer the galaxy," she said, turning her back to them and sweeping her left arm out in a grand motion, as though taking in the entire galaxy in that one sweep. "And I will be the apprentice at his side. After I prove my worth by killing you!"
He sighed. With his right hand, he reached over and pulled his lightsaber from its station over his left hip, then held it out and to his right, angled behind him. "I will do what I must."
"You will try," she mocked.
Behind her, the snap-hiss shattered the silence as his blue blade erupted from the hilt clasped in his hand. In a single move, she activated both red blades of her lightsaber and leapt up, spinning in midair to come down at him with her blades swinging for his head.
In an instant, his blade came up, intercepting the blow of her red blade from his left, then sliding to his right to counter her second attack from that side. He shoved her blade away with his, ducked beneath the other blade as she turned the momentum into a full rotation.
She continued the spin until she was several meters distant from him, the double-bladed lightsaber held behind her in her right hand, her left hand before her in a gesture of invitation. A sadistic pleasure twisted her otherwise beautiful features into a mockery.
Spinning his lightsaber around his hand, the man formerly known as Revan looked upon Bastila and sighed, shaking his head slowly. He closed his eyes and thought all the way back to Manaan, just before she had admitted her feelings for him, when she had confided in him that she was afraid of falling to the dark side, and he had sworn that he would keep her from falling.
He opened his eyes and focused on her features, twisted with hate. With sadness, he looked into her sickly yellow eyes, boring deep into his own soul. "I have failed you, Bastila," he said, sorrow pulling at every word. "I have failed you."
A cruel smile appeared on her face, and he knew right away she had been digging at his memories as well. "You have failed only yourself. There is nothing I desire. The dark side has been my path to power. I have everything I could ever wan't."
"No, you don't," he answered. "There is one thing you do not have." Me.
Steeling himself within the Force, he spun his lightsaber once more and attacked, rushing directly at the dark Jedi. Surprise registered on her face as she realized that his mind was completely closed to her now, and she took several hurried steps back, swinging her lightsaber around in front of her to intercept his glowing azure blade, just inches from her face.
Jolee swung around behind her, bringing his glowing emerald blade toward her unprotected backside. Snarling, Bastila pushed Kagi away from her with brute strength…or had he intentionally stepped away to allow her to defend herself? No matter. She spun around, intercepting Jolee's attack with her blade.
Almost immediately, she stepped halfway around and brought her right blade down hard, knocking away Kagi's snapping blade at the same time the other half of her lightsaber's arc forced Jolee to duck or lose his head. Holding her lightsaber in place, she spun her body around into a spin-kick aimed at Jolee. The heel of her boot impacted solidly against the retired Jedi, spinning him away unconscious.
While she was distracted, Kagi doubled the amount of force he was applying against her lightsaber, intending to throw her off-balance, but she simply turned the momentum into a midair rotation to land gracefully on her feet and charge right back at him.
His lightsaber was ready, intercepting hers inches from his face, and forcing it back toward her. Now their faces were mere inches apart, their crimson and cerulean blades clashing brilliantly between them.
"You are stronger than I would've thought possible after what the Jedi Council did to you," Bastila said, struggling to bend him over backwards and defeat him in their saberlock. "Seems that Malak was wrong; the power of the dark side is not lost to you after all, Revan."
A surge of strength powered by something not of the Force pushed them back to the equal lock positions. "Do not call me that," he hissed, inches from her. "I am not Revan anymore."
"You can deny what you are, Revan, but you are only fooling yourself," she coolly answered. "I know the truth. I have seen the shadows inside your mind. Remember, I was there when you nearly died in the trap set by the Jedi Council!"
She suddenly broke contact, expecting him to stumble and leave her an opening. Instead, he shifted his weight around to the left, swinging his lightsaber horizontally toward her side. Hers flashed down, blocking his, but he suddenly shoved against her with a massive surge of strength, bringing their lightsabers up and over until his was on top.
Releasing his grip on the lightsaber with his left hand, he formed it into a fist and shot it up into her face, rocking her back several steps. She shook her head once to clear it, then readied her lightsaber again before her. "We are forever linked by my actions on that bridge."
Spinning the lightsaber in his grip, he brought the weapon up over his head, angling it until it was pointed directly toward the ground, held protectively before him. It was an awkward guard; one few had ever mastered. He had. "Yes, Bastila. That link is how I know of the light still in you. You will return to us!"
"These are not your true feelings, Revan," she said, almost sympathetically.
He could feel her probing his mind across their link. This time, he opened all his mental barriers, allowing her to dig deep and read that they were, in fact, his feelings.
She hesitated slightly, her own lies now caught out in the open between them. But then her expression hardened again. "You are speaking as a tool of the Jedi Council, as I once did," she said, attempting to break him with her words. Deep down, though, she knew that it was an impossible quest. "But now I see how the Jedi used us both."
A current of anger shot beneath her words, and pure hate swelled up in her eyes. "The Council tried to exploit the bond between us," she spat angrily, perhaps moreso than she should have. She was dimly aware that he would find the hidden meaning behind her words. He always had. She forced herself past those thoughts, clung to the anger and hate. "They hoped I would draw out your memories to lead them to the Star Forge. We were slaves to their will, like all who follow the Jedi Code!"
She studied the guard stance he was in, looking for a weakness in it. "But in our shared visions of the Star Maps, I also felt the so-called taint within you. But now I embrace the power of the dark side; your dark side!"
He scoffed from behind his daring guard, shaking his head ruefully. "You should have learned from all that you found in my mind, Bastila. My mistakes. Come back from the dark side."
"Mistakes?" she spat contemptfully. "No, Revan, the only mistake you are making is the one you are making now. You deny yourself the power that is yours by right. Only now do I realize how strong you are. You deserve to be the true Master of the Sith, not Malak. I see this now. Together we can destroy your old apprentice. Join me and reclaim your lost identity."
"I am not Revan anymore," he answered, his voice as hard as vacuum-forged durasteel. "Those days are lost to me now, and willfully so."
"Your mind was too badly damaged to ever fully restore your memories, Revan," she said, sadness creeping through her voice. "But your power, your strength of will, the essence of who and what you are; these things still remain!"
She glanced to his right, behind him, where Jolee was beginning to stir. If she was going to convince him to side with her, she'd better hurry. She tried something else. "Once, long ago, you defied the Jedi Council, freeing yourself from their control. You claimed your rightful title of Dark Lord of the Sith. Together we can defeat Malak and take back what is yours!"
"What I want from Malak is that which he stole from me," he answered, shifting into a more traditional guard and stepping back to bring Jolee into his vision.
"Yes, yes, your title of Dark Lord!" Bastila said eagerly.
"No!" he shouted. "I do not care about the Dark Lord or the Sith! If Malak wants to fancy himself as the baddest ass in the galaxy, that is his concern, not mine! Malak stole something from me far more important than any title or name. He stole you!"
Those words struck something deep inside her, some vestige of the noble Jedi that was still inside her. She paused, lowering her lightsaber, staring dumbfounded at him.
Standing up groggily, Jolee turned his attention to Bastila. "Bastila, it is not too late for you to be saved. The teachings of the Jedi can lead you back from the dark side."
At his words, Bastila's expression hardened again, and she turned a hateful glare on him. "You are beneath my contempt, Jolee. You touched the dark side and fled to the bowels of Kashyyyk like some cowering animal. You know nothing of the Force or its true potential!" She turned back to Kagi, holding her hand out in invitation. "But you, Revan. The power of the dark side is yours to command. You can use it to destroy Malak. With my help, you could rule over the entire galaxy!"
"I don't want the galaxy, Bastila. It's nothing but space dust and cosmic matter to me, without you. You are what I want. The rest of the galaxy can go to blazes for all I care."
"You are a pathetic fool, Revan," she snarled. "Together we could have defeated Malak and ruled over an Empire, but now I will be at Lord Malak's side instead. You will be crushed with the Republic and all the fools who bow down to the Jedi Council. No one can stand against the power of the Star Forge and the Sith fleet!"
With that, she spun around and ran back through the pillar, toward the ship on the landing platform beyond. Bringing up his lightsaber, Kagi followed her. But as soon as he cleared the doorway, automatic turrets on the ship swiveled down and opened fire on him, forcing him to duck back and reflect the bolts with his lightsaber. Underneath their cover fire, Bastila boarded the ship and sealed the hatch behind her.
Mere moments later, her ship rose on its repulsors and fled back toward space, toward the Star Forge.
Watching her ship vanish into the darkness of space, a sharp knife of pain stabbed itself into Kagi's heart. Finally, he forced himself to tear his eyes away from the tiny speck of light and deactivate his lightsaber.
Behind him, he could hear Jolee do the same, and move toward Juhani. He moved toward the ancient computer console, burned by several of his reflected bolts, and accessed it. Two options appeared on the screen, one to shut down the disruptor field, and one to shut down the temple's shields. He activated them both, in tandem, and listened as the omnipresent hum of the temple shields died out.
As he turned away, his comlink beeped, and he pulled it out. "Carth here. We've got the new parts installed into the Hawk and she's ready to fly. Shall we come pick you up?"
"Yes, and make it fast, Carth. Juhani's hurt badly, so have the med bay ready. Then get ready to make for space. We have a date with the Forge."
A/N: I just noticed, as I played through another game of KOTOR, that I had picked up the bug that fucked up the Bastila romance dialogue during the playthrough I'd used to write this chapter originally. So I re-edited some parts of the text to put the actual romance dialogue back in, with artistic licensing applied, of course.