Meetra felt numb when she woke up. Even in the Force, it was as though she was lying under a heavy blanket of snow. All of her extremities ached and trembled.

In the wake of Malachor, it didn't seem very important. It had to be shock, and was only to be expected, she thought, with a kind of distant understanding. Even her thoughts felt like they were travelling through treacle.

The mass shadow generator had been so destructive that the instantaneous loss of life knocked her out cold. Her crew somehow managed to fly them out of the spiking gravity field, one of very few ships that did.

They wouldn't meet her eye when she woke up.

She understood.

She was sitting slumped in the medbay corner of her quarters, her elbows on her knees and her forehead in her palm, when Revan found her.

He had accepted the Mandalorians' official surrender. It wasn't the jedi rebel who stood before her, but the triumphant defendant of the galaxy.

He didn't feel very triumphant. He didn't feel like anything. It didn't help that her ears were still ringing.

She looked up along the tower of robes and metal armour at the inscrutable helmet. She frowned. He always took the helmet off for her. That he still wore it now was even stranger than the fact that he was here, in person. When was the last time they'd debriefed in person?

He tilted his head, and said nothing.

Fine. If he wanted to feign mystery, more power to him.

The distance he kept nagged at her though. He had opened the door and then stopped at the sight of her. The way he watched her, with his head at that odd angle. Was it disgust holding him back? She didn't think it was still possible for him to be horrified by anything.

"Congratulations," he said, his voice modulated through the speaker, and yet slightly distracted. "You won the war."

"Did I shock you that badly?" she asked.

"Yes."

Her eyes strayed to the distance between them again. Had he come all this way just to retreat at the last step?

He wasn't the friend she had grown up with anymore. He was the friend she had bloodied her robes with, had broken all her vows with, had turned worlds into mass graves with, and she could bear to be held at arm's length now.

But that wasn't all he was either. He was her commanding officer. The leader of the entire Republic army. He kept so many secrets from her for the sake of the war, or maybe just because he wanted to. He was as much a stranger in a mask as anything else.

She stared at the floor. The distance was sickening, both too close and yet much too far. She couldn't even feel the techniques he used to cloak his presence anymore.

"You weren't strong enough," he declared, after a long and tense silence.

She looked up. Such a statement could mean all sorts of things from him.

He finally stepped closer.

"I ended the war, didn't I?"

"Yes. You did." He reached out, but his gloved hand hesitated before touching her shoulder. The hand dropped. "...At no small cost," he added, thoughtful, and sad.

She narrowed her eyes at him. He didn't care about the hundreds of thousands she killed, and she wasn't going to let him pretend otherwise. She'd have stood if her legs didn't feel like they were made of flimsy.

He inclined his head in a deep bow to her.

She blinked, unsure what to do with that. She didn't deserve honour after what she'd done.

"What will you do now?" she asked.

"I am forcing the Mandalorians to disarm. The Republic fleets will go into the unknown regions."

Her brow scrunched. "Why?"

"Because I am leading them there."

'Them'. Not 'us'. He didn't invite her to join him this time, and she didn't ask. They had been sundered for a long time, but the acceptance of the gulf between them stung nevertheless.

"What will you do?" he asked.

She bowed her head. "I will return to the order."

"Why?"

"I did what I set out to do."

He tilted his head at her again. He sighed and turned back to the door.

Their opinions on the Jedi order had diverged as the war grew more dire and the Jedi more critical of their actions. She didn't blame him, or even the Jedi for their accusations. It wasn't as though either were wrong. The senate had given him full control of every weapon and ship the Republic had. Now the enemy was vanquished, did they expect him to give it all back?

She rubbed at her temple and let out a shaky breath. Her arms were trembling.

He paused at the open door and looked back from the corner of his T shaped visor.

"What do you want, Revan?" she demanded, and it sounded fragile even to herself. She didn't think she could handle him manipulating her any further, not now. "Take the blasted helmet off, if you're going to loom like that."

After a moment he reached up and pulled it off.

He had a kolto patch taped to the side of his jaw, and a new angry red line at his brow. His eyes were bloodshot. His mouth was a thin line, but there was a warmth in his eyes she hadn't seen in so long.

"I will never forget you, Em, or the sacrifice you've made."

She swallowed through the lump that rose in her throat. She scowled. "I'm not dying."

He gave her a look she didn't understand. He put the helmet back on.

"I hope the order treats you with all the delusional forgiveness you treat them," he said. It was almost teasing.

"I hope you fly right into a supernova," she replied, her lip twitching.

He scoffed a laugh, and then he was gone. The door shut behind him.

She wished she'd said goodbye.


The numbness followed her back to Dantooine. She'd stopped shaking at least, and the medics declared her healthy. The blanket of deafening snow was probably a trauma response, some kind of psychosomatic injury.

How many other people could say they knew what noise a planet made when it died?

She piloted her personal fighter down to the landing pads by the Jedi enclave. She waited for the rush of the Force of a rooted community to rise up and flood her with the old warmth and welcome, but it did not.

The doors opened and… nothing. Dantooine did not welcome her.

It felt very cold.

Master Lonna Vash waited for her on the landing pad. Meetra hesitated at the sight. Lonna had been one of her masters in her padawan days, she'd been her tutor on philosophy and the code, and an unshakeable voice in opposition to the war. Her hair had been less grey then and her forehead smooth.

Meetra braced herself as she walked down the ramp.

Lonna smiled and held open her arms.

"Meetra," she said, and folded her into a hug they pretended wasn't awkward. "Thank you for coming home."

Meetra mustered a smile in reply. It did not feel like home.

"Thank you, master." She bowed her head.

"Please, this way."

Meetra had privately wondered if they would greet her with inhibitor cuffs and a holding cell. She wasn't convinced it wouldn't end there yet, but she followed anyway and kept her head down.

The grounds were quieter than she remembered, with almost no knights to be seen. The quiet was eerie.

"We've arranged these chambers for your stay," Lonna said and opened the door to a little guest residence.

It was one of the blocks where outside visitors stayed, most often pilgrims, scholars, and the parents of children getting tested for force sensitivity. She ignored the implication and the impersonal arrangements. She wasn't sure she would have been able to stomach her old chambers.

"I'm sure you will want to rest after your journey," Lonna began, sticking valiantly to her smile. "but would you mind answering a few questions first?"

"Of course. I bring news of the war's end."

"What happened?"

Meetra sat cross legged in the small living space and gave a report. Word had spread of course, there was celebration all across the galaxy, but the details had not been released. Few enough had survived Malachor for the rumours to be sparse, confused, and mistrusted.

The sudden disappearance of Revan and the entire army had confused things.

Meetra was truthful. She started with Revan and worked her way back. Then she had to jump around a little because Lonna didn't know as much as she had expected. The master asked questions, and nodded along.

They arrived at the subject of the final battle. Lonna stopped asking questions. Meetra was accustomed to giving reports on her battles, the shock of the experience couldn't throw off deeply ingrained habits. She spoke without inflection.

Lonna didn't nod along. A strange expression took over her face and her eyes seemed to look right through Meetra. Her shoulders were pulled back.

Dispassionate, Meetra detailed the losses of which units, which Jedi, and which enemy generals. The fallout. Saying it finally made it feel real. She did those things. Those losses were hers. She slaughtered them all. The knowledge settled quietly under her ribs. She continued her report onto the bitter end.

Only in the silence that followed did she comprehend Lonna's expression. It looked so foreign on her face, the abject horror.

Meetra felt unsteady and hurt in the face of it, but she refused to pretend at shame. Not now, after it all. She had made her decision and she would hold to it. She squared her shoulders and waited for further questions.

Lonna stood, knocking a couch cushion to the floor. She stared at Meetra and took a step back. She left without a word.

Meetra blinked at the blank door that closed with a snap behind her.

It stung.


She couldn't bring herself to sleep in the enclave, not even in the guest residences. She retreated to her ship. Outside, Dantooine's sunset bled a magnificent red and the giant manta rays flew slowly overhead.

She did weapon and armour maintenance in the hold where she couldn't see it. She tried not to let her hurt simmer into anger, and failed in a hundred little ways. She took slow breathes, pinched her eyes shut, and wished the numbness would go away.

She considered meditating. Would Dantooine, the stronghold of so many Jedi, reject her still, silent and condemning? Would she sit alone in the force and offer up her struggles in a home that looked down on her for having them in the first place? Would the hundred thousand dead rise up and ask her what right she had to peace?

She glowered and threw the reassembled breast plate onto the table.

It was probably the only set of hard shell armour to be found on the whole planet. She buried her head in her hands and gave up for the night.

At first light the council came calling.

Meetra had been up for an hour, looking out across the dark and still fields, wondering at the lack of patrols. Dantooine was in the outer rim and a prosperous farming world. She would have posted patrols.

Sitting on a duracrete bench, she watched a woman in the pristine white robes of the head archivist walk past her without a glance and approached her ship. She held her hands behind her back as she all but floated along the frosted grass. The woman stopped at the foot of the open ramp, looking up into the dark interior.

Meetra knew that platinum blonde hair, that poise and stern expression. Precocious little Atris, now a master.

For a moment Meetra was so proud of her. Atris never said it, but it had always been obvious how badly she wanted to wear those robes. To prove herself worthy of the rank. Meetra smiled fondly. How much she had missed.

Atris cleared her throat.

"General Meetra Surik," she called into the ship. "The Jedi require your time."

"Yes?"

Atris' head snapped around to her. "Oh. There you are. I didn't..." She pressed her lips together. "Well. Very well."
She recomposed herself facing Meetra, hands behind her back and chin lifted. "I am Master Atris of the high council. I expect you don't remember me."

Meetra raised an eyebrow. She'd been the first to congratulate Atris when she achieved her knighthood. She was more bemused than insulted.

Atris waited.

Meetra blinked at her from the bench.

Finally Atris huffed. She nodded sharply at the open ramp.

"I had thought you barricaded yourself in your warship."

"Did you?"

Atris pursed her lips again. It belatedly occurred to Meetra that you were meant to bow when meeting a council member. Was that what she had been waiting for?

She was going to wait a very long time.

"Shall we go in?" Atris demanded more than asked. "The Jedi have questions."

She tilted her head, disliking the phrasing. She could tell her that republic warships were restricted spaces to those outside of the war effort. It probably wouldn't be worth it.

She stood from the bench, sighing at the relief her back felt to be free of the cold surface. Atris walked ahead, up the ramp and into the hold.

Meetra followed slowly, watching her back with increasing defiance. She had nothing to hide, but the woman who had been her friend had something to find apparently, given the narrow eyed look she cast about the hold. It was lit only sparsely, and the metal floors echoed under their feet. The walls were covered with all the things a general who regularly took to the field would need within easy reach. The armoury was ID locked but its walls transparent.

"You brought your trophies of war with you," Atris said, looking down her nose at a long range blaster. "I warn you not to use these on the citizens here, this planet is under Jedi protection."

Meetra narrowed her eyes, insulted.

"Protectors?" she replied, looking the pristine robes up and down and tilting her head. "The Jedi?"

"Don't be childish," Atris snapped. "I am here as a member of the council-"

"-You mentioned."

"And I have questions for you. Sit."

Meetra crossed her arms. "Ask."

Atris asked of the war, the Jedi survivors, the casualties and the state of various worlds. Meetra answered honestly but it didn't sound right. They weren't the right questions.

She had been briefed and debriefed on these matters a million times and this was not that. From the depths of her memories she recalled what Atris had been like, beyond their friendship. When she wanted something from someone who's opinion… didn't matter to her.

"Stop it," she said. "You don't care about armaments and transport numbers. Don't pretend otherwise. What do you want?"

Atris' pursed her lips. She did that a lot now, apparently.

"Why are you here? Why did you come back?"

"The war is over."

"Do you hope to rejoin us? Surrender your weapons and lead peacekeeping missions again under the Jedi name?"

"No," she said, even though she hadn't known it until that moment. It was a ridiculous thought. She wasn't a Jedi anymore, hadn't been one in years.

This path had ended. She lowered her head.

Atris' shoulders relaxed marginally. "Good. You are not entirely delusional then." She raised her chin a moment later. "You are to be put on trial."

Meetra's eyes snapped to hers. "What for?"

Atris scoffed.

Meetra stepped forward. Atris stepped back, startled.

"What for, Atris?"

"For abandoning us."

"I abandoned nothing."

Atris bared her teeth. "You abandoned me!"

Meetra scowled at her nerve, the audacity to claim to victimhood, here, now. Malachor was dead, Revan fallen, and the Republic strewn with corpses, and Atris nursed indignation from sitting protected on the sidelines?

"My duty was never to you," Meetra spat. " You abandoned the galaxy."

Atris paled. "Get out."

"You're on my ship."

"This is my enclave."

Meetra smiled with all the bitterness she didn't know she'd been brewing over fifteen years of constant war.

"I can't leave. I've been invited to a trial."

Atris pulled herself up, failing at dignity but all the more self righteous for it.

"The council will call you for questioning when they are ready."

She took her leave like it counted for something.


The trial did not go well.

Meetra resented them more and more with each question, which slowly became accusations. She held her chin high and refused to apologise or regret anything. They were still caught up in her leaving in the first place.

They knew nothing of the choices that she had made since, the stakes, the price. They didn't know the names of the commanders she had buried. The enemies whose deaths she longed for and then celebrated. The enemies she had respected and killed and mourned.

They refused to know, and she refused to explain. They could think whatever they wanted.

She was making a very bad impression. The idea of bowing and pretending at repentance was not worth their good opinion. Who were they to judge her?

She hated that Revan had been right about the order.

She waited in an antechamber to be summoned back. The hearing was at an end, all that remained now was the verdict.

Defiance kept her back straight, all the more so for the back injury she got at the battle of Dxun.

She should probably meditate. She'd avoided it since… she didn't remember. Since before the war ended.

She closed her eyes and crossed her legs. There hadn't been the time before the end, there was never any time. She'd known what road she walked then. She searched herself, trying to find that stability. It was only just hitting her that the war was truly over.

Her emotions were a crumbling mess. She could live with it, but even her convictions were tangled, slipping through her fingers like oil. Her thoughts chased themselves endlessly in loops. What was she without the war?

Not a jedi. She didn't need Atris to tell her that.

When had she started hating them?

She let out a shallow breath.

It had been a weak attempt at meditation anyway.

The numbness was withdrawing from her, the blanket of mental snow melting. Her thoughts felt so small and quiet beneath it. Slender and fragile things.

She'd found steadiness in the shadow of Revan's ever darkening cacophony and the roar of war. She felt empty without it.

An attendant pushed the door ajar.

She swallowed and opened her eyes.

"The council is ready for you, ma'am."


The Jedi cast her out. She was exiled from the order and from republic space.

She lifted her chin.

They demanded her lightsaber.

Her hand formed a fist.

She had already decided she wouldn't fight it, but it was a blow nonetheless.

She ignited the blade.

Atris looked at her with such disdain, and such fear. They were all so afraid.

She stabbed the weapon that had guarded her more than anyone in the room ever had into the centre stone, and marched out, empty, defiant, lost.

She was not welcome here. She had nowhere else to go. She left her republic fighter with its top of the line systems, and walked to the public space port. They could sell it for all she cared. On autopilot she caught a cheap transport going anywhere. Few got on or off at Dantooine but the lower decks were already full of those refugees trying to escape the destruction on the outer rim. Fellow refugees. She disappeared into their number, letting her jedi cloak fall off her shoulders and get trampled in the halls.

As the ship pulled away, it settled upon her shoulders that she had nothing. Not a cause, not a rank, not even a name. The Jedi gave her that.

She was lost and scared in a reeling galaxy, no different from the thousands of desperate souls around her.

She tried to meditate. All had abandoned her or been driven away, what else was left to her? On a narrow bunk in a room with eight other sleeping bodies, she reached out for the force like she had as a scared child.

She couldn't find it.

She couldn't find anything. Not the flow of life's currents through the ship, not Dantooine slowly drawing away. Not the woman in the bunk above her, not in the pet gizka in the cage.

Not in herself.

She didn't have the force. They had taken it from her.

She fell apart.


A/N: Thank you for reading. Reviews and concrit are much appreciated.