6. The Doings of Women

The restless wind of Korriban rolled the sand in a simple pattern: cover the desiccating corpses, and then reveal them. And so on. Endlessly. Atton took the boot off and poured some of the sand out. Can anyone depart from here without taking at least a single grain along? Is it evil? As far as desolation went, Korriban had few rivals, and Atton had seen plenty of ravaged places in his lifetime. Maybe he should have stayed inside, hiding like Kreia. Only Kreia frightened him more than the ancient Sith corpses. Plus, if he was tanning on these morbid sand dunes, doing what Kreia declared she couldn't, didn't that make him stronger than the old witch? A man could hope. The sooner Quinly is back, the better.

"You are ill-suited for the academic setting, Atton," Quinly said with a trace of a smile, when he wanted to come down the valley, "and Disciple needs to face his tests." "In the Sith Academy?" Atton asked, wondering if he could go for a day in this woman's company without being thoroughly puzzled by the strange leaps of logic. She played pazaak like that too, making decidedly odd choices. "The destroyed Sith Academy, Atton." She must have detected his anxiety about her wandering off with Disciple down the twisting cut through the red mudstones, the landscape set for nightmares. "Everything is dead here, Atton. I do not feel the presence of Master Vash, but I have to search, while Disciple will take a look at what the looters left of the Great Library of the Sith." Atton replied with an almost perfect Jedi calm: "May the Force be with you." The words were like the sands of Korriban, hiding the skeletons below. No matter how empty the valley of the tombs looked the two were walking into danger, and there was no fooling anyone, not even the robots.

That's why Atton tanned on the dunes, and made a slow progress towards the cut through the rocks. That's why he was the first to spot Disciple returning. Alone. "Where is she?" Atton asked brusquely. Disciple closed his eyes for a moment. Atton counted out 10 cards to put in his imaginary side deck. "The Academy, that was a sham, nothing was there, apart from Master Vash. Dead. We found a cave's mouth. It did not look like much, but she went in, told me that's why we've come here after all." Disciple clutched his shoulders looking pained and his voice dropped to a whisper. "There was a purple light. Not a force field. Just… light. She's passed through it like a knife through butter and I… I couldn't." Atton was about to scream at the man for being a deserter, but cut himself off. The sheer misery of the young man's blue eyes was telling enough. Disciple tried to pass, again and again… and he, Atton would have been just as impotent to follow. "You go, eat something," Atton said roughly, pushing the young man back towards the Hawk. "I don't think I could—" Disciple argued. "Oh yes, you can and you will. Retch if you have to, but blazing eat." Disciple dragged himself a few steps, then turned: "You coming?" Atton shrugged: "I should, but I am a fool. Everyone says so."

He did not have to prove his foolhardiness after all. Quinly was sitting by the cave's entrance when he'd made his way. Not in a proper meditation pose, but getting there: head leaned back against the rock wall. Atton called out her name. Quinly opened her eyes and stared at him for a moment. "Is everyone…" She must have noticed how hoarse her voice was, because she coughed a few times, then tried again: "Is everyone well on the Hawk?"

Atton nodded, and extended his arm for her to garb onto. "You've been better, old girl. Need a med?" She shook her head: "Nothing's hurt, but my pride. In my arrogance I have not foreseen that I myself may be tested." Her fingers wrapped around his wrist and he pulled her to her feet. That was the closest he'd ever stood to her, and a forgotten giddiness rose in his chest. The sort you felt when you knew the girl who'd never kissed you before is just about to.

"What is your name?" she asked him quietly. "My name?" he asked over all the pounding and drumming inside him. "On Nar Shaddaa, the twi'leks who recognized you told me you've called yourself differently once." Atton sighed: "My name is Atton. I've taken an alias in the army, edgier, I thought. Just like your most beloved student." Quinly raised her brow. "What, do you really think his mother called him Disciple?" Atton chuckled. "I guess not," Quinly said, "you were not so different from him once." He did not like the sound of it. "And where is home, Atton?" He did not know what madcap mood came onto him to blurt out Malachor. He regretted it instantly seeing her facial muscle lose every trace of those small motions that animated it. "No, no, I am sorry, I was mad you were interrogating me again. Look, I come from Alderan, a green world ruled by the noble princes. You haven't personally burned my house, and for all I know my parents still live and are ready to chew my ear off as much as ever. Not everything has to be linked, not everything has to end in blazes, Quinly."

"What happened to you," Quinly sighed stepping back "is the greatest shame of our times."

"There's a chance that something good might yet happen to us…" Atton whispered closing the distance. She gave a quick glance behind her shoulder into the darkness of the cave.

"I have just killed you back there," she said. "Actually, I did not even do that. I stood and let the blaster fire burn me watching Kreia kill you." Atton massaged his temples: "This witch poisons everything." "And I have seen all of you die by her hand because down there, in that moment it meant her salvation," Quinly finished firmly. She believes it, by the Force, she believes it. How can someone think like that?

"Do you know where home is, Quinly?" he asked, wondering. "How old where you when you went to the Temple?" Quinly smiled up at him with what looked like pride: "I came to the Jedi younger than most anyone in the Annals. I believe I have come from a distant world, for my parents never visited. Very much like Disciple, actually, only my training went uninterrupted."

"Why, he is a bit like me, and a bit like you. We might as well adopt him," Atton muttered. A shadow crossed Quinly's handsome face. There is a woman there still, and she knows what she had sacrificed. Unless it's just the children of her body.

"Tell me one more thing," he pressed, "just one. Down that cave, in the dark, you wanted me to be by your side, did not you?" She took him by the hand and walked towards the Ebon Hawk.

She did not say a word and they were only a few steps away. She released his hand and made for the ramp. "Make sure next time you want me to be by your side, I am," Atton called after her.

Quinly turned to him, held his gaze and said: "Atton, down in that cave, in the dark, you were the very last person I wanted near me." When they captured them on Telos, the brawny Echani women dragged him, semiconscious, through the snow. He thought he was cold then.

Quinly must have felt it, because she added quickly: "Revan was there."

Atton had a very hard time following her: "Did you love Revan?" The only thing that makes sense the way she looks at me. Quinly laughed, and he caught a glimpse of Quinly that once was. Happy. Brush. Fearless. "I am glad you still can think like that, Atton. No, I didn't love Revan. Admiral Onasi loved Revan. A pawdwan Quinly did not love Revan. She worshipped her. And when Quinly was done worshipping her, she worshipped the dirt that she walked on."

Heat and conviction filled Quinly's voice: "Revan was glorious, beyond any comparison or competition. She taught us that we were smart and young, and too talented to be restrained by the ancient rules. She was walking a path that was neither Sith, nor Jedi, a glorious new discovery, I've thought. I marveled at Revan, and I raged at Revan's detractors. "

She paused to catch her breath. Instead, it went out of her. Her shoulders sagged, and she went on, in a dead voice: "And then came the day when I stood on the bridge, waiting for Revan to break the rules, to do the impossible. She did not come. She couldn't. Instead, I've killed thousands so that the millions might wake up the next morning to be properly terrified by what I have done." I, not we… She absolved Bao-Dur. Bah, what does it matter?

"That's when I understood that the old rules weren't dust at all, but blood of thousands upon thousands… and that is why I stand by them, and I that what I will teach." That sounded final and firm, but Atton tried to argue, a last, desperate shot in the dark. "Revan's gone. You've only saw a construct, Kreia's ghastly test. And I wager you handed her holy backside right back to her!"

She looked at him kindly: "You wish."

Then, calm and collected again, Quinly asked him to plot the course for Dantoine. So much for the love without pain.