Ebon Hawk
Enroute to Telos
Visas
It was as if she had merely changed places with Kreia, who always meditated in here alone. Marai knelt, facing away from the door.
"You are troubled."
"That took no skill to work out." She snapped. I knew she was speaking from some internal pain. Having spent my life in pain as she had said, it took no great skill.
"What did you learn from the Masters that had caused you such anguish?"
"Why are you here?" She asked. "Not just aboard this ship, but here standing at my side?"
"Because you need me to be here."
She gave a small pained chuckle. "So you are here because I made you be here." Then it turned into a sob "They were right."
"In what way?" I walked up behind her. "When I swore myself to you, I said my life was yours to use as you pleased. I would die gladly, even if it was your hand that took my life."
"That's what they said!" She wailed. "That I am like a web weaver, I draw others to me and when they come I trap and devour them! I...I can't stand this any more. I will cause you all to die, and I will feed on your rotting corpses, and go on!"
I knelt beside her, turning her to face me. She resisted until I caught her chin and made her look at me.
"If there is to be an ending between us, it will be at the right time. This I feel. If my death will keep you alive one second longer I would leap into the void with that thought alone to sustain me. Sometimes there is no rhyme or reason to what people must do. This is what I must do."
"But is that you speaking or me?" She wailed.
"What did they say that has struck so deeply at your core?"
"That I have always been able to form bonds with those around me readily. That I can direct them; make them my puppets. You, Mira, Bao-Dur, Atton, those men in the cargo bays; what if they are just puppets I have been playing with all this time?"
"It is a danger they have created from what little information they had." I told her. "That such power in someone's hands automatically makes them evil. Yet I have seen someone with such power. Felt his body, felt his anger need and hunger. Things they attribute to you.
"But I see none of it in you. Where I felt his anger, in you I feel your compassion. Where I felt his need, in you I feel the desire to hold us all free of danger, even if you die alone. Where I felt his hunger, I feel in you the boundless willingness to give of yourself. Even thinking yourself unworthy, you try to teach us all, and nurture us all. Where my old master seeks to devour all life, you nurture it as if we are all your children. You are the other side of this coin of power; like the gods of my people the Destroyer, and the Preserver. You were needed to balance him.
"The Jedi masters have spent so much time being masters, they have forgotten what it is like to be human and without the Force. They do not understand what an awakening experience it is to have to find another way to see, to feel, to react. For ten years you were blind and you had to learn how to see the world just with your eyes. When you regained the Force, you could not see it as they had. You were now judging it by those years of blind movement.
"Where they had the Force to guide them, you had to walk alone like the rest of the people out there. As I did before my master made me see again. You see, I did what you had done. I cut myself away from my abilities so I would not have to witness the horror around me. If he had not come, taken me away, forced me to do what I have done, I would have died content because as any child will tell you a horror you cannot see cannot harm you. I spent five years seeing only what he wished me to see, seeking what he wanted me to seek. Then... Then I found you.
"I heard something so soft, so gentle, so beautiful there was no way I could have avoided loving it. I felt the call of all that beauty my master destroys embodied in one spirit, one mind, one body, one woman. I felt in you a wound so like my own that my very being was subsumed. Someone out there had suffered a loss as great if not greater than my own, and survived it. I came to die by your hand, for such beauty would take my life without the glee my master felt. Nothing so beautiful could enjoy my death. I would have been enfolded in gentle death, sanctified by the grief you would have felt and there was nothing I yearned for more. Killing me would have been mercy.
"Yet you redeemed me. As he made me see, your words, your actions, your very spirit made me want so desperately to see the world as you do. Not the filth he sees everything as, but in the wonder you have at a simple sunrise, the joy you feel when you teach Mira, the sorrow you feel when you held Bao-Dur in his nightmares. The simple pleasure you get from cooking. Even the mercy you gave to Atton for all of his sins. The effort you spent on me as well. Not out of a sense of duty, but because it is what you are."
I turned from her, and felt a sob in my own throat. "I understand if you are terrified of this, that you feel the need to go alone, leave us in the darkness so you can chase the death you now seek. But as long as you remain among us, treasure that horrible nasty link you have with us all. Our world will be a dark and empty place when you are gone. Do not put out the light so readily."
I fell to my knees, weeping. I felt her arms enfold me, and spun, burying my face in her neck.
"What is wrong."
"He will be there not long after us. He will come to kill, and you will face him, for you could no more stand aside than a moth can avoid being attracted to a flame.
"He will try to take you, to wound you as he had done to me. He would take you from me, and I cannot bear it!" I reached up, felt her face. Damn it, I wished I could see! "Please, I beg you, don't go. Stay here, stay with us... stay with me. I will not want to live an instant beyond you, and I cannot bear that you will go to death first!"
"I can't stand by and let him murder the dreams of trillions of lives." She whispered in my ear. I could feel her tears on my face. "Not and live myself. I must face him, even if it means my death."
"I know." I whispered. "But I will not let you face him alone. Whatever else happens, I beg you to remember your promise. Do not cast me aside and face him alone. If death takes you, I wish to be there hand in hand to make the crossing as I failed to do with my family. It is all I ever asked of you, and I beg you. Please."
"Visas..."
"Do not deny me the choice of my passage to death!" I leaned back, hands touching her face. "I wish I could see with eyes like you do. To me you are a presence, a voice, and a shape of the Force before me. I want to see the woman that leads us, to see her face as the skin I can touch. The eyes that weep as I do. The hair that is always getting loose from that insufferable bun as a sheet. To see the color of it!
"I want to see the woman, understand why the Handmaiden feels such contentment in your very presences. Why Atton's heart beats faster when you walk by. Why Mira clings to you like a frightened little sister. Why Bao-Dur found strength within himself just because you have asked him to go with you!
"The masters and elders of my people could do this. I wish..." I leaned back, tearing off my hood, grasped her face between my hands. "It is no longer a wish. I will see you!"
I reached out, feeling the Force flow through us, and for the first time, I saw…
"Your hair." I loosened the bun. "It is golden, but with a reddish tint, as if copper was added to it. Your eyes are gray, with flecks of fire in them as well." I whispered. "Your skin is as soft to my sight as it is to my hands."
I held her face between my hands. "I understand now why Mira forsook her solitude. Why the Handmaiden saw in you what she had always wished to be and walked away from Atris. Why those of us that are women love you, and yearn to merely sit at your feet and learn. Remember that, Marai. You are all of us in equal measure, and to deny any of us is to deny yourself.
"You are these things to us, as we are all parts of what you have been. You have been cast aside as the Handmaiden has, wounded as I have been, lost and alone as Mira has. We see someone who has gone through that horror we have faced, and has survived beyond it. You are the ideal we all strive for.
"You are our leader, the one for whom all will die for. Each of us have an answering echo of your pain. That is what draws us, even the men that boarded our ship at Dantooine. But where my master would have used it, you have drained it, cleansed it filled it, removed it. Made it no more.
"I understand why Atton yearns for your touch, your body against his. I understand how Bao-Dur can look upon you and see all that he has lost regained by your presence. Part of all of us shall die when you die.
"To my master we were pawns to be expended. To you we are that still, for you play this game against him for the Galaxy itself. But as this game is played out, as we perhaps die, know this my heart. We know the player weeps for us as we leave the board that final time. We know that part of you will die with each of us, and our dying will wound you. So we strive to live, to make sure that we will not wound you. For you are our heart and soul."
I stood, touching her face again. I felt her heart lighten a bit. Not much, but anything was better than that deep gloom.
"Perhaps the three of us that remain can see what we will do to Atton's blood pressure?"
She chuckled.
Marai
Some of the recordings Mical had found at the enclave had been loaded aboard our ship by mistake I thought. But his note that I might enjoy reading them told me otherwise. While I love history, I was looking at a future where there might not be any more.
So I was cooking. Since we had almost 30 people aboard, that meant I had to use our largest pots, and was making enough stew to literally feed an army. The oven was filled with pan after pan of bread. I wasn't happy, but it was the closest I had been to it since this entire mess had begun.
Mira came in, holding a holocron. "Marai-"
"Stir this." I said. I turned to pull the loaves from the oven. The smell of fresh bread permeated the room, and a moment later, I had to assume the entire ship because eager faces could be seen in the passageways leading into the mess hall.
"Guys, I need a moment alone with our chef. Do you mind?" Mira said. They looked crestfallen. "Don't worry, I'll slice up a loaf and bring it to you!"
I shrugged. There would be enough so that any who lost their appetites would have their chance. "All right Mira. Talk to me."
"It's something I have to show you." She pulled me away from the stove, sitting me down, and started the holocron. I failed to see what was so important. The holocron was a history of the Academy, with images of the faculty. Baas and his teaching staff, then his successor Master Alisi Windu and her staff. Then finally Master Vandar and his...
I stared at the face. "Kreia."
"Yeah, but look at that." She pointed at the subtitle that gave name and position. Her name hadn't been Kreia then.
Telos
Handmaiden
I flared out the ship, settling it in the snow near the entrance. I felt numb as I had for the last two days of our trip.
Marai was dead. She had died, and I had failed her, failed the Jedi she followed. Failed so abjectly that nothing I could do would redeem me. Kreia had been as social as she always had been, and I was grateful for the silence.
We crossed the snow, and entered the redoubt. My eldest sister nodded curtly. "The Mistress wishes to see this one first. Wait here." Even at her most angry, she had never spoken this coldly to me. I would have been alarmed if I had emotion to waste on it.
I was left in our common room alone. All five of my sisters ignored me.
Atris
I knelt among all that wisdom, and felt nothing. My plans had come to fruition, yet I felt no joy in it. The others no doubt still waited for my arrival; or had died by my chosen weapon's hand. Even if they had survived they were the ragged remains of an outmoded order. The order I would build would be strong. It would not meekly stand by and let the Senate and the Chancellor push them around. We would give them order if I had to ram it down their throats!
The door opened, and I fumed. No one came in here; that was the first thing I told all of my budding young acolytes. When I was in my sanctum, I would be here alone.
"Who dares disturb my meditation?" I hissed.
There was a dry chuckle. "I knew I would find you surrounded by the wealth of knowledge like a catcher bird filling its nest with shiny things. And expending just as much thought." I had heard that voice before; in one of the holocrons that lay in serried rows around me.
"Who are you?" I demanded.
"Who I am is not the question my little friend. It is what am I?"
"You are Sith. That much I can tell. But I am Atris, last of the historians of the Jedi order. Last Jedi of the old order itself! I am your doom."
"Jedi. Historian. Even Sith" Each word was a stinging brand. "Titles, Atris. Titles you have woven around yourself, used to ease your mind. All are titles I also held. But they are not what or who I am. No more than 'Master' is what you are." Again that dry chuckle. I saw a robed shape move among my collected works, her very actions driving me to fury. She picked up one of them, idly perusing the title. "The collected musical works of Zardan Landru of Fondor. Most claim he was the first of the humans that later would claim to be Sith almost thirty years before the Republic was even founded. But he was only the first."
"Who are you?" I demanded again.
"I have had many names. My most recent is Kreia; but before that I was known as Traya, Darth Traya. For Darth Traya was the premier teacher of those fools that call themselves the Sith. Betrayed by her own teachings. Betrayed by her own body. Betrayed by her order, and at the last, betrayed by her own students. While that Darth Traya no longer exists, the title still remains. There must always be such a person in the Galaxy. Otherwise it will die of sheer boredom."
She moved to the other side of them, running her fingers through the wealth of knowledge. "So many different books, so many points of view. Jedi, Sith, the writings of the ancient Sith race. The few works saved by Revan of the Rakata that predate us all.
"Yet you have failed to grasp the most important part of all of this. To hold the knowledge to you like a miser wastes it. I knew that when I was your age, and I gave of it freely. I was condemned for it in fact. That I would not simply spout the rote knowledge the Council wished spoken, not tread the narrow path they wished of me.
"Yet there was so much good I did with it. An inquiring mind will always seek the best possible answer. It might not be what the Council would wish, but we were supposed to be teaching them about the galaxy beyond, not what we wanted them to think of it.
"This you knew, but there is a fatal flaw in your use of it. I used it to show the outer world in all its horrors so that my students would not be surprised by it. You have merely taken it and incorporated it and called it all good.
"Sith is what I might have been, but look into the mirror my young friend. You are as much a Sith as I ever was."
"I can't..." I wanted to rail at her, but in my heart, I knew she was correct. In trying to pick and choose, I had chosen unwisely. "How could this have happened?" I asked plaintively.
"It is such a quiet thing to fall at the first. But so much more painful when you realize that you have fallen, isn't it? As I said you cannot blame battle for your fall, as you did with Marai and Revan. You cannot blame the 'New Sith' teachings, for as any fool could see, the New Sith teachings are but variations of the very old. You cannot even blame Malachor, for this has happened before, and you, the one who should have seen it, was blinded by your own sanctimonious stand.
"As for Marai. The 'exile' you still call her. You were too busy demanding something you were not worthy of from her when you were students, and that festered. That grew. That if you want a true starting point, was your fall."
"No! I loved her like a sister!"
"Rather more I think." The woman said. "For only love of that sort turns so readily to hatred when unrequited. She spurned you. Oh not through any intent. She knew some about the Echani, and assumed much that need not have been true. But you drove yourself into this. She had nothing to do with it beyond sheer naivete.
"And unlike you and I there is hope for her still."
"I thought-"
"Ah, you thought she would face them and act as you would in place. That they would all die and leave you to rule. A common fallacy. She went meekly to face them, willing to give up all she had regained because even after ten years of punishment, she still believes what she was taught Like an Excommunicant stiil mumbling the words of the service that she still remembers.
"I've seen your representation of the obelisk. Justice severed from her life, you all thought. But her final statement was 'how can you claim to dispense justice when you will not seek the truth first'? None of you on that council sought truth. All of you came with your own view of what the truth was, and none of you actually looked for it. As in my case, it was easier to react than it was to think, then act."
"Your case?" I looked at her, and she lowered her hood. "Oh gods-"
"The Gods do not hear our kind, Atris. The Force does, but the Force is more egalitarian. It gives to all who can seek it without judgment as to why you want power, or what you might do with it. If anyone deserves the help of the gods, she does.
"But true judgment is coming here. You and I stand condemned from our own mouths. She may yet be condemned by her actions. But you and I deserve what comes.
"Tell me, for my records if nothing else. What has hurt you worse? The fall? Or the idea that with all your pride in place when she stood before you, that she never betrayed that trust?" She pulled the hood back up. "Call your Handmaidens. There is a test that must be given before the one you betrayed arrives."
Handmaiden
I had never felt uncomfortable in this place before, why did I feel so now? My sisters had gone, and I was told to wait here. But I wanted to move, wanted to do something!
I left the room, walking toward the council chamber. We had called it that since our arrival over eight years ago, when Atris had relocated from Coruscant. This place, this atmosphere had been my home for almost all of the time since, yet I felt like that crawling thing in the oceans that used the shells of dead creatures to protect themselves. I had outgrown this shell, and didn't want to return to it.
The door of Mistress Atris' meditation chamber opened, and my sisters filed out of it. All five of them walked down toward me. Their stances had changed incrementally. They were more self assured, but...
"No." I whispered, stopping.
They filed into the room, moving in two pairs to my left and right, the eldest standing to face me directly. They thrummed with power, but I knew it
was nothing like what I had felt with Marai and the others. It was...
"Gods, she has fallen, and taken you with her." I gasped.
"Silence." The eldest said. "It is good that you have come here." She waved at the room. "You have come before judgment. You have much to answer for."
"Sister-"
"You have never been my sister of blood, and only the link of flesh has kept you as 'sister' all this time. Yet even that you forswore!" She screamed. "You betrayed us, you betrayed Atris! You sought power and were willing to give us all up in that search."
"Sister, that is not true!"
"Silence." Another of them said. "You who were our sister of flesh, but never of blood, you are no longer our sister. We deny your flesh. We curse you in sitting, in standing and lying."
"No, please." I fell to my knees. Not the Cold curse!
"We curse you by day and by night." The next eldest said. "We curse your friends, and those you cling to."
"We curse your issue, and the man that sinks so low as to take you to his bed and home." The next said softly. She had always felt at least something for me. But it did not dissuade her.
"We curse you in life, and only your death will end this curse." The youngest said. "Begone."
"Sisters, somehow Atris has been touch by the Sith-"
"Silence woman of no family. If you will not leave we will kill you."
I stood. "You have denied me, but my flesh still feels the call of what we did share. For the sake of you all, I must stand against you in this."
"It is a crime to spill the blood of family." The eldest stepped forward. "Have you sunk so low?"
"I will not fight unless you force it of me. But she whom We obeyed has led you into the darkness. For the sake of our family, our clan, and our father, I must stand here. Please, do not force this upon me."
She struck at me with her fist, and I flowed beneath it. I caught her wrist, flipping her aside as another came at me. I foot swept her, rolling aside as another came. I caught her arm, kicking her in the side below the ribs, rolling away from her as the last two came at me together.
I was caught by the arm, and I used that fulcrum to kick out with both feet, punching that one off her feet, then rolled back, my body rolling on the ground, feet against her chest, and flung her away.
I was on my feet, facing them again. The eldest stood, and there was a snap as her staff leaped to its full length. The others drew, all of them facing me.
"It is a sin to spill the blood of family, but by the cold curse you are betrayer to that blood, and there is no sin in killing you."
I drew my light saber, then put it away. She saw this and laughed. "Pathetic to the last, hoping that blood will tell what flesh cannot; you have earned this, betrayer."
Together they leaped at me.
Atris
I heard the fighting die down, and sighed. The first step in the plan was complete, and now the second. I came from my meditation room, and stopped at the door of the council room. My Handmaidens lay dead. The one who was forsworn was clutching the obelisk, one hand at her side.
"My sisters..." She whispered with pain not of her wounds. "I am sorry." She looked up, and her face grew harsh. She shoved away from the pillar, staggering slightly. "Why Atris. Why did you do this?"
"I do this?" I laughed. "It was you, forsworn one that had murdered her sisters. You that consorted with the demon to gain what? Power? She has none, and her teachings are garbage before what I possess.
"Love? She does not have a scintilla within her."
"Then why did you command me to go?"
"Did I command you to forswear you oaths? To ask, no, beg her to teach you? To use the excuse that an oath to your father was more important than your oath to me?" By the last sentence I was screaming. "Of course I did no such thing! I wanted to keep track of her whereabouts. To see what she did when she murdered the last Masters that might have forestalled my plan!
"I offered you the galaxy to rule as my subject, and you spurned it for what? For Her!"
I reached out, and the Force slammed her into the obelisk. I burned her with fire I smashed her down with the sheer power of what I had learned. "Why?" I screamed. "Did you have feelings for her as I once had? Did you look upon that face and feel love? Did her touch do for you what your own flesh you have murdered here would not?"
She had staggered to her feet, and I could see her own loss of her sisters in her face. "She gave me what none of you would. A choice."
"There is no love in that woman!" I slammed her against the obelisk again and again. "She is a shell, she is a void formed by Malachor, and you willingly gave yourself to that void! You have earned this!"
I caught her throat. Not with the Force, but with my hand. "You have tried to steal even that from me!" I screamed in her face as she fell unconscious.
"Let her go." I looked up. Marai was there, and I felt the fury she refused to show.
I dropped the girl. "So, one exile comes to save another. It is almost touching."
"Atris, I was a stupid young girl that didn't understand what I was offered those years ago. If I had, perhaps we could have bonded as you asked. But I have not taken it and turned it into a hatred spanning almost two decades. If you want to punish someone, I am here. It was my acts then that made you what you are now. I will not let you harm her because you think she achieved what you did not."
"Ah, so you have feelings for this one. Perhaps there is humanity still in you. You came across the span of the void to save this one?"
"I came for her. I also came for Kreia."
"Kreia!" I roared with laughter. "That is not her name. She has already left. She is beyond your reach, Marai. When I have dealt with you I shall go to her, and your death will cause the galaxy itself to die!"
"Atris, by the love we once shared as sisters, by all we meant at one time to each other, I beg you do not do this."
I took the lightsaber I carried, and it thrummed. "You execution has been delayed, nothing more."
Marai
I looked into that face I had once cared so deeply for, and felt nothing in return. My own saber-staff hummed, Then she came at me.
It was all attack, with no thought of defense. Against someone who had never faced a lightsaber it would have been my death. I had fought like that once, back when I first learned, and Master Zhar had broken me of it. It had been painful, and it would be this time for her.
I matched her strokes, making her work, making her put more energy into her attack, forcing her to make the same mistakes I had. Because I did not have to expend half as much energy as she did in blocking her. Her strokes became ragged, and at the appropriate time, I merely blocked her blade aside, stepped into her within that circle of death, and hit her with my fist in the chest, slamming her off her feet.
She rolled to her feet, and came at me again. But she had not yet learned what I had with the first punch against my chest all those years ago. I allowed her to expend her energy, and yet again stepped in. This time, I caught her from below, my open palm slapping into her chin, lifting and throwing her with the Force rather than the blow to limit the injury. She flew backwards, slamming into the wall. The blade dropping from her hand. I reached out, and drew it to my hand with the Force.
She screamed, and turned, running toward the meditation chamber. I set the lightsaber down beside my fallen sister, and gave chase.
The massive blast door was closing as I reached it and I closed my eyes, using the Force to stop their progress. The generators whined in protest, and I pushed harder, harder, then suddenly there was a shriek and the right side generator exploded into scrap. I switch my mental grip, and the left side shattered as well.
Atris stood there, and as I walked in I felt such a miasma of evil that I paused. Around her in ignored piles were books of the Jedi, taken from wherever her assistants had gained them. More that Goto had collected I am sure. But in the places of honor, rising up the dome in their serried ranks were the holocrons of the Sith. The bookshelves behind her were stuffed with Sith teachings, and all that the Jedi had ever said were spurned on the ground.
No, not all. The histories of the wars written by Jedi had been stuffed in with the Sith ones in some mad effort to rationalize it.
"She said you would come, but Atris was not worried." She spun like a young girl dancing in the moonlight. "All the knowledge of the Sith and Jedi. Teachings of how the Force should be used, War, diplomacy, all hers. She has spent months, years in this room. When the Telosians fled this planet She seized this place, stuffed it with all I had gathered for her, but oh so secretly." She put a finger to her lips as if whispering a secret. "You see, Master Vandar had begun to worry about Atris, oh yes he did. He had asked her to represent him at Katarr, but I was not fool enough to allow her to go. You see, I had figured out we faced even then. It has happened before, back in the midst of time, before the Republic was even born!"
"Atris-"
"Atris?" She looked at me. "I have not been Atris for over ten years. Atris withdrew from the world when the one she loved left her to go to war. When you spurned her so you could fight."
I looked at her remembering that day:
I had been finishing my packing when she came to my rooms. She had taken my hands, dragged me away from my bag.
Stay here. Please. She had whispered. Or let me go with you!
Atris. I had sighed. I touched her face, the first time I had touched her since we were student and teacher. Her eyes had closed in bliss, leaning into my hand. I ask you to stay, but I must go.
She had opened her eyes, wounded by my words. Why?
Every warrior needs one thing before they go to battle, Atris. That is something to come back to. Something that holds them in this world even as slaughter happens about them. You have been my anchor for years.
Anchor. She said the word sarcastically. The kind of thing a goon would tie to someone's feet so they are dragged down!
Never Atris. I had touched my lips to her palm. An anchor holds a ship from being cast upon the rocks and shattered. War will be my storm, and the rocks that I fear. You will hold me, give me something to look for, and return to.
If I meant that much to you, why will you not bond with me?
Because... I am afraid of it. I cannot stand here with you, or bond with you, for if the bond is so strong, what happens if I die? Will I drag you down into death?
Go. She snarled. Go and be damned! I will not be an anchor for anyone such as you!
"I did not spurn her. She refused to let me live unbonded."
"Ah, but I know that even if she did not!" Atris replied.
"Gods above, what happened to you?"
"Malachor happened to her. When you returned from the wars, you ignored her! You did not come to be held as Atris would have wished. To be what you claimed she was; the one thing that would hold you to this world beside her again. In her eyes your words when you departed were just wind, and the wind moves nothing! 'Be my anchor' you said, and when that anchor would have held you, you cut it free, yet another casualty of Malachor.
"Do you remember the crystal? The one you gave to her? She threw it into space the day after you left but regretted that act of pique. Perhaps that is why after your trial she took this." My old lightsaber lit in her hands. "I had not even known she had done so until you came here the first time. So she has betrayed me as you betrayed her, sneaking out to do things of which I had no knowledge. She is the one that sent the Handmaiden you suborned to you. She must have hoped inside that you would give to her what you would not to Atris. But even that pathetic little girl only got the teacher, didn't she? The teacher that gave Atris nothing else.
"The old woman you travel with revealed to me what had happened. You see, I had a vision of how to save the order that Atris did not. She merely intended to bring these girls here, teach them secretly, keep them safe until the Jedi and Sith had destroyed themselves, then return, bringing back to the Galaxy what they needed.
"But I took that plan one better. Why should people of such power bow and scrape to monsters that would murder their own children for enough votes to sit in the Senate? Even the Sith were appalled by such arrant nonsense.
"I would have brought them order. I would have brought them peace. True it would have been the peace of a team under one whip, but I would have been sparing with the lash!"
"Please, Atris, there is no reason for us to fight. Just tell me where Kreia has gone, and I will leave you in peace."
"Now that I cannot do. You are the one fly in the ointment. As long as you live, the Galaxy has a chance to turn from what I will offer. I needed you here, because you would draw the most powerful of the Sith here. After he had killed you, I would defeat him, and the grateful galaxy would name me God!" She sighed. "But you arrived too soon. The Sith have not come, and they will not be weakened for me.
"But if I slay you, Kreia told me that the secret of defeating him will be revealed!"
She came at me. I was heartily sick of this, and instead of meeting her blade to blade, I snatched the weapon from her hands.
She stared at me, then stood defiant. "So kill me, carry out the vengeance you have held since you left me alone!" She screamed at me. "Here, I'll even make it easier!" She spun on her heel, back to me. "You never had the stomach to face me in truth. So from behind like a coward suits you."
I stepped forward, and my arm encircled her below her bosom. I kissed her neck then stepped back. "I could not be what you wished me to be, Atris. A lover in truth. For that I apologize."
"Then you leave me alive in pain! Such mercy!" She wept, screaming at me. "So Kreia lied to me as well! It is not I she awaits, it is you!"
"I must end this Atris, even if it means my life. I ask you again, where did she go."
"But you know!" She said with a laugh. "Where it all began. Where the hole that you bear was formed! She has known of it since it happened, for she was there to witness it.
"You and her share a link, have shared one since that day though you knew it not. You felt her pain along it, and both of you have feared her death. But have you ever thought that your deaths are exactly what she has hoped for?
"As linked as you are both to her and to Malachor, your deaths would create a hole that will suck up the Force throughout the galaxy! It will cleanse the galaxy in one great orgiastic blast, and the sad chapter of life with it would be finally finished and closed!" She laughed, the cackle of a woman no longer linked in anyway to reality.
I walked away.
"Come back here! Kill me!" She screamed.
"I can't, Atris." I looked back and felt tears on my cheeks. "Even as you are, you are too precious to me."
"Liar!" I saw the blade an instant before she thrust it into her own bosom. I leaped into a run, catching her as she stood, stunned by her own actions. Her hand released the hilt, touching my face as she collapsed.
"Marai..." She smiled. "At last, you came back to me."
"Atris?"
"Have I changed so much that you do not recognize me? Has my love meant nothing?"
"No, Atris." I saw a tear fall on her face. She touched it in wonder then touched my face again.
"No more tears. We are together at last as it was meant to be. We will bond, you and I, we will grow old watching the children of our bodies grow into adulthood..." She was no longer seeing me. "Our bond will grow and soon there will be love within it. I will not accept otherwise. But merely hold me for a time, my love, for I am so tired..."
I held her body, and cried for her.
Handmaiden
I felt a hand on my cheek. I opened my eyes, and Marai was looking at me, crying.
"You're dead. Kreia told me-"
"As much as she said she has never lied to me, none of you seemed to have been exempted. She needed to be here to confront Atris before I did."
"Marai..." I didn't know what to believe. She was dead, Kreia had told me so! I was alone, only my sisters... I looked. One of them lay there. Her neck had been snapped. I remembered it, fighting them, trying not to hurt them but there were too many. When my eldest sister had broken one of my ribs, I had stopped trying to keep them from harm.
"Oh Gods!" I rolled to my knees, looking at the bodies. My sisters, half of my flesh, and I had killed them all!
"Marai, Atris had gone to the dark side." I whispered.
"Atris is finally at peace." She replied.
She held me in my grief. I did not know what was the worse pain, that my father's line had died, or that it had happened by my hand. I clung to her, and both of us cried for what we had lost.
She finally sighed, standing. "We must go."
"But..." I waved at the bodies around us. She took my hand, helping me to my feet.
"The Sith are coming, and if we take the time to do them the honor they deserve, we will join them." She said softly. "If we survive that attack, I promise they shall get their due."
There was a movement, and we spun, weapons out, lightsabers humming. The droid walked forward, hands empty.
"HK?" Marai asked.
"Amused reply: I so detest the ability of meatbags to restate the obvious. Query: Did you forget that I was not aboard the Ebon Hawk?"
Marai looked chagrined. "I hadn't noticed. I did have a lot on my mind."
"Irritated answer: It is nice to know that this unit is so important to you. If you would peruse this document at your leisure, I will... clean up the mess."
"They deserve-"
"Rejoinder: I know the burial rites of the Jedi, five hundred other races and seven thousand planets. I will prepare them for your return. It seems we have company overhead."
I looked at her then dropped to my knees. "I am no longer the last Handmaiden." I looked up at her. "She who bound me has betrayed us all, and died. My sisters that followed her have died, Goddess help me, by my own hand. For my line, I must do this.
"I, Brianna Rekavali Bai Echani beg that you take me into your service. To avenge the wrong done to my family I will fight and die at your side."
"Brianna." She smiled shyly. "May I call you that?" I shrugged "It is much better than 'hey you'. Though that is what I have been doing for so long."
"In love I give it, in hope I offer it, in patience I await it." I said, bowing my head. The bow not of a liegeman, but of a slave. She caught my chin, lifting my head, making me look into her eyes.
"In grace I receive it, in love do I cherish it, in humility I shall honor it." She replied. The oath of a sister in law to her new family. "My sister, you have no flesh to call your own. Will you be mine?"
"Marai-" I turned my head. "Would you give me what you denied Atris?"
"To bond as sister is not what she wanted, as what remained of her told me before she died." She replied softly. "At least in her heart. Do you expect the same?"
"No!" I reached out. "My sister, love is not always such!"
"Then bond with me. As sisters we shall fight to save not only ourselves, but those we cherish. As sisters we shall comfort each other in pain, laugh together in pleasure, face the world one flesh, one heart, one soul."
I hugged her. A sister in truth at last.
