Last time: The Jedi and Cien are plagued by a vision of an alternate reality.

Now; Cien is stuck.

Chapter 31- A Glimpse in the Light

Cien hid her face behind her palms, trying to keep her composure. Seeing that, seeing some version of herself kill Sasha. Kyr killing her after she had killed his wife, whoever she was. The worst part about it was that she knew that vision represented some shade of truth. That is what might have been if things had worked out differently. What might have happened if Order 66 hadn't happened, and the Bloodstorm had emerged into a galaxy still controlled by the Republic. Protected by Jedi Knights. Protected by them. What would have happened if she hadn't met them on Vestora, and sent the five of them down the path that had occurred.

She had quietly left the space and turned a corner, but she had no idea where she was. And didn't terribly care. She sniffed trying to keep her composure still, and she felt tears welling in her eyes as the horrible scene played out over and over again in her mind. She opened her fingers slightly as she took deep breaths. She was still in this dream, this vision, this nightmare, whatever it was. The others were gone, she was alone after having left them behind.

She looked around her in surprise, trying to understand where she was. She was standing on a small stone precipice. Around her an infinite night stretched out, with soft cyan nebulae-like clouds wafting gently around her glowing amongst stars. Below, there was what looked like an ocean of water, and everything was bathed in the soft light of the cyan glow. The water spread out as far as she could see, as smooth as a pane of glass and reflecting the starscape above. It was a scene of serenity, so different from the vision she had just shared. Someplace where she felt the light side suffusing all like a blanket, and she took some comfort in that, so different from who she had been. So different from the version of herself in the vision that would have recoiled at such a scene and such an oppressive blanket of light. She took deep breaths, calming herself, and starting to wonder where the others were, if they were still trapped in the vision. She certainly was.

"So different you seem, acolyte." A wizened, gravelly voice said with a humorous undercurrent.

Cien's head snapped around to the voice, recognizing it from so long ago. Her hand went for the saber at her hip out of reflex as she turned. Her eyes widened, seeing the ghostly blue figure behind her sitting on a long, smoothed stone as though it was a bench thousands of years old. A very small, greenish bronze figure in a small set of Jedi robes. Large eyes, pointed ears that stuck out from his head, and cane that was made out of a very plain durasteel pole that she knew was the Jedi Master's lightsaber. For him and his short stature a pike, for anyone else a nearly normal length saber hilt.

"How are you here?" She hissed, her hand hovering over her saber. She wrapped an arm around her stomach, and realized that the twins were gone. She looked down out of fear and realized she looked like she had last time she had encountered… him. Her old Acolyte robes she had worn in her very early twenties, when she had been sent to break this impossible prisoner. She looked up at him in surprise.

The Jedi chuckled under his breath. "One with the Force, I am. All places do I reside." He pointed the tip of his cane at her. "Our last parting, so frightening was it would you draw a saber on me? Hmm? Hmm?" He asked, gesturing to her hand hovering over her hilt.

"Our last parting I nearly died with you." She growled softly, but there was no menace to it.

"Ah, but my fault, that was not." He said with a chuckle, and a twinkle in his eye.

She swallowed, looking at him. She had spent a great deal of perceived time in his mind. He was a Jedi Master, he had resisted all the other torturers, all the other techniques the entire Sith Order had been able to bring upon him. A lone Jedi Master, captured from a sabotaged and crashed ship, held prisoner for years, and as he had lain dying she had been called in at the very last to try to use her skills to glean what information she could before he passed. After spending what felt like months in vain rifling through his mind, she had been there for too long. All that time they had talked in his mind, as he put up barriers and erected the most horribly complicated labyrinth she had ever encountered, trying to keep her at bay. All the while being a constant, pestering presence, befouling her with thoughts and ideas of the lightside. She had hated him so deeply for refusing to break, sitting there so placidly, just as he was now and taunting her with his serene meign and humorous observations critical of her. Especially as she had stayed with him as he died, in his version of the Jedi Council chambers as Coruscant. The chambers, the chairs, everything had faded out as she desperately struggled, shouting at him, to gain something of value from his labyrinthine mind. And she had to leave without getting the answers she sought, and only waking up in an infirmary a few days later.

But so much had happened since then. So very, very much.

Her hand relaxed, slightly. "Master Soru." She said quietly.

"Ah." He said with a light chuckle. "Now my name you use, hmmm? No more 'Jedi'?" He said in a humorous mocking of the way she used to spit out the word when she cursed him.

"No." She replied, simply. She was addressing him not as an enemy. Not as a Jedi. But as a fellow lightsider. Even if she didn't consider herself a Jedi, and never could or would, she respected him as one of the most worthy foes she had ever encountered. But, also, now, remembered him as the first Jedi she had encountered that had treated her not as a bloodsworn enemy, but as if he could see some spark of light in her to be kindled in the darkness she had been trapped in. She had just hated him all the more for it then.

"Glimpses of your future, I saw. Glimpses of you." He said, poking the tip of his saber cane at her. "So many different possibilities." He said, bringing his cane back with his hands clasped over the pommel of it, and he rested his chin on them, like he had when he had been considering her deeply, then. "Your path, the one you expected?" He asked, looking deeply into her eyes.

"No." She said again, and she swallowed. "Not what I expected at all."

"The lightside, you have fallen, yes?" He asked, prodding her. "My taunting, some of it makes more sense now, yes?" He asked with a smirk, still resting his chin on his clasped hands.

"It does." She said quietly. "You saw," she paused, "you saw what would happen?" She asked unsure.

"Always in motion, the future is." He said, regarding her. "Possibilities, I saw. Possible futures."

"Why are you here?" She asked.

"So tall are you. Sit." He said, patting the smoothed stone beside him with his small, clawed hand. "Pain in neck it is, to be so short in a world of giants." He said with a chortle.

She regarded him for a moment before she went to sit next to him. In a strange way she felt like if there was anyone she should consider a master for her of the lightside it would be him. Thinking back on their previous experience together, he may have been the one to put those cracks in her faith in the Sith and the Darkside. Or, at least, recognized the cracks were there to help cultivate them. "I am sorry for what happened to you." She said quietly, as she looked down at the ground, "and what I did to you."

"The will of the Force, it was." He said dismissively. "Perhaps our meeting is what mattered, yes?" He suggested.

"Perhaps." She said. "Why are you appearing to me?" She asked, again.

"Spoken of you, the council has." He said. "Of your family." He said.

She twitched slightly at what the Jedi Council, in whatever ethereal form they now took, might say of her and her family. Especially because of how un-Jedi they had been. "And?" She asked pointedly.

"Glad, they are." He said, putting his hands on the pommel of his cane and absently rocking it back and forth from his body. "To have three knights still in service to the order. And you -"

"I'm not a Jedi." Cien stated annoyedly.

Master Soru chuckled. "Oh no, certainly not. But a knight you may be, not of the Jedi, but the light, perhaps, yes? Hmmm?" He asked.

She looked at him confused. "I doubt that." She said. "I am still a Sith. I'm still of the Darkside, at my core." She said, looking downward.

"Matters this, so greatly?" He asked, looking up at her. "All must fight darkness within themselves. That such darkness you came from, the light is all the brighter." He stated.

She looked at him, and then downward again.

"Always in motion, the future is." He stated again. "And so is the past, for all those futures." He said. He hopped off the stone and hobbled a bit forward. She stood and followed him curiously, he barely came to her knees. "Look, yes, at what may have been a future." He raised his hand as a clouded view focused in front of them into a gateway that opened into the Room of a Thousand Fountains again.

Cien recoiled as the Master stepped through. Worried that she might step through to see Sasha's body, and Kyr's smoking barrel. "What is this?" She asked.

"What may have been." He stated, hobbling along on his cane and stopping to look back at her. "If this journey I can make, all the easier with your long legs." He stated with a humorous smirk.

She swallowed and stepped forward with him, back into the room. But it was different. The foliage was different, younger, or replaced with other trees or flowering plants. And she looked at the Jedi gathered in the room. They weren't the Jedi contemporary to Sasha, Viran and Oppie. They were the Jedi she remembered. The armored Jedi, the more ornate Jedi, from her time. She swallowed again at the scene as she looked around.

"But Master Swanseae, I don't understand why I should waste my time with this." A petulant child's voice said behind her.

She froze, and she turned. Herself, in Jedi robes, her hair tied back in a comfortable braid beneath a leather wrap, and she was leading a class of young Jedi - Younglings, she supposed. Several of them were soaked, and a young girl was looking at the fountain waterfall with deep annoyance.

"Youngling, not all you face as a Jedi will be fighting." This other version of herself counseled the child, with a smile. "To part the water teaches you to control the flow of the very world around you. And," she said a little mischievously, "it does a Jedi no good to arrive for a mission looking soaked and bedraggled from a rainstorm."

Several of the children laughed at that, even a few who had gotten splashed with water during their, apparently, unsuccessful attempts at the exercise. "Now just try, Farlen. You can only ever fail if you don't at least try." She admonished gently, as a teacher.

The Youngling Farlen turned to regard the waterfall again, as a shadow spread across the sunlight that poured in through the skylights. And Master Swanseae, and Cien, looked up. A fleet of multi-pronged Sith Star Destroyers were descending over the temple, and red lighting was spraying across the cityscape from the ships. "Stay behind me!" She ordered the younglings. She reached for her saber and ignited it, a brilliant yellow green, just as drop pods came crashing through the glass skylights. The drop pods opened, and a horde of Sith troopers came out, led by Kopesh. His eyes glossy, his movements stilted as if he was in a thrall state. Both versions of Cien swallowed at the vision, and red lightning coursed down through the scene at the Master, and she raised her hands to try to deflect it.

Cien raised her hand to protect her eyes from the brightness of the display, and when she moved her hand again, she was back on the stone island in the middle of the dream-like starscape.

"Your former master, quite evil he is." Master Soru said from her side, clucking his tongue as if speaking of a problematic child. "So many futures did he snuff. So few paths that prevented his rise. And walked one of them, you did." He said.

She looked down at the small Master. "What is the point of showing me this?" She asked, again, more confused than ever. Seeing herself as a Jedi Master, something she never could have pictured.

"A long road has your family and you traveled, to ensure a future." He said, looking up at her, as he clasped his hands across the pommel of his saber cane again. "And still yet a longer road before you." He said. "Important for you to understand it is, that you are of the light. And the light is of you. A knight you refuse to be, but a knight you are, nonetheless." He said.

She swallowed, and looked up, around the space they shared. "I'm not a Jedi." She repeated again.

He chuckled ruefully at her. "No, but not a Jedi you need to be, to be of the light." He reiterated. "Already great things have you and your family done, yes. Some of them yet to be. But to ensure that the light does not burn out." He said, very pointedly now, "to ensure a future with light, remember who you are, you must. And defend it, you must. Have great reason to do so, I think you have." He said pointedly as he flipped his cane up to gesture at her stomach.

"What are you speaking of? What will we have to do?" She asked quietly. She already had a hand resting across her flat stomach without thinking of it.

"Know what you must do, when the time is right." He said, "a long journey already taken, to thwart your former master, that take again you must." He was looking her in the eye, and any sense of being shorter than her was gone, now. "And evil you will face then, you and your family will."

"Why tell me this?" She asked. "Why not tell all of us, why just me?" She asked.

"Always in motion, the future is." He repeated, yet again. "And the past." He said. "Already of the light, they are." He said with a smirk, "but a reminder you will need, acolyte." He said. "And stand with you the light does, you must know, Knight Swanseae."

"I will do what I must to ensure my family is safe." She said, looking at him critically. "I don't care what the light or the dark thinks of me, I will do what I have to do."

"Between light and dark, always you will be." He said, almost as if agreeing. "But when darkest it is, remember the light stands with you." He reiterated. "Not the council that considers you a knight." He said with a slight chortle, "but the will of the light itself, it is."

She considered for a moment, and swallowed, looking away, off at the starscape around them. "Thank you." She said quietly. She had spent the last several years grappling with who and what she was. Not a Jedi, not a Sith. Not of the Darkside, nor really the Lightside. Somewhere in between that she could never quite figure out. The knife's edge she walked to keep that balance. She was part of the family, and she considered herself a Mandalorian, but that didn't give her the answers to the questions she had sought about her place within the Force. She had settled on thinking of herself a Sith Lord as far as the Force was concerned, but she hated that in a way, putting herself up with the likes of the Sith Masters of old, the evil wretches. Malgus. Valkorian. Even Bane, Palpatine and Vader. And, worst of all, Dracul. The fools who only drew pleasure from inflicting pain and suffering. She hated all of them, and trying to consider herself in that same court disgusted her.

But if the Lightside itself sought her out to offer this way, some branch that wasn't Jedi, wasn't Sith, but of something different and in between she could grasp on this tenuous path she forged ahead on, she almost felt some strange comfort from know that though she walked between the two, she was of some Order of Force itself. Even if she was the only member of that order, and would only ever be the sole member of it.

Master Soru nodded. "A long journey, in the middle of, you are." He said quietly. "But find a path you will. Faith in you, I have." He said quietly.

She looked downward and nodded, one lightsider to another. Whatever terrible things she had done to him, he had forgiven her. And he was one of the ones she had hurt the worst, even if she was probably one of the less harmful encounters he had under the ministrations of the Sith. He was the Master she had asked Anna about, and he was the one who had burdened her the worst, aside from Sasha. And she felt that burden lift from her shoulders. "Thank you." She repeated even more quietly.

He nodded. "Have faith in the Force, you must." He said. "Steered you wrong, it has not?" He asked wryly.

That got a small smile out of her. "No, I suppose it has not."

He nodded. "My time, at an end it is." He glanced off into the darkness, and bemused annoyance flashed across his face. "Loud, your sister is."

Cien furrowed her brow, and realization dawned, and she looked off into where he had glanced in the darkness, hoping to catch a glimpse of the rose red armor.

"Say hello, she demands." He grumbled as he turned and started hobbling off into the darkness. "And satisfied, she will not be since hugs I do not give. No peace will I have."

That made Cien smile fully as she watched him go, and then looked back into the darkness where Anna was.

She opened her eyes. Kyr was looking at her, his eyes filled with worry, and relief now seeing her waking up. Sasha, Viran, Oppie and Kait were around her as well.

"Cyar'ika, are you okay?" Kyr asked frantically. She realized she was laying in his arms

"Yeah." She said, and her features fell when she saw Sasha, their shared vision coming back to haunt her.

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