He saw the opening and instinctively struck, his lightsaber moving in fast.

He felt the blade cut through fabric and flesh with a scorching scream.

Reflexively, he brought the lightsaber around for the finish. Almost simultaneously, he heard her gasp in pain, and felt a blinding flash of agony via their bond.

Blade still at the ready, he backed off warily.

Trembling, Bastila stumbled to her knees, her right arm dangling limply at her side, the lifeless hilt of her double-bladed lightsaber falling beneath her. With her left hand, she clutched at the torn fabric and bloody wound on her upper right arm. Threads of hair hid her down-turned face from Enosh's view.

The echoes of the steps of their deadly dance faded away, leaving only the low throbbing of the generator, the soft whine of Enosh's lightsaber, and Bastila's ragged gasps.

Enosh's heartbeat slowed along with his breath, as he stared at the curtain of dark brown hair bowed before him. Streaks of blood and sweat, tangles and cuts, marred its well-remembered sheen.

Her left hand over her wound was bloody now, and the fabric black with blood. He could feel her tensing herself, and then she slowly, unsteadily got to her feet… and fell again to her knees with a last cry of pain.

His heart twisted to see her in such pain, but he did nothing but stand silently, watching her.

A few more ragged breaths, and he could sense her trying to fight down the pain.

Slowly, the hair parted like the receding tide, and Bastila's wan, blood-streaked face emerged from the depths. The lips he had once so tenderly brushed with his own were flecked with blood and pressed tightly together in a pained grimace; the gray eyes he had so often been hypnotized by defiant but distant. Blood dripped slowly from a cut on her forehead above her left eye, tracing the line of her jaw down.

"It seems…" she said softly, tightly, trying to control herself, always in control, "it seems… I have failed yet again."

His voice dry, Enosh said, "It is not too late to turn back to the Light, Bastila. It is still strong within you. It has guided my way through the darkness of my past, and it will guide you as well, if you just have the courage to follow it."

"But I no longer can see it, Revan. All I see is death and destruction." She closed her eyes. "It is too late for me now," she whispered. "I have seen too much, done too much… I have too much… hate… within me now, to return to what I once was.

"I see now the mistakes of the past. All too clearly, all too late. In pursuit of false rewards to feed my hollow soul, I have thrown away all I once was, all I once had, all I once… cherished… and fallen so far away…" She opened her eyes, and they were distant, staring past him. "Please," she whispered, her voice intense, piercing in the silence, "please torture me no more, and put an end to this misery."

He felt such agony, such twisted agony, from their bond that he nearly cried aloud. But he had to get through to her, to the light he still saw inside. "It doesn't have to end this way, Bastila. You can still use your Battle Meditation to aid, instead of hinder, the Republic. You can fight by my side against Darth Malak."

She closed her eyes. "If only it were so easy, to change the past. But the taste of power is too much in my mind to forget. The stain of betrayal is too much in my soul to erase. Can you not see it, through our bond? I'm… confused… I'm losing control… there is little time left… please!" Her eyes opened, glared at him in raw appeal. "Before the Star Forge regenerates me yet again! Before I take arms yet again!"

The generator behind her was glowing now, glowing brighter with each passing moment.

"You can control it, Bastila!" he urged. "You can reject it!"

"How can you reject what you are?" she whispered sadly. She visibly paled. "It nears. It pulses. I hear the Star Forge calling out to my… my blackened soul… and I fear I cannot resist its allure much longer…" She trembled, blinked. "Please, Revan!" she cried. "While I still remember what I once was! For the sake of whatever we once had… whatever that you will remember kindly of me… you must! Strike me down now, while I still remember the Light, before the darkness finally consumes me!"

And with no further word, she dropped her gaze downward, and the curtains of her hair returned to shadow her face once again from his view. Blood dripped slowly, softly to the floor.

The light was intense now, and he could hear the hum of the generator increase in pitch. And distant as thunder on the horizon, the sounds of battle came through. Valiant men and women were fighting out there, in a hopeless battle against Bastila's Battle Meditation, throwing their lives away as he stood here transfixed.

Reluctantly, his arms heavy, he raised the lightsaber.

Images flashed through his mind. She stood by a window deep beneath the oceans of Manaan, her gray eyes staring into the eternity of the limitless sea outside, her reflection in the glass staring back. Flickering embers of a campfire beneath the silent shoulders of the trees of Kashyyyk, lighting her face within a dance of colors.

A sudden nova of light shone from a viewscreen, as one of the Republic capital ships blossomed in a deadly explosion. Thousands, gone in a heartbeat.

Leaves falling from a tree, twisting gently as they drifted down in the hazy light of a cool dusk, as they danced around each other, lightsabers humming, sparring across a courtyard of the Jedi Enclave. Standing alone in the sand dunes of Tatooine, staring at the image of her father, her eyes shining in the reddening glow of the sinking suns, while he and the others waited, pretending not to see the façade crack.

Dantooine in ruins. Sith soldiers overrunning the Enclave. The fires of homesteads, burning on the plains, the fingers of smoke drifting up into the once-clear skies, blotting out the sun.

The soft hum of the air scrubbers aboard the Ebon Hawk, as they shared a furtive, tender, ever-so-brief moment alone. She was soft within his encircling arms, the gray eyes that looked up into his own were tranquil pools of water that he could have stared into forever.

Sith battlecruisers pounding Taris into slag. Billions dead.

A last glance at her determined visage, a well-worn picture in the rooms of his mind, her eyes staring defiantly at Darth Malak towering above her, the yellow blades of her lightsaber the only light against the dark shadows gathering around her, before the blast doors slammed shut.

Thousands of gleaming ships emerging from the Star Forge, silent and deadly, streaming towards the distant reaches of the galaxy, the hundreds of quiet worlds, the quadrillions of unsuspecting souls.

It was blood no more, but tears, now, which fell, sparkling drops of starlight in the blinding glow of the generator.

And the lightsaber fell, arcing through the air, slicing through the stars.