In the cacophony around her, Malae sought one resonate note.

She sat next to Carth, but she did not watch the Hawk diving through battle into the station. She did not see the Jedi escort fighters flying into position around her, though their notes sent echoes through the symphony of the Star Forge, much as the soft tones of Juhani and Yuthura did from behind her, tentatively matching each other's pitch. She saw nothing and heard only the sound that matched her own heartbeat in the Force, a whisper inside the command center. She knew the path well.

"We're in," Carth said, snapping her out of her meditation. "Revan telling you anything yet?"

"No," Malae lied, "but I have a plan." She leaned over the console and hit the intercom. "All hands to the commons!"

"Mal," Carth said as she stood up. "You think we have a chance?"

"We have to. Can't have just spent six months wandering the galaxy for nothing, right?" Malae asked, giving him a smile. "Come on."

They met up with the rest of the crew in the commons, Malae standing with her hands on the table and looking around at them. "I don't know where Bastila is," she said. "But I know where we can do some damage."

"That's what I like to hear," Canderous grunted.

"We'll need to split up. We can't have any of you attracting Malak's attention, so I'm going alone through the central shaft," Malae explained. "If Bastila's in the command center or the observation lounge, I'll find her...and Malak."

"And the rest of us?" Canderous asked.

"Hold on," Jolee said, narrowing his eyes. "Are you sure you'll be all right on your own? This is the Star Forge, this is where Malak is strongest."

"Come on, Jolee, have some faith," Malae said dismissively. "As for the rest of you, we're splitting you up into three teams, a Jedi leading each. Luckily I had the good sense to install a few signs for the underlings, so it won't be hard to find your way. Juhani, Mission, and Zaalbar, I want you to take down the external turret systems. Start left as we leave the docks and follow the signs down into the lowest part of the station. Juhani and Zaalbar can protect Mish while she slices the system."

"On it, boss," Mission said, saluting.

"Yuthura, HK, and T3 will need to head right at the docks, towards the shielding systems. Take them down and the fleet can directly hit the station's orbital stabilizers and plunge it into the sun," Malae continued.

"I'm stuck with the droids?" Yuthura complained.

"Objection: I should accompany you, Master, I know Malak well enough to-"

"You're going. Yuthura and HK can fend off droids and Sith while T3 sabotages the shields," Malae interrupted. "Jolee, Canderous, and Carth, I need you here, defending the ship from attack. We'll need a way off the station before it does the whole plunging-into-the-sun thing."

"If you're sure, Mal," Carth said.

"You're keeping me in the rear guard? Seems like a waste," Canderous complained.

"I'd rather have you watch my back than anyone else, Ordo," Malae said. "Tell the Jedi teams the plan once you get out there, have them accompany you. I have to face Malak alone, no matter what. I won't let him take any of you like he took Bastila."

She took a deep breath as her crew prepared their weapons. "This could be the last time we see each other," she said. "In case that happens, it's been a hell of a ride."

"Wouldn't have missed it," Canderous said.

"Got your back," Carth affirmed.

"Let's get going," Yuthura insisted, grabbing HK-47 by the neck and dragging him towards the loading ramp. "We've got a station to wreck."

As Malae left the Ebon Hawk, the teams split from her on either side, leaving her to walk the central path alone. As the first bulkhead opened before her, she saw four battle droids waiting for her, and swept them off the sides of the walkway like she was swatting flies. They'd never finished the railing construction here after all. Pity.

She drew Revan's saber and prepared for the long walk, retracing steps taken a lifetime ago. Malak's desperation repeated itself in every droid, every soldier, every pathetic Sith apprentice sent her way. She reflected their blasters right into their throats, or shoved them down pits, or sliced them in two; it felt like she was merely wading through Dxun again, slicing away foliage on the way to a real destination. Bulkhead after bulkhead, she stalked the empty steel halls of the Star Forge with no fear, seeking only the sound of herself, repeated far above her. Malak's frenzied preparations, his feeble attempts to strategize and sent forces to every corner of the Forge that Malae's crew had infiltrated, it all meant nothing to her.

All that mattered now was this door.

It had taken two long turbolift rides to get here, and uncounted deaths; if Malae stopped to consider them, she could not open this door. The bond between them sang as Malae placed her palm on the center of the door.

Sealed. Naturally.

Malae drew Revan's saber, ignited it, and plunged it into the door. Bastila's concentrated wail of war suddenly shook and stammered as Malae carved a circle through the bulkhead, replaced with the drumbeat of fear. Malae gave the metal a kick through the Force and sent the separated piece flying through the map in the center of the room, just clearing Bastila's head as she stood to greet her.

"Revan."

Malae stepped through the hole, saber lit at her side. "Bastila."

"You can't defeat me here. Not when I can draw power from the Star Forge. Malak showed me how, I don't even need a living person, I can take right from the dark side energy that permeates this place," Bastila rambled as Malae approached. Her eyes were a glowing yellow, glinting in the light of the holomap.

"What has he done to you?" Malae asked.

"He opened my eyes! He woke me up!"

"He turned you into his little roadblock. He wants more time for something. If you listen, you could always read Malak like a book. It's why he was always so good with mind tricks...his mind is open, and he knows all the ways in," Malae said, stopping as Bastila leapt through the map to stand before her. "And he found his way into you. I'm sorry."

"Regret is for the weak," Bastila said.

"Take his words out of your mouth," Malae seethed, her fist clenching around her saber. "Don't let him win. He can't win this."

"I'll kill you," Bastila whispered, a mad laugh creeping into her voice. "I'll kill you and you can never hurt me again. You can never make me feel like this again if you're dead." She grinned. "And then, I'll go back to meditating, and the Republic will fall, and the Jedi will die, and everyone who put me here will pay. But you'll be first."

"I won't kill you," Malae promised.

"Then don't." Bastila threw out her hands and sent lightning at Malae, who held out her free hand to block it - but it gathered in her palm, faster than she could neutralize it, and soon she held a storm in her fingers that threatened to consume her. "Send it back," Bastila goaded. "Go on, try to hurt me, try to stop me, you can't, you can't-"

Malae cried out and put her hands together, channeling the lightning into the blade of her saber and ducking to slam it into the ground. The discharge shook and warped the very metal beneath her feet, knocking Bastila off-balance and sending her lightning into the ceiling. Malae stood as Bastila stemmed the tide from her hands and pulled her saber from her belt, igniting both ends. As Malae pulled her saber from the floor, she raised it to block Bastila's leaping strike, and the fight was on.

The rage and anger and hurt in Bastila's blade drove Malae back towards the bulkhead as she struggled to parry, but not counterattack, to dodge and not to exploit the weakness she created, to defend herself without giving into Revan's hatred and survival instinct. Her back pressed into the hole she'd made.

She pushed Bastila back with the Force and tucked her limbs in, rolling backwards through the hole and steeling herself on the walkway. The door flew apart as Bastila charged through, the sound of shrieking durasteel harmonizing with her scream of anger. Malae blocked her overhead strike, then slid around behind her and delivered a powerful kick to her back, sending her tumbling down the walkway. As Bastila's saber flew from her hands, Malae called it to her, holding it out in front of her as Bastila rolled to her feet and pivoted. She glared up at Malae.

"Stop this," Malae pleaded. "Think about what will happen if you win. You'll be Malak's slave for the rest of your life, or he'll kill you, or maybe you kill him and you're just a slave to the dark side instead. Do you really think that once you kill me you'll be happy?"

Bastila offered no response except Forcing her saber out of Malae's hand, grabbing it in midair and lunging once again. Malae parried a few strikes, waiting for the pattern to emerge, and then struck out as another hit came in from the right side - she ducked it, then thrust her saber up to catch the center of Bastila's weapon, cleaving it in two. One half fell into the darkness below the walkway as Bastila staggered back.

"Bastila, I love you, please-"

But Bastila would not listen. She gripped the other half of her lightsaber in both hands, the blade still ignited, and pressed the attack, leading them back into the command center. Malae's foot slipped on the edge of the holoprojector as Bastila came in for a heavy blow. Their sabers connected, and Malae's lack of balance sent Revan's old blade against the wall.

Bastila grinned and drew back for another strike, but before she could land it Malae pulled her own double-bladed saber from her belt and caught it, holding it there as Bastila pushed her down, closer to the floor. As cyan locked with gold, Malae looked past the lightshow and into Bastila's watering eyes, tears dropping and fizzling on the sabers. "Why won't you kill me?" she asked, but her lips didn't move.

Malae shoved her off, and she stood back, panting, her saber at her side. "Do it!" Bastila screamed, fists shaking in impotent rage. "Kill me! Win your war! End your evil! Just let me go!"

Malae stood and faced her. "Never."

"I'm broken, I'm lost, stop...stop wasting your time on me!" Bastila demanded, shifting her blade in front of her. "I know you're holding back. I know you could kill me, right here, right now. Just stop trying to save me."

Malae deactivated her saber. "I won't."

"Why not?!" Bastila asked. "I'll never be the same. I've fed on people, I'm a monster, I'm a wreck, you were always better than me, always stronger, I've fallen to the dark side-"

"I fell, Bastila." Malae stepped towards her. "I fell. You had me at your mercy. I was beaten. And you still saved me."

"Because you were always the best of us!" Bastila insisted, stepping back and placing another hand on her weapon. "Always! You had the courage to fight the Mandalorians! You had the power to succeed, the knowledge, the strategies! What am I? A fancy Force trick. A waste of potential. I've done nothing but guide a false Revan here."

"You saved me," Malae repeated. "And you can save yourself."

"I don't want to!"

And Bastila struck again, forcing Malae to ignite her saber again. But her strikes were uncoordinated, sloppy, with none of the easy grace that Malae was drawing off through the bond, none of the skill that she now knew came from Bastila, nothing but a last, desperate attempt to force a wound. Disarming her instead was child's play, the half-saber rolling to where Revan's abandoned saber lay. Malae stepped back and deactivated her weapon once more. "Come back to me," she offered, and closed her eyes.

Bastila could not accept that.

She called over Revan's saber, the one she'd sent back to Malak in a fit of immature gloating the day after she'd returned to Dantooine. "I'll kill you," she repeated, her hand fumbling along the hilt for the ignite switch. "I'll kill you with your own blade. I swear it."

"You won't," Malae said, her eyes snapping open and a hand thrusting out and sending lightning into the inert weapon. Bastila cried out as it exploded in her hand, pieces of shrapnel studding her palm and chest as she staggered backward. And then a deeper rumbling, and a tilt, and she realized why Malae had hurt her.

"We took too long," Malae said, approaching her as she shook her head, no, no, they couldn't both die, that wasn't right, someone had to win, someone had to come out of this. "I'm sorry."

Bastila fell to her knees and closed her eyes as the station groaned and shifted around her. She felt a gentle touch plucking the shards of metal and violet from her body, setting them down beside her, letting them go, letting them slide behind her as the world tilted. And then, a healing hand intertwining their fingers, another on her chest. "Please," Malae whispered, lifting her up and embracing her. "Don't make me go into the darkness alone. Don't go to the Force hating me."

"I never hated you," Bastila murmured into her shoulder. "I hated myself." She heard the station cry out as it began its long fall, echoes of Malae's perception of the Force.

"I love you." Bastila heard something clicking beside her head. "I wish you could see yourself the way I do."

"I love you too," Bastila admitted, at long last. "With all my heart."

"Then follow my lead."

Malae stepped back, and Bastila opened her eyes. Malae's lightsaber floated in pieces between them, a slowly drifting cloud of metal and glass pieces, and at chest level, the cyan crystal. Whispers through the bond told her to grasp it, and they both did, hand over hand, fingers interlocking over the living spark of the Force within.

As the station disintegrated around her, all sensations but the Force fell away, and Bastila saw nothing but Malae, her arms open and welcoming. She walked into the embrace, without fear.

Carth was not Force-sensitive.

So he could not have felt the crystal shooting up through the dying station and into a stable orbital path above Rakata Prime's sun. He couldn't have felt the brief moment of acceptance, of reconciliation, that Malae and Bastila shared as they died. He didn't hear anything but a whisper of the message that Malae sent to the Jedi. He shouldn't have known anything but the hollow feeling that filled his stomach as he backed out of the port, Canderous screaming in his ear, leaving his friend and the galaxy's savior to die.

Yet somehow, even as he fled from the explosion of the Star Forge, he had a feeling. A hunch, maybe. That Malak had died in the observation lounge, waiting for Revan, waiting for his final duel at the end of all things, and found himself thrown out into vacuum when the first volley of turbolasers hit. That Bastila and Malae had kissed, once more, aboard that station. And that Malae had left her mark on that system as surely as she'd left her mark on him.

They all made it out, all except Mal. They flew down to Lehon and received their medals in a hasty, desperate ceremony to celebrate their accomplishments. Carth was officially re-inducted into the Republic ranks, and left not aboard the Ebon Hawk, but on the bridge of a Hammerhead. The Hawk, he was told later, disappeared shortly after he left, along with the three former Jedi.

He kept the Republic strong. Over the course of a few years, he was promoted again and again, until he was quite suddenly Admiral Onasi, father to a Jedi Knight. And when the Jedi started disappearing, he told Dustil to seek the Ebon Hawk, for it was the only safe place he could think of in the galaxy for a Jedi.

The Ebon Hawk did return to him, a year after that, without his son or his friends, only news of a broken Jedi who'd drawn out a terrible creature and destroyed it above the skies of his home planet. As he stood in the dock, staring at the ship, he took a deep breath and readied himself.

When his boot hit the loading ramp for the first time in five years, he quite suddenly felt the presence of Juhani, Jolee, Yuthura...and Mal. He caught himself and choked, and thought that maybe the Jedi should have scouted him out earlier. T3-M4 poked his head over the top of the ramp and beeped excitedly, zipping down to knock against his knees.

"T3!" Carth exclaimed, kneeling down to embrace the little machine. "I, I never thought I'd see you again, I can't believe it, do you know-"

"Where they've gone?" Carth looked up to see who'd finished his sentence, and beheld the General. He'd known, intellectually, that of course the Exile that had been traipsing about the galaxy causing problems had been his general in the Mandalorian Wars, but seeing those soft green eyes, the fluffy blonde hair, the red lips again was something else entirely.

"Kayrn Tekal," Carth said, getting to his feet. "It's an honor."

"The honor's mine, Admiral," Tekal said, giving him a bow. "I heard you were involved in Raven's little redemption. That's why I agreed to meet with you - I'd like to know where she sent the Jedi who left this ship on the Outer Rim."

"I knew her as Malae," Carth said.

"You're going to have to explain that one to me."

"Then let's pull up a chair in the commons and get started," Carth suggested, stepping up the ramp. "For me, it all started on a ship called the Endar Spire..."

He sat back down in those familiar chairs and told her everything, of Taris, Dantooine, the Star Maps, Bastila and Malak, and finally leaving the Star Forge as it turned to so much solar fuel behind him, and then sending his son away to find the lost Jedi. When he was done, all she asked was, "So you don't know where they went?"

Carth took a deep breath, and resolved to tell her what he'd always imagined was just a flight of fantasy, or an illusion, or something that just wasn't real, about the day that he'd left her to die. "Before the station disintegrated," he said at last, "I heard her voice. I think she sent it through the Force, and I don't think it was supposed to reach me."

"You're a Jedi?" Tekal asked. "Yes, actually, I can feel the spark of the Force in you, I've seen it before, in my crew-"

"I'm not a Jedi. I don't know if I'm Force-sensitive. But..."

"But you have a Jedi son," Tekal pointed out. "What did she say?"

"She said..." Carth swallowed. "She said, 'Carth will keep the Republic strong. Seek the Empire.' That's all I heard."

"Seek the Empire," Tekal repeated quietly. She reached across the table and brushed her hand over his. "I could teach you, you know. To use the Force. To follow her trail, together."

"She said I would keep the Republic strong," Carth said, withdrawing his hand. "I plan to do that."

"She could always inspire loyalty," Tekal said, smiling sadly. "I'm not done, yet. The Sith that have been killing Jedi, it was a triumvirate. The last one went to Malachor Five. I need to seek her out. But after that, I'm going after the lost Jedi. Can you think of anywhere I should go, anything I should know?"

"Head to Rakata Prime," Carth said, without really knowing why.

"And if I find your son?"

"If he made it to them, and if he joined them...just tell him I'm proud," Carth said.

They stood up, and Tekal shook his hand. "I will, Admiral Onasi," she promised. "Keep the Republic strong."

As Carth left the Ebon Hawk for the last time, as he saw it fly off without him, he smiled.

Then, he turned away.

THE END