Right, at this point I think I'm stepping off of the speculative path and fully into an Alternate Universe. This is my explanation; I like it, its fun. Obviously it's totally non-canonical but, hey, this is a fanfic. I also think this may be fluffy, just a little.

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Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose,
Nothing don't mean nothing honey if it ain't free.

−Janis Joplin

The armor she had borrowed from one of Ordo's warriors was not as cumbersome as the atmospheric suit she had donned on Peragus but it was still created a strange sense of distance from the world outside the visor. It was a necessary evil; however, not even her now considerable powers could protect her from the radiation and the chemical storms here on Ossus.

She had defeated Kreia; had killed her and survived, despite all of the dire predictions. There had, of course been more predictions after that. The part of her that was still The Jedi Exile, General of the Madalorian Wars, Last Hope of the Republic, had wanted to know the fates of her companions; had wanted assurance that this part of her life had not been in vain. Even as that portion of her took comfort in the words the other part had known that it mattered hardly at all. They were safe in their unknowing revolutions in time. Live, die, live again, die again; never really remembering who and what they had been, such was the lot of those held safe in the Force. It was only when one became like her, like Revan, that their fate became their own.

Creatures like they two could not coexist with the privileged unenlightened that made up this Republic, this galaxy. They would only bring destruction to those around them; their dissonance with the rise and fall of the composition that was life caused such terrible ripples. Kreia had been caught in one of those ripples; it had dragged her down and torn her to pieces, leaving only the confused, babbling shell of a great woman. The entire Republic Army, or nearly, had been breached and sunk by those awful swells. Revan had left when he realized what his proximity to his former friends and companions had done.

Of course, she would follow him, as she had before. Better to destroy one's enemies piece by piece then one's friends. They would destabilize the Sith from within by their very presence. It would not stop the coming wars but it would ensure that the root of the foundations of Sith power was too weak to support their ambitions for long. They would be a subtle poison in the well of power from which the Sith drank, though they would die sooner or later their antipodal influence would be as near eternal as the Force.

She would follow her commander soon but first she had business to finish with her nearest past.

Knossa was a city of shattered bones. It took concentration to see the city as she had known it almost fifty years before. In the end it was an imperfect vision with the city she wanted to see nothing more than a pale shade, superimposed over the irradiated remnants. It was enough though. She found the square from her dream-memories and then the remains of the building that had been their temporary refuge, hers and Sion's. She realized now that could not remember his other name.

It didn't matter.

She picked her way through rubble until she reached what had been the center of the lobby to the building. She thought she recalled a fountain here, surrounded by stone benches and plants. She thought she might have enjoyed sitting there; had done so often.

Yes, here were the remains of the pool. There was no where left to sit so she stood near the cracked cistern and let her mind drift.

Perhaps he had been a Jedi come for some arcane piece of information from the library, maybe even a padawan undergoing the last stages of his training. Then again he could simply have been some force sensitive visitor or even a Krath agent. She honestly could not remember and may not even have known. She would not then have been in any position to speculate. She had been, after all, only an assistant at one of the numerous research stations. She must have been at least sensitive to the Force, but then again maybe not. She thought in the affirmative because she vividly remembered their first meeting now.

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She had been finishing lunch at one of the open air café's around the square before her. There had been others with her, friends or colleagues, both most likely because she recalled the meal as having been pleasant and herself as reluctant to return to the sterile, artificial environment of the station. She had been looking out across the square, drinking in the early afternoon light and warmth, when she had seen him. He had been standing near the middle of the square all alone and he had been looking directly at her. The intensity of his stare had made her uncomfortable and she had looked away but when she hazarded a glance back she saw that he had been not only still looking at her but was now approaching.

She had tried to make a graceful exit before he reached the low stone wall that enclosed the café terrace but one of her companions had noticed him and quickly asked her who the attractive male wandering their way was. It was by then too late either to bolt or answer coherently because he was upon them. He had barely looked at the other pair at the table and had asked only her name. She remembered giggles from the other women as they excused themselves and she sputtered to answer.

She must have coughed it out eventually and they must have had some conversation, perhaps they had even had several meetings. Her next memory of him was later though, with enough time having elapsed for them to have settled comfortably into the early stages of a romantic attachment. She remembered the morning that comfortable relationship had intensified. He had come early to this very fountain, had met her unexpectedly on her way to work, and told her that he must go. There had been rumors of war for some time and now it seemed that full scale conflict had been declared. He was going to fight that war. He had reassured her that the fighting would be far from this world as he held her while she shook and wept quietly, fearing not her safety but his. She had not gone to work that day, instead they had retired to her apartment and spent the hours before his transport left making love for the first, and each feared the last, time.

Whatever he had been before when he returned from Empress Teta almost a year later he had become something else. He had spent several days at the Great Library which seemed to cement the change in him. She accepted all of this because he was her man, because she was madly in love perhaps, or maybe it was because she already bore a secret resentment toward the haughty and unknowable Jedi that populated the planet.

He stayed for only days and then he left for Yavin. It was from this time on that she recognized that her life began to take on a split character.

There was the world of other people, of work and social activities. Then there was the world she inhabited with him. One of total devotion in which no other entity existed outside of they two. Gradually though this other world, dark, more intense became the only one she wanted. Work fell by the wayside as did her life at large between his visits. It was at some point during this time that she first became aware of latent talents.

It could have been her proximity to him as a Force wielder but it seemed more likely to her that it was the time spent almost in solitude that allowed her to discover something that had always been there. She had not spoken to anyone for nearly three days when she first reached out through the Force. She broke a cup at that first attempt and scared herself so badly that she refused even to clean up the pieces for another day. Gradually though she began to gain in courage and attempt more ambitious exercises with the Force. By the time he returned she was able not only to move the cup but also bring it to her across the room and even levitate several objects at once.

His face had not immediately reflected the delight or pride she had hoped for. Instead he had seemed both enraged and frightened. He had grabbed her then, hard enough to leave bruises for days afterward and for the first time she had been afraid of him. He had demanded to know who had taught her to do this; who else knew of her new skills. When she had reassured him that it was only him his demeanor had shifted again. He had stood staring out the large window in the front room for a long time, his expression distant and fearsome enough to warn her not to disturb him. Finally he had told her that he needed to see someone and that he would return shortly.

She had wept in the 'fresher after he left, filled with shame and anger at this first rejection she had ever suffered at his hands. He had come back during the night when she was curled miserably in their, it had stopped being her's in her mind long ago, bed. He had been all gentleness and apologies. He had even offered to train her, so long as she told no one else what was happening. She had agreed without enthusiasm. She remembered wishing more that she had never discovered her affinity for the Force in the first place. He had been adamant though and had spent the rest of the night, and much of the next day, training her to mask her presence in the Force.

Now their relationship changed again, creating ever more tension and secrets in her other life, the one without him, as she now thought of it. He was her teacher and lover, one who became more and more intense as the months progressed. At times he seemed almost in a frenzy to both keep her away from the Force, as the girl he had first met; and to push her to master techniques faster and faster. It required all of her attention to keep up with him and, eventually, she was politely told to take a leave of absence from her position in order to "resolve whatever personal problems she was currently facing in order to return to peak mental and physical health." She was half promised a reinstatement after a period of "review."

It no longer mattered to her anyway. Sion, he had been calling himself that after the events in Empress Teta, had recently begun to provide her with credits, perhaps he had anticipated her dismissal. Now she lost almost all contact with the galaxy outside of him. He began to see her more but often demurred to let her go outside much and certainly never on her own. She should have realized how unhealthy the entire situation had become but by then she was too caught in the dark vortex to pull herself out even if she had.

Not even she had become so isolated that she could miss the climax of the war; it took place very nearly below her window after all. She had ventured out when some of her former colleagues had pounded on her door and forced her to accompany them toward an evacuation station as pieces of the pulverized nebula hurled toward them. She had been extremely reluctant to leave without Sion and had had to be coerced by one of the Jedis or Padawans in charge of the evacuation. It was in this state, being physically removed from her apartment and "escorted" toward the space port between two Jedi, that he found them. Her memory became vague here; fragmented into momentary images by the tumult of her emotions.

What she had finally pieced together was that Sion had slain both Jedi and had begun to leave with her when a far more powerful group of Jedi had appeared to stop him. Though he managed to defeat three of the four in the end they proved too much for him and he was himself struck down. At this moment her entire recollection was nothing but seething rage without color or sound. She had attacked the remaining Jedi both physically and through the Force. She had murdered that other woman. She was out of control with rage; she lashed out blindly at anyone who crossed her consciousness, not caring who they were or what they might have been doing. She became worse then a mad animal. Fortunately, she realized now, that her raw power was a poor match to disciplined Force users. As she had lain choking out her last breaths after they had taken the only action against her she had left to them she had sworn never to forget what had passed here. She swore it through the Force and the Force kept her promise.

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It had been the trauma of Malachor that had pried open the door to her past memories preserved in the Force. She had slammed that door shut and run away from it, and the Force, as much for the terrible things it had shown her about herself as for the pain of the last battle of the Mandalorian Wars. His re-emergence in her life was what had finally pushed her back toward the painful truth that waited for her. Kreia had been correct in assuming that a connection had been made between her and Sion while she lay unconscious during his attack on the Ebon Hawk, she had merely underestimated the depth and length or that connection.

The Exile smiled wistfully at that memory. She almost wished that she could have remained ignorant, could have stayed the hero of the Mandalorian Wars returned to save the Republic and the Jedi, but such maudlin desires were foolish in the end. The will of the Force was undeniable, and she had chosen this path, it would not let her deviate to serve her own selfishness. Her life now might even be thought of as penance for the mistakes of the past she mused. That was an elegant explanation but she suspected it was too simple in the end. After all, many others had done far worse then her in the last, hazy moments of her life on Ossus, had done far worse than try to love a Sith, but they had not been removed from the unconscious flow of life.

Perhaps it was her promise in the last moments of her life. Perhaps it was something that she had chosen when she accepted Sion regardless of what she knew him to be. Perhaps it was something else, subtle and lost in her memories. She resolved to ask Revan what had wakened him and what he thought about the whys and wherefores of their condition when she found him.

A small part of her wanted to rage at the trick that had been played on her. After all, her lover would have risen again. There had been no need for her to die. She could not bring the rest of her self to agree with that lone, soft whisper. There was a reason for her to have died as she had. It lay before her now, in the dark with the waiting Empire of the Sith. She had needed to die to fulfill her role now just as Sion had needed to be struck down by her blade. She was become a dark void in the Force to be used against the enemies of the light. Her fall had been longer and darker then she could ever have imagined and she had been torn apart by it; but at the end of that fall were the tools she needed to rebuild her self. She could not have foreseen it, would probably have run from the dreadful things that had been required of her, that were still to be done, but she had not been given the choice. If she must be a monster she would be a useful monster.

Rising, she took on last look around the ruins of her former life. She gave herself over to the threadbare recollections of her joy and passion and pain here. She clutched at them and imagined herself inhaling their fading scent as one would with the clothing of a long departed loved one. It would be the Jedi way to leave them behind now, to walk towards one's new duty with all the ties and concerns of the past laid neatly aside. But she was no longer a Jedi. She chose those memories of love but also the final moments of pain to temper them and locked them away in her mind to be touchstones of her former self.

She walked back toward the shuttle and forward toward Revan and the True Sith.

She did not look behind her.

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I would like to thank everyone who read this story and enjoyed it. I would especially like to extend my thanks especially to those who reviewed and those who added this piece to their favorite lists. It means a great deal to me that you would be inspired enough to leave feed back or publicly display your regard for my work.

The quotations at the beginning of each chapter are referenced as follows.

1. Michel Foucault, Sexuality 1: 45

2. Michel Foucault, The Use of Pleasure 252-53

3. Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment Part IV Chapter V p. 405

4. Lucretius De rerum natura Part IV;ll 1097-1101

5. Dante Alighieri La Vita Nuova Part III ll 11-14

6. Vasko Popa "Ashes" in Homage to the Lame Wolf

7. H.D. "Eurydice"

8. Janice Joplin "Me and Bobby McGee"