Title: A Jedi, or Something Like It
Author: obaona
Summary: Atton's journey to becoming a Jedi, while on board the Ebon Hawk.
A/N: This is hopefully the start of a series of missing scenes from KOTOR2, mostly following canon.

Feedback is loved!

He watched her a lot - he knew he watched her a lot, he wasn't in denial about that or his jealousy, as Mira claimed - but even though she seemed aware of his attention, she didn't appear to mind, never questioned him on the subject. He wondered if it was that she was used to it, that this is how it had been for her in the Mandalorian Wars, with so many at her side, fighting and killing on her command. He wondered if they felt no hesitation, if they were as drawn to her as he found himself. Even their enemies, the Sith, seemed drawn to her, usually attacked her first of all of them, even though the better tactic would be to kill the weaker companions first.

But the others - well, Atton felt that the others, though they felt the pull as much as he did - she never looked back at them. She talked to them, listened to them, of course, but they didn't have her attention in the same way. He thought. Hoped, maybe. Bao-Dur's damn laughter came to his mind.

She was meditating in the cargo hold when Atton came to find her.

"What are you doing?" Atton asked, sitting opposite her.

She smiled. "Playing pazaak." She had no cards before her, but Atton would have known what she meant anyway.

"Care to share a game?" he asked, settling down in front of her.

"It's strange, actually. When I play pazaak in my head, it's when I hear you the loudest. Like you're answering me, almost," she said.

Atton was startled, and didn't know what to say for a moment; he hadn't considered that in teaching her that technique - a derivative off the one he had used so long against the Jedi he had captured - would have that particular result. But he didn't mind so much, not if it was just her. "Well, I guess I'm okay with you in my head. But playing pazaak isn't really why I'm here. I was wondering if you'd mind teaching some more about the Force. About controlling it." So it didn't control him. The way he could move before thinking, the Force telling him what to do - it was a little creepy, even as the Force felt beautiful to him. "I mean, I can feel it - like I've never felt it before, when I'm around you."

This was, as far as he was concerned, merely the natural evolution of their relationship - that Atton was saved, he believed, for this purpose: to be there for her, as a protector if he was able, someone to just slow her enemies down if he wasn't able stop them. Which was the more likely, really.

She looked at him thoughtfully. "The more you touch the Force, the more you'll get comfortable with it," she said, as if reading his thoughts. He was pretty sure she wasn't, but still. "I was thinking I could train you some basic thought techniques, so we can fight more together, be more aware of each other and what the other is about to do. It works well for groups of Jedi, and can improve our ability to defend ourselves so much that nothing can get through."

Atton nodded. "What do I need to do?"

"Sit with me, as you are, and meditate. Then we will go through the basic forms of lightsaber combat together, the ones I already taught you. I will do them at different speeds, and you need to match me without looking, without seeing."

"Like the old witch?"

She smiled. "Not all of her teaching is so cynical as she is."

"Whatever. I still don't like her."

"Well, this is a fairly basic Jedi technique. It raises ones awareness of his or her surroundings, and masters and apprentices use it to strengthen their bond as well as their fighting ability." She paused, and then added, "It probably would have helped us in the sublevels of the Enclave."

That had taken some effort and concentration to get through - the laigreks weren't pleasant creatures. Though he still wished the laigreks had gotten to the Disciple before they did. What a kiss-ass. Bowing. Seriously.

"So you can meditate with me instead of the Disciple?" Atton asked, one eye half-open, watching for her reaction.

She seemed amused. "All Jedi meditate to some degree, Atton."

Which was no answer at all, of course, but Atton didn't argue.

She set up, taking the first stance. Atton copied, looking at her through the corner of his eye. She waited, and he realized she was waiting for him to close his eyes. He sighed, letting her know he still wasnt sure about this anything - Kreia said was automatically suspect, as far as he was concerned - and did it anyway.

The Force was like a whisper from a distance, something Atton had tried for a long time to shove into the deepest recesses of himself, shut off and not effecting anything he did. And yet, he couldn't help but wonder, what had caused him to take the chance of a job at Peragus? He was a pilot primarily, with a few other useful skills, and all piloting at Peragus was about following the latest nav chart. And he'd coincidentally gotten arrested for smuggling fuel - that he was guilty was irrelevant - when the only way he could have survived was in that cell.

She went through a series of stances, and Atton could feel the Force prodding him along to follow. After maybe twenty minutes of that, he was getting relaxed, trusting the Force to tell him what to do, and the Exile stopped making minor corrections vocally.

And then she touched his mind, gentle, a little invasive, squirming, inside --

Atton jerked violently away, falling out of the fifth stance of Shii-Cho, falling to the floor in an awkward scramble away.

"Atton!" She looked alarmed, approaching him.

He looked up at her, distrusting - but it quickly faded. He realized how foolish he was being, that the contact was no more than she had said they would try. And anyway, she'd admitted that she could hear his mind, and he'd thought nothing of it then, because he trusted her. "It's nothing. I just - no, I'm sorry. Forget it."

"You reacted like that for a reason, Atton," she said, eyes full of concern, stopping her approach, as if sensing his wariness.

Atton rolled his eyes, didn't answer. It wasnt important, really. This was just the first time he'd felt that mental contact through the Force and had a choice about it.

"What is it? I did something wrong, I know I did," she said, pausing and then settling to the floor beside him when Atton made no move to get up. Not too close, but not too far, either. It was just as usual, with her she was so aware of them all, of him, knowing just how close to get, how far away to stay.

"You just startled me, that's all, when you touched my mind," Atton said, finally. He supposed there was no reason not to tell her, at least about this part, right now. "It was just remarkably similar to what she did. The Jedi who saved me. Crawling in my head. Like Kreia too, for that matter," he added, figuring that regardless of Kreias latest blackmail, it wouldn't hurt the Exile to know at least this part.

"Kreia?" She blinked.

"Oh, yeah. The old witch crawled her way in and saw the truth. Seemed to think I'd be good blaster fodder for you, so she told me to stick around." That he would have done so anyway was perhaps not irrelevant, because it meant that his mental shielding worked, when Kreia wasn't consciously forcing her way into his head.

She was shocked, appalled, and then very quickly it shifted into a surprising uncertainty. "You want to leave? Atton, you dont have to stay regardless of Kreia. I'll give you credits, if you need them - as much as you need. And Kreia well, Kreia will get some words from me, Atton, I swear you that much."

Atton shot to his feet. He hadn't anticipated that reaction. "No! I don't want to leave. I never did." He stopped, ran his hand through his hair, a nervous tick. "I ... I've been drawn to you from the beginning. I mean, the half-naked thing, that helped, but it wasn't just that. It was that ... you had this calm streaming off of you. I've never met someone like that. Like you."

She looked down, away, then his eyes again - seeing something, Atton didn't know what. "I'm sorry, still. I should have realized that would be a trigger for you."

"It's stupid," Atton muttered. "I trust you, I do." Kreia doesn't matter. Even her other threat, to bring out his darkness again, didnt matter. Not ultimately. The Exile could kill him if it came to that. For the time being, he supposed he could follow along with Kreia, doing what she said. Kreia seemed, at least, to want to help her.

"It was a totally natural response, Atton. No need to apologize. We can work on touching each other's minds later, when you're more comfortable. And just ... ignore Kreia, for the time being." She stopped, and there was a brief uneasy silence. He wondered if she was going to ask more about Kreia, but she didn't, changed the subject, continuing, "Anyway, I wanted to ask you about your Echani knowledge. I assume you have some, more than the stance, as you said earlier?"

"Oh. Yeah, I do. All the ... all the assassination squads learned it. I could teach you, I guess, but you're a pretty good fighter already. I bet you could take out an Echani."

"I'd still like to learn, if that's all right."

"'Course," Atton said.

"So you got your Echani training as a Sith, then?"

Atton was uncomfortable talking about the subject, and though he tried to hide his reaction, he couldn't help drop his smile, his eyes shifting away, but he nodded, sitting down again on the floor. "I was one of the elite. I was very good at what I did." And guilty as sin because of it.

"It's all right, Atton." She looked suddenly tired. "A lot of Jedi were led astray. I lost myself, too, at Malachor V. I can't judge you - if I judge you, I judge myself equally as irredeemable."

"That's different. You were doing what you had to, to stop the Mandalorians. I was doing it for the pleasure of it."

"Not as much as you probably think you were, Atton," she said. He shook his head, disbelieving, but she continued, leaning in, looking into his eyes. "I remember your words as you told me your story, Atton. The story of Jaq. You thought what you were doing was right. You were swayed by your loyalty into the position - as many were - but you believed your every action was right. That the Jedi deserved what they got. Isn't that true?"

Atton shook his head, looking away.

"In your own way, you were serving as best you knew how. You were lost, but you didn't know that. True Sith know how lost they are, and they don't care. The Dark Side has by that point twisted them beyond recognition."

"I don't believe that. It sounds like you're patronizing me, saying I didn't know what I was doing. I knew what I was doing, and I - I enjoyed it."

"Jedi are trained to resist strong emotions, Atton, but as I swept down on Malachor V and took all those lives I felt the thrill, the rush of life as I killed. I was no different from you."

"I hadn't ... realized it was like that for you," Atton said, surprised.

"You were lost, Atton. We both were. I lost my ability to sense the Force, and that was, in its own way, a blessing as much as it was cruelty, if the Jedi did it to me. I think otherwise I would have been driven mad by the pain I felt - driven mad or driven to the Dark. When you saw the truth, when she showed you the truth, Atton, you did the right thing - you turned away. And yes, you ran. But you did it so you could survive."

She was still looking at him, almost staring him down, and she sounded so sure of herself, so utterly right, he couldnt bring himself to deny her once again.

"I'll have to think on this," he said finally.

"That's all I ask," she said, softening, smiling at him.

He let loose his breath. "Okay."

He was going through a series of Echani hand-to-hand moves - without the Force, as was appropriate - in the largest unoccupied area of the ship, the cargo hold, when she came in. He didn't stop, didn't feel the need. He went through the whole series, the first time he'd allowed himself to do so in years, thinking. Thinking while she watched him.

Logically, the Exiles words make sense. She had her problems, he had ... his. They had both moved on. Jedi believed in redemption. Revan a case a point, however bizarre that switch had been to him. He'd never met her, of course, but she was brilliant, had won the Mandalorian Wars for them, had saved them all and as a result he'd believed in her cause, in the cause of those who had saved them from destruction.

Only to twist them later, of course. He hadn't even seen the twisting, not even had a clue - he'd been so certain, so righteous. Even after all the Jedi he killed and captured, torturing and breaking them, watching them try to fight the change in their thinking, what their pain revealed - the pain, the anger, and finally, the power. He had been oblivious to his Force sensitivity then, though he had no doubt he had used it. Afterwards, after her, that Jedi, he couldn't help but see the nudges of it, how the Dark Side had lured him. And, at the end, how the Light had called to him with simplicity, with clarity.

And when the Jedi who crawled inside his head showed him what it truly was - what the Force truly was, in the Light, he experienced it with no filter, no training, and it had terrified him as much as it enraptured him. In that moment he had seen the way a Jedi does, in the way of knowing a person through the Force and recognizing them as a person ... everything was connected, and he'd loved her the way a Jedi loves, because he couldn't help it, couldn't stop himself, once he'd seen and understood.

And she'd died for him. He'd killed her.

Here he was, now.

After the moment he had revealed everything, shocked her, hurt her, the Exile had shown him the Force in much the same way, except it was voluntary, and he could at that moment see all the lives of the people on the planet, the sound of them, their minds, and felt connected to them. To other people, people he'd never met. And he had believed, at the moment, that she had saved him - saved him not by agreeing to train him as a Jedi, but by giving him the chance to make up for the wrongs, all the pain he had caused. Maybe that was enough, Kreia's threats regarding his inner darkness notwithstanding.

He stopped, breathing hard, moves once so familiar now causing unfamiliar aches, met the Exile's eyes.

She smiled at him.

She always had that same gentle attentiveness, an awareness of her surroundings and the people in them, even as she maintained a rather ridiculous amount of trust in the goodness of people. Like the guy who wanted the Ebon Hawk - Atton was all for shooting him in the back. The kind of people who had a ship like the Ebon Hawk? Were not nice people. The Exile being a major exception. So he'd wanted to kill the guy, but she said no. It wasn't fair or right, she said.

Things will work out, and what do you know, they did.

He was kind of amazed at that, honestly. How the hell did she know? The only thing he could think of was the Force. Speaking to her.

He didn't say so, though.

He sat down beside her - not too close, he was still sweating, and aware enough of her to care - and waited for her to say something.

T3, in their moment of contemplative silence, rolled on by the cargo hold.

"I've been meaning to ask. Why do you hate T3?" she suddenly asked.

Atton almost rolled his eyes. "Because it's a droid, and people keep acting like it's a person. And droids break. In the head. Or whatever, its dome."

"It's as simple as that?"

"What were you expecting, that I'd be dropped on my head as a baby by a droid? I thought you'd get it, seeing as how the Force is all about LIVING beings. Not droids."

"Droids have their own sense in the Force, actually. It's faint, different from a life form, but there. They have their own effect on other life, after all." She looked at him. "Would you like me to show you?"

"Uh, no, I think I'll skip that lesson," Atton said dryly.

"All right," she said, but there was a glint of amusement in her eyes. "I noticed you didn't use the Force."

He shrugged. "I figured it'd be a good idea. To keep in shape without the Force, as well as with it."

"Why?" she said, surprised.

"Well, because of you. I've seen what you are even before you really started, you know, glowing." He waved his hand, not sure what that meant, but trying to indicate the change hed noticed in her since first seeing her in that holding cell. "That's what Kreia said, that you were special because you'd lost the Force, and managed to survive - not just survive, actually, but keep going and relearn all your skills."

"You talk to the others about me?" she asked, not at all the question he was expecting.

Atton shifted his position slightly, eyes darting to the right, then to the left. He wasn't sure what she'd make of his answer. "Well, yeah, a little. To Bao-Dur, since he knew you from before."

"What did he say?" she asked curiously.

"Nothing," Atton said in a disgusted tone.

She laughed. "Atton, you could always ask me."

"You were pretty touchy about your lightsaber, I figured the rest of your past would get the same reaction. I learn quick," Atton said dryly.

She looked down. "I suppose that's true. I'll try not to do that. Anyway, you're learning from now. You have a right to know about my past in the Jedi."

"Okay. So why didn't you ever remake your lightsaber? Until recently?" he asked bluntly. He'd been curious about it ever since her dismissal when hed first brought it up.

"It takes the Force to make a lightsaber properly - to align the crystals. All crystals have subtle variations, often too small to be properly detected by a machine. The combination of crystals is unique for every lightsaber, and that creates unique problems in assembling them to create a highly deadly beam. But in the Force, one can tell, and align three different crystals perfectly - in a way a non-Jedi can't. It also takes skill, of course, which is why I gave you your lightsaber." Her mouth quirked. "Not to mention, unless you have the Force a lightsaber is pretty useless against a blaster."

Atton thought about his lightsaber, a yellow double-bladed version that was a little hard to control, if awesome to use. "Why did you give me that kind of blade?"

She looked away, seeming thoughtful. "Bastila had a double-bladed lightsaber."

"Is that an answer?"

Her smile was almost shy. "Well, no. Not exactly. It was something I wanted to discuss with you, eventually. Double-bladed lightsabers are considered a more aggressive style, some even say closer to the Dark Side."

Atton was starting to feel a little alarmed.

Apparently she saw it, because she continued, more seriously, "It's not an act against you, Atton, to give you that lightsaber. It's a reminder. Of who you were and who you are. Bastila turned to the Dark Side, did you know that?" Atton hadn't, but he was guessing Kreia had. "I kept out of things, but I learned about that. The Jedi didn't publicize that detail, of course."

"So you think I'm going to turn to the Dark Side?" Atton said, disbelieving.

"Not at all," she replied, calmly. "But I think you're going to have to face the Dark Side at some point. I sense something in your future, Atton. It will be a test, and not an easy one. I want you to be ready, in every way. That lightsaber? Is part of your preparation."

Atton wasn't even sure what to say to that. He felt like a little bit of 'thank you' and a little bit of 'what the hell?' "So what, it's practice?"

"Yes, in a way."

"So that's why you gave me that lightsaber? The entire reason?" Somehow, the event had felt more significant than this.

"No, not entirely. Tell me - the moment I placed it in your hands, what did you feel?"

He considered a moment. "Comfortable, I guess."

"Yes. It fit you."

He looked away, the image of his lightsaber in his mind - the sleek hilt, the chip on one end, the scratch along the entire length. She and Bao-Dur had constructed it for him, made of used parts they'd found who knows where, but it had felt brand new to him, perfect and waiting. He didn't like what it said, though - that he'd been drawn to what was almost considered a Dark Side weapon?

"It's not a fault, Atton. Jedi Masters use double-bladed lightsabers as well, even Council members."

"The ones who took your lightsaber and kicked you out when you were the only one who went back to explain?" Atton asked, wryly. Not reassuring.

"I trust you with it," was all she said. Simply. Certain she was right.

He didn't share the opinion, but that had never stopped her. "All right."

She nodded.

They passed into comfortable silence once again, one she apparently felt no need to break. Atton took the time to think. Most of their conversations ended up that way, making him think, with her changing his worldview, and he wasn't even really sure how she was so convincing all the time, but she was. It was a dangerous skill, one he'd normally be uneasy about, but since it was her, well. She'd never given him the slightest reason not to trust her. Even when he told her all the horrible things he had done, and accused her of hypocrisy when she kept pushing- she'd just said she would tell him whatever he wanted to know about her past. About the Mandalorian Wars.

About Malachor.

And she'd come back from that, when he hadn't. Ever since that briefly elucidating conversation with Kreia on Telos, he'd looked at her differently. Everything she had gone through - she'd gone through it all, everything the other Jedi did and more, everything those like him had gone through, and she'd still turned away from the Sith, from further war. The only one who had, even as she had insisted - he'd seen in the holo of her trial - that it was necessary to stop the Mandalorians, and that they failed to understand any of it, any of them that had chosen to go.

It made him angry, disgusted with the Jedi he'd never seen except in that holo, that they had dismissed her so readily, so willingly ignorant. Maybe that was why she always met them alone. Even when she went to find the Jedi Masters on Nar Shadda and Dantooine, she had always done so alone.

Well, whatever. He trusted her, that was enough. Enough, maybe, that this Jedi thing, this Force thing, would really work out.

She suddenly spoke. "I think it would be a good idea for you to practice with the Force, as well as without it. The Force is a powerful tool, but also more than that. The more you use it, the better you'll be at it, the better you'll be at listening to it."

"Yeah, okay." Atton nodded. He had a tinge of hesitance, a fear of the Force that had started when that Jedi had shown it to him, shown him this thing more powerful than he had ever thought existed, this thing that spoke to him. He had understood, of course, that the Mandalorian Wars were in some way a fight within the Jedi themselves, and the Jedi/Sith War after that was where events were truly leading. Being part of that aspect was a little strange. Even though he'd seen her listen to it, use it, as natural as breathing, trusting it absolutely - and it hadn't seemed to fail her yet. "Is it normal, to feel it ... so individual? Like it's alive outside of us, I mean. It's almost like it's influencing my thoughts, telling me what to do. And I do it. Like I don't have control over it, it has control over me, I guess."

"What you feel as influence is the Force speaking to you, yes. But be aware of this: the Light Side suggests, Atton, it guides you to do the right thing, so long as you are silent enough to listen. What you have been doing is perfectly natural, trusting the Force."

"How can I trust this big semi-sentient blob of life force, though?" Not that he hadn't, already, in some sense. But it was in the purest of mechanical ways, the Force says the bolt is going here, block there with your lightsaber. The rest of his knowledge of the Force was pure experience - the feeling of the lives of Nar Shadda, the differences and eccentricities of the people there clamoring at each other on different levels in different ways, resulting in a buzz of pure mental sound.

She had to think a moment. "Kreia would say that there must be two parts, for either to exist so must the other. That good must exist if evil does. And I have no doubt that the Dark Side is evil."

Atton didn't either, but he couldnt get the words out. It had felt so gloriously right, when he captured Jedi and tortured them, turning them to see the Sith way of thinking, to make them from something weak into something strong. Only later could he look back and see the horror of it all, when he had first seen the Light that the Jedi did, that meaning of the importance of all life which he had seen dozens of Jedi cling to.

She waited for him.

"So you're saying that if a blob of life force is good, its worth trusting?"

"Thousands of years of Jedi experience say yes, unequivocally."

"I'm hardly a normal Jedi," Atton retorted, thinking of Atris's distaste for their very presence. "More like a Force sensitive trained something-or-other."

She laughed. "I'm not sure I'd call myself a Jedi either, though I've returned to those skills, and taught them to you. Things are off-kilter, now, of what they used to be. That structure is gone. And the Jedi Masters who remain ..." She seemed sad, for a moment. "But I have you. All of you," she said, smiling faintly, but Atton could sense the honesty.

"It doesn't bother you? You were raised as a Jedi."

"That that was a long time ago, for me. I didn't join the Sith after the Mandalorian Wars, but neither did I particularly feel the need to remain a Jedi - I think that's why when they exiled me, I simply left. At the time, I couldn't feel the Force and didn't know if I ever would. I had to let that go." She seemed to gather herself, pause. "At any rate, there are plenty of people, organizations that also have Force training - the Mutakai, the Jal Shey. Theres no shame in not being a Jedi anymore or, at any rate, not having the title."

An ambiguous answer, but Atton sensed it was not evasion on her part, but rather an uncertainty about the subject. He let it drop. "Does that mean I don't have to recite the Jedi Code every day?" He could just picture entire classes on the Jedi Code.

"Only if you want to," she replied, amused.

He smiled. Took the good moment as it was. Something he was learning to do, something he'd seen her do, in between the moments of being hunted by everyone in the galaxy (or close enough). Sometimes sometimes it was nice to be in the moment, not reaching for an emotion that goes only skin-deep to hide the deeper ones, not playing pazaak.

And she sat there with him, in companionable quiet.

Piloting was its own kind of shield, Atton thought. Pulling on emotion or playing pazaak were one thing, piloting was another - soothing in its predictability, its mechanics, its function. All things he knew how to do, and could do them well. Naturally, most of the time piloting was making course adjustments, being attune to the machine in general, knowing when it was jerking to the right or left, if the hyperdrive was functioning perfectly. Those were all things one could feel as a pilot, in how the ship responded and how it sounded. Pilots were, by nature, half mechanics, because you had to know at least some of how a machine worked to use it at its maximum capability. And then you learned how to push and push to the very limit of that capability, and use it with the greatest skill and creativity to kill your enemy and leave you alive.

Atton was a very good pilot.

Force training had made him better. As much as he had understood a Jedi's weakness during his time in the Sith, he hadn't properly understood how far the Force could bring one, in the right circumstances. Mostly because he'd avoided those circumstances as a Sith, and rarely worked with Jedi as a Republic soldier, though he, like the rest, had seen from a distance and known how important the Jedi were to the war effort. And hed caught himself thinking about the kind of Jedi hed hunted down as a Sith. Not Jedi like the Exile, not like Revan - not the most powerful of the Jedi. Seeing the situation of Force sensitivity and training from this point of view had made him rethink a few things. Ever since that one, that Jedi who found him, he'd found himself rethinking things about the Jedi. Because of the Exile, of course. But also because of the training she had given.

He could feel the ship moving through hyperspace. She'd mentioned, offhand, that some Jedi could guide a ship through hyperspace without a navicomputer, by sensing stars and planets and all the other stellar miscellanea, even to the degree that a Jedi using the Force could navigate closer and more dangerous paths that a traditional navicomputer would refuse to try due to possible stresses on the ship - even be pulled out of hyperspace entirely, and into the gravity well of some star.

He wasn't ready to try anything like that. But it intrigued him, the possibility.

But now, it was the old boring stuff. Making multiple jumps on the way to Onderon, just in case Sith or bounty hunters were on their tail. It wouldn't help any if they already knew where the Ebon Hawk was going, but if they didn't, it was a good precaution that could at least save them a couple of fights.

She came into the cockpit during one of their brief stopovers, as Atton programmed the navicomputer to take them another short, random distance.

"Hey," she said softly.

"Taking a break from the old witch?"

"Well, this is practically the one place she's guaranteed not to go." She came up behind him, glanced at what he was doing, but there was no urgency to her tone or sense in the Force.

"Ha. What can I do for you?"

"Just visiting," she said. Walked over to the copilot seat, but didn't sit, just rested her folded arms on the back.

Atton purposefully busied himself with calculations, not looking at her. "I wanted to ask ... about Kreia. You never spoke to her, did you?" Kreia had been as dismissive and threatening as always, as they were on their way to Onderon. Atton had done his best to ignore her, and try to put aside Kreia's threats.

"No," she said. He didn't look up, but her voice sounded partially sad and partially frustrated. "I'm sorry for that. But I think you might be safer if she feels you're under her control. She's still more interested in teaching me than in hurting you, I think, and it's better that way."

He glanced up at her, assessing. She seemed attentive as she normally was, if a trifle annoyed at something - not him, he sensed. "Look, there's something else. About Kreia."

He had debated long and hard about this subject. Whether to tell her - she was so convinced he could be saved, that he was worth saving. It was doubting that - and he still doubted that regardless - that had kept his mouth shut, out of fear of Kreia. He was never sure what that old witch was up to. And there was something weird about the fact that Mical didn't seem to know Kreia existed.

Her eyes narrowed. "What else has she done?" she asked warily, wearied.

"She calls it my pitiful attempt at freedom. Tells me that she can unleash the part of me that killed the Jedi, the one who saved me. The part of me that enjoyed it." His gut twisted inside of him at the words - the memory still held power, even after opening himself up to the Light Side of the Force with the Exile, and even after her words of comfort of understanding.

She blinked at him, then her expression turned thoughtful. "She can't do that, Atton, only you can. She can no more influence you than anyone else, by their words or actions. She can't make you something you're not." She took a deep breath, sat in the co-pilot seat. "And I know that, Atton because I can. I've watched myself, and my companions, not just you, all of us here. I bring people to me, and my simple presence changes who they are. This willingness to die for me - I've seen it before, of course, in the Mandalorian Wars, but never like this. I seem to have drawn total strangers to my side, willing to die for me." She looked away, tension in her face, a strange kind that Atton wasn't sure he was even reading right. "It makes me feel a little strange, like I'm not what I used to be. I can't ask Kreia about it, because every conversation with Kreia is like a battle."

"You're saying you're holding all of us against our free will? I don't think so," Atton replied, shaking his head. "I've seen Bao-Dur, I know why he follows you - he sees you as a great general, as someone who can effect large change in a way he can't. Visas follows you because you defeated her, and she's got some kind of weird loyalty oath thing going on - which is in her head, not yours. The Disciple is just pathetic."

She couldn't help the small laugh that escaped the rivalry between the two of them had hardly escaped her, apparently. "And Mira?"

"I'm not sure," Atton admitted.

"I don't know her very well," she answered, looking away. "There's something oddly familiar about the way she speaks, though."

:Yeah, whatever. My point is, we're not your slaves. We've got our own opinions and our own minds." Despite her magnetic presence, she had always listened to their comments, talked with them about her decisions. She didn't dig around in his head, either - if she was touching his mind, it was always of the non-hostile variety. That they all chose to follow wasn't her fault, if you could even call it a fault. Despite Kreias words, saying that he could be as mindlessly obedient to the Exile as he had been to the Sith, the Exile had never seemed to want that kind of obedience. She always explained her actions, invited disagreement and discussion.

The Sith had demanded obedience; the Exile just got it naturally, he supposed.

"Haven't you just proved it yourself that you can't be made into something you dont want to?" she pointed out.

"Thats different," he said. He had a feeling the change of subject wasn't just because of the opportunity to bring it back to him, but because she didn't quite believe him about herself. Irony, there.

"You're not a two-minded person. Just a person who has changed. Like the rest of us." She gestured widely, and he took that to mean the group in general. "Bao-Dur destroyed a world at my command, and ended up on Telos trying to rebuild one. Mical turned from the Jedi, and found his way back again. Visas was a slave, a user of the Dark Side, and she now works against her enslaver, in the Light." She paused. "And I? I was a general, one who destroyed a world, who slaughtered the Mandalorians, and I enjoyed it. I saw in that enough, enough that I realized I had been changed." She sighed. "I don't regret the choice I made, to go, but the rest of it - yes. But I'm not that person anymore."

That was true enough, he supposed - that she had surrounded herself with transformed people. Except Kreia. He had a feeling that whatever Kreia was, whatever dark thing she was, she'd always been so. "How can you be so sure? Kreia is powerful, I know that much."

She sighed, rubbed her temple with her hand. "After the first time she threatened you, she later said she had no hold over you. What makes this time any different?"

Because this one is more frightening, he thought. He had no half-accident reassurance of 'either she will forgive or she will not care.'

She pressed on when he said nothing. "The hardest part for you being a Jedi, Atton - or something like one - is admitting that it's possible."

"You really think that? That this part of me can be eliminated?"

"Not eliminated. I think every person, regardless of the Force, has a darkness inside of them they have to deal with. But I don't believe that another can bring that out of you against your will."

He shook his head. "I saw a lot of Jedi turn. A great many at my own hands." Maybe Kreia couldn't just rip that part of his mind out, but he knew well enough that it was possible to turn someone without that step.

"And what of the ones who didn't?" she challenged.

"They died."

She looked away. "There are places and things that can put incredible pressure on you. On your soul, I guess. But in the end, you still have control, no matter how hard it is. I walked away, Atton. So did you. Whatever strength Kreia sees in me from turning away from the Force, you have it in equal spades."

Atton gave a disbelieving laugh. "I had to have a Jedi in my head, forcing me to see what I was, to walk away. You didn't. Why isn't it possible the other way around?"

"Because you know, now. You understand what you were and what you are. And I've trained you, Atton. Training added to innate skill. I have skill in the Force, and I've taught you the same. And you'll only get stronger," she insisted, looking him in the eyes, determined to make him believe her. To make him agree? To make him obedient? But that was just foolish thinking. Atton wasn't a fool, at least not in the sense Kreia meant it - certainly he was in some respects, going along on this journey being exhibit one - but a fool was a useful disguise. Or a useful reality, maybe.

Again, it was almost like she was reading his thoughts, as she continued. "Kreia has always been blind to you, Atton. She calls you a fool and doesn't bother to look further and that's a fault, because you're neither a fool nor weak. She's not as all-seeing as she pretends to be. She can't sense Bao-Durs thoughts, for example. She completely ignores mechanical things - even knowing what happened at Malachor, she doesn't see the power of the shadow generator."

"So, what? You're saying I should just believe you instead, because you think better of me than Kreia does?"

She got up from the co-pilot seat, walked to him. He repressed the urge to lean back, scoot away, even though the confrontational look on her face had faded. "I just wish you could see yourself as I do."

"What do you see, then?" he whispered.

She stood, looking down at him. Touched his face, her fingers trailing from his temple to the curve of his jaw. He stopped breathing. "I see Atton. Not Jaq. Atton."

She withdrew, slightly, hand dropping to her side. Atton leaned forward, almost following before he caught himself. He was hyper-aware of her, not just her movement or intention like in battle, but differently. He could see the certainty in her eyes, see the affection there, too. And that was what convinced him - because he knew that he could trust her more than he trusted himself. It was like loop: if she trusted him and he trusted her, he had to trust himself because she did.

And so he acquiesced, as he always did, if not without reservations. He looked her in the eye, nodded.

She didn't quite smile - she didn't often, almost like sometimes she felt too much to do so, but he had always felt she'd given him more than his fair share. He smiled back, as much as he could, silence settling between them.

She sat down, not in the co-pilot seat, but on the floor, back pressed against the hull. She didn't wait for him, didn't say anything, just closed her eyes and relaxed, apparently choosing not to go outside the cockpit and deal with the others, he assumed. He waited a second, punched in the final instructions to take them into hyperspace, then joined her on the floor, on the other side, the galaxy map above his head as he settled. They were closer now, feet almost touching.

He let the silence continue for a few minutes, before asking what was on his mind. "What are you going to do about Kreia?"

She opened her eyes. "I don't know. I need her near me for the time being, and I know she cares for me, in her own way - to the exclusion of considering others, apparently." She sighed, fiddled with a thread from the arm of her robe. "This bond could kill me. Considering all she's done against you, I hate that fact, her being here and my needing to learn from her, but it's necessary."

Atton couldn't say anything in response; he couldn't deny the actions of Kreia in regards to him had been cruel and unsettling, if not by and large harmful. Yet.

"But I feel like the more of the Jedi I find, the more I learn from them and our travels, and the more Kreia teaches me about the Force - the closer I'll be to severing this bond." And the closer, it was unsaid, she would be to being able to leave Kreia behind. "I'll confront her if and when I have to. But I don't think that time is yet."

"You can sense that?"

"Yes. The future is never really open, but sometimes I can sense the paths we will take. Kreia sees a lot more than I do, I think, but she doesn't tell me much." She was looking away sightlessly, out the cockpit to the blue and white formlessness of hyperspace.

"What do you see?" Atton asked, curious.

She focused on him again. "I see a darkness. In both of our paths. Yours, I'm not sure where. Somewhere dark." She gave a wry look. "I mean, somewhere underground, I think. The Dark Side will tempt you there, I feel."

Well, that was a kind of a disturbing thought. "Can't give me anymore hints?"

"All I see of my future, when I look, is my past. I'm not even sure what that means," she said, spreading her hands helplessly.

"You think I'll get through it?" Atton asked, stupidly seeking reassurance, but he couldn't help himself.

"Yeah, I do," she replied. "You have what you need, Atton."

He thought about that. "I want to be there. When you face yours, whatever it is."

"I know you will be, if you can," she said, quietly confident. A bit unnerving, that. He wasn't used to people having that in him, and it was doubly unsettling that she didn't think he would be there.

"Is that why were going to Korriban last?" he asked, taking a guess.

She looked startled. "Yes. That's part of it. I want all of us to be at our strongest for that place. I've never been to Korriban, but I know that the Dark Side is strong there. It will have a weight on us."

Atton wasn't sure what that would be like, but he didn't like the idea. "I wonder why a Jedi Master went there."

"I suppose it would be a good place for one to hide. The Dark Side presence would mask almost anything, I think." Atton wasn't sure what to say to that, so he said nothing. She continued, thoughtfully, as if the two topics were connected in her mind, "You shouldn't mention our talk to Kreia. With her manipulations of you, I don't know what else she has done or planned, in this effort of hers to make me something else."

"Just continue on as normal?"

"Just play along," she agreed.

"I can do that," he said dryly. Most of his life he was playing along to something, getting along to get along.

"And if need be, Bao-Dur and Mical can help you - as much as I know you detest that idea," she added.

"Hm," Atton said, very purposefully non-committal. He didn't want to argue. They would probably help him, since he was one of the group - whatever they thought of him personally. Since the Exile considered him part of the group, actually.

She seemed to accept that answer.

They stared at each other for a while, Atton not sure what to say, if anything needed to be said, and her apparently not having anything more to add. These silences were always oddly comfortable, unlike most silences, which begged someone to break them. He became aware of the way the Force was shifting, though, their silences in that sense not quiet, very much speaking. He'd felt the calm streaming off of her before, infecting them all despite the rather daunting situation they faced, but now he sensed more than that, as if him opening up to her and her to him had taken away some barrier.

He felt her calm, still, but he also sensed her worry, her tiredness and the way she paid attention to them all. He had always been aware on some level that she was constantly attune to her surroundings, including the group of misfits that followed her, but he hadn't sensed this particular aspect. This kind of love.

Not the love like romantic kind of love. Like the love he'd felt from the first Jedi to get through to him, that unconditional kind of love that Jedi just seemed to have for the galaxy at large. That the good ones seemed to have, anyway. And she felt that way about all of them, and more. And for the first time, he didn't mind that. Didn't mind it from her or from himself. That was part of what she was training him to be - that in order to be that for others he had to forgive himself. He hadn done that, quite - didn't think he ever would. But he had gotten far enough, he thought, that he understood what he had been and what he was now, and let go of some of that. Those dark feelings that had clung to him for so long. Maybe that was enough, as she had said. Enough to protect himself and stay on the Light Side, and use the Force and not be afraid of it.

He still thought of her first, which maybe for a Jedi, or something like one, was a little odd, that her welfare went past the innocents they might encounter. But he thought he really understood, now, through the Force, what made her do the things she did, making these decisions which seemed so illogical and stupid. It was part of her, and maybe now part of him, to think of others before herself, not to exclude herself as worthy of anything, but to consider herself a part of life and others, and act according to that fact. She had taught him that, and he wasn't even quite sure how.

And that made him love her all the more. How the uncertain distaste for anything Jedi had transformed into admiration and then into something else he didn't know, didn't really understand. Not that part. Nor if she felt the same way. But that element didn't really matter. She was so beautiful and real apart from him, apart from anything else, he couldn't help but be what she needed him to be.

"What is it?" she suddenly asked, sounding puzzled.

Her being puzzled, her of all people, struck him as amusing. "Nothing," he said, smiling, laying his head back against the bulkhead. He could do this. Be this. The Force would grow stronger in him, and maybe eventually he'd be as certain of himself as she was. Maybe. But in the meantime, he could still be useful for her. And be good for her.

As Atton walked to the Mandalorian Xarga, he thought of her. The Sith tomb was empty now, save for corpses. The Sith Masters were dead, struck down by Mira, Visas and him - but too late to stop the Sith from whatever the hell they were doing in the tomb of Freedon Nadd.

But it was when he had approached the dark energy in that room with the ancient computer, and Mira had warned him against getting anywhere near it - it was then that all he could think was, She told me this was coming. The dark presence hed felt there, clawing at him and suffocating him, and then the Sith Lords who had sensed his Force ability and tried to turn him - he'd resisted them both, defeated them, and he felt lighter than he ever had, like his past trailing behind him wasn't so heavy a thought anymore.

The Force sang in him stronger than ever, as he asked Xarga what had happened to the Exile.

And as the Mandalorian spoke to him, he had a feeling everything had turned out all right, and he would be with her again.

[end]