Grand Audience Chamber

"And you're right to insist."

The shepherd's jade eyes were unblinking in the last throes of sunlight, his gargoyle-like expression almost daring it to stay above the horizon. Only when it finally descended - and the light outside became an increasingly-vibrant red - did he speak again.

"The Jedi Order hasn't held to its promise of defending the galaxy. Even now, they rest on their laurels, doing nothing as the servants of darkness act to take over once more. They've become...complacent. And you know how I feel about complacency, Na'an. There are too few willing to go forth into the galaxy and do what they've been trained to do. And that is why I've called you here.

"I mean to take the fight to the dark side - and all its followers - and I want someone I can trust at my side."

The older man shot Na'an a glance and had been about to protest when he remembered that she hadn't seen those that kept his operation running. Orphans with nowhere to go except the gutters. Mercenaries looking for any excuse to shoot at people. The desperate. The destitute. The down-and-out, looking to be up-and-coming. There were Jedi among his ranks, but the shepherd's flock was largely made up of those that the Sith had wronged, the Jedi had ignored, and the galaxy had forgotten. Each had come from various places. Each had stayed for their own reasons. But all of them had answered the call to fight the darkness wherever it stood, and for that, the shepherd welcomed them. By comparison to the rank and file of his movement, his former student was a saint.

And a saint would be needed in order to bring other, more deviant Jedi into the light. To bring order to the flock when he couldn't enforce it. The supposed stains on Na'an's record could only help in those respects. After all, her dalliances with darkness put her on a path to rub shoulders with the sitting Jedi Grandmaster, helping to legitimize her, and by extension the shepherd's ideals. And her brushes with the dark side not only made her a prime example of what it meant to overcome it, but also to help make her easier to relate to and to help solidify the norms he hoped to instill in his followers.

The shepherd had chosen the right person. Anybody better was long dead.

"I'd respectfully disagree," the Zabrak finally said in response, "after all, who better? Tyrono Parr? Raan Jade? Eliana Shan? Caoimhin Shan?"

"Actual power in a senate that's been undone. Safety and happiness bought with his integrity."

His tone was remarkably even when he spoke. When she had been little, Na'an would have known better than to take that tone with the shepherd; he had made initiates run laps around whatever temple they were training in for less. She did have a point, though; Jade had become an esteemed politician in his own right after his dalliance with a senator. He had also openly welcomed those that served the dark side and themselves, and the safety and happiness of their people was a contestable proposition at best. Names like Dav Man'Sell and Aerandir Calmcacil held weight among the Jedi. Raan Jade did not. Vidalu Na'an hadn't passed her trials, but neither had she given up on what it meant to be a Jedi. Raan Jade had.

"And considering the company he's apparently kept, don't think that he's escaped my notice just because he claims to be a Jedi."

The shepherd spoke his last few words with noticeable disdain.

"Given all you've been through," the shepherd continued, turning to face Na'an as his broken-horned face became bathed in red light, "I'm shocked you're not more confident in yourself."

The shepherd heaved a sigh. The woman wasn't about to make this easy for him, and - even when he desperately needed her by his side - he wasn't about to beg. The organization had already proven that it could do without her, and if need be it would continue to do so, but the old man was growing tired of the modesty. His mind silently peered into hers, looking for some kind of leverage. In an instant, the Zabrak found it.

Him.

"I think," the shepherd began, his already rough voice now even harsher, "that the time you've spent on Felucia has dulled your edge. I think that you have something of a confidence problem, considering what you've accomplished. And I know that you seem to be punishing yourself for things that happened a decade ago."

The shepherd rounded to face Na'an fully, tilting his head downward to look his former student in the eye.

"You aren't what you were supposed to be, Na'an, I'll give you that. But perhaps I can help you towards your potential yet again..."

"I trust you've heard of my exploits by now. Korriban. Kashyyyk. Sith worlds both. I destroyed the academy of one," the shepherd stated, silently lamenting that it had been more of a symbolic move than anything, "and I destroyed the dark leaders of the other. And people noticed."

The shepherd's jade eyes moved back to the long windows of the audience chamber, now looking at the red giant above them.

"The galaxy saw that someone was doing something. And many wanted to help. Not the Jedi, mind you, but countless others. Soldiers. Farmers. Beggars. Slaves. Many of whom without training, but each one more willing to take the fight to the dark side than many of our alleged brothers-in-arms," the shepherd said, the last three words spoken with no small amount of venom on his tongue, "so I rallied them. I became their teacher. Their shepherd. And in turn, they became my students, just as you had been. My flock."

The shepherd almost beamed with pride.  His organization was small, but each and every man and woman that swore fealty to him had the heart of a true Jedi Guardian (if, in some cases, not the discipline or the temperament).

"But as of late," the shepherd continued, "they've grown restless.  And I - as you may have already figured out - have grown distant.  Some are threatening to break ranks.  And if we're to show the galaxy the true way, I need a lieutenant that can inspire our forces the way I can't.  To instill discipline when I can't.  And - should the worst happen - to lead when I can't.

"And there is nobody I would rather entrust these duties to."

The old Zabrak raised an eyebrow. But of course. His old student's thoughts betrayed her; even now, with the prospect of helping to save the galaxy, her thoughts were on the wretch in the dungeons. Of course, this had been expected; his anguish had helped to lure her here in the event that his own summons failed. But what the shepherd hadn't expected was her continued concern for the man, nor had he expected the fervor with which the thought dominated her mind.

The shepherd, as he did for all of his flock, held the answer.

Reaching into a pouch on his belt, the teacher produced a small comlink. Guards, he growled, bring him up.

The cliff face that served as the shepherd's face shifted slightly, coming as close to honest surprise as the hardened Zabrak was capable of. She must have heard of his exploits on Korriban. And there was absolutely no way she had not heard of his actions on Kashyyyk, something his fellow Jedi were within a hair's breadth of trying him for. She likely even heard the viral broadcasts he had sent to the galaxy in that time. And if she hadn't...

"Na'an," the shepherd said, "the dark side is a disease. As are those that use it. As are those that harbor it. If left unchecked, as the Jedi have done, it will infect this galaxy world by world, star by star. Every man and woman in this temple that bears my mark has sworn to fight it wherever they find it, because we all hold to one ironclad truth; the dark side must be purged from this universe.

"Who better to help my lieutenant lead the charge?"

Leigh had been by the door when the guards had dragged a scruffy, half-dead man in through the main doors. If she had not known that it was Aherk in advance, she would have needed processing time to recognize him; even now, the state of her mother's master triggered a sort of instinctual horror. The man was just this side of a corpse, his broad figure having seemingly shrunk from injury and neglect. All of his coloring had been somehow muddied, from the sharp black of his hair to the blue eyes everyone who knew him, friend or enemy, seemed to linger over--all the colors except the sick purple-black veining outwards from his chest. Aherk was sick--perhaps deathly so, and had gotten so seemingly under Na'an's teacher and friend.

This was not right. This was wrong to the Nth degree, and if Leigh had been organic it would have only taken .083 seconds for her to break her composure and act. But Na'an...

Na'an had gone very still at the sight of the man. For a minute, she seemed almost not to breathe, and in that breathless silent stillness Leigh saw the Na'an she only saw rarely--someone turned inwards towards thoughts even she did not understand. When she moved, it was slow and dreamlike, a even pace until she was standing only inches from Aherk Formidonis. She kneeled in one fluid motion and reached for his face gently, tilting his chin up with two fingers until his eyes met her own.

"Leigh, get Doc," she said quietly--almost, but not quite an order, not looking up from him. Leigh did not nod, but immediately turned her auditory circuits inwards.

Ms. Bastiel, we have sight of the target. In need of your expertise.

Her friend did not speak again for a long moment. She just looked at the man before her, his head almost in her hand, her eye glancing over him as if trying to find something that should have been there, but was not. Perhaps it was anger--or terror--or even just something as simple to an answer to a question still unasked. There was a brief flicker of all those things, flitting across her expression in the space of milliseconds, but they all, in turn, faded. She breathed in, one slow measured intake of air, and Leigh wondered absurdly if she tasted smoke on her tongue this time as well.
"Sir, this..." At last she looked up, first at Leigh and then at Rutil. Something in her expression finally, to some degree, gave Leigh some assurance. "Sir, what is this? Why are you keeping him like this, this is sick."

His lightsaber.

Na'an stared at it, her expression not shifting an inch as she stood. Her fingers trailed away from Aherk's face and rose almost to the worn, battered hilt her teacher held out to her. That hilt, every scuff and every scar, was just as symbolic of the man as the man had been of her youngling self's ambitions: strength and beauty and utter, perfect functionality, the sword that served as a shield to many. He was offering it to her now, to do one very specific task, and then he would take her on--not as an apprentice, but as an equal, any bit as good as any Jedi he had known.

One very specific task. One she had tried to do before, under very different circumstances.

Her fingertips ran over the durasteel the same way they had run over the face of the man at her knees, almost caressing a scratch she did not recognize. Then she wrapped her hand around it fully. "You know, sir," she said, her voice still quiet but oddly clear. "Master Parr told me a story a little like this once. It was so long ago...I'd nearly forgotten."