Strange as it was, he understood there was grace and strength in this pain; a reminder of what should never be forgotten.

It will require you to forsake nearly everything that it means to be a Jedi. But you have already begun down that path, I think. Your grief over the deaths of the Krim family does not speak of...

though, was perched high inside the massive tower that was the centerpiece

Words crowded his mouth, but he spoke none of them. Not about the sharp delight he had taken in brutally asphyxiating an innocent creature. Not about the desire to do it again, and to harness that...

Vos stretched out on the cot, but sleep would not come right away. The words he'd spoken kept running through his brain: What's worse…to have unhappy stories, or to have no story at all? Vos had no...

Impossible. Not after everything that's happened.

We could still have it.

Go ahead, spit it out, she muttered. You look… Like a goddess of love and war and hope and ecstasy. Like a glimmering star that I have somehow been blessed to hold. Like the rest of my life....

Grieved are we all, to see so many suffer," he said. "Courage, the youngling had, at the end. Forgotten, she and her people will not be.

Many Jedi would raise eyebrows at the thought of meditating in a bar, but Vos had done it before.

The Jedi cultivated a practice of nonattachment, which had always served them well. Few understood, though, that while specific, individual bonds such as romantic love or family were forbidden, the...

Few do, at first. A small step, the one that determines destiny often is.

There's no way to phrase this other than bluntly. Master Vos-the Council wants you to assassinate Count Dooku.

Each life, a flame in the Force is. Beautiful. Unique. Glowing and precious, it stands, to bravely cast its own small light against the darkness that would consume it. Yoda

Sometimes it is a dark path we must tread so that long more for the light, we shall.

There is no emotion, there is peace. There is no ignorance, there is knowledge. There is no passion, there is serenity. There is no chaos, there is harmony. There is no death, there is the Force.

And you will forgive me too, one day, Asajj Ventress." He hesitated, and took a breath. "That's what you do for…for the one you love.

I am not your kind," Vos said, his voice thick. "I do not feed off vengeance." Truth was quiet. It did not need to shout or to demand. It simply existed. "I am a Jedi.

And now, it's too late, and I will never stop grieving that. But I'm on the path, Asajj. You bought my chance with blood, and I won't waste it, I swear I won't. Every day, every minute of my life,...

me. That's what it does. Nothing is ever enough. You get more, and more, but you're never happy. It's a trap baited with all the things you want most. That life-it's not worth living.

I wanted what we had. What we were going to have. Together. We had a future.

Please…please don't… You must let me go, my love, Ventress said, her voice so gentle, so tender, and she smiled lovingly. It's the Jedi way. And she was gone.

Ventress gave him a look that was so completely her, it tore him apart. You don't…tell me what to do, Idiot. A small smile surprised him. Never could, he admitted. Damn right. Another bout of...

Remember…you always have a choice to be better. You always have a choice to…to pick the right path." She smiled sadly. "Even if that choice comes a little late.