Shatterpoint

The sick weight gathered in his chest again: the one that had been born weeks ago in Palpatine's office. The one that had grown heavier in Pelek Baw, and had nearly crushed him last night in the outpost bunker. That weight had lifted somehow through this long afternoon: maybe it was because he'd been so sure he was doing the right thing.

The only thing.

And now he was a meter away from being face to face with her: his Padawan: his protegee: the woman for whose sake he had left behind Coruscant and the Jedi Temple and the simple abstractions of strategic war. For whose sake he had plunged into this jungle. Had subjected himself to the harsh, complicated, intractable reality behind the strategies that had seemed so simple and so clean back in the sterile chambers of the Council.

He discovered that once again, he didn't know what he should do.

Just seeing her shadow on the curtains had loosened his grip on right and wrong.

Palpatine's words echoed inside his head: Depa Billaba was your Padawan. And she is still perhaps your closest friend, is she not?

Is she? Mace thought.,' wish I knew.

If she must be slain, are you so certain you can strike her down?

Right now, he wasn't entirely certain he could look at her.

He was that frightened of what he might see.

.' have become the darkness in the jungle.

A slim brown hand took one edge of the curtains. Long fingers, but strong: nails broken, and black with grime-the shape of the O. Ollttl ILI't'trUII palm, the faint rolling texture of vein and tendon and bone, that he knew as vividly as he did his own-and the curtain was streaked with mold and stained, and hand-patched with dark thread that showed like scars against the lace, and it draped around her hand as she drew it slowly aside, and Mace's heart hammered and he nearly turned away, because he should have known he wouldn't meet her in the dawn, at the begi

He thought, I have met the darkness in this jungle already. I've felt it in my own heart. I have fought it hand to hand and mind to mind. Why should I fear to see it on her face?

The knot in his gut untied itself.

All his anxiety drained from him. All his darkness trickled away. He stood empty of everything save for fatigue and the pains of his battered flesh, and a calm Jedi expectation: ready to accept the turn of the Force, no matter what it may bring.

She drew the curtain aside.

She sat on the edge of a long, padded chaise. She wore the tatters of Jedi robes over the rough homespun of a jungle Korun. Her hair was as he had seen at the outpost: ragged, greasy, hacked short as though she'd used a knife to trim it without the benefit of a mirror. Her face was every bit as thin as he had seen it: her cheekbones sharp, and her jaw going prominent. The burn scar was there, from one corner of her hardship-thi

Or the scar it had left behind.

The Lesser Mark still glinted gold on the bridge of her nose, and though her eyes were bloodshot and pain-haunted, her gaze was clear, and level, and, after all, she was Depa Billaba.

Whatever had happened to her; whatever she had seen, or done.

She was still Depa.

With an effort that nearly broke Mace's heart, she curved her mouth into a smile, and she extended a hand that trembled, just a little, as Mace reached to take it. It felt fragile in his, as though her bones were as hollow as a bird's, but her grip was strong and warm.

"Mace," she said slowly. A single jewel of a tear welled in one eye. "Mace. Master Windu." "Hello, Depa." He opened his vest and produced her lightsaber. "I have kept this safe for you." As she reached for it her hand trembled even more. "Thank you, Master," she said slowly, with exhausted formality. "I am honored to receive it from your hand." Her smile turned more genuine. She looked down at her light-saber, turning it over and over in her hand as though she didn't quite remember what it was for. She lowered her head until he could no longer see her eyes. "Oh, Mace. How could you?" "Depa?" "How could you be so arrogant? So stupid? So blind?" Though her words were angry, her voice was only tired. "I wish. You should have come to me, Mace. Straight to me. Those people-they're not worth this. Not worth you not knowing. You should have asked me-I could have told you-" "Why i

That's what I brought you here to learn, Mace. But now you've messed everything up. It's falling apart and flying off in all direc tions. It's all wrong, and it's all too late, and I should have known it would happen like this, I should have known because you're just too blasted arrogant to mind your own business!" Her voice had risen to a screech, and a drop of blood seeped from a crack in her lower lip.

"You are my business here." "Exactly. Exactly!" She snatched his wrist and yanked him down toward her with astonishing strength.",' was your business here. Those people had nothing to do with you. Nor you with them. But you can't stop being a Jedi," she said bitterly. "No matter what. With the existence of the whole Jedi Order at stake, you had to play HoloNet hero. Now your business here is ruined. Destroyed. Everything is wasted. It's too late. Too late for all of us. You have to leave here, Mace. You have to leave right now, or Kar will kill you." "I'm pla