He was a Jedi, of course. I never learned very much as to how he came to Korriban - it wasn't important to either of us. From the little he said and the state of his crashed fighter when I found it, I deduced that he must have been separated from the rest of his squadron and chased by Mandalorians until he finally ran out of fuel over our planet.

I found him in the wreckage of his fighter. He had been there for several days with no food, water or medical equipment, and he was meditating. I had never seen such calmness - and when he opened his eyes and beheld me for the first time, I did not see so much as a glimmer of the by-then customary revulsion.

My Master had ordered me to bring him back to her; I went to him and helped him up. He had been using a Jedi technique to sustain himself without food, but he was still warm, his arm solid under his loose robes. I wondered, for the first time, if the Jedi technique for sustaining oneself was not possibly superior to my own.

He introduced himself as Lorth Bano and I began to lead him back towards the academy, towards my Master. He seemed intrigued by me - both my condition, and myself as a person, and not once did he recoil from me. I could not help but like him, and it was this simple emotion which saved him.

Rather than taking him to my Master, to be broken as I had been, I took him to a cave that lay between the Valley of the Sith Lords and the academy. I brought him food and water; I tended his wounds, though my proficiency in that area was slim from long disuse. He wished to return to the war - craved it, a thing which I found unusual in a Jedi until Lorth explained how these Jedi, Revan's Jedi, differed from the others. We spent long hours discussing points of Force philosophy; as time passed, our discussions rambled to other topics. Soon we began to spar together; Lorth desired some small excitement, and was putting on weight besides. I admit, I was not surprised; he had a voracious appetite, even then.

It was almost a year before I was able to collect what he needed to leave Korriban, and to repair his fighter. He and I had grown close in the interim - he swore to keep in touch, swore to return and aid me in freeing myself from my Master. And before he left he said one last thing, which I shall always remember; he called me beautiful.

When I returned to my chambers, basking in my success at keeping this secret from my Master for so long, she was waiting for me. She stood at the window, watching the sky, and said just one thing:

"Only fools fall in love, Sion."

I did not understand her, then - I understood only the hard edge to her voice, that told me I had lost her respect forever.

/\/\/\

Lorth kept his word and wrote to me regularly; I did my best to keep abreast of the latest news from the war, though my position was not ideal. Finally, the thing which I dreaded most occurred; he sent to me to say that he would be on Malachor V, and then...

Perhaps the Exile was the one who gave the order, but it was Revan who caused that demonic device to be created. The Exile, at least, suffered for her choice to use it - will suffer more, if I have my way.

Kreia moved us to Malachor soon after the event. The reason she gave was that of Revan's designs on the Korriban academy, but I knew better; she, who wished me only pain, intended that I walk upon his grave a thousand times each day, and never find him for searching.

The surface of Malachor was a twisted, shifting mess - Kreia, her lips upturned in some passable imitation of a smile, likened it to me - and I knew as soon as I saw it that I should never find him. I tried, though - day after day, hour after hour, I tried. In the end, though, he came to me.

Kreia was away and there were few slaves there at the time; it is not too surprising, then, that he managed to find his way to my rooms without being noticed. More worrying was that I did not notice him, not until he said my name.

"Sion..."

I whipped around, reaching for my lightsaber. I scarcely recognised him; his robes hung ever more loosely on his large frame, and his once-bright eyes were hollow and sunken. I bade him sit and made to go to him - before I was even halfway there, however, he held up a hand to stop me.

"No - no closer -" he said, his quavering voice echoing through my rooms. "- I can't control it, Sion. I've killed every Jedi I've come across since the explosion. Don't - don't come any closer. Please."

I called for a slave, to fetch food and drink for him. The food, when it arrived, was fresh - fruit imported from offworld, because Revan had designs on this academy too, now, and was planning to move in - and Lorth stared hungrily at it for several minutes before I reminded him that I had no need to eat, and that this feast was entirely for his benefit.

"It's not what I need," he told me, his voice - once so calm, so level - full of despondency and fear. "I need... I need the Force, Sion. I can't... it keeps slipping away from me, faster and faster, and I can't keep up - I can't sustain myself without it, I can't breathe. And... it's getting worse - I'm getting worse. It's... I'm losing my grip on me..."

The slaves prepared a room for him. When my Master returned a few days later, I did not even attempt to hide his presence; instead, I pointed out that his condition almost rewrote both the Jedi and Sith philosophies on its own. She was interested, of course. She no doubt knew that we were still close, but said nothing.

We kept him provided with slaves to feed from, slaves and - once Revan reopened the academy - Jedi who refused to join the New Sith Order. Each helped for a time, but Lorth's condition progressively worsened; he began to need two, three slaves at a time, then two or three Jedi; and still, he grew more Force-hungry. His skin hung off him; he lost his ability to speak; his face grew so disfigured that he began to wear a battered cardboard mask which he had, for some reason, had in his possession. I cared little for his appearance, of course - how could I, when he still thought me beautiful? - yet he was clearly ill, and his condition began to consume him on the inside too. He began to enjoy his feeding sessions, to experiment with them, to care less and less which or how many people he harmed... and finally, one day...

He claimed afterwards that he had merely lost control. He would have killed me, save that I was some metres away on the other side of the room - as it was, I was so weakened that I barely held on to life for a little over a week.

Lorth - Nihilus, as our Master had titled him - seemed repentant and swore that it would never happen again. It did, though, some days later, with a Jedi prisoner. I went to see him that evening; we decided that we must leave, must separate, if only we could be rid of Kreia.

We elected not to trust to plans, in the end - not for a woman who could read any mind at will. Still, we acted together, and I know that we surprised her. I believe that it was this unity, however, which surprised her most of all. Lorth stripped her of the Force, a technique which he had somehow perfected without my knowledge, and we left.

Our parting was bitter, sweetened only by the knowledge - or perhaps my belief - that it was out of love; if we stayed together, he would surely kill me. We resolved, once more, to remain in contact, and we embraced, a thing which we had not dared do since the explosion on Malachor. He had been warm once, and strong; now, I felt only bone and the little warmth that his robes held.

He did keep contact, for a time, but gradually his messages came less and less frequently, and I knew that his sickness had consumed him. Still, I wrote and sent my own messages - for a time, at least, it made me feel better. I came to understand Kreia's words of so long ago... if this was all that love could bring, then I had indeed been a fool.

I missed her guidance, though I knew that she had broken me. I ceased my letters to Nihilus, and never received any indication that he noticed or cared. Probably by that point he no longer even remembered me, and I did not care to remind him - not after Katarr.

Despite my most valiant efforts, however, I found myself unable to lose hope entirely, and I occasionally searched for ways in which I could cure myself of my own weaknesses and be with him. My surprise when I found the one who was everything that I was not must have been... palpable.

/\/\/\

Lorth, when he was Lorth, had spoken often of Ania Mellyn. She just left an impression on people, he said, often adding that the impression in question was usually around belly-height. I never understood until I met her myself; she was short, very short, and he had been - no, was - a large man himself.

She was everything that I could not be; I saw at a glance that she would be immune to Nihilus, and it took mere moments after that to diagnose that she was in love. The fool - and travelling with another, though Malak had earned my respect for doing what I could not, letting go of his love so completely that he was able to kill her.

I hated Mellyn, though, fool girl that she was. She had taken Kreia's teachings from me, and was rejecting that wisdom even as I once had - she had taken my beloved from me once, on Revan's orders, and could do so again. And I had no doubt that she intended to do so.

Perhaps, I thought, I could capture her alive, take her from Kreia, remake the Exile as my Master had remade me. Then what? Then, I could... maybe use her, maybe find a cure for Lorth by experimenting on her. I let her go, knowing that Kreia would eventually lure her to Malachor - Malachor, where I could capture the Exile easily with the aid of my assassins.

/\/\/\

Things have not gone according to plan. Kreia has incapacitated most of the Exile's followers, but I can sense Malak prowling through the cellblock - a minor annoyance, for now, but I have not forgotten our fight on Korriban. He will not perform the same trick again. The larger problem, by a small margin, is in front of me; a fresh apprentice, untrained yet strong in the mind, and he is - ah, he is in love.

"And I get the fool," I say.

I tell him that I will remake him in my image. He does not understand - he believes that I mean to kill him. Perhaps I will, in time, but first I shall show him the truth of love. Then... yes, I shall kill him, to teach his Exile my lesson. She has already killed my love - there is nothing but suffering for her, I swear it.

I raise my lightsaber, and I begin.