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“You have done much for the good of the Republic, Djyad Mourra.  You are considered by many to be a war hero, someone who has lit the darkest hour of many a Republic citizen,” Satele Shan’s voice rang out clear, strong in the nearly empty council chamber.  Djyad knew these things already though, and she had already denied him the title of ‘Master’ in front of a crowd.  He glowered at her, suspicious.  She was trying to soften the blow. But for what?

Djyad crossed his arms, irritated but listening,  “However, you are bathed in a darkness we cannot, in good conscience, ignore.  You are too proud, you stepped away from the light on your path and the Council can no longer stand by it.  It is an attitude and a darkness that will fester and grow in you if it is not halted, and you seem to have no desire to take those first steps back into the light-”

“So I’m not a model Jedi, this isn’t news , Master Satele.  You’re not anywhere near the first person to point this out to me,” the mirialan heaved a sigh and let his eyes wander around the room.  No point in paying attention if she was just going to rehash what every Jedi, soldier, and Sith couldn’t restrain themselves from pointing out everytime he showed his face.

The dark side had taken a toll on him, visibly.  His stint under the Emperor’s thumb, unconscious but active, had done him no favors either.  His eyes, a glowing, hateful gold, had once been red.  At one point, the pupils had also been round, regular.  They’d thinned to vertical slits sometime since the last time Satele had seen him.  His skin had paled significantly, from a deep, forest green to a bright, abrasive lime.  The scar running across his face was more pronounced, angry red and black infecting the scar tissue such that the remnants of an old, ugly gash looked inflamed and irritated. His lips were turned down in a permanent scowl, which only deepened as his impatience grew.

“And yet,”  Satele soldiered onwards, firm, “you do nothing to correct it.  You do not strive to better yourself as a Jedi.  You have made decisions that cost lives and caused unnecessary violence, especially with the battalion you commanded on Corellia-”

“ You were the one who gave that to me!  Is that your play, give me the reins, get results out of me, then tell me off later?  It may have cost lives but at least it worked ,”  he snapped.  He thrust his arms out to the side and lent forwards, open but aggressive.  A challenge.

“It was a mistake to give you that kind of authority.”

“It was effective .  I won -”

“You did not win, you committed a massacre .  There is a difference between victory against an opponent and mindless slaughter .  I’m not sure you know what that difference is.”

“So, what?  Going to put me through therapy ?  Get some half-trained healer to mess with my head and make me good?  Is that your plan?” he growled, “I don’t know if you’ve noticed but we don’t exactly have a surplus of healers here, not any that aren’t busy with actual important things like the wounded from those battles.  No time or energy for one wayward Jedi.  Especially not on Tython .”

Satele levelled a cold, detached look at the irate Jedi, “I know.  Which is why you aren’t staying here.  You aren’t staying here, and you aren’t coming back.  You are taking your crew and you are leaving .”

That threw Djyad for a loop, she was telling him to leave?  To go?  What did that even mean?  He blinked, mouth open in an ‘o’ of surprise.  He stumbled a moment for the words, his eyes flashing around the room, looking for a way to respond to it, a way to react.  He didn’t know what to feel.

“I- what? ” he settled for indignant confusion, taken aback by the declaration, “What does that- what are you saying?”

“I’m saying that you have to leave.  You are no longer welcome on Tython.  I will not have you influencing the younger Jedi, who are perhaps too trusting of someone they see as a hero.  You will not bring more down into the darkness you’ve embraced.  You have three days.”

He gaped at her.  It took more than a few moments, mouth open and eyes wide, to register and really process what she was saying.  She was- this- this was exile .  He was being exiled .

“I- no!  What?  No!  This is my home you can’t just kick me off!” he bared his teeth, sharper than Satele remembered, and snarled at her,  “You’re going to kick me out of my home because I’m a bad Jedi ?”

“We cannot formally remove you from the Jedi without severe backlash, however we are obligated to protect the younger Jedi.  So we’re doing this quietly.  It is simply too dangerous for you to remain here, with the darkness you have swathed yourself in,”  she remained calm, professional through it all.

Djyad, however, only seethed.  “How can you say it like that?  Darkness this- dangerous that- you’re going to throw me out like that ?”

He spat pain at her, the twisting in his heart and head that had spent its time festering in the time since he had been named a Jedi Knight.  It surged and he welcomed it, let the hurt in, “How can you say it like it’s nothing ?!  I gave everything for you people, I lost months to the kriffing Emperor and you’re kicking me out ?!”

“I know that-”

“No!” he snapped, power in his lungs, the Force twisting under the surface in his vocal cords and dragging the air around him down, making it difficult to breathe, “Don’t say it like that!  Don’t say it like you don’t karking care .  You can’t even bring yourself to give a bantha’s ass while you’re shitting on what I did, can you?”

“Mourra,” her voice was never anything but level, never anything but cold and derisive and patronizing .

He shrieked, the air visibly tore in front of him, and it ripped with the power behind the directionless exclamation of outrage.  No syllables, only an impossibly high pitched painful, grating sound that threw itself out of his throat with a physically concussive force.  It pushed her back, made her take a few steps backwards to keep from being thrown off her feet, but her expression never changed.

The scream died, but Djyad hissed at Satele.  Still cool, still unflappable.  He curled his fingers in, into talons, and ripped with the Force as he hissed in a struggling breath.  He still hadn’t learned how to shield himself from the effects of a Force-powered scream, and he would regret it later.  For now, he used it to bolster his anger.  

He ripped a Council chair from the floor, flung it at the Grand Master, sloppy but powerful.  She ducked, the chair sailing over her head and impacting with a small crater into the wall behind her.  Her eyes narrowed, guarded and prepared.

“ React , damn you!” his voice was a twisted, rough wheeze.  His throat protested, and his next breath in was a garbled, gravelly mess.  He heaved and his throat whistled.  Hot, angry tears spilled out, down his cheeks.  He didn’t bother to brush them away, “Damn you, just react .  Get angry , do something .”

She stood, resolute, refusing to be goaded into an emotional response that she felt would only give the raging Jedi satisfaction, to see that the Jedi were not infallible after all.

It wouldn’t have, not really, he was too deep in his own pain and anger for it to have been satisfying at all.  Nevertheless, Satele’s refusal to be moved fanned the flames like nothing else.  Djyad hunched into himself, he pulled at his own hair, twisted it in his fingers, before throwing both arms out to the side with a frustrated, wheezing growl, “You’re all dead !  The Jedi are dead, and they’ve been dead for years , you’re all just too stupid to look at yourselves like real people !”

It took only a moment for his lightsaber to make its way into his hand, ignite, and for him to throw himself at the Grand Master.  He swung down at her in a wild arc, one handed and furious.  Her lightsaber met his, just as immovable as she had remained.  He pushed down into her firm resistance, the black core of his lightsaber a corrupt, light-sucking void at the center of a Guardian’s blue.

Satele’s own blade, blue as well though the blade was untainted and a solid color, held against him.  She gave no ground to the furious push of the dark Jedi, resisted the strength of his tumultuous emotion and anger.  That he could make no headway served to fuel his fury.  He pulled back to swing again, and when he brought the lightsaber down again she met it with a blow of her own.

They clashed, the mirialan on the offensive, growing frustrated with the Grand Master’s impeccable defense, until finally Satele had decided that she’d had enough, and she turned the tables.  Suddenly she was on the offensive, taking step after step forwards towards Djyad.  His eyes widened as her lightsaber whistled towards him, and he rushed to block the blows.  He was put on the defensive, something he routinely struggled with.  He had subscribed heavily to the idea that a good offense substituted defense entirely.

It had failed him before, on the rare occasion, but he had never rectified the mistake.  It failed him again here.

He retreated with her attacks, step by step she pushed him back, until his back was against the grand, elaborate doors.  She bore down on him, refused to relent while he still resisted, and resist he did.  Both hands on the hilt of his lightsaber, lifted to push against the lightsaber blade that threatened to take off his head if he relented for even a moment.  His blade dug into the door behind him, his back pressed against it, and hissed with the slicing of the weapon through the stonework.

He wheezed a few anxious breaths, throat whistling with the damage he’d done to it already though he hadn’t even Screamed more than once.  Residual damage from the last time he overdid it, months ago, restricted him even now.  He pulled in a breath, heavy.  It caught and tickled in his throat, threatened to emerge as a cough, but he held it.  If he let that sort of thing loose, with a lightsaber threatening to rip him in half, he’d lose his struggling defense in a moment.

It distracted him though, to hold that in.  It weakened his grip on his lightsaber.  The hiss of his lightsaber in the door grew louder as it dipped towards him, his resistance failing him in favor of holding in what was sure to be a hacking, wheezing response.  It would quickly become uncontrolled.

Djyad wracked his brain, his eyes flitted between the lightsabers, ground and sparking together, Satele’s resolute, grim expression, the room.  He didn’t focus on anything for a moment, lost in his split concentration and looking for something that could turn this to his advantage.  His eyes settled, finally, on his own hand.  A moment and he flicked to Satele’s face, then back, the gears turning in his head.

It was a risk, but one that just might save him.  Unorthodox but not his first experience with it.

He released one hand from his lightsaber, focused everything into keeping the strength to hold off Satele’s blade for just a moment more, just one more moment .  Just a moment.  A moment later, and his fist was colliding with Satele’s face.

She let out a surprised sound, a sound of pain, and mercifully took a few steps back.  Her lightsaber no longer menacing Djyad.  He pulled his own from the door, an abrupt deactivation and reignition of the blade as he finally released and bent over with a hacking, choking series of coughs.  For a few moments, he couldn’t draw breath.  His throat closed somewhere and though he gasped and hacked and choked, no air would find its way in.

He didn’t have time to struggle with his breath, not before a sudden pressure on his front lifted him off his feet and through the doors to the council chamber.  They slammed open, and he was blown out, and over the shallow railing beyond.  He slammed into the floating centerpiece to the room, a massive, levitating, holocron-esque object.  True to its appearance, it was solid, hard, and painful to collide with.  Had he any breath in him, the solid collision of the centerpiece and his back would have stolen it.

He fell off the face, dropping unceremoniously to the floor below in a crumpled heap.  His lightsaber, deactivated, clattered to the ground next to him.  He lay there, aware that he had an audience now, spectators to how far he’d fallen and his exile, but it was in the back of his mind, secondary to the horrible sounds his throat was making as his lungs struggled.  He drew a slow, stuttering, gravely breath.  It caught halfway.  He choked and wheezed on the ground, the sudden urge to throw up paired awfully with the lack of air.  They fought, the need to breathe in and the coughing out until he gagged.

He curled in on himself, hunched his shoulders where he lay and planted a hand on the ground, shaky, trembling.  He’d never-- why was it so hard to breathe?

He caught the sound of metal scraping the floor, looked up to see his lightsaber, a short distance away, moving across the floor.  Being moved, with the Force.  He growled, a disgusting, wet sound in his throat, and reached out for it himself.  He tore it from the grip of whoever had dared try to take it, and it returned to his hand.  Tension was in the room suddenly, but it dissipated when he only curled himself around it, possessive.

“It is mine ,” he declared in a wheeze, struggling through the choked breaths he had to take to fuel the words, “I built it.  You can’t have it.”

He could feel the look Satele gave him, standing as she was on the half-wall, the railing, above him.  She stood tall, the blue, double-bladed saber she wielded held at the ready behind her.  It was a warning, a threat , she would tolerate no more obstinance or resistance from him.  She stood against him, determined.  She declared him a threat, an enemy, with the posture she took in front of their audience.  Jedi had been milling about, going about their days, and this had been a violent interruption.  They were watching, judging like Jedi do.

“Fine, you may keep it.  But you are not to be rewarded for this.  You have one day.  Leave Tython, do not come back, ”  Satele’s voice was strong, she wielded authority like she wielded her blade.  She declared his exile to the entire Order with that command.

He was never coming home.

“Fine,” he paused to draw in an ugly breath, “I have nothing left here anyways.”

The commotion had drawn Valy from the shuttle bay, she had rounded the corner and stood a level above him, and gaped.  He met her eyes, one a cybernetic, red orb in a metal socket, the other the most gorgeous he’d ever seen, and he looked away.  He lifted himself into an almost sitting position, paused to hack and choke on his own breath.

Another few moments and he made it to his feet, though he couldn’t straighten up entirely without his body jolting forwards, curling forwards in a warring struggle to take in air and rejecting the process entirely.

“Valeiena,”  Satele called from above, commanding.

“Yes, Master Satele?”  her voice, sweet and precious Valy, was nothing but cool and soft, at the ready for whatever Satele asked of her.  She played the perfect Jedi so well, his Valy.

“He is your charge from now on, you have lived this long with him, and not followed him down the path he has taken.  Take him to your ship, get him patched up, he is not to set foot on Tython again.  Any communications to Tython will be done with you as the liaison.”

“Of course, Master Satele,” she responded.  She wasted no time after that, descending to Djyad’s aid.

She clipped his lightsaber to her belt, pulled his arm over her shoulder and carefully brought him into a mostly-upright position.  He leaned on her heavily, glad for her support and strength, as his lungs betrayed him.  He murmured his thanks through the coughs that threatened to knock him completely over, and she shushed him quietly.  They couldn’t handle this how they’d like, not while they were still on Tython.

Valy looked up at Satele, who remained where she was, resolute and unmoving.  Entrenched in serenity, she nodded at the Grand Master, an acceptance of what she was to be charged with.  She would be held, at least in part, responsible for whatever befell Djyad next, and whatever fell upon the galaxy at the mirialan’s hands.

“I will contact you at your ship later, we will discuss this further, Valeiena.”

“Of course, Master Satele.  I will await your call.  I will serve however I am called to.  May the Force be with you,”  how she could sound so calm, so sweet with him barely standing in her arms, Djyad would never know.  She had control over herself in ways he never would.

“May the Force be with you,” Satele echoed, “And good luck.  You will need it.”

“Thank you.”

Had he been more able, Djyad would have been insulted and incensed to yell.  Instead, his lips curled back into a snarl.  Valy gave a gentle, miniscule caress to Djyad’s spine and his snarl disappeared.  She soothed him, and he gave in, relaxing further into her, conceding defeat.  They headed to the ship, where he would heal, they would regroup, and they would figure out what the hell to do next.  Fate hadn’t ripped them apart yet, he would take that win over any other failure any day.