Jenaara was tired of fighting.

She and Kanan hadn’t been given a break after they made it out of the obstacle course. They had been forced to fight their way through what seemed like armies and armies of stormtroopers. They had found Adaara after an eternity, and the three of them had battled together for an eternity more.

But suddenly, the fighting had stopped. The stormtroopers had either retreated or simply allowed themselves to be killed. Now, she lay on the blood-stained ground, struggling to breathe. Kanan was on his knees beside her, embracing Adaara with all the strength left in him.

Even though they hadn’t had any time to get to know each other, Jenaara had begun to see her companions as the older siblings she never had. They were both much more learned than her and would often give her sparring pointers even while they were fighting. She cared for them, and that scared her. It seemed like everyone else she cared for had bad things happen to them, and she didn’t want that for this couple. Even thinking about it felt like a premonition; one that she desperately wanted to be false.

Suddenly, she heard a familiar screaming sound split the sky: the sound of a fleet of TIE fighters overhead. Jenaara wanted to cry, immature as that seemed. Will we never have a moment’s peace? “Duck!” she heard Kanan try to shout beside her, but in his weakened state it was more of a groan. She put her head down and covered it with her arms, but surprisingly, the ships didn’t fire on them. They landed a few yards away, and Imperials poured out of them.

Cold hands grabbed her arms and she was pulled roughly to her feet. The moment she was let go, she collapsed to the ground again, her shaking feet unwilling to hold her weight. One of the stormtroopers around her kicked her in the side, and she screamed in pain. “Pull her up,” another one said in the same monotonous tone they all used, “and don’t drop her this time.”

Next to her, Kanan and Adaara were ripped out of each other’s arms. Adaara struggled with all the strength she had left, screaming incomprehensible words at the Imperials.

It happened so fast that Jenaara barely even registered it. One of the troopers whipped out his blaster and put a hole in Adaara’s head. She dropped like a stone.

Kanan screamed.

Jenaara’s vision seemed to blur. She could see nothing except Adaara laying on the ground, blood pooling around her head. Dead. In the blink of an eye, she was gone.

Kanan struggled against the stormtrooper, clawing towards his wife’s body. The trooper who had shot her down raised his blaster to shoot him down, but one of the others raised his hand. “Don’t. The Emperor wants these ones alive.”

Fear swept over her feeling of loss. The Emperor himself wanted to see her? She knew that a meeting with him would be no friendly chat. Whatever his reasons for wanting to talk with her, she knew they wouldn’t be good.

Her hand went to Mikaal’s lightsaber, which was still hooked to her belt. What if I run for it now? she wondered to herself.

Then you would be shot before you even took two steps, she answered herself. Wait for a better opportunity.

It was as if the stormtrooper holding her could sense what she was thinking. She barely had time to see him raise his fist before a fierce blow was dealt to her head and everything went black.

***

Before she even fully awoke, Jenaara heard it: the noise that had haunted her darkest nightmares for eight years.

The mechanical breathing of the Sith Lord who had slaughtered her brother.

It was just as frightening, if not even more, than she had heard it described. It sounded as if there was an animal trapped in his lungs that was rattling the bars of its cage and howling for release at the same time. That was the best explanation for it that she could come up, for in reality, it was terrifying beyond words. And that was all before she opened her eyes.

When they did open, she was even more sure she was living a nightmare. Darth Vader himself stood in the corner of the small, cell-like room she was in, his red saber casting a flickering glow on the walls.

In front of him sat the Emperor himself. He was smaller than Jenaara had imagined, but not in a way that made him any less terrifying. She could just make out a sadistic grin under the hood that covered his face. His lightsaber lay on the table in front of him.

He suddenly spoke, and his voice seemed to echo in her mind as well as throughout the room. “So strong, and yet… so weak. You have trained yourself to be a warrior, but you are still plagued by demons of your past. You could be strong, Jenaara Kalor, stronger than you know.”

Jenaara opened her mouth to say something defiant, but all she could manage to say was a faint squeak. Her insides seemed to be melting fear. She had dreamed of the day when she would come before these men--if they could even be called that--and make them pay for what they had done to her. But now that she stood here, she realized that their power was far, far beyond anything she had ever seen. Not even the strongest Jedi would be able to take them down, and she wasn’t even that. She was only a girl who had put a lightsaber in her hand and called herself a fighter.

“Did you know that you have the Force in you?” the Emperor asked. “It is only very little, but I can feel it stirring. It yearns to be used, to be freed from its cage.”

Her tongue finally found the strength to speak, and she said weakly, “I was told that I couldn’t use the Force.”

The words sounded feeble to her. She had always expected her first sentence to the Emperor to be something more heroic, something like “My name is Jenaara Kalor. You killed my brother. Prepare to die.”

The Emperor scoffed. “The Jedi lie to you, girl. That is all they ever do. It would take you much training, but the Force within you can be used. In fact, it must be used.”

She hated to admit it, but something in his words appealed to her. There were many times in her life when she had wished for the power of the Force: when her brother began his training, the night he was killed, when the stormtroopers had come to take her to the arena. Even now, fighting alongside Kanan and Adaara, she often felt useless because she wasn’t a Jedi. Now, he was offering to grant her wish.

But the thought of Adaara reminded her of why she had to resist the Sith Lord’s offer. Joining him would be akin to slaughtering all those he had slaughtered. Countless faces passed through her mind: the people she had watched die in the arena, Adaara, Mikaal. Her fists clenched, and the fear inside her turned to anger. “I want to use the Force,” she said boldly, “but not in the way you would have me use it.”

He just laughed at her show of defiance. “You have so much anger inside you. I can teach you how to use it to fuel your power.”

“I will never join you,” she said.

Instead of saying something else to try to convince her like she expected he would, he wordlessly gestured to one of the stormtroopers still inside the room. The trooper immediately exited. The Emperor turned back to her, his inhuman grin growing larger by the second. “I have something that might… persuade you.”

He’s going to torture me, she thought in a surprisingly calm manner. The Emperor had already put her through all kinds of horrible things. Physical pain had almost no effect on her anymore. What more could he do to her?

After a few more moments of waiting, the door slid open again. Two stormtroopers entered the room, another man standing between them. Jenaara’s heart lurched. It was her father, but not as she knew him. He stood upright, stiff as a board, not like the kind, graceful man she had grown up with. His eyes were half closed, and though he looked right at her, he didn’t seem to recognize her. He’s just acting compliant so the Emperor won’t punish him, Jenaara thought desperately, but she knew it wasn’t true. Her father had always been a terrible liar. This was no act. The Emperor had done something to him. “What did you do to him?” she asked, anger coursing through her veins.

“The minds of the weak are pliable,” the Emperor answered. “A strong user of the Force can mold them as they wish. Your father doesn’t even realize that he is standing in the same room as his daughter who he worked so hard to protect.”

“Let him go,” she said in a low growl, “or I’ll--”

“You’ll kill me?” The Emperor laughed. “Good! The anger inside you has built up into a desire for death!” He pushed the lightsaber on the table towards her. “But by all means, strike me down! That is what you wish for, is it not?”

Almost before he had finished speaking, she grabbed the saber from the table. A part of her screamed for her to stop, that this would be exactly what the Sith Lord wanted, but she paid it no heed. She wanted to make him pay for all the pain he had caused for her and her father. She brought the blade down, ready to cut off the Emperor’s head-- but it stopped before it touched him. She tried to move but found that her body was locked in place. She could practically feel the Force pressing against her from all sides. Her eyes landed on Vader, whose hand was outstretched towards her. He was the one stopping her from killing her enemy. Her hatred burned inside her chest.

“Good, good!” The Sith Lord said again. “Hatred is a Sith’s greatest weapon. I can feel it radiating off of you. The Dark Side calls to you, Jenaara Kalor. Will you heed its summons?”

She was too furious to answer him. All she knew was that she wanted to kill someone. She didn’t care who anymore. The Emperor’s lightsaber burned red in her hands.

Barely realizing what she was doing, she lashed out at the person nearest to her, slicing his head off. She was delighted at the sight of the blood staining the hard floor. But it wasn’t enough to quench the anger inside her. They all had to die. Then the pain inside her would stop.

She flew into a frenzy, stabbing any and every stormtrooper that stood in her way. She saw nothing but a red haze. She vaguely heard the Emperor laughing in approval somewhere in the distance, but she didn’t care. All that mattered now was her revenge. She would kill all of them, and then her soul would be set free.

Stop! a voice in her mind pleaded. This isn’t you; you’re not a murderer! If you do this, you put yourself on the same level as them, and that’s exactly what they want!

The way the voice in her head spoke was enough to make her stop, because she recognized its tone. The voice in her head was her brother’s.

She looked down at the lightsaber in her hand with new eyes. What did I do? The glowing red of the blade disgusted her now. She threw it on the table, trying not to look at the Emperor’s grinning face for fear it might send her into another frenzy.

Then she turned and saw what she had done.

Eight stormtroopers lay on the ground, either dead or dying. They had been wounded in various ways; some decapitated, some stabbed in the heart, some rapidly bleeding out. But there was another body among the troopers, one that she knew. In her rage, she had stabbed her own father.

She screamed and raced over to him, kneeling down in a pool of blood. Frantically, she searched for a heartbeat, but there was none. He was already dead, and she had killed him.

All emotion seemed to flee from her body. She no longer felt anger or pain or sadness. She just felt hollow. What point was there in feeling anymore? If she let herself feel, it would just destroy her.

She reached for the lightsaber again, but this time it wasn’t to kill others. She had gone through so much in her life. Now, she just wanted it to end, and she wanted to be the one to end it. Right now. But Sidious snatched the saber before she could grab it. “If anyone is to kill you, it will be me or my men,” he hissed.

The door slid open and more stormtroopers entered. “Take her,” the Emperor ordered. “She can still be turned.”

Jenaara didn’t struggle. She didn’t care anymore, for she knew that she deserved whatever pain she would get. She killed her own father. In the end, she was just as much of a murderer as any Sith Lord