“No,” she whispered, her eyes still unfocused, frighteningly blank. Then, “No!”

Violently, she shoved Vos away, putting the Force into the movement so powerfully that he was hurled across the room. As he struck the wall, he heard a terrifyingly familiar sound: the sizzle and crackle of Force lightning.

Dooku stood, his teeth bared in a savage snarl of victory. Ventress was caught in the most violent bolts of Force lightning Vos had ever seen. They danced and crackled about her hungrily, almost like living creatures. Her body spasmed and her face contorted into a mask of absolute agony. Blood trickled from her ears, eyes, and nose.

“Asajj!” Vos cried, leaping between Ventress and Dooku. He activated his lightsaber, deflecting the Force lightning back onto Dooku. The count’s eyes widened in comprehension a split second before his own weapon turned on him, disloyal, as things of the dark always were. Dooku was flung back and lay on the ground, screaming and trembling, then lying still as the bolts faded.

Ventress lay unmoving on the floor. Her clothes—and her body itself—emitted wisps of smoke. “No,” Vos moaned. She was breathing, but her pulse was thready and she was still, so terribly still. “Asajj…no…no…!”

Fury, as intense and primal as the bolts that had nearly killed her, shuddered through him, and the world went red. Vos threw back his head and voiced his rage, whirling on the count as he lay, shivering and gasping for breath, on the stone floor.

Three strides brought Vos to Count Dooku. He pressed the humming blade close to Dooku’s neck.

“Do…it,” rasped Dooku. Impossibly, he was smiling. “The lightning wasn’t…for her. It was for you. She just…got in the way. Go on. Take…your revenge!”

Vos’s heart shook his body with its pounding, its aching, its demands. His gaze flickered to Ventress, lying so terrifyingly motionless. His vision blurred. It took him a moment to realize that tears were falling down his face in a river of pain. The dark, rage-filled tide inside him receded, leaving in his heart only the truth of the tears. The count still smiled, still anticipated the final step that would turn Vos irrevocably to the dark side.

“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.”

Vos deactivated his lightsaber. Ventress was still alive, and hope, cruel and beautiful and agonizing, flared in his chest as he rushed to her.

“Vos.” He didn’t turn around at the sound of Kenobi’s voice. Somehow, he was unsurprised that Obi-Wan was here, at this moment. “We’ll take him from here.”

Vos simply nodded. He might still be executed. He would certainly be taken back to the Council in chains. But none of that mattered. Everything that mattered was here, right before him. He felt raw in this moment—cracked open and laid bare. His senses were heightened and he was almost painfully aware of everything: the smell of blood and scorched flesh; the steady slip of tears down his angular cheekbones, and their salty taste; the coppery tang of blood and fear in his mouth. He saw that strange patterns now decorated Ventress’s bone-white skin; traces of darker flesh that looked like lightning bolts. The Force lightning had marked her for its own.

Ventress’s breathing grew labored. He wanted to hold her, to keep her alive through the sheer force of his will, but he was afraid touching her would cause her more pain. Her beautiful, ice-blue eyes opened, and she smiled. He tried to return her smile, and failed miserably.

“Hey, handsome,” Ventress murmured.

Vos gave a shaky laugh through the tears. “Hey, yourself.”

“I won’t break, you know.” No. She would never break. Not Asajj Ventress. At the invitation, Vos gathered her as gently as possible in his arms. The movement caused her to cough violently. “I’m…”

Blood ran from her mouth, soaking his shirt. He bit back a sob. “Don’t try to speak.”

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 coughing racked her thin frame, and for a devastating, heart-scalding second Vos thought this would take her. But she continued. “I’m proud of you for…what you did over there. You chose loving me instead of hating him.” Her bloody-frothed lips curved in a smile. “Best choice you’ve ever made.”

Vos wept unashamedly, cradling her, stroking her face. He wanted to memorize its every curve, sear it into his memory, then realized that he had already done so. “It was,” he agreed. He swallowed hard. “Asajj…you were right. I—I did fall to the dark side. And I’ve been there this whole time. I just…I didn’t…know!”

“You lied to yourself,” Ventress whispered. “That’s…why I couldn’t tell.”

“I love you, and I’ve never stopped, not for a moment.” Here, at the end, Vos had to make sure she—

“I know,” Ventress said. “But you did stop lying.” She shuddered deeply. Vos felt his heart crack. Her fingers dug into his arm tightly and her gaze bored into his. “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.”

No, it couldn’t be too late. Vos still had to tell her everything he’d felt. How his heart had jumped the first time she had touched him tenderly, caring for his injury on the Banshee. That seemed like a lifetime ago. When she’d asked him how she looked in the ball gown, he should have told her. And when they had first kissed—Asajj Ventress had changed everything in his world, was still changing it, right this minute. But there was too much to say, and not enough time to say it, and the words crowded his throat and choked him into silence.

With an effort, Ventress reached to touch his face, tracing the yellow tattoo, lingering over his lips. When she spoke, her voice was so faint that he had to strain to hear it. “And always remember…that I loved you, with all of my heart.”

He had known it. But he had never before heard it from her lips. Now he found he could speak, the simplest of words. “I will.”

Ventress took a shuddering breath. The tension left her body, and she relaxed into his embrace as her eyes began to close.

No.

“Asajj,” Vos begged. “Asajj. Please don’t go.”

Her eyes flickered open, and a corner of her mouth turned up. “I have to, Quinlan. It’s my time now. My sisters…are waiting.”

Fear such as he had never known seized Vos, and he tightened his arms around her, as if by holding on he could somehow prevent death from taking her. “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.