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"Lies."
She had never felt so near yet so far from Dan than she did now, and the reality of it began to erode her already paper-thin resolve. She grimaced, screwing her eyes shut as if willing the apparition to dissolve into the air.
"A Sith lies and knows no other way to speak," she fired back, reluctant to open her eyes for the ever-growing fear that perhaps this time, her tormentor would not leave.
"And a Jedi clings to a hope that inevitably betrays them. A lie is based in truth. It only waits for the truly powerful to transform it."
And at that, the storm lifted, leaving the terrible visage she knew all too well to close the distance between. She could neither move nor retaliate. Her choices were to gaze upon or look away.
"Who have betrayed you, Loklorien s'Ilancy? Who no longer remains by your side? Tell me their names, if you can remember them all."
Her eyes snapped open at his last words, though any rebuttal she had was effectively silenced by the sight of him. Unable to take her broken gaze from his, the Lupine could do nothing but stare. She was transfixed. Those horrid, yellow diseased eyes bored holes into her, and s'Il could do nothing to protect herself.
He drew closer, and still she could not look away.
At least however, her voice found purchase once more, though it was small at best.
"Those who are no longer by my side are gone not for their own wishing," she gasped out.
"They are torn away by the treachery of the Sith."
And yet, his words had found the smallest of cracks within her defenses.
Zem left me...
Every emotion that she had borne in months following his abrupt absence threatened to boil over and spill out.
He laughed, mocking her flimsy defenses.
"Treachery? You think so little of the fallen and departed. Those poor gullible rubes, if only they discovered the Sith!"
He waved his hand dismissively.
"They faced this same choice that you now face. They chose poorly. They paid the price for their lack of vision. Now tell me who else you are content to simply hope for the best over?"
Tears began to form, and yet still she could not look away as he stood over her.
"It is no concern of yours."
An exhaled breath rattled up from her chest to escape her lips, and s'Il finally tore her eye away from the tall figure over her. She looked to Dan's sleeping form, desperate for any measure of shelter from the Dark.
So close, yet so far away...
She had lost Zem. She couldn't lose Dan as well. Looking back up to the Sith, she felt as a single tear rolled down her cheek. Her resolve seemed to harden however, and the Jedi cast as stern an expression as she could muster upwards.
"Leave. Now."
And as if to punctuate her words, the unmistakeable rumble of a capital ship's engines burning atmosphere grew in volume. Novgorod had found them.
The spectre laughed at her demand, fading through the snowy mist as the rest of the world returned to Lok's senses. He was gone. Or was he?
He was gone by the time the Novgorod passed by overhead, and s'Il folded in on herself as she leaned into Dan's body. Her eyes closed, blinking away her tears as she drove the sight of her tormentor from her mind's eye. She focused on warmth, and on keeping Dan from growing too cold.
"Wake up," she whispered, her ears registering the sound of the Novgorod banking for another pass. A quick look up to the ship in the distance, and she made out a small shuttle detaching itself from the larger body of the corvette.
"Wake up," a hand came out to lay against the side of his face as her words were repeated.
Dan's snow-flecked eyelids reluctantly fluttered open, and he grimaced, trying to shift his weight to get comfortable, to no real avail.
His eyes focused on her, though, and he smiled. The shadow that passed over them both also reinforced that smile.
"Good morning."
He was hers and she was his. It certainly was the strangest wedding he'd ever heard of, but he wouldn't change a thing about it.