Author's Alibi: This story was first uploaded to the Star Wars Fanon Wikia on December 24, 2019. If you'd like to get it as a .PDF file or else read more about its behind-the-scenes rigamarole, it can be found easily enough by means of a search engine. This version of the text has been slightly updated, mostly for the quashing of spelling and grammar faux pas.

Although Critical Points spans most of the length of KotOR 2, the target audience already knows what happens in the game, so this is not a novelization or a retelling. Instead, it's a character piece about the Exile, meant to show how and why she gradually turns to the dark side of the Force. Atton, Kreia, and several other party members and minor characters play roles of varying importance. Secondarily, it also establishes a couple points of continuity that come up in my other fan fiction, Torchbearer, which is set some years after KotOR 2.

My original idea was to write a series of vignettes, all semi-self-contained, with each one showing some significant incident during or in between the events of the game. Past the halfway point, the narrative starts to compact, with each part proceeding more directly from the previous one. This isn't how I planned it; it's just the way it turned out.

Action is relatively light, but it gets gnarly at one or two points - hence the rating. Mostly it's talky-character-development stuff. I hope it's tolerable. Updates will likely occur weekly, provided the rackghoul plague doesn't get me.

- MPK - Feast of St. Patrick - March 17, 2020


"War... is a hunger. And there are spirits in the galaxy whose hunger is never satisfied."

- Kreia


Obsidian Command Deck — Chorlian Sector

Year 21,093 of the Age of the Republic

Mute as a ghost, Meetra followed the two guards from her quarters to the bridge of Revan's cruiser. Courteous but reserved, they in turn offered her no conversation. No doubt they knew. A week had passed since Malachor; everyone knew and said nothing. For her part, Meetra felt nothing ill toward them for treating her like she was carrying the Bandonian plague. In fact, she felt nothing, period. She had been content to be left alone and to wait, though she had no idea what she was waiting for. Perhaps it was simply for death to catch up with her.

The Obsidian's bridge was busy—every console in use, every station occupied—and nobody in the twin crew pits showed much interest in the Jedi General as she walked down the command aisle between them. Without a word, her two escorts stopped a few meters short of the gallery which rimmed the forward viewports. At the gallery's center was a lone figure in black who stood gazing out at the stars.

As Meetra approached, she could not help but remember the bridge of her own cruiser, identical to this one, where she had stood in that same spot and watched as the void filled with metal and fire. Feeling distant from everything, as though in a dream, she took her place behind the figure on the gallery.

A single word greeted her. "General."

"Revan," Meetra heard herself say.

Slowly, deliberately, the savior of the Republic turned and faced her. With her elaborate robes, armor, and particularly the mask she had taken from the ash-choked shores of Cathar, Revan had a presence that was imposing and in a way inaccessible, even to the Jedi who had known her on Dantooine.

In the past, Meetra had always felt something strong and unique in Revan's presence, almost a kind of gravity pulling her toward this great woman, whose destiny had so many others bound to it. Only a few beings seemed to have this kind of sense about them; Grand Master Sunrider was another one. Now, of course, Meetra experienced no such pull, no such energy. She only knew that it was there, totally outside herself.

"The galaxy knows that the war is won now," Revan mused.

Her remark hung in the air. Certain beings are said to be able to somehow make another person feel naked simply by looking at them; Meetra felt as though Revan was seeing through her skin as well. All she could manage was a nod.

"There is something I want you to do for me, General. Though it may seem otherwise, it is more important than any mission or battle you've taken part in. I hope you are prepared."

It was obvious to Meetra that she was not and could not be prepared for anything. She was unable to see except with her eyes, unable to feel except with her flesh. The world itself felt unreal to her. Even her own skepticism at Revan's words barely registered to herself. Somewhere in her core, buried and compacted beneath the strata of everything that had happened to her, there were a million things she wanted to say, to demand, to beg.

But she said, "I'm ready to do anything you ask of me."

"Good… No doubt you're aware of the Council's summons."

Meetra nodded again. She still had her beacon transceiver, and had read the order that had been broadcast from the Temple. With the Mandalorians defeated at last, the Jedi Council was demanding that Revan and her Crusaders, all of them, relinquish their military posts and return to Coruscant to give a full account of their actions, beginning with their entrance into the war.

The Crusaders, of course, were waiting on Revan's word. As was Meetra.

"Unfortunately, we cannot comply with the Council's request. There are still bands of Mandalorian recusants, fleeing into unknown parts of space. To ensure a permanent end to this war, the Jedi must remain in command until we've tracked down these stragglers and made certain that they accept their defeat." Revan paused and cocked her masked head. "Nevertheless, it seems to me that we do owe the Council a… response. That is your task."

For the first time since Malachor, since the day she had watched a planet's surface crack like glitterglass, Meetra felt something. It came slowly, as something deathly cold that seeped down through the layers of numbness to finally reach her skin.

Dread.

She studied the black visor that crossed Revan's helmet, but found only a reverse image of herself and the rest of the bridge. "You're sending me back to Coruscant? By myself?"

"I'm asking you to go, but your destiny is yours alone now. And only one person is needed to deliver a message."

Internally, Meetra squirmed as she thought of the Council Tower and the massive gates of the Jedi Temple, which now seemed more like a place from a nightmare than from reality. "What am I going to say to them?" she said, asking herself as much as the woman before her.

"The Council wants an explanation for this Crusade. Tell them why you did what you did, and that will be enough for them."

"And after, when I've given them their message? What then?"

Revan's voice softened just a little. "You know the answer to that—Meetra."

Not "General"—and immediately Meetra understood. Even deaf to the Force, her dread had been a knowing dread, a premonition. In fact, before Revan had spoken of her destiny, before the conversation had even begun, this was what she had been waiting for.

Dismissal.

Obviously.

She still wore her robes, still carried her lightsaber. But what was a Jedi, what was Meetra, without the Force? How could she stand at the head of the other Crusaders, as she once had? What was there to keep her tied to this towering conqueror of a woman, who had redeemed the Jedi Order from stagnation and delivered the Republic from ruin? The only duty that remained for her, the last thing she could do for Revan, was to deliver this message to the Council—and disappear.

On some level, Meetra was aware of the things that she ought to have felt at that moment—trepidation, outrage, despair. Betrayal. But she did not feel those things, even though part of her was trying to. She did not yet see herself as broken, as a thing that had been used; in her own mind she remained a Jedi Knight, a Crusader, a General. As she always had, she would serve Revan until the very end, because she still believed in her. And after the end, she would continue to believe in her for a time.

"I will do as you wish," she said at last.

"Then go. Your ship is waiting." And with that, Revan turned back to the stars. She did not say, May the Force be with you, because they both knew that it wouldn't be.

Meetra rejoined the guards, and without a word they led her off the Obsidian's bridge and down to the hangar, where she went out alone into the dark.