I'm good at shooting people, cracking wise, and pretending to know how to fight.

It had been a long day.

It had been a very long weekend, actually, so don't mind Atton if he burst into his apartment and started rummaging around for some kolto patches right away. He figured Sparkle was at the party thing anyway, and damn, he had to keep his shields locked up tight not to let the worst of the island slip into his head.

He wasn't that great at shield control was it was.

So he ignored the imagery: Mira encased by explosions, Mical with a hole in his head, Visas on the ground on some volcano planet somewhere. Whatever, island. You do your thing.

"Atton.."

He paused, hands still well into the medic's bag. "No," he said flatly.

"The prisoner holds the darkness at bay," Meetra whispered, "He will be lost inside it for three hundred years. His strength will fail. Then he will--"

"No," he repeated, holding up his hand, palm-first. "We're not... we're not doing this Jedi thing, I'm not, I don't-- don't make this about somebody else. You're around often enough, I just-- please don't."

"Atton," she repeated.

He sighed. She vanished. It was worse.

[[ can be open. some of meetra's words stolen from star wars: the old republic. ]]

They had barely escaped Malachor V with their lives. The planet had already been unstable, but it had begun to implode as they left. It'd been a rocky ride -- a really rocky ride -- through the world's caverns and ravines up into the sky and away.

It was a testament to Atton's sheer stubbornness that he didn't pass out until the rocky part was over.

They found out later that the collapse of the planet was Bao-Dur's doing-- his last act, to undo the last echoes of his first one. There was a silence now in Meetra's head where once these echoes had lived. She was thankful for it. Malachor V had been harrowing, mentally as much, if not more so than physically. She needed the quiet.

They had come here to Manaan as soon as they'd been able. Atton was in a bad state - clinging on to life more tightly than he had been when she'd left him to face Kreia, but still flickering back and forth. He hadn't regained consciousness, either, and so when they got to Manaan, they transported him from the med bay to a health center nearby.

This was the planet the kolto came from. It was the best they could do for him. The best she could do.

Considering what she was about to do, she knew it wouldn't be enough.

Meetra looked up at him in that tank. It made him look fragile, partly because the fluid colored his skin an ugly pale white, but also because of the various wounds decorating his chest. He really had come close to losing that arm... but he hadn't quite gotten there, and thankfully, the flesh was starting to knit together again already.

She let out a sigh.

"So, might I ask where you will be going next?"

Mical had been there for some time already; Atton might have not thought fondly of him, but he had no issue with the man. It felt only right, considering, especially when not listening to his counsel had led to their rather embarrassing defeat at Kreia's hands.

"I need to find Bastila Shan," Meetra said quietly. "She might know where Revan is."

She'd told the others about her plans to leave. Atton... Atton wouldn't have taken it well even if he'd been in the best of states, and he hadn't exactly been that. And... she could admit here, in the privacy of her own head, to some cowardice about telling him in the first place. Where you go, no one you love can come with you.

Kreia had been right. Painfully so.

"Do me a favor," she said, and shot Mical a look. "When he comes out, tell him I'm sorry."

"This is goodbye, then," Mical said, after a moment.

"Yeah," she replied.

Then she turned around and walked out of his life. Just like that.

( And now, the Plot Index! Oh lord. )

[[ nfb, nfi, ooc-okay. oh god, i really am done. some plot details ganked from 'Revan' by Drew Karpyshyn, a novel I mostly like to ignore because it is TERRIBLE. ]]

Atton ran.

Of course he did. He was a coward. He always had been. Running was what he did best, and... and that wasn't true, was it? He wasn't running because he was a coward; he was running because he knew. Knew, from years of experience fighting beside Jedi, that they weren't Jedi-- just idiots running around with lightsabers and Force tricks. Knew that Kreia was far more powerful than she had pretended to be during their journeys. Knew that Meetra was the only one with the ability to take her down.

And so while Kreia used a combination of Force power and manipulation to take down his compatriots one by one, well, he'd fled. Because he also knew that he'd be no use there, and there were still a ton of Sith between Meetra and the woman known as Darth Traya.

Atton wasn't a Jedi, no, but he was here to protect her. And that's what he planned to do.

( Which is why when he heard ashes and flame and grit snarl, 'And I get the fool', he stopped running. )

[[ nfb, nfi, ooc-okay. taken and adapted from 'knights of the old republic 2'. this is where we start finagling plot threads together because the ending to this game is a complete mess. warning for violence. i think this may be the only fully prose post of this plot ]]