Chapter Text
This is how it begins (though in truth, it began long before).
The Jedi are getting desperate, Revan finds herself thinking as she stares at the half-trained padawan with the golden lightsaber, standing defiantly (but foolishly) among the corpses of her fallen Jedi. Oh, the girl is powerful, burning bright as Tatooine’s suns in the Force, but she’s young, grips the hilt of her lightsaber too tight as she lifts it into a defensive guard. (An admirable effort, but flawed; Revan is clearly her superior, and a defensive strategy is the wrong way to go - but of course the Jedi train defense into their padawans as the best tactic to take in any fight.)
Revan twirls her double sabers - one violet, one red, the latter crystal a remnant of Korriban she’d taken with her after they’d visited - and presses her lips together behind her mask, thinking. Bastila’s battle meditation is less powerful than the Jedi have always told her it is - or rather, it’s a crutch for inferior tacticians; Revan had fought the Mandalorians and won with nothing but her own wits - but she has potential, Revan would be a fool not to recognize that. And Malak is strong in the Force, but he’s nothing but a brute these days, Revan has always been the brains in their relationship, even when their only real adventures came from pulling pranks on the Jedi Masters. He has his uses as her enforcer, but if she’s going to build an empire against Vitiate, she’ll need an apprentice who truly understands her plans.
She’ll have to be delicate about this, Malak doesn’t like feeling replaced, but in the end he’s always followed her lead, from the moment they met in the Temple creche on Coruscant, and he’ll have to see the promise Bastila has. Right now, the girl’s eyes flash with barely-controlled anger, and although she’s clearly trying to suppress everything she feels her emotions are wild. The longer Revan waits to attack, the more likely Bastila will simply snap, attack first, and then Revan can let her wear herself out, can take her captive with very little struggle-
A whisper of warning.
Revan cocks her head as the Force hisses danger at her, but she doesn’t have the time to understand what the warning means before the wall behind her explodes and she’s crushed beneath the weight of it.
This is how it begins: a betrayal, and a bond.
She wakes up alone in an unfamiliar room, alarms blaring through the fog in her head, a whiteness she can’t quite think past, and for a long minute she knows fear.
Then the clouds clear and settle, and Revan remembers herself.
Or - not everything. The last thing she remembers is facing Bastila on her flagship, a warning; Malak betrayed her, then. Well. He’ll learn, soon enough, what a mistake that was. Right now, though, that’s not exactly her main problem - she’s more concerned about the indeterminate amount of time missing from her memories. How she’d gotten to the- this ship, what she’s doing here, why are there alarms going off.
Then the door to her room (some kind of crew quarters, she thinks, which is- a strange place to keep Darth Revan, unless this is a friendly vessel, but it doesn’t feel like one - and she doesn't know why she thinks a friendly vessel should feel different) slides open, and a Republic soldier runs in.
It takes every ounce of Revan’s formidable control over herself and her emotions to keep herself from flying onto the defensive; the man is armed and armored, and she’s not, she’s in unfamiliar territory, confused, the most vulnerable she’s been in years, and something still feels foggy, like she’s been drugged.
But the man doesn’t attack, just introduces himself as Trask Ulgo, says he’s her “bunkmate from another shift”, explains, a little too thoroughly, that they’re on the Endar Spire, that she’s supposedly Shala Dral, some kind of… smuggler the Republic has recruited, that they’re under Bastila Shan’s command. At first none of it makes sense, but Trask keeps shooting her narrow, lingering looks, as he directs her to the footlocker holding “her” equipment and tells her they need to get to the bridge to find Bastila (and Revan has to bite her tongue to keep from pointing out, acid-sharp, that Bastila’s a Jedi and capable of holding her own, that a two-credit Republic grunt and the smuggler she’s supposed to be wouldn’t do much more than get in Bastila’s way), and slowly some things start to click into place.
For some reason, Trask Ulgo really thinks she’s not supposed to know who she is.
She remembers the foggy feeling of drugs or- something mind-altering, figures that’s why he’s spoon-feeding her a backstory, an explanation; the drugs must be supposed to keep her from questioning the information, or making her so confused she internalizes it. But drugs wear off eventually, and there’s no way the Republic or the Jedi Council would risk Revan being free.
And why would they make her a smuggler? Revan is the most powerful Force-sensitive the Jedi have seen in centuries, there’s no way they could hope to hide that from even an amnesiac version of herself. The only reason she can’t feel every lifeform on board this ship and their basic emotions is because her shields are up. Maybe they’d thought her subconscious would remember how to shield, or maybe they hadn’t thought that far ahead.
It doesn’t make sense.
The Endar Spire shudders around her (she’s very familiar with the feeling of escape pods or boarding craft slamming into the hull of a ship), drawing her out of her reverie, and Revan shakes herself, pulls on the folded suit in the footlocker, and then hesitates as she reaches for the blaster she knows she’s supposed to grab. If she really were a smuggler…
But she is angry, and vulnerable, and maybe even a little afraid (not of Trask Ulgo, not of the boarders, but of what’s been done to her, because someone or something has messed with her mind and she has no way of truly knowing what they did), and so she looks past the blaster, sees a shoddy vibroblade hanging on a weapon rack against the far wall, strides across the room and grabs it, testing the weight and balance. It’s not a well-made weapon, and it feels clumsy in her hands compared with her lightsabers, but it’s a quiet defiance against this entire theatre she’s been forced into, and right now that’s what matters.
Revan makes her way through the Spire, dealing with a handful of Sith soldier patrols as she goes - Trask is a good shot but every time he fires his blaster from just behind her she has to stifle a flinch. She’s not sure if he knows who she is, beyond possible danger to the Republic, and the not knowing makes it worse. (If he knows who she is he’d have every reason to shoot her in the back, and vibro-weapons don’t deflect blaster bolts.)
But they reach the bridge without incident, or at least without the kind of incident that leads to Revan being shot in the back, giving her her first real view of the situation. The bridge is abandoned, except for the dead bodies, both Republic and Sith, but there’s clear evidence of a fight everywhere Revan looks, and a planet spinning in the viewscreen. While Trask is distracted searching the dead for anything useful, Revan slices into the computers on the bridge (it’s really pathetically easy, Republic security codes and protocols haven’t improved since she enticed half of their Navy and the entire Army she’d made for them to follow her into the Unknown Regions ), discovers they’re currently in rapidly-decaying orbit around Taris, which is controlled by the Sith army and being blockaded by half the Sith fleet. They hadn’t conquered Taris (as Sith) as far as Revan can recall, so Malak must’ve done it on his own - and that means she’s missing at least several weeks of memories.
There’s a familiar trilling sound and Revan pulls the palm-sized holocomm out of her belt, responds on autopilot as she’s hailed by a soldier named Carth Onasi, an earnest-looking man who informs her that she and Trask are the last two people on board the Endar Spire, besides the Sith.
Part of her almost can’t believe they’d risked Revan dying in the fiery inferno the Spire’s crash will be, but then again, she’s sure the Republic and Jedi Council both would be more than relieved to get rid of her in a way they don’t have to feel guilty for. (It’s hardly a surprise; the Jedi Council doesn’t have the resolve to get their own collective hands dirty - that’s part of why she’s always disliked them, why she had to leave. Someone has to make the hard decisions.)
After she hangs up the comm, but before she heads for the escape pods, Revan takes a moment to look over the crew roster as it’s recorded in the Endar Spire’s datalogs; she almost skips right past the fake name, catches herself just in time - she’ll have to get used to responding to it, after all - and scans the entry. There’s nothing unique about it, just a notation of how long she’s been stationed on the ship (two weeks), and a small addendum: watch closely.
Two weeks. And before that, enough time to heal completely from whatever injuries she sustained; even with Jedi healing that leaves her with at minimum two months missing time, and that’s not even counting the memory loss she’s still feeling. Oh, it’s nothing huge, but there are gaps, things she knows she used to know. Comm codes she’s had memorized since the Mandalorian Wars, dates and names… hyperspace coordinates.
(Malak has the Star Forge. And all she can remember is that she must get it back.)
She finds herself mulling over the losses as she and Trask leave the bridge and make their way towards the escape pods; the hyperspace coordinates are the most worrying, because to get those back she’ll have to search out the star maps again, and that’s not exactly an inexpensive venture. It’s not exactly safe, either, despite the fact that she remembers the defenses she set up to guard the maps; it isn’t the kind of journey one makes on their own.
She’s distracted, the weight of everything she’s learned in the last half an hour since she woke up dragging her mind away from her current situation - that’s her only excuse for not sensing Bandon until she opens a door and comes face to face with Malak’s favorite underling. Revan had allowed, even encouraged Malak training his own apprentice, had thought it would keep him occupied from plotting against her. Bandon hadn’t been anything close to a threat to her power, after all, another narrow-minded Sith too focused on bloodlust and destruction and petty bullying, though he’d had the power to back that up. She’ll pay for that oversight now, unprepared for anyone with any real power, with nothing but a cheap piece of metal (not even cortosis) and a second-rate Republic gun to her name - oh, how far the mighty Dark Lord of the Sith has fallen.
Force take it, she should’ve scavenged the lightsabers off that Jedi and Sith they’d encountered earlier, no matter that it would’ve been too strange, too revealing.
Bandon doesn’t recognize her, she can tell immediately; he’d never been incredibly in-tune with the subtleties of the Force to begin with, and who would be expecting to see the dead Dark Lord in a Republic uniform without a lightsaber? He sneers at her anyway, clearly entertained as she brings up the vibroblade into an offensive stance (it’s her only chance, the blade will only take one hit from his saber and she doesn’t have a replacement), and then Trask shouts and charges through the door, and it closes and seals behind him.
Well. Shit.
Revan only encounters a couple more patrols before she reaches the escape pods, and she finds herself grateful for that; however long she’s been gone from the galaxy she’s lost some of her fighting edge, and although she doesn’t hesitate to use the Force mercilessly now that she’s not being watched, it’s still all more exhausting than it should be.
She’s going to need help getting to the star maps, that’s for sure.
Trask hadn’t known exactly who she was, Revan decides, after giving it some thought. He’d certainly known she was someone dangerous, someone who had to be watched, but he hadn’t known she’s Darth Revan. At first, she thinks Carth does: her only ally (how convenient that is) talks about how the Force can do terrible things to a mind and looks at her like he’s seeing someone else, or like she’s a tragic story, but he’s also a terrible liar, and he doesn’t stumble over her false name. He tells her all about Bastila, is even on first-name terms with the Jedi, tries harder than he needs to convince Revan they should go rescue her. Of course, if Revan really were a smuggler who enlisted with the Republic Army for a steadier, more legal paycheck, she would probably be thinking this seems to be a great time to desert, so maybe it does make sense.
And Revan does consider leaving all of them behind; she knows Sith protocol well enough she could easily get off the planet. But it’d be suicide to try and confront Malak now, without any kind of power base, when he’s still in control of the Star Forge (the heart of her empire, she knows, but everything else is faint, slipping away from her like sand through her fingers when she tries to grasp at the details - and the tighter she tries to cling to it the more she loses), when the empire she built from her bare hands has forgotten her.
She needs an apprentice.
She needs Bastila.
Not for the girl’s battle meditation, but for her raw power, for the way her emotions fly like sparks of lightning, and because Malak has always been jealous of people who hold power he doesn’t, and Revan knows her old apprentice will want to take Bastila and crush her.
And she can’t find and rescue Bastila on her own, not on an unfamiliar planet (she’s been here before, once, when they liberated it from the Exchange, but that was years ago now, and things have changed with the Sith occupation), which means she needs Carth, however much she doesn’t trust him.
“We better find Bastila,” she tells him with a perky smile that doesn’t at all match how she actually feels, but Carth is satisfied, and that’s the important part, for now.
The Lower City is bleak enough, ruled by gangs and criminals (Revan’s constantly having to swat away potential pickpockets), but the Undercity is truly dismal. Everyone she sees is unnaturally pale no matter their skin tone, shies away from bright lights, and has a kind of hunger about them that sets her nerves on fire. They beg her for help like she’s some kind of savior, and normally Revan would embrace this, but there’s an awareness whispering in her mind, constantly, that their time is ticking away, that the longer she spends here on irrelevant tasks the less likely she’ll be to get Bastila and get away from here. The entire planet feels like it’s a graveyard, even though it’s bright and bustling, a kind of premonition thrilling down Revan’s spine whenever she looks too long at the people.
Psychometry has never been her strongest gift, but she has enough of a talent with it to give her an advantage in old ruins - it’s how she’d found the star maps so easily, how she’d been able to connect to the Star Forge as soon as she’d set foot in it. Between it and the constant swirl of whispers from the Force (run, hide, leave) Revan can barely clear her mind. “This place is sickening,” she tells Carth in a murmur, as they cross through the gate to leave the village, too distracted to pay attention to the wails of the woman who’d just lost her partner to the rakghouls.
Carth looks at her a little strangely, but nods, says, “I don’t much like it myself. It’s too dark down here.”
The darkness isn’t what bothers Revan, not really, but it doesn’t exactly help either, so she just nods shortly and picks up the pace, tightens her hand around the hilt of her vibrosword where it rests on her hip. It irritates her, a little, that she’s already starting to get used to its weight, adjusting her stances to make up for its imbalance. She needs a lightsaber if she’s going to do this properly, or even better, two sabers: fighting with one blade is something she can do in her sleep, but she still finds herself instinctively shifting into combat forms that require two. It’s habit. She’s found enough cheap vibro-weapons and plain old knives she could go back to two-weapon fighting, but none of them are properly balanced, and it would just make things more difficult.
The world is eerily silent around her and Carth, except for the distant scuffling of rakghouls, who come out of the shadows in packs of five or so at a time to attack them; they fall into a comfortable routine quickly, back to back, Carth taking shots at the further away ones while Revan handles the rakghouls that get up close and personal, and they don’t talk much as they do it. The atmosphere around them doesn’t lend itself well to relaxed conversation.
When Mission stumbles into the small circle of light cast by Carth’s light, Revan nearly stabs her out of instinct. Carth gives her an irritated look, like his hand didn’t go for his blaster, and Revan can’t help rolling her eyes. Part of her almost wishes he knew who she is, so he’d stop looking surprised (or annoyed) every time her battle instincts kick in. (Like he doesn’t have those same instincts, honed by the Mandalorian Wars.)
When Mission isn’t immediately followed by her hulking Wookiee friend, Revan knows something’s wrong; the girl’s tearful explanation confirms it, and Revan sighs and grits her teeth, shakes her head a little. They don’t have time for this, but she’s never liked slavery (it’s so much better to make people love you, even if you’re a dictator they’ll support you and work to hold you up the entire way - although when love fails fear is an adequate substitute), and Mission refuses to help until they get Zaalbar back, so she sighs and starts for the nearest sewer entrance.
The Dark Lord of the Sith, traipsing through the Tarisian sewers with a burned Republic soldier and a half-wild fourteen-year-old thief. HK would never let her live it down.
They rescue Zaalbar, and Revan sends him back to their grimy apartment in the Upper City to recover from his injuries. He swears a lifedebt to her before he goes, and Revan finds herself thinking I can use this. Why make the Wookiee a slave when instead he’ll serve her willingly? Some people (Malak) just don’t understand.
The raid on the Vulkar base goes about as well as expected, though it would be so much easier if Revan could openly use the Force; it leaps to do her bidding, like an eager puppy, but she’s consigned to only using it in subtle ways, to nudge aside an opponent’s strike or a blaster bolt that would’ve struck true, to enhance her reflexes as she ducks and dodges. Mission has no frame of reference for Revan’s extra speed and flexibility, but she catches Carth watching her thoughtfully at times, a considering light in his eyes. She throws him a grin and a wink once, because it’s amusing, and because it serves to keep him from thinking she’s analyzing him.
Wouldn’t want him to think too deeply about her actions, after all.
The wink serves its purpose, and Carth rolls his eyes at her (although there’s a small smile in the corner of his mouth, which she appreciates - it’s taken long enough to get him to let his guard down at all around her, the man has some serious trust issues) and goes back to taking carefully aimed shots, but Revan knows he’s still watching her, making decisions. Carth isn’t dumb by any stretch of the imagination, and he served in the Mandalorian Wars, he knows what Jedi reflexes look like. Hopefully he explains it away as untrained Force sensitivity and leaves it at that.
Mission is so incredibly young.
The Twi’lek has street smarts, sure, and she’s tougher than she appears, but her emotions swing in a wild pendulum and her insecurities are on full display for anyone to see. She’s strangely naive for an orphan and it shows when she talks about her brother, and when she’s ready to turn on Gadon after a two-minute conversation full of blatant lying and manipulation. Revan files that information away for later, just in case - it’s always wise to know your allies’ weaknesses, for the eventuality that they become your enemies. (The practice has served her well many times in the past, and will now, again, with Malak.) Still, even with Mission very nearly ready to turn her back on a man who, Revan assumes, has basically raised her for the last few years, they manage to acquire the prototype accelerator and dispose of the last of the Vulkars.
Revan smiles as she strolls out the front entrance to the swoop gang’s base, casually stabbing her vibroblade into the door guard’s neck as she passes him, before he has a chance to shoot. It’s nothing like fighting the Mandalorians, or facing five Jedi on her own and taking them apart without them landing a hit on her, but it’s the most fun she’s had in days, probably since Malak’s betrayal, and there’s something about single-handedly destroying an entire organization (even if it is just a swoop gang) that feels exhilarating.
“You’re in a good mood all of a sudden,” Carth says, nearly accusatory, and Revan shrugs, turns to look at both him and Mission, walking backwards down the street.
“What, do you have a monopoly on enjoying taking down a corrupt organization?” she asks archly, raising an eyebrow. Mission hides a giggle behind one hand and Revan marks that as a success. “Funny, Carth, I wasn’t sure you enjoyed much of anything.”
Mission’s giggle turns into a full-on laugh, and the teenager gasps out, “You know, she’s got you there, old man,” darting out of the way as Carth aims a half-hearted swat at her shoulder. The soldier is smiling now, though.
He’s loyal, she thinks. If she can turn him to her side…
(Carth tells her about Saul Karath later and she thinks that turning him will be both easier and far more difficult than she’d expected.)
It’s with a pair of chuckling, bantering companions that Revan walks back into the Bek base, accelerator in her hand, that much closer to finding Bastila.
Carth doesn’t know who she is. Mission is, for the most part, clueless to the actual state of the galaxy beyond her world. Zaalbar is clearly more informed, and Revan will have to tell him at some point - he deserves to know who he’s sworn a lifedebt to - but he has no way of even recognizing her voice, unlike Carth.
Bastila, though.
Bastila knows.
In the whirl of the fight that follows after Revan wins the swoop race and the Vulkars try to withdraw their “prize”, Bastila is vulnerable, newly freed from the collar and cage, weaving the Force around her in a wave of rage and joy, mental shields abysmally low (Revan refuses to believe the girl hasn’t been properly trained in shielding, the Jedi aren’t that negligent, and after all she’s one of their better weapons, isn’t she? The Last Hope of the Republic or however Carth had put it), and once all the gang members have fallen Bastila tightens her hands on her stolen vibrostaff and turns to Revan, and for a moment she’s about ready to launch herself into another attack.
“You-” the Jedi starts, and Revan raises an eyebrow, because even if she’s pretending she doesn’t know who she is, the girl’s tone is too-obviously recognition, “-you’re from the Endar Spire, both of you.”
“We’re here to rescue you,” Revan says, casually cheerful, still riding the high that is fighting with another Force-user by her side (emotions bounce freely back and forth in the Force, the exhilaration and adrenaline rush and the thrill of it all amplifying exponentially when there’s more than one person projecting), and she has to stifle a laugh at the look on Bastila’s face.
Back at the apartment, Revan sits on the narrow windowseat, one knee pulled up against her chest, the other leg dangling out the open window, much to Bastila’s consternation and Mission’s delight, and hums a cantina song under her breath as she considers her next move. Bastila and Carth are arguing about something regarding leadership in the background, and Revan privately agrees with Carth - Bastila’s certainly been acting like a stuck-up princess since they rescued her. It’s not entirely far off what Revan was expecting of her, if she’s honest with herself, though she’d been expecting someone a little less… shallow.
Of course, Bastila then apologizes, and Revan reminds herself not to make assumptions.
Bastila looks much more comfortable now that she’s away from the Lower City, a double-bladed lightsaber on her belt that Revan had found on the Vulkar leader and Bastila had claimed had fallen off her belt during the crash, thus allowing her to get captured to begin with. Carth had actually laughed at that, and even Revan had found herself amused, though tinged with an ever-present anger. Revan would never be able to lose her lightsabers; crystals sing as strongly in the Force as another person, when they’re directly bonded to you, it’s so easy to just open your mind and listen and call and will your saber back to your hand. But it wouldn’t be surprising if the Dantooine Council (the ones who trained Bastila, and certainly the worse Council when compared to Coruscant; every Jedi she’d met from Dantooine during the war had been stifled in the Force, wrapped with chains too similar to the ones she sees holding Bastila back) had entirely forgotten what it’s like to seek out your own saber crystal, to harvest it yourself and build your own saber around it. Revan’s never forgotten the feeling, when she’d found her first violet crystal, the one she’d lost on her flagship - she’s still bitter about that.
Still, even with these new revelations, Revan stands by her original assessment of Bastila: she’ll make a wonderful Sith, and there’s a strength in her, a fire, even if it’s heavily suppressed. Bastila seems determined to pretend she feels no emotions at all, as if the very concept of feeling anything invalidates her identity as a Jedi.
(Revan remembers when the Jedi cared about compassion. When she left the Order behind to save people and so many followed her, because they could not abide sitting back while innocent people died.)
(Revan remembers when those Jedi, the only true Jedi, died.)
Revan dedicates herself to breaking that wall down, a chip at a time. She knows how to turn a Jedi, has done it so many times before; it’s more difficult when she has to pretend to be a spacer with no concept of the Force at all, but Bastila has been acting- odd, and it takes Revan delicately probing the Force to realize, ah.
The little Jedi has a crush.
And isn’t that interesting, because it’s so obvious that Bastila knows exactly who Revan is, and yet when Revan shoots her a wink she blushes and looks away, and there’s a faint trace of attraction in the air.
The poor girl must be repressed beyond belief and have very little freedom outside the Enclave to latch onto Revan so quickly, despite everything. The attraction will probably fade in time, but if it doesn’t… well. Revan can use this, too.
Their small group is in the Upper City cantina while Mission swindles the rich nobility out of their credits in pazaak and Revan busies herself beating every available contender in the dueling ring (the fights are fun, if they’re really pathetically easy, and a good way to get back into fighting shape) when the Mandalorian shows up.
Revan had seen him before, in the Lower City - Canderous, she remembers, the local Exchange boss’ enforcer - and it’s clear he recognizes her as well, as he ignores the patrons staring at him and crosses over to where she’s leaning against a storage canister, rebraiding her black hair after her latest duel. The offer he makes her is too good to pass up - a free ride off Taris, just when she needs one? It’s almost suspiciously convenient, but there’s no dishonesty in the Force, and Bastila agrees with that (it’d been a risk to bring Bastila with her out of the apartment, but the girl was going crazy being cooped up, and the internal countdown Revan’s had ticking since the moment she woke up here has been getting ever more urgent), so Revan quietly agrees to raid the Sith base and bring him their targeting codes.
As soon as the Mandalorian leaves the room she turns to the Hutt duel organizer and levels him with a piercing stare, pulling on every intimidation trick she’s ever learned that doesn’t require the Force and pushing into his space.
“You repeat one word of that conversation to anyone and you’ll never see another duel,” she says, low enough so Bastila can’t hear her, and just barely lets some of the Force into her eyes so they wash gold for a heartbeat. Ajuur pulls back, skin going bright green in fear, and Revan smiles, shark-sharp and satisfied. “Play nice,” she says, louder, “and I’ll let you officiate a death match between me and Bendak before I leave.”
And there it is, the carrot and the stick. Ajuur nods, as much as a Hutt can, recognizing the amount of credits he’ll see if a death match goes off, and Revan turns on her heel and strides over to where Mission has just fleeced a man out of some hundred credits, Bastila falling in line behind her almost out of habit. (It’s not Revan she’s used to following, it’s anyone.)
“Come on, Mission,” Revan says, clapping her hand onto the disappointed-looking Twi’lek’s shoulder. “I’ve got a better use for your negotiation skills.”
Mission cheers up at that, tosses her pazaak partner a lazy salute that would make Carth cringe, and scoops up the pile of credits into a small belt pouch, tossing it at Revan after a moment’s thought. She chatters about how easy it was to con the rich idiots in the Upper City, I should’ve come up here way sooner, Big Z and I coulda been living it up, as Revan leads them to the south side, to the droid shop Canderous had mentioned. A bit of negotiation, a charming smile and a brush of the Force so soft Bastila barely notices and she’s haggled the shop owner down to a thousand credits for the T3 unit, though after the purchase is made the woman looks over the credits with an almost confused face, like she isn’t quite sure why there are so few. The problem with weak suggestions; they wear off so fast. Thankfully the woman doesn’t call Revan back or challenge her as she leaves, the astromech cheerfully beeping to itself as it follows her.
Revan sends Mission back to the apartment to let the others know what’s going on, and that she and Bastila might not be back until late, and although the teenager sulks about being left out of the action, she agrees, and so soon it’s just Revan and Bastila casually strolling towards the Sith base at the far end of the city spire.
“Mission would’ve been invaluable here,” Bastila says quietly, as they pass another Sith patrol. “Yet you sent her back.”
Revan shrugs, says, “She’s a kid, this isn’t any place for her. Besides,” and she shoots Bastila a smile, “I barely know anything about you,” true, technically, “I thought we could get to know each other more.”
The Jedi actually flushes, looks away for a moment before saying, a little haltingly as she reaches for her customary haughty tone, “I hardly think that’s appropriate. I’m a Jedi and you’re-” Bastila fumbles before finishing, “a smuggler. Which, actually, is something I wanted to ask you about.” She doesn’t say anything else though, and Revan finally realizes she’s actually waiting for permission.
Interesting. “Ask away, I’ve got nothing to hide.” Which is also true, in a sense, because really, if Bastila focused and thought about it she could probably figure out that Revan isn’t as brainwashed as she’s supposed to be.
“It couldn’t have been an easy task to find me at the swoop track,” Bastila says, thoughtful, “yet somehow you managed. You also avoided detection by the Sith, discovered I was a Vulkar prisoner, gained sponsorship to the race, and became the Taris swoop champion. That’s quite a resume.” She almost sounds impressed, though it’s tempered by something like caution.
“And rescued the damsel in distress along the way,” Revan teases, winking, just to see the look on Bastila’s face. (Alright, so maybe she has more than one reason for cultivating the attraction Bastila feels for her, but that hardly has any relevance.) It’s all-too-easy to slip into the casual confidence of the spacer personality she’s supposed to have. “I’m talented, what can I say? Though I doubt I would’ve gotten that far without Carth and Mission.”
Bastila looks amused, but she hardly shows it when she speaks. “A Jedi could’ve done all these things, of course, but only by drawing heavily on the Force. In fact, I think there’s no other explanation for your great success: the Force must be working through you.”
Of all the things Revan was expecting Bastila to say, admitting she’s Force-sensitive was certainly not one of them. She blinks, not having to feign surprise, although it’s for the wrong reasons, not that Bastila seems to realize that.
“Perhaps if you weren’t- Well,” the Jedi continues, clearly once again cutting herself off before she reveals anything, “perhaps if you were younger the Jedi would take you in for training. As it is, though…”
Bastila knows who Revan is, and knows what’s been done to her. From what Carth had said earlier, Revan was only on the Endar Spire at Bastila’s request, which speaks of the Jedi Council, at the least, being aware. And if the Jedi know… the Force can do terrible things to a mind.
So all of this is the Council’s doing.
Revan smothers the flare of anger and responds, a little sharper than she means, “What are you trying to say?” The Jedi Council can’t seriously believe they can just… erase Revan and retrain her, can they? Do they really expect to put Revan back on the leash she’d broken years ago when she walked away to fight?
“I’m sorry, I overstepped my authority,” Bastila apologizes, and Revan shakes her head, cuts her off before she can say more.
“It doesn’t matter. We need to get those codes so we can get off Taris.” Revan isn’t sure how much longer she can stand feeling like she’s surrounded by living ghosts, and she really doesn’t want to discuss the Jedi or the Council, not right now. Her control is good, but the constant Force-induced urgency has been wearing on her, and just because she’s the Dark Lord doesn’t mean she’s infallible. Malak’s betrayal had proven that to be all too true.
It’s surprising, really, how easily the raid on the Sith base goes, despite the fact that it’s broad daylight out; between the surprisingly handy astromech, a Jedi (and a skilled one, no matter how much better she should be by now, with her talent - look at where Malak had been when he was her age, Revan had been better than him but he’d still been good, the two of them preparing to go to war), and a Sith Lord in hiding they make quick work of the base’s defenders. The Sith governor barely puts up a fight, though he crows about how powerful he is - more powerful than them, and all because he’s harnessed his anger. Revan’s certain the man can barely recite the Sith Code and understand it, much less properly access the Force. No wonder he hasn’t gotten a lightsaber yet.
She finds the command codes for the Sith guns and a thousand credits on the man’s body and tucks them both away, securely. A death match in the dueling ring with Bendak tonight, and then in the morning they can head down to Jayvar’s cantina to meet Canderous and finally get off this planet, and then Revan can start looking for the star maps. Maybe she can even convince the Jedi to help her - and wouldn’t that be ironic?
Either way, her time on Taris is coming to an end, and she couldn’t be more grateful.
Malak hasn’t learned a Force-damned thing.
(Revan still remembers Malak on his knees before her, half his jaw missing, looking up at her with terror in his eyes; there’d been no blood, lightsaber wounds don’t bleed, but he’d had one hand clutching at the injury anyway, trying to gasp out words but barely even able to make guttural sounds. Both her sabers are ignited and her cape is still twisting from the fury in her strikes - she’d thrown him against the wall the moment she’d stormed onto the bridge of the Leviathan, the vessel she’d given him as his own command, held him pinned there even as he struggled to free himself, and attacked him with both blades. He’d barely managed to free himself enough to block her first few strikes, and then she’d batted his saber away easily and tore one saber through his jaw, leaving him unable to speak and barely breathing, crumpled on the floor.
You should’ve known better, you brute, she snarls, stalking closer to him, gratified to see him cower back. The Dark burns in her eyes and wraps around her like a second cloak, and she feeds on the fear that causes among some of the officers on the bridge. Most of them are used to her and Malak’s confrontations by now, but there are some newer recruits, and she supposes they haven’t figured out she’s not here for them yet. What a waste of a planet.
Malak, conveniently, can’t argue, though defiance flares in his eyes, fading away immediately when she takes another step towards him. She knows the argument he wants to make anyway, something about showing their strength. As though their strength will be anything but a provocation to the survivors, now.
Only a fool makes a show of strength by destroying the people he’s trying to intimidate, she snaps, disdainful. It’s better to rule with an open palm than a closed fist. That is how you form an empire, Malak: you make them love you, and you use fear carefully, as a tool, to keep the ones who don’t love you in line. Until you learn that you’ll never be anything more than my enforcer. Malak’s face crinkles in rage that billows from him into the Force, and Revan deactivates her red saber, closes the distance to him and grinds the edge of the hilt into the wound on his jaw until it spurts blood and he wails. We don’t glass planets. Understand me? Make this mistake again and I won’t be merciful.
And she turns and strides from the bridge, leaving her apprentice a bloody, weeping mess on the floor behind her.)
Revan is still shaking with fury four days later when the Ebon Hawk arrives at Dantooine. Mission hasn’t left her bunk in the crew quarters since they’d gone into hyperspace, other than for necessities, and Revan knows better than to push her. Carth has been unusually withdrawn too, but she’s more willing to press him - that’s how she finds out his homeworld, and his losses, and suddenly his hatred of the Sith army makes more sense. It’s not just betrayal.
Telos. Malak had thought it a show of strength to destroy the defenseless planet with an orbital bombardment, the same way he’d glassed Taris. Revan had thought she’d made herself perfectly clear to him after she’d learned of his actions, but clearly, now that he thinks she’s dead, he’s decided he’s free to be as sadistic as he wants. The man will crush the life out of the galaxy under his hand and leave them defenseless against the Empire building in the Unknown Regions, and then everything will be lost. It’s not like the Jedi would have any hope of fighting back that Empire, after all, weak and stagnated as they’ve become. They’d hidden away from the Mandalorians, and as bad as Mandalore the Ultimate had been, Vitiate is a thousand times worse.
Revan thinks it’s an admirable showing of her self-control that she hasn’t spent their time in hyperspace pacing and thinking out loud and that they’ve made it to Dantooine without her revealing herself. And while Dantooine is clearly a respite for Carth, Mission, and Zaalbar, Revan finds herself constantly struggling to control her anger there.
It’s much more difficult than it should be, and it’s all due to the way Bastila completely shuts down the moment they enter the Enclave.
She’s quiet, that fire Revan knows burns within her so deeply smothered Revan’s almost afraid it’s gone out completely, hardly daring to speak her mind, seeming so eager to please the Council she doesn’t dare disagree with them, even when Revan can feel her discontent roiling behind her shields.
And that’s interesting, as well - the revelation of the bond between them. Revan hadn’t been expecting that, although she’s a little disappointed in herself for not sensing it sooner: gossamer-thin but strong as a durasteel cord. Revan reaches out and brushes against it, sees Bastila jerk a little in surprise across the room, and hides a smile; it’s been difficult to pretend unfamiliarity with the Force, to fake a struggle to learn, but it’s been worth it to finally be able to use the Force openly again. She’s missed it, so much.
The Council sends her to go cleanse their “sacred grove” after some month of training, in which Revan spends half the time ignoring their lecturers, then parroting the information back word-for-word (she remembers too much of this from the last time she’d been through Jedi training). The Masters are constantly surprised at how quickly she picks it up, and she just shrugs and smiles and says she’s always been a quick learner.
Which is true. She’d taught herself Ancient Rakatan, after all.
Vandar talks about a taint in the “sacred grove” she’d actually believed all their talk about the first time they’d sent her to be tested there, and she expects some of Malak’s thugs; it’s a perfect test, really, see if their little mind control experiment will make her kill her own for their cause. They say she can’t bring Jedi help, which really just means Bastila, so she takes Canderous and Carth with her, because an astromech would struggle with the grasslands, and Mission’s finally ventured out of the Hawk for the first time in days to go play cards and Revan doesn’t intend to disturb her.
As soon as Revan sees what the taint she’s supposed to dispel really is, she orders Carth and Canderous to go back to the Enclave, or make themselves useful and figure out what the kriff Mandalorians are doing here. Carth argues, but Revan gives him a look, weighted with all the command she possesses from her years of General, and he silences himself and follows Canderous without another word (though she catches him frowning as he does it, like he doesn’t totally understand why). Canderous, for his part, is perfectly happy to go hunting his own people. What else would you expect from a Mandalorian?
That leaves Revan free to approach the small meditation shrine on her own, and to reach out to the young Cathar within.
Juhani fights like a wild thing, but she doesn’t know what she’s doing; she’s in pain, and scared, and angry even, and she’s simultaneously trying to use those emotions and terrified of them. She tells Revan, after falling to her knees in surrender, that she’d thought her darkness was more than enough to crush anyone, and Revan cannot control her rage at all of this.
So for once, she doesn’t.
“Juhani,” she says, softly. “You have a choice to make. The Council would take you back, of course, if you repented, if you showed you don’t feel anything at all - and you could go back to trying to be perfect for them,” and she lets a dark snarl come into her voice there, sees Juhani look up, surprised, ears twitching a little. “Or you could learn to lie, and I could teach you to properly harness your emotions, so that no one will ever use you again.”
And she holds out her hand and waits, patiently.
Revan tells Juhani who she is, and what the Council has done to her, once she’s certain the Cathar won’t spread the secret around. Juhani is still clearly unsure, but she’d taken Revan’s hand after only a minute of consideration, a dark shade to her voice when she said she didn’t want to be used by anyone. The girl’s probably had some experience with slavers, given her species, and it would explain the venom in her eyes. There’s bitterness there, and while bitterness isn’t the ideal start for a fallen Jedi… well. Revan isn’t going to complain. With Juhani it’s possible she won’t even need Bastila by her side, but Malak is going to go after the other woman whether or not Revan turns her and it would be a nice touch. Besides, Revan finds that she genuinely likes the girl, when Bastila forgets her Jedi self-righteousness.
Revan doesn’t go directly back to the Enclave after she sends Juhani back; part of that is a simple contingency, just in case Juhani decides to tell the Council the truth. There won’t be much Revan can do, in that case, with no lightsaber, alone, but she’ll be damned if she’s not going to put up a fight anyway. Still, after a few hours she hasn’t heard anything, and that’s probably a good sign - she comms Canderous to check in on him and to confirm nothing strange has happened with the Jedi. The Mandalorian tells her he and Carth found several groups of his people in the plains and dealt with them, but were unable to track down their leader, so they’d headed back to the Hawk, and no, nothing new from the Council, why, was she expecting something?
Revan just thanks him for the report and starts the long trek back to the Enclave alone.
She makes a quick detour, though, because she remembers the rumors she’d heard, of a natural crystal cave in the plains, and she knows instinctively that somewhere there is a violet crystal to replace the one she lost. She crawls through a kinrath cave and comes up into a world of light and color, and for a few minutes she almost feels like a child again.
Revan returns to the Jedi Enclave with a pair of crystals tucked securely in her pocket, ready for when the Council finally lets her build a lightsaber.
She doesn’t see the Council again until the next day; Vandar tells her how she did an “excellent” job bringing Juhani back to the path of the light (oh, if only he knew the truth), and how what happened to Juhani should serve as a warning to her, to remember how easy it is to stray off the path of the light.
“I’ll remember, Master,” she says, low and quiet, and keeps her hatred under tight shields. (She’s sure he can still feel it, but he won’t know who it comes from, and that’ll unnerve him more than knowing it’s hers.)
The ruins on Dantooine are only a couple of hours away from the Enclave, but Bastila has never been there. It’s almost sad, Revan thinks as they cross the hard-packed dirt and dry grass; the girl looks so much freer, out here, taking deep, lingering breaths, even pausing to admire a small tuft of wildflowers struggling to grow. On impulse, Revan bends down to pick two, stepping around behind Bastila and tucking one flower into each band holding her hair back. “There,” she says, softer than she means. “Since you liked them so much.”
Bastila reaches one hand up to just barely brush over one of the flowers, looks up at Revan almost seeming confused, and for the first time she can remember Revan finds herself flushing a little.
“We should keep moving,” she says briskly, starting forward again, but she’s stopped by Bastila’s hand on her wrist, just the slightest amount of pressure before she drops her hand again.
“...Shala,” Bastila says, a pause while she searches for the fake name. “Thank you.”
Revan remembers the ruins, and they remember her: a calm, quiet force of nature, confident in her decisions, a saber-calloused palm feeling out the catches in the ancient stone doors. This, too, they remember: the shadow at her side, uncertain, but following faithfully in Revan’s wake.
The ruins remember Revan, and they remember her apprentice.
Two days later, Revan and Bastila meet with the Council again, for what Revan hopes is the final time; she’s growing tired of having to constantly lock down her hatred of them. She’s starting to feel a bit like Bastila, chafing at the restrictions set on her, desperate for the freedom of empty space, the galaxy spread out before her, just waiting for her to choose where to go.
She’s given up trying to completely hide the constant anger she feels - now, in this final meeting, she lets the Council feel it, spreading out to fill the room like a pool of cold blackness, leaving them glancing around, unsure, unable to pinpoint the source but knowing it’s someone or something close to them. Revan doesn’t smile, merely keeps her head down, the perfect picture of an innocently brainwashed Jedi trainee, but she’s amused by their discomfit anyway.
Then, of course, she has to wonder if Bastila can feel that amusement, and she locks it down quickly behind shields, just in case. She can’t risk a slip-up now, not when the Council has finally agreed to send her off to hunt down the star maps. They tell her Bastila will be going with her (unsurprising, they need Bastila to watch and make sure Revan doesn’t remember herself, because wouldn’t that be just the worst possible thing), and that Juhani has also requested to come, and that they’ll allow her to keep the companions she met on Taris, how gracious of them.
“Thank you,” she says, gravely, like their approval matters, and as quickly as she can she escapes to the Hawk. Dantooine is a respite, they’d tried to tell her, as though she could ever feel anything but anger here, when her entire code revolves around breaking chains and the Council seems to revel in binding anyone they can. Still, Bastila might want to come back, and Revan finds she’s not entirely sure she could deny her that.
Juhani is waiting for them, and though she looks the picture-perfect of Jedi humility, she catches Revan’s eye and smirks the tiniest bit - an acknowledgement that the plan worked. Telling Juhani her plans, to find the source of Malak’s power and take it back and destroy him, had been a risk, but she’s grateful she’d gone through with it now that everything is falling into place. Revan needs an apprentice who understands her plans if she’s going to remove Malak and successfully build her empire, and in the event she can’t manage to properly turn Bastila, Juhani will do well.
“Everyone ready to move on?” she asks, leaning against the navicomputer’s display, preparing to set the coordinates for Tatooine - get the worst planet out of the way quickly. Manaan isn’t going to be much better, in terms of where the star map is hidden, but at least the rest of the planet isn’t terrible. “We’ve got a lot of traveling to do.”
“Just say the word,” Carth says, dropping down into the pilot’s chair, his tone turning wry as he continues, “I’m sure Canderous will keep us plenty busy with his war stories.”
Canderous scoffs, but Revan cuts him off, says, “I find them interesting, personally. Setting a course for Tatooine.”
And as the Ebon Hawk leaps into hyperspace, Revan’s eyes find Bastila, who’s standing behind the copilot’s chair, and drift to the pair of wilting flowers tucked into her hair.
Revan isn’t entirely sure what to do with the warm rush that sends through her, but for now, she just lets herself smile and feel the moment, content in the knowledge that she’s finally away from Dantooine, and one step closer to taking back her empire.