Consequence

Disclaimer: All KotOR characters and settings and references belong to Bioware and LucasArts. I certainly make no money off of this - the only thing being fed by the fruits of my labor is my obsession.

Author's Note: Though this piece deals with (in reference at least) a female Revan, I like to think that it would remain emotionally unchanged even with a simple switch in pronouns. What drives at least the beginning of the story of Revan, and Bastila's role in it, has nothing in my opinion to do with gender. Hopefully those who imagine a male Revan more clearly can do some pronoun switching in their mind's eye while reading and still enjoy this.

CONSEQUENCE

by Jedi Boadicea

She had spent a lifetime being trained to cope with situations that would confound most people, and trials that would cripple weaker beings. She'd been trained more extensively even than many Jedi, for hers, they told her so often, was a special power, and to tap it fully required an absolute dedication to perfection. And she had striven for it always with a need that almost, she sometimes felt, crippled her in its turn. But she did learn.

And nothing she had ever learned had prepared her for this.

The last intact panels on the starboard side of the bridge's crew pit exploded at last in a shower of sparks as the third volley hit the Vindication, but this time Bastila managed to cushion herself with the Force, clutching the floor with all her strength of will and muscle, her head still ringing from being thrown to the deck the first two times. Sparks brushed the side of her face, adding another pain to her confusion. Fire caught in the fabric of her sleeve, but she guttered it with a swift thought.

At last the violent shudder of the deckplates beneath her stilled, and she risked raising her head again... stretched out her hand... and froze, black cloth a hair's breadth from her fingertips.

She knew what she had to do. She'd known it from the moment she'd crawled close enough to sense the faint flicker of life still struggling in that body, and thrown a frantic look back over her shoulder to confirm with her eyes what she'd already known through the Force - that she was the only member of the strike team who had survived. She was the only living person on this bridge.

Only her, and the Dark Lord dying at her feet.

'We must try to take her alive if possible.'

The smoke was now growing thick, the scent of burning wire and the metallic taste of scorched durasteel scraping sharp fingers down her throat. She coughed. Dragged in a deep, painful breath... and settled her hand on the black folds of the cloak over Revan's shoulder, feeling the supple shape of fiber armor sculpted to fit the flesh beneath. A cold frisson of fear shot up her arm at the contact.

There was no way to deny the fear. Her training availed her nothing. Her training had not prepared her for this.

'Forgive me for being bold, Master, but... why must we? We risk so many lives. We must think of what is best for the greater good, surely. Would it not be more effective to - '

'Your rational approach to the situation does you credit, Padawan Bastila. But a truly careful analysis must take into account other factors. Though we certainly hope against all hope that even Revan might yet find redemption, do not be deceived into thinking that mercy is the only consideration which drives us. We denied Revan and Malak permission to aid the Republic in the Mandalorian War because of the darkness we sensed awaited the reckless in that struggle - and perhaps even that denial played a part in leading them down their path into that very darkness. But whatever drove them, whatever inner paths they might have walked to arrive at their own darkness, it seems clear now that they walked a very tangible path as well, and we must learn what they discovered at the end of that road. The Republic will lose this war if we cannot uncover the hidden power behind the Sith effort, and the Order will suffer greater losses still. Revan must be taken alive. Compassion and necessity can be companions in this cause.'

She wasn't feeling any compassion now. Only the cold fear, and a thrill of revulsion at the softness of the black cloak beneath her fingers. It ought not to be so soft.

Belatedly, perhaps damaged by the bombardment, perhaps only muffled till now by her preoccupation with pain and prey, the sound of klaxons at last wailed through the desolate bridge and set off red sparks in Bastila's hazed sight with every howling rise.

The viewport was cracking. She could sense the air shivering as though the Force itself held its breath in anticipation of the implosion sure to come, should Malak fire on his master even just once more.

Malak had turned on his master. After all the slaughter which had been wreaked, somehow this seemed to her, in this impossible moment, the more gut-wrenching crime. How could Jedi truly fall so far?

How could she do what she now must do?

'May the Force guide me,' Bastila whispered, and her hands began to shake as she leaned forward, her choice made, the threshold crossed, and slipped her pale fingers past the dark borders of Darth Revan's hood.

And pulled the mask free.

She knew the face. She'd studied the Jedi records. Prepared. Prepared for a very long time, for this moment.

No, not this moment. Never for this moment. For another moment entirely, when hands other than her own, had everything gone well beyond even their wildest expectations, would have willingly pulled the mask away from this face.

She'd known what to expect, and yet it wasn't this.

There was a terrible innocence about the face of the woman lying still before her. Elegant lines, weary shadows, a deathly pallor, and innocence. In that moment of weakness, it was not the face of a Sith Lord.

Could it ever be? Was this why she hid it behind the mask? Shame for a face that showed no outward signs of the cruelty within?

'May the Force guide me,' she whispered again, and closed her eyes.

Moving her fingers by touch, by the Force's guidance, Bastila spread her hands flat along the cheekbones of the Dark Lord she had come to save; against all odds, unexpected and undesired, to save. She opened herself fully to the Force, felt her fingertips slide into hair made damp by sweat, and dove into the darkness in pursuit of a fast fading soul.

And the world changed.

~

The woman weighed a ton.

Under other circumstances, she could have used the Force to lighten the burden, but not now. She was exhausted in body and mind, and using the Force now was the only thing keeping her on her feet, and that just barely. She could not spare the time to pause and gather her strength. She had already lost too much time on the heaving floor of the Vindication's bridge, trying to put her mind and her soul back together after breaking herself open, like so much glass dashed on something sharp, on the jagged edges of another soul already shattered.

She didn't know if it had been enough. She could feel the life-force flickering more steadily in the body pressed against hers now, but no pulse in the wrist gripped in her hand to keep the limp arm in place across her shoulders.

But there had been something... she had touched something, of that she was sure. Something she could still feel in the back of her mind, like a vast shadow she was too afraid to face directly, or like a great light which threatened to blind her if she could not keep herself focused on the outside, the here and now, the immediacy of a ship falling to pieces around her and a duty to perform.

The floor lurched beneath her, and her feet became tangled again in Revan's trailing cloak as she tried to right herself. Lacking even the breath to curse - a practice she'd spent most of her life eschewing anyway - Bastila dropped the other woman to the floor and ripped the cloak off. It tore away from the armor beneath at the shoulder blades, and she tossed it aside in a flutter like black wings. There was no time for this, they were running out of time...

Heaving Revan's limp arm across her shoulders once more Bastila pushed herself back to her feet and forward, wishing over and over again in a sequence of a hazed thought that Kelen had survived the explosion on the bridge, so that he could have put those broad Guardian shoulders of his, and his earnest eagerness to please, to proper use here. But he wasn't here. And she was too weak now to do anything but drag her burden.

But she would. By the Force, she would.

She almost cried with relief when she arrived at the nearest hangar to find it still accessible and a transport intact at dock. Almost.

Moving mechanically, as quickly as she could, Bastila hauled them both into the transport's cramped cabin and strapped her limp charge into the navigator's seat, tightening the restraints with a violent snap. Another lurch of the cruiser's death throes sent her tumbling ungracefully into the pilot's chair, and she fumbled at her own restraints with one hand even as she flipped levers into a startup sequence with the other.

'Please,' she murmured hoarsely. 'Please.'

Please let her strength hold, let the Force stay with her long enough to guide this flimsy transport safely out into the stars, and past Malak's vengeful eye. She wasn't a pilot. This wasn't the transport on which the strike team had arrived; the controls were just unfamiliar enough to worry her. But she had to get out, now. She couldn't waste more time trying to get to the other bays, and she couldn't waste any more time in fear.

The repulsors kicked in. The control panel flashed warnings at her in a painfully dizzying way, and she squinted with the effort of keeping her vision and her concentration focused as she wrapped her hands around the controls.

Not once did she look over at the woman in the chair beside her. She didn't need to look in order to know.

The stars, as she fell into them, were serene pinpricks of white light in the midst of a terrible cacophony of color - red laser fire, silver ship hulls, brilliant explosions of blue and gold. For a moment, completely disoriented, her death-grip on the controls not enough to control the transport's spin, she could not tell friend from foe. There wouldn't be that many friends, she knew. She'd be lucky if any of the Republic ships remained at all. They hadn't come for an assault, only to serve as a distraction, as bait, and now everything had gone so wrong...

A Republic snub fighter zoomed by so close that she almost imagined she could feel the transport's hull tingling in the ion wake. Was she getting delirious? Force, no, not now, not so close...

There. There was the Radiance, her Republic markings blazing defiance in the light of Sith laser fire. It was all chaos out here, and Bastila knew she didn't possess the piloting skills to get her safely within tractor beam range of the Radiance, yet she had no choice but to try. The chaos couldn't be allowed to matter. There was no chaos, she reminded herself.

But in the privacy of a stolen transport and a moment of honest desperation, with no one to see or hear, she allowed herself a wry snort. She had never known a more chaotic moment, and as for harmony... harmony could be so hard.

Bastila felt suddenly as though Revan were smirking at her from the adjacent chair, unconscious or not.

She felt ill. Told herself it was only the swirling of the stars seen through the cockpit port.

'There is no chaos,' she said, through gritted teeth. She would make it so. 'I am not going to die here.'

Neither of them were.

~

Later she would learn that Master Zhar had been on the bridge of the Radiance, reaching out for her, and it had been at his command that the cruiser turned, slowly and desperately, to get the stolen transport within range. Six Republic fighter pilots died in brief flashes of light and fire in order to intercept the Sith fighters who tried to put an end to her escape. Perhaps the Sith ships had been sent by Malak. Perhaps he'd sensed her just as Zhar had. Or maybe he'd sensed Revan.

Bastila's clearest memory of those last moments, as the Radiance pulled them in for emergency dock, was of staring out at the disintegrating bulk of the Vindication. Darth Revan's flagship was crumbling against the stars.

Vindication. She'd never given it thought before that moment. Why vindication? What part of Revan's mind had become so twisted to make that name seem... appropriate? What could someone who had so dedicatedly destroyed so much think they were proving, feel they were vindicating? Where was the sense, the reason?

A silent spark kindled in her mind, struggling to surface, struggling to answer... but she blocked it out, guttered it as quickly and as easily as she'd used the Force to quench real fire.

But she knew, even then, that it would not be so easy to do the next time.

~

They might never have safely made the jump to hyperspace had Malak not withdrawn his ships and made the jump first. The Captain and his officers were grim in their attempts to understand Malak's purpose, wary of such an easy escape.

The Jedi said nothing. They understood better, perhaps.

Bastila didn't. Nor could she summon the strength to care. She could barely summon the strength to walk to the medical facilities.

But she was not so delirious that she did not notice that the Masters escorting her - and carrying Revan's limp body - were using the Force to turn the minds of all those who came near enough to see their burden. They moved to the secondary medical bay, far from where wounded soldiers were being treated, and here there were only droids and other Jedi. No one, Bastila knew, would remember that an unconscious woman had been carried here. How they were going to keep it secret for long, however...

But it was too much to think on now. And when Jedi healer Amaran guided her to a bunk and suggested an immediate healing trance, Bastila was only too eager to comply. She hurt all over. And something deep inside of her felt broken.

When she was guided back to awareness several hours later, she found that all but a lingering soreness in her muscles had been healed. Her fellow Jedi stood, mostly silent, in various shadows of the medical bay. All the light and attention in the room seemed focused on the single bacta tank, and its unconscious occupant.

Bastila swung herself down slowly from the bunk, a hand to her head. She took one step forward, as though pulled against her will, then stopped.

Stripped of robes and armor and mask, limned in the pale glow of her liquid prison, Revan seemed... small. With half of her face obscured by breath mask and the tubes coiled about her like snakes - their number testament to the severity of her injuries - the impression of vulnerable innocence was difficult to shake. Difficult and dangerous. Hair floated free around Revan's face, and as Bastila stared at it, entranced by its sinuous movement, she was struck suddenly by a feeling of drowning, as though she too were trapped within the tank, helpless to move damaged limbs, desperate to strike out against the walls enclosing her...

'Padawan.'

She was breathing hard, and for a moment could not answer.

'Padawan Bastila. Look at me.'

Finding her voice at last, Bastila turned to the summons. 'Master Zhar,' she said, more weakly than she would have liked.

'Bastila,' he said gently. 'You have done well.'

'She... she will live?'

'Yes. Thanks to you.'

But there was something he wasn't telling her. She could see it in his face. Feel it on the Force. No one else in the room was looking at her, but they might all have been shouting it at the top of their lungs for all the difference it made.

'What is it?' Frustration steadied her voice, gave her strength. It always did. It was a weakness she hadn't yet been able to conquer.

Zhar sighed, and turned now as well to face the tank and its occupant. 'The body will survive,' he said quietly, almost sadly. Bastila remembered, then, that Zhar had once trained Revan and Malak. Known them as eager apprentices, gifted young charges. Before. 'But the mind... you acted quickly, Bastila, but no one could have acted quickly enough.'

She clenched her fists. 'I... I don't understand. Her injuries... '

'Are severe, yes, but alone they might not have caused this. Master and apprentice share a special bond, and this must hold true even for the Sith. It is possible that Malak turned more than his ship's weapons on his... friend. Friend, once. And now...'

His words struck too close for comfort to the horrified incomprehension which had overwhelmed her earlier. Struck too close to something else, something deeper, and perhaps not her own.

Bastila struggled to turn those thoughts aside, hoping desperately that Zhar would not be able to sense how unbalanced she was feeling, how poorly she was mastering herself at this crucial time.

'Then I have failed in my mission,' she said, hands still clenched. 'Even my Battle Meditation was not enough. I was focused too closely on Revan and the Vindication's crew. I should have kept my focus wider. I should have - '

'Do not berate yourself unnecessarily, Padawan. You did all that could have been expected. If this is the will of the Force, then we must accept it and salvage what we can.'

She opened her mouth again, ready to protest her failure until it was properly acknowledged, struggling with a need she'd never felt before; a perfect display of confidence and the impatience attendant upon that image were usually what came to her in moments like these. But this was so very different. And something in Zhar's voice as he spoke now caused a strange twist of apprehension in her gut.

'What do you mean, Master Zhar?'

He shot her a veiled, measuring look. She could sense nothing from him. Perfect Jedi serenity kept her out, cold and confused.

'Her mind as it is may no longer be able to look forward,' he said at last. 'But it might still... remember.'

It took her a moment. The room seemed to darken even further, till the numinous liquid glow of the tank and its suspended prisoner seemed the only thing filling her mind, and by its light the truth became slowly clear.

'Forgive me, Master...' she began, but the words came out so softly she had to start again. 'Forgive me, but do we... do we really have the right....'

'We do not,' Zhar said. And though still none of the other Jedi in the room spoke, they might as well have all been breathing in tandem, so attuned were they to every word, both spoken and unspoken, being formed in this room, at this cold moment of choice. 'But we have an obligation.'

And was that enough? Who were they to decide that duty could be used as a justification now, when before they had decided that other circumstances could justify the forsaking of duty. And so Revan had gone... and now she was here.

'And your task, Bastila, is not yet finished.'

She turned to him again, her throat painfully dry, and was not surprised when he reached out with both hands to gently touch the sides of her face, though he had never been a Master prone to physical displays of affection, or of anything else. Even now, for the first time in her memory, she could see the slightest movement in his lekku, betraying a depth of emotion he could not, or chose not to, contain.

Pity.

'You will be the one most suited to guiding her, should our efforts succeed. There will be as much of what she was, preserved in you, as in her. Are you ready to face this?'

There is no emotion, she told herself. There is no chaos.

'Yes,' she said. 'I am.'

It was only the first lie of many, but perhaps, in the end, the worst.

~

For the tenth night in a row, Bastila woke up screaming.

As usual, it took her several moments to remember where she was. Dantooine. Her quarters.

The room was quiet, even the echoes of her screaming having already died away, and she could not remember what the nightmare had been. She never could. All she knew was that something dark haunted her as she slept, chasing her always into weary wakefulness.

She had started avoiding sleep. Meditation rested the body and the mind, and she'd spent more time meditating in the days since their return to Dantooine than she had in the last several months combined. But she could not avoid sleep forever, and every time she lay herself down she did so grimly, determined not to give in to whatever plagued her dreams, determined to conquer this.

The shame of failing was worse than the frustration of not knowing what she had dreamed.

She crawled out of bed and went wearily to the dispenser, drawing a glass of water and swallowing it all down before exhaling a heavy sigh and turning at last, reluctantly, to the mirror.

The reflection no longer surprised her, though only a week ago she would have been horrified to be seen so ungroomed and visibly... beaten. There was no other word for it. The bruises of exhaustion were so bright beneath her pale skin they were almost the same blue as her eyes. Her lips were nearly white. Her hair hung lank around her face.

Pressing pale lips tightly together, frustrated and determined, she set aside the glass and raised her hands to her hair, willing fingers to move in the familiar patterns which would weave the brown strands into their usual bindings. But even in this she failed. She couldn't even get the part right. She couldn't concentrate on something even so simple and mundane as her Force damned hair.

Growling through clenched teeth, she flung her arms down at her sides, letting her hair fall as it may, and glared at her haggard reflection.

'You are pathetic,' she told it. 'You should be ashamed of yourself. This weakness is not becoming of a Jedi. You are better than this.'

But she wasn't. That was painfully clear.

And there was only one solution.

Unable to avoid it any longer, or to fool herself into thinking she could go on as she was, Bastila turned from the mirror and threw an outer robe on over her sleeping clothes. Her appearance was hopeless anyway. Let them see. It wasn't as if they couldn't already sense it.

But she took her lightsaber.

There was no one abroad in the corridors at this hour of the night, but she didn't doubt that the Masters would still be awake and at their work. It was a long and difficult labor that would not permit them any more sleep than she herself was getting, though she had been cautioned to take rest and privacy as a way to steady herself while the task was being done. She snorted softly at that thought, the sound masked by the faint rustle of the night wind sweeping over the surrounding grasslands as she strode across one of the compound's many courtyards. Another building, another courtyard, through a closed door and down a long passageway into an area of the enclave not usually entered by Padawans. But propriety, though usually the law by which she measured her life, was not enough to stop her now.

She passed through the final door, and into the outer chamber. Before she'd crossed the full length of the room, the door for which she was aiming was opened by a touch of the Force - not her own - and Master Vandar stepped through.

'Padawan,' he said calmly. 'We have been expecting you.'

She barely caught the words and yet you left me to stew in it alone before they slipped out. After so many years, it should not have been hard to do, and yet it never seemed to get any easier.

'Master, I....'

He waited, his huge eyes staring up at her unblinking.

'I... I need to...'

'Come,' he said at last, beckoning with his stubby hand. 'Come inside, then, and see what you must see.'

The room beyond was surprisingly empty. She'd expected to see more Masters, or more medical equipment, or... well, she didn't really know what was required to create a new soul for an empty body. But somehow she'd expected more than a round room with only two workstations to either side of the tank at the room's center, and the two quiet figures standing still and focused before each display. She barely had enough attention to spare to note that one of the figures was Master Zhar, and the other an unfamiliar human woman. A glance at them, no more, and then her eyes were drawn inexorably to the tank.

Revan looked unchanged. They might still have been on the Radiance - it might even be the same tank - if not for the fact that there was now a strange green glow emanating from the suspending liquid. If not for the overwhelming sense of relief which swept Bastila now, in place of the horror and confusion she'd felt then.

She had been resisting this pull with all of her strength for so many days, but now she admitted defeat, and it was such a relief to surrender.

'You have been dreaming again,' Vandar said simply.

'Yes.' There was no point denying it.

'You still cannot remember?'

'No.'

'Perhaps you will, in time.'

She didn't say that she sincerely hoped not, but he could no doubt sense her feelings on the matter regardless.

'We will stop soon, for a few hours at least,' Vandar said, his ear tips bending somberly downward. 'You may have some privacy then, to do what you must do.'

'Master, it's.... it is very difficult.'

'You must have faith in yourself, young Bastila.'

She just nodded.

When at last the Masters had finished whatever their task had been this night, they left her alone in the dim room, speaking no further words to her. She moved at last into the center of the room, coming to stand a pace away from the tank, and stared up grimly into Revan's still face.

Almost she said something. But in the end, she closed her eyes, and sank down to the floor in a proper meditation pose. Setting her lightsaber aside, she folded her hands in her lap and breathed deeply of cool air that smelled faintly, inexplicably, of the sea. She had loved the oceans of Talravin as a child. On so many planets, life was born from the sea.

She meditated through the rest of that night, and rose from it feeling more at peace than she had in... a very long time. Longer than the Vindication. Longer than she wanted to admit.

The room was still empty, though she was certain that work would have resumed by now had she not been here.

This time, when she looked up into Revan's face, she spoke.

'I don't want to know you. I'll keep you out. There will be no more nightmares, Revan. I am better than this.'

She was right about one thing at least, and only the one. There were no more unremembered nightmares.

~

Newfound calm made everything seem so clear. Despite all her training and power, despite every assumption of some great destiny waiting on the horizon, Bastila had never before felt so certain about her future, about what she must do to shape it.

'Masters, I know that I can do this.'

'Your willingness to serve is commendable,' Master Vandar said in his small, gravelly voice. 'But do not be over-eager. It can lead to unwelcome consequences.'

'Master Zhar,' she said, turning to the Twi'lek beseechingly. 'Surely you saw what I see, you feel it too. On the Radiance you told me that I would be best suited to guiding her, and you were right, I'm sure of it. The bond which connects us - '

'Is something which may be resisted,' Master Vrook insisted, interjecting his opinion with all the gruffness of his nature. Even in calm, he was a forbidding man. 'And perhaps ought to be.'

Bastila hesitated in her reply, fighting back the irritation which always threatened to slip out first. And fighting also the small, reluctant voice that whispered that Vrook was right; this bond was not something she should be so eager to embrace. And she wasn't. Not truly. She didn't want the bond, not with Revan... but she needed this chance.

'Perhaps,' Mastar Zhar conceded Vrook's point, speaking at last, his face expressionless. 'But perhaps we should consider that this bond was meant to be.'

'The future remains clouded and uncertain,' said Master Xiira, the Falleen consular who had come all the way from Coruscant with several companions to assist in Revan's reprogramming. Her pale green face was even more inscrutable than Zhar's, but in contrast Bastila thought she could sense a slight hint of anxiety from the older Jedi. 'The dark side's influence grows. It is difficult to predict the fate of even one as gifted as Padawan Shan. Or Revan.'

'Then allow me to prove myself,' Bastila said, hating herself for the pleading note in her voice, but unable to mask it. 'If we must use Revan in this fashion anyway, then let me be the one to attempt to uncover what we require. No one else would be in a better position to guide Revan's subconscious, and surely I would be the first to sense if she were... slipping back into old patterns. And if it were to happen, then I might be in a unique position to stop it. If we are to use her, then surely we should also be prepared to offer this one small chance at redemption.'

They were silent, many eyes staring at her, searching her soul. But she could already feel them turning, and was suddenly certain that it was the last plea that had swayed them most.

It was Zhar who spoke first. 'I agree,' he said quietly. 'This is what I have felt from the beginning. And feared.'

Relief made her bold. 'I am not afraid, Masters.'

'Nor should you allow your over-confidence to rule your actions,' Vrook retorted sharply.

She bowed her head immediately, her hands clenched tight.

'I wonder,' Xiira said, inclining her head thoughtfully so that her white hair fell loose over her long, scaled arms. 'Do you truly understand the risk you take upon yourself? Or the responsibility?'

'I think first and always of my responsibility, Master,' Bastila said, nothing but sincerity in her voice. But a shiver of untruth passed through her.

'You are dedicated, Bastila,' Vandar said, nodding his wrinkled head - whether in acknowledgment or approbation, she could not tell. 'But all dedication must be tested.'

'I will face my test, then, as all must.'

'Hm.' Vandar turned his large eyes to each of the Masters in turn, and Bastila stood in their midst, unmoving, refusing to follow his gaze. Tense, she waited for judgment to fall.

At last, Vandar finished his silent communication with the six Masters around him, and said, 'So be it. This task will fall to you. Go now. Ready yourself for what is to come.'

Bastila bowed deeply, sweeping her hands wide, glad, as she often was, for the way the gesture served to hide the first reactionary blushes of her expression. 'As you instruct.'

She turned to go, but Zhar's voice stopped her at the last moment, as she was passing him.

'Padawan,' he said softly, and though the others could certainly hear him it was clear the words were meant for her alone. 'Even destiny can prove susceptible to our weaknesses. Do not forget who you are.'

She bowed again, but the words would not truly root themselves in her mind until much later, and by then it would be too late.

~

It took seventeen days to build someone a new mind.

Bastila tried to make sense of the figure, of the thought, but she would never truly be able to. It was incomprehensible in too many ways. Too frightening to really face.

It had taken less than seventeen seconds to destroy one.

They woke Revan while Bastila was away from Dantooine. Or rather, they moved Revan while she was away from Dantooine. They didn't say, but Bastila was certain they would not have woken her in a Jedi enclave. No doubt they had moved her in stasis to a Republic ship somewhere, maybe even to a nearby planet, and begun the process there.

Whatever that entailed.

When Bastila returned from the short mediating mission to Bimmiel on which she had been suddenly dispatched - without even an attempt to mask the fact that it was meant to distract her and keep her off-planet during the final stages of the mind-wipe and reconstruction - she was not surprised to learn that Revan was gone.

She was surprised to learn that the new Revan had already been woken, because she hadn't felt it, and she'd expected to sense something.

Perhaps that would change when they were brought into close proximity again. She wasn't certain whether or not to hope for it. A sense of duty wasn't enough to quench the twisting fear. Deep fear, deep in the darkness where she had locked away the whispers she could not face.

A few days later, they brought her a datapad full of facts.

Birthplace, Derallia. Parents, deceased.

Childhood friends. Schooling. Two speeder accidents accounting for numerous scars.

She couldn't read it all. She knew that she ought to, but she simply couldn't do it. It made her feel dirty. It made her feel... like she'd been party to stealing someone's life and trying to compensate by giving them a cheap imitation in return. It could never be as real. Could it? Could the Council have done their work so well?

And why should she feel guilty at all? How many innocent lives had Darth Revan destroyed?

She consoled herself as best she could, making all the necessary excuses for her actions, and her cowardice. Despite her determination to take on this task, and her deep satisfaction in her success with the council, she couldn't shake the even deeper sense of doubt. She told herself, and the Masters, that she should not be too familiar with the new Revan's fabricated past, lest she accidentally let slip knowledge she should not possess when the time came for them to be rejoined.

And the time came all too soon. She did not feel fully prepared, but knew she never would. Her destiny was waiting, however, and she meant to face it with her head high.

The Endar Spire made a supply and crew stop at the Yavin spaceports, and there she took command. Made the necessary requests, and saw to it that they were heeded. A few officers complained. Commander Carth Onasi in particular was altogether too eager to dispense advice, but she was grateful nonetheless for his efficiency, and his discretion in carrying out her more... particular... orders.

'You must begin with Taris. It was the last planet Revan and the others visited before the first counter-assaults of the Mandalorian War. We must begin at the beginning, before the road seemed dark.'

Begin at the beginning.

It would have to begin sometime.

She saw the woman three times on the ship, but never spoke to her, only watched from a distance and made her final preparations.

A Jedi's training was long and difficult, stretching across years of patience and dedication. She had mastered the lightsaber, mastered the Force, mastered her Battle Meditation - a lifetime contained in a check list of successfully mastered skills.

But none of her Jedi training had prepared for what she would need to do now.

It was time to learn how good a liar she could be.

~

And the world changed.