Title: Traces of Her
Rating: Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.
Summary: Ghosts aren't always people. More often, ghosts are the imprints the people leave behind.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything… yet. *rubs hands evilly*
Author's Note: Please forgive the slightly rambling nature of this story.
Everyone grows up with ghost stories. He can remember telling quite a few to Dustil back when his son was small, holding his boy in his lap and making shadow puppets with his hands against the wall to illustrate the characters and the ethereal being that stalked them. Dustil always ate those stories up.
Even the Jedi have ghost stories. Oh, sure, they call them "Force Ghosts," as if they were somehow different or more special than ordinary ghosts, but it all comes down to the same thing: a restless spirit that cannot move on to the afterlife.
But in all those stories, the ghost is a person. It's a being, a creature, a single entity. What he's learned since then is that it's not always so. Ghosts aren't always people.
In his case, the ghost is the imprints the person left behind.
It's funny, in a bitter kind of way. He knows she's not dead. He'd feel it if she was. She explained a bit to him about "Force bonds," like what she had with Bastila. She said that Force bonds are created in various ways. One is through a near-death experience—one Jedi saving another's life, as Bastila saved hers—and another is through Master and Padawan, communing so closely over a period of years. Another is through love.
He's Force sensitive, he's been told. He can never use it, exactly, but it's there inside of him. Sometimes he wonders if that's how Dustil got it. Kid hasn't used it since leaving Korriban and he'll never become a full Jedi but he's stronger in it than his father. But anyway, he's Force sensitive. And Revan, well… she's like the heart of the Force itself. How many times could he know she was upset before she even set foot in the house? How many intimate moments where he could feel her pleasure as if it was his own? How many rushes of emotion that didn't belong to him?
No, he's bonded to her. He would know if she were dead.
Doesn't stop her from haunting him.
He asked the Exile to find a trace of her. He hopes—he has to hope—that the last Jedi Master (and she is, with her ragtag band of Padawans trailing behind her like a troop of lost ducklings) will find more than just a trace, will find Revan herself and bring her back, but still… a trace...
It tastes of irony. Asking for a trace of her, when he's got several traces of her to haunt him already. They're everywhere he turns, soothing and mocking him in chorus.
There's the window seat, where she would sit for hours, her legs curled up and her chin resting on her knees. She'd stare out the window, and he'd know she wasn't seeing what was in front of her. She'd be off far away, zooming through the galaxy in her mind as she scoured her memories, trying to regain the lost images. Whenever he tried to ask her what she was thinking about, she'd point at something down below and call attention to a fault in the planning, or a way a particular effort could be expedited, as if she'd been thinking of nothing but Telos the entire time. But he knew better. He always knew better.
He remembers the time he pressed her up against it, the glass pane cool under the palms of his hands as he braced himself. She opened up to him, making happy little humming noises. She was always so open, so ready, like she had a constant itch and he was the only one who could scratch it, could soothe the ache. No, it was more than that—like she had a wound and he was the only doctor for miles.
There's the bed, too, of course. They both stayed up late—him from the recovery effort and she from whatever projects she was working on—and they often went to bed at different times, but they woke up together. He can never forget how she felt in his arms. She was small, with a tiny little waist, skinny shoulders and sticks for limbs, and she was five foot three and a half no matter how many times she insisted that she was five foot four—not at all what you'd expect to be Jedi material, never mind the most powerful Force user in the galaxy and a former Sith lord. He could wrap his arms around her and she'd be cocooned in there.
He remembers how she had nightmares a lot. Suppressed memories tended to surface in her dreams, where the subconscious could take over and override the damage done in the explosion Malak had set on her and the workings of the Jedi council. Sometimes the dreams were random snatches of memory; giving a speech during the Mandalorian Wars, learning meditation techniques, and the like. But other times they were resurfaced horrors, returning from the depths to torture her anew. He recalls one time how she awoke screaming, tears streaming down her cheeks, twitching like she'd been electrocuted. Maybe, in her nightmare, she had. He'd secured her in his arms, covering her with his body, sheltering her as best he could. She'd clung to him, pressing her face into his neck. He'd whispered over and over again, you're safe. You're safe with me. I'll keep you safe.
Ever since then, she'd called his embraces her safe place.
They'd made love in that bed, all the time. Jolee had once described Revan as a snake, and she certainly moved like one. She was sinuous and fluid in her motions, winding herself around him and sliding up and down his body. She would strike like a snake as well—one moment he'd be toeing off his boots, the next she'd be on top of him and kissing him until he was dizzy.
He'll be honest—his hand just doesn't cut it.
He dreams of her at night. She'll be whispering in his ear, giggling, her breasts brushing against his chest the way she would when she was teasing him. She was always teasing him, knowing his irritation was a mask for how damn enamored with her he was. He'll reach for her, convinced that the last few years have all been a nightmare, that she'll really be here this time, warm and soft...
But then his hands close on cold, empty air.
He can smell her sometimes, too. In the bathroom, he'll catch a whiff of her perfume. In bed, he can smell the sweaty, sated smell of her body. In the kitchen, he can smell—and taste too—the annoyingly minty leaves she'd chew, courtesy of the Ithorians she'd convinced to come and help with the restoration efforts.
In the doorway, he can hear her laughter and remembers how she jumped him, wrapping her arms and legs around him and pressing kiss after kiss into his lips, his jaw, his collarbone. In the shower, he can feel her around him as he pressed inside her, sliding in and out slowly because the water was warm and they were feeling lazy and he'd thought, as all fools in love do, that they had all the time in the world to enjoy each other. In the living room he can see her on the couch, reading and refusing to let him easily distract her, making it into a game where he pulled a lot of cheap tricks involving the removal of clothes to get her to finally put the damn book down.
In the garage, where she'd be tinkering with HK-47, telling him shut up, it's just a slight behavior modification, I'm not going to wipe your memory or adding a modification to the swoop bike Canderous had left her, ignoring all warnings like this has a fifty percent chance of blowing up.
On the balcony, where she stood on that final night, staring up at the night sky like she was trying to count the stars.
He dreams about that night. Every time he thinks he has to do something different, something that will make her stay, but his body doesn't listen. He's trapped in his mind, screaming, but goes through the motions the same as he did in real life.
He'd known she was thinking of leaving. He just didn't know how bad it would be.
The dream always starts the same.
He comes up to her where she stands and slides his arms around her from behind, tucking his chin over her shoulder. "Come to bed."
She hums, her hands coming to rest over his, but she doesn't move.
"C'mon. These late-night walks and balcony staring contests with the stars aren't helping your health."
She sighs, turning in his arms and brushing her lips against his clavicle. "I love you." The words are drawn out of her like a confession of guilt.
He realizes that her cheeks are wet and he pulls back, peering down at her. She's been crying. "Rev—"
She kisses him, her arms slipping around his neck and holding him fast. He is powerless against her, just as he always is. He doesn't know if it's the Force flowing through her but he suspects she'd be like this no matter what. She's Revan. She has the power to pull him to her and drown him. She is a deep ocean current, a riptide, sweeping him away from shore.
There isn't much speaking after that. She leads him back to bed, still crying, but determined to have him. Eventually he stops asking questions and simply drowns in the sensations. He calls her beautiful, because he calls her a lot of things (gorgeous, for example) but he knows that beautiful is her favorite. He kisses every part of her, holds her, claims her because he knows it's selfish and she has more in her life than her marriage to him but he has her love and he will take it when she offers it to him. She presses him down into the mattress, her dark hair sliding down her shoulders, hiding her face from his view. She clutches at him and so he clutches at her, the desperation unspoken but felt.
Afterward she lies in his arms, her head resting on his chest, and murmurs, "My safe place."
And because this is when he started to fall asleep, his arms around her and her body a warm weight on top of him, this is always when the dream starts to fade. He fights it, fights to keep her with him, but the fighting only ever makes him wake up to his cold, empty reality.
It's the biggest trace of all, that dream. The memory of the night he failed to keep her with him, to keep her safe. To protect her, as he swore to do all those years ago. He'd thought then that her big choice, the decision that would make or break her, was denying her mantle of Sith Lord. Now he fears that he was wrong—that her decision had yet to be made, that it's somewhere out there beyond the Outer Rim, where he can't be there to help keep her strong.
And then there's the final trace, the only tangible one he has.
He keeps it with him always, although he's not quite sure why. It's definitely a sign of his masochism, keeping it in his pocket or on top of his desk. He watches it when he can't bear to not hear her voice or see her face. He can't let himself forget her.
It's a simple holovid, left lying on the pillow next to him when he woke up the next morning. It was the only thing left of her.
She obviously recorded it earlier in the day, beforehand, ready to go as she slipped from his arms, from her safe place and left for the dark and the danger. It shows her sitting on the window seat, curled up like a coiled snake, her hair messy and unbrushed.
"Hey there, Fleet," she says. She loved the nickname his fellow soldiers gave him the second he told her of it, and she's used it ever since. Her voice is low but not quiet a whisper. "You're asleep right now. Long night. I actually got to bed before you." She smiles, a tear escaping from the corner of her eye and sliding down. "I'll wipe these away and smile and pretend to be happy, because I am happy, to see you, and we'll have breakfast and you'll go with Dustil to check up on the restoration efforts… and I'll see you tonight. For the last time.
"Where I'm going… it's not that I don't want you with me. I do. I want nothing more. But where I'm going, I cannot take anyone that I love." She smiles again, small and fond, just like she would when she would stroke his cheek. "And you are at the top of that category."
At this point the video turns as she angles the camera toward the window, showing him Telos. His home world.
"You're needed here, Carth. You said you wouldn't abandon Telos again and you can't. Telos needs you here. Dustil needs you. Mission needs you. The Republic needs you."
This is the part where she gets frustratingly vague again. Damn infuriating woman. He even misses that about her.
"Something is coming, Carth. The Mandalorians were tricked into starting the war. Something bigger, something evil, is coming and the Republic is still crippled. I need you to keep the Republic strong. I know you can do it."
The camera moves back to her face, and she's crying in earnest now, her voice breaking. "I love you, Carth. And I'm so sorry. I don't—I'm so sorry. I love you."
That's when the video cuts out.
Everyone grows up with ghost stories.
He just never thought he would be in one.