Prologue
3,963 BBY
Bastila gasped as she tried to unwrap herself from around the console chair. The depressurization of the bridge had flung everything – and everyone - about. Pieces of three Knights and a Master – her Master – were jammed under seats and in the corners of the walls along with the remains of common Sith soldiers. Panels were ripped loose, and the dim glow of the emergency lights along the floor took over for the broken ceiling lights.
Despite the fresh air being pumped into the bridge, Bastila sill smelled burned flesh, and she felt the ache where her Master used to be. She knew Master Naa-Tai was dead – master Naa-Tai's head had rolled under one of the consoles - but Bastila couldn't stop calling down their severed bond, much in the same way she couldn't stop crying for her father her first few months as an initiate.
The bond was one more pain on top of a world of physical hurts. Her ribs were likely broken, there was a nasty light saber burn down her leg (a blow that nearly took her leg off at the knee), and many similar near-hits from blaster fire stung up her arms and the bridge of her nose.
She had to keep her mind in the present. Master Naa-Tai always said to mind the present, with a bemused smile. Master Naa-Tai was always smiling, even when Darth Revan had taken her head.
Where was Darth Revan?
The deck seemed to pitch and roll beneath Bastila as she got to her feet, and she clutched the console chair to keep her balance. Where was the killer of her Master?
The bridge was quiet except for the woosh of the air ventilators, and distant vibrations of fighting going on elsewhere on the ship. Bastila pushed aside the impulse to find Master Naa-Tai's head (There is no emotion there is peace there is no death…) and stumbled across the deck.
Darth Revan, Lord of the Sith, was crumpled against the plating beneath the emergency shutters. Darth Revan was not moving.
Revan still lives.
At first, Bastila believed she imagined it. That the whisper against her thoughts were childish imaginings. Revan was a thing of myth and legend, first an immortal hero and then an insurmountable monster. How could something that was not-quite-real ever die?
But there Revan laid, little more than a pile of robes and pool of shadow.
Revan lives.
That time, Bastila felt it. A flickering breath, a pulse in the force. Easy to snuff out, easy to say 'I didn't do it.' Easy to sooth the ache of Naa-Tai's absence.
Revan's death wouldn't stop the war. The Sith war-machine had other leaders; Malak would pick up where Revan left off and the Sith would continue on. The loss of so many of her agemates – to death, to the dark side – meant nothing. Because Revan's death changed nothing.
But it would be easy.
Bastila couldn't find her lightsaber (Naa-Tai smiled, Perhaps we should get you a bungee and attach it to your wrist, Bastila?) but she didn't need her lightsaber for this. She sat with less grace than she would have liked, and began checking Revan's neck and spine. When it seemed both were intact, Bastila pulled the comatose Sith Lord into her lap, and began to re-bind Revan's life.
It was not her place to pass judgment, and she could feel Revan with the jagged edges of her force-sense (where Naa-Tai no longer was). The taint of the dark side was, frankly, disgusting. But Revan's death wouldn't change anything. Revan's life, however…
Bastila could not recall any instance of a living Sith Lord being captured. If Revan could be contained, alive, Revan could provide what was needed to end the war: information.
It wouldn't be until much later, after the remains of the taskforce found them on the bridge, after the arguing, after Bastila had already begun to sift through Revan's mind, did she remember why so few Sith Lords were taken alive.
There were things, once touched, once learned, once awakened, that could never be sent back.