A/N: I'm well aware that it's been well over a year since I last posted anything here. I have no idea if any of my old fans are reading this, but if so, I'd like to apologise for going so long without updates. The main reason is that I've finished my degree and am now working full-time, as well as being heavily involved with several musical groups, which doesn't leave me a lot of time for writing.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy this little KotOR/Discworld story (my first ever crossover fic). One of these days I may get around to updating my other stuff, but unfortunately I can't promise anything.
Death was one of the few beings on the Disc who could travel relatively freely through L-space. There were millions of worlds out there in the multiverse, and wherever life was found even in its simplest form, you could be sure that he would be needed. Oh yes, there were plenty of other things out there as well – love, war, famine, disease, the entire spectrum – but Death was the only constant. As the saying went, only two things in life are certain, and you don't get a lot of taxes on worlds populated solely by single-celled protozoa.
This universe contained a civilisation far older than any on the Disc, and far more advanced. They had weapons and medicines and technology beyond anything a Discworld inhabitant could conceive of, but they still hadn't managed to get rid of death. Quite the contrary, in fact. Better weapons only made it easier to kill thousands or millions of people at once, rather than dozens, and right now in the Galactic Republic there was a lot of death.
Death made his way through the corridors of the huge sky-ship, or 'starship' as they rather more poetically termed it, carefully stepping over the bodies of fallen soldiers as he went. It wasn't that he really needed to do this, but the faint echoes of humanity he had picked up over time had left him with a vague aversion towards walking through people – or what used to be people. As he turned the last corner, a young woman darted past him and headed up towards the bridge, her laser sword blazing a trail of light across his field of vision.
A short way ahead the soul of a male soldier floated above a mangled body, looking slightly lost. As Death approached him he turned sharply, gasped in shock, and reached to his side for a non-existent weapon. "Who the hell are you?"
DEATH.
"Death?" The man regarded him with a mixture of suspicion and bewilderment. His eyes darted nervously from side to side, still searching for possible threats, before settling inevitably on his own transparent form. Death watched impassively as the ghost's pale face ran the gamut of shock, disbelief, and finally comprehension.
"Damn," he muttered, and turned away. Death followed his gaze to the bridge, where the young woman was battling a masked, black-clad figure. She looked small and vulnerable, silhouetted against the light.
"She's the Republic's last hope, you know," the soldier said quietly.
I KNOW.
The look in the young man's eyes was all too familiar to Death: a kind of forlorn, almost desperate pleading that exists on the very edge of hope. "Couldn't you – "
NO. I AM SORRY.
He swung the scythe down in one practised movement, and watched the man's spirit fade away. Better to get it over with quickly, he thought.
Up ahead, the woman appeared to be winning the fight. As Death drew level with the pair he saw the masked man falter and then stumble backwards, briefly leaving his body open to attack. In a fraction of a second it was over: the glowing blade plunged thorough his ribs, and the body crumpled to the floor. The young Jedi drew a long breath and stood back, face to face at last with her final opponent.
This one was a man, though no one but Death would have been able to tell. His body was entirely covered by a black, hooded cloak very similar to Death's own – strange, he thought, how the same themes seemed to turn up again and again – and the face… well, there was no face. Just an evil-looking red mask with a thin slit where the eyes should be; a mask designed to obscure any trace of humanity that might be left in the face below it.
Death pulled out two lifetimers from beneath his cloak and held them up to the light, trying to judge which one was emptying fastest. One of them was going to die, that was for certain… he just wasn't sure which. The thing they called the 'Force' – which was essentially the same as magic, only with slightly different trappings – was doing strange things to his lifetimers, messing with the flow and stopping them from working the way they ought to. It was all rather annoying.
Other people were running up to them now – some in military dress, others wearing the simple but distinctive robes of the Jedi Knights. The cloaked figure stretched out a hand and one of the soldiers fell to his knees, clutching his throat and gasping vainly for breath. The Dark Lord snapped his fingers together, snuffing out the man's life with one effortless gesture, and lowered his hand to his side.
There was a moment's silence. Then the woman stepped forward, her blade still raised in front of her in a defensive stance.
"You cannot win, Revan." Her voice betrayed no trace of fear. She stood there – young, resolute and practically glowing with the strength of her faith – and Death saw in her face the echoes of a thousand other doomed heroes. He watched the trickle of sand through her lifetimer quicken to a steady flow, and sighed.
Another tense silence. Revan twirled his lightsaber a little, but remained motionless. Everyone seemed to be waiting for… something…
The explosion seemed to shatter the whole world into pieces.
By rights it ought not to have had any effect on Death at all, given that he wasn't technically 'there' in the first place. But Death had a habit of getting, as it were, caught up in the moment – and on this occasion the shock was such that he completely forgot he ought to go through things rather than into them. The result was that he was flung back against a wall with a force that no mortal could have survived, and it hurt.
OW.
Death got painfully to his feet, rubbing an elbow joint and clicking a couple of dislocated ribs back into place. His first thought, naturally, was to look for the two lifetimers he had been holding when he fell. Both were lying a short way away on the ground, miraculously unbroken, but the sand had – shifted…
A few feet away, the woman – whose name, according to her lifetimer, was Bastila – was also struggling to her feet amongst the bodies of her companions. Something, or more likely someone, must have protected her from the force of the explosion when it struck, because apart from a few bruises she appeared unhurt. Revan was a different matter; he lay in a crumpled heap on the floor, his head bent at a slightly odd angle, and a small pool of blood was beginning to seep out from somewhere underneath his cloak.
The man, then, thought Death, with something akin to surprise. Still, it was all the same to him – or at least, it ought to be. In practice he couldn't help feeling a tinge of satisfaction that some sort of justice was being done. He even had a little speech prepared; he'd felt that so influential a personage as Revan deserved one, in every sense of the word.
He grasped the lifetimer – not quite fully drained yet, but close – and stepped forward, drawing himself up to his full height.
DARTH REVAN?
There was a faint shimmer around the dying man's body, and then Revan's ghost slowly stood up, still connected to his body by its fragile blue thread. Surprisingly, he didn't seem particularly perturbed by the sight of a seven-foot-tall skeleton standing right next to him. "What's going on?" he asked sharply.
YOU ARE DEAD. WELL, ALMOST.
Revan merely smiled rather grimly. "Am I? Well, we'll see about that." He reached a ghostly hand to his belt and drew a ghostly lightsaber, holding it up towards Death with a look of gleeful triumph.
Bastila, meanwhile, had knelt down by Revan and was bent over his body, examining the damage. She reached out with trembling hands and carefully lifted the mask, revealing a face that somehow seemed far too young to be that of a ruthless tyrant. It had been handsome once, but now there was a greenish tint to the blotched, pasty skin, and the eyelid she gently pulled back revealed an eye that was clouded and bloodshot. In this universe, evil didn't stop at corrupting the mind.
SUCH A WASTE, said Death, speaking his thoughts aloud. YOU WERE A GREAT JEDI ONCE, WERE YOU NOT?
Revan snorted, not an easy thing for a ghost to do. "In a manner of speaking, perhaps. I am far more powerful now than I ever – " He broke off as he looked down to where Death's finger was pointing, at the blood and twisted metal and the sad little heap on the ground.
The one with his face.
Two, three seconds passed, and then Revan looked up.
"Ah," he said softly, and the saber slipped from his fingers and fell noiselessly to the ground. He stood there in silence, his gaze fixed on his own twisted body, and Death could practically see the walls of illusion crumbling around him. All those layers of defences and excuses, gradually built up over the years, telling him constantly that he was in the right and all the others were cowards or weak, pathetic fools who deserved to die – all slowly peeling away, leaving only the rotten core he had refused to see for so long.
Bastila was still bent over the body, hesitating…
The ghost straightened up with something like a groan, and gestured through the window towards the other huge ship in the distance. "It was that bastard Malak, wasn't it? He did this."
IS THAT NOT THE WAY OF THE SITH, LORD REVAN? IS NOT EVERY APPRENTICE BOUND TO TURN ON HIS MASTER?
But Revan was barely listening; he had turned his attention to Bastila. "What is she doing?"
Death had to admit that he wasn't entirely sure what she was doing. She had gathered up the broken body in her arms and was holding it – him – closely against her, her head pressed against his chest and her eyes were squeezed shut in a look of intense concentration. Now that he looked closely, he could see the tears trickling down her face.
Revan was staring at her with faint disbelief, almost as if she were the ghost. "I would have killed her," he muttered. "Or – worse."
NO DOUBT. Death's rigid smile was even grimmer than usual. YOU ALWAYS GOT WHAT YOU WANTED, DID YOU NOT, LORD REVAN? ONE WAY OR ANOTHER.
Revan looked up sharply. "How did you kn-"
I KNOW EVERYTHING, DARTH REVAN. EVERY DEED YOU HAVE EVER DONE, GOOD OR EVIL. THERE ARE NO SECRETS FROM ME.
A long silence followed. The Dark Lord said nothing more, but went on staring at Bastila, apparently trying to gauge her intentions from her face.
"She's trying to use the Force to heal me," he said suddenly. "Stupid woman! She'll kill herself if she's not careful." He looked Death straight in the eye. "Well, is it working?"
Death held up the lifetimer, straining to see any movement. The slow trickle had stopped, and the few remaining grains of sand seemed to hang there in the air, suspended…
I… He hesitated. I… BELIEVE SO…
Revan's ghost was beginning to fade now, drawn inexorably back towards the body that housed it. "Listen," he said urgently. "Will I remember this when I wake up?"
I VERY MUCH DOUBT IT.
"But it's impor-" And than he was gone, leaving Death alone with Bastila, the unconscious Revan and a lifetimer that was rapidly filling up with sand.
Death stared at the touching tableau before him with mounting exasperation. This, he thought, was ridiculous. Using mystical forces to cheat Death once in a while was all very well, but using them twice within a few minutes was too much. It was… well, cheating.
He rarely appeared to humans other than those who were about to die, but perhaps it was time to make this one aware of his presence. He took a step towards Bastila, leaning over her slightly.
AHEM.
When Bastila looked up, it was to something that seemed to come from her worst childhood nightmares. She wasn't easily scared, but the effort of keeping Revan alive had already pushed her to her mental and emotional limits. The sight of what was, indisputably, a skeleton – a grinning, seven-foot skeleton, with eyes that were not so much eyes as huge staring holes – was simply too much for her over-strained senses to handle. Her mouth fell open in what ought to have been a scream, but sounded more like a mouse being slowly strangled; then, mercifully, her mind's natural defences kicked in and she slumped forward in a dead faint.
Death sighed. She wouldn't remember either, he thought – or else she would convince herself that it had been some kind of hallucination. Humans generally did when they realised they had seen something they knew to be impossible.
There were voices now, and footsteps rapidly approaching from the corridor – several more Republic soldiers and another Jedi. The first of them, hurrying up towards the bridge, stopped short when he saw the bodies littering the floor. "Ye gods, what happened here?"
A female soldier strode past him and knelt down by the unconscious Bastila. "This is Bastila Shan, isn't it?" She pressed her fingers to the woman's wrist, searching for a pulse. "Is she still alive?"
"She's still alive," said the male Jedi quietly. "Only… very weak. I can barely sense her through the Force." He hesitated, his eyes half-closed as if in deep concentration, then nodded slowly. "And… Revan too."
"Alive, is he?" The third soldier patted his blaster rifle with a grim smile. "Well, we can fix that soon enough – "
"No." The Jedi spoke firmly. "We had orders to bring him in alive if possible, and in any case, I will not have my men shoot a wounded enemy." He bent down and gathered Bastila's limp body up into his arms, ignoring the dirty looks he was getting from the others. "We'll take both of them with us. Those are my orders."
There was a brief, sullen silence. The woman's lips moved almost imperceptibly.
"That was an order, Ensign. Not a suggestion." The commander's voice grew dangerously low. "And if you call me 'bloody Jedi' again, you'll spend the next three months on bodyguard duty for the Gamorrean ambassador."
The woman sighed and shrugged her shoulders. "Very well, sir." She kicked at Revan's body with the toe of her boot and then crouched down beside him, muttering something under her breath. Death's acute hearing managed to catch the words "probably die in any case."
Grumbling, and with some considerable difficulty, the soldiers managed to lift the Dark Lord's body and carry him away. A quick glance at Revan's lifetimer showed Death with absolute certainty that he was not going to die – at least, not for the moment. Clearly he was going to have to keep an eye on that one.
I SHALL WATCH YOUR FUTURE CAREER WITH GREAT INTEREST, YOUNG REVAN, he said aloud.
The soldiers were gone now, and the bridge was empty and silent; even the battle outside seemed to have died down considerably. Death looked around him and knew that it was time for him to go. One day he would come back to this universe – it was too fascinating to leave altogether – but not until he was needed. He felt certain that he would be, sooner or later.
He swung his scythe one last time, sending the souls of the dead to wherever they were headed, before slowly fading from view. Across the millions of stars and planets making up the galaxy, life – and death – went on.