Disclaimer: I do not own Star Wars.
Summary: A pre-temple LSF Revan foresees Carth's death if she fights for the light side.
Sacrifice
She saw the shot from the corner of her eye.
It was one of the many blaster bolts being peppered at them as they fought their way through what could only be the Star Forge. Covered in sweat, she was fighting two force-wielding Sith at once and could only give minimal attention to where the blaster bolt was going. Somehow, she managed to follow its path to where it entered through Carth's ragged armor and pierce his skin. He gasped and his body jerked and fell to the ground.
Trained and battle-hardened as she was she didn't even flinch as she continued fighting. Reacting in battle meant death.
She could hear a desperate breath.
She was fighting a Sith trooper now. Canderous was off to her left and down, struggling fiercely with two more. He hadn't flinched either.
Another breath.
Two more Sith apprentices where on their way. She met them with her lightsaber.
A very weak breath.
She didn't know when this would end. They just kept on coming.
By the time they had finished, the body was cold.
Revan woke up in a rush. She was lying on her claustrophobic bunk on the Ebon Hawk. No one had been there to see. They undoubtedly would have been worried as Carth had been when she was lying unconscious at Taris. Force dreams were never pretty with her. And she knew it had been a force dream. She wondered for a moment if Bastila had shared it. Then she remembered, Bastila's with Malak.
Force dreams had always seemed to find her. She remembered that now. Some Jedi meditated in hopes of seeing the future. Whether she meditated or not the force seemed to creep up on her just when she'd let down her guard. They'd been random and disorienting as a child. As an adult they had had one purpose. To show her what she needed to sacrifice.
Revan had been famous for her blood sacrifices. Her feints and abandonments had caused the deaths of many soldiers. Had she lost she would have been called cruel or incompetent. But she had won. That had made her a hero to the galaxy. But Revan had never thought of herself as a hero. She was someone who did what needed to be done. She was someone who could do what needed to be done.
Most people, even those very close to her (Malak, for instance) had assumed that Revan's strategic decisions, or in other words who would die, had depended on the brilliance of a calculating mind. They never knew the torture it was to give those commands. Or the fact that she didn't choose the targets at all. Oh, certainly some of it had been her. Especially after the beginning. In the beginning she hadn't wanted to sacrifice anyone. But she had learned the hard way. And the really brilliant decisions, the ones that it was almost impossible to predict the consequences of beforehand, that was the Force.
Sometimes she thought she was just a pawn to the Force. But it had been her who made the calls. She could have disobeyed the force, or even walked away. But she had been a war leader. She had called for victory at all costs. How much of the old Revan was in her?
Could she sacrifice Carth?
