This collection of one-shots, most of which take place pre-KOTOR I or II, and do not take into account Knights of the Old Republic comic canon. All are DSF/LSF Revan, LSF Exile. I do not own the characters, and have quoted select bits of dialogue for the sake of continuity. Enjoy!
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"Justified"
DSF Revan
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"I know what I'm doing." She always tells Malak that, when whatever scruples he has managed to cling to lead him to question her. Sometimes, she spits it out angrily and then storms off, and sometimes, she says it so softly he can barely hear her, a pleading frown and wide eyes begging him to believe her. He never does, but he always gives up after she says that, because neither of them wants to waste what little time remains to them fighting. The peace never lasts; he usually leaves her with a challenge hanging in the air between them.
There was a time when his questions were her balance. Now, when he questions her, anger explodes and she wants to strike him down for trying to tear her apart when she so desperately needs his help. Never mind his opinions, though. She knows what she is doing, and that is what she will keep telling herself.
She completes the training of the students the Academies produce and commands her fleet and plots her next move, and they all bow down to her and call her Lord, and she does what she has to. She has always done what she had to do. After the bombardment of Telos, she lauded Saul before their followers, but something died inside her when she thought of all the people who died in that senseless act of assertion. Saul had been fortunate to survive that encounter, the first when she almost let her anger entirely rule her actions. Pain had a terrifying power. When she first developed a program to train assassins to convert Jedi, she wondered if it was really worth it to break a living being so entirely, even if it was for a greater purpose.
She remembers seeing the first batch of broken Jedi after their "conversion" and how much she wished that she could tell them that this was the only way to make them strong enough to face the coming threat, that if she didn't do this, they would only die at the hands of an inept Republic and an ignorant and apathetic Jedi Council. She could not and had not, of course, because she must be merciless. She must be the most ruthless Sith Lord the galaxy has seen, must play the part to perfection, or no one will follow her and she will only divide the galaxy even more and make it more prone to the Sith threat that even now draws closer. It's not even hard to step into that role any more.
Perhaps it would have been hard for the innocent padawan she was before the Mandalorian Wars, but it is not for a woman who has known genocide and betrayal and war and has become too used to making the difficult decisions. The person she once was could not have made decisions of which planet to sacrifice and which to save without being broken, but she is stronger now. Malak has grown more resilient, too. They are neither of them who they were as children, as Jedi Knights, as war heroes, even who they were when they stood for the first time on the bridge of the Star Forge. She knows this because now she looks back on all the things she has done and can't manage to feel the regret she knows she ought to. The mask makes it easier. So does the justification.
She knows what she has to do. She has to kill Jedi and murder those who oppose her and eliminate military targets, even if it means nearly destroying an entire planet. She has to create a hierarchy of ruthless, vicious, power hungry monsters who do not share her vision but are only the attack dogs she must set loose upon the galaxy. There are even times when it gives her some measure of satisfaction. The Jedi, with their righteous indignation, give her the least regret; in many ways, their fate is so beautifully justified, and as she watches more and more of them convert, her anger toward them is appeased. It is even more satisfying to know that someday, they will see what she has done, and will be forced to laud her wisdom, to accept her as the greatest of their number.
The Republic, too, will no longer betray her, for it will be extinct. A new order will arise, an order that will never abandon its devoted followers to the merciless. Her new order will not let worlds burn for no good reason because they could not get a majority vote to agree on the budget proposals for a war. She will tear that village of idiots to the ground and raise a fortress in its place. One day, they will thank her, but for now, it is enough that they fear her. Their fear is as heady as any drink, for it lets her know that she has reached the height of power she has striven for.
She has so much more power now. Without restriction, the Force courses through her like an electrical current, and she commands it as no living Jedi has ever done. When she meets Malak aboard the Star Forge, she can practically feel it crackling in the air, and she can sense how it surrounds him like armor. He seems taller and more terrible and overwhelming now, and the golden glow of his gaze as his vocabulator grates out a low, mechanical greeting no longer disturbs her, but only reminds her of the power they've discovered. As they lay awake at night and feel the power of the Star Forge resonating through them, she knows that he is reveling in it, too. This is their destiny, he tells her. This is who they were meant to be.
It is only when she leaves him after their inevitable morning argument that a tiny thread of doubt winds its way into her mind. His remorse has long since been abandoned; which should tell her something, because Mal was always the righteous one. Sometimes, he scares her, as he did this morning when he mentioned his research into some of the deeper, more hidden functions of the battle station. A nagging feeling tells her that she should be concerned, but she also knows that they will need all the power they can gather to themselves to fight the coming battle. Perhaps she should be worried about the accelerated rate at which he has been changing since she sent him to oversee operations at the Star Forge. Perhaps she should be disturbed at her lack of regret. Or perhaps not; she is only doing what she has to.
It is her choice, after all, to be the Dark Lord of the Sith, her choice to make herself Darth Revan, destroyer of the Republic. She never fell; she chose to throw herself into the dark side, a willing sacrifice. Yet sometimes, she wonders if the darkness that has always called but never captured her is slowly pulling her in. She wonders if perhaps she will become sick of fighting it and just give in. She wonders if she already has given in, and just doesn't know it yet. She lies alone in the dark in her private chambers on her flagship, amidst her massive fleet, and closes her eyes and her mind against everything and feels lost and confused, which should be impossible, because she knows what she's doing.