Summary: Kotor1 AU. In which Revan isn't evil, male, young, respectful or terribly energetic. The question isn't if she's powerful enough to stop her old friend Malak, but can she be bothered? LSFRevan X Carth
Chapter One: You know what you do when you assume…
When Carth Onasi staggered from the escape pod with a beautiful unconscious woman in his arms, he could think clearly enough to realise that things were not going to plan. By the time he had found an abandoned apartment and released his burden with a groan of relief, he knew that the plan had not just flown out the window, but was not even in the same solar system. Everything that needed to be done now would have to be either done on the spur of the moment, or predicted more or less accurately.
Carth Onasi hated being without a plan. So he dealt with the only thing he could think of at the time, and concentrated on healing his injured comrade. Not that there was much he could do. He wasn't a doctor, and neither did he have all that many medical supplies. By her clothing, however, he had concluded that she was a Jedi, and therefore was much tougher than the average human. Good thing, too. He was stranded on the apathetic overpopulated planet of Taris, which had just been put under Sith martial law and quarantined. He sure could use the help of a Jedi.
In the meantime, while his companion snored, or rather, slumbered away peacefully, he decided to take a walk around the place, try not to look like a tourist and try to get some information while maintaining a low profile. He thought he succeeded more than not, although the people there stared and insulted his sense of fashion.
He obtained new information about the terrain: it came in three levels, the Upper City, where he was, the Lower City, a place full of gangs and poor people, and the Undercity, where there was the undead. Luckily, Carth believed in distrusting everything he heard. If there were any other survivors, they had all crashed into the lower levels. Carth wished he could ascertain the fate of each and every one, but he had a mission. Not to mention an unconscious companion, to which he promptly hurried back to with offerings of food, all of which she declined by way of her inattention to external stimuli.
He spent a further two boring days scouting the Upper City and watching his friend whistle in her sleep. Just as he was about to sing his third rendition of '1000 Bottles of Ale on the Wall,' his attention was arrested by the woman who started to snort and hack.
He was beginning to think she was an epileptic when her eyes flashed open and she seemed to recognise him, albeit through one eye as she held her hand over her nose.
"Oh, good, you're awake. I was beginning to be…" Carth started.
"Siwenth!" she lisped angrily. "Bi head hurths. Amd by doze!"
"Um, miss…"
"Thut up!" Ah, he could understand that.
She had removed her hand from her face only to prod her nose with the tips of both fingers. Carth thought he saw her wince, but it was hard to tell with all the swelling.
"Bi doze is bwokem!" she announced crossly. Her eyes focussed on Carth. The slate grey orbs regarded him coldly. "Du shood have fiched it!" As he shrugged self-consciously, not wishing to tell her to speak more clearly, she sighed and pursed her lips. "Devermingd."
At first Carth thought he saw a fog gather before her nose – a second later he thought he was seeing things, and the next minute he saw that her small pert nose had straightened, and the swelling gone down.
"Well, that's better," she said in an accent like cut glass, "I was getting quite tired of that bemused expression of yours."
"I'm glad you're up. Do you remember me?" Carth offered.
"Of course I do. You're Carth Onasi, assigned by the Republic Fleet to be my…I mean, our consultant. I do trust you have your memory unimpaired?"
"Pristine, Lady Jedi," he said, remembering protocol and repressing disrespectful feelings. Or trying to.
"Excellent. I am confident you have gathered intelligence while I have been indisposed. Please, enlighten me." With somewhat uncanny grace, seeing as she had been an unconscious invalid an hour ago, she swung her shapely legs over the side of her bunk and crossed her ankles, clasping her hands expectantly. She raised an eyebrow as Carth gathered his thoughts.
"Well, the plan facts are: we've crashed on Taris. The Endar Spire is a complete loss, there are no acknowledged living survivors other than us, and the entire planet is under Sith control. The Sith have also placed a quarantine on the entire planet, no doubt looking for 'the last hope of the Republic'."
"And how do we get off the planet?"
"I'm still working on that."
"You haven't made a plan to get off the planet yet?" her voice was incredulous. "What have you been doing all this time?"
"Taking care of you as you lay unconscious, Lady Jedi," Carth said, not bothering to hide the irony in his voice.
Again, her lips pursed in annoyance. "Well, we won't continue to be so sloppy now. This is my, er, our mission, and…"
"And what do you plan to do?" Carth questioned sourly. "You know nothing more of the situation than I've told you, and already you want to make the decisions? Not gonna happen, lady. I happen to like being alive."
"You are being insubordinate, Commander."
"And you are being ridiculous. Let's remember that we are allies, and we need to work together if we are going to survive this mess."
"Well said, Carth," she said, chastened. "You are right, I am not yet fit to command. What do you suggest?"
"I was assigned to you and your master. It was stressed that you were equally important."
"Yes," she said, trying not to allow a hint of resentment show in her response. "My master holds value as she has incalculable knowledge about Malak and his motivations. She was an acquaintance of him before the Mandalorian Wars. And I…" she paused, trying to think of a modest way of saying that really, everything depended on her.
"You, Bastila Shan?" Carth shrugged his shoulders and relieved her of self-examination. "You have that Battle Meditation thingy that gives the Republic an edge in a battle. Sure. You're valuable."
"We must find my master," Bastila mused. "She is very important."
"And we must do that without giving you up to the Sith," Carth reminded her.
"I am confident I can disguise myself adequately," Bastila said, combing her hair with her fingers. She pointed at Carth suddenly. "You, Commander? You must buy me some hair dye."
Carth choked on air. "What?"
"I can hardly do it myself. Something other than brown, I think?" she mused, holding one of her own locks before her eyes.
"I…oh, blast it, I'll just go," Carth growled, and went out.
(&X&)
Deep in a place where natural light never reached, a forlorn figure moaned and fingered her head. Her fingertips brushed against a coarse fabric – bandages. Archaic nits, she thought grumpily. I bet they're not even kolto soaked – good thing I can heal myself or I might die from gangrene. And gangrene on my head…
An electric shock pulsed through her neck just above her collar bone and almost rendered her unconscious. What the hell? she thought disjointedly, are there live wires here? When her muscles cooperated, she felt at her neck and found a thin metal collar pressed into her flesh. Very little information could be gathered from just the touch, and when she hesitantly tried to heal herself with the Force again, she received another, less severe shock.
With slightly shaking hands, she pressed the bandage over her eyes. Relieved that she felt no pain, and fairly confident that she hadn't been rendered blind, she rested back down against the ground and relaxed her muscles. She couldn't reach the Force, she couldn't see, and she wasn't about to stumble around blind and defenceless. Why not sleep?
(&X&)
"Carth," Bastila breathed, desperately trying to hold on to her composure, "what made you pick out a blonde hair dye?"
"You said it shouldn't be brown," Carth said defensively. "I didn't think you wanted a pink dye, or try being a redhead."
Bastila screwed up her lips, trying not to say anything else. "Fine," she grunted.
"They do say blondes have more fun," Carth offered.
"Fun? Fun?! I am a Jedi, Carth!" Bastila ranted, and then clutched her head.
"Take it easy, there, Shan," Carth advised her uneasily, as she sank down on her bunk and whimpered. "You took a serious blow to the head, you need to be careful."
"It's nothing," Bastila whispered, "A tension headache." When she recovered, she found a plasteel bowl and filled it half full with water from the tap. After wetting her hair, she gingerly applied the contents of the hair dye to her scalp, kneading it into her roots with her fingers as per instructions.
To break the silence, Carth asked out of the blue, "So, what's she like, your master? I never saw her, she never went out of her room."
Surprised, Bastila's fingers stilled and she directed a quizzical glance at Carth, before working on her hair again. "Revan? She's…interesting. I mean, it's a great honour to be taught by her, and she is one of the most powerful Jedi."
"And what does she look like? It would be good if I had a description."
"Taller than average. Somewhere between our respective sizes. Blonde, light blue eyes. Middle aged – I think she's around your age, but she does look a bit younger. Solid build, tends to dress in apparel two sizes too large."
Carth paused for a moment of indignation that she referred to him as middle aged. When that passed, he asked, "And you don't have a holo of her? Some kind of picture?"
"Revan disapproves of her image being taken." A polite way of saying that if you tried to snap a picture of her, your camera device would suffer from a powerful Force Grip.
"And what can you tell me about her personally?" As Bastila gave him an outraged look, he qualified, "Quick tempered, or loves to garden, or what?"
"Revan has a viewpoint of things that is truly unique. She is one of the most learned Jedi in the Order, and if she were more traditional it is more than likely that she would already be a Council Member. She is…unimpressed by position or wealth, and takes delight in many simple things." There, that was all true, and inoffensive.
"Do you think she's still alive?" Carth asked soberly.
"I am sure of it," Bastila said positively, smoothing the dye over the ends of her hair, "She may not be the most athletic of us, or the most …proactive, but she has a way of surviving that is absolutely uncanny."
"Can you hone in on her position using the Force?"
Bastila huffed in annoyance. "Is that what you think the Force is?! Just some inner compass that states everything nice and clear in some internal screen? For your information, the Force is a highly complex…"
"I don't need the details," Carth interrupted, "I just need to know if you can do it."
"No, not in the way you mean," Bastila snapped. She sighed, and snapped the flexible cover over her hair. "I apologise for my tone, it's just I'm not used to being with people unlearned in the Force. There is so much…interference, you could call it, on Taris that I fear I would simply get lost. The living Force in every individual tends to blur my Force senses. We're going to have to find her using old fashioned detective methods."
"Great." Carth felt that his every feeling could be described by that word as voiced by his completely disgruntled tone.
"It shouldn't be too hard for you," Bastila tried to say persuasively, "After all, you worked as a police officer on Telos for a time, did you not?"
Carth froze, before levelling a hard look at her and asked calmly, "You read my file, eh?"
"Naturally," Bastila nodded, oblivious. "As you were to work with me, us, I needed to know your strengths and weaknesses."
"And what did you deduce?" he asked grimly.
Bastila's internal alert device finally went off. She looked at his face uncertainly, and compromised. "You are loyal. That is very important."
Carth grunted, leaving the apartment and clearly ending the conversation. She sighed softly, and removed her hair cover, in preparation for rinsing. Working with Carth was going to be very difficult if his file was correct in pinpointing his issues.
When Bastila was vigorously drying her hair with a spare piece of material Carth returned, and dropped a bag of unidentifiable but assumedly light contents at her feet. "Clothes," he said shortly, with an expressive gesture at her current attire. Bastila nodded at him and headed to the furthest corner as Carth stalwartly turned his back. After some minutes of awkward silence, Bastila cleared her throat. Carth turned around and appraised her critically.
As before, Bastila was a beauty. A striking, childlike face with pouty lips and big clear grey eyes framed by dark brown lashes that curled back from her eyes naturally, coupled with an athletic but pleasingly curved body, now partially hidden by the drab civilian wear he had procured for her. She still looked like a refined woman, but the ash blonde hair spilling into her eyes and over her shoulders gave the impression that she was of the courtesan class. All the better, he decided, for her disguise. At her feet laid the bloody and torn Jedi garments she had made famous on the Endar Spire. He allowed himself to smile wistfully in the memory of the crew members bandying bawdy observations about her in the mess hall. They were likely all gone now.
A light cough woke him up from his recollections. Bastila was staring back at him with slightly pink cheeks. He understood that he had prolonged his stare for too long. He shrugged his shoulders in his leather jacket and handed her a retractable quarterstaff.
"What is this…oh, very thoughtful of you. Of course, I can't carry my double bladed saber around, and this is the nearest thing to it without attracting attention. Well done."
Carth endured being commended like a schoolboy and eased his blasters in their holsters. He knew he looked suitably scruffy to be anything from a mercenary to a bodyguard, and would be practically invisible. He led the way to the apartment door and tried to prepare himself mentally. He hadn't exactly been favourably impressed with Jedi Padawan Bastila Shan. How was he going to be able to survive working with her?
Reviews would be appreciated. My first story, you know.
