Legacies

Chapter 1: Guilt

The cloaked figure sat out on one of the Dantooine Enclave's open patios and faced the rising sun, his hood protecting him from the light as it finally crested the horizon and continued to climb upwards into the sky. The figure sighed and smiled, lowering the hood to allow the gentle breeze to blow by his face.

There was a stillness in the air, unique to the morning, that Revan found incredibly calming; before all of the padawans awoke and began their training, exercises and various classes for the day, the flow of the Force was much clearer and undisturbed. It was in this tranquility that Revan felt completely at peace, and could lay aside his burdens for a few brief hours. He could simply let himself flow along with the Force, allowing it to speak to him in whatever way it willed. Closing his eyes, the Jedi extended himself outward, into the waiting arms of the Force.

But this time, the Force was waiting for him with something in mind, and presented Revan with something he hadn't experienced since the quest for the Star Forge several months previous:

A vision.

"You asked for me, Lord Revan?"

The speaker was a Trandoshan, cloaked in black with his hood up, covering everything from sight save his brightly rust-orange reptilian eyes.

"Yes, Blademaster Arnok," a man Revan recognized as himself replied emotionlessly, the yellow eyes and black robe marking him as the Dark Lord of the Sith. "I did. I hear your consort has given birth to a child. Is this true?"

The Trandoshan nodded at once.

"Indeed, my Lord Revan," Arnok replied. "It is a boy; I have christened him Jerissk. The Force is strong within him; I believe he has the potential to surpass even me in the art of the lightsaber."

"Then you will ensure that such an outcome is brought to fruition, Blademaster," the Dark Lord Revan replied, "no matter what the cost. The first thing he grasps will be a lightsaber. The first words he speaks will be the Seven Forms of Comabt. If he seeks your position by rite of combat some day, you will fight him for it without hesitation. If you strike him down, he was unworthy of a place in our Order. If he strikes you down, I will take it upon myself to finish his training. Is this understood?"

The Trandoshan bowed once, completely accepting of his fate as one of the Dark Lord Revan's most valuable soldiers and teachers.

"Of course, my Lord," Arnok answered. "In the name of the Sith Empire- in the name of Revan- it will be so."

The vision ended as abruptly as it had come, thrusting Revan sharply back to the present. It had been so vivid that it took the Jedi several moments before he was convinced he was on Dantooine instead of Korriban; he even went as far as to walk over to a small current of running water and glance down into it, relieved to find blue eyes staring back at him, rather than bright yellow ones.

Quickly wiping away beads of sweat that had begun to form on his brow, Revan took in a few calming breaths before he realized it would take much more than that to calm his troubled mind. His days as the Dark Lord were none he cared to revisit ever again, and yet the Force had seen it as important for him to view that conversation. But why? What had it hoped for him to draw from such a short exchange?

Truth be told, Revan hadn't even seen Arnok again after that meeting; he and Malak had gone off to oversee the Star Forge shortly afterward, and the Transoshan Blademaster had been nowhere in sight during the slaughter that Revan and his comrades had committed at the Academy during their journey, when it had been under the stewardship of one Uthar Wynn.

Shaking his head to clear it of the last vestiges of the vision, the Jedi began to walk. He had no destination in mind, and didn't particularly want one; he was just going to walk until the vision of his former self had been left far enough behind him to fade away. Malak was dead, and Revan himself had firmly renounced the Dark Side—the redeemed Jedi assumed the Force understood that meant it could leave him in peace.

But apparently the Force had some convoluted plan of its own, and was not to be dissuaded.

"What more do you want from me?" he whispered to the winds, seeking an answer that did not come. The Force had retreated from his mind, its message delivered and clearly in no mood to reveal anything else.

Fall to the Dark Side one time, he thought to himself wearily, and they never let you live it down.

"Master Revan! Master Revan!"

The excited voice of a youngling was enough to pull the Jedi from his thoughts, and Revan turned to face the boy that rushed up to meet him, before doubling over, winded, to catch his breath.

"Easy, kid; easy," the Jedi said as the learner got his balance back. A pair of determined brown eyes were soon looking up at Revan, without the shadow of intimidation that the Jedi thought was all-too frequent among the younglings that interacted with him on a daily basis. Revan finally recognized the boy as Westor Astare, one of Revan's History students.

"What's wrong, that's got you running to find me in such a hurry?"

"What do you think, Master?" the child countered, raising an eyebrow in confusion. "Our class started five minutes ago!"

"It did?" Revan asked, as confused as his student. Clearly, he'd been out thanks to that vision for longer than he'd thought. Westor nodded adamantly, and Revan hid his jarred state of mind behind a mask built up from decades of emotional control.

There is no emotion; there is peace.

Why the Force didn't seem to want to follow through on its end of the bargain, though, Revan had no idea.

"All right, then," he said, walking back into the Enclave as his student fell into line behind him, "let's go."

The classroom was quieter than it had been in weeks when Revan entered it, walking quickly to the front of the room and looking over the faces of his students. The Academy here at the Enclave had grown exponentially since the death of Malak and the fracturing of the Sith, with several parents who had been afraid to expose their Force-sensitive children to the public during the Jedi Civil War coming out of the woodwork now that there was no danger of their children turning into soldiers.

Master Lamar had been firmly against Revan's position as a teacher in any way, shape or form, and Revan had been as well, but it was at Master Dorak's insistence that the newly-ordained Jedi Master took up the position. He was practically a history lesson incarnate, and fit in perfectly with Dorak's philosophy that those who did not internalize and remember their history were doomed to repeat it. Revan's class had students that ranged from younglings to padawans to a few Knights who audited it regularly, all of them as eager to claim the status of having been in the same room as a living legend as they were to learn. Revan openly discouraged hero worship of him in any and every form, but it still managed to manifest in certain ways regardless.

That was the thing about legacies: they took on lives of their own, whether or not their patron wanted them to.

Revan quickly went through the roll-call and glanced down at his lesson plan for the morning, stopping cold as he saw what was on the page, and realizing why his mind had subconsciously blocked it out.

The Mandalorian Wars.

So that's why everyone is so quiet this morning, and there're so many new faces I don't recognize; even some new Knights dropped by.

"I assume," the Jedi began, "that you all came here this morning expecting to hear an account of my glorious exploits during the Wars: how I managed to never lose a single battle and came away being honored as a great hero of the Republic."

There was a murmur of agreement in the room, the student body wondering why Revan was bothering to restate the obvious when he could just get on with it instead.

"I thought as much," Revan said, "and honestly, if that was the view you held of the Wars, you wouldn't entirely be wrong. But I have a different view of them, one I will share with you now. I want you to close your eyes, all of you."

The Jedi said nothing more, waiting until everyone had realized he was being serious and had done as he had instructed.

"I want you to imagine your home-worlds, as clearly as you can. Think of every detail your mind can recall, from the feeling of its air to the smell to the number of blades of grass you pass by every time you walk from your house to the marketplace. Picture everyone you see on that walk; the old men wrangling over a game of cards, the children playing in the street, merchants hawking their wares and birds squawking from the tree-branches as they wake up. Do you see all of that?"

The students nodded, some enthusiastically, homesickness visible on their faces, some hesitantly, as if they were wondering where Revan was going with this.

"Good," the teacher continued. "Now, I want you to imagine that someone screams off in the distance. Not a shout of alarm, not the beginning of some meaningless argument, but a full-throated, panicked scream.

"'It's them,'" they shout. "'They're here! The Mandalorians are here!'

"And so you turn, and you start to run. You never thought they would come this far, or this fast; that they would strike this hard without giving you any warning. And yet they are here. Of all the planets in the Outer Rim, yours was the next one the Mandalorians chose to attack.

"You sprint, as hard and as fast as you can, hoping to outrun them. You've heard the stories around the campfire: the Mandalorians, they're butchers, demons given flesh with no regard for human life. If they don't kill you, they'll enslave you. And in some cases, that's a fate worse than death. But you always assumed it would happen to someone else. And so every time you kissed your mother or you loved ones good night, you did it with the assumption that the next night would end in just the same way.

"But then you hear the speeders. The engines are loud and raw and powerful, and they're gaining on you. Before you know it, you've been knocked to the side by a Mandalorian as their vehicle races by you. And it all goes black.

"And when you wake up, everything is gone. Everything you knew is ashen, a husk of what it once was. You wander back through the ruins of your town, past every monument and building-frame that's now little more than a needlessly-ornate gravestone, and you wonder why the people who took away everything you loved didn't take you as well. Why they bothered to leave you behind in this living hell. Why they left you with nothing but hatred in your stomach, and a heart of stone.

"That," Revan finished, "is the true face of war. There is no glory, and there are no triumphs; those are just things the victors spin up so that their soldiers can sleep a little easier at night. It was that feeling of hopelessness that started me down the path to the Dark Side, and that is why you should never, ever see war as a glorious undertaking. If it is necessary, it is a necessary evil; if it can be avoided, it should be.

"I only entered the Mandalorian Wars because I thought I had no other choice, and it was from out of that conflict that I became the Dark Lord of the Sith. And then Malak, my best friend and the apprentice I pulled to the Dark Side, took up the mantle after me. Even if I believe to this day that what I did ended the Wars, even if hordes of people tell me I did the right thing, there is still nothing I regret more than bringing the Jedi into that conflict."

The room held its silence for several moments, before someone spoke up. It was a Knight, and someone who, judging from the look on his face, had been expecting to hear something completely different.

"So, if the Mandalorians came again, or someone like them did," he asked, "would you say that we should stay out of the fight? That we should just sit back and watch while they laid waste to everything?"

Revan smiled bitterly and shook his head, finding it oddly nostalgic to hear his own words thrown back at him so many years later. His eyes passed over the room once and stopped as he saw a very familiar face in the back, the look in his loved one's eyes helping him to find his answer. After all, she had been the one who had given him the strength to bear the burden he had been given during the fight against Malak.

"That's not what I'm saying at all," the Jedi Master countered. "I just want each and every one of you to understand that war is not without its costs. The burden laid upon the survivors is a terrible one, and in some cases it can break your will completely. If you can face that possibility without flinching, and truly, without ego, believe that you can bear that burden, then you can go forward into war without fear. I only pray that you make it out the other side alive, or that you are never called to serve that function in the first place. Remember that, above all, the Jedi are a peacekeeping Order; not a standing military body."

"But then how did you do it?" a younger student asked. "If this cost is as big as you say it is, if this 'burden' is so bad, how did you go from being a Sith back to being a Jedi?"

Revan's smile lost its bitterness, and he allowed his memory to pass briefly back to his first duel with Bastila, the moment everything had changed for him.

"I…" here the Jedi paused, his eyes finding Bastila's again, glad to see she was still smiling at him. The same smile he woke up to every morning, and hopefully, would wake up to for several mornings to come.

"I got very, very lucky," Revan finished his thought, "and had someone there to lend me support when I needed it the most. If you take one thing away from this, let it be that the people sitting next to you now are your strongest allies, and should be treated as such. War will corrupt them, and take them from you… so if for no other reason than that, you should view war as a tool of last resort, and never otherwise."

The class was immobile until someone finally took their teacher's continued silence as a sign that the lesson was finished, rising slowly from her seat and walking out of the door. The rest of the students followed suit, some beginning to mumble amongst themselves when they assumed they wouldn't be overheard by their teacher.

Revan knew some of them would be angry, and he'd be lying if he said he wasn't worried that he'd robbed the younger students of some of their idealistic innocence, but the last thing the Jedi wanted was for anyone to view what he had done in a positive light whatsoever. Those battles had ruined him, and it was only by the slimmest of chances that he'd been redeemed from the darkness that the Mandalorian Wars had plunged him into. The darkness where soldiers had been reduced to markers on a board, and whole swathes of people could be killed and deemed 'acceptable losses'.

"Well, if aging those kids ten years in the space of one lesson was your goal, Revan," Bastila said as the pair of them walked out of the room and down the hallway side-by-side, headed towards the meeting in the Council Chambers they were already late for, "I'd say you succeeded with flying colors. I wouldn't be shocked if half of the class vanishes overnight after that."

"Good," Revan said tersely. "If that's what it takes to stop them seeing me as a figure to look up to, then so be it."

Bastila sighed, wondering why Revan still insisted on dragging himself through the mud after all of this time for sins that pretty much the whole galaxy had forgiven him for.

"I saw firsthand what you're capable of, Revan… I was ready to kill you on the Star Forge, and you pulled me back from the Dark Side through your will alone. There hasn't been someone capable of that in centuries, Revan, if not more! People need that image of a hero to look up to!"

"They can keep looking up to you, Bastila," the Master countered, unmoved. "I deserve to stand as an example of the evils of the Dark Side, and not as a symbol of redemption: that's what you stand for, remember?"

Bastila sighed and fell silent, wondering what it would take for Revan to finally forgive himself, if even she couldn't convince him to let go of what he had once been.

The atmosphere in the Council's chamber when Bastila and Revan walked in ten minutes late to the meeting could at best be described as frigid, and at worst as bordering on outright hostile. At least as far as Master Vrook Lamar was concerned, anyway.

"You're late," he said sharply, his voice not possessing even a single ounce of tolerance. "Again."

"My apologies, Master Lamar," Revan said with a humble tilt of the head, before taking up his seat next to Master Vandar.

It had taken little time since Revan's return for him to be granted the rank of Master; his status as a figurehead for the possibility of redemption and the power of the Light Side of the force, in addition to his incredible popularity with the other Jedi in the Order, had made the appointment almost a formality. Revan himself had been absolutely opposed to it, but in the end he had accepted when the pressure to do so had become too great even for him to ignore.

Lamar grunted shortly in disdain, having taken it upon himself to be the sole voice of opposition to Revan's appointment on the Council. Ironically enough, for the very reasons Revan himself had given to begin with.

"Of all your traits, Revan," Lamar spoke scathingly, "I assume it is fitting that the one constant between your time as a Jedi Knight and Dark Lord of the Sith is your appalling arrogance."

"I believe you've made your point, my old friend," Master Vandar spoke up, his voice commanding in spite of the small frame from which it issued. "Continued belaboring of it will only serve to further elongate this meeting, and we have important matters to discuss. Bastila," the Jedi continued, turning to face the Knight who was having a hard time not feeling incredibly out of place, "if you would be so kind, please go and retrieve your padawan from her studies and bring her here—I believe it would do her good to observe the finer points of a mission briefing, and not simply the end result."

"Of course, Master Vandar," Bastila said with a graceful bow, before straightening up and walking from the chamber. After she was out of earshot, Zhar Lestin chuckled and spoke.

"She has grown strong, that one," the Twi'lek said appreciatively, "and far less tempestuous than she once was. I do not know how you managed it, Revan," he finished, "but it is most impressive. I do not doubt that she may soon join us on this Council, perhaps when one of us is summoned to the Temple of the Order on Coruscant."

"And if that day comes, it will be entirely on her own merit, Master Zhar," Revan replied evenly. "All I did was guide Bastila back to the Light, as she had done once for me; every step she has taken since then has been her own."

"And they have been many indeed," Master Dorak chimed in, "including the taking on of a padawan learner. Which reminds me, Revan; do you have any plans to instruct a padawan of your own? I can think of several younglings who have expressed quite the adamant desire to study under you, and the number seems to grow by the month."

Revan gave a drawn smile and shook his head.

"I utterly failed my first apprentice, Master Dorak," the Jedi replied, "and I am in no rush to risk repeating that failure. Every youngling I have heard profess a desire to learn from me has done so out of the want for glory, and that is the last thing I want to condone as acceptable for a Jedi.

"I have no doubts, however, that if the Force sees it fit that I adopt a learner of my own, it will make its will known to me."

"Well said, Revan," Master Vandar opined. "You, too, have certainly matured in your time back amongst the Order."

Revan nodded humbly, ignoring the 'harumph' that Master Lamar sent his way. Before he could reply to the compliment, however, Bastila re-entered the Council chamber, a young Jedi 20 years of age trailing slightly behind her.

"Ah, you've returned," Master Vandar said warmly, his eyes moving from the Knight over to her padawan, who was standing stock-still and looked as though she was wondering if this was a court-martial.

"Please, be at ease, padawan," the Master spoke reassuringly. "This summons was not a disciplinary one in the slightest. Arina, I believe it was?"

The padawan nodded, her green eyes brightening as she gave a small smile.

"Yes, Master Vandar," Arina said as humbly as her excitement would allow. "I am truly honored you remember someone as insignificant as myself."

Master Vandar laughed, his small body shaking slightly from the action.

"Please do not sell yourself so short, young padawan," he said gently. "Every member of the Order is essential, from the Masters on this Council to the padawans. For as much as we Masters are the leaders of this Order, you padawans are the ones who will one day sit in these chairs, and guide the new generations of Jedi. It is a cycle with no end, only new beginnings; such as it is with the flow of the Force. It would do you well to keep this in mind, Arina."

"Of course, Master Vandar," the padawan said with a full bow this time, and Dorak began to speak once the room had settled again.

"You are here, Arina, because the Council has seen it fit to send you on a mission. There is a Jedi Knight who has decided to break from the ranks of our Order. Normally, this would not be a grave concern, but to say that this particular Jedi's leanings were 'militant' would be a firm understatement.

"As such, the Council has seen it fit to apprehend the Jedi in question and bring her before the Grand Council at Coruscant for questioning. We have decided to give this task to you, Arina: you have shown great aptitude for the Force, and your learning has progressed at a speed we have not seen here in this Enclave in some time."

Arina opened her mouth and closed it a few times, unsure whether to believe what she'd just heard or pinch herself to see if it was some kind of hallucination.

"I… I don't quite know what to say, Masters," she stammered out at last. "While I am grateful for your consideration, I think I must decline; someone as inexperienced as myself has absolutely no business going up against a trained, rogue Jedi Knight. Besides, my performance is nowhere near as praise-worthy as what you have indicated…"

The assembled Masters smiled at the response, pleased that Bastila's pupil had passed the test they had given her.

"And it is because you possess that mindset, young padawan," Master Vandar replied with a glint in his eyes, "that we believe you are indeed suited for this undertaking: your humility is the sign of a Jedi who knows themselves, and harbors none of the delusions of grandeur that are the first sirens of the path to the Dark Side. But do not fear- you will not be going on this mission alone. Your teacher, Bastila, will accompany you, as will a member of this Council: Master Revan has requested to partake in this mission personally, and as such he will travel along with the two of you."

"And if I may ask, Master Vandar," Arina managed to say, still reeling from what she'd been told, "where would we be going?"

"Kashyyyk," Revan answered, the smile not completely gone from his face. "My contact there has informed me that a female Jedi passed from the village of Rwookrrorro down into the Shadowlands not too long ago; if we hurry, we should be able to catch up before she moves on somewhere else."

"Then it would behoove the three of you to get moving right away," Master Zhar said, and Revan nodded. "Your ship has been fueled and is waiting, Revan. May the Force be with all of you."

The trio bowed and left, leaving the four Masters by themselves in the Enclave.

"It's dangerous," Master Lamar spoke sharply, "allowing the two of them such free reign. Relationships like theirs make things emotional, complicated and above all dangerously volatile; there is nothing quite like love when it comes to upsetting the balance of one's feeling."

"While I would normally agree with you there, old friend," Master Vandar replied calmly, "Bastila and Revan have always been a special case, from the moment their Force Bond was formed. It keeps them strong, and keeps them both aloft in the Light; as long as one knows that the other would go with them should they fall again to the Dark Side, they will do their utmost to keep from traveling down that path.

"And besides," the aged Jedi Master finished with a smile, "I believe all four of us are aware of the simple fact that there is no way those two could be pried apart by any means we possess, and to try to do so would only make things worse."

"So then, what would you suggest?" Master Lamar countered, unwilling to give up. "That we have faith in someone who has betrayed the Order in the gravest way possible to be able to control his emotions?"

"No, my old friend," Master Vandar answered. "I would suggest that you have faith in the flow of the Force, that which guides all things. A time of peace follows every time of great conflict, and straining to hold onto that peace by any means at all usually only serves to shorten it even more."

Master Lamar was silent, but his doubts of Revan's capacity to keep both himself and others free from the taint of the Dark Side remained firmly in his mind.

As the three Jedi walked out of the Enclave and back into the sunlight, headed towards the Ebon Hawk, Bastila looked over at her apprentice and arched an eyebrow.

"Something wrong?" she asked. "You're practically trembling; that's not like you."

"The Council…" Arina forced out at last, clenching her hands to stop them from shaking. "The Council called me up personally! That's- I mean, that's good, right, master? That's a good thing?"

"Of course it is, padawan," Bastila answered calmly. "The Council's aim wasn't to intimidate you, it was to show you they have faith in your abilities, the same as I do. You've done enough missions with me now that the Masters are ready to give you bigger responsibilities. Don't be so nervous; if you had even half of the faith in yourself that others have in you, you'd be a Knight by now."

"So you say, master," Arina replied, a slightly glum note taking the edge off of her energy. "But what if they're mistaken? While I do appreciate your confidence, I believe my performance on our missions speaks strongly to the contrary."

Bastila sighed, wondering what had led her pupil to set such impossible standards for herself.

"A Jedi's strength isn't measured in one way alone, and you know that," she said firmly, but not unkindly. "I'd rather have someone with your linguistic talents than some idiot who just knows how to fight, and nothing else; the true value of a Jedi is their ability to solve problems without violence, anyway."

"Up until the point that violence is the only recourse, master," Arina countered, and Revan finally broke his silence with a chuckle.

"If you do your job right, padawan," he said encouragingly, "it will never come to that. If there's one thing I've come to understand over the years, it's that a few well-placed words can be far more effective than the application of force when it comes to getting what you want or need. Besides, the Civil War is over; we need diplomats now much moreso than we need soldiers. Don't think of yourself as lagging behind, Arina. Soon enough, those who devoted their entire Academy training to combat are going to be scrambling to make up for lost time, while you'll be out running missions."

Revan's words helped alleviate Arina's doubts somewhat, but she was still clearly questioning herself judging by her troubled look.

Bastila was just glad she had the whole flight to Kashyyyk to try and get her apprentice back to normal: the Shadowlands were very unforgiving to those not prepared to face them.

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A/N: And there you have it, Chapter 1 of 'Legacies'! I hope you guys and gals enjoyed it, and if you would be so kind as to drop a review, that would be fantastic. They keep me focused, something I'm sure my awesome beta JasoTheArtisan would tell you is a bit of a problem for me sometimes. I've got a pretty deep plot planned for this one, and I hope I'll see you along for the ride.