The panicked cadence of Carth Onasi's footsteps slowed to a brisk walk as he neared the entrance to the cockpit. I heard him come to a sharp halt on the threshold, struggling to catch his breath. It took a him second before he recovered his voice.
"Hey," Carth said as he walked towards me. He flicked the lights on, banishing the long shadows that the navigation panel and control panel sent sprawling up the walls.
"Hey," I managed dryly, turning just enough to get a look at him. His mouth was set in a grave line, his skin was unnervingly pallid, and the light was gone from his eyes, stolen by exhaustion.
A nightmare was an implausible explanation; he'd been resting peacefully only minutes ago, cocooned in the shallow farce of sleep. Either he had heard me leave the crew quarters, or he had drifted into the twilight between sleeping and waking, aware enough of his surroundings to deduce that I had dissappeared. Whatever the cause of his sudden awakening, he looked terrible.
I leaned back in my seat, closed my eyes, and sighed. "Go back to sleep, Onasi."
He shook his head. "I - I really hope you realize what you've been putting us through these past few days," he spluttered. There was a note of dull irritation in his tone, but it belied distinct, cutting pain that shot across his face. "Your mood swings are off the charts, I have no idea what is going on in your head at any given moment, and frankly, you're driving me insane. You can't just dissapear in the middle of the night without expecting me to panic."
I laughed, but there was no humor in it. "You panicked?"
"Yes." He sighed. "Damn it, of course I panicked!"
I looked away from him, not wanting to meet his eyes. "I'm serious. Go back to sleep."
"I'm not going anywhere until you explain this to me," Carth snapped. "I can't stand being left on the outside to just watch in silence while you tear yourself apart. I am trying so hard to figure you out, and everytime I think I've got it, you start acting like - like I can't even explain it. You dissappear inside yourself. You are making no sense to me whatsoever, and I swear, I'm not just going to stand back and watch you do this to yourself."
I rolled my eyes. "Go ahead," I said, with thick sarcasm. "Interrogate me."
Carth took a deep breath. He finally stepped forward and sat down adjacent to me, in the co-pilot's seat. For a minute, neither of us said anything. We just stared at each other, and I wondered how haunted I must look. It would be useless to lie to him. I'd been having these dreams for nearly a week, every night. He must know the signs by now. I must look awful.
Carth sighed. "Just... talk to me, okay? I am so damned tired of arguing with you. I can't stand seeing you like this."
I stared blankly at the floor. "Like what?"
"Like you're completely shut down."
I swallowed hard. "I'm fine, Carth."
"No, you're not," he insisted. "I've seen you when you're fine, and this is not fine."
I glared at him. "You can't expect me to act like I'm okay."
"So you're not okay?" he pressed.
"Oh my gosh. Why can't you just shut up, Carth?" I growled, stiffening, sitting up straighter in my seat. My heart clenched inside of my chest, and my hands balled into fists at my sides. "I have a lot of things to sort through, okay? I'm confused. Every move I make, I'm running into another dead end, and I... I need time to think."
"Okay, fine, okay," Carth stammered, raising one hand to placate me. "You can take as much time to think as you want, but, for crying out loud, why are you wide awake at three o'clock in the morning?"
"I should be asking you the same question," I answered wearily.
Carth leaned forward in his chair so that we were eye to eye, his gaze intense and searching, his eyes staring directly into my own. He took a sharp breath. "I want you to talk to me, that's all," he said, a deadly seriousness in his stone that somehow stung. He paused for a moment, considering his words, and then, finally, "It was another vision, wasn't it?" he admitted. "You might as well spit it out."
I lifted my head and stared out the window at the sprinkling of stars, letting myself get lost in the dark void. I wanted to be somewhere else. Anywhere else.
I sighed and closed my eyes.
Images of Telos IV - tongues of scarlet flame licking at the jagged ruins of a thousand homes, hotels, hospitals, stores - men and women and children screaming, pushing others aside, frantically weaving through rubble and fire and bodies - Sith spacecraft sending wave after wave of blood-red blasterfire raining down on the innocent world - danced behind my eyelids.
"Drop it, Carth," I breathed. "It was only a dream."
He ignored me. "A dream about what?"
A dream about Revan, I thought, but then I had to revise it to a dream about me, and that felt so sickening inside, I almost wanted to throw up. Something flared inside of my chest. Something snapped. I rose sharply out of my chair and to my feet, my cheeks flushed with heat.
"It was only a dream, Carth!" I shouted, and my voice was poison – was venom – was black fire and boiling water and raw rage, all at the same time. It wasn't even my voice.
It was Revan's voice.
"Only a dream," I repeated quickly, as if speaking the words could dispel the haunting fear knotted between my ribs. Heat shot down my spine, and my cheeks burned hotter. "Only a dream, nothing more."
"Then why are you so - "
"Save it, Carth!" I shouted, and the blackness in my voice startled even myself. I should bite my tongue. I should stop talking now before I said something that really did it, something that would finally drive Carth Onasi away for good -
Too late. The words were already flying out of my mouth.
"I don't want you to talk to me. I don't want you to waste your night here trying to convince me that everything is fine, because it isn't, it never has been, and it isn't suddenly going to be. I can't take one more second of you acting like you can fix me... There's nothing wrong with me. I am myself. It isn't changing."
"So you're having an identity crisis?" Carth retorted.
I bit my lip. "I am not the woman that bombed your planet. I am not a Sith Lord."
"So this is about the dreams," Carth said, rising to his feet. "What was it this time?"
"I'm so sick of everyone insisting I tell them my dreams," I snarled, glowering at him. "Why can't everyone just shut up around here? Canderous acts like I turned into a god overnight. HK-47 thinks I'm going to morph into some kind of demented assassin. Jolee and Juhani talk to me like I'm a wild rancor and I might attack them. And she might act like she doesn't give a crap, but I hear Mission crying into her pillow, every night, when she thinks I'm not looking - because she's afraid she's losing me!"
"Is she losing you?" Carth challenged.
I turned away from him, unable to meet his eyes. I wanted to snap back at him, but I knew I was running out of decent comebacks. My throat hurt. "Didn't I just tell you to shut up, Onasi?"
"Damn it!" Carth yelled. "I'm just trying to help you, but you're supposed to ask the questions, is that it?" He swore bitterly under his breath again, collapsing back into the co-pilot's seat. His eyes seemed to glaze over, an empty, cold serenity turning his expression into ice. "I never get told anything, damn it," he sighed.
The hopelessness of my misdirected anger abruptly overwhelmed me, and I collapsed back down into my chair, adjacent to him (but still unable to look at him,) my hands balled into defiant fists. "Oh, Carth, I'm so sorry. I just can't take this anymore…"
"So it's my fault! I'm bothering you," Carth retorted, and he stood up. "It's my fault. Hell, everything's always my fault –"
Now I was officially angry with him. "I never said that!"
"Then what did you say?"
I jerked back up to a standing position again, eye-to-eye with him. This was getting out of hand. "Must you speak to me like that?"
"Like what?" Carth growled.
"Like you are right now."
He chuckled. "How would you prefer that I speak to you?"
"A bit less hostile, maybe," I suggested, matching his sarcasm with my own.
"So I'm hostile?" he said, his voice dropping an octave. "I've heard it all now."
"And sarcastic," I added indignantly.
"And you're just a civil young woman!"
"There you go again."
"Oh, just damn it all!" Carth made a fist and punched the wall with such force; his knuckles left a shallow dent. He turned and glowered at me with a stone gaze for a split second. Then he went straight for the door.
I stood there paralyzed, biting my lip on a sharp retort. I'd done enough damage already. I was in over my head again. After all this, I was just going to drive everyone I loved away.
"Carth, I…"
He was already in the doorway, but he went stock-still, frozen on the threshold. The muscles in his arms tensed as he clenched both his hands into fists at his sides.
"Listen to me," I stammered. "I care about you. Maybe more than care about you. I don't know anymore. I don't know what' s me and what's.. . something else. But I absolutely know that I can't afford to lose you, not now, not after all we've been through together. I need you, Carth. You can't just –"
"I can't just what?" He turned to face me, incensed. He stared at me with a fierce gaze, a distant gaze – like he'd never seen me before. "You never tell me anything anymore," he spluttered. "You told me you were my friend, and I believed you. That was my first mistake. I should never have trusted you, I should never have cared about you as anything but a fellow soldier, and look what I've done to us."
"You're wrong," I said, and the power in my voice surprised even myself. "This isn't your fault, Carth. I care about you. I trust you. It's just – I can't –"
"You can't ever tell me what's really going on!" Carth shouted, raising one fist into the air. "You get a private meeting with the Council, and they kick me out of the room. You have some kind of bizarre dream-bond with Bastila, and you tell me nothing. You are the key to discovering an ancient Star Forge and ending this war, and you tell me nothing. You killed my wife, you killed my son… you destroyed my life! And you expect me to believe that you care about me?"
I shook my head. "I can't believe what I'm hearing," I said, but the words came out choked, strangled in the back of my throat. I swallowed hard. "I care about you. You know that."
Carth looked right at me, like he could see into my soul. "Do I?"
I gasped for air. "I care about you," I said, my voice betraying the honest agony welling up in my chest.
Carth didn't answer.
The hurricane inside my mind was making my head reel.
I remembered every precious snapshot of my adventures with Carth in vivid detail - every color distinct, every sensation so clear. The first time I looked into Carth's eyes, me having just revived from our crash landing on Taris. The time Carth bludgeoned a Mandalorian raider with a blaster butt to the back of the head, knocking him to the dirt of the Dantooine plains. The time Carth told me the story of the siege of Telos, how he held his wife's trembling hand as the color in her face drained away. The time Carth swore at a Jawa that was bothering me on Tatooine, and the little thing ran for its life. The time Carth crushed me to him with all his strength, ignoring my unkempt hair and sweaty Jedi robe, when I emerged, intact, from my underwater mission on Manaan.
I couldn't think straight, but somehow, I knew now, and I didn't know why or how or what it would mean, but the words came out of my mouth before I could think them through.
"I love you," I said. All the desperate, long-denied, long-supressed passion seized me, and for a moment, I imagined how my life would change, if I had to go on without him – no one to talk to on lonely nights, no one with scars to show that he'd knew where I'd been, no one to tell me that he knew I was more than a monster – and I was so afraid and angry and lost inside that shadow of what could have been, I repeated a second time, "I love you."
I closed the distance between us in only a few lengthy strides, and then one of my hands was on his shoulder, and the other was gripping his arm with hopeful strength, and I so needed him to just turn around and look into my eyes, and I would know, only then I would know, I am not finished living yet.
But he didn't look at me.
He shook his arm so fiercely, I lost my hold on it, and he wheeled around with such a start that my other hand was thrown away from his shoulder, and he stared at the floor. His eyes were on fire.
His next words worse than taking a vibroblade to my throat.
"That's enough, Revan."
My teeth dug into my lip, and blood began to trickle freely out, tasting bitterly like rust and salt. My whole body went rigid, but I felt completely numb, isolated inside a prison of my own making, distantly watching jagged shards of shattered dreams rain down in front of me. My gut went hollow. My heart sank down into the empty space. My jaw slid back as I gritted my teeth together.
I stared at him.
I said, "I'm not Revan."
Carth lifted his head, and now he was glaring at me, the way he'd glared at Darth Malak on the Leviathan, the way he'd glared at the Sand People on Tatooine, the way he'd glared at the Sith guards on Taris. But never at me. He had never glared at me like this.
He asked, "Who are you, then?"
My vision misted over.
Carth wasn't finished yet. "Who are you," he repeated, "if you're not Revan?"
The mist became a thick pool. I closed my eyes.
"Answer me, Revan!" Carth snarled.
I swallowed. My jaw unclenched. I opened my eyes, staring straight ahead into nothingness. When I spoke again, my voice was not Revan's, but it was not my own. It was too broken.
Carth raged, "Who are you?"
And I said, "I don't know."
All the power went out of me with the words. All the secrets and regrets welled up, tightness in my throat and lungs, and I couldn't breathe. Things I'd never known, worlds I'd destroyed, people I'd betrayed, civilians I'd murdered, lies I'd believed… Stab after stab, knife after knife embedded in my soul, and I found myself backing away like someone had punched me. I collapsed back into the pilot's seat, my heart racing, a physical weight of crippling emotion crushing me like a durasteel fist ground into my back.
I buried my head in my hands. Tears flowed relentlessly, even as I uselessly resisted them.
"I hate me, Carth," I sobbed – racking, convulsive sobs that shuddered through my whole body. "I hate me."
Several seconds passed without a sound.
I gasped for air. "Look at what I've done!" I choked on the words; every confession strangled me, every truth clawed out my ragged, bleeding heart for him to see it – but I couldn't hide it, couldn't change one detail of it, and it burned me. It all burned me. I wanted me to burn.
"I built the Sith Empire," I said. "I trained Malak. I killed your family!"
I lifted my head, my world blurring like a sick hallucination, my eyes stinging.
"Bastila should have killed me while she had the chance!" I spat. "I'm dead inside. I don't even know myself anymore. I initiated Saul Karath, I made him into that animal, and do you know what he called me?" I said, and I breathed hard. "The Dark Lord. Darth Revan."
Carth's hand caught me by the shoulder.
I wouldn't look at him. "Don't lie to me," I whimpered. "I'm sick of it. I don't need you to pretend that you –"
"I'm not pretending," he said. "Look at me."
I couldn't ignore him. It hurt too much. I looked at him, and he didn't look angry anymore. Just wounded. And there was something intimate in his eyes, like he'd been blind all his life, and my face was the first thing he'd ever set eyes on.
His hand gently moved to the back of my neck, warm against my icy skin. I felt warm all over, all of a sudden; some strange heat coursing through my blood. "Look at me, and answer me," he said. "Who are you now?"
I glared at him like he'd glared at me. "No one."
"I don't believe that," he sighed. "You know I've never believed that, I'm just so confused, damn it!" His hand moved from my neck to clasp mine with urgency. "Listen to me. I trust you. I don't why or how, and it's probably the stupidest thing I'll ever say in my damned life, but I trust you."
"That's because you're a good person," I stammered. "But I've always been Revan. When I killed that gang of drunks on Taris. When I threatened to slaughter every Sith on Manaan. When I tricked that shopkeeper on Tatooine into selling HK-47 for practically nothing."
I sighed. Instead of heat, chills began to radiate out like cold tentacles from the base of my spine. "It was always someone else who did those things, Carth, and now… she has a name." I swallowed. "Revan," I said. "Revan."
A/N: More to come! Please review! I love you guys! This ended up expanding massively from my rough draft, so I'll have a fourth chapter in store, after all. Again, please leave feedback (but no flames.) I apologize for any typing errors. I'm having a blast characterizing the RevanXCarth relationship, so hopefully you are enjoying reading it as much as I enjoy writing it.
For those of you who may have favorited and/or subscribed, but not reviewed - if you would take five minutes (less!) to leave me feedback, I'd really appreciate it. I can't force you... but it would mean a lot.
This is the first fanfic I've ever written that had curse words in it (namely "damn" and "hell",) but it's because that's how Carth talks in the KOTOR game - I had to make it realistic. I'm a Christian myself and I don't use those words (I find them offensive) but for Carth, they're a way of speaking. I don't like cursing, but heck, that's Carth. I roll with it.
May the Force be with you!
