Legacies
Chapter 10: Struggle
"You want me to what?"
"Are you the one who's going senile here?" Jolee prodded. "I believe I said I want you to move that rock there five feet to the left. Don't make me repeat myself again, boy."
"This is pointless, old man," the Trandoshan hissed, drawing an offended grunt from his teacher.
"Sure it has a point, or I wouldn't have suggested it!" Jolee countered, his eyebrows bristling with indignation. "I was fighting Sith on Yavin IV while you were still crying out in the middle of the night for your momma.
"If I know one thing, it's how to whip trainees like you into shape. So why don't you stop sassing me for five minutes and think about why I'd want you to move this rock. Or even better, don't even think about it and just do what I tell you. The sooner you figure out how to do that, the better off we'll be."
Jerissk bit his tongue and turned his attention back to the rock in question, channeling his anger into trying to move it. When he got it done, maybe the old man would finally stop jabbering. The Trandoshan could feel the Force moving around the rock clear enough, but when he tried to reach out and grab hold of the energy it slipped right through his fingers.
"Shit," he cursed, trying again and accidentally forcing it so hard that he crushed the rock into dust and created a small crater in the ground beneath it.
"Well, that's a start," Jolee said with a smirk, "but not exactly what I was going for." He picked up another rock and tossed it into the crater, this one bigger than its predecessor. Jerissk shot him a murderous glare, but swallowed his anger and took a few calming breaths. Pausing to regain his balance, the Trandoshan thought back over why exactly the old man might have structured his training the way he had. Because as annoying as Jolee could be, he certainly wasn't an idiot.
The training to dodge blasts of lightning had been about evasiveness, but also about prediction: being able to tell by the movement of the Force currents where the blast was going to go before it happened. But what would that have to do with moving a rock over the ground?
"Would you mind at least doing something while you try an' puzzle this out?" Jolee called over, breaking Jerissk's concentration in half. "There're only a few people I'd consider spending my last moments alive with, and you're not one of them."
The Trandoshan growled in frustration but said nothing, refusing to rise to the bait. Instead, he forced himself to focus and tried once more to grip the rock with the Force. Jerissk could feel the flow around the rock, and reached out to grasp the currents as they passed by. Taking his time and studying how they moved, he shifted his hold at the last second and smiled wide as the currents slipped right into his grip rather than drifting away from him. Keeping his focus and tugging up on the currents, Jerissk was so glad to see the rock rising up into the air that he almost lost his old on it. It wobbled, but in the end the rock stayed aloft—
Until another rock flew in out of nowhere and sent it crashing down to the ground.
The Trandoshan stared sharply over at Jolee, seeing the smug grin on his face. His orange eyes narrowed to slits. The weight of the glare wasn't lost on the old Jedi, and his face took on a hurt look.
"You think that was me?" Jolee asked. "Why would I ever want to do something like that? Clearly it was the rock's fault, not mine."
Jerissk frowned, finding himself weighing the odds of his survival if he fought this old man seriously. In the end he decided against it on account of only having one arm, but it was a close thing indeed. Part of the Trandoshan wanted to scream, but he refused to give the old bastard the satisfaction of seeing him break. He was going to move this rock five feet, and then he was going to sling it right in Jolee Bindo's smug face.
He got a grip on the rock again, and this time it came easier than it had before. In contrast to using brute force as the Sith teachings encouraged to bend the Force to his will, simply moving in accordance with the natural flow of the Force made it much easier to interact with.
Lifting his rock into the air again, Jerissk made sure to keep his mind open enough to sense when Jolee's next attack was coming. The precaution paid off, as he sensed the mild disturbance early enough to move his rock out of the way of the old man's projectile. Jolee's rock stopped dead in midair and looped back around, but Jerissk had assumed another attack was coming and had already moved his rock out of the way. Being able to feel the natural push and pull of the Force so readily was exhilarating, and it wasn't long before the Trandoshan's rock had found its way to its destination, despite Jolee's best efforts to knock it down.
"Not bad, kid," the Jedi mused with a genuine smile, "not bad at all. Looks like you're getting the hang of it again at last. Easier to manipulate the Force when you're not fighting it, ain't it?"
"Yeah," Jerissk grudgingly had to agree, "it is. So, what's next?"
"There's a game younglings play to sharpen their sense of the Force," Jolee began, picking a rock up with the Force and motioning for his student to do the same. "It's called 'Push-Feather'. Basically, two younglings stand across from each other, and each of 'em tries to push the other off balance using the Force. But seeing as how you and I are grown men, I think we should make it a little more interesting."
The rock in front of Jerissk came zipping towards him before the Trandoshan could so much as blink, and he knew there wouldn't be time to dodge it normally. Reaching out instinctively through the Force, he moved his own rock and deflected Jolee's just before it made contact.
"Good, very good!" the old Jedi complemented, a mischievous gleam in his eyes. "Keep it up!"
The rock flew around erratically, weaving and cutting almost like it had a mind of its own. Jerissk knew that the point of the game was not to think, and simply to trust the flow of the Force around him. He closed his eyes, feeling for the movements in the currents and acting accordingly. Eventually he would have to be able to do it with his eyes open, but the Trandoshan looked at the whole process like he was re-learning how to walk. One step at a time, the Force would open itself back up to him.
Suddenly a sharp pain stabbed through his head, and Jerissk's eyes flew open in surprise. Jolee was no longer standing in front of him; the old Jedi had moved to the right and struck from a position the Trandoshan hadn't been expecting.
"Don't just pay attention to your immediate surroundings," the teacher cautioned. "Your enemy ain't gonna be standing still while you're fighting them."
Jerissk didn't get mad; taking a few deep, calming breaths, he lifted his rock back up and repeated his mantra in his head.
One step at a time.
He knew something was wrong long before the adjutant came rushing into his office to inform him of the disturbance; Revan had felt it rippling through the Force. The Jedi was already on his feet and walking towards the door of his cabin when it slid open before him.
"General, sir," the messenger said suddenly, snapping to attention. "There's been—"
"I know; walk with me." Revan cut him off, waving his hand impatiently. "Where?"
"There's a group of soldiers assaulting a young refugee girl they found in the engineering bay's cargo hold, sir," the messenger said quickly as Revan sped up his pace, falling into stride beside him without losing a step.
"Not for long," the General said tersely, casting a sidelong glance at the messenger; a Lieutenant junior-grade, he saw from the bar on his shoulders, and no older than Silvas Rahn. He'd heard this one was something of a prodigy, but even for prodigies such a rapid rise in rank was almost unheard-of. "Congratulations on the promotion."
"Thank you, sir," the Lieutenant said. "But to be honest, it was a fluke more than anything else. I just did what any other soldier would have done; the circumstances were just atypical."
"Don't be so modest; it does you no good to downplay your own merits in the middle of a war," the General replied evenly as they approached the doors of the cargo bay in question. "Thank you for informing me of the situation here, Lieutenant Tarkin," Revan continued as he prepared himself for the possibility of a battle waiting beyond the heavy doors. "You may return to your post; I expect a full report on exactly what got you that promotion by lights out tonight."
The crackling of the Jedi's blue lightsaber as it ignited to life was all Tarkin needed to hear before he took his leave, snapping off a crisp salute and taking the hallway to the right. Revan ripped the door open with the Force, stepping into the cargo hold and hoping that the girl was all right as he prepared himself for a possible duel.
What the General had expected and what he got, however, were two wildly different things. He could see the girl huddled and shaking over in the corner, but the soldiers who had been accosting her were nowhere nearby. They were sprawled out on floor in various stages of injury, and Revan could see from just a cursory glance that one of them had been given multiple compound fractures and another was suffering from burns that had been delivered by the blade of a lightsaber.
"You're late, Revan," a gravelly voice spoke out from the right of the carnage. The Jedi looked over and saw who had spoken, a smile creeping over his face in spite of the lack of respect the speaker had given him. "Missed out on the party, such as it was."
"You seem to have handled it quite well yourself, Sebulga," the General said as he approached his comrade and fellow Jedi Knight, kneeling to be on eye-level with the Dug. "You have my thanks."
"Save them for someone else," Sebulga said sharply, snorting through his large nostrils in disdain. "I was just doing what anyone with a shred of decency would've done." The Dug snorted again, turning away from Revan and scooting his way towards the door.
"The next time you kneel down in front of me," he said in parting, "General or no, I'm going to kick your teeth out. The last thing I need right now is people suddenly treating me respectably because I'm carrying a lightsaber around. I don't know what I'd do with myself."
"Fair enough," Revan said with a laugh as he rose to his feet. Sebulga had been a padawan beside Revan at the Academy on Coruscant, and although the Dug's prickly demeanor had been off-putting at first, the two of them had grown into grudging friends over the years. He was someone Revan was glad to have fighting at his side, considering the enemy they were facing.
Turning his attention to the shivering girl in the corner, Revan walked over to her and knelt once again.
"Are you all right?" he asked softly, and the girl stopped shaking. She looked up at him, her wide blue eyes unafraid even as her body bore the bruises of her earlier 'interrogation'. She nodded defiantly, and Revan held out his hand to her.
She took it, and suddenly the ship around them shimmered and melted into nothingness. Only Revan and the girl remained, and the Jedi saw that a dark line had appeared across the girl's neck.
"No regrets," she rasped, and then she was gone.
The vision ended and Revan's eyes snapped open, pupils dilated wide as his mind lurched to catch up to his body. The door to his room slid open just as the Master rose shakily to his feet, revealing the only other person in the Enclave that had a key to his room.
"What's wrong?" Bastila asked as soon as she saw Revan's state, but he waved her off as she walked towards him.
"Just the backlash from a Force vision, that's all," he said, a slight rasp to his voice. "It'll pass in a second. What's up?"
"You're not the only person who feels backlash from your visions, you know," the Knight said, and it was only then that the Master could see the beads of sweat on Bastila's forehead. "I can't make out anything distinct, but the emotions come through loud and clear. Are you sure you're all right?"
"Yeah, I'm sure," Revan insisted. Bastila looked past him and saw the two full traveling containers resting on the floor, her gray eyes hardening in suspicion.
"Going somewhere?" she asked pointedly, and her lover sighed.
"Tatooine," he said almost wearily. "The Council's asked me to see if I can get some up-to-date information on the Sith's movements from some of my old soldiers, and Yuthura dug up a lead for me there."
"Are you sure they can be trusted?" Bastila pressed, but softening the tone of her voice as she did so. Revan had clearly been under a lot of pressure lately, and the last thing she wanted to do was add to it. The Master nodded.
"This one can," he answered firmly. "I'm sure of that much if I'm sure of anything."
"And why's that? Why would someone you turned your back on still be loyal to you? It's thanks to you the Sith are in shambles, after all."
Revan gave a small smile, his eyes slipping out of focus as they peered back into the past.
"His loyalty was never to the Sith," he said assuredly. "It was always to me, and me alone. And it's not the kind of loyalty that will sway easily, either. That's why I chose him to be in the Wraiths to begin with."
Bastila's eyebrows furrowed in confusion at the unfamiliar name.
"The Wraiths?" she asked. "Who were they?"
"A special group of spies I created within the Sith, whose identities were secret to everyone but me. Not even Malak knew about them, even if I'm sure he did have his suspicions from time to time. The lead on Tatooine was one of them. Another was someone I'm sure you knew; she was in your class at the Academy on Coruscant. Dersu'u'Zala."
Bastila's expression snapped from puzzled to shocked in an instant, stunned into silence by the name. When she finally spoke again, her voice was incredulous.
"But she… that's not possible. Zala was my roommate; she even became a full Jedi Knight. She couldn't have been a Sith, she fought right next to me in the attack on your ship!"
"Because that's exactly where I wanted her to be," the Master answered simply, his eyes betraying nothing of his feelings. "I needed to be sure you would reach me alive. Dead, there was no way I could have turned you to the dark side, and your Battle Meditation was far too precious a gift to let go to waste."
It was only the plain regret seeping into Revan's voice that kept Bastila from fearing that he'd slipped back towards some shred of his old self, but the revelation that one of her most trusted friends growing up among the Jedi had been a deep-cover mole was still chilling.
"I never knew," she said hollowly, shaken to the point of needing to sit down. "I ate with her, trained with her, confided in her, slept in the same room with her, and she was in your pocket the entire time?"
Revan nodded.
"If you'd been able to figure that out, she wouldn't have been a very good spy at all, princess… let alone one of my best."
"I suppose that makes sense," Bastila admitted, regaining her mental balance and rising to her feet again. "Besides, it's not like that matters anymore: Zala died on your flagship during the assault that day."
Revan sighed and picked up the two cargo containers, walking towards the door and stopping when he was abreast with his loved one.
"It wasn't my decision to turn her," he said gently. "But for what it's worth, I'm sorry."
The Jedi kept walking, but only got a few more steps forward before Bastila's hand gripped his forearm and held him in place.
Revan stood still for a few heartbeats, relaxing his grips on the containers in his hands and letting the Force cushion their fall back to the ground. He turned, completing the embrace Bastila had begun once they were facing each other again. The Master held his Knight gently against him, torn between wanting to protect her from the conflict that was sure to come and knowing that they would both have their own paths to travel. Revan could only hope that, when the dust settled from the last aftershock of his old empire's collapse, Bastila would still be standing strong amidst the wreckage.
Waiting for him to return to her, as he had once waited for her.
Revan pulled back just far enough to look her in the eyes, an ache in his chest as he realized in that moment just how much he would miss Bastila if she vanished from his life forever. He leaned forward and kissed her, hoping that the act could convey how he felt better than words. She returned the kiss with a need that Revan had been feeling from her more and more as of late, and it gave him pause. Searching his own turbulent emotions, a sobering discovery smacked him square in the face:
He had been an incredibly self-absorbed bastard these past few months. Thinking back, he could see each missed moment he could have spent with Bastila spread out like a hundred glittering, fleeting, lost opportunities. He'd told himself that his work was more important, that the needs of the Order came first, that the Sith were too dangerous to be ignored in any way…
But those had all been lies. Lies Revan had told himself to edge around the truth he was afraid to face: that he really didn't deserve any of this, the illusion of peace the Jedi had given him when they'd rebuilt his mind. And he certainly didn't deserve Bastila, who had suffered so much as a result of his direct actions.
"Stop it."
The Master blinked out of his thoughts and looked down at Bastila, who was staring right back up at him with eyes that were as open and vulnerable as he'd ever seen them.
"Why do you keep dragging yourself down like this?" she asked earnestly. "And don't even try to deny it; I can read the guilt right on your face. Why can't you just forgive yourself? What do I have to do to reach you?" she finished pleadingly, searching his face for some kind of answer.
Revan could hear the pain in her voice, but shook his head all the same.
"You gave me a second chance," he replied softly, "and that alone was more than I could have ever asked for. But a few months of good deeds can't ever counter-balance the years I was the Dark Lord of the Sith."
"Even though you saved the entire galaxy in the process?" Bastila pressed, unwilling to lose the argument. "What do you think you'll have to do to atone for your sins, if defeating Malak wasn't enough?"
"Stopping him was just covering up my old mistakes," Revan countered wearily. "If I'd never fallen, he wouldn't have followed me."
"All right; fine," Bastila sighed, exasperated. "If saving the Republic from complete annihilation twice in half a lifetime isn't going to convince you that you're not a terrible person, I don't know what will."
The Master arched an eyebrow at that.
"Twice?"
"The Mandalorian Wars, remember?" Bastila prompted, her voice gaining an edge. "You single-handedly held Mandalore's armies back from the core of Republic space and ended the conflict. Or are you so focused on drowning yourself in your own guilt that you can't even admit you were a Jedi before you became a Sith?"
Revan was taken aback by the sharpness of his loved one's words, but after a few heartbeats his mouth widened in a tired, but genuine smile.
"You're never going to give up on me," he said, "are you?"
"Never," Bastila affirmed with a smile of her own. "Now," she continued, bringing one of her hands up to rest against Revan's cheek, "about this trip of yours…"
"Hmmm?"
"Don't you think it could wait until tomorrow?"
Revan's smile lost its tiredness, his eyes brightening mischievously as he picked up on the tone in Bastila's voice.
"As a matter of fact, princess," he said as he closed the distance between them again, "I think it can."
The Jedi let himself relax into the warmth of another kiss, this one completely unfettered by guilt. The Sith had taken almost everything away from him, but Revan wasn't going to let them have Bastila. Not again. She was his, and his alone.
His salvation.
Arina stood right inside the door of the training room, waiting for the other padawans going through exercises to clear out. She wanted to be alone for this. She'd tried running through the list of sword exercises that Bastila had given her out on the open-air training grounds, but it hadn't been long before Arina had tired of those. Her blood was up, and slicing through air wasn't going to do anything to help her regain peace of mind. She had to work out her frustrations on something tangible, and it was that desire that had brought the padawan to the droid training room.
It was the closest the Jedi would let their students get to actual combat, and even then the use of lightsabers was prohibited in favor of vibroblades. The standard reasoning was that droids were expensive to replace, but Arina knew that the Jedi were smart enough to not give their pupils any chance to taste the power of the Dark Side; power that she now knew came as easily as breathing in the heat of battle. The surge of power she'd felt during her fight with the Katarn in the Shadowlands had terrified her at first, but the more she'd thought about it in hindsight, the more she could see how useful that kind of power could be.
If it could be controlled, of course. And it was that need for control that had brought her here. Walking over to the nearby control panel, the padawan hesitated in thought for a few heartbeats before deciding to give herself a real challenge. Telling the cages to release the maximum number of droids they could for a single round of training, Arina stepped into the middle of the floor and held a vibroblade out in front of her, waiting.
The first bolt of energy came from her right, and she spun to avoid it with little more than a slight shift in her footing. Knowing just how long the window to retaliate was, the padawan lunged forward and swung the blade's edge down onto the droid's sensor, shorting it out. There was no time to relax, though, as the other droids didn't hesitate to turn the training area into a swarm of stunning bolts.
Arina swerved and spun through the small gaps in the volleys, giving herself up to the Force around her and relishing the feeling of her adrenaline rising higher and higher. Her frustration built into a powerful wave, and she rode it until it crested and sent her careening into the roiling sea of power that was the Dark Side of the Force.
The sound of numerous shorted-out droids buzzing in unison brought Arina slowly back to the present, but the rush she was experiencing hadn't dissipated at all. The power of raw emotion still enveloped her like a fog, pulsing and ebbing and seemingly waiting for a catalyst to give it form; to give it purpose.
It didn't have to wait very long at all.
The presence began as little more than a flicker on the edge of perception, but it was still intense enough for Arina's heightened senses to latch onto it. It took no longer than a blink for the source of the Force disturbance to become clear, its signature one that the padawan knew far too well.
Jerissk.
Arina all but sprinted out of the training room, leaving the twitching droids and borrowed vibroblade behind her without a second thought. The halls of the Academy were deserted, which was just as well: she couldn't afford to be distracted now, not when she felt so keen and alive for the first time in years. For the first time since Rhion had been taken from her. As she stepped back out into the light of the sun, her senses sharpened even further and the padawan could feel the Force flowing around her, rushing and twisting in endless currents. Directing her own cloud of anger out at the raw energy, Arina tried bending the unbridled Force to her own will…
And felt euphoria so intense it almost knocked her off of her feet entirely. The energy thrummed with life around her, begging to be released once more. Letting it flow through her body uninhibited, Arina felt the Force coursing into her fingertips and let it go. The result was a powerful arc of lightning, blasting outward and leaving a seared scorch-mark on the grass. The padawan looked at her hand as if seeing it for the first time, awed by her own display of power. She hadn't been able to re-create Force Lightning since she'd shot a few weak bolts at Jerissk on reflex so long ago, and even then she hadn't been in conscious control of it.
Reaching out again, Arina harnessed another current and channeled it into her legs, using the Force to boost her speed. Running without feeling any fatigue whatsoever was exhilarating, and the connection she felt to the Force was much clearer than it had been in the past. She could feel it bolstering her muscles, reinforcing each individual fiber strand as it worked to move her legs in stride after stride. It was better than any drug, and felt more natural than breathing.
She had been so caught up in the sensations of her new connection to the Force that Arina almost failed to notice how close Jerissk's Force signature had become; at the speed she was running, she would be within sight of him in a little under half a minute. Letting the Force current in her legs relax, the padawan slowed her pace to a jog and then to nothing, just in time to find cover behind a large rock nearby where Jerissk seemed to be training. The Trandoshan was lifting and moving a large boulder around him in the air, his single arm looking oddly relaxed as it moved from side to side in tune with the rock.
Arina could feel her hatred simmering as she watched Jerissk, and the angrier she got the more intense her bloodlust became. Her hand moved with a mind of its own, inching towards the lightsaber at her hip and drawing it from its holster. She was close; so close she could smell the blood that would soon be in the air—
"Looking for something?"
Arina's head snapped around so hard at the unexpected voice that she almost winced in pain, and probably would have had it not been for the Force buoying her. Jolee Bindo was standing to her right, looking at her in bemusement.
"You could say that," the padawan answered evasively, but being sure to hold the old man's gaze. "Why, is there a problem?"
"Only if you're here to make one," Jolee countered, his voice steely and containing no trace of his usual humor. "So let me ask you again: you looking for something?"
The two of them stood silent for a few tense heartbeats, and it was Arina who caved first.
"No," she said calmly, turning and walking away from the impromptu training ground, "I found it."
Jolee watched her go, his expression never relaxing even after the padawan's figure had faded away into the distance.
"She wanted to fight," Jerissk's voice chimed in sharply a few moments later. "Why'd you hold her back?"
Jolee's frown became laced with sudden melancholy, his dark eyes looking somewhere far back in the past.
"If you can't tell that much, kid," he said heavily, "you still have a lot to learn. I've seen far too many people struggling with their demons like Arina is right now—all it takes is one push too hard in the wrong direction, and they're lost forever. I'll have to tell Bastila to keep her eyes on that one, next chance I get."
Jerissk eyed his teacher intently, the look in his orange eyes inscrutable.
"She's going to fall," he said lowly. "I know what a Sith looks like, old man."
Jolee's mouth set back into a hard frown, and he sighed.
"Maybe so," he admitted at last, seeming for a moment to be twenty years older. "But if my years have taught me anything, it's that very few falls are permanent."
The Trandoshan said nothing more, walking back over to the large boulder and lifting it up into the air again. Jerissk knew that not everyone could or would be like Revan, but he also knew better than to make that point to Jolee.
The old man had suffered much, that was clear, and Jerissk wasn't about to trample on what thin hopes remained to him. He owed his teacher that much, at least.
...
...
A/N: Whew! Sorry that took so long again; I would have liked to have gotten this chapter out to you all sooner, but exams got in the way. That, and the middle scene was much harder to get right than I thought it'd be. All the same, I hope the length and quality of the chapter at least make up for the delay.
Reviews are, as always, highly appreciated, and keep me writing when I would otherwise do things like school-work. Huge thanks go out to Grinja, ApparentlyInsane and Gwynedde for their reviews last chapter; y'all are awesome.
Huge thanks also go out once again to JasoTheArtisan, a beta so awesome he makes Frank Sinatra look like a hobo. Go check out his stuff if any of you are fans of the anime/manga Bleach: it's all amazing.