o.O.o
Kindness
o.O.o
Malak seemed to realize that he had made the wrong choice the moment she almost succeeded in electrocuting him mid-battle when she managed to knock him off-balance. He fought with new craftiness this time, using her teachings as a guide; that training spars and true battles were fundamentally different. That in a real battle, there was nothing one couldn't use. But using the moment Bastila recovered from the paralysis to grip her by the throat and smash her entire weight against the wall was thoroughly cowardly, no matter how one looked at it.
And Bastila, the foolish girl, seemed to think that she wouldn't be able to get out of this little inconvenience. But how she expected that rushing into the battle and challenging Malak would help them any was doomed to remain a mystery to Revan. She was still somewhat distracted; the implanted memories were resisting somewhat while giving way to the new ones, but she was able to discern what was real and what wasn't by now. Now if she could only help her mind arrange the recollections correctly somehow, so that she could see what she needed to see…
But it was to end differently than she planned this time. Once she got back to her feet and grabbed her lightsaber, quite ready to shove Bastila out of the way and finish what Malak had started, it turned out to be too late. Perhaps it was Bastila who decided to be noble and sacrifice herself, but that seemed doubtful; she seemed to have trouble even holding her ground against Malak, let alone using the Force.
No, it was him. He sealed the door in her face. There was a certain amount of grim satisfaction in Revan, knowing that her former friend had gained certain insight into battle strategy, knowing when he was outmatched.
It didn't change the cowardice of his actions in the least, but it was a brave gamble. He was willing to let his old master and single possible nemesis escape for the sake of detaining Bastila. Her Battle Meditation was still the key to destroying the Republic. Perhaps she should be insulted, but Malak was underestimating her in this moment. With her status and – he wished – power stripped of her, her memory gone, she wasn't in a position to command the Republic fleet any longer.
She was dead.
Once safely back at the Ebon Hawk, having escaped the Leviathan, Revan wished nothing more than for a refresher and a bed. After all, the mind had a tendency to recuperate when consciousness wasn't in the way. Carth was the one who stepped into her path, bravely, she supposed, because she was still rather disgruntled. He had quickly related the story to the others, who had all made it safely off the Leviathan, and, apparently, this was the moment when she was supposed to express sympathy and reinforce team spirit.
No, wait, that wasn't it. Carth seemed to think that this was the moment she was supposed to bravely confess her true identity, the hidden dirty little secret of the Jedi and furiously repent for her non-existent sins. Oh.
Revan wasn't entirely certain what she was supposed to make of all this. The Jedi had proven to be highly desperate in doing this to her. On one hand, they claimed that her mind was too destroyed to restore her true self. On the other, they weren't beyond creating a little puppet whose strings they could carefully pull. They could have simply restored her mind and slowly given her information on who she was and her memories would have returned on their own accord. In a way, she was thankful for their no death penalty policy, but this setback had cost her precious time; not only that, it might cost them the entire Republic. Malak, bless his brute force strategies, was doing an admirable job of destroying her carefully laid out plans.
It was rather like smashing the perfect formation of pieces on a dejarik board with a club.
She looked at the crew, face after face. She remembered them, of course, as the memories not conflicting with her true identity had no cause to disappear after her revelation. They were a peculiar bunch, to be certain, but she supposed she cared about them in her own way. In any case, discarding them wasn't a good idea, as they all were useful in their own way.
Instead of wasting her breath on an act she wouldn't mean anyway, she did the logical thing; walking up to her dear HK-47, she said a few well-chosen words in several alien languages, activating the homing system and taking care with the clearing up of her identity this way. At least someone was glad to see her return, she thought with a dejected inner sigh. She had accepted this fate, knowing it was for the good of thousands, millions, even… but even she was only human. At times, she wished for nothing more than to be as blissfully ignorant as the rest of them.
But she had seen the face of her enemy, the one who had bent and broken her to his will... and he would never be allowed to gain another victory over her. The Empire would never reach those under her protection, and its stone-eyed lord would rue the day he dared force her to her knees.
At times, she believed in the single line of the Sith Code: The Force Shall Free Me. Because if there was no death; only the Force… then death and the Force were the same and both would liberate her of the terrible knowledge she had gathered over the years. It was an almost welcome alternative, even though she had come this far.
Everyone was mildly astonished by the news; that is to say, almost everyone. T3-M4, being a droid, didn't react to that in almost any way. Droids didn't hold grudges, as Mission wisely stated. Jolee claimed to know from the very beginning, though he defended his actions by saying that it wasn't his place to tell her. it fit into his senile old man spiel quite well, despite Carth's obvious disapproval. The only one other than HK-47 that seemed enthusiastic about this revelation was Canderous. He didn't doubt this truth for a second and if he saw that there was a new calculative sharpness to her eyes, he didn't say so.
Mission was handling her own surprise in a rather unique way; she asked Revan if she remembered anything about being Revan; anything at all. It would have been a good moment to lie, but not strategically well on the long run. They already knew about the visions she and Bastila shared… so Revan decided to use that to her advantage. She decided to spare the young girl unnecessary fear by saying that there were only disorganized bits and pieces floating in her mind; flashes. It seemed to soothe her accordingly and her Wookiee friend agreed that his life-debt was to her current incarnation, not the previous one.
It showed only how superb her charade had become. At times, even she believed it.
The only one who lashed out against this was Carth, claiming that it was a clear lie. He had seen the change come over her on the Leviathan, he said. Names held power and it seemed that hers had opened a door in her soul that had been carefully sealed to that point. But Revan saw through his anger on this occasion; he was angry at himself, most of all. Incapable of believing that of all the women in the galaxy that could become significant to him, it had to be her. She saw his conviction at her evil become locked in conflict with his affection for her.
Most of all, she saw that he had come to realize that while memories could be altered, human nature couldn't; it had always been her, from the beginning till the end. It was how she would have been, had she not learned the terrible truth. If only the gift of foresight wasn't hers, if the Force didn't run through her veins too strongly, far more strongly than anyone could predict.
And, for the first time in what seemed ages, Revan allowed pity to enter her heart. She still had one, of course; a person without a heart would have surrendered to her own charade long ago. This man was far stronger than she had guessed. He was struggling with his own beliefs and his will to love her, despite the thick mask she had so carefully created to disguise her true intentions.
That was strength she needed. That was strength she craved.
Because she was always alone.
Malak had been destroyed by her, a pure soul turned into an empty shell. A blank page upon which she had written words too harsh. He had learned and embraced his part in the tragedy she had written far too well. The only person in the universe she would have given her life to protect was destroyed by the very attempt to protect the entire galaxy.
An unfair bargain, but a necessary one. As all her decisions were.
But Carth was spun of a different silk. He refused to sink too deep into her own creation. He was perhaps the first person who was making an attempt to see not her deeds, not her plans, but her. The person, not the icon, not the figure of history, not the spinner of webs that would capture the entire galaxy. And faced with that strength, that conviction that there was more to her than others supposed… Revan felt very exposed. Very weak.
Very… human. She hadn't felt like a human being for so very long…
If only in exchange for that single moment, she made the choice to see things through to the end.