Jay went to the catatonic man and first pulled down his heavy black hood before she removed his mask. What he saw beneath froze him to the core: he thought he'd looked awful when he'd stared in the mirror, but Revan's skin had gone completely corpse-grey. Well, corpse-grey, if the corpse had been weeks old. Deep fissures ran along every inch of available skin, deeper than Darth Traya's own wrinkles had been. The eyes, though, those were the worst—worse even than Revan's white hair. Darth Traya's pure white eyes had been a thing of horror, but Revan's had ceased to be human; instead, they had turned almost catlike, vaguely yellow, and filmed with white fog. He wondered how Revan could see through the cataracts that covered both pupils like stormclouds.
"T3, if he starts to recover before I've returned with a mirror, could you freeze him with a carbonite ray?"
Twee-bree-deet! I will. Dreet-dee-doot? Not stun ray?
"Maybe it's better than the carbonite ray… Do what you need to."
Dee-deet! Okay.
"Query: Why aren't you finishing this master off, Master?"
"Because I don't want to."
"Observation: Master, you have some serious ethical problems that must be attended to."
"Statement," she said, "Be quiet—I'm busy."
"Mockery: Oh, Second Master, kill me, I beg you, for I am too ethically challenged to fight you." For a broken-down piece of garbage, he had to admit the slagheap did a reasonable imitation of her voice.
She took his hand before he even noticed her beside him. "Run—I need your help with the fresher's mirror."
Clever… But she'd always had a hint of creativity about her—an unconventional way of solving problems, like how to fight the very essence of evil without falling, when the object of all your love and passion was the prize. She seemed a bit brighter to his eyes now, but that could just as easily have been his slightly unreliable tainted sight. They reached the fresher before he could truly appreciate that they still lived, and neither had fallen under Revan's sway.
You didn't, love, she thought as she gestured to him to hold the mirror. He did his best to look away—he was still too ugly—still too Sith though he saw a few of the veins had retreated, and he'd caught a glimpse of some of the old deep caffa shade returning to his hair. She unscrewed two brackets holding the surprisingly heavy piece of glass in place with the 'spanner she'd likely yanked from the workbench when she'd told him to run. It bothered him that he didn't remember seeing her pick it up.
How could a sheet of glass be so heavy? He grunted under half its weight as they hefted its awkwardness back to the garage. He wondered again why she was bothering to do this for Revan, of all people—he could still feel her rage deep down, and the hatred just waiting to escape, but he understood enough of the light still to know that was exactly why she was doing it. But if it didn't work?
Out the airlock, she thought, though it was tinged with enough of a laugh that he figured she was just kidding.
Well, one thing cheered him—since he was facing backward, he got a nice view of her grimacing face doubled in the glass' reflection. Two of her—now that was a thought! But, really, one was more than he could handle, especially when he caught a reflected glimpse of that grease-enhanced shapely inner thigh where her robe parted. In the garage, she stopped them right in front of the head-lolling idiot. Near him, the tin can sat, or stood or rolled or whatever those things did when they were no longer moving. It seemed to have an air of smugness about it—an insufferable air that made him want to twitch. Or deactivate it.
Twee-deet-dit-dreed-brank! Stunned old master twice. Vreet-dee-deet-dreedle! And mean droid too.
"Why, T3?" He could feel the annoyance she tried to keep out of her voice.
Deet-DREE-deet-vree-breeb! Tried to disable me. Breet-VREET-zeet! To help old master.
"Thanks, T3," and the warmth in her voice warmed him up too. "How long until he wakes up?"
Vreet-dee-reep! Ten seconds.
Good—the damned mirror was getting heavy. But what if it didn't work?
"What's plan B, Jay?"
"There is no plan B."
Great. No secondary backup plan. No devious Jay-machinations. It was either this or… She could always kill Revan, and he knew, without a single doubt, that she could. Not that he had time to think about it; Revan was shaking himself awake.
"What?" he said, and then Revan stared straight ahead into what should have been anyone's worst nightmare. To his credit, he barely flinched. "What's this, Jane? The typical look-in-the-mirror clichéd redemption technique? You think I don't know what power looks like?"
"Look, schutta. Look long and hard and look into the shriveled husk that is your soul and remember…"
She broadcast another of her memories—this one of the band of Revanchists, as they called themselves, on the razed surface of some world, gathered around a bright, glowing young man who spoke of the atrocities that had happened there years before. He had that same glow about him that Jay still had, and his face, young and unlined, twisted in compassion and pain as he spoke of the death of a species.
"Young, handsome and compassionate," she said, her voice soft and gentle. "The kind of man a woman would kill to call her own. Do you remember Sy at all? Who could mesmerize a crowd with his words and visions? Who seemed to live and breathe righteousness? Whose heart was open to the suffering and pain of the oppressed? Who inspired even the most cynical to move to action? I remember that Silas, just as I remember the little Sy who was the only reason I survived my first year at the academy on Dantooine."
You wanted him? Damn, she'd lied to him back in the cargo hold two years ago!
No, but my friend, Zhu-Shei, did. She never stopped talking about him. It got really annoying. A vision, the friend struck down by heavy Mandalorian fire on Serocco. A striking friend with short black hair and bright green almond-shaped eyes. Hunh. Who'd have thought the Jedi Order was a place to find stunning women?
Great, lusting after the dead—no wonder you wanted to turn Sith. He winced but drowned himself in her as she continued speaking.
"Remember other things about Silas, Revan? Remember how he could be right and could do what was necessary to save the Republic? Or how he could tackle any military objective and come out on top? I remember gaping in awe at some of his tactics and his larger strategy to save the innocents in the Outer Rim."
The Sith stared into the mirror, and he swore he could hear the gears churning in Revan's mind. Yes, he remembered, all right.
"Tell me, Sy, of the last five planets we've visited, on how many did we achieve your objective? You know, lightening the Force and reversing a little of the taint?"
Silence.
"That's what I thought. None. In fact, every single one of those planets is so heavily fortified against us that we'll never be able to fix our mistakes."
Had it really been that bad? But as he thought back himself, he realized she was right, and he'd had his own part in ruining things. He was surprised she'd never called him a "schutta."
Tempting, she thought, but she grinned at him anyway.
"So, Sy, is your 'power' worth it? Back in the early days of your first fall, you could control it, and even, perhaps, around Malachor, you still kept control of your own mind. But now? It's obvious the power's consuming you, chewing you up, and spitting you out. You have power but no control, the Force, but no objective. You're a detriment not only to us as an army, but to your own damned war! If I had T3 stun you and we spaced you, the entire galaxy would be better off. I speak now as 'General Jane,' not as a Jedi, or as a servant of the light, but as your third-in-command—you're a danger to all of us."
"That's not a very good way to redeem someone, Jane." But Revan seemed almost humbled somehow.
"I don't have any illusions of redeeming you, Sy. I'll just settle for you retreating enough from the complete darkness in you so that your mind returns and we can work together again."
That seemed to shock Revan, for the man's mouth flopped open wider than a cannock's. "You don't want to redeem me?"
"What are my chances when the entire Jedi Council failed? I can feel that you hate me every bit as much as you loathed them, even though I've never done you any harm."
"Never done me any harm? Wrong, Jane, so wrong!"
"I'm getting sick of holding this mirror," she said and he agreed. It was bad enough looking at Revan once, but the reflection made the vision a thousand times worse. "Done yet, Sy? Seen enough of yourself?"
"So you're not going to ask what harm you've done me? Some redeemer you are!"
She guided him to the workbench and they set the mirror down. He grunted when the weight suddenly left him and he rubbed his arms and hands after shaking them around for a few seconds.
"Sit, Sy. Can we talk like civilized beings now? I'll humor you and listen."