Thirty-seven hours and thirty-two minutes and a Level 25 character later, I now know what I can do with the rest of this story. . .
Anything I want.
Footprints in the Clouds
Interlude Two: Descent
The ship shuddered and rolled, pitched and flipped as it spiraled out of control. In the vacuum, with nothing to stop them, it might have done this forever. This was the first thing Revan noticed as he began to emerge from unconsciousness. The second was the stars as they shifted and blurred and shifted some more, like the changing currents of the ocean depths, and looking either forward or backward made Revan somewhat sick.
His head felt fuzzy, like every thought was lined with fur. It brushed across the surface of his mind, lulling him into a state that could easily be a comfortable stupor if not for the ambient noise of pain.
He knew he'd hit his head against the console when they fell out of their little hyperspace leap when he looked down and saw the spattering of red on the control console. There were other injuries, doubtlessly, but the bulk of the fire his nerves were enduring came over the link with Bastila.
He looked over her seat, noticing that she, too, had hit her head. It didn't seem bad -- just a small cut above the eye. She tried not to completely shut her eyes as the contractions hit, breathing through the pain calmly as any Jedi would. He could feel them, though. He was amazed she was still conscious.
"I'm glad you're back, Dear," she said, clenching her teeth as another wave started to hit. "I could really use your help with this ship."
"Where are we?"
"The navicomputer is down. I have no idea."
He turned his attention to the console, squelching the sick feeling that struck him as the ship pitched again.
"What's our status?"
Her response was a grunt, followed by a shower of sparks through their force bond. He turned to see her firmly in her seat, her arms wrapped around her abdomen.
"How long was I out?"
"About thirty minutes. Do you have any more questions or may I concentrate on making sure our son doesn't merely plop down on the deck?"
He sighed. The contractions were about fifty seconds apart. Something needed to get done.
An engine diagnostic revealed that only one of the two thrusters was still active, but that would be enough to let them land somewhere, assuming they were anywhere near a stable planet. A few quick changes to the power relays behind his head would reroute enough power to get it online.
When the thrusters cycled up, the ship's wild movement was much easier to correct. In seconds, the starfield's swimming ceased.
A planet had been hung against the black curtain of open space, one that seemed to possess an inner glow. It shone like a beacon before them, a beacon of hope and promise. Any wayward space traveller would gladly fly toward its bright blue light.
Except that Revan had seen that planet before, and he had prayed never to see it again.
Bastila undoubtedly felt the strange mix of emotions that ran through him at that moment. She turned her tired eyes to him as his eyes remained fixated on the planet.
"There is no fear, my love."
"Now you're just mocking me."
She winced as another contraction hit. "I'm not sure he is going to wait much longer."
He swallowed his trepidation as they neared the planet. Everything will be fine, he thought.
Then they hit the atmosphere, and the thrusters went off-line.
As they descended at a rate he didn't care to calculate, he could hear Bastila's verbal manifestation of her physical pain. He was briefly thankful for this ship's atmospheric shielding, as it was probably the only thing keeping them from burning up on entry. As they started to slow and the flames began to dissipate, the ride got rough.
Bastila cried out as the ground first came into view. Revan desperately tried to get the engines working again, but if they were reparable before they hit the atmosphere, they were likely toast now. All he had left were the wings, rudimentary directional controls and air brakes that were vulnerable to the heat of re-entry.
To his horror, he realized that he had been here, in this moment, several times before. In his dreams, the air brakes failed to stop their rapid descent. In his dreams, the ship crashed horribly. In his dreams, Bastila has just enough strength to give her life to her son.
But as those visions cavorted about on the surface of his brain, something occurred to him that the visions had never tried..
So he concentrated, forcing everything he was into the act of slowing and stopping the ship before it reached the surface below. It takes all of his focus and willpower to try using the Force instead of the craft mechanisms to slow their descent, and the deeper into this meditative state he fell, the more distractions came to him.
Memories invaded his consciousness, screaming back through and demanding to take back the places they once held. They were memories of the determined, charismatic leader that duped four generals and his best friend into following him into darkness, into thinking that the council was wrong.
They were of the man that had convinced them to believe that they could stop the looming darkness, only to help bring it about all the faster.
In the force-guided sight of the ship hurtling downward, Malak walked up to his mind's eye. The lower part of his face was still covered by a mechanical vocabulator, but he knew that the man would be smiling maliciously if he could. His hand reached outward and, unable to stop it, he was taken from the present into a past he could not remember.
Revan found himself facing Malak in what resembled some of the tombs in the Valley of the Sith Lords. Energy crackled in every corner of the chamber, and the vision was so strong that Revan could feel the power of the place as he had the first time he had walked through. Malak was younger now, his original jaw replacing that horrible mechanical contraption. They stood side by side, as good friends would, and Malak began to speak.
"She was disappointed in us. I could see it written on her face."
He could hear himself respond, yet said nothing. "It will be harder without her. Her powers of Battle Meditation are such that we might have won the war quickly."
"But we will win without her," the taller, larger man responded.
"Yes, but it will cost us many more lives, and many more planets."
Malak sighed beside him, and spoke of her once more. "She was so loyal to the council, Revan. She nearly made me doubt what we are doing."
He could feel the resentment as it crept through the mind of his former self, then felt it squashed by his overriding logic. "She is so young. I am not surprised that she would be afraid to join us. But this will be a long and costly war without her, and I think she will one day see beyond her stubbornness and come around to our way of thinking."
The vision paused. Everything in the cave – or tomb, if that was what it truly was – stilled. Only Malak moved, walking around to face him.
"She was the only one to turn from us, in the beginning," he repeated, his voice just above a whisper. Slowly, others started to fade into view behind him. "And I made her break in the end. I took pleasure in watching her struggle against herself, against the knowledge of you she carried within her. When I found her love for you, when I discovered how deeply her passions ran, it was a simple matter."
He walked around, stopping just beside him. He leaned in so that his words would have little distance to travel.
"You betrayed yourself when you returned to the Order," Malak said. "You knew the truth about war, that it is necessary for the balance of the universe. You knew the True Sith, and their love for war. And you knew your own need for battle. Now…what a shell you have become."
As he finished, the face of a human female Jedi came into view, taunting him with its pallor and the dark lines striping it. "You betrayed yourself, Revan, and those that followed you so willingly into war. You turned away from the path you started, demoralizing us and making us doubt. We must never doubt in war, you said. And yet you left us behind."
"You betrayed yourself, Revan," another pale man said. "You betrayed your plans and your own great deeds, the promise of a united galaxy free of petty skirmish. You turned away from the creation of an Empire capable of protecting itself, only to insure that all the suffering will be for nothing."
"You betrayed yourself, Revan," another female, another marked face. "You betrayed your own powers of foresight and tactics. You've turned away from the great future you were planning, the future Golden Age that would ride on the coattails of your conquests. You turned away from the end of slavery, the end of poverty and the end of ignorance, and now the Republic will endure with all the injustices intact, or the entire galaxy will fall into chaos."
Two more, most familiar faces appeared. The first was another human female with reddish hair and hazel eyes. Her face was not marked by the Sith, but she held her scars, nonetheless. The other was an old woman in Jedi robes.
"You betrayed yourself, Revan," the younger one said. "You brought about more death and destruction with your resistance to the Sith Empire than you would have at its helm. Your doubts as Darth Revan and your lack of attention to your apprentice could only have resulted in the Jedi attack, and your actions after have only brought about pain that will last for years to come."
"You betrayed yourself, Revan." The smooth tones of the older woman's voice made his blood immediately run cold. "You allowed your destiny to be dictated by others. You allowed your destiny to be dictated by the Force. And perhaps worst of all, you've allowed your destiny to be shared by that foolish girl. She could never see what you saw, the promise of the greater threat if you did not act. She does not see it, still. She places blind faith in the whims of the Council, and she will pay for that . . . as will you."
The ghosts of his past fell silent as they waited to see what he would say next.
"I cannot tell you the motives behind most of my actions," he said at last. "I do nto remember them. All I know is what I have seen since.
"All of us have contributed to death on a massive scale. We are all responsible for some of the greatest massacres in the history of the Republic, and as justified as we thought it was, we have made every living thing in this galaxy pay for our actions. If the suffering of one person, just one person could have been avoided if we had done something differently, it would have been worth that difference. What we built was a legacy of Death, and that legacy will end as all evil must."
He turned to the old woman. "The more people that try to make a difference, the greater the act's effects. Inaction, or negative actions, breeds nothing but more of the same. A kindness, no matter how small, always has some small chance at producing a positive effect.
He turned to the woman, the only one of his generals spared the mark of the Sith. "The difference I made, the good deeds I performed on so many worlds has come a long way towards healing the damage and redeeming the dead. It was not a lot, but it helped enough that those small deeds will be the inspiration behind the salvation of this galaxy one day."
Finally, he turned to Malak. The man's jaw had once again been replaced by his cybernetics, and fury was written all over what remained of the man's face.
"I did not betray myself," he said to his former apprentice, "I have just found a better way to express myself. I did not deny myself the opportunity for power, simply ended my craving for it. I have a chance at happiness, a chance for my own inner peace. Love brought me this chance, as it brought Bastila back to her own true self. Love – knowledge of it, the feeling of it – brings more power than the dark side ever could, more than you could ever imagine. Love is what defeated you on the Star Forge. Love . . . the one thing neither Jedi nor Sith is allowed to experience.
The infuriated rage exploded outward in a blinding red haze, and all of the visions swirled out of focus. The cave darkened as his legs gave out, and he felt himself falling again . . .
"REVAN!!"
The surface of the planet was nearing. He could feel it as they hurtled toward it, their speed unchecked. The air brakes had been pulled and the directional controls has evened out their descent. Through his connection to the Force, he felt what needed to be done next.
He fell deeper and deeper into concentration, picturing the Ebon Hawk from the exterior as it raced over treetops. The momentum of the spaceship gradually dissipated against artificially-dense air, until the ship was essentially held aloft by sheer will alone. It never even occurred to him that he had stopped actually flying the ship halfway into the trance he was in.
At the last possible moment, the engines kicked back on, and the reverse thrusters fired. The ship landed with little more than a slightly jarring thud. From what he understood of engines, what happened wasn't physically possible. He decided not to question it yet.
When he looked over to Bastila, he was relieved to find that she was uninjured. There were no support beams sticking through her chest, there was no blood smeared across her flawless complexion. She was beautifully and mercifully whole…and her glare was going to freeze him solid if he didn't do something for her.
He held Bastila in his arms, having unstrapped her from the seat. He realized that she was in more pain than he thought, as she was limp in his grasp.
"Greeting: Master! It is a good thing you are as skilled a pilot as you are. Anyone else might have crashed, and I would likely be little more than scrap upon the side of a cliff."
"HK! You're alive?!"
"Chiding Retort:" the battered droid responded, "It takes more than a proton cannon and carbon scoring to destroy me, Master." HK's neck servos directed his head downward. "Observation: It seems as if there might be a casualty, after all. How delightful."
He ignored the droid as he carefully stepped around the small common area of the ship and placed Bastila down on the deck. "Search this ship for supplies, HK. We need blankets and a medpak."
"Reluctant Resignation: You're going to save her, aren't you Master?" The droid began to search the ruins of their bomber for supplies.
Her weakness made him worry about the other possibilities. Alone and on a strange planet, with few supplies to speak of, any complications would most assuredly result in death. But he felt her through the Force, and saw the agitation on her face.
"I am alive, Revan, just in a great deal of excruciating pain," she said.
He suddenly became aware of something on the fringes of his awareness. He immediately looked up, only to see nothing. He looked down at her: she had felt it, too.
"I'll be right back."
He hopped out of the bomber and took a quick surveying glance about the exterior of the ship. He could feel it…but could see nothing. In the distance, there was a path through the trees, perhaps to another clearing, he didn't know. Perhaps this world was inhabited, and he felt the wildlife.
The questions were set aside.
"Exclamatory: MASTER! Your meatbag concubine requires your aid! I am used to carnage, but this…this is wrong!"
He was there in moments, and reached the area just in time to see the ensuing carnage.
"For the last time! I. Do. Not. Like. That. Term!"
Before HK could react, Bastila had sent him flying into a bulkhead. Revan winced. "Again, that will take some time to fix."
"I don't honestly care right now! I just want him out!" She screamed as the last word ended, drawing the last syllable out until her lungs had emptied. Gasping for breath, she closed her eyes in an attempt to calm herself, but Revan could tell it wasn't working.
"I don't want to be like this! I don't want to be helpless again!"
He took her hand. The link was jumbled, eight different types of pain coursing through her mind from eight different sources.
"Breathe, my love. You have to breathe."
She could only gasp for breath. Not nearly enough of it was entering her lungs to help, however.
"Bastila--"
"He used you, Revan. He used my love for you. He took that love from me, and left me empty. He gave me the knowledge of what you had done, what you planned to do, and what would have happened, anyway. He showed me . . . he did things . . . thy all felt so real, like they had actually happened, but it was all illusion. He had me hating my own feelings by the end of it."
"Bastila, don't--"
"It was never you at all! It was me! It was my own weakness that allowed me to be so helpless! And I am weak and helpless once again!"
"Bastila!"
He used his free hand to bring her tear-filled eyes to his own. "You are not weak. You are exhausted. You and I have been through too much to be weak. But you are stronger than this. You can end this now."
Her head arched backward as her muscles clenched once more, allowing yet another wild scream to be released into the air. "I can't do this! I don't have the strength!"
"You do. You have mine."
He leaned down and kissed her tenderly on the lips, using the contact to transfer his own energy to her. It was much as her own attempt to save his life must have been in the beginning, back when their bond was forged.
And when he pulled away, he could see the resolve in her beautiful eyes.
The next few minutes passed quickly. The baby's head emerged within two more contractions, and with one final, mighty push Bastila cleared the infant from her body. She fell backward, exhausted by the exertion. It left Revan holding the baby in his arms.
The boy made few sounds, and Revan was fairly certain that newborns were supposed to cry very loudly. But the baby was breathing and healthy, and the force rolled off him like light from a sun.
"Let me see him," Bastila said quietly. Smiling, Revan handed the baby to his mother. He still did not cry. He was simply content with his parents.
Her smile made up for the last few hours of terror, and as he watched her play with the baby's tiny fingers and toes, he knew this was what he wanted, what he'd truly been meant for his entire life.
The feeling he had earlier came back to him, and he looked out the hole in the ship once more. This time, there were about a hundred beings standing outside, all of them staring directly at him.
He stood up and their eyes widened, but they moves. He sensed them in the Force, but sensed no hostile intentions. In fact, they were like the Force itself: calm, steady and constantly moving.
Yet they all stood still.
They were a short, human-looking people with tanned skin and well-built bodies. They covered only the necessary areas of themselves with an earth-tine fabric, yet apparently had the skill to produce beautiful adornments for their shoulders, arms and feet. It reminded Revan of primitive armor, but he felt that wasn't its function.
One of them, the most adorned and oldest-looking one of the group, stepped forward.
"A'a netjer! Tjen em a bew? Tken em-tjen?"
"I'm sorry," he said. "I don't understand what you're trying to say."
"Tken em-tjen em netjer?"
He noticed that he could feel the man's words that time, that he got meaning from it less through understanding and more through the emotional currents that ran through them.
And he found he almost understood.
"No, I am not a god." The leader tilted his head a bit, then nodded.
Bastila moved beside him, peering out from her leaning position to find out what was going on. When she emerged, fixing her gaze upon the group, the collected mass gasped.
It's her eyes, he realized. They've never seen eyes like hers before.
"Sepnetsu! Ini-en hena'resh!"
"What?"
I think he just welcomed you, he thought to her.
Er . . . that's wonderful. What do I say back?
Revan pointed to himself. "Revan," he said. Then he pointed to his wife. "Bastila."
The crowd was quiet for a moment. The leader then pointed to himself. "Calle," he said.
The baby squirmed in Bastila's arms, and as he wrestled free of his coverings, the people could see what she held. Again, a gasp went through the crowd.
"Sepnetsusa! Reshwet!"
The group started celebrating immediately, and he understood that they were bestowing some sort of honor title upon them. Revan considered their talks closed for a moment and sat down upon the deck.
Bastla leaned upon his shoulder, still exhausted. He took the boy from her arms andshe closed her eyes. He bent his neck to place a kiss upon her forehead, then cast his gaze downward.
He placed one of his hands upon the baby's tiny, cornsilk-covered head. He was smaller than expected, but miraculously perfect despite his early arrival. The boy opened his eyes to his father for the first time, and Revan understood why the natives had been so amazed.
The boy's eyes were the same color blue as his mother's.
A single word ran through his mind, and he felt Bastila's approval before she drifted to sleep.
"It's nice to meet you, Rinshan. We've been expecting you."
----
And, finally. . .a handful of responses:
SnackFiend: Actually, those are your words. :)
Tinuviel: Revan's not good with words. It's all force channeling. Oh, and when are you updating A Jedi's Secret?
DragoonKnight: How was the roast?
There are many more of you that have been giving me feedback, and I have to thank you for that. As I said in the beginning, it is not necessary…but it had been appreciated. Thank you.
Up Next: Lake Placid. Wait, that's not right. . .