A/N: My sincere apologies for the lateness of this chapter! It simply did not want to be written; it's still not quite there yet, if you know what I mean, but I've fixed as much as I think I can without breaking my brain too much. We're really close to the end now, and trying to untangle the relevant plot tangles is a bit stickier than I'd anticipated.
XXI. Darth Malak
Juhani peered through the viewport into the small room. Val lay on the small bed, her chest rising and falling slowly, as if every breath was another battle. The Mandalorian sat near her, unmoving.
"She is a strong woman," said the blue alien, Dreln.
"You knew her well - before...?"
"I did," he affirmed. His dark blue skin and disturbing red eyes made it difficult for her to read his expression, but Juhani thought she saw sadness there.
"What was she like? Revan - before she became Val?"
Two days before...
The Sith assault broke against a wall of Mandalorian iron.
As the last Sith trooper fell, Carth's precision pistol took out the Rakata battle droids. "They sure didn't make very good droids," he remarked as the last droid collapsed, its spidery legs flailing in every direction.
Val dealt with an injured enemy before he could rise again, then indicated the eerie, silent watchers lining the corridor. "Why build machine intelligences, when you can capture living minds to do your work?" Each statue stood on a short pedestal, liquid vulancis running in narrow channels beneath them along the base of the wall: black blood flowing through the veins of the station. Some pedestals stood empty, and Val wondered if the Rakata had eventually run out of slaves.
She looked around, comparing their current position with the holomap of the station she'd memorized. "This is where we jump off," she said. Juhani and Bastila weren't far away, but their minds were frighteningly quiet.
Zaalbar and Carth exchanged nods of respect and encouragement. Canderous gave Val a long look, as though promising something.
One of the Chiss separated from his squad, and came to join them. "I'm Cazen. Aristocra's orders, I'm your support."
Val bit back what she really wanted to say, and thanked him. Apparently Dreln didn't trust her not to hare off on her own - he knew her too well.
The passages within the Star Forge snaked through a labyrinth of statuary-lined corridors, ramps opening over thousand-meter drops, and large galleries crowded with yet more sable Rakata.
They came on another room, ubiquitous black fountain bubbling in the center; beside the pool there was an odd board or table, empty but for a series of broken straps.
This chamber was populated, not only with strange alien statues, but also with what looked like they had once been humanoid. Cazen swore softly, the first time Val had ever heard one of that stoic species display less than perfect composure.
The Aristocra had mentioned missing units stationed on the Star Forge; now they knew what had become of them. She wondered if any of them would make it out alive to bring him the bad news.
The Chiss soldier looked at them, but Val got the feeling he wasn't finding what - or maybe whom - he hoped to. He cautiously touched one of the black sentinels, then drew away with another pained curse.
"Are they real?" he asked Val. "Are they... them?"
He cocked his head as if listening to half-heard music, drawing close to the central pool where the liquid vulancis burbled softly.
"It's really them," Val confirmed sadly. "The substance... it fossilizes, crystallizes, whatever you want to call it - your body, your internal organs, your entire nervous system - the bioelectrical signals that make up your knowledge and memories are preserved."
He looked at her sharply. "They're still alive in there?"
She nodded. "I'm sorry. There's nothing we can do for them."
Cazen's alien face hardened. "Which way from here?"
Val closed her eyes and extended her senses. "They were here," she said, "in this room." She looked at the table again, and an echo of pain made her hand cramp and twitch. "Something's happened to them, to both of them."
She felt out again, searching. Val could feel Bastila now - or was it Juhani? - but now it was Bastila again. Their two minds seemed to have become so intertwined that Val couldn't tell them apart. What are they doing? Where are they?
The corridors were quiet, deserted except for the occasional obsidian sentry. Val felt the pull of Bastila's desperation urging them on. Somewhere beneath that, Juhani's voice whispered Hurry, hurry, making Val's heart hammer and skip.
Something else stirred in her mind, a dark force that threatened to undo everything she'd worked for, hoped for.
Dreln's face shifted into something that could have been a small smile. "Revan was strong. Logical. Unemotional. Highly intelligent. Quite an extraordinary sentient."
"For someone not Chiss, you mean?"
Dreln acknowledged that with a sardonic nod.
Juhani blinked doubtfully. "That... doesn't sound much like Val. She was always laughing, or crying, or trying to think up some bright idea - which usually was not very bright after all. She was not... not as intelligent as Revan, I think."
They came at last to a vast chamber, the largest they'd found yet. Some quick mental calculation brought Val the realization that they were now at the heart of the Star Forge.
Though this had to be the central control, there was no instrumentation, nothing to show how the station might be operated. But Val knew the computers and technology behind the Star Maps were primitive, for the Rakata.
Bastila and Juhani were close now, along with the menace boiling through the Force.
Solid vulancis statues stood guard at evenly spaced intervals around the room. Veins of liquid black pulsed between them, running in thin channels that cut a mesmerizing pattern in the deck. In places where the pattern was broken, where no figures stood, there waited instead pedestals inset with small pools of liquid obsidian, anticipating future occupants.
"They're watching us... aren't they?" Cazen remarked, his voice faint, his mind seeming light years away. Zaalbar gave a low rumble of concern. The feeling of threat grew stronger and colder.
Val felt the figures around them whispering in her mind, pleading with her to run, pleading with her to stay - to join them. She wandered through them, touching them, accepting the pain each contact brought.
At the center of the enormous glyph was a circle of statues. Several humans, a male Twi'lek, and a small, stooped figure with outsized ears. They didn't look like they had struggled; instead, they seemed... accepting. As if they'd known what was to happen, and had agreed to it.
They'd been captured, not killed - but her teachers had been so powerful in the Force! How could this have happened?
This shouldn't have been possible, her Revan voice said, and Val agreed. Jedi didn't go meekly into the black. Did they?
"The Force was strong with them," a harsh voice said. "But their power feeds me, now."
Somehow Val had known that this would come to pass, was meant to come to pass.
He still bore those tattooed horns on his scalp, a youthful indiscretion that had earned him disapproving stares among the Jedi, but provoked startlement and fear in what Darth Malak had always considered "lesser beings." And his jaw - the jaw that Revan herself had mangled and broken when he had first challenged her - the clumsy metallic implant replacing his lower face as well as his vocal chords was as disfiguring as she remembered.
For a long time, Revan hadn't let herself believe that his once-rakish looks had been the foundation of her friendship with him; hadn't acted on her attraction to him until long after they were both no longer Jedi. By the time Revan and Malak admitted the feelings they'd once had for each other, though, it was far too late. Every kiss she'd shared with him had been a calculation.
More explosions sounded in the depths of the station, coming closer now.
The distraction was enough. Malak ignited his lightsaber, Val stepped in to meet him, and twenty years of memories, of friendship and mutual respect and shy hints towards something more fell away into ashes.
I've been here before.
The Force itself rose up against her, channeled through Malak's sheer strength and will, channeled through the Rakatas' dark side technology. Val tried to hang on to the Force, but it had been stolen from her, shaped into something monstrous.
Vulancis whispered sickening promises. Someone screamed, but she couldn't spare a glance, not with a blood-red dual blade inches from her throat, grey eyes once full of hope and determination now glazed over with hate.
Val tried to hang on to the light, but it was so weak here. "I'm sorry," she said, and shoved Malak away with a frantic pulse of the Force.
He caught himself easily, laughing. "Sorry? What, sweet Valena, are you sorry for? Do you regret not dying when you had the chance? Or perhaps you have discovered that it was Jedi lies, always Jedi lies, that created you!"
He closed again, and Val defended again in a flurry of desperate blows and Force-assisted parries.
Laughing, he backed away, reaching out one hand; dark power flowed into his fist from one of the pools, and Malak seemed to grow somehow, become more solid, all the gravity of a small black hole pulling reality into him.
Val's mind shattered - every time she had doubted herself, or done the wrong thing, every time someone had gotten hurt because of her. Darth Bandon - the boy that had been Darth Bandon - died again and again, pitiful Selkath victims cried out from where her lightsaber had left them in pieces.
Malak laughed at her tears, and grew in the Force again, bloating himself on the Star Forge's power.
"Why do you still fight for those pathetic creatures of the light, when you could take up the mantle of the dark side again so easily!"
Black stones trembled on a black sand grave. Something was inside, digging its way out, and it would come looking for Val.
It was all an illusion, but Malak was so much stronger than her - too strong for her to cut through the horror, too strong to defeat alone.
On the far side of the galaxy, three figures appeared. Two were injured, while the third walked stiffly and held a blaster rifle to cover them. They wove behind stars, through the scattered statues; Val couldn't take her eyes off her opponent, but she knew HK-47 had captured Juhani and Bastila.
On the other end of existence, a single armored figure appeared, and then another, and then a whole group. Suddenly she was there again, inside the Star Forge, her memories swept back into her mind where they belonged.
I'm more than Revan, she told herself, and I'm not alone!
She looked at Malak and saw the shadow of an old friend, and she smiled.
"Your first mistake," she told him, "was in thinking that the Val personality came from the Jedi."
Dreln glanced at Juhani, meeting her gaze with his crimson eyes.
"There is much of Revan in your Valena - and much of Val was in my Revan, though she always tried to tuck those parts of herself away. She never put much stock in emotion, as much as that Sith code she went on about praised 'passion'. Quite admirable. Used her emotions, yes - but I think she understood that giving in to them would have made her weak, made her easy prey."
"Prey for what?" Juhani asked, discomfited. "Val made it this far!"
Dreln's eyes glowed in the dim light. "Perhaps not for what, but for whom."
Cazen was still screaming.
He broke away from Zaalbar, who had been trying to restrain him, and ran wildly through the confusion of statues.
Malak laughed, and attacked again, using Val's horrified distraction to beat her down. His lightsaber clashed and growled against her own, and she tried to reach out to Cazen in the Force, but found herself laid out on the floor, parrying one-handed as she scrambled away from Malak's red blade.
"Val!"
"No! No! Zaalbar, Canderous stop him!"
Something burned through Valena. Her lightsaber clattered to the floor, its blue blade extinguished, and rolled away.
A searing red brand pinned her to the floor, stealing her breath. She heard the awful sound of a man weeping, and looked for Canderous, but her eyes settled on Cazen instead.
The Chiss made a noise like a wounded reeku bird, raising his hand to touch a statue resembling himself. Brother? Son? Val wasn't sure it mattered anymore. Cazen's face cleared, and he nodded, then walked over to an empty pedestal.
Juhani and Bastila had collapsed to the floor, watching as Cazen coughed and shuddered. The Wookiee tried to pull him away - but vulancis had already taken Cazen's legs, and his shrieks were stifled as it climbed, as his heart and breath and finally his mind were taken from him, captured and preserved forever.
Val tried to close her eyes, but even that was beyond her.
Canderous stood horrified, his face grey and sickened. He took a step toward Malak, but stopped, clutching his head as the Sith Lord's dark visions began to assault him in turn.
The pain was overwhelming, that red slash of hell still boiling through her. Val wanted to scream, tried to concentrate on breathing. Someone was trying to tell her something, but there were too many voices, too much blood and horror.
"Surrender, Revan. You may survive the wound. I shall spare you, and your friends. You shall know life eternal, the peaceful slumber of the Star Forge."
Go away, she thought, and just let me die.
Malak took a cautious step away, the vicious sizzle of his lightsaber pulling out of Val's body. The others were closer now, and he gestured toward them. "Droid! Bring the captives here!"
"Affable agreement: Of course, Lord Malak."
"Sometimes," Dreln said, "it seemed that there was only one person Revan truly feared."
"You are speaking of Malak?"
"Malak? No. I believe she only truly feared... herself."
She stared up at him, trying to think through the agony in her gut, trying to reconcile the memories crowding her mind - his innocent laugh, the light in his eyes, the way he used to look at her when he thought she couldn't see him.
Canderous was screaming. Soon he would be like all the others she had ever known and loved.
Master Zhar. Master Vandar. Master Vrook. Master Dorak.
Mission and Jolee.
Cazen, whose full name I never learned.
Her mind touched vulancis, and she heard their voices again.
Canderous had fallen silent now, collapsing to the floor, but Val found herself strangely calm. Somehow she found strength, and her lightsaber rolled back into her hand. The answer was there, had always been there. She wanted to laugh, but it hurt too much.
What was it that Master Zhar had told her, so long ago back on Dantooine?
A Jedi who loves greatly can twist the Force as surely as one who hates greatly.
She reached into the Force, and twisted.
Juhani and Dreln watched as, in the small medical bay, the Mandalorian bowed his head.
"He seems to care for her a great deal," the Aristocra observed.
"Of course," Juhani said. "We all do. Did you not care for Revan?"
He coughed. "Revan... did not encourage warm feelings in her companions. She was utterly cold, utterly ruthless. Sticky things, attachments. I was under the impression your Jedi Order forbade such emotions?"
The Cathar laughed. "We are none of us the Jedi that we were," she replied.
Val found her strength again and rose weakly, her sweat-slick lightsaber unlit and uncertain in her hand. "Do you remember when I kissed you, that night on Malachor Five?" She drew on the memory, handing it to Malak like an unexpected gift. "I never told you, but it took me two weeks to work up the nerve to do it."
He looked confused, startled, and unsure. "Revan..."
"Please," she whispered, and gave him Revan's memory of his smile. "Alek," she said - and he was there with them, that hopeful young man talking about doing what no one else wanted to, beating back the invasion, saving Taris. He'd been a hero to her then. She gave Malak the light in his eyes, the way his mouth moved against her hand months later, somewhere under a triple moon.
Darth Malak stood frozen.
Val took a wobbly step towards him, reached, touched. Her fingers stroked the cold metal where his strong jaw should have been. "I wish I had never done that to you. I wish we hadn't lost each other." Her vision blurred with tears, and it was as if his face was whole again. She shared that with him, too, and his gloved hand came up, tentatively, to touch her hair.
Pain is power.
"I wish you hadn't forgotten why we had to do what we did."
Somewhere, a blaster shot rang out, then another. Glazed, half-closed eyes snapped open to stare at her. Her lightsaber pressed against him like a kiss.
She thumbed it to life.
Juhani looked at Bastila. Bastila looked up at HK-47. The droid - his blaster rifle still smoking, still aimed at Darth Malak - looked over at Canderous, who was rising carefully to his feet. It almost seemed as if the droid were smiling.
"Suggestion, Lord Malak: Press your nonextistent lips to my posterior carapace."
The Sith Lord gasped for breath, his eyes rolling wildly; he tumbled to the ground, his legs kicking out reflexively against the shock and pain of his terrible wounds. Juhani felt the Force heave and shudder, and then Malak was flying across the room to land next to her - next to another empty pedestal.
"You won't die, Malak," Val hissed, one hand pressed to the wound burned into her stomach. "I can still use you. You're strong in the Force, stronger than all these Jedi Masters you enslaved. I hope you enjoy eternity with them."
She heard it, Juhani was sure she heard Malak's whisper.
"Why... couldn't the Jedi... have saved... me?"
Val staggered under an unseen blow, tears still streaming. For a moment she looked hesitant, sorrowful. "I don't know, Squint. I wish they could have saved both of us."
The Force held Malak upright just long enough. He didn't cry out as the black took him.
"Perhaps Revan hoped that an emotional personality would be easier to defeat than anything the Jedi might have programmed her with," Juhani suggested.
"I imagine that she has had quite the surprise, then," Dreln quipped.
Bastila joined them, still pale but well on the mend. She linked one arm through Juhani's. "Will Valena live?"
"That is, perhaps, up to her," Dreln said. "And up to your Force."