THE REAWAKENING OF REVAN

by SuperMudz

Until he had been… "reawakened", he didn't even realise he was any different from the rest. That he had a connection to the Force. He had hints, for certain, dreams – the feeling that something was out of place. But otherwise, he was every bit the raw Republic soldier he appeared. Even his memories… he really believed he was a… he laughed… a non-descript rim explorer from the outer reaches, who had signed up to be a part of something greater.

It was a great joke of the universe at his expense, but also in a strange way, a kind of gift. He wondered if it was like that for all sentient beings. He still did not know why some felt the call of the Force and others did not.

He shouldered the blaster rifle, realising with a slight smile that bordered on a smirk that he didn't need it. The instincts were coming back to him, the old instincts, not just of himself but of the training handed down from masters that stretched back millennia, not just of the Jedi but the Sith order too. An odd quirk of fate – two polar opposite lives, one from the other, but then… it had just been wiped away. He was his own child, in a very strange sense, but one given a very strange second chance.

He watched Bastila, thoughts flitting through his mind as he tried to make sense of her. Of himself. She had… rescued him… in a sense. She had been there to slay him. He winced as the memory came back. He had put aside all other emotion, he could feel that much, and struck out at the enemy as he knew he should. No hesitance, no fear – not even her beauty shook him, for many Jedi, many people, were beautiful.

But then the memory would stop, and he'd wonder, was there something more? As he remembered more, the weapons and tools of a… Jedi or Sith, he didn't know, also were coming back. And he tried to use them to peel away the layers, reach through what was false to what was true.

He had still forgotten much, but this journey of rediscovery as it turned out to be, at least gave him the chance to find out, and free of the trappings of either past. Bastila had given him that chance.

The enigmatic woman, who looked and moved like a royalty of the Jedi, didn't glance back – and he fought back a feeling of disappointment. Did he feel a connection with her? Did he have the right to ask or want any such thing? She was important to the Jedi, and despite what he was… she could be more important than he was. He had left behind that mask and its promise of power.

If he were ever to choose to take it up again… It didn't matter…

It made him unique, he knew. Many who fell to the Dark Side did not return, he knew – but he had been… born again. Recreated with no memory – completely freed of its hold, given choice once more to decide his fate under new circumstances. To wonder at the person he had been and wonder what remained for the moment that he did not remember. And to wonder what would happen when he did?

That thought had caused him a moment of dread a time or two, so he almost was reluctant, holding back, carefully guarding against it – because of the fear of what it might make him, regardless of what he willed. Would he simply become that person again, and this new life would pass like so much shadow? What would that mean for the people around him? And was he an automaton, to be so imprinted and rewritten?

Bastila had taken his memories. And although he was not at peace, it comforted him to a degree. For she had chosen peace rather than death, as he well deserved from at least her perspective. And maybe his own. It was an act of love, for such the Jedi were known for. He didn't think he had ever witnessed it so, however.

Strange for so much to remain forgotten.

(*)

TRIAL AND ERROR

They cut through the jungle. The speeders. The troops. The tanks. Led by their foremost hunters.

Revan led Bastila and her Republic troopers away from them, pressing deeper into the jungle. They remained hidden until the enemy patrol had passed. The Sith were still searching for them, even here on this forgotten moon with no name. But the Force had drawn them here – even Bastila had felt it – and they had been compelled to make the short trip here. The Ebon Hawk was well concealed, and Bastila had a larger Republic cruiser waiting just one short hyperspace jump away. It had been some reckless and undefied fortune that Bastila had found her reinforcements so close by.

At last they found it. A place that was heavy with the mystic airs of the ancient – but of the Jedi or the Sith? The initial construction he saw was antique enough that it held design aesthetics that seemed in common with both – perhaps before the schism that had created the divergent paths.

He had found a signal. For some reason the device only worked with him. It seemed he had left himself a trail of sorts – perhaps he was his only guide. What odd and unconscious foresight he must have had. He frowned – at least he believed so. There had been no sense of precognition in that fight on the bridge – Bastila had clearly taken him unawares…

They followed the signal.

It was guarded. Revan exchanged a short conversation with Bastila, and decided to attempt diplomacy first. There was a chance his half-remembered past would come in handy, especially now.

The Sith saw him and challenged him, for Revan was in fairly non-descript garb. Sith, he felt amusement for a moment. The man had no connection to the Force, and yet he wore the name like the uniform of his masters. Me, he realised again with a sudden shock. Not just a short time past, this man had served him – Revan had been his ultimate commander.

Such a strange fate the Force must weave. But now, without the apparels and confirmation of his rank, he was just a stranger – but he would try.

The Sith did not lower his guard as Revan first attempted to persuade him he was an officer. Frustratingly, the details slipped past him, details he might have needed to convince the man. Perhaps if they had stopped to learn more about the Sith patrols.

"I need to see your authorisation," the man insisted, but at least he didn't seem to disbelieve him, which was a good start.

"I don't need authorisation, I am the authority," Revan snapped in reply, feeling the Force move through him, but yet an uncertain thing. Perhaps where it failed, confidence would succeed.

He lifted his blaster. "I don't think you're supposed to be here." Was all the guard said.

"Would you defy the will of the Force?" he pressed, and pushed with his command of the Force. The trooper blinked, in confusion it seemed, but his pistol did not waver.

"Maybe it's the will of the Force that the foolish perish," the trooper sneered. He had little time to add to the comment however as the first blaster shot was made, whizzing just over his head.

Revan whirled, and saw something unfortunate had occurred. The patrol had returned. Several more bolts lashed out, and the Sith trooper that had stumbled across them was quickly put out of action. With the Force, he tried a different tactic – raising a hand suddenly he slammed the suddenly stunned guard back against the tree with the Force. He turned and shrugged with a smile at Bastila. She rolled her eyes, clearly not needing to say it.

Philosophy from a grunt, just what I need, he thought even as he went into action. Overlooking the fact that in a sense, he was also "just a grunt". Revan felt a rush of misfortune, he supposed he should have attempted to push on a weaker point, if he had known any. His strength with the Force apparently had much yet to return.

So the Sith believe in any case. And the thought gave his mind pause, even at this crucial moment. So what did he believe?

"Quickly, inside," he told his waiting allies, who agreed without hesitation.

Using the Force, with an instinct as old as the Sith, he opened the temple as he had done once before.

Bastila was coming into his mind more and more often, of late, although she had always been a distraction of sorts. It had not mattered because she was in fact the focus of their mission as Republic soldiers, as he had followed or been guided by Carth. The soldier himself had remained on the ship to co-ordinate their efforts there.

Obnoxious, but beautiful, and with a fiery, attractive spirit. He supposed he simply found her wilfulness obnoxious, but it was also why he liked her. She wasn't afraid to follow her own path, irritating as it was. And she had bested him. Against armies of both light, darkness and the unbridled warrior heart of the Mandalorians he had fought and commanded legions of his own, cutting an unstoppable swathe through the enemy – until she had boarded with her Jedi and confronted him. That was where his victory had ended.

He wondered – if he had not lost his memory – would it have been a painful lesson for him? A humiliation? Perhaps he would have been changed regardless.

He was absorbing his memories, but slowly, and that was just as well because each new memory brought much to consider. He had planned for fleets and strategies – but reclaiming one's own soul? He did not think there were any who were prepared. But among that, at least the Jedi were the ones with knowledge. With the Sith, there was only power – he would not find the knowledge he sought there.

But he had been Jedi once already, and then a Sith.

But if there was any hope, he believed it was with Bastila. At the least, he had allied himself to her cause. If he had sins to pay, he would pay them sooner or later. How much had he learned as a Sith? And so what was he? More Jedi or Sith? Bastila seemed to think it was his choices now that mattered – but he still wondered about the nature of the path he had followed, however divided and vacant.

What was he, really? The person they needed, he hoped.

The temple held nothing. It was dangerous to remain even for a strategic hold-out. They moved on. There were other places to search, and even a negative helped him to narrow it down.

(*)

THE REPLACEMENT OF MEMORY

He saw skeletons. And with the certainty of memory and the flash of prophecy, he knew it wasn't just Jedi. He saw Sith – and others… There had been a battle here. He had been here. He could feel the memory of battering rain, strange, as if super-imposed over the present. And then it faded, and he felt the grip of the Force relax on his brain.

"What is it?" she asked, a braid of hair falling over one slim shoulder, an unconscious happenstance. Again he was reminded how beautiful she was.

He paused a moment, letting the soft dirt fall apart under the thumb of his glove. And then spoke.

"Just a memory…"

THE END