The engines were cut and suddenly the only sounds were small jets venting from the shuttle's underside, creating downward plumes of white mist. The cloudlets swirled about Bastila's boots while the gentle pneumatic hisses covered the noise of Kashyyyk's nocturnal wildlife. It was night in Rwookrrorro, and the platform was lit only by its flickering torches and the running lights of the ship. It felt as if they were all alone. She tucked a wayward lock of hair behind her ear after she said his name. He instantly recognized the motion; it was one of her rare nervous tells.
Force, she was beautiful. His chest tightened painfully at the sight of her. So much was trying to boil up through his throat. Years of longing.
Her skin was a bit darker than the alabaster that remembered – had she had been spending more time in the sun? The golden tint to her flesh made those magnetic, blue-gray eyes stand out all the more. Her hair was quite a bit longer than it had been when he left. His hands visibly twitched – only once, before he brought them under control – with the desire to bury themselves in that silken waterfall that cascaded over her shoulders. Gone were the twin pigtails of the Padawan prodigy, replaced by the thick tresses of a queen. And the natural red highlights, the ones that he had only ever seen in direct sunlight and only upon close inspection, they now glowed a noticeable warm hue against the dark shine of her brown waves, even in the lamplight of the platform.
Gone also were both the arrogance and insecurity of her past, along with the shame and humility she had worn as a plain badge after her fall. Her dark umber robes did nothing to hide the poise and confidence of an earnestly and faithfully honed Jedi Master. The lightsaber at her belt, the levelness of her steely gaze, the inscrutability of her aristocratic features – these all testified to a woman who was unconquerable.
He missed the arrogance, though, and the way it had driven him mad.
There had been times during his desolate sojourn that he wondered, could he still love a woman that he hadn't seen in years? The topic had even come up in one of the many conversations (debates, interrogations, torture sessions) with Scourge, in those dark and lonely days of imprisonment while they had stumbled foolishly and deceitfully through considerations of philosophy and government and the Force.
Force, did he love her.
He loved her now as much as he ever had, and he would love her until he died, and then he would continue to love her from the next life. And every moment before he could hold her in his arms and tell her that was going to be hell.
But for now, he did not take a single step.
Bastila opened her mouth as if to say something, but then she stopped; her lips settled back into a compressed line. She was appraising him as well – perhaps she find his appearance odd? He wore no robes or other garments characteristic of the Jedi Order. The only things that resembled the clothing he'd left in ten years ago were his boots. He wore black pants that fit snugly, an equally dark shirt beneath an armored-weave tunic with thinness that belied its stopping power, and a plain gray jacket. His hair was the same close-cropped raven mess that it had been, though he supposed it had some gray now. Torture tended to increase stress levels. And his face was probably worse for the wear.
"You're carrying a blaster now?"
Well. Yes, he was.
Whatever Revan thought his long-separated love might say to him first, it hadn't been that.
She sounded genuinely curious, perhaps a little judgmental, but her face suggested that maybe the question hadn't been carefully selected. He looked down at the holster on his right thigh. His lightsaber was a reassuring weight against the left.
"Uh, yeah. It comes in handy."
Bastila nodded, looking like she was trying very hard to bite her tongue. Right then he would've given anything for her to unleash the biting comments he knew were in there. Her sense was frustratingly blank in their bond, but he just knew she had any number of choice comments primed and ready to fire. It would have been just like old times.
He was utterly lost in this foreign relational landscape.
You knew what it did to her when you left. What were you expecting to come back to?
"Are you okay?" he asked dumbly. "You were transmitting a distress call."
"We're fine," she replied. "We were investigating slavers; things turned unpleasant."
"Oh. I'm glad you remembered the system we set up."
Bastila snorted and her eyes narrowed, and his heart pinged with excitement. "Kinrath pup!" She all but threw her hands up in the air. "I don't know why I agreed to that ridiculous call sign. Zaalbar didn't need a call sign! Do you know how utterly humiliating it was to broadcast that in front of two apprentices, not to mention Atton and Mira?"
"As I recall, you didn't think we should bother setting up any system at all among the old crew, but it sure saved your butt, didn't it?" He spread his arms wide and grinned magnanimously. "You're welcome."
She was a half-second from launching what was probably going to be an extended tirade against all his most infuriating qualities, but she stopped herself. His chest ached for the loss. She ran an agitated hand through her hair and only then realized it was down. He watched with some disappointment while Bastila produced a band from somewhere and tied her hair back into a single ponytail. Although not quite as thrilling as those loosely flowing cascades had been, its bouncy sway still provided an utterly enchanting distraction.
"I'm glad you've made it back," Bastila offered suddenly, earnestly, surprising both of them. They locked eyes for a second before she looked away.
"Yeah," he agreed, mouth suddenly dry. "I kind of doubted it was going to work out for a while there." A sudden flash of mental agony zipped past his eyes, a function of memory alone, an open wound that he had spent the last year trying to repress. He blinked rapidly and stared at the ground, furiously working to keep the usual tremors at bay, clenching his fists for strength. He refused to show it, not in front of her.
She could sense it, though. Their bond was certainly not what it once was but here, with only two meters between them, she could glimpse what he was trying to fight. He looked up and was swiftly carried away in the deep stormy gray seas of her worried eyes.
She still cared.
He could see that she still cared for him, to some extent at least, and that buoyed his mind on a raft of determination. He would earn her forgiveness; he would get her to fall in love with him again; he'd done it once before. Back then she had believed he was a monster in lurking, possibly to resurrect at any moment and destroy everything; if he could unknowingly beat those odds, he could certainly beat these.
"I missed you so badly, Bastila." Revan's eyes were completely open, his mental barriers utterly dismantled for her. He needed her to see how miserably he regretted the decision to leave her behind, how much he had suffered for it, and how much we wished he could undo it. "I hope eventually you'll be able to forgive me."
She stared at him for a minute. When she spoke, her voice was calm and even. "There's nothing to forgive, Revan. You did what you had to do, and I've made my peace with it. The Force led us down separate paths, and that's fine."
It was as if a silk curtain was suddenly torn violently from top to bottom, revealing behind it a meter-thick duratanium wall.
He hadn't had a fucking clue how much stood between them.
"That's it?" he asked incredulously. "You don't want to tear my head off and feed it to a rancor? You're not going to kick my ass across the sector like I deserve? We're just… fine?"
Bastila rolled her eyes. "It's not as if no time has passed between us. But we are still friends and allies, and we certainly work toge-"
"Friends and allies? Are you kidding me, Bas? We were in love!"
"We were in love, Revan!"
In the war, when the enemy had delivered a crushing blow, his response had always been the same because it always worked: go on the offensive.
"So you picked back up the ice queen routine, huh?" he snarled.
Bastila snapped back in kind. "Obviously in your time away you didn't learn –"
She stopped abruptly as footsteps reached their ears. Revan turned to see a Togrutan girl in pause halfway down the ramp, her mouth a silent 'O'. Just behind her was a petite woman with brilliantly red hair, looking a tiny bit amused by the exchange, but also glancing around the landing pad warily.
Bastila sighed and waved the two down.
"Varia, this is-"
"Revan," the girl breathed. Her obvious awe made him feel kind of weird; he shoved that down, along with the black clawing whirlpool that was painfully cracking apart his chest from the inside out. Instead, he smiled winningly and extended his hand.
"Revan Venachi." The girl shook it firmly and said nothing, just staring agog. "And you are…?" he prompted.
"Oh! I'm Varia Lor Onda. It's an honor to meet you, Master."
Revan forced a laugh. "I'm no master, so just call me Revan. I haven't been part of the Jedi Order in a long, long time." He couldn't be sure with those natural Togrutan face markings, but he thought she might be blushing. He could sense her defiant nature and see the way she wore her emotions on her sleeve.
He suspected he would very much come to like her.
"Don't tell me you're one of those apprentices that thinks everyone older than you deserves to be called master, even if they're so full of bantha poodoo that they've started growing the horns?"
"Revan!" Bastila snapped. His eyes shot to her, his face the picture of perfect innocence while he soaked in the way her eyes glinted and narrowed as if her stare alone could reduce him to a pile of smoldering ash.
It was glorious.
"I won't have you corrupting my pupil," she continued, protectively stepping closer to Varia.
"You know who was full of poodoo?" Revan said to Varia in a stage whisper, ignoring the rebuke, "your master's old master, Vrook."
Bastila spun to face Varia. "Go help Atton with post-flight," she tersely ordered. The girl nodded and turned back up the ramp, pushing Mira with her. Before she disappeared from view she turned to glance at Revan over her shoulder.
He winked; she grinned.
"Don't do that!" Bastila turned on him angrily the moment they were out of sight. "I'm a Jedi Master now. That girl is my apprentice, my first apprentice. I do not appreciate you undermining me in front of her."
"I'm sorry." He sincerely was. "She seems like trouble – in a good way."
"Yes, perhaps." Bastila relented in her irritation. "She was rescued from slavers only a few months ago. She was kidnapped from her family a few months before that. She and almost four hundred other Force-sensitive children."
That was interesting. "Who was slaving them?"
"The slavers are a sophisticated group, but we don't know yet who they are. And we don't know who they were being sold to."
Cogs started to turn in Revan's mind. The Sith were most likely behind this. It was a particular kind of evil that made his gut clench in horror and fury – stealing vulnerable children to corrupt and twist – and it was exactly Vitiate's style. Cruelly innovative. It would also explain some of the things he had witnessed in the Sith empire.
"Revan."
Bastila's voice prodded gently, that beautiful accent returning his mind to the present as quickly and effectively as a stone dropped into a shallow pool. He could feel her question coming before she said it, could anticipate the very words she would use; he just knew she had sensed the nature of those awful memories that had welled up in him like a noxious slick of oil bubbling through the dry, cracked earth.
"Why did you decide to return now?"
Revan found his voice suddenly weak. It was a simple question, with a simple answer. But he didn't want to give it.
"I, um…" he began reluctantly.
"Revan! There you are!"
Bastila observed a woman fast approaching them along one of the narrow hanging paths that bridged between the wooden landing pad and the village. She slowed as she got nearer, a belated realization seeming to befall her. Bastila could plainly sense her distracted anxiousness and knew she was here for one reason alone.
"Master Shan." The woman bowed. "It's an honor to meet you."
"And you, Knight Venachi," Bastila nodded in return and extended her hand, a smile gracing her features. She was truly happy to meet the woman who was Revan's sister and comrade-in-arms, and who so clearly had a durasteel grip on Atton's heart. "I've heard many good things – I hope we'll get to know each other better. Please call me Bastila."
"Bastila," she smiled and shook her hand. "And please don't call me knight or anything. I don't think the Jedi Order is really where I belong anymore. Just call me Aeryn." She extended her hand, and Bastila gladly took it.
"Atton is in the cockpit," Bastila mentioned almost casually. She was pleasantly amused to watch her crystal green eyes widen just ever so slightly before she politely excused herself and hurried up the boarding ramp into the ship. When she had disappeared from sight, Bastila turned her eyes back to the man that so confounded her. She watched turmoil move subtly across his features and through his eyes that gazed into space past her shoulder, before suddenly refocusing upon her.
"I returned because I'm weak."
The words rushed out dejectedly as if they were some admission of tremendous shame. After a moment of studying his face, she realized that's exactly what they were.
He was ashamed of… returning?
"I don't understand."
Revan sighed and turned from her for the first time since she had landed. He walked to the edge of the landing pad and leaned on the railing. She noticed his strong, calloused hands clenching into the wood. He took a deep breath.
"I found the nightmare, Bastila."
The nightmare. A chill shuddered down her spine.
The nightmare was what they had taken to calling the unnamable thing that kept him waking in the middle of the night, trembling and sweating, which had tormented him while it lurked just beyond the edge of memory. She had watched, powerless to help, while his eyes had darkened and shadows had formed beneath them, and he had lost his patience and balance. Ultimately, he had resolved to seek out the source of these waking and sleeping terrors.
Without her.
She pushed down the surge of tightly coiled anger, old and bittered, forcing herself to focus on the conversation at hand.
"You found it?"
"The Mandalorians were mere pawns," he began heavily. "They were manipulated and coerced into war with the Republic simply as a means by which to test us. And that test revealed much to our true enemy – the Sith Empire." He swiveled to look at her, and there was fire and determination in his eyes. "There is an entire Sith empire still out there, Bastila, and they have been waiting for centuries for the moment to strike. Exar Kun knew nothing of it, nor did Ulic Qel Droma or the Krath or any of them. Malak and I found clues during the Mandalorian War and we went searching for the answers."
His voice turned dark. "And we found them."
She watched and listened raptly, her blood running cold.
"This empire was created in the aftermath of the Great Hyperspace War by Vitiate, a Sith Lord who is cunning and ruthless and incredibly powerful. But what makes him more dangerous than any Sith the Republic or Jedi have ever faced is his patience. He has been waiting for the right moment to strike for over a thousand years, Bastila."
Her jaw dropped. "That can't be right, Revan. No species lives that long, except maybe Vandar's."
He laughed, dark and mirthless. "Oh, his life isn't natural. It's by Sith magic that he continues to extend his life, and there's no sign that he can't keep doing so forever."
"So when you and Malak found these Sith… what happened? Have you remembered that?"
"Yes." Revan hung his head. His voice was cold, choked with sorrow and regret. "I remember everything I ever did."
He seemed so young, admitting that. She was struck by how, even in his thirties, he had lived through so much more than anyone should. How old had he been when he became Supreme Commander – twenty-one? Twenty-two? Barely old enough to drink on many worlds. Certainly not old enough for the responsibility of winning a war, saving the galaxy, sending hundreds of thousands of soldiers to their deaths. No wonder darkness had claimed him.
She could feel the pain from memories he desperately wished would have remained lost.
Then an errant, flippant thought tumbled into her consciousness. He remembered. So that meant…
"Yes, I remember when we were both Padawans."
Dammit, her mental barriers had faded without her noticing. She cursed their bond.
"And I remember the way we fought." Revan was looking at her with suddenly bright eyes and a smirk that she loathed. It sent tingles up her spine of… anger? Yes, it had to be anger, the other option was simply preposterous. "Fighting with words, fighting with sabers," he continued with far too much confidence, "the flirting…"
"We did not f-flirt!" she sputtered. Her cheeks felt hot.
He shrugged arrogantly, eyes twinkling. "Whatever you say, princess. We can come back to that later."
He pivoted his gaze back out to the night.
"When Malak and I found the Sith empire, we tried to assassinate Vitiate." Revan scoffed at himself. "We were such fools, arrogant and brash from our victory over the Mandalorians. When we came face-to-face with him, he dominated our minds and enslaved us. But it only lasted until we'd left Dromund Kaas. That's when we devised our plans to find the rest of the Star Maps, seize the Star Forge, and return to prepare the Republic for the greater threat."
That bridled her instantly. "And did you seriously believe that the only way to prepare the Republic was to conquer it?" she challenged hotly.
"Yes," he answered, flatly and immediately. Sincerely. The levelness of it is what made it so upsetting to her. "We believed it had to be honed, forged like a blade to withstand the Sith onslaught. Purified of the corruption that fills the halls of the Senate." He looked her straight in the eyes. "I don't know that we were wrong."
That broiled her anger right over the shallow levees of restraint she possessed with him. The Revan she had known, the one missing his memories, had been absolutely vexed and horrified by the ruthless conquests of his past. This Revan sounded nothing like that. He sounded like… like a –
"You sound like a tyrant," she snarled.
Her rebuke didn't seem to register.
"Think about it, Bastila. My campaign of conquest was precise and efficient. I left local governments intact and largely independent so long as they were obedient to my overall objectives. I avoided bombardments, internments, executions, oppressive occupations –"
"Until Telos!"
She might as well have slapped him across the face. He looked winded. His shoulders sagged and so did his gaze, downward to the depths of the Shadowlands.
"Yes. Until Telos," he echoed. His voice dripped darkness, and it was all directed inward. She could feel his self-loathing. It made her arms itch to encircle him. She kept them firmly pinned to her side. "Malak lost his jaw," he muttered, absentmindedly rubbing his own.
"What?" Bastila wondered, but he waved the question aside and continued.
"After that things were darker for me. Before Telos, I believed that I had been following the will of the Force; after it, any clarity I possessed was gone. The Force is a spectrum, and the dividing line between light and dark is arbitrary… but there's no doubt I was deeply in the darkness, and very lost." He looked hard into her eyes again. "Until you saved me."
Bastila swallowed, utterly unprepared for the emotions that brimmed to overflowing in his eyes. She wasn't ready for the way his gaze and those words knocked her chest inward, made her stomach swoop. She looked away and scrambled to change the subject.
"You said you returned because you're weak." It was cowardly, to escape the moment by redirecting him toward his own perceived shortcomings, but she took it anyway.
"I found the Sith again, spent time gathering intelligence, studying the Emperor's moves, recruiting allies, and sabotaging his war plans." Revan threw his hands up in frustration. "But I didn't do enough."
Bastila pitied him. "You've bought us more time, the Republic can prepare-"
"War is upon us!" Revan interjected loudly. Bastila was taken aback at his outburst. "There is less time than you think," he continued after taking a deep breath. "The Emperor will attack now, sooner than he wanted to, because I have forced his hand."
Bastila's eyebrow arched upward at his claim, and she did not fail to sense the fount of guilt that was welling up within him. "How, Revan?"
"By escaping."
"You were captured?"
He nodded, eyes unfocused, staring off well beyond the Wookiee village that surrounded the landing pad on all sides. She considered the probability that Revan's escape would somehow prompt an earlier, perhaps even premature, invasion – why would that be the case? She didn't understand.
But then a stray thought alighted upon her mind, a tiny, painful flame against her consciousness. Was he wondering…
Would his death have been more valuable to the Republic than his life?
And that tumbled into the next horrifying thought – did he choose to escape in order to return to her? Did he choose his love for her over sacrifice for the greater good?
Did he doom them?
Her breath caught painfully in her throat; she took a deep, ragged inhale and dashed to lock those thoughts away lest he hear them… but it was too late.
"Yes."
His voice was as dark as anything she'd ever heard, the self-loathing radiating off him in a painful tempest.
"I may have condemned the Republic. If I had stayed, I would have bought more time. Maybe even centuries."
"Centuries?" Bastila scoffed, her compassion evaporating in a rush of irritation. This man was still as arrogant as ever. "Revan, even you can't have that kind of effect. You certainly haven't lost any of your…"
She found herself trailing off dumbly. His eyes…
They were so bleak, so haunted, and he was staring blankly through her. His mind was in another place right now.
"Vitiate has this… device." Revan licked his lips nervously. Force, had she ever seen him nervous? "It keeps your body in stasis, but your mind conscious. He uses it to keep his most special prisoners alive and trapped until they go insane." He gave a grim, hollow smile. "It's good for having conversations. And repairing torture wounds."
Bastila's mouth opened in a silent 'O'. She couldn't stop herself; she placed a reassuring hand on his arm, trying to convey her understanding, trying to show how her heart broke for him, knowing full well how meager a consolation her empathy was. She could never comprehend what he had been through in their ten years apart.
Revan stared at her hand like it was burning him, then shrugged off her concern. "He visited me often, kept me close to him, and I was able to influence his mind. I was slowing him down, making him more cautious and paranoid, but… when the opportunity came to escape, I still took it."
Another weary sigh. He rested his forearms over the railing, gaze again lost in nothingness. "Now he'll try to strike before the Republic has a chance to muster, and he'll use his new allies."
Bastila's mind had just processed this vague reference to allies of the Sith when a commotion came down the shuttle's boarding ramp. Varia was arguing about something with Mira, while Goran was being silently towed behind.
"Just give them space, okay? Geez kid," Mira said in a pitiful attempt to placate her. Her own face was distinctly brighter than Bastila had ever seen. Her reunion with Aeryn must have gone well.
"We were practicing in another room! They could have plenty of privacy in the cockpit!" Varia was arguing, but Mira still managed to shoo her down the ramp and towards Bastila with a clear this-is-your-problem look.
Revan approached Mira and offered his hand. "You must be Mira."
"And you must be the famous Revan," she replied as she grasped it.
"Thanks for watching my sister's back."
"It's kind of my shtick." Mira stepped aside to reveal the young Gotal behind her. "This is Goran, one of our new apprentices."
The attack happened in slow motion before Bastila's eyes. She watched Revan extending his hand to the boy, his entire demeanor transforming in a split second, snapping from calm to deadly, the orientation of his hand flicked from handshake-ready to fingers-up, open palm facing right at Goran.
The boy was sent flying backward at a horrifying speed.
He smashed against the shuttle's landing strut; there was a sickening thud and he was pinned there. His hands clawed frantically at the invisible force crushing into his ribs while Revan advanced on him like a bull Kath hound.
"How long have you been with the Jedi!?" he shouted. Rage boiled off him in waves that pulsed through the air, through their bond, and filled her with dread.
Mira didn't move, certain that she had no hope of doing a thing to stop the most powerful Jedi alive. For a moment, Bastila didn't move either. Then Varia's inconsolable screaming snapped her out of shock. She lunged towards Revan, reaching for her lightsaber –
Which was grabbed and twisted out of her grip suddenly. A strong hand grabbed her shoulder and spun her to meet the deadly serious gaze of two dark green orbs.
Aeryn.
"Master Shan, don't." It was both plea and warning. "This isn't what you think it is."
Something in that piercing stare was compelling; she felt her body involuntarily relax ever so slightly. She stopped moving, equally confused now by the effect Aeryn was having on her as she was by Revan attacking a defenseless boy.
Varia's shrieking stopped suddenly and Bastila twisted her neck to see Mira had captured the girl in a full-body hug, the crook of her elbow firmly across her mouth.
"How long!?" Revan bellowed. "Where's your villip? Did you tell them the academy's location?" Goran stopped struggling against the Jedi's grip on him, looked Revan dead in the eye, and smirked.
There was a loud snap as Revan used the Force to break his arm.
Goran didn't flinch or cry out.
He grinned.
What in the fucking hell was going on here?
"You think I'm impressed?" Revan taunted. "Not even close! I killed Hulan Lah – that's right, I killed the Warmaster's son. You're just an acolyte. Priests can tolerate more pain than you!" He spat on the ground and stepped much closer to Goran. "I've experienced pains that you can't even understand. Pains of the mind. The Embrace doesn't teach you that, does it?"
In a swift and sudden movement, Goran unnaturally twisted one wrist and barbs erupted out of his forearm, through his skin, towards Revan. He batted them aside angrily and effortlessly.
"Pathetic," he snarled. "Here I thought servants of Yun-Harla were masters of surprise and deception. You shame your goddess."
Goran howled out something in a completely alien language, something utterly unlike anything Bastila had heard in her entire life. A maniacal expression slid onto his face for a moment before it contorted into complete disfigurement and the rest of his body went slack.
"Dammit," Revan cursed, and uncaringly let Goran drop. He hit the ground with a limp, sickening thud. With horror Bastila's mind slowly comprehended that he was dead.
Had Revan just killed him?
She could hardly process what had just transpired, and then she saw something more, something that caused her mind to abandon the effort altogether.
Goran's skin was peeling back. Beneath it was a totally different face and body – sharp, harsh, demonic features. It was both humanoid and the most alien thing she had ever seen.
"What did you just do!?" she snarled at Revan, shaking off Aeryn's grip and lunging one step in his direction as if to strike.
"Well I didn't kill him if that's what you're implying," he shot back with far too much calm. She belatedly noticed that his maelstrom of anger was gone, its absence noticeable even behind those tense shoulders and sharp eyes. Had the rage been merely… protective? "This is the other nightmare, Bastila – the allies of the Sith."
He pointed to Goran's disturbing corpse. "This is the Yuuzhan Vong."
Atton watched the statistics trend out on the graph display as the diagnostic neared completion. The hyperdrive field guides had nano-fractures and the null quantum field generator was fused. Their shuttle wouldn't be leaving the star system without a complete overhaul of their hyperdrive systems. It was well beyond his ability to repair. He had heard that despite their primitive seeming home, the Wookiees were gifted technicians. Maybe Bastila's connection here could help them out.
In the meantime, he turned his attention to repairing the thrusters, starting with the throttling servos that he'd blown out during one of his last evasive tricks. He sensed the commotion outside but ignored it because it wasn't accompanied by any warning prickle of danger. The Grandmaster had it well in hand, he was sure; he didn't want to be around anyone right now anyway.
Atton was well into extracting the servo controller relay from beneath the copilot's station when he sensed her. She was a soft, summery breeze that whispered across the hairs on the back of his neck; a light, gentle, warm, irresistible whirlpool that slowly pulled him down. He could feel his typically immutable barriers quickly yielding to the merest caress of her presence. He was already giving way to her again, and damn if he couldn't summon the least will to fight it.
And damn her, because he knew that it wasn't due to any effort or intent on her part. It was just her, just who she was, and he was just who he was – a sucker.
He stood and turned to face the cockpit entrance, and the sight of her knocked the air from his pounding chest. She stood before him, hale and whole, long raven hair in that high ponytail she had always favored. Soft eyebrows were arched slightly, nervously, and damn he wanted to kiss them.
"Atton?" His name sounded so sweetly coming from her lips. It was a profound mystery that she should say his name like that.
"Aeryn." He nodded at her, pitifully trying to act casual. She was worrying her bottom lip and it almost killed him. "I'm glad you made it back."
Her verdant green eyes bored into his; they were uncertain and slightly amused. And full. They were full of emotion that thwarted any attempt to define. Was that why he understood it? Words had never been something he was very good at. Aeryn was a general and a leader – she could inspire great loyalty and bravery with her words; he'd seen her do it. But between the two of them, words had always caused more trouble than good.
When he took his first step toward her, she was already crashing into his arms. Whatever had been in his eyes had refused definition as well. And she had understood it perfectly.
He locked his arms around her so tight that it must've hurt, but she didn't complain. She sniffled and breathed deeply of his scent where her head was buried into his neck. Atton buried his face in her hair, luxuriating in the way it tickled his nose. He sighed achingly as her hands clenched at his back.
Aeryn's lips unexpectedly found bare skin around the collar of his shirt and a sudden heat rushed through him. He tensed involuntarily. She pulled back to look at him, and his heart turned to slag under the loving fixation of those dark emerald pools and the blissful upward curve of those full lips.
"Aeryn… I love you."
The words tumbled out and he was horrified, he didn't intend to be this vulnerable, he didn't know if she wanted to hear that, he wasn't ready, but… but he couldn't regret them.
Her pupils blew even wider, and then she was kissed him again, more passionately, more hungrily, ravenously, even. She drew her whole body up against his and whispered "I love you" over and over against his lips. His own kissing became sloppy from the stupid grin he wore.
Without warning, things shifted. The heat and tension between them redoubled. Her small hands un-tucked his shirt and found the skin of his back. Then his shirt and jacket were gone and she was running those hands over the planes of his chest and down his stomach, setting fire every they touched. In seconds he was out of his mind with need for her, his cock throbbing painfully, while he frantically worked to strip her robes and tunic; his face was against her neck, his lips were dragging down to her breasts. He hungrily mouthed a taut nipple, flicked it back and forth under his tongue, felt his vision swim as she moaned loudly and dug her nails into his shoulders.
He gripped the small of her back and absolutely devoured those magnificent mounds of soft flesh, grinning to himself at the arched her chest into him, babbling incoherently, urging him on, fingers tightly dragging through his hair…
The last clothes hit the floor and they landed heavily in the pilot's seat, too drugged with skin touching skin to maintain the least bit of grace. Aeryn was straddling him. She rose up and paused, her hands on either side of his face, looking through his eyes and straight into his soul. Sure that was bared for her as totally as his body. Then she dropped, taking him deep inside of her, and they both cried out.
Now he was the one babbling into the valley of her breasts, his whole body tremoring from such warm-tight-wet-complete.
Their union was fast and hard and desperate, Aeryn crashing down on him frantically, whimpering and dragging her hands from the nape of his neck down his shoulders to his arms and then back, over and over again, leaving trails of hypnotic, erotic tingles. The shakiness in those fingertips betrayed that she, too, was drowning in a deluge of pleasure.
"Aeryn…" he ground out, and even that felt positively slurred, "I'm… gonna…" he clenched at her hips desperately and hoped she got the message.
"Yes," she gasped against his her. "Yes, give it to me, g-give me e-everything!"
So he did. With a great cry his vision whited out and his whole body shook as he emptied into her. She unraveled upon him, greedily taking every bit while she clenched and seizured ecstatically, fingernails digging painfully and wonderfully into his scalp, her quiet screams drugging his brain into soporific euphoria.
When he had regained some sanity he placed gentle, hungry kisses down her arms, devouring her soft skin, and he felt her smile against his naked shoulder when he pulled her tight to him.
Aeryn was utterly drained from her journey in a way that hadn't set upon her until now, but it was catching up to her at the same time she was also aglow, sated, and utterly content.
She was the general who had been left behind, the Jedi who had been cast aside, but now she was home.
Bastila's horror continued to grow while Revan shared his knowledge of these aliens, these Yuuzhan Vong. Fanatical, xenophobic, practically immune to pain, and possessing a kind of technology (if that was even the right word) that the Republic had never encountered before.
And they were from another galaxy. She hadn't even believed the galactic perimeter could be pierced; all science pointed to the impermeability of the potent and chaotic magnetic, gravimetric, and radiation fields encapsulating their whirlpool of stars. They were only the advance force for a larger invasion that was still centuries away, but this was a passing mercy; their force still numbered in the millions.
"The Sith-Vong alliance won't last for long, but it may certainly last long enough to conquer the Republic," Revan explained, continuing to detail grim odds. "Vitiate foresaw their arrival and factored it into his calculations. He'll destroy them when he no longer needs them, but I also believe he will need them for longer now that he is being forced to strike early."
He spoke quietly so as not to be overhead by Varia, whom Mira was comforting on the other side of the landing platform. Goran's body had been placed inside an empty cargo container and the lid sealed tight.
"How did you know what Goran was, underneath that… ooglith masquer thing?" Bastila asked.
"The Vong have a unique feel in the Force. It's sort of… hollow, like their presence is incomplete somehow. If you learn to recognize it once, it stands out pretty strongly. Of course, that only helps if you're Force-sensitive. Those masquers can fool any sensor or physical exam, short of sampling blood or cutting them open."
"Can they shapeshift?"
Revan shook his head. "Not that I'm aware of. If they want to change forms they need to change masquers. The things are tiny when inactive, though – you could fit one or two in a pocket."
"Oh!" Bastila gasped as a chilling thought suddenly struck her. That ship that Jolee had seen, the one Carth went looking for… "Revan, what do their ships look like?"
"Kind of like ship-shaped asteroids. They look distinctly organic – there's all sorts of growths on them that make up their weapons, propulsion, and sensors. They don't use shields, but everything is covered in a layer of coral that makes some damn effective armor."
"Carth is out at the edges of known space right now, looking for a Yuuzhan Vong ship." Worry creased her brow.
"Where?" Revan sounded worried too.
"They left out of Kril'dor. The last time we talked, his task force was over forty parsecs west of Republic space. It's because of a vision Jolee and Vandar had," she continued, having anticipated his next question. "Their descriptions matched with the telemetry transmitted right before one of our frigates was lost in the borderlands. We all agreed that it was not a coincidence."
He leaned out over the railing, elbows resting on the rough-hewn worshyr wood. Bastila studied his strong jaw as it tensed slightly, and could see that he was deep in troubled thought. She studied his face, noting an unfamiliar scar below the ear. His eyes, even locked into the far distance as they were, still shifted colors as the lamplight danced, revealing flinty gold and green buried within hazel. She remembered her fascination with the way they changed by the light and by his mood. For everyone else, they showed warm but indecipherable sand or impenetrable stone.
For her, they had always revealed so much more.
Now, though, she couldn't decipher them. The colors were confusing and riotous. They had changed over the years. Or was it that she didn't remember how to read them?
Really, though, she hardly recognized him at all.
He was fully the man who had become the Dark Lord of the Sith and fully the Jedi who had left the Order to wage war against the Mandalorians. She had witnessed firsthand his ruthlessness not half an hour ago. She didn't sense the dark side about him, exactly, and yet…
He was a dark cloud pressing on her, a violent thunderhead that seemed ready to erupt at any moment.
He possessed simmering anger and hurt, and despair… and determination. Although she avoid delving into the specifics of his thoughts, she could tell the selflessness was still there, as well. He was hell-bent on making things right, somehow.
Yet he had just committed torture before her very eyes.
What was he?
Revan had shunned plain robes in favor of clothing more suited to the life of a smuggler or renegade. She disapproved, and yet… he did look rather dashing in the trim jacket and the pants that hugged the muscled bulk of his thighs and the curve of his tight –
"I miss Carth," Revan interjected into her thoughts, mercifully derailing them. "I've missed everyone. The last ten years have been like… like towards the end of the Mandalorian War." He shifted to look at her, still leaning against the railing. Those eyes brimmed with regret, she could read that at least. "I drove everyone away so my decisions wouldn't be influenced by concern for them, and so they'd be safe from association with me. Not a target. I even pushed away Aeryn and Alek. Attachments are dangerous when you're responsible for keeping the Republic intact; there are assassination attempts and political blowback from every judgment call you make because it saved or didn't save the lives of millions."
He exhaled heavily, morosely. "It's very lonely."
For the first time since she had known him, Bastila felt like she had some meager understanding of the Revan-that-had-been: Revan as the single greatest military leader of their generation; Revan as the controversial Jedi-gone-rogue; Revan as the far-too-young man standing between the Republic and defeat. The pressure would've been incalculable, the expectations as well.
Lonely hardly came close.
Surprising herself, her hand found its way into his larger one. His skin was warm and a little rough. He immediately returned her grip, twining their fingers in an embrace that felt more than a bit possessive to her; she allowed it anyway. It sent a riot of conflicting sensations into her arm and to her very core and her brain wanted it to stop, but she let the contact linger, watching as his eyes closed and a deep breath left his body. His shoulders relaxed and she could feel his tension decrease. How long had it been since he'd had the reassuring touch of someone that cared for him?
Probably about ten years.
She regretted the way her skin tingled and sparked where it touched his, and she studiously ignored the way the Force seemed to thrum contentedly about them.
After a minute of not-quite-comfortable silence, Revan released her hand and stood to his full height. "We have to get to Coruscant. We need to rally the Republic for war." He paused and grinned self-deprecatingly. "Kriff, I need a new routine." His eyes remained starkly empty of humor. He looked at the ship, the flickering lamps, back at her, like he didn't want to say whatever came next.
"So, will the Jedi stand with us?"
She'd known that he hadn't thought himself a Jedi before he had left, but this question made her feel a vivid demarcation between his former life and current, and for some reason that saddened her.
"The Jedi Order is still in hiding," she replied, a bit ashamed of her obvious stall.
"Stand with us in private, then," he countered, "until the war really starts. I'm sure the Jedi aren't rebuilding without some help from the Republic. You must have connections."
She nodded. "I can't speak for the entire Order yet, but I will help however I can. I don't doubt the warning you bring."
"Thank you." Their gazes locked. "I know that despite what I did, despite everything… I know that you are the person I want standing alongside me." She felt a dismissive comment rising in her throat while her eyes fled from his, but Revan waved her off. "I just mean as friends. As someone I trust. And –" he continued, that infuriating grin sneaking onto his face again, "as the powerful Grandmaster of the Jedi Order. I'm so proud of you, Bas. They couldn't have chosen more wisely."
She was blushing. She could feel it in her cheeks. Dammit dammit dammit. "Yes, well, it was…" She sighed, conceding defeat to her traitorous face. "Thank you." She studiously avoided his eyes. "I really should attend to Varia."
"Yeah…" Revan trailed off in thought. "Would it be okay if I apologized to her?"
"For what, undermining her master in front of her, or killing her best friend in front of her?"
"He killed himself!"
"Your methods were atrocious, Revan, but you were also defending us. I understand that. Still… an apology may be warranted."
"My methods are exactly what I want to apologize for. I could have kept an eye on him and waited until I could warn you. I just wasn't prepared for discovering a Vong stalking the woman I – um…" his words slumped off uncharacteristically.
Bastila refused to wonder what was left unspoken.
"I'm sure she would appreciate that," she answered.
They walked across the landing platform to the far side, where Mira and Varia sat side-by-side, feet dangling over the edge and arms resting on the lower rung of the railing. They were talking quietly.
"Varia?" Revan approached gently, his tone layered with soft kindness in a way that caused her heart to skip a beat. The young girl turned to regard him with angry, bloodshot eyes. "May I sit?"
She shrugged and quickly darted her gaze back to the forest. He copied her position, sitting a meter away. He was silent for a while. Eventually, he swallowed and started with words she suspected he didn't use often.
"I am so, so sorry." He looked at her, Varia looked right back, and Bastila felt a great rush of pride. "I should not have done that in front of you. I'm sorry for taking away your friend."
Bastila wasn't sure what Revan saw in her pupil's unwavering eyes, but it caused him to look away and find immense interest in the wood beneath them.
"Will you teach me?"
Revan's eyes snapped back up to hers. "To… detect Vong?"
She nodded and sniffled slightly before angrily scuffing her arm under her nose. "I don't want to ever fall for that again."
"Yes, I will teach you. Your master has agreed to accompany me to Coruscant – I can teach you on the way."
"We'll follow you to Coruscant," Bastila clarified, not at all certain that she wanted to be trapped in the Ebon Hawk with Revan for several days, and unequally unsure she wanted Varia to be left under his instruction for that long.
"Hyperdrive's shot, remember?" Mira reminded her.
Well, frell her luck.
"Then I guess we will have to join you on the Hawk," she stated unnecessarily. Revan stood again, looking like he was ready to fire off a retort for her obvious displeasure, but decided to keep it leashed.
"I have to complete arrangements with Zaalbar and his council of chieftains. It could take another day or two. The Hawk is on platform twelve. T3 is guarding it. He'll be thrilled to see you."
Bastila smiled. She did miss that little droid. He had always been very sweet towards her, albeit with a sassy flair that reminded her of Mission. "And HK?" She dared to hope that that wretched creation was in a pile of scrap somewhere.
"Sorry Princess, he's still around," Revan answered laughingly. "But I'm keeping him busy in the village as a translator for Aeryn." He pulled out his comlink. "Aeryn, are you ready to head back?" He stared at the device impatiently while waiting surprisingly long for her response.
"Yeah, yeah, be right there." Her reply was breathless, almost winded sounding. Bastila arched an eyebrow pointedly at Revan. He caught her look, then his face scrunched up painfully.
She laughed.
"These are strategy meetings," Revan continued after a moment. "You would probably be interested in them."
"Perhaps later. I am needed here first," she explained with a glance to Varia. The girl's gaze had returned to some dark point between giant tree trunks in the far distance. "I'll stop by later. I would like to see Zaalbar again."
"I'll see you soon then," Revan said, looking slightly disappointed but understanding. Bastila watched as he strode away down the suspended walkway until he was eclipsed by the trees. Then she let out a breath that she hadn't realized had been filling her lungs with lead. A moment later Aeryn rushed down the shuttle's ramp, waved a quick salute at Bastila, and hurried after her brother. Her hair was mussed and she had a distinct flush to her cheeks.
She sat down next to Varia, and her own boots joined the other two pairs dangling over the edge. The girl rested her chin on the rail and stared at her master forlornly. "Do you trust Revan, Master?"
Oh, Varia.
Bastila sighed sadly. Even her idealized belief in the fairy tale story between her and Revan was gone, lost in the course of just a single hour, destroyed by an act of brutality. The girl had been shorn of all her innocence. She resented Revan for it.
"I do." She wrapped an arm around her apprentice, who leaned her head into Bastila's shoulder. "I do trust him," she repeated, mostly, "but he will have to earn your trust as well."
"How do we know that Gor – that thing was evil?"
"Disguises are rarely used for good intentions," Mira piped up. "Someone who goes to so much trouble to appear as something else isn't looking out for anyone but themselves. And someone who would kill themselves before being captured is very dangerous."
"How do I know you're not Yuccan Bong or whatever-the-kriff they're called?" Varia sniffled.
Mira laughed while Bastila admonished her language. "Did you see the way Revan was looking at Bastila?" she asked. "Can you imagine that he wasn't on the highest alert for any other threats to her?"
Varia smiled. "Yeah, good point. He is so in love with you, Master."
Bastila huffed. "He said no such thing."
"He didn't have to," she retorted.
"His body language was screaming it," Mira added.
The Grandmaster stood. "We need to transfer our supplies to the Ebon Hawk," she said simply, and stormed up the shuttle's ramp, leaving the giggling apprentice and knight behind.
Mira found Atton in the engine compartment, inspecting the hyperdrive. "I'm pretty sure it's not going to get fixed by you."
"Yeah, I was just double-checking to see-"
"We're transferring to the Ebon Hawk and going to Coruscant with Aeryn and Revan," she cut him off. "Can you help me haul the utility bins?" Despite her rude interruption, she was looking at him with imploring eyes. She did not want to be trudging through a Wookiee village on her own.
"Sure," he answered easily. "Man, I can't wait to get my hands on that baby again."
"I bet you can't," Mira snickered. Humor was useful. It drowned out the sharp pricking in her chest.
"The ship," Atton glared.
Mira had feared that the thing lurking in the shadowy corner of her mind, the thing which she would never name or acknowledge, would manage to poison her reunion with Aeryn. But as she had crushed the taller woman in a fierce embrace and felt her heart flare with joy, those fears had been proven utterly false.
But it also didn't make quite everything okay.
"How's Varia doing?" Atton asked.
"Okay for now. Just keep her distracted."
Atton ran his hands lovingly over the pilot's yoke of the Ebon Hawk. Ooh baby, he had missed this ship. Nothing he had ever flown, save for fighters, matched her speed and maneuverability. And with her shields, armor, weapons, and engines, he'd choose her over the superior agility of a fighter any day.
There was a knock on the cockpit's threshold. Atton had heard the boots approaching and knew it was Revan. Chills crawled down his spine, but he stood, turned, and faced the man that had been his master in a former life.
Revan offered him an outstretched hand. "Revan Venachi. I've heard a lot of good things from my sister. It's a pleasure to meet you."
He shook the hand firmly, though the confidence in his grip belied the confusion on his face. "Atton Rand. Uh, do you not remem–"
The other man's intense gaze stopped him midsentence.
"I remember everything." Revan spoke quietly and seriously, and his tone conveyed some of the terrible weight caused by this burden of memory. "But I wish I didn't. These awful memories enable me to do the things I need to do, though, and protect the people that I love. It's something I understand we have in common."
Atton nodded. The regret, apology, and determination were all right there in his ex-master's eyes. He realized that he had never seen the Dark Lord's face – not in person anyway – despite having served him for years. There was no mask between them now, and the conqueror of half the known galaxy had offered his hand as equals.
"I heard you coming, but I didn't sense you," he said, rather lamely he thought. Relief seemed to flicker across Revan's face, however. "You'll have to teach me how to do that."
"Sure thing. Thanks for looking out for Aeryn."
"Thanks for bringing her back alive."
"It was the other way around." Revan paused, looked around the cockpit. "I'm told you're a heck of a pilot. Maybe you'll teach me some things."
"Sure."
This was fast becoming awkward and they both realized it.
"I'd better head back to the village – we were just taking a break from the planning sessions," Revan said and excused himself. When he was gone, Atton felt a wave of relief. If the man wanted to leave the past buried, that was fine with him. It was how he preferred it.
It was another twenty hours before the Ebon Hawk was finally pulling up its landing skids and rising upward, through trees and into the clear day sky of Kashyyyk. Atton was at the controls with Aeryn standing right behind him, steadying herself with a firm hold on the pilot's headrest. Mira was in the copilot's seat. Varia and Bastila were strapped into the two passenger seats on the left side, talking quietly, and Revan was in a seat on the right. He was sitting sideways so he could stretch his legs out across both seats and lean his back against the wall, appearing relaxed and absorbed in a datapad.
But really, he was studying Bastila and praying to the Force that she wouldn't notice.
Their bond wasn't as strong as it once was, so he might actually get away with it. Regardless, the potential risk of a tongue lashing was well worth being able to soak in her beautiful features. He almost hoped he would be caught, just to have her attention, just to see the fire in her eyes. She was really here, physically, actually within reach. She wasn't a vision or a painfully vibrant memory or a hallucination. She was flesh and blood and behaving unexpectedly which was wonderful simply because he always knew what the Bastila in his head was going to say, and that reaffirmed that this was reality.
Their interaction had been sparse since that first meeting on the landing platform. Bastila joined the last of the planning sessions, and her reunion with Zaalbarr had been exuberant, to put it mildly. The big Wookiee had practically crushed her ribs. But she had avoided speaking with Revan except as strictly necessary. He had tried small talk, but it seemed utterly ridiculous and forced. They had never engaged in small talk. Small talk was for people who didn't already know each other inside and out.
But that must be what they were, and the thought rang in his chest with a hollow, painful echo.
She had changed so much, he realized. He had anticipated that she would find him to be different. He had regained most of his memories and in doing so had seen and experienced and done things that were abhorrent to both of them, and that wasn't even including the things he'd done since leaving the Republic.
But he hadn't expected her to be so much more… reserved, and calm, and patient.
Bastila had become someone truly worthy of leading the Jedi Order. She had become that which she had aspired to be. He was proud of her, but he wondered if the woman he had known, the Bastila who was fiery and passionate and daring and impudent and arrogant – did she still live within Bastila the Grandmaster?
Soon they would talk, he knew. It would happen inevitably – they were two black holes swirling about each other, doomed by their own gravity to collide. She would ask questions, hard, blunt questions, and he would give honest, direct answers, and then… then she would see who he really was, now. How he was now the man he used to be, plus what he had become since.
And she would be repulsed.
He wondered whether the Bastila of today or the Bastila of old would be more sympathetic to his full, true past, but he knew the answer. Any sympathy from either of them would be a minute drop against the horror of his sins, and his willingness to commit some of them again.
He had faced many no-win scenarios in his life, and had always found a way to turn it into something better, at least, less terrible.
But what did that even look like when the goal was to win – or earn – someone's love?
They were just about to make the jump to lightspeed as Revan stood, abandoned his pretense of study, and left the cockpit. He would go sleep, he decided. His mind was weary and blood seemed to be moving sluggishly and achingly through his veins; rest in a safe location was a luxury that he ought to take advantage of while it lasted.
.
.
.
Author notes:
WHEW! This one took a long time to edit. It's the most emotionally involved chapter in Revenant, and the more the feels, the more I find myself reworking it.
So...
The Yuuzhan Vong. I went there. Hate 'em or love 'em (I kind of hate 'em), they make interesting bad guys. Yeah, I'm bringing back the crowd that killed Chewie in the New Jedi Order (what a mixed bag that series of books was) and I'm sorry, but also not sorry. The Yuuzhan Vong in my story are going to be different in some key ways than how the New Jedi Order books describe them. For one, they have Force powers (at least, they do 4,000 years before NJO). They are not quite as OP as they were in NJO. And their numbers are more limited, because this is the advance group of Vong conquerors - a reconnaissance en force, if you will. The rest of the billions of them are still transiting the void (sucks for them).
If you're not familiar with the New Jedi Order books, don't worry about it. Reading the summaries of the articles I link below will probably give you the necessary understanding. Knowing something about the Vong will help, but the NJO plotline itself is irrelevant - although I will point out that in the NJO era, the Vong have lost their connection to the Force, and that is something I will explore... eventually.
Tl;dr - as much as I disliked most of the New Jedi Order books, the Vong are a rather interesting bunch of psychos, and now Revan has to fight them AND the Sith! **EVIL LAUGHTER**
Lastly and most importantly! Please go read Until the Stars Fade by R. Constance. It's an absolutely brilliant novelization of the first KOTOR game, with numerous unique twists that make it feel like an original story and not just a KOTOR re-telling. If you're looking for KOTOR meat-and-potatoes, it has that. And if you're looking for fresh ideas on KOTOR, it has that too! Check it out! (and if anyone can tell me how to hyperlink to other stories on , I would be grateful!)
s/9691650/1/Until-the-Stars-Fade