Chapter one, part three.
Revan sat on the sandy beach and watched the sun slowly begin to sink into the horizon. He'd been filled with many thoughts and emotions despite his attempts to be at peace with himself.
How many people had he been responsible for killing in this war? Hundreds, thousands... Soldiers, innocents, other Jedi. How much blood was on his hands? How many people had followed him, believed in him and the Sith. How many, ultimately, had he betrayed on both sides as the war had raged on?
He sighed, depression and guilt tearing at him, and looked out to sea once more. Everything that he'd believed in about himself and this damn war had been a lie. His name, where he came from… even his past occupation. How much of all he could recall about himself was true? More importantly, how much was all a lie? The council had thought it was doing the right thing, but if that was so and he had been redeemed in the light... Why did the councils decision seem more and more like an option the Sith would have used. Who had the right to take everything that made someone who they were away?
The sand whispered under his hands and he ran his fingers through the soft layers. His mind was like the sand on this damn beach. Each grain was a question and as he disturbed one, others moved as well. All he had were questions and the guilt that went with them.
"And the one thing I do have, the one thing I don't want to let go of, is wrong in the eyes of the Jedi code. I love her so much, hell even more than before. I can't live without her and I don't want to try! But it was my love that dammed her to the darkside, my love that made her sacrifice herself." He looked up and guilt swelled inside him. "My fault that she was tortured until she couldn't take any more. I saved her, but for what? She feels she failed me, the Jedi and mostly herself. I know that she does, but she's wrong, it was my fault. By the force, what am I going to do? How can I face her when everything that happened to her was my fault. Everything that was put in motion, caused by me."
"A credit for your thoughts, young knight." A familiar voice asked gently behind him as soft footfalls crunched through the sand.
Revan felt the familiar presence of Master Vandar slowly hobble next to him, but he kept his eyes fixed on the last parts of the setting sun, until a grunt sounded as the old master slowly sat on the sand.
"I was just thinking about stuff, that's all." Revan muttered softly, running his hands through the sand once more. Vandar watched him quietly.
"I can sense where your thoughts run young Knight. Many things cause you concern. The war, the loss of so much life on both sides and your part in all of this." Vandar watched as Revan's hands stopped moving in the sand and tightened slightly. "Then of course you have your own problems. One of which we, the council, have brought upon you and one which you may have brought upon yourself."
Revan sighed and turned to the small green alien who sat with his cane between his knees. Vandar watched his face carefully, saw the guilt flashing in his eyes.
"Despite your refusal to follow some aspects of the Jedi code, it was not your fault that Bastila fell to the darkside."
"No, you're wrong! It was my love that dammed her, gave Malak a pressure point to use against her. Hell, it was her love for me that made her charge him on the Leviathan, even though she knew she'd never win."
Vandar looked at Revan.
"So you feel it is solely your fault she fell to the darkside… I cannot lie to you, it's possible you did assist her descent and you know why. You knew a Jedi should never love, you knew where it could lead, but you did not have training to resist such emotions. However, we sent Bastila with you for the very reason that she had been trained to resist such emotion. Yet, she surrendered to it herself."
Revan laughed bitterly and Vandar looked up from the sand he too had been studying for answers.
"You can't resist love Master, it's too powerful." Revan said quietly. "I didn't think, hell, at first I didn't want to fall in love with Bastila. So stubbornly proud of being a Jedi, that's all I remember thinking at our first meeting. Then, you started to train me. You know how hard I found it sometimes."
Vandar nodded.
"Many young Jedi do. You may have achieved in weeks what others take years to do but I saw how hard it was sometimes. Some lessons cannot be recalled, no matter how powerful the Jedi, they have to be re-learned."
Revan smiled at the memory.
"Well, the one person I could turn to was Bastila. She knew so much and was willing to share anything I needed, and she dropped her abrasive attitude each time as well. I felt myself falling for her and then as we tried to find the starmaps, so much happened and she was always there, helping me cope, to decide to do the right thing. I owe her everything I am and, and I found myself falling for her." Revan looked at Vandar as he shifted slightly. "I tried to resist and so did she. She fought what she felt for me and tried so hard to control her emotions. It wasn't her fault, Master Vandar..."
Revan trailed off as the last few inches of sun vanished under the horizon and the sky began to darken.
"In the end, her heart decided for her." He shook his head at the irony of the situation Bastila and himself had found themselves in. " All the people she could fall for, it had to be the fallen Jedi she'd been sent to protect."
He watched as the dark blue sky continued to fade into blackness. "The link we shared may have had something to do with it. Guess I should have realised that the force wanted us to be together, no matter how many codes it violated."
Vandar looked at Revan, his face impassive, except for the eyes, which looked troubled.
"The link you and Bastila share was and is dangerous, we should have realised it as such. Although it is rare, there have been other Jedi who have had such a link created between them. Each time it has proven to be hard for them to control their emotions, especially love for each other. We should have realised it could have led to this, led to Bastila and yourself becoming more than fellow Jedi. Perhaps we should have stopped any chance of this occurring."
Revan looked at him, appalled.
"How can you say that? Having her love kept me going, even when she'd been kidnapped. I hung on the link between us, willed her realise I was coming. The link we shared, the love, saved her from the darkside. Besides," He looked at Vandar once again. "The Dantooine council is in a fine position to lecture me or her on morals."
He looked away and began to fiddle with his sabre hilt and as Vandar opened his mouth to speak, shot him a look.
"I can't live without her Master Vandar and the council will have to get used to it. If they really want, I'll face a tribunal or something. But she's up there in the Hawk right now, beaten and broken in spirit and she won't speak to me. She's even blocking anything I try through our bond and its tearing me apart! Despite the guilt I feel, I need her help!" He felt his anger and desperation rise and fought to control his temper. "Help to understand who I am... What I am! The council erased my personality but I still get flashbacks, some of which I wake from screaming. Do you know how many times I'd wake to find Mission standing there, distraught, almost crying?"
Revan paused and felt the bitterness inside him. A gentle pressure on his arm made him look down. Vandar's left hand rested gently on his arm. He sighed and tried to let go of his anger.
"I was Revan, but I remember so little about who I was. You gave me a new identity when Bastila came to you with my broken mind. You gave me a name, past and occupation; all of which were false and I can't keep going any more knowing and living this, this lie of who I am. I neither want to be Revan or who you created! I've heard the arguments you gave Bastila for doing this, but the fact remains that you stole everything that I was. Then when you found I had information and skills you needed, you asked Bastila to guide me and try to pull any memories I had left from my mind. No matter how hard I try, I... I can't forgive you for that. I blamed Bastila at first, the woman who saved my life had betrayed me. The ashamed look she gave me then still fills me with guilt. So, now I'm the 'redeemed Jedi Revan, hero of the Republic.' and I should feel happy, but I can't. Bastila's guilt, her own impossible position, coupled with the loss of who I was, the false life I always thought I'd had. That's what I can't forgive the council for, what I don't want to forgive you for!"
Vandar sighed.
"Such anger," Revan grunted and Vandar could see his struggle with it. "All of it justifiable. Understand Revan, that we had little choice in the matter, or rather no choice at all. When Bastila brought your body to us you were barely alive. It had been her use of the force and nothing more that had allowed the flicker of life in your shattered body to remain. I remember coming into that room, seeing her covered in soot, and grease from dragging you to safety. Such exhaustion etched into her face as her force flowed into you at a terrible rate, even as the medics struggled to continue what she'd begun. Watching the two of you in that room was terrible to see, especially when we found that your mind had been ruined from the damage to your brain."
Vandar ran his fingers through the sand once more as Revan leaned back and watched the dark sky, behind them the temple lit up as the party's lights slowly flickered into existence. The warm glow was welcome but Revan felt a cold knot tighten in his belly as he listened.
"It was decided, not just by us but also by the council on Coruscant, that we owed it to what you had once been to try and give you a future. We had so little to work with some even thought any chance we had of restoring you to a level where you could look after yourself was slim. To accomplish the restoration we had to use the most powerful method of instilling the force power needed to try and heal your mind. Although the council had the ability, or so we hoped, to at least try and restore something of you, we needed help."
Revan looked at Vandar and knew the answer.
"I knew that Bastila saved my life, I guess I owe her my mind too."
Vandar looked at Revan with a troubled glance.
"Bastila provided the link we needed, reluctantly I might add when she found out we could not restore your mind, even if we had wanted to. The process took many days of concentration and we had little hope of succeeding no matter how many of us concentrated, the damage seemed to severe."
"Seemed?"
"After five days or so something odd happened, your mind began to... heal itself. At first we had been trying to simply imprint enough into you so that you could have basic abilities; such as feeding yourself, walking and talking. Your mind was that damaged, we thought it would be all we could achieve. Later... later it became easier to imprint even more complex memories into your mind, until eventually who you are now was created."
Vandar looked at Revan and smiled sadly.
"I wish I could say that what we did, we did out of compassion. I suppose there is one person there that day that did, even though she thought our idea of using you might be wrong. It had been the will of the council and we were never immoral and never wrong. I wish however I could believe that." Vandar fiddled with a few sand grains and continued.
"I still believe that you should have been told and not just when your force power began to manifest itself. We should have given Bastila permission to tell you what happened to you as soon as you could have coped. However the other council members thought it would be too dangerous and forbid Bastila or myself from telling you. They thought they were protecting you from your past, but I wonder now if they were protecting themselves from having to face what they had done, as well as fearing what could remain locked in your mind."
"It could be argued that erasing what little remained of the previous Revan's personality, trails close to the darkside Master Vandar."
"Exactly, it took many days to decide to do even that. However, Malak's attacks and the desperate position the Republic and we found ourselves in, made the decision for us. So, we reprogrammed your mind and gave you a new personality and past. Bastila, was assigned to look after you when she realised she could 'feel' what you did and also sometimes 'see' your dreams," He sighed once again. "I remember how terrified she was when it first happened. She came to me first, I don't know why. She was distraught, despite all her training in emotional control, tears were running down her face. Eventually, she managed to explain that she had seen the battle of Revan's flagship from your viewpoint and it scared her. I knew what had happened then and the council confirmed it with further testing."
"Oh Bastila..." Revan sighed, feeling guilty.
"Imagine how she felt young Knight. Bastila is many things... Wilful, proud and sometimes, yes, she can be full of herself. However she is also a very private person, deeply emotional despite all our efforts. When she found you would be able to see and feel what she had... it upset her terribly. We feared that you would both become agents of evil, but we had no choice and I, for one, am glad it has turned out this way... It could have been so much worse."
Vandar looked up at the inky sky, searching for answers to the questions he knew Revan needed explanations for.
"I cannot say that my colleagues are, pleased, by what has happened to you and young Bastila. However, I think that love is possibly the best outcome in this situation. As to what we did to you... All I can say is that the council regrets what it had to do, but it was necessary at the time and it was done with that in mind "
Revan nodded but his look of uneasiness and his annoyance with the council remained.
"Those still don't answer the question of who I am, what I am! Who has the answers about my mind? I need to know why it began to mend itself, why I'm not a gibbering vegetable!" He looked at Vandar and cocked his head slightly. "Does anyone know the answers?"
"Our knowledge of the force was, disrupted by the battle with the Sith and Exar Kuhn. Not only did we lose a large number of good knights in that battle, but our archives were disrupted and a large portion of the older knowledge stolen by the Sith. The method we had to use in order to repair your damaged mind is ancient, one of the oldest actually. Although we knew it could possibly save your mind, how it actually works is contained in a holocron missing from the archives." Vandar felt Revan's anger drain slowly away. "I'm sorry Revan, the answers you seek lie elsewhere than on Dantooine or Coruscant.
Revan nodded slowly.
"I'd still like to see the council on Coruscant... One of the Masters there may know of a place I could begin looking," He looked at Vandar once more. "Besides, I know that they want to see Bastila. I'm not leaving her to see them alone."
Vandar nodded, he had expected as much. Revan didn't miss much around him..
"I shall inform them that you will be there as her counsel. As much as your love and desire to protect her is the real reason, it does not allow you access into the chamber with her. By giving you the act of counsel you can remain with her no matter what is discussed. Please, accept this as part of the apology for what we did to both of you, and my own personal gratitude."
Revan smiled at the wizened Jedi Master and bowed as he rose from the beach.
Suddenly a flash of emotion from Bastila slammed into him and his head snapped upward to look at the temple and the beach beyond, where the Hawk lay. Vandar felt the change in Revan's emotions and looked up at the Knight with concern.
"Young Revan, what is it?"
He looked at Vandar and swallowed as Bastila's shock rippled through him.
"Something's wrong with Bastila... something powerful enough to knock aside her guilt, even for a little while... I can't tell what but..."
They both looked around as a roar from the other side of the temple echoed down the beach. Revan was the first to recognise it, the main engines of the Ebon Hawk in full burn. He looked up, as it's bulk rose in a dark shadow above the temple and began to slide towards the sky.
"Bastila..." He whispered into the link and the air. "What's wrong, what's happened?"
He felt her withdraw from him as he reached out, blocking him once again as she had with her guilt. He couldn't break through to her without pushing, something he'd never tried and didn't want to.
The hawk flew across the beach and buffeted them with its downward thrust exhaust as it hammered across the sky before boosting into full power and roaring upwards. Revan and Vandar watched it slowly dwindle until a faint female voice began to call Revan, growing in strength.
"Rev, Rev! Bastila's taken the Hawk!" Mission came dashing across the dunes, worry and panic creasing her young features. "She's gone, but she left a datacube on the beach for you. I dunno what's in it though. Kinda personal maybe."
Revan touched the young Twi'lek on the shoulder and took the cube from her hands, the others of his group had caught up with her and came dashing over.
"Where's the Hawk?"
"Bastila took it... Why?"
"Query: Do we hunt the female meatbag down?"
Revan looked at them all gathered in one spot and with a shrug activated the datacube. Text flashed up on the screen, a short message and his lover's face, rumpled and tearful. I've got to go. It's a personal matter on Coruscant, so you don't need to come. I'll be back on Dantooine as soon as possible. I love you, take care. Bast. He looked up at Carth.
"We need a ship, as fast as possible..."
Carth tilted his head in a slight nod and looked at Revan's face, the upset in his eyes.
"Sure, I'll see what the Admiral can rustle up... Where do we need to go?"
Revan looked around at his friends and sighed.
"She's gone to Coruscant... It's personal, but I think she'll need my help. You lot can stay here if you want. Zaalbar, I know you want to get back to Kashyykk, so I release you from your life debt. Thank you for all your help."
Zaalbar stood shocked and then roared his approval.
It has been an honour to travel with you Revan. You have proven to be both a great warrior and diplomat to my people. If you ever need my help, all you need is ask.
He nodded and bowed to the Wookie. Turning, he looked at the others.
"Any of you want to take up the offers flooding in from the republic can do so, you don't need my permission."
Carth sighed and looked up at the temple clouded in shadows. His son was at the party and he needed to remain also.
"I, I need to spend some time with Dustil, I'm sorry Revan, really. Look, I'll get you the fastest ship I can pilfer from Dodonna but I have to stay with him, get reacquainted. You don't need a pilot. I know you can fly!"
Revan nodded and smiled at him.
"I understand, and a fast ship is all I'm asking for. Anyone else?"
Mission looked at him and at the huge Wookie who had been her friend for many years. Sad though she was to see him go, she was pleased that it would be to his father's side.
"Well I'm sticking with you Rev, and it seems everyone else is too. Z you take care on Kashyykk and, and I'll try to visit soon okay?
You will always be welcome at my home Mission. I really do hope to see you soon. I wish to present you to the rest of my family as my most trusted friend.
Mission blushed and turned away as a feeling of sorrow overwhelmed her for a few seconds. Her life was changing so quickly, a street urchin one-day and a hero of the republic the next. Sniffing slightly she turned back to see Zaalbar and Revan both watching her with sad smiles.
"What? Look," She pointed at Zaalbar. "You get going and I'll see you soon " She pointed at Revan. "You and me have got a ship to board and a girlfriend to find. So lets hussle!"
Revan smiled at her flustered expression and nodded, he turned to the others.
"What about you lot."
Jolee and Juhani looked at each other and back at Revan. They nodded both sporting smiles. Canderous merely shrugged.
"I've got nothing planned up at the moment. Don't even think of trying to suggest the Republic to me… They wouldn't like my ideas of tactics at all. I'll hang around until I can find another merc job I suppose. That of course, is if you still want me around Revan."
Revan nodded and Canderous bowed slightly. He looked around at his friends and felt a feeling of honour fill him.
"I just want to say, before some of us part company, that it has been an honour and a privilege to call you all friends. No matter where the force takes us in the future, I will always consider you so… Now, lets get to Coruscant, Bastila needs me, no matter how much she pretends otherwise."
Vandar watched as they moved swiftly up the beach and sighed to himself. As much as he knew the code of the Jedi, as much as he believed in its warnings of emotion… Bastila and Revan did need each other and the force knew that, as much as they, it seemed.
"Even after my hundreds of years of learning about the force I can still be surprised by the choices it takes. First a link as deep as life and death and now love, the two of them could have been a power for either side and yet the redeemed saved the fallen, and all through love. Who are we to argue with the will of the force?"
With a wry grunt he wandered back up the beach to discuss these events with his fellow Jedi. The council had to be informed, especially some of his colleagues on Coruscant.