"Jedi don't sleep in, beautiful." She knew he wasn't really saying it, that she wasn't being awakened in the morning with witty nothings. She allowed the secret guilty parts of her to bask in the fantasy for a moment, however.
It had prodded her out of black moods and restless sleep for months, and she allowed it to jolt her back into reality.
"You are restless, young Jedi. You show this even before you speak."
She smiled back at the holographic projection of Master Vandar, floating sagely a few inches from her face. "What is the bidding of the Council, Master Vandar?"
He shook his head at her. "So quick are you to think the Council demands above all else."
"Forgive me, Master, I did not-"
Master Vandar chuckled, an odd little repeated squeak that sounded a little like a hyperdrive turning over. "Still acting like a Padawan seeking approval. The Council is pleased with your handling of the situation, and I only wish you well upon your return to Telos."
They were pleased.
She recalled the days when the approval of the Council didn't mean bantha fodder to her. She and Carth would secretly laugh at the stoic messages they would send, so full of archaic words and over-blown advice.
These, however, were the days in which she knew that the derision of the Council, of the Order, of the Code, were one of the things that had led to her fall in the first place.
"I thank you, Master Vandar. The task was...not an easy one." Such an understatement. Her thoughts had turned increasingly sarcastic, tinged with a constant teasing quality, undeniably masculine.
"But succeeded you have. The Star Forge might have been in vain if not for you and your companions."
"I did little more than save myself." She realized how language lashed out and broke free from the confines of her jaw, as if it were some wild animal she constantly needed to control.
She could only think of Jolee for a moment, how he had told Carth that their war was not any important than any other, that they were not more important that the millions who had fought the same war, over and over, for years and years.
Master Vandar's brow raised for a moment, but the chastisement she expected did not come. "And the most difficult to save, this is."
You don't know the half of it, sister.
"What of your Padawan learner?" Master Vandar's words could hardly compete with Carth's, but she allowed them to register all the same.
"His experiences have slowed his training but he will recover." She couldn't decide if his recovery was a fact to be recited or a creed to be believed. It seemed possible and at the same time impossible but lovely to think on.
"His future is unclear. The Council trusts your judgment on this matter."
How sure had they ever been on anyone's future? They had tried to write a new one for her, and she was the testament as to how well that had turned out.
"I thank you for your concern, Master Vandar. Bastila and I will contact the council as soon as everything on Telos has been settled."
Master Vandar nodded. "May the Force be with you."
The words made her feel better, as if the Force equated happiness, as if the Force equated Carth.
"And may the Force be with you, Master Vandar."
Still, she could not entirely forget when the Force had equated the darkest struggles and fears within her.
"You Jedi don't take long to recover, do you?
It always seemed like she was waking up from something.
"Surprising, considering they take damn near forever on anything else."
She couldn't recall a time when something wasn't breaking her out of a world she didn't want to leave, forcing her to accept a new reality she would only hold until sleep claimed her again.
"Probably didn't have enough time to lightning bolt the hell out of that thermal detonator." The voices, undeniably mocking her, chuckled under their lazy sighs.
They were idle with lack of concern, but she could sense what they held for her: resentment and anger.
In one seamless motion, Katrina's lightsaber was extended from her hand, causing the two men standing over her to jump back and raise their arms.
There is no confusion, there is no fear.
"Hey, watch where you're pointing that thing!" The two were dark haired, grubby and dressed in uniform.
She glanced around, noting her new surroundings should something choose to once again yank her out of consciousness. Somehow she knew that she was no longer on a ship, Jedi Chaser or otherwise. This place had the definite solid feeling of foundation, of structure. It was a planet, and hopefully a friendly one. She was in some type of barracks or medical facility. There were too many beds and computer consoles around for it to be anything else.
That, and the two men were unarmed.
"Threatening people might make you lose a few friends," the other one added.
"I wasn't aware I had any here," Katrina replied. The place was beat- up and run-down, but still functioning to the standards of these people.
"We save her life and we're not friends. What do you have to do to win the favor of the Jedi?" the shorter one murmured to the other.
"Tell her where she is for starters."
"You're on Telos." The grip on her lightsaber instantly relaxed. "A scout ship found you adrift a few parsecs out."
Telos. Exactly where they had been headed. Telos was safe, and despite the mockery and anger she felt from these two, they meant her no harm. Katrina withdrew her lightsaber.
"Is the ship salvageable?" She couldn't ask the most important questions, not yet.
"Nothing irreplaceable was damaged. The extent of the attack was focused on the cockpit," one of them continued, his arms still raised suspiciously as if any moment she might slice him in half.
"Still, it's surprising the hyperdrive and the main systems are still intact, though the controls will be dearer than Tarisian ale to replace. Onasi knows how to pick a ship," the other one added, and both smiled roguishly at the mention of Carth. Katrina couldn't decide if that was in her favor or not.
She wanted desperately for a moment to plead about the state of him, to find him, to make sure he was salvageable too.
Training, remember your training. Knowledge first, pounding heart second.
"What is it that attacked us?" She prayed for a random accident, a freak occurrence of the cosmos.
But she already knew in her heart the nature and purpose of the attack.
"We thought you'd know that already, being a Jedi and all," the man replied sharply, his eyes seemingly blaming her for all the wrongs he had suffered in his life.
She suddenly felt old and tired. Revan followed her everywhere it seemed; pinning the crimes of the past to a body that, while having committed them, had no recollection of it.
"Do you know who I am?" She tried desperately not to make it come out the way it did: cold and already having sealed the fate of those who didn't know the answer.
The men exchanged glances, their arms still halfway raised in protection.
"Look, we don't want any trouble-"
"Tell me who I am."
It seemed to be the question that she would forever be asking and never quite sure the answer she got was the right one.
"They say you're Revan." She felt the name like a kick in the guts. "But you've reformed and become a Jedi again." The man's tone showed just how much he believed that rumor.
There is no self-pity, there is no anger. There is no frustration at a past and a future already written for me.
"Well, I'm not." Her words were short, curt, infallible. "My name is Katrina, and Carth and I were just trying to get back here."
She tried not to let the mention of his name send her spiraling into panic.
The two medics seemed to consider the association with Carth positively as they lowered their hands.
"From the extent of the burns you both received, and the fact that the damage was localized to the cockpit, it had to be a very small blast, thermal in nature."
"We assume your sensors didn't go off?" She nodded. "Couldn't really figure that one out for ourselves since, well, they've been blown away."
"The repair crew hasn't finished up their examination of the ship yet, but since it was undetected by the sensors and small enough to only cause damage to the cockpit, my credits are on it having been a thermal detonator." The two seemed in their element now, and for a moment she wondered why they were medics and not out on some space freighter, as they obviously wanted to be. "Most sensors aren't equipped to pick up hand-held demolitions as most people with as much sense as a bantha don't go tossing them around in the vacuum of space."
Most people, that is, that don't want to kill me.
"What about the light?"
The two exchanged glances again.
She felt irritation and impatience, her two greatest enemies since the fall of Malak nipping at her heels. "I saw a bright light coming towards us. Like an exploding planet or star or something. A little thermal detonator wouldn't produce that kind of light."
"If you think thermal detonators are little." One of them shrugged, getting a wry smirk on his face. "Maybe it was the Force or something. Don't Jedi see it when they die or something like that?"
Fools. I'm getting made fun of by two wannabe spacers who don't understand the power of the Force. Idiots.
The derision in her thoughts scared her and she said nothing in reply.
"You might have too if that scout hadn't come along. Lucky for you that piece of the bulkhead didn't go in too far." Her hand flew to the space on her forehead where a few hours ago a piece of metal had resided.
"You'll have some scars but nothing that'll kill you." She felt the whitish puffy line near her forehead and thought idly about how it must look. Her forearm was lying in a bacta tank, the charred flesh now a scaly white and a few wisps of black particles in the liquid.
How about those questions, beautiful?
She shook her head, breaking her concentration on her injuries. There were no more questions now. There couldn't be anymore until she knew what had happened to Carth.
"Where's Carth?"
The two men seemed to instantly concentrate harder on their tasks, examining their medical kits with renewed interest.
"Carth?" one of them said blandly, like it was some foreign word in a language he had trouble pronouncing.
She felt some strange desire to ram her lightsaber straight into his eye.
"Carth. Carth Onasi. You know who he is, you said his name before. Where is he?" She could hear her desperation, the exasperated sigh she let out before saying it. She could vaguely hear in the distance her old mentors and masters waggling their fingers at her for her panic and obvious lack of control of the situation.
"He must have been trying to protect you," The man's speech was halting, and they both eyed her lightsaber as though they knew where her thoughts were heading. "Because he took most of the blast."
There is no all-pervasive guilt, there is no desire to kill.
Every second she knew she was losing grip of what was happening, that this new reality was one in which she would have not even have will over herself.
"He's dead." Even as she said it, she felt that it wasn't true, but she could not think of anything worse to make these men fear to tell her.
"No, not dead." The man walked over to the back of the room.
The door he opened hissed for a moment, obviously just as worn-out and battle-ridden as many of the surroundings here were. But open it did, to finally reveal Carth. Not dead.
"He's almost there, however."