It was stupid, what she was doing. It was avoidance and probably very evident to Dustil, who sat moodily in the corner of the room, that she didn't want to talk to him.
But Katrina continued to pretend to pack, despite the fact that she owned two possessions; one was her lightsaber, and the other the slightly singed clothing on her back.
He agreed; after a few more carefully traded barbs. She still didn't know whether it was the fact that he would have to see his father like this for a prolonged period of time or the fact that he was agreeing to do something for her that made him look so murderous at the moment.
Either way she avoided the problem by not speaking to him, by not looking at Carth, by pretending she was doing something else.
Behind the door she could hear the exasperated efforts of the medic crew trying to communicate something. She clearly recognized the stern voice of Bastila countering everyone.
Katrina smiled to herself, feeling a little sorry for the besieged workers of this facility. She didn't know why they feared the Jedi so much, but this experience was not going to help their unfounded ideas about the Force.
"What is that?" Dustil asked, sounding a little like he was looking for a fight.
"That would be Bastila," she replied, still refusing to look at him. She exited the room.
"Finally!" Bastila exclaimed upon seeing her.
"Just how many of your Jedi friends will we be expecting?" one of the original two medics snapped at her. She had yet to learn their names, but at this rate she doubted they would tell her anyways.
"Will you please tell these people that I'm not leading a Jedi invasion or resurrecting the Sith or any such nonsense?"
"She's not leading a Jedi invasion or resurrecting the Sith or any such nonsense," Katrina answered, smiling at Bastila's irritated face.
The medics grumbled and moved off, and Katrina decided that finding out why they hated all Jedi so much would be one good reason to leave Carth.
The two words, a distasteful verb and the man she loved, made her throat go dry.
"You'd do better not to agitate them, especially when they have such a low opinion of our order," Bastila murmured quietly.
Not much had changed in Bastila visibly, though Katrina could only guess at what went on inside her. The connection they had was now bitterly resisted by both, who each had no wish for their deepest, darkest fears to be known to the other. "And I suppose you couldn't avoid agitating them just now?"
Bastila sighed heavily. "How is he?"
She tried not to think of the words 'broken', 'ruined', or 'beyond repair'. "How did you know?"
"The Council was concerned at your hesitance to tell them the entire truth. They made inquiries through the Telosian facility. I must admit that they were relieved it was Admiral Onasi's condition you were hiding and not something more sinister from the Council."
And why am I not allowed secrets of my own? The Council saw fit to hide my identity from me. Hypocritical liars-
She tried quickly to silence her thoughts.
"The Council trusts you, have no fears about that." No use. Her former mentor had seen them.
"It'll take time. He's in bad shape."
Bastila nodded, for once content to accept an abbreviated version of the truth.
"What are the orders of the Council?" Katrina asked. She had stretched the truth a little for Dustil. The Council's true orders, while probably along the lines of what she had said, hadn't been told to her yet. In true Jedi Council fashion, she would be the last to know of their plans.
"This attack has many unknown factors. We haven't even found out the weapon used for it, and I, like you, don't believe it was a mere thermal detonator. The Council has decided this was a planned attack with a weapon we as of yet do not know of. They advise us to act with caution and begin looking for the perpetrator where the evidence suggests."
Because they don't know. Because they don't have the slightest clue of who or why this attack occurred. It could be any of thousands in the galaxy and they have absolutely no idea.
She knew Bastila could see her thoughts by the way she stared critically at her, searching for any emotional flaws as if they would be visible to the naked eye.
"Telos seems as good as any a place to begin," she continued, trying to avoid Bastila's gaze.
"I agree. Your proximity to the planet at the time of the attack could be a factor."
That and supposedly she would live here someday. It wouldn't hurt to see what kind of a place had spawned both Carth and Dustil. "Do we have a ship?"
Bastila smirked. "If you ever called the Ebon Hawk a ship. I certainly never did."
She didn't want to traverse down a path of her life she had already been down, but it seemed she had no choice.
Her past would not be left behind. It would stay, clinging to her legs kicking and screaming until she dealt with it. "Mission and Zaalbar agreed to come?"
"Indeed. They had to be dissuaded from doing more." She doubted Mission had grown out of her stubborn idealism. That was something inherent in the Twi'lek herself, not just in her comparative youth. And with Zaalbar's life debt to her, she doubted the Wookie had been much of a sobering influence.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw Dustil, having crept into the room, now standing near the doorway, watching both of them with folded arms.
"You look familiar," Bastila said, giving him a once-over.
"Dustil Onasi-"
"Carth's son."
She returned Dustil's suspicious gaze, silent for a moment so that she wouldn't talk over him again.
"I didn't know Admiral Onasi had a son," Bastila said, eyeing her as though she was trying to figure out how she could have given birth to a young man in his mid-twenties over the course of a few months.
"He's an Admiral now?" Dustil said, standing up from his slouched position against the doorway.
"Of course. Without your father's efforts, the Republic surely would have fallen to Malak. That does call for some little type of reward."
Dustil seemed to digest this information, nodding and saying nothing.
I don't know what he's thinking. And she didn't like it.
"Dustil's staying here until we return." She didn't mean for it to sound like an unspoken command, but Dustil still sighed angrily behind her.
"Whenever things are settled here," Bastila said finally, glancing once more behind her as if she could see beyond the doors into Carth's sickroom. "We can set out. This medical facility is part of a rebuilding city here on Telos, and I suggest we begin here." Katrina looked at Dustil, but he offered no verification or additional info.
There is no uncertainty, there is no questioning if I have done the right thing.
It seemed as though all this had occurred in the space of minutes instead of the course of a few days, and she was dumbfounded that the event she had been dreading was now being placed before her.
He is alive, she reminded herself again. He will stay that way.
Her first thought was how, for the first time in his life, he was actually clean-shaven.
The many operations to his face had made shaving it a necessity. She was surprised how the lack of substance made him appear older, not younger. He simply was not Carth without that protective layer of experience around him.
She had strayed so far from him in the past few days; calling the Council and finding Dustil, trying to stay with him while staying as far away from him as possible, that she had refused to look at him, refused to touch the man that could comfort her with a mere look.
He also was not Carth while lying on a medical bed, various machines supporting and regenerating his vital organs. Katrina came closer to him, standing over the bed.
She had been with him through the rest of it, but he had looked so gone then. So utterly beyond hope that the shell of a man she had sat by felt as though he had no connection to her at all. This man, though; he was broken but he was Carth.
And she was leaving him.
She leaned over him, her hand in his hair and her other on his cheek. One of his eyes had wandered open, but whether this had been a reaction or a moment where he had been conscious, she didn't know.
He was warm, and he was alive. She struggled to remind herself that leaving did not mean he would grow cold and dead.
"I'll pretend you can hear me," she began to his lone brown eye, staring her down, already accusing her of what she hadn't admitted yet. "Even if there's no sign of it."
The eye gazed at her, and she could not tell if it saw her or if she was merely in the path some lucid dream.
"You promised to protect me. I didn't think you'd go so far as to take a thermal detonator for me," she continued, laughing weakly.
She did not want him hurt protecting her. She had never wanted that, had said it to him even when he made the promise so long ago.
He had said he'd be hurt worse if he didn't try. Looking at him now she was unable to see what worse was.
"I don't want to go, Carth. Please believe that I don't want to go, but I have to." The eye stared dumbly at her. She felt her own beginning to sting.
"For once the Council is right. I never thought I'd be agreeing with them whole-heartedly like this, but I do. Someone planned this attack, and whoever it is won't stop here. Especially when they discover they didn't hit their intended target." Her breathing shuddered for a moment, and she gulped down air, trying to suppress the tears she knew were coming.
It was meant for you. Everything is meant for you. Everything he did, every danger he's been through since the Endar Spire, that's all been meant for you. Death and dismemberment at your hands even when you aren't concious of it.
"I'm sorry," She couldn't stop the tears now. She couldn't stop the nasty voice in her head chiding her for them either. "I don't know who I am but everyone else seems to. And you're suffering for it." She felt her lungs hiccup for air, heard her broken sobs that sounded more like choking than weeping.
There is no self-pity, there is no sadness. There is no guilt and there is no regret attacking me at all sides.
Katrina sniffed, wiping her nose in her arm. She ran her fingers over his face, staring back at his open eye.
It gazed at her as if she could right all the wrongs of the universe simply by being here. She smiled.
"I know. "Jedi don't cry, beautiful", right?" She entertained the thought that she could see his wry smirk in that lone gaze.
"None of us will be safe unless I can convince whoever's behind this that I'm not who they think I am. You protected me, and now I'll protect you. And Dustil too."
Dustil will be here. He will, and you will not.
Katrina found that it was harder than she thought to look away from him, despite having been so afraid to come here, to confess her sins to the man who couldn't stand to condemn her.
"He's here, Carth. He'll stay with you, while I'm gone. He loves you." She found that the words she wanted to add, the I-love-you that she so desperately wanted to assure him of, was stuck in her throat. It was too expected, too obvious.
It was too true.
She kissed his forehead. She forced herself to stand, forced herself to walk backwards, to pull her hands back from his body and break the contact she had been so afraid of between them.
She heard his breathing, steady and sure, the only part of him that, once it had begun again, needed no regeneration.
"I'll return. I promise."