The sky was a miserable mix of gray and purple. Dead earth lay curling and cracking beneath her feet. The corpses of once tall buildings knelt around them. There wasn't a soul to be seen.
"This is what war looks like. Of course, you Jedi wouldn't know anything about that," Nocen snapped.
"I think I remember now why I don't come out here that often," he said in a softer tone, one less angry and more resigned.
The air was dry, but there was plenty of wind. She wouldn't have noticed it otherwise- there were no trees for it to rustle, no tall objects for it to howl and whistle its route around.
She wondered what the young man might do if he knew she had been the cause of it.
"Is the entire planet like this?" Nocen nodded.
"As far as anyone can tell. No one's really too eager to scout out the entirety of it to find out."
"The Jedi didn't abandon you, Nocen, or your planet," Bastila began again. He rolled his eyes.
"Then where were you? Where were you famed magicians when all this-" He gestured wildly to the sky, the earth, "-was happening?"
"The Council didn't want to rush into a war. Time was needed to-"
"Well, while you were taking your grand time with it, Telos was being burnt to the ground by Mandalore, Malak, Revan and every damned man following them." She heard her name clear as day, enunciated no harder or more forceful than the rest of the rogue's gallery he had named. It still hit her hardest.
She exchanged glances with Bastila.
"If you all hate the Jedi so much, and this Knowl character was so bent on leaving me adrift, why rescue me at all?" Nocen stared at her as if she had sprouted headtails.
"You were with Onasi." Carth spread over her like a protective blanket even when he wasn't at her side.
"Do you know him?"
"Know him? The whole planet knows him. Telos didn't have many heroes in the war that didn't come home dead or as traitors. And after helping to destroy Malak, becoming a Admiral...he's something of a legend now."
And while he had been traveling the galaxy, blaming himself for the death of his wife, the disappearance of his son, and being duped by his mentor, his home planet had been lauding him a hero. The universe was not without a sense of irony.
"And because I was with him, you helped me?" He narrowed his eyes at her.
"We're not Sith. We don't leave people to die. Besides, a few Jedi helped him with taking out Malak, or so I hear. Of course, rumors tend to fly about this kind of stuff since Telos doesn't exactly make sure to contact the Republic for the daily news anymore. There was even one pretty wild one about Lord Revan having risen from the dead and somehow defeating Malak with him."
I am not a contradiction standing here waiting to be found out. I am not the dirty laundry of the Jedi Council. I am not the Republic's little white lie.
There was a period of uncomfortable silence.
"And why is the planet still like this?" Bastila finally said.
"We enjoy it. It helps keep tourists away," Nocen replied mockingly.
"Why haven't you tried to rebuild?" Katrina watched him as he walked in front of them, gazing at the ruins with a weary look that someone of his age shouldn't have had yet.
"Telos barely finds the credits for kolto and rations, let alone rebuilding what it once was."
"But if you petition the Republic. They've helped rebuild other worlds, they'll help Telos too-"
"The Republic," There was a force in his voice that said he didn't want to be questioned on it anymore. "They gave enough to us in the war. They helped as much as they could. We can't ask for more."
They took a few steps into the bleak outside.
"Aren't you coming?"
"And get myself killed like the two of you?"
"You're allowed to leave this base right? I mean, you aren't prisoners or anything."
"Look around you. Is there anything worth leaving it for?" Without another word, Nocen turned and strode back into the base. The doors, steel and a few meters thick, creaked shut.
"I guess you'd call him our official welcoming committee," Katrina murmured.
She didn't blame him. Some small part of her wanted to run and hide in the base too.
"They're on a very unorganized plan of lockdown, it seems. Do you suppose we slipped through the cracks?"
"I think it's more like they don't care what happens to us. Probably happier now that we're not sticking out like sore thumbs amid their lives of color."
Their footsteps made crunching noises over the long-scorched ground.
"They seem to despise the Jedi, and yet they helped you, let me land, and allowed us out of that base."
"Maybe it's one of those 'I help you, you get the hell off my planet' kind of deals."
Carth had never made it sound this bad. Looking around now, she wondered why he had wanted to come back. The planet itself was ruined; its people were probably more irreversibly scarred.
"This search isn't starting off very well, is it?" Katrina said, glancing back at Bastila. "Already we've got a whole planet of people who would all be more than willing to blow me up."
"They'd kill me just as quickly as you. They seem to think you're no different a Jedi than I or any other."
Aside from those two medics, she couldn't recall anyone who had even remotely guessed at her identity. They seemed more upset over the fact that she was a Jedi who had arrived on their planet with their wounded hero rather than a former Dark Lord who had destroyed their planet.
"If they knew differently, I'd have been shot about twenty Telosians with blasters ago."
She was expecting them to hate her, but they hated her for the wrong reasons.
The wind whipped around her face, but still there was not a sound from the surface.
"You still won't answer to the name Revan." Bastila's words hit her harder than the wind did.
It was as if Bastila wouldn't answer to the name Carth. Katrina could not answer to that name. It wasn't hers.
"That's not who I am."
"There's no reason to deny it. You've redeemed yourself for whatever sins there might have been."
Beginning a war, killing countless hundreds and helping in the resurrection of the Sith and the Star Forge versus defeating my old apprentice. I think it's pretty obvious where the bulk of my sins still lie.
"They weren't my sins to redeem."
Bastila wisely said nothing. While both were still mere Padawans, Katrina knew there was still a faint line of mentor and learner, and Bastila's wisdom at knowing when to stop pushing was where the point of mentor began.
"What is Knowl going to tell us that we don't already know? I doubt he'll be as friendly as the rest of the locals." Bastila shrugged, the wind tossing her brown hair around to partially obscure her face.
"If there's anyone here who would have the credits and the motivation to launch an attack. Perhaps we can also find out if he is as discouraged as the rest of the planet on the idea of restoration."
She eyed Bastila for a moment.
"Perhaps we can help Telos while we are here," she added, "to repair their relationship with the Jedi."
She didn't want any side quests, any fulfilling of local rituals, any quelling of local disputes. She just wanted to stop whoever had attacked her and go back to Carth.
But she still followed Bastila up the ruined roads. Far off in the distance in every direction, a black shadow seemed to surround them, blacker than the sky or the burned out structures around them.
"What type of region is this?"
"This is what used to be somewhat of a suburban area. Those black areas in the distance I would say are the main urban sites. They were destroyed first and heaviest."
So the burned out structures around her had not been nameless businesses or ports of call. They had been homes, where people had lived. Where Telosians had lived, where Carth might have lived.
"He never told me about any of this." Bastila looked back for a moment.
"I doubt he knew of it."
She bit her lip. It was only one more moment before she tasted the blood from having bitten too hard.
There is no self-hatred.
The road, or what was left of it, seemed to stretch on for miles. The dried earth or the ruined structures never seemed to change, and she only knew they were moving further when she looked over her shoulder and saw the base growing smaller and smaller until it could be seen no more.
"Bastila, do you actually have any idea of where this Commander might be, or is it that Council-ego of yours talking again?" Bastila frowned.
"He wasn't transmitting from the base, but he wasn't more than a couple kilometers away from it. It should be around here somewhere."
Something had changed in their surroundings. It caught her scent as if carried on the breeze, and she stood still for a moment, trying to locate it.
Life. That was it. Amid these inanimate memories of objects, there was something very much alive. And she could sense it meant to make her as lifeless as everything else.
"Bastila-" she said, extending her lightsaber. Bastila had already withdrew hers.
"I felt it too."
There were the few moments of waiting, as there always was in battle. Who would be the first to strike, to succumb to the urge to cause harm to someone else.
Too often was it her. Katrina stood and waited for whatever was waiting for her.
Two or three blaster shots came towards them out of the wreckage. Blazingly red amid the pale, muted colors of destruction, they were easy to deflect.
"We mean no harm!" Bastila called out.
Unless of course, you mean us harm, Katrina thought wryly.
"Lower your weapons." The voice was authoritative rather than merely a demand from a man in a fight. Bastila withdrew.
"And if he asked you to give him a Twi'lek cantina dance, would you do that too?" Bastila ignored her. Katrina still held her lightsaber out.
Nothing could be trusted until you saw what it was. And she wasn't about to trust a random voice from a planet that hated her enough as who she was and would hate her more as who she really was.
Groups of men started to emerge from around them, about nine or ten in all. They had been hidden sniper-like in the burned out buildings. In the filthy tattered uniforms they wore, they must have blended in well.
She carefully retracted her lightsaber, still holding it in her hand in case she would need it again.
"We are Jedi sent to investigate the attack on Admiral Onasi." She was surprised at how she was still using him as her crutch, as if by waving him around she could deflect all possible hurt.
"Commander Knowl has authorized us to be here," Bastila added.
"Give me your weapons." the same voice growled, as if he hadn't heard them at all. The men all looked so alike Katrina wasn't quite sure which one of them was the leader.
"That depends on whether I'm going to need mine or not," she replied. The man held up his blaster, aiming it straight between her eyes.
"You wouldn't be able to get to it fast enough either way." Bastila wrenched hers out of her hand and dropped both on the ground. They sent up a small cloud of dust from the dry earth.
"There. Now will you take us to Commander Knowl?"
"Don't worry. You'll be seeing him for the rest of your lives. You're under permanent confinement to the planet."