After having counted them at least twice, Katrina had determined that there were about two hundred and twelve holes in the steel plating above her.
She rolled over in her uncomfortable bunk, trying to bore herself into slumber. It shouldn't have been this difficult. She was used to sleeping alone- sharing a bed with Carth was still something she had been getting used to.
The rest of the women on the ship- Bastila, Juhani, and Mission- had been dreaming uneventfully for hours. Only Bastila wore a somewhat cross look on her unconscious face.
"You two look like you had a run-in with a couple of lusty cantina bar flies," Canderous had muttered as the two of them walked up the gangplank after their meeting with the Committee.
Katrina smirked, thinking of Turk back in the demolitions factory. He hadn't been too far off, at least in Bastila's case.
"And now that you're back, you'd better be able to fill us in better than Coppertop over there," Mission added, putting her hands on her hips.
HK-47 looked equally perturbed. Katrina saw a wisp of smoke rise from the equipped flame thrower on his left arm, and she shot him a look. The droid lowered his arm.
"Later, Mission." She had watched Bastila storm off towards the crew quarters.
Fine. Let her be angry. But she knew how dangerous anger was; how grudges had a way of turning into hatred. She knew how dangerous it was for her to have these feelings, let alone Bastila, who was still recovering from her own fall, albeit brief, to the dark side.
But she had no desire to become an insufferable lecture-happy Jedi, always following Bastila around and waxing poetic on the redemption and the power of the light side she knew nothing about. The Jedi was her own person; Katrina was neither master nor of a higher rank. It wasn't her place or responsibility.
Juhani looked as though a plasma explosion wouldn't rouse her. She was deep in the sleep of righteousness, and Katrina certainly didn't envy her.
She had come upon Dustil sitting at the workbench, a look of frustration on his sweaty face. Juhani had stood behind him, looking drained.
He had glanced up at her momentarily, then went back to his work with an even more determined look on his face.
He was attempting to set the crystal in his lightsaber, and evidently having a rough time of it. She wondered if was still the red that had menaced them on Korriban or if he had chosen a different color.
"Revan, you have returned," Juhani said, with a somewhat relieved sigh. "Were you able to discover any more on the attack?"
"Only what we already suspected about the weapon having originated from this planet. We should have a few names to follow up on by tomorrow, though." Juhani nodded.
"And what of your connection to the planet? Have you learned any more?" Katrina leaned up against the doorway, folding her arms in front of her.
"Revan visited this planet in both wars, as both Jedi and Sith, for the same reason: to try and get supplies of demolitions out of the planetary government."
"I assume both visits were unsuccessful." Katrina nodded.
And then once you've got the Star Forge, demolitions from an obscure planet seem to be a little redundant.
"Did the Sith attack the planet once your request for arms was denied?" Juhani had always phrased her questions about Revan carefully. It was always the Sith rather than the Sith Lord, and the Cathar never made the painful distinction between the body that carried out the orders and the person who gave them.
Katrina shook her head.
Dustil glanced up at her again.
"That doesn't sound like the Sith to me."
"Watch what you're doing. You're liable to slice off an ear or two," she said, motioning towards his half-reconstructed lightsaber.
"Why didn't you attack the planet?" he asked again, ignoring her.
"I imagine it had something to do with it being heavily populated and completely innocent." He equated her with death and destruction and little else.
"Innocence and gravity mean nothing to the Sith," Dustil had said, undaunted by her obvious attempts to put him off the subject. "I'd say you had some kind of personal reason not to attack it. What was it?"
There is no personal reason. There is no brother.
"I don't know. Why didn't you attack your father?" she had finally snapped. Dustil dropped the lightsaber. It clattered loudly on the workbench, fizzled and sparked, and was quiet again.
The younger Onasi pushed himself away from the bench and stalked off down the corridor.
Anger seemed to be the only thing she was capable of fostering at that moment.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to-" Juhani had waved her away, a tired smile on her face.
"Do not apologize, my friend. Dustil has...absorbed much in one day." The Cathar looked down the corridor in the direction her Padawan had gone.
"There is much sadness in him. He mourns his family, his father, his friends."
"His father isn't dead." She sounded so defensive, as if that was the constant taunt of her schoolmates.
"He mourns his actions against his father," Juhani clarified. "But his anger prevents him from dealing with these emotions." She shook her head.
"I have introduced the Jedi Code to him, but I believe he is merely humoring me when he claims to understand it."
The Code was only words. As if by thinking that something didn't exist, the Jedi could make it disappear.
"I believe he will benefit from seeing it in practice, as well as getting off of this ship for a while."
Katrina now frowned, trying unsuccessfully to mash her pillow into a more comfortable shape. She didn't want him following her, asking the questions that Bastila and Juhani's Jedi training and friendship with her kept them from asking. Dustil had no such scruples.
Her eyes, having fought against the pressure of gravity, finally succumbed and closed. The reassuring feeling of darkness only lasted a few seconds.
Something metal was poking her in the shoulder.
"T3?" The little droid had rolled up next to her bunk, and was now prodding her awake. Katrina pushed herself up, rubbing her eyes.
"What is it?"
The droid's announcement was so agitated that she almost couldn't make it out.
"An intruder asking for me?" she said groggily. The droid seemed to nod.
Katrina stood, stretching and reaching for her lightsaber. She hoped she wouldn't have to use it- she doubted she would be very effective with it in her half-awakened state.
Night on Anelli consisted of a dark maroon sky, three yellow moons forming a sort of halo over mountains in the distance. She saw them beckoning in the windows of the cockpit as she headed towards it.
She also saw HK-47 with his blaster aimed squarely between the eyes of Phineas, seated in the co-pilot chair and not daring to blink an eye.
There is no personal reason. There is no brother.
"I requested that you find a place on the ship to dispose of this meatbag's body," HK began scathingly upon seeing T3. "Not disturb the master."
"Apology: I am sorry, Master. I intended on having this meatbag out of sight by the time you awakened. Shall I shoot him quietly, or did you have a more suitable punishment in mind?" Katrina reached out for HK's blaster, attempting to lower it from its threatening position. She found that she couldn't fight the droid's strength and finally let go.
"What are you doing here?" she said calmly. Phineas looked at her, his face still not in the least concerned that an assault droid had a blaster trained on him less than two centimeters or so away.
"Explanation: The meatbag approached the ship asking to speak with you, Master. He believes himself to be your brother, and as I have no knowledge of you speaking of any brother, I naturally assumed he was an assassin attempting to kill you," HK added, interrupting whatever Phineas' open mouth had planned on saying.
"While I appreciate the gesture, HK, in the future inform me if any other visitors come to the ship rather than blasting them on sight, hmm?" The droid finally lowered his blaster.
"Acknowledgement: As you wish, Master, though I will take the opportunity later to remind you of the meaning of the HK model designation." HK turned to T3.
"You lack obedience, but are proficient in defiance. I am uncertain as to whether this is an admirable quality or not." The two droids continued down the corridor.
They made an odd pair, but Katrina remembered many instances that the two had kept them safe while they slept.
She turned back to Phineas. Out of the government office, away from the clean lines and bright lighting, he looked very pale.
"I'm sorry I disturbed you," 'I' was back again, and again she pitied him. "I didn't know what kind of hours you kept, and I didn't think I could wait until you and your fellow Jedi returned to the Committee to talk with you."
"What is it?"
"Revan, you're my sister. Whether you remember it or not, a simple genetic test would confirm it. But somehow I think you know that you are."
She knew. If she didn't innately feel it in the pits of her stomach, she would have no problem using her assault droid to throw him off the ship and going back to bed.
"I'm not the person you remember," she replied.
"Well, I'd at least like a chance to find out." She recognized the tenacity in his voice. It was something she shocked herself with daily.
There are personal reasons. There is a brother. Merely thinking that there wasn't wouldn't will him away.
Listening doesn't mean I have to believe it. Listening does not automatically make me Revan, she reminded herself.
Katrina seated herself in the pilot's chair. It smelled faintly of Carth, who had sat in it the most; a mixture of oil, sweat, and the leather from his old jacket.
Phineas gazed at her with the devotion of a family pet. His gaze made her uncomfortable, and she looked away.
"I bet you don't remember Anelli, either." She shook her head.
"I guess you wouldn't want to remember it, in any case. You couldn't wait to leave." A fleeting image of the smiling faces she remembered as her family appeared in her head. She noticed the ground beneath their feet was red. Did she remember or was she subconsciously coloring it red trying to?
"This was Revan's homeworld?" Phineas narrowed his eyes at her third-person referrals, but continued.
"Yes. We were born here. I've never left it my whole life. You, on the other hand, jumped at the chance. But with Mother dead and all-" Phineas sighed.
So her mother was all but a word now. Not even a memory.
"What am I saying? You wouldn't know that. You probably have no memory of a mother."
She felt anger from him, burning like a struck match and dying out just as quickly.
"What was she like?" She longed for a memory, even if it was one she would create for herself from his telling.
"She died around the time the Jedi made their second visit to the planet. On their first they recruited you and Malak-"
"This was Malak's homeworld too?" Phineas nodded.
"That must have been difficult for you," he murmured sympathetically.
"What?"
"Having to kill him." His eyes narrowed. "I had heard that you were the one to do it. Was I wrong?"
His defeated face looking up at her, ice blue eyes already far away. Pulling her lightsaber cleanly from his torso.
No, killing Malak was something she had a clear and vivid memory of doing.
"No. I killed him."
"I'm sorry you had to go through that. I know how much you cared about him." The only image she carried of Malak as something other than someone she was destined to kill was the vision of the Dantooine Star Map; a young man watching her cloaked form intently. Even as she had analyzed the vision over and over, she had always determined it was a devious stare, trying to find her weaknesses and plotting to betray her even then.
That it might have been the concerned look of a friend was something she couldn't grasp.
"I left to join the Jedi?" He seemed encouraged by her unconscious switch to first-person.
"You were always strong-willed, Revan, and stubborn. You left and Malak followed."
Another flash of anger from him.Katrina eyed him suspiciously.
"I guess you can tell I'm somewhat bitter," he murmured. "You're giving me that look of yours."
"What look?"
"That Jedi look,"Phineas smirked.
"You used to tell me how childish and self-centered I could be when you were a Jedi, especially when I voted against giving you weapons for the Republic war effort. I suppose it was ironic when you presented them as strengths to me when you returned as a Sith."
"Strengths?" He twiddled his thumbs together idly, looking at his feet. Finally he lifted his head slightly, barely looking at her.
"You tried to recruit me into the Sith, Revan." She could see why- he was an easy target. The bitterness over her absence was causing the random spurts of anger she could feel through the Force.
"Why?"
"I suppose for a contact inside the governing body of a planetary demolitions factory. That and you were always a little disappointed I never used my talents the same way you and Malak did." She felt the strength of the Force faintly within him, like a small withering plant.
"You're Force sensitive then?"
"Not nearly as much as you or Malak were. But enough that you seemed to think I would add to your arsenal of Sith."
"Did I succeed?"Phineas gave a little triumphant smile.
"I didn't want to become one of your mindless soldiers, no matter how tempting you made it sound."
He had darker hair than hers. While hers was more of a dull brown, the color of mud, his was an almost black.
"But I didn't kill you."
"No. No, you didn't,"the politiciansmiled again.
"Even then you knew me as your brother. You hadn't completely turned into an emotionless killing machine. Which I suppose is why now, when you've returned to being a determined and fearless Jedi again, it's hard for me to grasp that you don't know me."
He reached a hand out towards her. She didn't know whether he expected her to take it or hold it- she didn't know what kinds of physical traditions there might have been between brother and sister in the past. She finally decided upon placing her hands on the armrests of the chair and looking nonchalantly at it.
"Who are you now, Revan? Who is this Katrina person the Jedi created for you?"
She was never a genocidal Sith Lord. That, I suppose, is her most redeeming quality.
"Katrina was a scout within the Republic's ranks." She saw at once how cardboard and flimsy her identity was; how it was only a fluttering paper mask designed for one-time use.
Phineas nodded, withdrawing his hand upon seeing that she wasn't going to accept it.
"It must make you angry- knowing nothing of your past other than a scout and a Sith Lord." Rage was on a constant simmer inside of her- usually it took very little to make it boil over.
ButKatrina choked it down all the same, and gazed at her own eyes set in her brother's head.
"It's late." Phineas smiled.
"Still as subtle as a trip mine, I see." He pushed himself up from the chair.
"I'm sorry I disturbed you, Revan." She stood.
"I guess we'll see each other again tomorrow evening." Phineas nodded.
"I'd like that." Whether she would or not she didn't know. She said nothing and watched him leave the cockpit.
Then, as soon as she was sure he was off the ship, when she could see his form through the windows of the cockpit and feel his relieved presence leaving through the Force, she curled back up in the pilot's chair and struggled to pretend it was Carth embracing her rather than an inanimate object that carried the memory of him.