For a few seconds, the room was noisy- the sound of the blasters and the dying grunts of Faris echoing like firecrackers and the roar of a rancor from the poor acoustics. After those seconds, all was silence.
Katrina lowered her arm from where it had been shielding her eyes. The droids had automatically shut down after carrying out their final objective. Each one stood slumped over in the corner, as harmless and non-threatening as a coat rack.
A cloud of smoke hovered over the body of Faris where he lay on the floor, his chest a mass of burnt clothing and skin.
Katrina swallowed hard, trying not to think of her conscious moments on the Jedi Chaser, touching Carth's face.
"What a fool," Canderous muttered, stepping over the body and waving a hand through the slight cloud of smoke that had risen from it. Katrina wondered momentarily if he was thinking of another waste of life, the suicide of Jagi that had taken place before their very eyes in the deserts of Tatooine.
She moved around the room wordlessly.
"I never really got used to it," she heard Dustil murmur to Juhani. The Cathar looked at him.
"The constant death. Corpses practically being part of the room decorations on Korriban," he added quietly, staring at Faris' corpse.
"It is because you cannot accept such things as being right, as being normal, that you were able to turn from the path of the dark side. Death is never something to get used to, no matter how many battles you may see."
Katrina didn't look at Faris. If she did, she knew the only remorse she would have was that she wasn't able to kill him herself.
There was little else in his study, aside from a cluttered desk and another glass case of weapons in the corner.
"Revan," Canderous said, gesturing towards it. The case was full of hand grenades and other demolitions devices.
"A case of weapons is not enough to condemn the man." Bastila said.
"He was blathering about vengeance and how he expected Revan to be dead. Do you need a signed confession?" Canderous replied, smirking at the irritation on the Jedi's face.
Katrina moved towards the desk. A number of datapads and other personal items were strewn across it. A computer terminal was built into it. Apparently Faris had been in the middle of something, because it was already on and appeared to be showing something along the lines of Faris' private journal.
"Yes. I do require something a little more substantial than our assumptions based on his décor and the raving he made before he killed himself," Bastila replied tersely, holding her head high against the Mandalorian.
She scanned through the entries. Most were vague and desultory, mentioning droid purchases and how he was feeling.
She felt a slight twinge of guilt, noting how often he had been feeling despair and hopelessness. The reasons for this were not mentioned, however, and she kept searching.
I need something along the lines of 'Dear Diary: Used my prototype weapon against Revan and her companion near Telos today'.
"What have you found, Revan?" Juhani murmured, coming up behind her.
"His journals. He didn't seem to use them very often for anything personal. They read more like droid production and purchase receipts."
"Perhaps if you go back to any entries around the time the Sith were expected to pick up his droids." Katrina followed the Cathar's advice, coming to an entry nearly a day or so after Phineas had dated Faris' agreement to supply the droids.
What have I done? The entry's first sentence stuck out from the rest. She looked closer.
But how could I have forseen it? How could I know that they would betray me in this way, the most painful of ways? I had thought that by giving them my droids, my life's work, that it would be a suitable offering, that they would become my allies. All too late I have seen that there are no friends among the Sith, that there are no alliances.
"It seems as though he supported the Sith out of fear for his family, and thought that supporting them would exclude him from their plans of conquest," Juhani murmured.
Katrina reached up, absent-mindedly tugging at her earlobe. She didn't want to keep reading, knowing how it would end; with another sin she didn't remember to apologize for.
Their dark servants, the Jedi turned to evil- they came for her. He has seduced her, taken her away from her family, from her home. They've taken my Sonia, my daughter, turned her to their evil purposes. And I, like a fool, thought a trade of weapons would keep them away. It appears that once you have agreed to supply them, they devour everything you have.
Her throat went dry but she kept reading.
They will come tomorrow; He will come and the woman; she will come too. They will come for the droids, though they have already taken everything I hold dear.
"The woman?" Juhani interrupted.
"He must be referring to you, Revan," Bastila said, nearly pushing them both aside in an effort to see the computer.
"But that doesn't make any sense...he thought you were a man when we arrived," Dustil said.
No, you are not him. She thought back to his words, trying to connect the dots.
"I don't think he was talking about me," Katrina murmured.
She was on the do-not-allow-entry list, but she was apparently not the primary target.
I will not let them have this final satisfaction. I will turn my creations on them...they cannot take anymore than they have already stolen. And someday, I will have my revenge on him.
The entry ended with that sobering vow.
Katrina leaned over the desk.
"After agreeing to supply the Sith with weapons, Faris discovered that his daughter had been recruited into the Sith," Bastila summarized.
"I guess that's reason enough for an assassination order," Canderous murmured, his arms folded as though he were still not convinced.
"Then who's the man he's sworn to have his revenge on?" Dustil asked.
"The Sith must have been Malak and Revan. The man must be Malak," Bastila finished triumphantly.
"Therefore, his vengeance was not directed towards Revan," Juhani continued. "His journal seems to imply that it was Malak who recruited his daughter, and the primary orders of his droids seem to have been to destroy thieves and Malak, should either wander near his front door." Bastila folded her arms, raising an eyebrow at Canderous, who's only sign of concession was a slight nod of the head.
Katrina eyed the glass case of demolitions.
While some of them were prototype weapons, all were covered in dust. They weren't meant to be used, and she doubted even more so that the small man who had had his heart broken by the Sith could have mustered the courage to launch such a bold attack.
"So it wasn't him," she finally said, pushing herself up from the table. She moved towards the door, stepping over Faris' body as though it were a pile of bantha droppings.
She resisted the urge to kick it, despite the fact that she felt so much pity for him, a man who had spent his life in mourning for his lost daughter and finally thrown it all away when reminded of his failure.
She felt more pity for herself, that she had been so sure that he would be the culprit, that she might have ended everything in this sparse townhouse and gone back to Telos, and that she had been completely wrong.
"The dark side thrives on fear and feelings of doubt or guilt. It is the dark side that had taken hold of this man and driven him to take his own life. Things did not have to end this way," Juhani said, more so to Dustil than to anyone else.
"How else might they have ended? We would have killed him if he had been guilty of the attack," he answered.
"No, Padawan, we would not have killed him," Juhani replied severely.
A Jedi does not end things with revenge. The Jedi idea of justice is not an eye for an eye, one destroyed life for another.
I did not kill him,Katrina reminded herself, despite the fact that she would have.
This wasn't the way today was supposed to be.
She picked up various items lying around the cluttered room, trying furiously to put them into neat piles.
Today was supposed to be a day of joy, a day of pride. Today was the day that she would tell them of her intentions to join the Jedi, to get off of this red industrial cloud amid their praise and applause.
Instead she was frustrated and angry, and that wasn't how she was supposed to be feeling.
"Revan..."A voice called out from the bedroom, high and whining.
Look at this place, she fumed to herself. That a person should be dying in such a dirty house.
"Revan." The voice was softer. She glanced up at her brother, standing in the doorway, watching her trying to straighten the room curiously, as though she were performing some kind of foreign dance.
"She's calling you."
"I know she's calling me," she snapped.
She shouldn't have been dying. Not now, not when she had wanted to show her how she had risen out of what they were; out of this squalor to become a Jedi.
A person should die with dignity, not in this slum. Not with a dirty house, with nothing around to show what she's accomplished.
She had wanted to be the accomplishment. But there was no way she could tell her mother. Not today.
"Malak's coming," she murmured brusquely to Phineas.
"I told him he didn't need to," she added, "But he said he would anyways."
She was of two minds about this; she didn't want his awkward attempts at condolences- Malak was never very good with words. On the other hand, he was always at her side. It would seem wrong if he wasn't here.
Her brother nodded again. He was poised in what she liked to call his 'politician look', arms folded behind him and his head high as though he wasn't a fifteen year old in a slum with a dying mother.
"Go in there, Revan." She ignored him, continuing to clean. She could see him frowning at her out of the corner of her eyes.
He was much taller than her, but then again she was small for her age. It had helped in convincing the Jedi that she was a very mature seven-year old rather than the ten years she actually was.
Whether she had successfully deceived them or they had felt that she was too strong in the Force to leave behind she didn't know, but she couldn't let something so arbitrary as age keep her from becoming a Jedi, from getting out of here.
"You'll regret it if you don't, if you leave without saying goodbye." She looked up at him. She hadn't told him of the Jedi, of her plans to leave. The hurt and anger from the fact was plain in his eyes, and through the Force.
"Were you even going to tell me, Revan? Or were you and Malak just going to disappear?" His voice was hard, trembling.
"This isn't the time, Phineas." Ten years old was an early age to realize such a thing, but she had never been ordinary in any sense of the word.
She finally dropped the datapads she had been tidying, moving towards the bedroom, now her mother's sickroom. She grasped one of her brother's clenched fists as she passed.
Well, she would make it up to him someday. When she returned as a great Jedi, she would make things right.
"Revan..." This was not fair to her, but it was a greater injustice to her mother, whose once strong hands now reached towards her, shaking like withered and dry leaves.
She forced herself to walk to her bedside, to try and recognize this wasted creature as her mother, Nura; a woman who had raised both her children on her own for years, a daughter who would become a Jedi and a son who was already becoming a well known voice in Anellian government.
"It hurts," Nura repeated, grasping her hands as she watched tears appear on her face.
The tears unsettled her, and she stood, stiff and uncomfortable. She didn't know how to respond to this- to this dying woman who wept and admitted pain when she had lived her life with a mother who had had no time for bedtime kisses and taught her children that strength, resilience, and defending what you believed in were the most important values.
"I'm here, Mother," she finally said. That had always been her talent- knowing the right words even when she didn't understand them.
Nura smiled weakly, her face contorting with the effort.
"You are always here. You have always done the right thing. You make me proud." She squeezed her mother's hand. 'Pride' often equated 'love' to her mother, and she was glad to have it.
"I'll do so much more, Mother-"
"Oh Revan..." her mother whined in pain again, her voice breathy and high.
She saw the thin form of Malak in the doorway, his pale skin even paler upon seeing her mother. She glanced up at him, reading the comforting reminder in his eyes, the guilty pleasure both had in their upcoming departure from this planet and to the Jedi.
She swallowed her dreams of grandeur, her plans of power, wisdom, and respect. These things would come. And she would make her mother proud, even after the death that was dangling above this house, just waiting for an opportune moment.
Right now, she would be Revan, the daughter that would stay by her mother's side.