"Revan, are you absolutely sure about this?" Phineas finally said, gazing up at her.
No end, perhaps, but certainly a number of beginnings.
He looked the same as he had in her vision; utterly at a loss for words.
She had gone immediately to him; the only person she could trust and the only person who might know something of a Sith hot spot on Anelli.
"You can watch the recording again, if you'd like,"Katrina replied curtly, holding the datapad out towards him. He waved it away as if it were some kind of disgusting entrail she expected him to eat.
The anger she had felt from him in the vision was here in the present as well, but she didn't begrudge him that. She too was enraged that a Sith Lord had risen right under her nose.
"I'm afraid I can't tell you anything, Revan. I'm astonished that Ruhol had this information."
"So you know nothing of a rising Sith Lord on Anelli?" He cocked his head to the side thoughtfully.
"Do you think this Sith might be responsible for your attack?"
It was the logical conclusion: Sith equaled evil, evil equaled hurting Carth.
"I don't know. It would make things a lot easier." Phineas smiled faintly.
"'Easy' was never a word in our vocabularies."
Katrina ran a finger over the patchy flesh on her arm. It no longer resembled the scaly appearance of a Rodian, but was still an archipelago of pinks and reds.
There are no visions. There is nothing to think about.
Had she really expected that to work?
"Do you remember what happened when I came back to ask for Anelli's support in the Mandalorian Wars?"
"Another vision?" She nodded. Phineas sat up in his chair, folding his arms on the desk in front of him.
"We were all angry. It wasn't exactly a happy reunion."
Talking with the only person in her vision that was still alive was really the only way she could think of to deal with them.
"You were so sure that you would win," he continued, something bitter under his tongue, "So sure that nothing could ever defeat you."
He believed in her. He would follow her to the end.
"Granted," he added after a moment's thought, "Even I wouldn't have predicted that Malak would ever turn on you."
She didn't know why she had been so disturbed: the vision had only shown her plainly what no one in the Jedi had been able to explain to her.
"Malak stroked your ego because he loved you. Your word was law to him, and once you said something was so, Malak believed it. When you said you wouldn't fall, that you were the most powerful Jedi in the galaxy...well, you had an equally powerful Jedi at your side repeating it to you."
She was Revan, a Jedi; she cowered before no one.
It disturbed her because it had shown her exactly why and how she had fallen.
"If I had listened to you then, we might not be having this conversation."
Phineas gave her a sardonic smile.
"If you had listened to me, the reason we wouldn't be having this conversation would be that we were killed or captured by the Mandalorians." She smiled back at him.
Everything seemed less severe when around this brother of hers: She didn't feel so much like a genocidal Sith Lord, with another prospective Sith Lord on the make trying to murder her.
But Carth hadn't escaped unscathed. Nothing could make her forget that.
"So there's nothing you can tell me about an underground Sith movement here?" Katrina asked, straightening up. "You don't know anything about a transaction between presumably Haytham and this new Sith?"
Phineas' face looked strained and uncomfortable.
She narrowed her eyes at him.
"Phineas."
He broke into nervous laughter.
"I haven't heard my name in that tone for a while now-"
"Phineas,"Katrina said again, this time in the tone that still gave her nightmares, the tone of an unrelenting demon.
He knew something. Something he was keeping from her. She didn't need the Force to tell her that, although it was going off like the shrieking of an emergency alarm on the Endar Spire.
"Look at your datapad," he forced through his teeth, glancing around as though there were spies in his own home.
"No, I want to know exactly what information you have, and I want to know now."
"Keep your voice down,"herbrotheradded warningly.
"I'll keep it down as soon as you tell me what you know about the Sith-"
"Some things are not that easy, Revan." His voice grew so low that she had to strain to hear it.
"I told you that there are colleagues of mine on that list- I can only go so far in betraying them."
Katrina glanced at her pack, as if she could see the damning object through the material. Phineas eyed her meaningfully.
You do realize what you're getting yourself into, don't you?
She could feel his fear, his anger, his pain all wrapped up like tiny trip mines within him. And the only apparent reason for any of it was that he was risking perhaps the most important thing in his life to help her.
She took his hand and squeezed it as she rose to leave.
"I understand. Thank you." He gave her that faint smile again, settling back into his normal composed posture.
She felt his slight relief, his sense of achievement behind her as she left his home. Why not? She would feel guilty accomplishment too if she managed to hide her betrayal from all her closest friends.
"Hello, my friend."
Juhani stood outside of the offices, waiting for her.
"Juhani. What are you doing here?" The Cathar smiled somewhat apologetically.
"Bastila advised that someone should perhaps accompany you. She was...concerned that you might react negatively from our recent discovery." Juhani frowned, as if Bastila were standing nearby and could see her evident annoyance at this assumption.
"I assured her that you would do nothing of the sort; you have proven time and again that you are a true Jedi. But Bastila was persistent, and thus I volunteered to come as a friend. I apologize...I know I have not been very attentive due to my undertaking in training Dustil." Katrina waved her away, though she too could not keep the irritation out of her features.
She was no longer the grinning Jedi initiate sent to collect Star Maps. She was no longer the student to Bastila's condescending eyes. Still a Padawan, admittedly, but the title was a formality only.
I am that proud and rash woman in my dreams, who believes that nothing in thegalaxy can harm her. I am a former Jedi Knight turned Sith Lord turned Jedi again.
She had controlled herself after waking up from the attack; after seeing Carth like that, after the Jedi allowed his son to begin the training, after visiting the suspects so far, hadn't she? Ruhol a near miss, perhaps, but even so...
There is no ignoring what is festering inside you. There is no denial.
Katrina kept these thoughts to herself as she and Juhani began to walk back in the direction of the Ebon Hawk.
"How's Mission?"
"She is recovering well. It is fortunate that she was in the company of two powerful Jedi when she sustained her injuries, or she might have fallen to them."
"And Dustil?"
"It is difficult to gauge my Padawan's progress at times. He displays a keen interest in the Jedi teachings and learns quickly, and yet sometimes his justifications show such inbred anger, such hate." The Cathar glanced guiltily at her.
"Much of his anger lies in his feelings towards you."
There is no defensiveness. There is no thinking that the feeling is mutual.
She felt like a schoolgirl trying to gather the gossip on a boy she was trying to court. She wanted Dustil's approval, Dustil's acceptance, even if she felt that she didn't have to give it back to him.
Most of all, she felt somewhat jealous that, although he was Carth's son and she was Carth's love, he still chose to confide in Juhani rather than her.
"In time, he will see you for what you are, Revan-"
"No, Juhani, I doubt that he will,"Katrina muttered.
The Ebon Hawk's familiar cockpit beckoned from the port they had finally reached. She gazed at it, thinking of the first time she had seen it: pulling frantically out of Davik's crumbling lair, dodging falling debris.
Watching Carth finally grin sheepishly and wipe the sweat off his brow after they had finally cleared the planet and the waiting Sith fleet.
She could still remember that slight feeling that someone was using her arteries as marionette strings when Carth had first told her of his wife, of Dustil. She could still remember realizing (however ridiculous such superficial feelings had been in light of their mission) that she had no chance in hell with this roguish Republic officer who had already lived his life and watched it fall apart.
She was beginning to fear that she hadn't been wrong.
"In my studies of the Jedi Code, of the teachings that our Order revolves around," the Cathar began slowly, "I have determined that the dark side often comes out of a desire to serve the light. A desire for power over evil that is hard to defeat, fear of the atrocities that, in the end, a fallen Jedi ends up committing themselves."
Juhani put a comforting hand on her shoulder.
"Dustil's anger and his fall were regrettable and unfortunate, but they were both his choices. You were not responsible for them. In time, he will come to see that. I am proud to say that he is my Padawan."
If he had to be entrusted to anyone, at least it was Juhani, she reminded herself.
Juhani was the only one she trusted to ask questions about the dark side both had experienced without fear of a lecture on the dangers of the dark side and the obvious superiority of the light; all while never actually answering the question.
HK-47 turned his metallic head towards them.
"Salutation: I see you have returned, Master. I am hurt that you chose not to include me in your previous outings. The Mandalorian meatbag made them sound most appealing."
"Well if you're a good little droid and shine up all your weaponry, maybe I'll take you along next time."
"Observation: Your morbid sense of humor has not changed, Master. I find it most comforting."
Bastila walked briskly up to them.
"Revan, I-"
The same irritation she had felt earlier that Bastila did not trust her, did not believe that she was no longer a Sith, was suddenly much stronger now that she was in the Jedi's presence. She gazed severely at her.
"What?" Bastila narrowed her eyes, hesitating for only a moment.
"I believe we may safely assume that Haytham is the one responsible for the transaction of weapons with the unknown Sith."
"And why's that?" The nasty tones escaping from her throat surprised even her. She pulled out the datapad, finding the information on Haytham.
"Haytham is a highly ranking superior officer within the ranks of the Anellian Mining Corporation, a company responsible for all weapons production on Anelli. Since this is the planet's chief source of income, it would be correct to assume that the AMC holds enormous sway in the political arena as well,"Katrina read aloud.
"Haytham's position within the company would give him exclusive access to the prototype weapons used in the attack," Juhani murmured.
A Jedi is not childish, a Jedi is not stubborn. A Jedi still isn't refusing to buy a fellow Jedi's theory because of petty feelings of hurt pride.
"Haytham has a long history of quietly supporting the Republic in all things, until a mandate from Coruscant declared his most prized accomplishment, the 'Inferno' line of demolitions, as illegal. It is said that Haytham is the only known possessor of these weapons despite the order to have them destroyed. Their properties are unknown."
Although I think their title might give a little something away.
"Since then, Haytham's support of the Republic has been nonexistent-"
"We should investigate him immediately," Bastila cut in.
Katrina glared at the Jedi. With all her constant expostulating about how they should avoid drawing quick conclusions, how she shouldn't travel the easy path of blaming the first possible suspect, how she must constantly be on guard against these things, for they were the harbingers of darkness-
The Jedi's constant hypocrisy drove angry spikes into her already impatient personality.
"There is no emotion, there is peace. There is no ignorance, there is knowledge," she hissed.
Bastila's eyes became glassy. The Code seemed to carry the opposite effect on the Jedi than what was intended- Katrina could feel the emotion searing under the Jedi's seemingly calm exterior.
"Haytham knows that we are investigating him. Here." She thrust a datapad towards her. Katrina took it, eying Bastila suspiciously.
Revan-
In an effort to prevent the violent deaths that have been your calling card for the eminent and now late Faris and Ruhol, I will instead invite you to the Anellian Mining Corporation offices to discuss any kind of investigation you may be conducting. I am not acquainted with the kind of investigation that ends in blood twice, however. Former Sith and currently favorably connected woman that you are, I would venture a guess that you are more well versed than I. Before you strike me down however, you may find that we both have information that will benefit the other. – Haytham
"What manner of message is this?" Juhani said, frowning.
Look, sister, something just doesn't add up.
It was in moments like this that she missed him, even down to his paranoid little idiosyncrasies.
"It's a trap."