"The Committee has reviewed your request, my Lord."
His voice was much less golden than she remembered; it did not bounce off the clean smooth walls of the Committee's chambers, making any further appeals fail before they began.
She smiled against the cold, smooth surface of her mask, watching the dark form of his hand reach up to rub his eyes or his temples or both.
Her apprentice stepped forward.
"Our ship is prepared to accept both weapons and droids should you have both."
If Malak could not recognize his mistakes, his awkward social taboos, she was the one to cringe, to absorb the shame he should have felt at being too cocky, at being weak.
She frowned. Her apprentice's doubts might have changed to over-confidence, his hesitance to hastiness; but her superiority was not any less evident with the red lightsaber he now carried, the veiny white skin that was now his own.
A Sith never showed the contents of their mind; never allowed their heart to bleed. Certainly not wear both on their sleeves as obviously as Malak did.
"You will not need to ready any ships, my Lord. The Committee has denied your request."
It had been expected, and she did not ask if it had been unanimous or not.
His slow and steady breathing was apparent now, rather than silent and assumed. She could already tell he had gone through a war simply to be able to sit here and say tiredly "The Committee has denied your request".
She felt Malak's rage. She drank it up, swam in it, savored it coursing through his body.
But it did not make him more powerful; that she knew, and she clasped her hands behind her back. She was the master, he the apprentice. His barely contained rage only reminded her of how much stronger hers was.
"I assure you then, I will remember your decision." Her voice was ice.
But only a minor setback. They had no need of Anelli's demolitions, although impressive; their dusty droid side productions, their outdated blasters. Not with the Star Forge at her disposal, at her command.
She clenched and opened her fist, listening to the satisfying crunch of her glove. At her fingertips.
The weapon she wanted was not made of steel or red earth.
Revan turned and left the Committee chambers. She strode easily past the gawking special-interest representatives in the waiting room, past the pale guards that protected the private areas of the government complex.
"This is a pointless endeavor." Her hands stayed clasped behind her back, and she did not even turn to acknowledge him.
"Your opinion is not a factor that deserved consideration."
"He has never been trained in the ways of the Force. His inclusion is worthless-"
"I will decide what is of worth, apprentice." His fury was always prevalent; she only ever noticed it now when it neared the breaking point.
She knew the way he was looking for something to do with his hands, something, anything other than what he truly wanted to do (pull out his lightsaber and lop her arrogant head off, it would be so quick, so easy-)
But he was her apprentice. She was the stronger. He would believe her, he would follow her.
Revan neared the large black doors and knocked.
He was not prompt. In fact, she stood waiting for at least a full minute, a mistake usually punishable by death.
She finally heard the thick sliding of the lock.
He was stalking away from the door as she pushed it open.
"Have you come to kill me for my opposition?" Her brother sounded hollow; his bravery rehearsed, his articulate speech scripted.
"No, I haven't come to kill you." Phineas turned, glancing sideways at her, dark circles around his narrowed eyes.
"What do you ask of me then, oh Dark Lord?" His voice dripped with sarcasm.
His apartments were less clean than she remembered them. She wove between the furniture, pausing to run a finger through a layer of dust on the table.
"You seem to forget the Revan at the end of that title. You're still my brother."Phineas scoffed derisively.
"How can you call yourself my sister?" He was afraid. He was afraid of her, and she did not like how desperately she wanted him not to be.
But she was in control; she was Lord Revan.
"So you won your war," he continued without waiting for a response. "I'm glad to see you've decided to make a career out of it."
"I never knew you to be a pacifist." She could feel his confusion, his conflict; how he wanted to laugh and compete with her, how he felt he had to argue and oppose her.
"It's not your war I'm against, Revan. It's your taking over the galaxy by brute force that has me a little concerned."
She laughed. It was high and strident, and it resonated off the smooth marble walls like the wail of a banshee. Her vocal cords seemed to have forgotten her dry chuckle, and replaced it with this strangulated noise that now made the color drain out of her brother's face.
"No one in the galaxy ever concerned themselves with what happened on Anelli. Don't pretend that your Committee extends concern where they received none."
He rubbed his neck, staring ruefully at the ground.
"You look tired, Phineas." He glared at her.
"Having you for a sister can get exhausting."
Not only in the way your shoulders are slumping right now. Phineas's head shot up, as if communicating through the Force was a personal violation.
What would you know? You haven't been here. He was always so careful to contain his anger, not like Malak: to smother it like he smothered the Force, to keep it wilting and dying but never able to destroy it completely.
"You should know that the decision wasn't reached easily," he added, straightening up. "You have a lot of friends on the Committee."
"But not enough."
"No, but the ones you have can be very...persuasive." Her brother didn't seem to know what to do with his hands; he seemed to have forgotten their usual calm position behind his back. Now they clasped and reclasped the folds of his robes, folded and unfolded in front of him, confused and lost.
"Abbas...Abbas believes that you'll usher in a new age for the galaxy. That you'll continue to stop the tyranny of clans like the Mandalorians in ways that the Republic couldn't." Phineas glanced up at her.
"But I've heard stories, Revan."
This, too, was expected.
Fury began to crash against her ribs like a thousand torrential thunderbolts that anyone would dare decry her in her brother's eyes, to make her less than him, to make him believe that he was a better person than her.
Revan walked towards him.
"What have you heard?" Phineas stood his ground.
"You've killed," he began slowly, "You've massacred. You've sacrificed civilians for victories, soldiers to make examples. You've become a Sith...you've embraced power at any cost and superiority at any price. You'd...you'd kill anyone in your way, from a grieving mother to your closest friend-"He glanced up at Malak, who offered no support. "Even me."
She was now directly in front of him, eye to eye.
"This is war, Phineas. Surely you harbor no delusions about that. People die in war." He reached out and furtively touched her mask. She grasped his hand and helped him remove it.
Even the low lighting in her brother's apartments pained her eyes for a moment, but she bore it silently.
Phineas stared at her face, frozen and expressionless.
"Malak," he said nervously, despite the fact that he wasn't even looking at him. "The years haven't been kind to you."
Malak bared his teeth; it was not a smile.
"No longer am I that pathetic pale orphan of your youth, Phineas. I am a Dark Lord-"
"A Dark Lord's apprentice," she interrupted flatly, still returning her brother's gaze.
Malak was getting far too proud; she would have to remind him of why she was the master and he was not.
"I want to help you, Phineas," she continued in a low voice, "You can become so much more than what you are."
He bristled.
"And what am I?" She grasped his trembling shoulder.
"You are alone."
She felt the Force trying to break through the intricate chains he had bound it in, trying to reach into her mind, begging her to help it grow.
"I'm not going to become your drone, Revan." He eyed Malak for a moment, "I won't be your 'apprentice'. If I choose to believe in you, it will be only belief, not a following."
And this, as well, was expected.
"Listen to your friend Abbas then. Learn the truth before others turn me into a monster." She touched the hand that was still resting on her cheek. "I'm still Revan. I'm still your sister."
She retrieved her mask from his hand, fitting it over her face and sighing happily at the return to darkness.
"Don't remain their puppet anymore, Phineas. Embrace your power. You are capable of so much more."
She turned her back to him, heading towards the door, feeling his eyes follow her as she left, feeling his heart still in her possession.
Malak trailed behind her, seething in his usual misery. She allowed it, knowing that later she would pay the price for humiliating him in front of her brother, a man Malak had, in his time respected just as much as she.
But he believed in her. He would follow her.
Would Phineas?
"Padawan Revan?"
She did not answer.
"Padawan?"
Her dreams were now inviting, distracting; but no less frightening.
Bastila rose, smoothing the front of her formal Jedi robes, clasping her hands demurely in front of her.
"The Council is ready for you."
In her dreams she was no longer a Dark Lord, threatening the innocent and terrorizing the guilty.
Katrina also rose from her chair, feeling pain shoot down her legs at having been motionless for over an hour.
There were no more glowing white indignant angels, chastising her for her bloodthirsty acts, no more cackling black demons telling her to embrace her power.
Coruscant looked no different, no more irrevocably altered than when she had last been here (with Juhani).
But I have changed. I have been altered.
In her dreams everyone had become grey. And instead of large scale massacres, there was only a Jedi with a green lightsaber, watching in horror as a Cathar that had overcome the darkness to become one of those angels that did not exist anymore crumpled to the ground and vanished forever.
She passed Dustil on his way out of the Council chambers. His face looked as though a hundred mynocks had sucked all the color out of it.
She did not acknowledge him. He did not acknowledge her. She watched him out of the corner of her eye until he collapsed in the chair she had just been sitting in, as if he had been battling the entire Council rather than explaining what had happened, how he had reacted.
How could she explain? How could she account for it? How could she justify the fact that she left with three Padawans and a Master and returned with only the scarred Padawans?
"Padawan Revan, Padawan Bastila. The Council is saddened that this meeting is not under happier circumstances." Master Ahniuk seemed sobered, much more so than she remembered.
It seemed a lifetime since she had been here. Did she even remember?
"Though I imagine that comes within the territory of being on the Council." Jolee's tone was bearable, and she chose to address him rather than the rest of the Council as a whole.
"We felt it necessary to inform the Council in person, Master Jolee." He nodded, though the look in his eyes told her that he didn't think that explanation worth a hill of beans.
"The Council has reviewed the information you have brought us, Revan. We are thankful that you have discovered the source of the attack on your life, but the beginnings of a Sith uprising on Anelli are indeed disturbing tidings," Vandar murmured.
"What course of action does the Council suggest?" Bastila said.
"The Council is in agreement that this threat cannot be left to fester and grow into more than a quiet takeover of a planet on the Outer Rim," Jolee answered. "You must return to the planet and deal with the Sith threat."
'Deal' did not mean to take action towards something, to be occupied with a task. She knew very well that 'deal' equated 'crush, 'kill', 'destroy'.
"I'm afraid we can't do that, Master."
Her words did not escape like bloodthirsty convicts from her lips. She released them and sent them on their way without any hesitation.
Ahniuk raised an eyebrow.
"Do you defy the Council again, Revan?"
"Send someone else, Master. Another team of Jedi, perhaps led by Bastila." She watched them exchange glances, unaccustomed to and at the same time all too familiar with her defiance.
"I am able to continue the mission alone if the Council wishes it," Bastila volunteered.
She's already continued it. It was Bastila who had assumed the navigator's seat in the cockpit of the Ebon Hawk, gotten them back to Coruscant, contacted the Council, explained what had happened. She mourned as much as Katrina herself, but she had done what needed to be done.
She watched Jolee's brow furrow, sizing up the responsible Padawan and the former Dark Lord as if trying to figure out which one was more dangerous.
"The Council asks if you would withdraw, Padawan Bastila, and allow the Council to meet privately with Padawan Revan."
Bastila hesitated.
Why do they exclude me?
Katrina glanced sideways at her. She thought of his hazel eyes.
My inclusion isn't an honor, Bastila.
The Jedi nodded, and exited the Council chambers.
"I sense much fear in you, Padawan Revan," Vandar murmured.
"Are you afraid they will attempt another attack on your life?" Ahniuk added. Jolee snorted loudly.
"Please, Ahniuk. This is Revan before you. That's like asking a Wookiee if he fears some unsightly back hair."
"We, too, are deeply saddened by the death of Juhani. We share your grief, Padawan," Ahniuk said after a moment's glare at Jolee.
"And yet," Vandar began again. "We sense that this is not the reason for your refusal to return to the planet and face the Sith."
"The Council knows nothing of this planet, Padawan Revan." They were lying. She knew they were lying and it made her grit her teeth, the grinding making a slight hum through her pained smile.
"Why didn't the Council inform me of my connection with Anelli?" Katrina said flatly, staring expectantly at the Jedi Master.
"The Council feels that it has tampered with your past enough as it is, Revan." he said calmly. "The decision was made to allow you to discover your own history and draw your own conclusions about it."
"We knew very little about it anyways, lass," Jolee added. "We were aware it was your homeworld and that you may have had some rumored family still living there, but nothing that might have prevented this turn of events."
She swallowed hard and realized that even after everything that had happened, she was still glad she had heard it from her brother's lips than have it recited to her in the emotionless halls of the Jedi.
"Then you didn't know that my brother is...was a Sith."
The past tense stung all the more; that even when he had introduced himself, told her of his existence, even then he was a Sith.
Vandar nodded.
"Do you fear your brother, Revan? Do you fear this...Phineas?"
She thought of how clumsily he had grasped the blaster she had flung at him, how he had tripped and fallen trying to get away.
"No, Master, but I do not...I don't want to face him again."
"You didn't flee here merely because you wanted to see our old wrinkled faces again, did you?" Jolee said. Katrina looked up at him.
It wasn't informing the Council in person that had necessitated a quick departure from Anelli. It wasn't even the fact that they were now wanted on the planet for their roles in the deaths of Faris, Ruhol, Haytham and most of the security forces in the Anellian Mining Corporation's headquarters.
"You fear that your brother cannot be turned. That you will have to kill him." She turned to Vandar.
"I want to kill him."
The entire Council was silent.
She saw Juhani, pale and cold and shivering. She saw her body disappearing, gone now except for her memory, and she clung desperately to that memory. She knew how easily it could be stolen from her.
And when she saw Juhani, she saw the Sith at the top of the stairs. The Sith that was her brother Phineas. The Sith, her brother Phineas, that had extended an arm and helped Juhani die.
She paced back and forth, one hand pulling distractedly on her earlobe.
"If I had stayed there, I would have killed him. If I go back there, I'm afraid I will."
"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.
"You fear falling to the dark side again?" Ahniuk finally murmured.
She placed the datapad in his hand, her fingers brushing against his palm. She ignored the Force jabbing her in the ribs, telling her that he was undeniably related to her.
"Falling is incidental, Master. I...care about him. I don't want him dead."
"Then you must listen to those feelings, Padawan Revan," Vandar said softly.
"I thought we weren't permitted to love. That familial attachments are discouraged because of the dangerous nature of the emotions that accompany them," Jolee recited loudly, raising an eyebrow at the Jedi.
"When love is redemptive, no," Vandar replied."When love can keep a Jedi from falling to the dark side, from giving into hate, fear, and aggression, no."
"You must return to Anelli, Revan," he continued. "If you do not, both the Sith, Sakh and your brother, will only retreat further into the dark side. It is our sincere hope that you are able to turn both back."
"If you can't," Jolee's voice was hard, and Katrina only recalled one time (one subject; one woman, his wife) when it had sounded like that before. "Then it will not mean that you have fallen again."
As unthinkable as it was, she had a brother, and he was her brother. As unthinkable as it was, he was a Sith.
And as unthinkable as it was, as much as she feared having the lightsaber that now clung benignly to her robes in her hands again, it was not over.
It would never end, as long as she was who she was.
Katrina nodded, straightening up and standing before them as a Padawan again.
"The Council also wishes to discuss the future of Juhani's former Padawan, Dustil Onasi," Ahniuk said. "We are grateful you managed to keep him from following the same dark path he had begun on."
She hadn't even thought of him. She distinctly felt the remnants of him in the room, the pain and the anguish of Juhani's death from fresh eyes.
"There was no other option, Master."
"Dustil's training is far too advanced to leave him floundering at this point," Jolee added. "One of the biggest dangers to the galaxy is an unfinished Jedi."
"What do you intend to do with him then?" The Council exchanged glances.
"We would like you to take Dustil as your Padawan and complete his training."
"They seem to think I can learn something from you."
"I'm still only a Padawan myself," Katrina muttered dumbly, unable to think of anything else to say.
"Bah, as if the title ever made a Jedi. You can call the Sand People Jawas, but they'll still impale you with their gaffi sticks." Jolee replied.
"You have more than met the requirements for the Trials, Revan. You have proven yourself a returned servant of the light time and again. You have defeated Malak and resisted the lure of the dark side since the Star Forge. The Council confers upon you the title of Jedi Knight."
She felt no elation. She wondered if she had been as nonplussed when they had promoted her to Knight the first time.
I was probably too irritated that I didn't go straight to Master.
"Thank you...Excuse me if I'm not more grateful." She was no longer afraid of the Council. She realized it instantly as she heard how honest her replies were, how she no longer edited them for the Council's ears, how she no longer cared if they could watch all the memories of her life, personal or not.
Vandar and Ahniuk only nodded back as if they understood.
"But why do you want me to train him? Why not another Jedi? Why not Bastila?"
Instantly she sensed their hesitation as clearly as she had months ago when she had known they were lying about Anelli. And she sensed they were about to lie to her again.
"Dustil has been...scarred by the loss of a Master whom he clearly respected and confided in. To introduce one he has never met would make it appear as though we are trying to replace Juhani, and would only court his hostility," Ahniuk explained.
"And Bastila?"
"He knows you," Jolee answered. "He may not like you all that much, but-"
"He has every reason not to like me. I killed his mother," Katrina snapped.
And I'm in love with his father, who also has every reason not to like me but for some reason still does.
"And allowing that hatred to fester would be doing Padawan Dustil a disservice," Ahniuk interrupted.
"He isn't defeating it if you're forcing him to hide it or look past it by matching him up with me-"
"You have been there during every step of his training," Jolee continued doggedly. "You brought him out of that Academy on Korriban, mind. You two have been through a lot together, whether either of you would admit it or not. You've got as developed a relationship as most Masters and Padawans do."
"Not most Masters and Padawans despise each other," Katrina replied.
Jolee raised an eyebrow, and the amusement was back in his eyes.
"Oh no?"
"This is your choice, Revan," Vandar finished. "If you refuse him as your Padawan, we will find him another Master, but it is the advice of the Council that you would be the best choice to continue his training."
There was the son of Carth with a lightsaber in his hands, a dying master in front of him, and a wounded Sith clinging to the railing. Carth's son, Juhani's Padawan, Dustil Onasi, about to fall. And there would be no second chance.
There was what she would choose and what she was supposed to choose.
"I will train him."
Master Ahniuk nodded in agreement.
"Good. Then you should prepare for your return to Anelli and what you may have to face. You may tell Padawan Bastila to reenter, for we would speak with her as well. May the Force be with you."
"Masters?" All of them looked up, waiting patiently for her question. She swallowed hard.
Carth's son made her think of Carth made her heart ache.
"I would ask the Council if there's been any word from Telos."
There is no longing, there is no wishful thinking.
Jolee smiled sadly at her.
"No, there has been no word."
There is no pessimism, there is no thinking that he's maybe been dead for months and you just haven't known.
Katrina nodded, bowing slowly.
"May the Force be with you, then."
She exited the chambers, sighing heavily as soon as the door closed behind her.
She was no longer afraid of them, she decided, but standing before them still took a lot out of her.
Bastila walked towards her.
"Well?"
She knew they had hidden something about Bastila, that they hadn't told her the whole truth. She struggled in vain to hide it, but Bastila found it too quickly.
Their bond would not disappear. It stubbornly held on, refusing to even weaken despite the fact that both ends were frantically thrusting it away.
"You can go in. They still want to speak to you." Bastila stared at her.
She didn't want to hurt Bastila, especially for such a mundane reason as knowing the Council had second thoughts about Bastila but not actually knowing what those thoughts were.
But hurt her she did. Bastila frowned.
"The Hawk is ready if we are to return to Anelli shortly." Katrina nodded.
"We are."
The Jedi didn't seem to know what else to say. She fidgeted with her robes for a moment.
"All of us?" Katrina nodded again.
"Yes, all of us."
Without another word, Bastila walked swiftly past her and into the Council chambers.