Same galaxy as my other stories. Written for the kotorfanmedia dot com challenge #3, Fairy Tales.
At first she thought it was a nightmare.
Katrina's eyes adjusted to the darkness of their bedroom. There was a moist, hot patch of skin on the back of her neck where Carth had been breathing all night. He was lying on his side with one arm above his head and the other on the pillow, his mouth hanging open and the soft air of the Citadel's climate control making his hair dance across his forehead.
Someone was crying. An innate instinct told her that she had the power to stop it. There wasn't anything else to assume than that it had been a nightmare.
But the crying was familiar in the way that she knew Carth's voice and knew the sound of her own laughter. Katrina pushed herself up and yawned, eyes scanning the room until they rested on their newest acquisition.
Celyn sat up in her crib, bawling to the galaxy about how no one was there to comfort her. Katrina swung herself to the side of the bed, half falling back down from drowsiness.
Her Jedi reflexes were still adjusting to having their old body back again. They had been honed for months to compensate for wider hips and a protruding stomach. Occasionally they made her lapse back into a slower stride or put her hand on a now-flat abdomen during a fight.
Celyn's screeching softened slightly into pitch-bending whimpers. She bounced up and down, unable to stand yet, reaching her arms towards Katrina who bent to pick her up.
"You're all right, shh, you're all right," Katrina whispered into her ear, rubbing her daughter's heaving back, smoothing the short curls of brown hair on her head.
It was easy to be a mother when you had the Force; when you could put your hand on your little daughter's back and instantly soothe her back to sleep.
Too easy. Not fair that there are mothers who pace for hours with shrieking kids and never get any rest. Not fair that you can get out of it, not fair that you can crawl right back into bed with Carth and have several hours of uninterrupted sleep. Not fair that you have a little girl and a warm bed and a man that loves you when you've deprived many others of the same things.
Someday when Celyn was older she would follow through on her plans to even things out, but for now Katrina made up for it in smaller ways, like sitting up at night when she'd rather be asleep.
Celyn was still sobbing into her neck, her little hands balling into fists and squeezing Katrina's nightgown.
Don't cry, Celyn, she thought towards her daughter. I promise I won't let anything hurt you or scare you, little girl…little girl without a nickname.
Some nights when Carth was the one to roll over groggily and soothe a crying Celyn, she could hear him softly trying out nicknames. None of them stuck, and he always ended up just saying her name.
"She looks just like you."
Katrina gazed down at her child, Celyn, a bright pink little mass of wrinkles, her face scrunched up to accommodate her shrieking.
"Are you trying to tell me something, flyboy?"
Carth smirked, planting a kiss on her matted head. He'd made it just in time for her last exhausting hour of labor, still in full uniform; caught by a hapless TSF officer (though a fast runner) in the airlock to the Sojourn as both the ship and its crew returned to Citadel Station. Carth had been far more worried than Katrina. Childbirth was exhausting, but it was nothing compared to the thickened fingers of the Force clenching around your throat, or the icy taste of lightning trickling through your veins.
"Come on, beautiful," he'd murmured in her ear encouragingly. "I didn't sprint to the nearest shuttle and demand that it alter course over here for nothing."
"Carth-"
"I'm right here."
"That hurts-"
"I know, gorgeous. It's almost over-"
"No, you're digging your nails into my shoulders."
Celyn made little hiccups into Katrina's collarbone, wailing as-of-yet unintelligible syllables. Katrina sat down in a nearby chair and wondered what had been in her little girl's nightmare; what had jolted her out of blissful sleep this time.
Some nights she was afraid that it was the shared visions of Sith Revan killing honest men of the Republic, mangling officers who had betrayed what they believed in to follow her, slicing off her best friend's jaw because he longed to kiss her.
There was no way to know-- not yet. She could soothe her daughter's thoughts, but the mind of a baby was far too unfocused for her to pull anything out of it. Katrina closed her eyes and leaned back, resting her head against the wall. Celyn quieted, squirming heavily in her arms and making mumbling motions with her lips.
This part she didn't consider cheating. Other mothers told their crying kids stories or sang them songs. Her way of doing that just happened to be through the Force.
The Wookiee celebratory fire burned almost three meters high, and Katrina pushed her sleeves up and loosened the neck of her robes, leaning back and letting the heat soothe the bruises and cuts earned that day; battling the Czerka slavers and Chuundar loyalists.
It had been a good day all around- Zaalbar stood on the other side of the fire, growling excitedly in conversation with his father. Katrina didn't think he had uttered that many words on all three of the planets they had been to before Kashyyyk combined. Mission sat on the ground with her knees drawn up to her face, smiling happily as she watched her friend. Bastila was talking to their newfound Jedi Jolee Bindo. The old man kept snorting in between the younger Jedi's sentences, letting out a punctuated 'hah!' every now and then. Katrina decided she liked him already.
As for her, she was sitting next to Carth. Whom she had kissed today. For the first time.
Her hand brushed his where it rested on the wood bench, and he squeezed it, giving her a rakish smile.
The memory of that kiss couldn't help but replay in her mind: the way he had put one arm around her waist, blaster still in hand; the way he had brushed the sticky kinrath goo from her cheek before leaning in and kissing her; the way her hand, still holding her lightsaber, had gone limp and dropped the weapon to roll across the wooden walkways of Kashyyyk.
Katrina felt herself blushing furiously as she gazed into his eyes and looked away, hoping everyone else would attribute it to the fire. Carth must have been thinking about it too, because his other hand came up to rub his neck and he cleared his throat nervously.
Juhani was so silent and still that Katrina almost didn't notice her.
"Are you all right, Juhani?"
The Cathar looked up from where she sat demurely on Katrina's other side, staring into the fire with a pensive look.
"Yes, of course," she answered, giving Katrina a toothy smile. "I apologize for being so quiet. The sight of so many happy creatures…an entire race we have helped to free from slavery…it reminds me of why I became a Jedi."
Katrina nodded vigorously, although she hadn't thought of it that way. Not even once.
The weeks had passed for her as a series of goals: getting down to the Shadowlands, convincing Jolee to help them, finding the Star Map, fighting to get Zaalbar released. These goals required certain actions to make them happen, and ending the Czerka slave trade was just the means to an end.
Guilt hit her faster than Bastila's stare. The Jedi had been giving her the eye ever since she and Carth had returned to Rwookrrorro together a few minutes behind everyone else. The fact that the two women shared not only visions, but dreams and thoughts didn't help. But with Carth now occupied in what Katrina hoped was a civil conversation with Canderous, and Katrina turned towards Juhani, Bastila quickly averted her eyes.
It's not the motives that count, Katrina told herself. It's the outcome. She had ended the Wookiee slave trade. That was the action of a Jedi, and the fact that she hadn't landed on this planet with that intention didn't make her a bad one.
Kissing Carth Onasi wasn't exactly the action of a Jedi either, but Katrina didn't feel a bit guilty about that one.
"We are now part of Kashyyyk's history," Juhani added, the fur on her neck ruffling slightly in the smoke blowing off of the fire. "It is a humbling experience."
Freyyr had begun their party with the history of the village. The tale had been passed around from Wookiee to Wookiee, remembered and retold for at least three hours until their hosts had finally broken out the food and drink.
Embellishment had already crept in only hours after the battle: how runt Chunndar, the weak and manipulative, was defeated by the mighty Freyyr and Zaalbar. In reality it had been a carefully planned ambush involving the entire crew of the Ebon Hawk as well as a bevy of stolen Czerka weapons. Even then, the battle had gone on until legend and truth evened out and it was down to a final confrontation between the elder son and the deceitful younger. And like all good stories, it ended happily.
But their mission couldn't avoid being good fodder for oral histories; good versus evil, Jedi versus Sith, the prodigal Wookiee son—
Even a love story, as long as Katrina was going to embellish things. She wondered if that kiss would turn into one.
Juhani smiled. "Perhaps one day we shall be in the histories of the Jedi. Like the Sunriders or Qel-Dromas. Or even Malak and Revan, as the Jedi they once were."
Katrina wondered if she would ever see Malak, the name on everyone's lips since Taris; Malak the enemy, Malak the Sith Lord. She wondered if it would be her or Bastila or Juhani to face him in a final fight like the hundreds that filled the Jedi Archives, or if he would be blown up in a ship-to-ship battle like his predecessor; killed as easily as any other man.
She wondered what Revan had been thinking in her vision, the one where Bastila had stepped forward menacingly only for the Sith Lord to fall in a crumple of black armor and robes onto the metallic floor of the command ship.
I know what I would be thinking. I would be angry that it ended like that. Stories aren't supposed to end like that-
The Cathar watched the flames lick the edges of the wood, the din of the celebration around them a low roar in their ears.
"Sad that we cannot pass on the tales of our journey," Juhani finally said. "I am the last of my people, and we are Jedi. Our lives will not include family or children."
"I think that Code of ours is somewhat flawed if it means we aren't allowed to love-"
The Cathar gave her a sly smirk and said nothing. Katrina turned back to the fire and the way the smoke made the images on the other side wavy and distorted. She took in the thick air of the giant wroshyr trees and thought to herself how there might not be another night like this one in a while.
Celyn grew heavy on her shoulder. Her head slumped into Katrina's neck, her breathing barely a whisper.
Katrina wondered how long she had been sitting there. Her limbs felt stiff and she could swear the colors of Telos that cast a pale light over the bedroom had shifted slightly.
She laid Celyn back into the crib and crawled back into bed, snuggling up against Carth.
"Carth?"
He mumbled incoherently into the sheets. Katrina moved closer to him, burrowing under the blanket until his beard was brushing against her forehead.
There was only one thing she felt guilty for, and she closed her eyes, trying not to think about it.
If she wasn't Revan; if she hadn't killed and mangled men by the thousands, attempted a galactic takeover and began the Sith conversion of the Jedi Order, she wouldn't be lying in a warm bed with a man that loved her and a little girl nearby.
Which meant that she wouldn't take any of it back. Ever.