Chapter 10: The Awakening

Revan

Bastila lay cold before Revan, shallow breathing sustaining her unconscious body. In contrast, Revan breathed heavily as she let the Force guide her hands to Bastila's ivory forehead, which was now nearly pearlescent with cold sweat.

Revan heard Bastila's heartbeat thumping loudly around her, drowning out the hum of the Lumos' engines. Revan let herself fall into this mesmerizing rhythm, into the pulsating thuds of Bastila Shan.

They were attuned precisely to the same wavelength now, and with their powerful bond, Revan was easily able to feel the battle going on within Bastila's psyche. Distantly, viperous voices hissed menacingly.

-Little Jedi, one taunted, -all alone with no power. No power at all...

-You must renounce what you know, little Jedi. For you are not so innocent as you would have us know.

-Corrupted. You were... corrupted.

-And you felt the power surge within you, little Jedi. And we can increase it a hundredfold, for we truly are the Sith.

Revan groped in Bastila's mind for some bit of matter. Bastila's hand, some Sith predator's throat. Whichever was closer.

As she blindly reached around, Revan felt a stinging cold pierce her, as though from the inside and the outside simultaneously.

:Revan: cried Bastila. :You have to leave! It's not safe:

Revan did not respond to Bastila's mental cries, but instead tried to block everything from her mind except her goal: dispelling the darkness surrounding Bastila.

Revan filled herself with light and began to aim the brilliance towards the lurking shadows...

Carth

"Stand," declared Canderous.

Carth looked down at his own cards. 5, 4, 7. In his deck, -2+1/-1, -3. He sighed.

"Yeah, hit me," he said resignedly.

Swiftly, Canderous dealt a 1 to Carth.

"Stand," said Carth, none too sure of his Pazaak prowess. He groaned as he realized they had come to yet another tie.

"I'm getting pretty fed up with this," Carth remarked, with a yawn. "Six dejarik stalemates and now these eight tie games of Pazaak. What are they doing?"

Canderous leaned back, his feet on the dejarik board.

"Well, don't forget that one game I won," boasted the Mandalorian.

"Oh, yeah, like I didn't win one first. And you have to have been cheating on that one," retorted Carth.

The two sat for a moment in thick silence.

"So," said Carth, "wonder if Bastila's up yet."

"Yeah. She's terrible at Pazaak. At least someone would win something."

"No, I'm serious."

"What happened to her, anyway?"

Carth shrugged. "I don't know anything more than you do, Ordo."

Canderous smirked. "Yeah, that kind of figures, huh?"

Carth looked up from the dejarik board sharply. "What is that supposed to mean?"

Canderous tried to suppress a laugh. "Well, she is a strong woman, of course."

Carth's mahogany eyes bored into Canderous fiercely. "And?"

Canderous, unfazed by this deadly glare, continued. "You're... now, I don't want you to take this the wrong way, but-" Canderous began to succumb to a fit of laughter- "you're totally whipped, Onasi. Sorry."

Canderous tried to regain his nonchalant composure, and did so only with difficulty. Carth turned away from Canderous in a pout. "Am not," he whispered.

Revan

It was as though the darkness was coiling itself around Revan's limbs. Continually, she shook it off, still searching for Bastila in the darkness.

Finally, Revan felt Bastila's familiar energy ahead of her, dormant.

It felt like Bastila had shut herself down to keep herself from falling to the Dark Side. Revan knew that Bastila was often cautious about the Dark Side, that she felt exceptionally weak against the temptation since her one-time job as Darth Malak's apprentice, but Bastila should have easily fought off this darkness.

:Bastila: Revan hurled her thoughts at Bastila's hibernating essence.

Bastila began to reawaken her psyche simultaneously as the darkness began to attack again. Knowing this, Bastila's psyche, as soon began to relax itself again.

:No! Bastila: urged Revan, :I need you to help me:

:Let me rest, Revan I cannot help you. I will fall too easily to this darkness.:

:Not if we stand together, Bastila! We can stop them together:

Bastila did not respond.

:Bastila, we need to go on! If we don't fight them off, we'll all have lost.:

Bastila reluctantly linked her mind's power tightly with Revan's.

:All right, Revan. But don't… don't be afraid to sacrifice me.:

:I won't need to sacrifice you, Bastila. If I sacrifice you, I lose as well.:

:Fine. Just... don't be afraid to.:

Ignoring this, Revan drew upon both her own and Bastila's inner light and power, shielding them both with it. As the darkness neared them, it recoiled in disgust. All of its voices hissed, and it curled into a denser ball of darkness.

:On three, we attack: cried Bastila, with renewed will. :One... two...:

As Bastila yelled, :THREE: the sphere of darkness leapt towards them, and light burst around them, puncturing and eating away at the murk until it seemed there was nothing left.

Immediately, Revan awoke in the physical world, her hands still resting on Revan's forehead.

As Revan moved her hands, Bastila's eyes began to open. She smiled slightly, still drained from everything that she had just been through.

Bastila tried to sit up, but winced as she did so.

"How... how exactly did I come to be on this ship?" she asked accusingly.

"Um... Canderous... carried you, actually." Revan grinned.

"I knew it would be something like that. Great job he did. Did he just fling me over his shoulder or what? My back feels like it was pulled at both ends at once!"

Revan opened the medbay door, turning away from a moaning Bastila to conceal a slight half-smile.

"Good to have you back, Bastila."