When You're Dreaming
Pol pressed her face into the pillow. What the hell am I doing with Canderous? There is no emotion, there is peace… But there is emotion all different types of it and no one is more avoidable than the other. Unable to find a solution to the riddle she resigned herself to sleep.
Rage, shame, hatred she claimed it all. There was nothing else left to have. His fear she claimed too. He owed her this intimacy. Pol crushed his throat. She felt his windpipe snap with the indiscernible hand of the force. The Republic trooper sank to the floor of the ship. Energy leaped form the man's lifeless body and into her own. The rage subsided and was replaced by detached indifference. My chains are broken.
She sought out Bastila. The Jedi approached, yellow double bladed lightsaber at the ready. She swung and Pol drove her back with a gesture. Heavy fire blasted the ship causing it to rock. A voice cried out strained by the ire that inspired it, "Malak!" Her voice.
She ignited her lightsaber. Red. The color drew her gaze for a moment and Bastila threw a wall of energy at her, pushing her back. Pol was dragged upright for a few meters her heels scraping noiselessly on the sleek black floor of the bridge. Unimpressed by the novice Jedi's ability Pol drew the energy from the air and delivered it coursing through the younger woman's body. Pol turned her back on the Jedi's limp form in disgust. This is what they send me.
Bastila healed herself rapidly and struck out at her, the ship thrashed under the attack and they were thrown across the floor, Bastila's face so near to her own, righteous eyes blazing, pure and sure. So sure of her path. The young Jedi leapt to a fighting crouch regaining the floor quicker than Pol could. "You can not win!" Blackness.
Pol woke abruptly, thrusting back the sheets. For a second she panicked. Where's Bastila? Where the hell am I? She remembered and sighed jadedly. My new room. She contemplated seeking out Bastila. It was 5am. Her room was on the other side of the compound. Ahh crap I should just get up. She dressed herself quickly cladding her form in bulky but clean Jedi robes. She had always hated uniforms and this was the least flattering one she had ever been assigned to. As soon as I leave Dantooine I have to find a good tailor.
Ebon Hawk
"Canderous is coming with us." Bastila answered.
"He's going? He's not a Jedi," Carth said, between mouthfuls of porridge.
"He offered his assistance, whatever killed Nemo is still in those ruins."
"Then I'll come too." Carth announced.
"Good we could use the back up."I could use the back up thought Bastila.
"Morning comrades," Pol greeted as she walked into the common room.
"How come I never get to go?" Mission complained.
"I have been meaning to talk to you Mission. Is now a good time?" Pol asked.
"Sure." The young Twi'lek said. Pol and Mission left the common room and headed outside. They passed Canderous on the way and Pol noticed he was looking grave. Uh oh I know that look, that can't be good. Pol focused her thoughts as Mission sat down in the shade of the ship.
"Mission, if thought there was anything worthy of your skills out there I would take you with me. You have seen so much death and destruction, for your age you have seen too much." Pol spoke quietly, crouching beside the teen.
"Why not do what Carth does and blame it on the holonet." Mission ragged with a dry laugh.
"I'd rather blame the Sith!" Pol laughed bitterly. Recomposing herself she held the Twi'lek's hands in her own. "Mission, I am so sorry for Taris."
"It's not your fault Pol, but thank you. Look I can handle myself."
"I know it's just a shame that you have to. I am going to need you more and more, but right now I think you need time to come to terms with your loss. If you want to talk, I'll be round."
"Thanks, Pol. And don't worry about Tatooine. I understand you have to obey the Jedi council." Mission said.
"I do, up to a point…If I can find a way to get you there I will." Pol said with a crafty smile. Mission hugged Pol firmly and they returned to the common room.
Canderous watched Pol and Mission come back. He hadn't slept well all night his head had thrummed with racing images, memories of the clash between Revan and Mandalore. What the frack am I supposed to do? Bastila is right, telling her off the cuff could mess her up. But I can't lie to her, she has a right to her history, and to the honor she claimed with her battles.
Ruins
Carth and Canderous followed the two Jedi as they walked the dew laden grass to the Ruins. The Kath hounds had been quelled since Juhani had ceased her channeling in the near by grove and they lazed sun bound uninterested in the travelers. On reaching the entrance the company armed themselves and stepped into the tomb. They spilt up upon entry and Pol found Canderous's prints from the day before. They lead to a solitary heavy door. There were more prints, the recent ones Nemo had left in his flight and Bastila and Pol's from the recovery of his body. The older ones were shallow impressions, filled with a film of dust and detritus. They also lead to the lone door embedded in the far wall.
Pol shivered. Canderous raised an eyebrow, "You ok Champ?" He asked.
"I still don't like this place Chief." She answered Canderous but looked to Bastila for her guidance. Bastila tested the door, the dark energy it thrilled with revolted her she pulled back her hand and looked at Pol who had gone quite green. "Well don't look at me." Pol said holding her hands in surrender.
"Gentlemen?" Bastila motioned to the door. Carth and Canderous holstered their weapons and hauled the door open; it trundled along regretfully, revealing the inner sanctum of the crypt. A droid sat motionless in the center of the room, its design was archaic and alien. Behind it was a door, heavy and ominous looking it was sealed with glyphs that glowed incandescently an icy blue. To its left and right were two more gates much like the first ones they had come through, heavy looking but not impenetrable.
Bastila crossed the threshold examining the prints as she went. Pol hovered in the door way, feeling abnormally claustrophobic. She was backed by Canderous whose hand rested on her shoulder protectively and by Carth who glared at Canderous. Taking liberties with a Jedi who does he think he is? Carth grumbled inwardly.
They watched as Bastila traced Nemo's steps around the room, they lead to the easternmost door and away again trailing blood. She inspected the droid. It displayed no sign of activity. "I think Nemo may have disabled it." She said after a brief experiment.
In Mandalorian Canderous said to Pol, "This is as far as I got yesterday." Carth pushed past Canderous deliberately knocking his hand from Pol's shoulder. He looked the droid over for signs of attack. "It doesn't look damaged, Pol you should check it out you're good with droids." Pol stared at the floor.
She took a step into the room landing her foot in a soured and familiar print. As if resurrected by her presence the droid hummed into life and began speaking in an alien tongue. The alien words combined with the sudden light show from the robot triggered something in Pol.
For moment her visions of the ruins flooded back She saw Malak, she understood the droid, Canderous's warning echoed "They said that you had been to Dantooine and implied that you had fallen to the darkside before. They mentioned using your memories to help defeat the Sith" Bastila was saying something. Bastila pushing her… Her heels scraping noiselessly on the sleek black floor of the bridge. These prints are my prints. I have walked this path before. Her voice…
"I only know Malak came here. I didn't actually see Revan. I've never seen Revan" "But you heard her. She was there in the vision." My voice…
Bastila called to Pol again but Pol didn't hear her instead she heard, "Revan! You can not win!" Pol sought for something to ground herself mentally. Smell of the grave, barren earth dust rubbing shoulders with mould and tendrils of webs encasing everything. I am here again. This room, here where I fell. Overcome by the insight Pol collapsed.
Bastila ran to Pol's side, Canderous was supporting her, checking her vital signs frantically. Carth activated his comlink to call for help. "No Carth don't" Bastila said interrupting him. "She's fine."
"She's unconscious!" Canderous snapped.
"She will be fine if you just leave her alone!" Bastila placated him with an air of authority... "I know this from our bond. Now I think you both should leave."
Canderous refused point blank, "No fracking way!"
"What did that droid do to her? We should get her outside for some fresh air." Carth said. "I think we all should get away from that droid." He glared distrustfully at the droid who had been incessantly cycling through languages since Pol has approached it.
"You both need to leave NOW." Bastila left no space for argument but only Carth left the room. Canderous remained holding Pol defensively and glowering at Bastila.
"I'm not leaving her with you," he spat savagely.
"Put her down, and walk away Canderous, I will see to her. She will be fine." In a calm Force modulated voice Bastila attempted to persuade Canderous. Even using the Force her words had no effect.
"Nark off and save your mind tricks Bastila. I'm not buying your Jedi crap anymore. You've messed with her enough!"
Bastila released the Force and made her demands angrily. "Canderous you can't help her. I can. Now if you have any care in that black heart of yours for Pol you will leave NOW!" With great reluctance the Mandalorian released Pol, and gave her to the care of the Jedi.
"Wait outside." She said quietly taking Pol from his grasp.
"I'll be in the foyer." Canderous deliberately left the immediate vicinity, but defiantly stood where he could see them. His belligerence and disregard for Bastila's orders impacted on Carth who felt compelled to leave his post outside of the ruins so he could also be closer to the scene. They watched Bastila resuscitate Pol and strained vainly to hear the conversation that followed. The Jedis' voices were inaudible, cloaked mildly by a convenient bend in the Force that was sustained by their personal bond.
Bastila healed Pol drawing her back to consciousness with the Force. "Pol?" Bastila asked emptily. She manipulated the Force bond between them to silencing the air about them. She apologized to Pol as she did it. Pol sent back a whisper of gratitude for the privacy. When at last she spoke aloud to Bastila she confirmed what Bastila had felt at the time of her collapse.
"I know. I know who I am and why you wanted me with you. Canderous is right, you are using me." Tears spilled from her dark eyes. She was soundless serene, too immersed in regret to sob.
"Pol," Bastila said again wiping the woman's tears away with her fingers. "Do you understand why?" the full weight of Pol's pain beat down on Bastila clouding her judgment.
"Why you need me? Yes. Why I fell to the darkside? Yes. I will face council. I should be tried for my crimes."
The bond between them shut out the outside world to a point where Bastila had trouble locating herself in it. She strove for the location where she ended and Pol began, scrambling for purchase on the gravel of Pol's disjointed memories. "We need you help Pol. If you tell them, they will change their plan and it will be to the detriment of the Order and the Republic. Only you have the knowledge and the heart to save us. Redeem yourself." Bastila pleaded.
"You are saying don't tell them? Do you hear yourself Bastila?" Pol tried to laugh through her tears. "If I hadn't just learned I was the most hated woman in the cosmos I could be proud of you right now."
"Pol, you walk the path of the light, you can make the killing blow against the Sith end what you began. But if you are incarcerated…They will wipe your mind again."
"Yes. You are right I can defeat them, but not as a Jedi. Do you know why I fell?"
"I sense…" Bastila faltered not liking what she felt.
"But you don't know. You have to hear me Bastila. If I try to walk this trail as a Jedi I will surely fall again. Once you have heard me I will leave telling the council of my 'discovery' or not to you."
On the subject of light and dark - chiaroscuro
"Bastila I have been where you are it is precipice between falling and flying. I fell because I lived the Jedi credo to the enth. When it was lifted from me I didn't know what to do" Pol swallowed hard, losing her new found faith was a blow.
"I was that brave Jedi, like you I swallowed my hate and I doused the flames of my anger. I scorned my loves and I cut myself of from my family. I sheltered from love so that I seemed more of an anomaly than a human. Some bizarre experiment created from nothing. I surrendered myself to the ways of the Jedi order. Not to the Force."
"My now famous defiance of the council during the Mandalorian wars was not the first transgression I had made but it was by far the boldest. I disregarded the council and lead the Republic to a victory over the Mandalorians."
"That blatant step away from their rule freed me from its constraints. I was too fierce for them. Too independent, despite all that I had done, all the life I had preserved the freedoms defended I knew I would have been shunned if I had returned. And for that I began to hate them."
"I had been given too much freedom too soon and after a lifetime of the Jedi code suppressing my emotions…. All the feelings I had denied under their teachings were still there, but unbound from their conventions they emerged from their enforced dormancy."
"The trouble with emotion is that it never goes away. The brutality of war was the freshest in my mind; perhaps that is why I turned to it first. One by one all of the emotions I had not endured, as they must surely be endured, consumed me. There is no emotion there is peace. That's a lie. You know there is as sure as you're angry at me for saying that."
"Bastila, that anger you feel now won't go away. Deny it and it will wait until your back is turned. First will come the anger and then the hate. The very things Jedi try so righteously swallow eventually consume them. To persevere you must channel your emotions lest you become their instrument as I did. I destroyed everything and every one I loved with it. I guess that's partly why I am crying now."
"If you're mad at me now feel it and be done with it. Experience it, don't let it build don't add it to the stack you already have against me. The dark side is one very bad idea that multiplies like a cancer of the mind. Multiplying until it is the only thought you have in your mind your heart and your spirit."
"I can no longer live by that part of the Jedi code. If you want my help you will have to accept me without it. The decision is yours."
"You will accept me and my methods?" Pol asked.
"We have no choice." Bastila spilled a few tears of her own as she said the words.
"What will you do? Will you tell the others?"
"Canderous has already guessed." Bastila said looking sickly pale.
"Pol the reason you fell, you defied the Jedi code, it you had stayed within it, if you had not left it…" Bastila tried to reason with Pol. After hearing more words from the older woman in one go than she had in all of their acquaintance it was a trial. Pol had always dominated their bond, but unknowingly so. Now the woman was aware and she was throwing her weight around.
"Be wary that sentiment Bastila. A Jedi needs tremendous inner strength not just thin conventions. If I had not acted the Mandalorians would have conquered the galaxy." Pol said drying her tears. She laughed to herself in spite of the drama, imagining Canderous as sovereign of some backwater planet, smoking cigarras surrounded by dancing girls.
"I ask that you help me Pol. I know the bond can keep us strong, this connection was formed for a reason."
"You will accept me and my methods?" Pol asked.
"We have no choice." Bastila spilled a few tears of her own as she said the words.
"What will you do? Will you tell the others?"
"Canderous has already guessed." Bastila said looking sickly pale.
"I know." He wanted to tell me.
"Unless it is necessary I will leave the telling to you. As for the council I truly believe you would be more help to us if they didn't know. I need your help Pol; the Republic needs your knowledge. We should finish our task, if you are well."
"Let's hope it becomes clearer when I see this Star Map." Pol shook her robes out and tried to stand, before she was up Carth had leant his support to help her stand.
"Are you ok Pol?" He asked worriedly. "What happened?"
"Inadequate dust training," she said with a false grin. Canderous concealed her subterfuge, he was unsure of what had just passed, but it was clear she had been crying.
"Told ya. You should never undervalue its effect on the sinuses."
"Blah blah oh Canderous you are so wise and so strong." Pol saluted Canderous on the word 'strong'. Carth winced at the clout.
Seeing that Pol was back to her usual self Carth searched Bastila for signs of instability. "So you're both ok then?" He asked.
"Yes Carth, we are fine. Pol, are you ready?" Bastila asked. Pol nodded blithely and began an exchange with the droid in Selkath.
New Orders
Pol was noticeably absent; she had gone to ask Juhani to join them on their quest. The council had stated that only three Jedi may go as any more would draw unwelcome attention. Their task was to locate the Star Forge. All they had to go on besides shaky memories in Pol's head, that had to remain secret, were a list of planets that might hold clues. Bastila and Pol's private hope was that Pol would recall more of her life as Revan by retracing her steps.
Zaalbar Mission and Canderous sat along the service counter in the galley while Bastila answered questions. Carth sat dumbly as Bastila told the crew of their destination and what she could of their assignment. She had been under a lot of pressure lately and tell tale signs of it showed in her appearance. The way she wore her robes as if they were an exoskeleton to her resolve. Pol's absence, no matter how benign, was like a wound, each member of the gathering looked for her like a limb that had been lost in a war. There were no smarmy jokes and no fruity smiles.
Carth was still under Bastila's command, as per orders form the Republic. He wasn't sure what Pol's collapse had been all about but it has adjusted his estimation of Canderous. At fist Carth had pegged him as after one thing and he had misconstrued the Mandalorians persistence in courting of Pol after her accession to the Jedi order as disrespectful. The tenacity, with which he perused her though, while not harmless, had seemed less ruthless and single minded once he inadvertently revealed his protective side in the ruins. He actually cares for her.
At the end of the briefing, Bastila dismissed them, and went to collect her personal effects form the enclave. Carth took T3 to the navicomputer to load the coordinates for their journey. Zaalbar bemoaned the state of the food synthesizer; he had gotten used to cooked meals on Dantooine and was harboring a private apprehension about their first destination his homeworld…Kashyyyk. He was grateful for the distraction that Canderous's latest orders gave them.
"Hairball, Blue I want you to go to Pol's rooms and pick up her stuff. Room 445, It's behind the library. Get going."
"Uh key?" Mission held out her hand expectantly.
Canderous answered without a moment's hesitation, "Three – five – eight - nine." He shooed them from the area with a wave of his arm. That should keep them out of trouble for a while.
Zaalbar lead the way, Mission ran to catch him. "So Kashyyyk huh? Do you still have family there?" she asked reaching his side.
He responded (Mission, I'd rather not talk about it.) Zaalbar slowed his strides for Mission's benefit. Changing the subject with a Wookiee woof he said, (He knew that key by heart.)
"Yeah, weird huh? Pol's only been there like two days. He defiantly digs her but I doubt it's a two way street. I mean Pol would have better taste; Canderous is a bit…Old. I wonder if she even knows he knows it, if you know what I mean."
(Pol is older than you think Mission.)
"How old is she?"
(Thirty seven in human years.)
"What? No way, she's older than Bastila and Carth? I still don't think she would go for C-note no matter how much he'd like her to."
(He is devoted to her. She could do worse for a mate than Canderous. They are well suited)
Mission wailed covering her ears. "Oh that's just gross Zaalbar!" They dropped the subject and completed their task.