A/N – For anyone interested you can email me for a sketch of Treg. (I will try to post a link on my profile page when I get a chance).

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When Revan returned to her room she believed she had every answer she needed. He hates me and and I felt his disgust with me too. The Masters were right, a Jedi should not love, it is too powerful an emotion. Now I have to deal with his hate too. How could I have been so blind? How could I have forsaken the Jedi code for a man? What was I thinking? I was fine without him before, I will be fine without him again. But I need to stop this pain in my heart first. It was so different when I left before, when I felt he still loved me. But now, I have nothing. I have lost the only things that kept me going, Carth, Aaron, Ariana... Dammit, I hate him. How could he do this to me? Why did he do this to me? He said he loved me. Til the end of the galaxy or something stupid like that. Idiot, I have been an idiot. Damn you Carth Onasi! Her eyes closed as she fell into a fitful sleep.

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She was standing on a ship, she could see the Jedi gathered around her through her mask. The power was flowing through her strongly and she felt no fear, she knew she would be able to defeat them. But then the ship rocked, Who the hell was firing on them? And then awareness hit her just as the next blast did. MALAK! You have betrayed me. How dare you turn on me like this! You… and then all went black.----

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"Getting used to that synthesized food yet?" Revan inquired as she stepped into the galley.

"Never, but it tastes better when you are hungry. Which, thanks to your lessons, seems to be quite often." Treg pushed away from the table slightly, signifying he was done with the plate in front of him. It was barely touched.

"Yeah, about our lesson, sorry I'm so late. But don't worry, I'll just grab some caffa and then we can get started. You are progressing and we only have a few days left to get you ready." She grabbed a cup of steaming liquid and slumped into a chair across from him.

"You look – tired. Are you feeling okay?" his concern seemed genuine.

Revan was staring into her mug but managed to look up at him when she spoke, "I'm fine, just have a lot on my mind."

"Right, the business that sent you looking for me?"

"Yeah" she said, taking a sip from the mug.

"You are worried about something?" he pressed.

"About a lot of things actually." She sighed.

"Is there anything I can do to help? To help ease some of what is bothering you?"

What would he think if I told him, even just a small part of my life. I do wish I had someone to talk to but this poor innocent man is not it. I should never have invited him along. If anything would happen to him. What was I thinking?

"You really should not worry so much. Some things in life you cannot control. And spending time regretting or wondering about things will never be able to change what has already happened."

Hmm, if he only knew how much those words applied to me. Ah hell, they probably apply to everyone at some point. But it is nice to hear something reassuring. Maybe he is someone I could confide in. Perhaps…

Her thoughts stopped when the galley door slid open and Carth stepped through. His gait paused for a slight second, apparently surprised that they were still there, but he recovered quickly and moved to grab a cup of caffa. "No lesson today?" he asked while pouring a mug.

"I am afraid I have been not been given such a reprieve. Unless, of course, you might be able to change Revan's mind."

Carth set the pot back down, holding onto his mug in a tight grip. His eyes moved from Treg to Revan. Change her mind? Wish I could. He turned and left with no comment.

"I do not think he likes me very much." Treg commented, after Carth had turned and abruptly left the room, never remarking on his attempt at conversation.

Revan stood, drowning the last of her caffa, "To tell you the truth, I don't think he likes me very much either. Ready?"

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The lesson wasn't going well and it didn't take an experienced fighter to realize that. Revan had abandoned her usual teaching method and instead had sent Treg off on his own to practice moves they had already gone through together. Ones that he had already mastered enough to move on to something more useful, if he were to progress.

Instead of being along side of him, encouraging, correcting and making him challenge himself, Revan sat alone in the corner, lost in thought, not even paying attention.

She was breaking. Her body was breaking. The shattered pieces of her broken heart were ripping and tearing apart everything still inside her. The jagged ends piercing into places with a pain that no sword blade could ever match. It was a pain that could not be healed with a med pac nor the force. It was so intense that it was hard to imagine living to the next minute, let alone an hour or a day. How can I go on? But I have to, for my children I have to.

The ache in her chest rose to her throat and she was finding it hard to breathe. She was in such agony, such pain that it blocked her from her surroundings. If she were to encounter an enemy now, she would be easy to defeat, for she was already defeated. Yes, she would be an easy mark because nothing else seemed to matter anymore. Is this how he felt when I left him on Coruscant?

Force, I can't stand the way he looks at me. I've had heartache before but never heart break. I don't know if I should hate him or feel sorry for myself. Maybe both. He talks about trust, well I trusted him too. He said everything would be alright, that we would find Aaron and Ariana together. And now ...

"Hey," Treg sat down in front of her, deep concern showing on his face. "Listen, I know you probably do not want to talk to me, but you look like you could use a friend. Maybe you should go speak with Carth?"

Treg tried to recover as he saw a look of horror fall over her face, "I am sorry if I said something wrong. I just thought that maybe he knew more about what is going on. Someone you could talk to. I know I have not known you for long, but you do not seem to be yourself today."

He's trying to nicely say you look like hell Revan. Argh, that's so, so, sweet actually. Like I deserve that, I'm loosing my mind, have lost the man I love and my own children and he's being sweet as he tries to tell me I look like bantha dung.

"Revan, I do not know what you are going through but I do know about hard times. About trying to reconcile things in your own head. Everyone has their own story about how hard life has been to them and I am afraid that I am no exception. But trust me, it does get better."

"Treg, listen, thanks for the concern and all but you have no idea. And you are right, everyone has their own tough times to live through. Unfortunately, it seems that is all I can attract. Right now, I just want to – I wish – well, for once I feel like it is something that I will not be able to rectify. I could always concentrate on something that would make everything right or something I could do to make it right. And if you told me I had to fight through 500 people to fix it, I would, no question. None of this - what I'm feeling now, allows for that. This is something I have no control over, there is no enemy to fight, no quest that will solve it. I just, I just feel so lost, powerless. Like I am just a puppet with no power to carry out …" She broke into a flood of tears, letting the pain wash over her, letting it seep through every part of her. She had no desire to fight anymore. She let it rake through her body and it came out in powerful sobs before gaining strength and running its course again.

Treg had never expected his confident, powerful trainer to react in such a way and his discomfort showed as he tried to figure out what to do. He reached out a hand and patted her shoulder but brought it back to his side as he realized it did nothing in the way of comfort. "Perhaps, perhaps if you heard my story, you would not feel so lost." He leaned back, his arms behind him to support the weight of his upper body.

"As I mentioned, I was not always a smuggler. Very knew to it in fact. I grew up in a long standing, respectable, wealthy family. Servants waited on me hand and foot and my life was easy, very easy. My parents gave me everything I wanted and I continued to want more as I tried to find my way in life. One day I found my future, in an incident that probably should not have changed my life, but for some reason it did. One of our long time servants, Lenna, had become ill and we were told that she was going to die. My father had some visitors to the house at the time, they wanted him to fund a project on some remote planet that had an advanced knowledge in curing illnesses. They convinced him by curing Lenna." Treg leaned into an upright position and placed his hands in his lap.

"After that, I had no other goals. I wanted to be able to save people, to find advanced cures for others. I wanted to change the galaxy. I even envisioned my name in holovids, praising Treg Unic, the one who discovered the way to eradicate the biggest illnesses plaguing the galaxy." A laugh of past memories and childhood dreams left his lips.

"I worked hard, for once in my life. When I won the commission to study alongside, who I considered, the greatest scientist of the time, I was more than a bit thrilled. I definitely had visions of grandeur. And a bit of arrogance, which, unfortunately, led to my downfall."

Treg shifted his position and noticed that Revan was now looking at him, waiting for him to continue.

"I carried out a lot of the daily logging at first. As I proved my ability I gained more of his confidence. My commission was renewed, year after year, and my knowledge of the program grew until I was pretty much running it myself. All I needed was my own discovery, my own idea, to reach fruition before I fulfilled all those goals I had set for myself." A brief moment of regret seemed to play across his eyes before he found the voice to continue.

"I was spending all my time in the lab. I slept there. I ate there, hiring my own personal chef even. I thought I had all the answers, I just needed that final bit of proof which could only come from a real experiment." He became apologetic, as if what he had done had a personal impact on the person he was telling the story to.

"You have to understand that I had no funding. Yes, my father had money, but that was not how it worked. My discovery would not be credible if my father was the sponsor. I needed my own, but I had no recognition. So, I believed that if I could just prove it once, then the funding would come. And I could branch out on my own. Make a name for myself, outside of my family. I did exactly what you are never supposed to do, ever. Everything I had been taught, everything I knew was right – I went against that. And it decided the rest of my life."

A long moment of silence followed before Revan encouraged him to continue, "What happened?"

"I experimented on myself. And my work … was not infallible. It, well, it reacted in a way that I had never foreseen. None of my notes or other experiments had ever had those results. I lost everything. My wife, she was carrying our first child at the time. She was the one who found me at the lab, I had severe mental impairment, part of my brain was destroyed, cortex damage, a host of other things. She uh, she ended up loosing the baby and despite that it would have happened anyway, well, she never forgave me. Blamed it on me." Silence drifted like a slow moving cloud.

"It was only through my extensive notes that Sargak, my mentor, was able to determine what was wrong. Some of the damage they were able to fix, rectify. Other things I had to learn again. But, I was no longer a scientist. Even if I could remember all my training, relearn it, I was finished in name. Nor did I have a wife or child to go home to."

He rose, walking around the room with no direction. "I spent years back with my parents before I couldn't stand it any longer. I had to create my own life, once again. But I was like an innocent child. I had my experiences and all the pain that went with them, but the knowledge I had lost. I've been trying my hand at a few different things. The last was being a smuggler, which, has not worked out too well." His lips drew out in a thin line and it seemed like they would break the hardened face.

"So you see Revan, I know what it is like to lose things. To regret past decisions, live with them and believe there is no hope for a future. But I try anyway, because that is all I have left." His pace returned him to her just in time for his legs to give way as the story drained the last remaining strength from him. The sadness darkened his features, making him look years older.

"I only hope that my story has helped you in some way. I have never spoken to anyone about it before. And I thank you for listening."

"Thank you for confiding in me." The pause she gave, as she readied herself for what she was about to do, sent chills down his spine.

"And I too have a story to tell…"