Trista took a step into the crew quarters before Kreia informed her, in no uncertain terms, that she wouldn't speak to her until she was "presentable" in the same tone she'd use when Trista had been barefoot in her underwear and leaving trails of kolto on Peragus' deck. So she'd grabbed her replacement clothes from her pack and hunted down the 'fresher.
Strangely, it seemed stocked – and water-based, which was a godsend. She assessed shampoo and soap with the same impassive bare-interest most things gave her. The ship's former occupant had a fondness for Dantooinian scents, and she grumbled and grabbed the least plant-scented bottle.
Trista cranked on the water control and moaned when it hit her like slipping into a hot spring. The others might need a shower at some point – Atton needing one seemed less awkward than Kreia – but for now, this was all hers.
It took far longer than usual to clean herself, washing her hair four times until it was back to its flaxen shade. The kolto smell scrubbed off her skin easily, though she washed several times just to make sure it was gone. She hated kolto immersion for this very reason. It was almost impossible to get rid of it afterward.
She stepped out and located a hairbrush behind the row of product. Red flashed in the bristles, and she plucked out a few strands of hair. Gross. Well, wherever the former occupant was, they were likely missing this. Undeterred, Trista brushed out her hair, trimmed the ends, and pulled it up in a head-encircling braid. Normalcy was, sometimes, sweet.
With her hair damp but in place, she dressed in her spare clothing and threw the miner's uniform into the incinerator pile. For a moment, she toyed with checking in on Atton or Kreia, but settled for exploring instead.
T3 hadn't been interested in talking, too engrossed in his work on the starboard engine to pay her any mind. She took another couple steps down the hall and ended up in a cargo hold with several scattered containers, disturbed from the ship's recent shakeups. The emptiness was rather shocking. Had the owner been flying on minimal supplies?
A large metal container was welded to the far wall, and she walked toward it. A panel slid up to reveal a keypad, and she paused.
Part of her wanted to investigate the feeling she'd gotten on Peragus at the top of the Hawk's ramp. The other half was surer, but asked... did she want to be right? What difference did it make?
Despite the second part's opinion, she hesitantly keyed in a five number sequence. 4-3-0-1-5. The container hissed and popped open.
Trista froze, her hand still hovering over the keypad. It wasn't impossible that some random smuggler might use Revan's preferred five-digit lock code, but it seemed unlikely. Or, it struck her as unlikely, and when coupled with the feelings from the ship and the hair on the brush and—
She reached in and her hand touched fabric. Familiar fabric, niggling somewhere in her deepest memories. Trista pulled it out and froze.
Even touching a Jedi robe after ten years felt wrong, as if the fabric itself knew she was an impostor. But there she was, looking at a small, simple robe top, likely a sentinel's with its inset armor plating. She set it aside on a nearby container, dropping it like one would drop a venomous animal, and reached back into the container.
A stack of about fifteen hundred credits, several medpacks, a couple low-level pazaak cards and a deck, some stimulants, and several droid repair parts. The pazaak cards were the first chip in her theory about the ship's former occupant. The last thing in the container was a datapad, the battery indicator warning that it needed charged even though it looked brand new. Trista frowned and flicked it on. It opened up to a text screen, dated about two months ago.
I assume you've found my ship and broken into my storage locker. Please pass this datapad onto the mentioned parties. Enjoy the Ebon Hawk, she's a good ship. The stabilizers can be temperamental – they haven't been the same since that crash landing on Rakata Prime – and the synthesizer has always been shit. There's a stash of Corellian whiskey and Tarisian ale under the second cot in the starboard dormitory, in the smuggler's hatch under the middle panel.
This datapad contains important messages for several individuals. You won't be able to unlock them – they'll know how to. If you're not sure where to find them, try the Jedi Temple on Coruscant. They'll know.
Trista frowned and flipped through the files. The first was addressed to Zhar Lestrin, a name she remembered. He'd been on the High Council and the Dantooinian training council when she'd been a Padawan, and had worked closely with both Revan and Alek.
The second, and largest, was to Bastila Shan. It took her longer to place that name. She'd been a Padawan that Revan sent her to talk to, to recruit into the war. She had refused.
The third, and second longest, was addressed to Carth Onasi. It took a moment for her to place the name, but – the Admiral from the Harbinger's recording, the one who wanted to meet her on Telos. Onasi had been his name, hadn't it?
Trista sighed and tucked the datapad into a pocket, resolving to plug it in. The rest of the container was empty, so she pocketed the deck and credits, collected the medpacks and stimulants, and left the rest.
There'd be no reason for Revan to leave messages for two Jedi and a Republic admiral, right? She shook her head with a slight laugh. No, this had been a Jedi vessel once, and it was a familiar presence, but her sister – her crazy sister that had turned on the Republic and then supposedly been redeemed – wouldn't leave something as sentimental as this.
Her path wound back to the main hold, where she plugged the datapad into the holotable to charge and headed to the medbay. It was fully stocked, with a full warehouse of medpacks, antidote stimulants, and a ton of herbs she didn't recognize. She opened a canister and sniffed.
"Is that a Wookiee tea?" she mumbled, then shrugged and put it back. Whoever had this ship before, they were an over-prepared individual.
Trista made her way back to the main hold and tried the synthesizer, finding its output more appalling than the note could have ever prepared her for. She choked it down on the sofa next to the holotable.
As she ate, she ran her finger over her bracelet. She must just be clinging to any sense of familiarity, and Revan was the worst option she could have picked. But she wanted to believe that her sister, and former commanding Jedi, hadn't truly disappeared off the face of the galaxy. Had she? No, Revan would never ignore this, no matter her animosity toward the Jedi. She had never been one to watch innocents die. It was why they'd followed her to war to begin with.
Trista set her plate down and started to get up, planning to check on Atton... but the sofa was so comfortable, and as her eyelids started to droop, she figured it wouldn't hurt to just close them for a moment.
#
A few hours after their escape from Peragus, Atton felt safe enough to venture out of the cockpit without running into Kreia.
He wasn't sure what it was about her. But the woman clearly had a vibe to her: dangerous and unwelcoming. His 'bad feelings' flared if he looked at her, and that was all the warning he needed. But some food would be nice, and a visit to the 'fresher. Then an unoccupied corner of the ship, far away from the two Jedi, and a couple hours of sleep.
He wasn't expecting to see anyone in the main hold as he went to scrounge for food, but paused in the doorway nonetheless. Trista was curled up on the sofa, her hands tucked under her head and knees bent, dead asleep. The Astromech was trying to sling a blanket over her without waking her, beeping softly. Atton padded over and tugged it out of his manipulator.
"Shoo, go on, I got it." T3 replied with a quiet but forceful protest and retort, then turned and headed for the communications room. Atton studied Trista for a moment, then settled the blanket over her. She shifted and he took a step back, but it was only to tug the blanket further over herself before settling back down. He stared for a moment, then shrugged and found food.
The synthesizer piped out a load of gunk that looked like it hadn't been cleaned in two years, and he curled his lip. Instead he rummaged through a cabinet, only finding a box of stale ration course. He glanced back at the storage cabinet and raised an eyebrow. Well, some ships stored extra rations there. Atton padded across so he wouldn't disturb Trista and reached out to touch the lock.
A second later he stumbled back. Before he could think, his blaster was in his hand and he fired. Repeatedly. Trista jumped to her feet, got them caught in the blanket, and tripped to the floor, and T3 sped out of the comm room with an alarmed shriek. Atton stumbled over his feet and fell back with a curse.
"What nonsense is this?"
Great, the hag was here.
Trista untangled herself from the blanket, and he looked up as she motioned over. "Ask him."
Atton scowled in Kreia's direction as he picked himself off the floor.
"Pardon the disruption, your highness," he replied sardonically, motioning to the room, "but I opened the storage room and thought we had another droid problem. So you'll forgive me for reacting."
Kreia made a sound that edged towards a hmph and retreated to her dormitory. Trista rubbed her shoulder where it'd hit the floor and stepped past him into the storage room.
"Looks like the same droid." She ran a finger down its arm. "But it's older. Maybe an earlier model? Or put together by hand."
"Or personalized." Atton paced around the droid, blaster ready. Trista bent down and tried to get her fingers under the front panel, then took a screwdriver when T3 offered it.
"Thanks." She worked the panel off. "Looks like someone blew out most of its circuits. There's a lot of chassis damage, its vocabulator is shot, and the control cluster is fried. Probably a close range shot."
T3 chirped and, as always, Trista listened.
"You know this droid?" she asked. T3 responded with an unpleasant noise and wheeled toward the engine room.
"He knows it?"
"Says its name is HK-47." She closed the panel. "Whatever it is, it's not a bounty hunting model. This is an infiltration droid."
"Yeah." Atton pointed to several spots on its plating. "Hidden weapon mounts, advanced sensors, heavy plating... this droid's a bodyguard or an assassin."
"It's not standard military."
"No, it isn't." Trista sighed and turned, and Atton gently touched her arm. "You all right?"
Trista tucked her blanket closer around her shoulders. "I'm fine, why?"
"You seem tense."
Trista's eyes flickered for a moment, and her lips dropped in a scowl. "Why would I be tense?" She practically spat the word. "I'll be in whatever dorm Kreia's not in, sleeping."
She turned and strode into the ship. Atton sighed and ran a hand through his hair with a grimace.
"Sure, sleeping, like normal people," he mumbled. "Guess I'll be finding a cot and making do with the cockpit then."
But, in the absence of food, he could use a shower.
#
Kreia sat alone in her dormitory, back to the door, as she meditated on the floor. Trista hovered in the doorway, not sure if she was welcome or not until she spoke.
"I see you are presentable."
Trista glanced down. "I don't smell like kolto, at least."
Kreia motioned to the floor in front of her. Trista sank down, tucking her legs up to her chest. "You have come for answers? There is little more I can tell you."
Trista nodded to Kreia's hand, the lost appendage now plainly visible. It looked better than it had the day before – she must have slipped out to the medbay at some point.
"You lost it to the Sith Lord on the Harbinger." Kreia nodded. "I felt it. It was like it set my hand on fire."
Kreia nodded again. "That does not surprise me, any more than you hearing my thoughts when we are apart. The pain, however, was unexpected. Had I been prepared, I would have shielded you."
"Well, I'm sorry, for what it's worth."
Her voice turned harsh. "Save your pity. I am here to save you, not you me."
Trista frowned. "I don't think I need saving, I've been doing all right on my own."
"Have you?"
She frowned deeper. "If we're traveling together, we need to work together. I don't see how—"
"I do not need your condescension or your lectures. If any need guidance, it is you."
"Fine." She wasn't in the mood for this. "But if I experienced that pain just from your hand, what if they had killed you?"
Kreia sat silent for a moment. "I do not know, but I fear the consequences would be more extreme."
"More extreme? That would have killed both of us."
"I fear so, and I fear it works both ways. I would not wish to test it, nor should you."
Trista swallowed and looked away. "Uh, right." She wouldn't say she actively looked for death, but she'd be lying if she pretended she didn't sometimes want it to find her. "What do we do about it? How did it happen? I know the ways Force bonds form, but one of this strength..."
"When we are in battle, I suspect we are prepared enough to shield one another from the worst pain. As for how it formed, I confess its nature eludes meas well. But it is strong and its roots run deep – the Force flows easily between us." She paused. "As for the Force, you have felt it again. How was it? Despite your attempts to turn away, was it the same as before?"
Heat rose in her cheeks, and Trista looked away. "Different, like it was fainter."
"Ah. Good. If my suspicions are correct, the damage the Council did was not as permanent as they thought." Trista's head snapped back to Kreia. A small smile played over the woman's mouth, but she couldn't tell its nature. "Cutting one off from the Force is not something easily done."
"I—I didn't think the Jedi had done this to me."
"If not them, then who? You didn't think Revan would damage one of her most valued Jedi?" Trista swallowed and looked away. No, for some time, that had been exactly what she thought. "This did not occur without reason, and I cannot believe you thought Revan would be so wasteful. She was many things, but not that."
"But it's like purposeful blinding, or deafening."
"Indeed. But the Jedi have done such a thing before, when pronouncing sentence on their own." She scoffed. "How quickly we forget the fate of Ulic Qel-Droma, even though his severance was only forty-four years ago."
"Still before my time."
"You only came to the Jedi fifteen years afterward, and yet, you do not remember."
Trista frowned, a little sheepish. "History was always Revan's bent."
"Yes, I know."
She was about to speak again but, as was so common when she spoke to Kreia, everything hit her a moment later than it should have. "Wait, how did you know when we got brought to the Jedi?"
"We? I thought you pretended you had no connection to her?"
She flushed, deep. "I figured you already knew." Kreia nodded. "All right, uh, that's a question for later then, I guess? If the Council cut me off from the Force, why is it coming back?"
"It is likely they did a poor job of it. The Jedi after the Mandalorian Wars were far more concerned with damage control than solidarity."
"No one else returned, though."
"And they were desperate for an example. Such a thing can be undone, but the Jedi undoing such a thing for a traitor is a slim thing at best, – assuming any still live.
"And our link may have yet another consequence: perhaps you hear the Force through me again, albeit distantly. If so, there is yet hope."
Hope that the Force would drag her around the galaxy by her nose again until she wasn't useful any more, maybe. Trista could feel Kreia's disapproving stare again and cleared her throat.
"All right. Well, uh." She fisted her hands under her chin. "I thought it was the Wars that did it. That something happened." Something like Malachor V, something she couldn't remember after she'd passed out on the bridge.
Kreia hummed. "No matter what horrors you experienced in the war, no matter who you served, it is unlikely the Force would be lost to you unless another factor were involved."
Trista nodded. "Right. Well, before we get to Telos, I think you should fill me in on what happened since the Mandalorian Wars."
Kreia shifted where she was sitting. "After you left?"
Trista nodded.
"As Revan and Malak fought the Mandalorians in battle after battle, they grew to despise weakness, just as the Mandalorians did." It was a change she'd noticed in both, but especially Revan, toward the end. "In the end, the Mandalorians taught them through conflict – it shaped the Jedi, and molded them into a weapon against the Republic."
"And then they turned on the Republic."
"And the Jedi. To a one, almost every Jedi that followed Revan and Malak turned. Two years into the war, Revan was ambushed and captured by the Jedi. Malak waged war in his master's place, inflicting terrible wounds on the Republic – wounds that bleed still."
"Then how were they defeated?"
"As all Sith do without a strong enemy, they turned on one another. Revan escaped the Jedi and returned to finish Malak, and that was the end of the Jedi Civil War."
Trista frowned. "When I spoke to Atton about it, he said that Revan was going under the name Anna Kyjjl. That it wasn't even known she was Revan until two years later, after she disappeared."
Kreia tilted her head. "I would not count on the fool to know matters of the Force."
"That seems to be the Republic story, at least."
"And when has the Republic understood?"
Trista sighed. "All right, well, where is she now?"
"No one knows, certainly not I. After defeating Malak, Revan left the Republic, and there are none who know where she has gone. It is said that the Sith remnants turned on themselves after Malak's defeat, reducing Korriban to ruin as the Republic still bleeds and struggles for life. Where she wanders now, I do not know."
"So, she saved the Republic, after she tried to destroy it?"
"It would seem that way, from a certain point of view." Was that... amusement? Trista tried to determine what in her question merited it. "But the Jedi Civil War left wounds that have yet to heal. We shall see if the Republic has the strength in it to survive."
"Can anything be done?"
Kreia shook her head. "We shall see," she repeated. "The Jedi Civil War cost the Republic much. The resources of the Sith seemed limitless, but the Republic's was not. Fleets of warships, soldiers, and people were lost. Entire planets were decimated. It is a great burden for any civilization to bear.
"And this new threat, it is a quiet thing, unlike the Jedi Civil War. It drives at something deeper than the strength of the Republic. And it is aimed at you."
"Me?"
She nodded. "The Republic was never what was important. It is but a shell that surrounds the Jedi, just as the teachings of the Jedi are a shell surrounding the heart of a being. The war, the true war, has never been waged by droids or warships or soldiers. They are but crude matter against which we test ourselves. The true war is in the hearts of all living beings, against our own natures, whether they are light or dark. That shapes and binds this galaxy.
"You are the battleground. And if you fall, the death of the Republic will be a quiet thing, a whisper, that shall herald the darkness to come."
Trista blinked, several times, as she stared at Kreia. Surely things couldn't be that bad – could they? She was hardly the bastion Kreia seemed to believe. After a moment, she cleared her throat and shook her head. "I'll... reflect on that later. The Sith we're facing now – those are the remnants you spoke of?"
"They are."
"So what do we do now?"
Kreia was quiet for a moment. "I do not know. The Sith struck more swiftly than I had thought, and they will not stop until they have you in your grasp. If you fall, all the galaxy will echo it."
Trista shook her head. "I can't imagine I'm that important."
"Then you are not thinking."
"There must be somewhere we can go."
"It does not matter where we go – it is the journey, not the destination, that matters." Oh, for Force's sake. Trista swallowed an irritated grumble. "All paths will lead to the end, whatever it may be, and no matter how strongly we fight against it. For now that is Telos, and that is enough."
"Enough?"
She nodded. "Before the war, they sent Jedi who failed to the fields of Telos, to serve the galaxy as farmers and laborers." Trista nodded back. She knew that, given how often Vrook had threatened Revan with the Service Corps. "The destruction of Telos was complete, and I doubt any Jedi remain. Yet there may be... echoes of their passing. We shall see."
"And if we find nothing?"
"Then I am left with nothing more than we had already – my faith in you, and your ability to meet what comes."
Trista stood and brushed off the seat of her pants with a sigh. "Guess that'll have to be enough. I'll go and... do some thinking."
"Yes," Kreia said. "Though I recommend you do so before we reach Telos. I fear things will progress quickly once we arrive, and you may not have time to again."
She frowned as she backed out of the room. "How so?"
When Kreia didn't answer, Trista sighed and turned on her heel, heading back toward the main hold.
