AN:
A little thing I've been considering doing for a while. I found this when I was going through my computer and figured I'd post it and see what people though. Obviously I own nothing. Keep in mind that while this will be based on the games, do not in any way expect this to be a rehash where I just tell the story of the game with an extra party member. One, that's not interesting, either to read or to write, and two, I haven't played Knights of the Old Republic in quite a while, probably going on five years. I don't really have time to replay it either, so don't expect anything to be exactly the same.
In any case, I hope you enjoy the story. Feedback is always appreciated.
Smoke and the smell of various intoxicants filled the Lower City cantina as Suri glanced around the familiar scene from her spot in the corner. It was a refuge for spacers, bounty hunters, and gangsters alike, all stranded by the Sith fleet orbiting Taris since the battle a couple of weeks ago. Many were aliens, more unwelcome than ever in the Upper City under the occupation, but some were human, mostly rich kids looking to prove something by coming down to the supposedly intimidating lower levels, paying for false papers so they could brag to their friends about imaginary exploits.
It was one of these brats that now sat across the table from her trying to get a drink with her. He'd been droning for almost a minute now despite her ignoring him. Suri found it irritating beyond words.
She finally groaned in annoyance and slammed her empty cup down to get his attention, making him flinch and stop mid-sentence. The relative silence was like a dream come true, and she savored what little she could before speaking.
"Look kiddo, let me be real clear so you can follow what I'm saying," she growled, eyes narrowing as she turned to glare at him, acknowledging his existence for the first time. "You can take your little speeder and go right back to the upper city."
"But if you'd only listen to what I have to say-"
In a way, Suri was glad that he hadn't taken the hint. That gave her some semblance of internal justification for provoking what came next. He'd earned it. Sort of. "I don't care what your last name is! You could be a Jedi for all I care." She leaned toward him. "I'm gonna let you in on a little secret: when a woman sits alone in the corner of a bar, glaring at everyone else in the room, it's because she wants to be alone. It does not mean she wants to be bothered by an arrogant, spoiled brat who thinks he's some kind of hot stuff just because his daddy gives him a nice, fat allowance every month."
His expression went from shock to indignation to rage in a single moment. He shot to his feet, his face glowing an intensely gratifying shade of red, even in the smoky light of the bar. "How dare you?! I'll have you know that I am the second son of the senator-"
"What you are," Suri said as she too stood, "is proving my point." She was just under average height for a woman, coming up to a little above his shoulder, her short tail of black and silver-dyed hair peaking just above that. She had never been physically imposing and her combat suit accentuated her lithe body rather than any overt muscle. She gave a predatory grin, eyes glinting angrily. "Go back to your friends at the bar," she said, nodding to the group he came in with, "and I won't have to beat it home."
Suri didn't need any of her old abilities to see his punch coming. It took her a while to get used to fighting without them, but mercenary work was a quick teacher, and she had always been a quick learner.
Sometimes she regretted what she'd become and wondered if she could've made a difference in His path, but that always ended up in a brawl and a hangover. Much like tonight, actually. And it wasn't like she was good at anything but fighting anyway. For all they preached peace, growing up as a Jedi taught few useful life skills besides how to fight and how to suppress feelings.
And she'd never been very good at the latter.
Before his fist traveled more than a few inches, her kick slammed the nobleman in his side, sprawling him against the bar among his companions. "Well, come on then."
Normally she wouldn't have tried to draw more people into a brawl, but… the Emptiness had been worse for about a week now, since around the time that Republic ship had been destroyed in orbit. It was always bad, but Suri usually managed to just live with the dull ache where her connection to the Force should've been. Now it felt like something was yanking on a raw nerve ending where she should have felt the Force. She needed a distraction.
It was really too bad for the nobles that they happened to be here tonight. Not that she particularly cared, of course.
The other patrons scattered to the edges of the room, many chuckling and settling in to watch, even placing bets on how long it would take her to deck the half-dozen interlopers. This wasn't the first time Suri picked a fight in here, but ever since her first couple of brawls, the bouncers had quietly agreed amongst themselves not to interfere in her altercations. They were certain her opponents usually deserved it for some reason or another, so as long as she didn't kill anyone, they didn't get involved. Besides, Suri helped them break things up once in a while and could hold her liquor with the best of them. She even helped a few of the bouncers sort out a few troubles of their own, free of charge. Human or not, Suri was fine in their book.
That this arrangement saved the hired muscle a lot of pain and quite a few broken bones in the process since they had an excuse not to get in her way was merely coincidental, of course.
The center of the room quickly turned into whirlwind of bodies and limbs. A quartet of humans sat another corner, the reputation of the largest ensuring their privacy. "Is that normal for this place?" Carth asked as the ruckus interrupted their conversation with Canderous. "First grenades and a shooting, and now an all-out brawl?"
The Mandalorian shrugged indifferently. "They say the only good thing you can say about the Lower City is that it's never boring. It might be predictably exciting, but never boring."
The least worldly of the group was rather more concerned than curious. "We should do something," Bastilla announced, hand twitching toward the sleeve inside her tunic where her saber was. "Even though she's clearly skilled, she's against six-to-one odds-"
"No," the final member of their group said firmly. "If she needed help, she wouldn't have deliberately thrown him into his friends to get their attention."
"You noticed." The Mandalorian was vaguely impressed. Most soldiers these days had little time for true hand-to-hand combat beyond the Mandalorians and Echani.
The last man was an enigma to him. Bastilla was a Jedi and Carth himself outranked him, and yet they seemed content to let him lead, even if they didn't realize what they were doing. Well, Onasi was, at least, and Bastilla had no choice but to follow. The would-be Jedi protested whenever she could, but she wasn't going to get back to her precious Enclave on her own, and it's a little hard to pull rank when you're isolated behind enemy lines and out-voted.
"She'll be fine. I'm not sure I would bet on myself against Suri, and I could take out those idiots without breaking a sweat. I know her, even worked with her on a few jobs," Canderous said with a grin. "We actually almost got into it once, but luckily we sorted it out before the bar exploded."
Carth snorted again in spite of himself. As much as he disliked Canderous' morality, he couldn't help but respect the other soldier. If they'd been on the same side in the war, they might've been friends. "What happened?"
"We both wanted a corner table, and Calo Nord was already sitting at the other one," the Mandalorian grinned. "I agreed to buy her three drinks if we shared and we ended up exchanging war stories instead."
"She was in the Republic Navy?"
"Suri left after the Mandalorian War." He nodded, taking another swig from his drink. "She even survived Dxun. It was interesting to hear what your side thought about fighting the Mandalorian way when that damned moon kept your Jedi magic in check."
Bastilla made a face. "It's not magic, it's just-" She felt it before she saw it, the faint twinge in the Force that preceded danger. "Blaster!"
Republic soldiers didn't survive long without learning to trust Jedi. Carth reacted without thinking, flipping out his pistols and leveling them at the brawlers before he even saw the dull, gunmetal glint in the hand of one of the nobles. "Freeze! Drop it, kid."
"Or I blow some holes in you and your buddies." Canderous had readied his own weapon in what must've been record time for something that huge. Carth shot him a sidelong glance and raised an eyebrow. "What? For brats as dumb as this you have to spell out everything for 'em." He turned back to addressing the punks as Suri took a few steps back and walked over to her table, barely breathing hard. "Now I'm sure even as stupid as you are, you all probably know who I am. You just pulled a weapon on a friend of mine when you already outnumbered her six to one, so why don't you all just scurry back to whatever hole you came from before I reconsider trying to limit the damage to the fine, upstanding establishment?"
The first brat, the one who'd been harassing her, took a half-step forward. "You can't just-"
Suri's empty cup careened off the speaker's temple with a heavy crack. He fell to the ground, out cold. "I just saved your friend's life, the forgiving woman that I am. Now scram!" She allowed herself a grin as they scurried off and sauntered over to Canderous' table where he was sitting with the strangers she'd noticed earlier. "I could have handled that, you know."
"Getting shot and then beating them down anyway isn't really handling it," the man in the dull orange jacket commented. Suri felt like she should know him from the net or something. He looked familiar somehow.
"I've had worse. Besides, that wasn't even a weapon; it was a toy." She pulled out one of her own pair of custom-built heavy pistols from her belt and admired it. "Now this… this is a weapon." Suri grinned good-naturedly at the speaker. "Though I suppose those to miniatures of yours might qualify. Barely." She glanced at the other two at the table. The girl was young, not much older than twenty standard, if that. The last man was at the back of the booth, face hidden in the shadows. "Canderous probably told you about me, but I haven't seen any of you here before."
"We're… a little new around here," the girl said. Somehow even something that simple sounded arrogant coming from her.
The Mandalorian knocked back the rest of his drink. "She's coming along if she wants. You might as well tell her the truth."
"Do you trust her?" That was Flight Jacket again.
"Trust her? Do you trust me?" Canderous chuckled at him. "She has honor. And if she wants to get off this rock, she can come with us." He crossed his arms, daring any of them to contradict him. The girl was ready to open her mouth, eyes flashing angrily.
What in the Force was Canderous talking about? Unless… Her eyes widened in realization. Risky. Very risky. Crossing the exchange typically was never healthy for one's life expectancy. But for a chance to get off this dump... "If you're stealing the Ebon Hawk, I'm in. I never liked Davik anyway. Crazy old lecher. He was always trying to get me in his bed."
"I told you she was quick," Ordo said with a grin.
"This is crazy," the girl finally interrupted. Her voice was petulant and whiny, as if she thought everyone should be listening to her. "We don't even know her! I-"
"No Suri, no me. No me, no Davik. No Davik, no ship," Canderous interrupted her objection. "It's pretty simple."
Flight Jacket shrugged and looked at the man in the shadows, who nodded slowly. "That's that, then. Welcome to our little crew." He reached out to shake her hand. "Carth Onasi, Republic navy."
Republic? That meant… "You're the Jedi that Brejik was stupid enough to capture," Suri said to the slip of a girl. Wonderful. At least she looked too young to understand what her Force sense was actually seeing in Suri-or rather, not seeing.
"Bastilla Shan," the younger woman introduced herself reluctantly. "I'm not quite a knight yet, but I'm close to becoming one."
She was the one who led the assassination team that killed him. Suri somehow maintained her outward indifference, trying not to fantasize about putting a hole in the schutta sitting across from her. "So that means that you're the one who won the race and killed Brejik, right?" Suri asked as she forced her attention to the man in the shadows. "Wish I could've been there."
He laughed. "That would've made it too easy." He leaned forward into the light to shake her hand and she saw his face for the first time.
Her heart stopped. No. He was dead. It couldn't be him, here, working with the Republic.
"I'm Kylar Aellion." But it was. He had the same voice, the same angular features and dark hair. He even had the old scar on his cheek and those storm-grey eyes she knew so well after their years of…
Suri—Meetra Surik, in the depths of her mind—tried to stop herself, tried not to remember the past.
She tried to remember why she stopped herself from thinking about him. She tried to remember the path he had chosen to walk it, that it was he who ordered the atrocities on Telos and other worlds. But she couldn't—not now, as she looked upon the man she'd thought was dead, who stared back at her with unknowing eyes, as if he'd forgotten everything once between them.
"Suri?" Canderous raised an eyebrow at her. "You look like you've seen a ghost."
Unfreeze. Do something, or they'll become suspicious. The Jedi assassin can already sense the Emptiness. Act, Meetra, his voice echoed in her mind, not through the Force but as if from a memory. His voice was as she remembered it from years ago, firm and confident but undeniably caring.
She blinked a few times, snapping back to herself. "Fine. I'm fine," she said, reaching around for an excuse. "I… Kylar just looks like someone I knew during my navy days, that's all." The men accepted her words, but without even looking she could feel Bastilla's eyes boring into her, discreetly trying to read her thoughts to sense the truth of the words. She had, after all, admitted to knowing someone who looked like Revan.
If her mental blocks could withstand the efforts of Jedi masters when they interrogated her about Revan when they amputated her connection to the Force, they could hold up to an over-confident teenager trying to keep her efforts unnoticed. "I'm in. What's the plan?"
As the other three left, Canderous signaled for another round. His friend's eyes were still clouded, lost in thought ever since she saw Kylar's face. Suri barely spoke as they went through the details of the plan—Suri, who always had a biting retort to whatever anyone said and could pick a fight over literally anything. Who could nitpick any plan to pieces, because she hated having plans in the first place.
"So…" he said as the server brought over another bottle, "you wanna tell me what that was all about? You recognized him, even though he didn't recognize you. I could see that much."
She glared at him, then threw back another glass and rested her head in her hands. It could've been the light, but he thought he saw a glint of moisture on her cheek. "Sithspawn. I guess I should give you something. I trust you not to be stupid, at least. More than I can say of that little Jedi schutta."
He raised an eyebrow. "That bad, huh?"
"All the Jedi are the same. They go on and on about peace and serenity, but when push comes to shove they only care about principles and not people," she spat. Her words were slurring. How many did she have before the brawl? "Anyone who trusts them is an idiot."
"And you're planning to help steal a ship to go to Jedi Enclave on Dantooine." Canderous just smiled through her glare.
She snorted after a moment. "I never said I wasn't one. I followed their orders during the war, didn't I?" Suri looked away from him, avoiding his eyes. "Besides, I'm not following her," she added quietly. "I'm following him."
"You know him." Another wordless glare, but she didn't contradict him. "He doesn't know you." A tear, this time, but still silence. Her face was carved out of stone for all its reaction. "Damn. What happened?"
"I knew him." She fumbled for the bottle but he slid it away, ignoring her groan of protest. Suri dropped her head back into her arms. "He died at Malachor because of the blasted Jedi. I thought he did at least. Now here he is, with a different name and apparently no memories of me."
She was barely holding it together. He'd known her for more than a year and had never seen her this rattled. "You were close," Canderous observed quietly.
Suri glared at him. "Yeah, we we're frakking close. It's hard not to be when we slept together for years."
Canderous stared at her for a moment, then slid the bottle back over to her. "Damn."
She took a deep drink. "Yeah. Damn."