They returned to Coruscant as soon as Kenna finished fixing the Ebon Hawk. It took a while, mostly because she had to do it alone. With Big Z dead, Carth hurt, and Mission in no mood to do anything other then mope in a locked--and probably barricaded--bunkroom, help was not going to happen. She did the best she could, however, and had the Hawk fixed in a couple of hours. She wearily plopped down in the copilot's chair when she finished. "Done. Let's get out of here."
"Yes, dear," Carth teased as he started up the ship's engines.
Kenna rolled her eyes. "I swear, I'd slap you up the back of your head--"
"If I wasn't hurt?" he finished for her.
"How do you do that?"
"Guess what you're going to say?" He shrugged, then winced. Kenna had 'helped the healing process' a little, but he was still sore. "I guess it's because I know you so well."
"That's more than a little bit flimsy," Kenna pointed out as the Hawk soared free of the hanger bay. "Other people know me almost as well--like Mission--but you're the only one who seems to read my mind at times."
"Best I can come up with, especially on short notice." They both sat in silence for several minutes, watching the void outside the ship scream by in points of light and dark all swirled together.
"I wonder..." Kenna let the sentence trail off and shook her head as if deciding the thought was crazy.
"What, beautiful?" Carth looked over at her.
"How Mission's doing," she finished.
"You could check on her if you're worried," he pointed out, knowing that wasn't really what she had wanted to say.
"True." Kenna stood and headed down the hallway to the bunkroom that had become the teenager's refuge, what she had really wanted to say running through her mind: I wonder if you're Force Sensitive. While it would explain a lot, she couldn't quite bring herself to voice the possibility. To anyone. Even if it was one she had been considering and arguing with herself since they reached Manaan. She reached the bunkroom and knocked on the door. "Mission?"
"What?" the Twi'lek responded in a tone somewhere between a sob and a snarl.
"Can I get you anything?"
"No."
"You sure?" Kenna leaned against the wall.
"Yes." The reply was muffled, as if Mission had buried her head under the pillow.
"Okay then." Kenna shrugged and returned to the cockpit, collapsing back into the copilot's chair. "I'm worried about her."
"This isn't something she's going to rebound from overnight, Kenna. She saw her best friend get killed with absolutely no warning. That takes a while to get over, trust me."
"I know. I'm just worried about her."
"Am I actually rubbing off on you?" Carth teased.
"I hope not," she shot back, grinning. "Kidding. Yes, I do believe you are."
Their landing on Coruscant was later than planned. The hyperdrive conked out a couple hours before they were supposed to reach the planet, earning Kenna a raised eyebrow and teasing look from her husband.
"Don't you say one frackin' word," she growled, glaring at him. "It was fixed."
"Then what--"
"I don't know what happened!" she exclaimed in exasperation. "I hardly even touched the hyperdrive! I was mostly in the frackin' engine." Muttering and grumbling to herself, Kenna made a beeline for the room that housed the hyperdrive. It was filled with electrical smoke that set off a coughing fit. "Damn it, what now?" When the smoke cleared a little, she examined the smoldering heap that had been the hyperdrive. She frowned. It seemed to have just... exploded, with absolutely no reason showing itself. Another assassination attempt? So close on the heels of the last one? Kenna shivered, feeling a deep-cutting chill despite the lingering heat from the explosion. She really might get Carth killed if this kept up. No, it was a short circuit, or a malfunctioning part, or something. You're just paranoid because of what happened--and almost happened--on Telos. Her self-reassurance helped a little, and the admission she was being paranoid made her smile. Carth was rubbing off on her more than she would ever admit to him. Shaking her head in confusion, she returned to the cockpit.
"Well?" Carth swung around to look at her.
"I can't tell. I'll have to look at it after we land." However, their landing was so late, all she wanted to do at the moment was sleep. "I'll check it tomorrow."
Mission had apparently fallen asleep in her locked bunkroom, so Kenna had to use the Force to get the locked door open. Sure enough, the teenager was sprawled across one of the bunks, fast asleep. Much as she wished she didn't have to, Kenna shook her awake. "Mish? We're back on Coruscant. Time to get up."
"Huh?" Mission blinked at her groggily, still more than half asleep.
"Think you can wake up enough to walk to our place?"
Mission gave a disoriented nod. "Guess so." She followed Kenna and Carth without a word back to their place, where all three stumbled to bed and immediately dropped into the kind of sleep only brought on by a most complete and utter exhaustion.
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
"Master, what are we doing here?"
It took every bit of willpower she possessed for Revan to not snap at the woman following her through the rain. "You'll see, Casaiah." There was silence from behind her as her companion detected the temper edging the short reply. The Dark Lord was not one to tolerate even a minor annoyance when she was in a foul mood. The combination of their guide's failure to show and the atrocious weather had put her in the foulest of foul moods. Casaiah's decision to remain silent the remainder of the journey was the wisest one in her young life. Upon reaching the cave, just over halfway up the slope they had been climbing, Revan slipped back the hood of her dark cloak and examined the walls. "Now, where was it... Ah, here we are." She pressed against a protruding rock ledge and a whole section of the wall sank in.
Casaiah watched her master with amazement for a moment before voicing the conundrum she had been puzzling the whole of their journey. "Master, why did you bring me?" She was among the lowest level of apprentices, a new recruit who had yet to advance despite obvious skill with the Force.
"I need another person, just in case. You'll see what I mean."
"Why not Malak?"
"I don't trust him," Revan replied in the short tone she'd used before, the bite in her words an unspoken warning for the girl to shut up. He's not expendable if it comes to that. She pushed the concealed door out of the way and motioned for Casaiah to follow her."Don't dawdle." The two women followed the narrow tunnel to a chamber buried deep inside the mountain, Revan with a feeling of anticipation, Casaiah with one of dread. She knew she should be feeling pride that Revan had chosen her, of all people, to help with this mission. Revan, Supreme Ruler of the Sith, wanted, needed her help. She should be bursting with pride, considering how to word her answers to questions upon her return to make the others, Rand and Jelissa in particular, the most jealous. But she couldn't. Something felt wrong about this. She knew Revan didn't trust Malak, and with good reason. The man practically smoldered with rage and resentment whenever the Dark Lord entered the room. Still, why her?
As if sensing Casaiah's hesitation, Revan turned her head. "Hurry up!" Finally, the two reached their goal. Revan's yellow eyes lit with fiendish glee upon sighting the artifact she sought. It sat on a small pedestal toward the back of the room. "Go get it for me," she ordered Casaiah. The apprentice thought about asking why Revan couldn't get it herself, but you didn't question her. You obeyed, or you died. Simple as that. So Casaiah obeyed. She crossed the room cautiously, expecting to at any minute be snared in a cleverly hidden booby trap. She reached the pedestal and picked up the artifact gingerly. Nothing happened other then a sound like the exhalation of a massive set of lungs, as if the cave was breathing a sigh of relief that someone had claimed the evil treasure it had guarded for who knew how long. Breathing her own sigh of relief that she wasn't dead yet, Casaiah carried the artifact back to her master.
"Give it to me!" Revan demanded, thrusting one hand toward the apprentice. All too happy to have this coveted thing out of her hands, Casaiah extended her hands toward the older woman. Just before Revan's fingers came in contact with the smooth porcelain object, Casaiah's boot caught in a snag. Her arms wind-milled instinctively in a vain attempt to keep her balance. She crashed to the unforgiving rock floor at the same moment as the artifact, and instantly wished she had shattered the same way it had. It would have been a quicker end than what she saw brewing in Revan's eyes.
"I'm sorry!" The words jumped instinctively--and futilely--from her lips. She knew apologies were wasted. Groveling and begging for her life was wasted. She was going to die.
"SORRY?" Revan thundered. That was all she said before stretching out her hands and engulfing the apprentice's body in electricity. She ignored the girl's screams. Reveled in the agony she was causing, despite mild regrets over killing her most promising recruit in almost a year. Failure was not tolerated, for any reason. Finally, long after Casaiah had fallen silent, ceased thrashing, Revan lowered her hands, raised the hood of her cloak, and headed back out into the torrential rain. "I'll make do without you, then."
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Kenna woke up choking on sobs. "No, no, no, no, NO!" She caught her breath and threw an alarmed look at Carth. He was still asleep, thank the Force. The thought of having to explain this to him made her shudder. She tried to calm herself down, but the screams of the apprentice she had so callously killed echoed in her ears and made that impossible. Oh, Force, I did not need that. She gave up on getting back to sleep and slipped out of bed as stealthily as possible. She pulled a lightweight robe over her undertunic and went out on the small balcony outside the bedroom. Her stomach twisted with nausea as she leaned against the waist-high railing. "Why do you do this to me?" she whimpered to no one in particular, pressing one hand against her querulous stomach and fighting a wave of dizziness. She sat on the wide railing, pulled her knees up into her chest, and cried. She couldn't think of anything else to do. She could fight any enemy, block out an external source of torture--though it was admittedly harder when it involved a certain someone asleep in the room behind her, but when confronted internally by who she had been and what she had done... Well, there was no blocking out the haunting screams inside her brain.
She didn't know how long she had been sitting there with her chin resting on her knees, fighting off the memory, when someone touched her shoulder. "Kenna?" She jumped, yelped, and nearly fell off the balcony. "Whoa, sorry, beautiful." Carth grabbed her arm, gritting his teeth as the move made his injuries complain.
"What did I tell you about sneaking up on me like that?" she demanded as her heart settled back into normal rhythm.
"Sorry. I noticed you weren't in bed and I was worried about you. What's wrong?" He sat down behind her on the railing and pulled her back to lean against him. Kenna hadn't realized she was chilly until he wrapped his arms around her.
She leaned deep into the warmth he offered. "I...had a nightmare. A real doozy of one."
"Would it helped to talk about it?" Carth asked, rubbing her back with one hand.
Kenna hesitated. "I...I don't know," she hedged. Did she really want to tell Carth about this? Then again, he was her husband, for crying out loud. If she couldn't tell him anything, why the hell had she married him? "I-It was from when I was Revan," she warned him.
"And I'm going to love you no matter what, remember? I know Revan did some pretty damn awful things, but that not who you are now, Kenna."
So she told him. It came out in halting bits and pieces, and she started crying again when she reached the end. "That wasn't my first flashback, either, but the other one wasn't so...bad. I made two officers fight over command of an assassination squad. But this one..." Kenna shook her head and stifled a sob. "I was enjoying what I was doing to her. I was taking pleasure in the excessive measures, reveling in the pain I was causing her. That I could ever have been...so...like that..." she didn't finish her sentence, instead voicing the fear brought to the forefront by this vision. "What if Revan comes back?"
"She won't," Carth promised, his hold on her tightening for a moment. "I know remembering what you did scares you, but that doesn't mean Revan's going to come back."
"I hope you're right. I don't want things like that haunting me my whole life." Kenna buried her face in his chest, missing the wince he couldn't mask, and wrapped her arms around him. "You're freezing. Have you never heard of shirts?" she teased with a shaky smile, tugging the flimsy fabric of his undershirt.
"Nope," he replied with a cheeky grin. "Didn't you know soldiers are taught to withstand all sorts of things?"
"Oh, you." Kenna swatted his arm. "I love you, y'know."
"I know. Believe me." He kissed the top of her head. "I love you, too. Now, let's get some sleep, so you can fix that hyperdrive today."
"If you insist," she yawned.
The day was spent on the Ebon Hawk as Kenna used the near-impossible task of repairing the hyperdrive to keep her mind off her nightmare, or flashback, or whatever it had been. She only took one short break when Carth showed up with food and made her sit still to eat it.
"You need a break. You've been in there for almost six hours."
"Really?" Kenna plunked down next to him on the floor. "Wish I had more to show for it. 'Course it's slow going with just me."
"Sorry. Wish I could hel--"
"No, no, no. You are not allowed to feel guilty that you can't help me because you got hurt protecting Mission. Understood?" She raised one eyebrow at him in a reprimand that was teasing and serious at the same time and grinned.
"Yes, dear." Carth chuckled at her expression and reached over to wipe a streak of grease off her cheek before kissing her. "Am I allowed to feel guilty that I didn't do a particularly good job of it?"
Kenna thought for a second. "Considering that it was Sith Assassins and you took out one of them with one shot, no, you're not. No angsting allowed."
"Why not? I get the most interesting and entertaining reactions out of you when I get angsty, " he teased, dodging her playful swing at his head.
Kenna sighed in exasperation. "Remind me again why I put up with you?"
"Because I'm good looking, funny, and the only one who would have you."
"And I love you. You forgot that one."
"No, I didn't. I wanted to see if you would say something if I left it out."
"Rat." Kenna playfully slugged his shoulder. His wince was there and gone in less then the blink of an eye, but she still caught it. "Oh, Force, I'm sorry, honey."
"It's alright. You better get back to work. I've stolen enough of your time."
"Can't steal what's already yours," Kenna pointed out as she pushed off his shoulder to stand up, then offered her hand to pull him up. Carth managed to hide the potential wince this time. The twin gashes didn't hurt as badly as Kenna seemed to think. He only remembered they were there when he did something that stretched the healing skin further than it wanted to go. But Kenna didn't need to know that. He liked the...coddling, for lack of a better word.