In hindsight Mal should've known better.
Every nerve in her system has been screaming Danger! from the moment Admiral Karath left them in that torture chamber. At the time, a ship full of Sith soldiers seemed like another to-do list. Endure a bit of torture, wait for Mission to break them out, kill the admiral, and make a grand escape. Easy tasks when compared to facing down the imposing figure of the Dark Lord standing between them and freedom.
Darth Malak is much taller and broader than she expects, filling up the doorway like an impassable wall. He walks towards them with the confident swagger of a hunter approaching prey. Her vision cuts out to static, grainy, as if she isn't supposed to look at him directly. With her thoughts blessedly silent in this moment, she defaults to comedy. Anything to distract from the intensity of his focus upon her.
"Lord Lack I presume?" The nickname sounds pathetic in the darkened halls, but there's no time to regret her lack of creativity. "You're the bastard who stole my name."
"Your name?" The metallic quality gives a chilling purr to his voice. "Ahh. Mal Korra. I wonder, did the Jedi call you that or did you choose it for yourself?"
"It's mine," she spits.
His gaze is pure fury. "What you bestow, you rip away. That's always the way it's been. But you no longer have that power over me, Revan. Darth Malak is mine."
Revan?
She responds though she can't hear the words out of her own mouth. Something has snapped, her body switched to autopilot as her mind stutters.
Revan.
She must be making some kind of coherent sound because Malak and Bastila and Carth keep saying that name over and over again.
Revan. Revan. Revan.
She has no reason to believe Malak's claims but even as she hears them, she knows they're true. He exchanges sharp words with Bastila, a verbal tug-of-war over the Jedi Council's intentions with her as their center and rvery excuse from Bastila's mouth pushes the knife of betrayal deeper into her chest. But this is no time to freeze or address the ballooning pressure in her head. Malak incapacitates Bastila and Carth and now it's just them. Master and student together at last.
The lightsaber in her hands feels foreign as she swings it up to block his vicious strikes, but the confusion eventually bubbles into a desperation that fuels her momentum. She doesn't pull on the Force, afraid of what it might reveal in this moment, and that's her mistake. Malak has no such reservations and locks her limbs to her sides with a savage grip. He laughs triumphantly, assured victory brightening his expression until Bastila reemerges in a desperate move that steals his attention.
"Go!" Bastila screams and her wild eyes begging for understanding are the last thing Mal sees before the door locks between them.
She runs forward clawing desperately at the impenetrable metal. All the answers of her life, including the ones she's been unaware of needing until this moment, are trapped on the other side.
"Do you know who you are?"
"Ah, n-no, I, m-m-"
"Do you know your name?
"M-mal-"
"Mal?"
"Mal- mal-"
"I need you to relax, alright? We're going to take care of you."
The name burning on her lips after the accident, seared into her first waking thoughts. Mal. It had been a joke. The Sith lord running around giving her name a bad reputation.
"What you bestow, you rip away."
There are unknowable layers to that statement. The smuggler running around giving his name a bad reputation.
"Revan brought Malak to the dark side. Made him a Sith apprentice."
What else has she stolen from him?
"I take it he's the one you've been wanting revenge on?" Canderous asks in the safety of the Ebon Hawk, the only one to smile at the grand revelation.
Is he? That doubly cursed name. Him, she had spat. Him, them, her… you. Oh, that anger burns in containment because it was never Malak you scorned.
Revan.
Revan, the great. Revan, the mighty. Revan, the fucking fool. She should've known all along and that's the true punchline. She's angry at Revan for being too blind to see it coming. She's angry at herself for being too ignorant to read the signs.
"And what if Revan were to return?"
"It was never my intention to kill Revan."
"Why do you assume Revan was a man?"
Was the damnation so great that her body had to purge the memory of it and create something outside of herself? Her greatest failure given to a phantom she can never hunt down because it resides within.
"What should we call you?" Juhani asks, all cautious tenderness in her approach.
The question of a lifetime. Who was Revan? Who is Mal Korra? Where is the line between truth and fiction?
"You're not at all what I expected you to be."
And Bastila! Sweet, arrogant, stupid Bastila had known all along and been hopelessly out of her depth. All those warnings against the seduction of the dark side glowing bright like cantina signs. She'd made it sound so easy. Simple equations in what needed to be done. For the greater good. As if being a puppet is a better fate than death.
"We gave you a chance for redemption!"
Of course, she should be angrier about the attempted murder by her closest companion over the control of an empire she helped build. But that's not what she remembers. It's lying in the soft grass beside Bastila meditating as the early morning light warmed their faces. It's tracking down Master Dorak at all hours of the day with her datapad in hand and a thousand questions on her mind. It's Master Zhar pretending not to laugh as she stood drenched from her attempt at levitating a water jug into her hand.
This is what she remembers. This is the betrayal that hurts the most. And there's no one left to blame, no one to confront or reassure. The Republic reports confirm it. The Jedi Enclave on Dantooine is smoky rubble and any survivors have faded into the wind. Bastila is far from reach in the enemy's grasp, the only consolation being the steady pulse of life across their bond. In one quick move Malak has shaken the foundations of her life to dust. All she has left is the Ebon Hawk and a crew who proclaims to trust her so long as Revan's ghost remains buried.
All that time spent with Jolee tentatively letting him see her personal truths when he'd known all along. What a laugh he must've been having. Mission's bright optimism which previously brought a sense of hope now chafes. The weight of Zaalbar's oath lays heavier between them like an even greater responsibility. And no wonder Juhani and Canderous had taken to watching after her in that way. It was Revan that inspired them. Revan that enraptured them. And what is Mal in comparison but an empty shell of that greatness.
"Revan."
She suspects he's either doing it to annoy her or to prove a point.
"Revan."
And why shouldn't he? That was her name after all. Her chosen title. The rallying cry that led so many to their deaths.
"Revan."
The smoldering anger that has been her companion for so long is gone. It's been transformed into something sharp. Deadly. Ice cold.
"Mal."
"What, Carth?"
"What are you going to do about Korriban?"
Mal keeps her focus on the blinding light of hyperspace. There's no telling how long she's been sitting in the gunner's chair letting her eyes burn with the brightness of the stars. It's nowhere near long enough to be around anyone else yet.
"I'm going to stick to the original plan and hope we can find the Star Map before Malak realizes we're there."
"You're sure about that?" His voice is hard. What an irony of the Force that so many of her companions have been personally affected by Revan, yet Carth's experience is the only one born from pure misery.
"What do you want to hear, Carth? That I'm going to walk up, knock on the doors, and take my old life back? 'Hey, it's me, Revan. Sorry you thought I was dead, but I only now found out who I am. Malak's been kind of an ass so drop what you're doing and come work for me.' Is that better for you?"
Her words don't hold the playful heat they used to. They're matter of fact. Cutting. She knows he's contemplating this change from the weighty pause that follows.
"Either way, you have a son we need to save." She offers this as a peace treaty, her voice gentle and low.
It doesn't matter what she wants. It never did. She'll keep pressing forward and follow this path whose steps have been paved long ago. Wrapped up so tightly in the Force she's been muffled from hearing its laughter as she speeds towards her fate. Jolee had tried to warn her. Nothing good comes of being chosen.
Carth breaks the silence. "Canderous is threatening to mutiny if we don't continue on to Tatooine first."
How lucky to be invited to face the ghosts of one's past at a specified location and time.
"Fine." She can hear Carth's shuffle of feet turning to leave. "What was it like?" He pauses. Mal tilts her head down, blinks her eyes to clear her vision until she can see his shadowed frame in the doorway. "Finally getting your revenge on Saul. What did it feel like?"
The space between them fills up with a long silence. Mal contemplates repeating herself, convinced he didn't hear until she catches a bitter, "Empty," as he walks away.
That isn't the answer Mal wants or needs. When they land on Tatooine, she follows Canderous out to the desert in the hopes of a second opinion. But the Mandalorians are fools and their bloodthirst is built on miscommunication and it's too frustrating to remain silent. Mal calls them out on their childish behavior and in the end, they walk away from the site of a sacrifice rather than a duel. For the first time in their journey, Canderous is at a loss for words. They march back onto the Ebon Hawk in silence and before the loading ramp even finishes rising, Carth has them launching into the sky.
This is it. No more excuses. Bastila's fear of Korriban brushed off as a nervous feeling of protection is all Mal can think about. Another clue hidden in plain sight. She sits crossed legged in the engine room, a gizka on each side and one in her lap. The lap gizka is a brown-spotted creature with an array of small scars and a knack for getting stuck in tight places. It had been affectionately named Mal Junior.
"Should I call you Revan now?" Mal asks as she scratches its head. Did Revan like gizka? Would Revan be attempting self-burial by gizka in order to avoid interacting with the rest of the crew? Or would Revan have crushed Malak's skull like rotten fruit back on the Leviathan and ended this whole charade? "Would you like to hold the responsibility of all my war crimes for me?"
The creature looks up and croaks, happy with the special attention.
"You going to train it to fight Malak for you too?" A gruff voice asks.
Mal glares up at the Mandalorian as he enters.
"Fuck off, Canderous."
"Now that's not a very Jedi-like thing to say."
Canderous crosses his arms and leans back against the wall behind him. This inversion of the way he normally takes up Mal's personal space alarms her.
"Why are you following me?" she asks.
"Figured you'd want to talk more about what happened."
"I mean why are you still following me?"
His gaze doesn't waver. "You already know the answer to that."
She pauses. "I can't give you what you want."
"And what is it that I want from you?"
Mal shrugs. "Money. Power." She doesn't dare say love. "Secrets. What do you want from all this?"
He's quiet for a while, mulling it over. "I think that's what I need to figure out. What this duel with Jagi was meant to lead me to. If you hadn't been there, I would've killed him no questions asked. I need to reconsider what being a Mandalorian really means to me. What it means for my people in the aftermath of the war. When I figure that out, maybe I'll let you know."
She raises her eyebrows in surprise. "Canderous, be honest with me. Are you having a mid-life crisis?"
"That implies I've got another long half of life to live. Nice to know you've given up on killing me."
That makes her huff something close to a laugh for the first time since they left Manaan. Somehow the bastard knows; his grin is smug at being the cause of this small humor.
Mal knows revenge won't fix her problems, won't erase her past or her present, and probably won't make her feel better. But she needs it now more than ever. To face Malak on equal footing, to stare directly into the darkness lurking inside, to plunge this icy sharpness into the heart of the matter and see what freezes alongside it. Whether it be the Sith or the Jedi, it's too soon to say.