Part 2
"The thing that scares me most is the fear I see in others. And the thing that really frightens me to the core is when I see that fear in you. That look that sent shivers down my spine will haunt me until the end of living days and nights..."
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A light breeze set the plains' golden grasses swaying back and forth as if an invisible sea tide were washing over the rolling vista, breaking upon the blunt face of the breathtaking mountain range that spanned the northern horizon. From the front seat of an open-cockpit landspeeder, Calum savored the view as he guided the gently hovering vehicle over the sweeping grasslands, the wind playing slightly across his face and blowing back his black mid-length hair.
In the seat beside him, Bastila leaned over and gave him a light kiss on the cheek. Juhani sat behind them, slightly agitated because she had to rely on Calum to do the driving. The Cathar relaxed slightly when she saw them entering familiar territory.
They'd left the wilderness home late in the morning to head back to what remained of the Jedi enclave and its tiny dependent settlement. Calum's first reasoning had been the most obvious; their only ship, the Ebon Hawk, was still docked at the settlement, just outside the boundaries of the Jedi grounds. Certainly none of them were going anywhere without a ship.
The second reason had been Bastila.
Earlier, after the both of them were fully awake and had put the emotional agonies of the previous night behind them, Bastila asked Calum if she could first speak with the two remaining Jedi Masters of the Council of Dantooine.
"The Force is in all of us, and it can sometimes work in strange ways, ways we may not even understand," she'd said. "There is something at work within you that neither of us understands, and I'm afraid that I have somehow been a part of it. I have to know if I somehow caused this, if perhaps your burning need for an elusive answer is connected to what I did to you. Calum, I love you, please understand that. But I'm afraid my love might be what is driving you further into the darkness, the same as it did me."
He knew to what she referred by that statement, and the memory set his heart pounding afresh. He remembered all too well the things she'd done for Malak, her heartless betrayal and sneeringly contemptuous treatment of him and the rest of her former friends. He also remembered that heartbreaking moment on the Star Forge when she'd begged him, if he loved her at all, to kill her for what she'd done. In the end, the only thing that had saved her was her love for him.
Calum's mind could not reconcile what she said to him. Love was what brought her back, not what doomed her.
"If I may, I would like to ask the Masters for guidance before we leave," she asked of him, and he couldn't possibly refuse her. But he worried about Vrook and Vandar, the two Masters she would see.
When he'd married Calum and Bastila on the bridge of his new ship, Commodore Onasi had sworn himself and his whole bridge crew into secrecy, vowing never to divulge what had transpired between the two Jedi. Calum knew from his experiences with him that Onasi was an honorable man who would keep his word. But he and Bastila had, for all intents and purposes, been missing for over six months. They told no one in the Jedi Order where they were going - not even Juhani, though she found them anyway - and had all but dropped off the face of the galaxy.
Even if they knew not of their marriage, the two Masters had doubtlessly realized that something had happened to the both of them. Calum worried what they might do, but he yielded to Bastila's insistence that she would be fine. The Masters were friends, not enemies. They had, after all, given him a second chance rather than kill him when they had the opportunity before them.
Although, after the nights he'd been having recently, Calum was no longer sure he was grateful for their second chance.
But his misgivings and apprehension hadn't done away with reality, and reality, in the form of the forbidding ruins of the Academy buildings, stared him in the face as he brought the landspeeder to a halt in what had once been a magnificent garden. He shut off the speeder's engine and the three sat in silence for a moment, regarding the lifeless ruins about them.
"Bastila, are you sure the Masters are even still here?" Juhani asked.
"Yes. They would not have abandoned the enclave, no matter what had happened. Can you even imagine the things of value that would be lost forever if these runs were not protected from foolish intruders?" Bastila climbed out of her seat and set foot on the ground, her feet crushing the petals of flowers long dead and withered. "Just a single lightsabre crystal in the wrong hands could cause a deadly accident, to say nothing of some of the more dangerous objects kept in the Archives or the Masters' chambers. But even more important are those priceless documents that may have survived the attack. The surviving Masters would not leave things of such incalculable value unguarded."
After her, Calum and Juhani clambered from the landspeeder. Juhani's eyes moistened as she bent to the ground and picked up the fragile body of a dead and dry fireblossom, a majestic orange flower that had once grown in wide patches around the enclave. They held special meaning for her, as she'd adored them as a child and Calum had brought some to her in the grove as a peace offering.
Calum grasped Bastila's hand. "Are you sure you want to do this?" he asked.
She answered with a firm, "Yes."
"I'll come with you, Bastila. If I know Vrook at all, and I think I do, he will not be in the least bit understanding. He'll see only that you fell under Malak's... under Malak's influence. You should have someone with you who's on your side."
"No, Calum, I have to go alone. I'm not afraid of anything happening to me. Vandar is one of the gentlest and fairest Masters I have ever known. He would not unjustly punish me when he knows I have suffered my due and redeemed myself by coming back to the Light." She said the words with such conviction. Calum wished she could convince him as firmly as she herself believed in her words.
"I know how you feel about Vrook. I felt the same way for many years, Calum. But he is only trying to do what is best for the Jedi and for the galaxy. I trust his wisdom."
"But they don't understand what happened to the two of us," Calum protested. He was frustrated with himself for not being able to adequately convey his conflicted thoughts and feelings. It was like reaching for the water before him to find it was only a mirage on a hot road; here a minute, gone the next.
As only she could do, Bastila seemed to better understand his thoughts than he did himself. Putting her hands to the sides of his head, she looked him straight in the eyes, her gray irises searing through the fog of confusion in his mind.
"Calum, the Jedi Masters are not going to take me away from you. I'll not let them. They may not like what they see as me straying from the path of the Jedi, but this is who we are now. I gave up life in the Jedi Order to be with you, and I won't turn back on my oath to you. 'Till death do us part.' Remember?"
Unable to find words to answer her, Calum hugged her instead. "I love you," he whispered. He thought it unfair that those were the only words with which he could express his devotion. They seemed woefully inadequate.
"I love you, Calum," she whispered back. "Trust me, it will be alright. I promise."
As desperately as he wanted to believe her, believe that everything was going to be alright, the moment she pulled away and started down the forbidding hall that led into the bowels of the ruined academy, Calum was struck by the horrible feeling that he would never see her again.
The Sith bombardment had not been kind to the Jedi enclave. Many of the rooms and hallways were unrecognizable; gutted from the merciless weapon blasts much of the buildings were in a state of near-collapse, holding a precarious solidity on the brink of utter ruin. The glow of the setting sun shone through the ragged holes in the ceiling, painting fiery orange streaks in the airborne dust that filled the broken hall as it was stirred up by Bastila's passing.
A profound sense of tragedy reverberated off the shattered walls around her. When Bastila thought of the six blissful months she'd spent away with Calum, in the face of the terrible things that had happened to the enclave, she felt like she'd betrayed everyone who'd died here. In truth, leaving the Jedi Order to marry Calum had had more of an effect on her than she could ever let him know. The Order had been her whole life, and to suddenly give it up was a jolting and profoundly saddening experience.
But then, she'd never really gone back to the Jedi after falling to the Dark Side. She came back for Calum and no one else. It had just taken her some time to realize how much the Jedi were still a part of her. She couldn't let go of them completely, not just yet. And right now, she needed their guidance more than ever.
Recently, her and Calum's blessed isolation had become a trying ordeal for both of them. As she had gradually begun to come to terms with herself and the terrible things she'd done, Calum's mind grew worse. The shadowed persona of Darth Revan, buried in his mind, was steadily being dredged up by his subconscious, and with it the even more baffling knowledge of a looming greater evil that cast everything she thought she knew about his dark identity into doubt.
Bastila had always accepted that Revan fell to the Dark Side during the Mandalorian wars and turned from savior to conquerer in a dark lust for domination. It was the way of the Sith, to crave ever greater power until they were so blinded by their selfish desires that every measure was justified in the pursuit of that power. But the more she learned about Revan, the more unclear the picture became. The shadow of an overarching scheme revealed itself piece by piece, never completely clear but substantial enough to disprove her previous assumptions.
The most unsettling thing was that she was sure the Council must have known, and yet they had not told her, nor anyone. Bastila wondered if she dared let Calum act on the flashes and fragments he saw in his mind. She needed to know if there was something there, lurking in the shadows of his mind, that had been kept from her; or if it was something she had helped the Council put there, inadvertently creating a shadow with no source.
Masters Vrook and Vandar were where she expected them to be, sitting cross-legged in meditation in the middle of what had once been the Council Chamber.
Bastila bowed to them.
"Good to see you again, it is, Padawan Bastila" Vandar greeted her.
"So you return at last," Vrook said in an accusatory tone. "I trust you have seen the terrible destruction that has befallen this enclave? Do you need any more evidence of the horrors you have helped inflict on the Jedi Order? That you would have the arrogance to hide from justice for as long as you have and then return here, where your treachery cost the lives of hundreds of Jedi, proves the dark taint of Darth Revan has taken you over."
In times past, when confronted with Vrook's displeasure as she presently was, Bastila would have cringed and wished for the floor to swallow her. But she'd been expecting his sour indignation and prepared herself against it. Even so, his words struck a sensitive nerve in her.
Standing straight and tall, Bastila did not submit to his unjust accusations, her assessment of him lowering. "What I did under the influence of the Sith and Darth Malak was done to those who have already forgiven me, Master Vrook. I was not the one who betrayed the Academy here on Dantooine, you know the truth of that. Malak was once a student here, and had always known of the enclave. It needed no betraying.
"And if, after what I sacrificed to stop the Sith and save the Republic, you wish still to punish me for betraying the Republic, I can assure you that there is no greater pain you could inflict on me than the knowledge I must live with for the rest of my life." Bastila blinked back a tear, remembering Calum's shock at seeing her on the pinnacle of the Rakatan temple.
"You think we can trust anything you say or do, Bastila? After proving that the Dark Side has taken your soul?" Vrook's tone was openly condemning. "You may say whatever words you wish, but once you put the crown of a liar on your head, never can you truly be rid of its terrible stain."
"Can you not sense her sincerity, Vrook?" Vandar intervened on Bastila's behalf. "Come back to the Light, Bastila has, and you do not see?"
"She clouds her thoughts with a torrent of emotion," Vrook protested. "She has somehow forgotten the most fundamental principle on which our order stands; 'There is no emotion, there is peace.'"
"If to punish her our intent was, we would not have let her leave after the Star Forge. You agreed with the rest of us that already given her punishment was."
"Very well, then."
"Esteemed Masters," Bastila said, drawing their attention back to her, "I have come to you because there is something I must know, something that I believe may concern the safety of the galaxy."
"Speak," Vandar bid her, "we will answer what we can."
"When the Republic came under attack by the Mandalorians, the Jedi Order did not come to its aid. Why?"
Vrook sighed, greatly annoyed and not loathe to show it. "Have you been asleep for the past three and a half years? Did you not see the destruction and death wrought by those who disobeyed us? The war consumed all those Jedi, and those it did not manage to kill it turned to the Dark Side. That is the nature of any war, and that is why the Jedi are not to fight such battles. Had the entire Order thrown themselves into the abyss the galaxy would have forever fallen under the shadow of the Sith."
Bastila nodded in agreement, crossing her arms. "Yes, that is what you've told us for all these years. And I believed, along with all the others, that it was within the highest calling of the Jedi Code to do as you did. Of late, however, I find myself increasingly unsatisfied with that explanation. You would not have made such a momentous decision on such vague grounds. Surely there is more to your reasoning than you have disclosed. Else, perhaps I overestimated how much wisdom you truly possess."
"You dare..." Vrook began menacingly before Vandar cut him off.
"You are correct, Bastila. Another reason there was, at the heart of the matter. Reveal it to others we could not, for a vision of prophecy it was."
"Prophecy is not meant for the unlearned," Bastila recited out of rote, understanding.
Vandar nodded.
"Long before the Mandalore wars began, the Council was confronted with a prophecy that one of our Order would go off to war and become a tyrannical Sith who would go on to rule the galaxy, the Republic and the Jedi Order itself under his fist," Vrook explained. "We soon saw the Mandalorian conflict as the war warned of by the prophecy, and knew we could not allow the Jedi to fight that war."
Bastila still felt they were withholding their true motives from her. "Tell me the prophecy."
Vrook frowned as unpleasantly as he ever had. "It is not for your ears to know, Padawan."
"I am ashamed, Master Vrook, that the day has then come that I can no longer trust the Jedi Masters to give me truth, only rationalized lies and vague allusions." She truly was disgusted; the price of their actions, good or bad, had been paid in blood and they still would not tell her why.
Vrook glared at her, she glared back.
"If willing to hear the truth she is, then hear the prophecy she should," Vandar argued.
Vrook immediately tried to protest. "Master Vandar...!"
"Concern her, this does, Vrook," Vandar said firmly.
"If you so insist then," Vrook grumbled. "The prophecy. Open your mind, Padawan Bastila."
He waved his hand and suddenly words exploded into Bastila's mind:
The war hero of the Jedi will save his people from the hordes of honor and turn himself to break upon the jaw of the ravenous Destroyers and the founding Forge. Should he seek a path out of destruction, he will lead those who follow into the darkness, and return to seize all rule of Government and Order.
Bastila staggered back a step, stunned by the power and implications of those words.
"We saw this threat lurking in the unknown years before Revan began his immoral crusade to split the Order. If he had heeded the words of the Council and not led those who followed into the darkness, this prophecy could yet have been avoided. But he defied us, and as the prophecy warned, he broke himself upon the Star Forge in his attempt to stay the destroying hordes of honor represented by the Mandalorians. He fell by his own self-righteous actions.
"It was only by our actions that Revan was given a chance to set right what Revan wrought. And even so, he came within inches of achieving his goal, total dominion, and fulfilling the last terrible part of the prophecy.
"Are you now satisfied?"
Thoughts swirled madly in Bastila's head. Calum's fractured memories and blurry recollections were beginning to make sense to her, and at the same time she was beginning the brand of truth on his suspicion that Revan's crusade had been for an overarching goal. The phrase "ravenous Destroyers and founding Forge" stood out like a blazing signal fire in her mind, illuminating the colossal error they had all made.
"You made a mistake," she whispered in shock. "The prophecy was misinterpreted! The hordes of honor were not the Destroyers from the prophecy. The Forge was meant to stop them! And Revan knew this..."
Revan had gone out into the unknown after the Mandalorian wars to find the Star Forge, because he knew it was the only thing that could stop these Destroyers, the ones who wanted an end to the Force. His war on the Republic was a sham, a cover-up for his true plan of galactic unification. But then Malak killed him...
The inklings and vague shadows of the larger threat Calum saw in his dreams could indeed be a portent of darker things yet to be unleashed on the galaxy--things still out there, waiting.
"The Force help us, the mistake was yours."
Vrook's scowl, if it were possible, grew more sour. His voice came out hard, spitting. "The only mistake was made by those who marched blithely off to war. We were not the ones in error."
"Everyone is fallible, Master Vrook," Bastila retorted, surprised at the strength of her own voice. "Even I, and even you."
"Enough of this pointless banter!" Vrook abruptly changed the subject. "Where is Revan?" he demanded. "Your sins may have only been against those who have forgiven you, Bastila, but his are unforgivable crimes he has yet to answer for. No more can he be allowed to elude the hand of justice. Where is he?"
Bastila regarded Vrook for a long moment, saddened that so much wisdom had been attributed to him by so many for so little, and shamed that she had thought him open to reason. "Revan is dead, Master Vrook, Master Vandar. He died when Malak betrayed him. The man he is now is a different person, thanks to you. After all his sacrifices, after everything he has gone through to save the Republic and the Jedi, Calum Jan should not be made to suffer for Revan's sins. What we did to him - programming his mind with a life of our choosing - was a crime enough."
"Revan was a bloodthirsty tyrant who killed millions of people. What we did allowed him a chance to set right just the tiniest amount of the wrongs he did. What, then? Should there have been no justice served? We truly have no excuse."
Bastila ignored Vrook's venomous sarcasm. "It would be a prostitution of justice to punish him for crimes of which he has no memory after he has sacrificed so much to save everyone. I am sorry Masters, but I am no longer a part of the Jedi Order and do not answer to you. I will not betray him."
As she turned her back on them, she anticipated a tingling sensation in her brain telling her they were about to alter her mind, or a sudden yank as she was forcibly stopped with the Force that meant they had no intention of letting her leave. Almost to her surprise, the two Masters let her go in peace.
Maybe, just maybe, she thought, they had seen things from her point of view. For their sakes, she hoped so.
She would tell Calum he was right about everything, just as she knew he was. The weight of her realization made her ache to be in his arms again.
Halfway back through the maze of wreckage she'd navigated through to get from the outer gardens to the inner chambers, Bastila heard a noise; someone else moving in the ruins. Instantly, she stopped and scanned her immediate area, caution telling her whoever it was would likely know the moment she tried to ping her surroundings with the Force.
She couldn't see much in the now-fading light of the sunset that streamed in here and there, but she could still hear something definite.
Bastila realized it was a woman crying.
Following the sound, she came upon a beautiful young woman sitting forlornly in the middle of a dormitory room that was still mostly intact. Long blond hair was fallen over her shoulders and arms as she sat with her head buried in her arms as she hugged up as close to her knees as she could. The woman was very pregnant.
Without even trying, Bastila could sense waves of anguish and loneliness pouring from the sobbing woman.
Moved by compassion, she approached her. "Are you alright, miss? Do you need help?"
Hearing her voice, the woman looked up at her with eyes reddened by tears. "Oh, please, you have to help me. I came to find help for my father, he lives on a remote settlement and became very sick. I'm afraid he'll die before I can have my baby and I'll be all alone." She was overcome for a moment with another torrent of sobs. "I don't what I'll do if he... if he..."
Bastila dropped down to he knees beside the distraught woman and put an arm around her shoulder, trying her best to comfort her while still heeding her intuitive warning not to ply the Force on her.
"Hush now, shh," Bastila said soothingly. "I'll help you."
The burnt orange of the sunset had darkened to a deep red, casting its rays on the dead gardens like a wash from the bleeding sky. Calum wandered about the scraggy, leafless trees and withered stalks that had once been painted by magnificent living curtains of color, almost in a trance as he remembered the days of training he'd spent here. It was the one part of rediscovering Revan within him that Calum savored. Both experiences, though from different lives, had blended together in his mind to the point where each was nearly indistinguishable from the other.
Dantooine was where he'd spent much of his formative years, and as the memories came back to him he was able to cherish them anew for the times of true peace they had been. Returning to Dantooine years later after helping Bastila escape Taris and once again being taught to harness the Force was as special a time as his childhood, for, even in the midst of the galactic war, it had been a blessed few weeks of tranquility.
Then it had all come to an end.
Calum glanced over at Juhani who walked beside him, the dead flower still clutched in her hands. His first meeting with her had signaled the end of the beginning, and events afterward soon began moving at such a breathtaking pace they often left him struggling in their wake, desperately trying to catch up lest he be left behind completely. But he never regretted that first furious battle or what it signified, nor his instinctual decision to spare Juhani's life.
Though he was married to Bastila, he considered Juhani family as well. She'd been the first to step to his side during the agonizing and heart-wrenching division amongst his friends that Bastila's revelation aboard the Leviathan had wrought. She'd stood by his side at the pinnacle of the Rakatan temple as Bastila betrayed him. And despite having no obligations to do so, after Calum and Bastila married and were threatened by rogue Sith assassins, Juhani had appointed herself their protector.
"Calum," Juhani said, snapping him from his reverie. "May I ask you a question?"
Calum looked up at the sky. Stars were beginning to appear high in the rapidly-darkening firmament. He hadn't realized it had been so long.
"Of course, Juhani," he answered, beginning to angle his way back toward the landspeeder, not eager to be among the gardens when night proper fell. He didn't wish to be stepping in the ashes of the garden's dead tenders when Revan began to claw his way out of the sealed door of his subconscious. Calum wished Bastila hadn't taken so long.
"It is difficult for me to say exactly what I mean, but I have been wondering; if you wished so badly to do good in order to convince us all that you were no longer Revan, after you succeeded why did you then decide you must leave the Order?" She was gazing forlornly at the dead flower in her hands, as if the once-vibrant orange blossom she held represented all the lost souls who lay in dust and ashes among the ruins of the Academy.
"Talethia," he answered in Nefirsi, a tribal Cathar tongue. Roughly translated, the word meant 'completion,' but it conveyed much more. It was often used by Cathar to describe one's soul mate, with whom they would bond for life.
"I would have been happy to live the life of a Jedi; there was little else for me except to be a soldier in the Republic as I then remembered. Yet, somehow I knew after Bastila's mother died on Tatooine that no matter how many Jedi laws spoke against it, I couldn't leave her side. Even if she never openly acknowledged me or her own hurt, I knew from that day that I might be the only one in the whole Jedi Order who could do anything to help her hidden feelings." Calum ran a hand through his hair and muttered, "Lya daraven daravor," a Cathar phrase meaning 'from one heart to another.'
It was the closest he could come to describing how he could have know what he did.
Juhani nodded. She knew that well enough.
"When she came back to the Light on the Star Forge, begging me from the bottom of her soul to kill her, whatever doubt was left in my mind was erased. I knew neither of us could live without the other. Had I chosen to remain in the Order, walled off my feelings for her as best I could and attempted to struggle on under the Code, I would have taken my own lightsabre to my neck months ago, Juhani."
Calum was unable to speak for a moment, his breath catching in his throat. "What comes back to me in visions and dreams only she can alleviate, and I know within her lies the same kind of pain."
Juhani dropped the dead flower from her hands. "Where is she?" Juhani asked into the silence. The landspeeder was empty, Bastila nowhere in sight.
Stars twinkled in the night sky, like the lights of a thousand souls shining down from the afterlife. To Calum they just seemed achingly far away, and he was inundated by a feeling of terrible loneliness. The night always did this to him. He hated it; hated the dark and the false light of the stars that seemed only mocking him. His own darkness had no such pinpoints of light, not even the feeble shimmer of thermonuclear spheres burning through millions of light years of space.
Bastila was gone.
His loneliness grew into a horrible gnawing worry at the pit of his stomach. She should never have been in there this long.
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"...You're the thing that matters to me most, and I sense this fear in you."
End part 2
The song quotes are taken from the Dark Tranquillity song Icipher, and is in no way owned by me; it remains the property of Brandstrom, Jivarp, Henriksson, and Stanne.