Hours, minutes, days—perhaps even years—passed. There was no telling how much time it truly was. All that she knew was that with each second fresh waves of pain rolled over her, sickening her body and soul.
She was sweating profusely now, her skin clammy and wet. Another wave of nausea swept through her and once more she found herself hanging over the commode, her stomach trying to rid itself of contents that had long ceased to exist. When the heaving finally subsided, she fell back, landing hard on her rear but scarcely feeling the pain. Her head seemed so heavy that it was impossible to understand how her neck managed to support it. Lifting a trembling hand, she swiped it over her soaked forehead, a useless gesture as it was soon covered in sweat once more.
It seemed like every inch of her was wracked with pain. She could now feel the wounds that Malak had inflicted, now that the adrenaline had worn off and cold reality had set in, robbing her of the blissful unawareness of what her body had suffered. It was not only her injuries that caused her pain, however. Her abdomen ached with the force of her violent heavings, her head ached with a pain so blinding it felt as though her brain were molten lead, and her lungs ached from the sharp indrawn breaths she was forced to take as a result of her sobs. Dimly, she was aware of her Jedi compatriots attempting to reach out to her but she was so lost in her own misery that their efforts were all but useless.
Even if I had the strength and serenity to heed them, would I? she wondered to herself. Perhaps what she was feeling was not merely a result of what she had suffered; perhaps she also wished to punish herself.
It was so perplexing, this self-loathing. Her mind felt as if it were trying to tear itself in two. There was the part of her that knew that she was Revan, that did its best to dredge up whatever dim memories of the past that it was able. But then there was the part of her that stubbornly insisted that she was not Revan, that she was Brinna. This part of her paraded recollection after recollection through her head. She heard the sound of her father's voice, felt her mother's arms around her, and knew the warmth of Amara's cheek pressed against her own.
But it's not true! None of it is true! Father doesn't exist, Mother doesn't exist, Amara doesn't exit. They never did exist, never. They might as well be characters in a holo serial. Who knew the Jedi were such masters at weaving works of fiction?
She was so tired, so very tired. Weary unto her very soul, Brinna felt as though her bones were liquid. Unable to find the strength to hold herself up any longer, she allowed her body to slide down, where she lay with her cheek pressed against the vibrating metal of the ship's floor.
The desire to stay there forever was very strong. Could she close her eyes and will herself into an eternal sleep? What would happen to her then? Would she be bound to the Force and able to bask in its lightness or would she be a subject to its darkness forevermore?
You can't give up. You deserve neither such luxury nor such punishment. There is much yet for you to do, many people whom you cannot leave behind. Someday you will meet your end—and it may well be someday soon—but until that time, you must go on. You owe it to so many others and you owe it to yourself.
This was, perhaps, the worst punishment of all. After learning what she had learned, it seemed that there would be no peace for her other than oblivion. And yet she could not embrace that oblivion, could not allow herself to know it for she felt beholden to these people. She knew without a doubt that this mission had no hope of success at all without her. When they had saved her life, the Jedi had made her the ultimate pawn. They had to have known it too. As long as she continued to roam the galaxy, Malak would not be content, even if he succeeded in breaking Bastila and exploiting her battle meditation, even if he was able to unlock the power of the Star Forge. He would stalk her unto the very edges of the universe, if necessary.
Why does he hate me so? she wondered. Though he had explained it away as an example of the eternal conflict between Sith master and apprentice, she had sensed that there was something more. His hatred had a tinge of obsession to it and she could not imagine why. Though it felt as though there was a part of her that was struggling to break free and pour forth memories of her past atrocities, she had been honest with Mission. Thus far, she had only been able to remember small pieces of what she had once been, of the life she had once known.
The skill of the masters must have been enormous indeed. She could not stop herself from feeling the wonder. A thoroughly broken body was nothing compared to a thoroughly broken mind. She wondered how long it had taken them to strip her mind down and to then restore it, placing within it those thoughts and feelings they had wished her to have.
A part of her was very angry that they were all dead, and not because she was incensed about their deaths in and of themselves. Rather, she was angry that she would not have the opportunity to seek them and question them, to find out what they had stolen from her and why they had programmed her as they had. Why make her believe herself to be a scout, once a captain of her own ship? Why fill her with memories of her family? They had sent her on this mission. Had they truly believed that it would never come to this, that she would never discover who and what she truly was?
Perhaps they wanted to punish me. Perhaps they felt that death was too good for me.
The thought made her shudder. A short time ago, she would never have imagined the Jedi masters to be capable of anything other than respectable thoughts. Now, however, dark and light were so twisted within her that she could assign dark intentions to the masters she had once seen as nothing other than pure servants of the light.
"Come out of there," a gruff voice called, breaking into her thoughts.
Startled, she gasped and just managed to raise her head off the floor. "Go away," she croaked, her voice sounding like sand scraping over the hull of a ship.
"Come out of there," the voice repeated and she wearily recognized it as that of Jolee. "Your wounds need attention."
"I don't care about them," she said listlessly, allowing her head to fall back down on the floor.
"I don't care if you don't care! You're no good to any of us dead!"
Brinna chuckled bitterly and felt a few tears trickle over her cheeks. "I'm no good to any of us alive either!"
"Put your violin down and quit wallowing in self pity. There are more pressing issues than your abject misery."
Had she the strength, Brinna would have been incensed. As it was, she had to admit that Jolee's harsh words finally gave her the impetus to haul herself off the floor and stagger over to the door. She leaned heavily against the frame as it whooshed open, revealing a stormy-faced Jolee.
"You look like hell," he said bluntly. His nose wrinkled. "And smell like it too."
"I'm not really attempting to win any beauty pageants at the moment," Brinna said sarcastically.
Jolee nodded as if she's said something really profound. "That'll do for now. I haven't known you that long but I've known you long enough to know that you're not one of those women who tucks herself into a corner and weeps when there's a crisis. Now get moving. Go to the sickbay so I can take care of those wounds."
A swift, fierce flame of anger lit within her and for a split second she felt an almost uncontrollable urge to crush Jolee with the strength of her Force powers. A shadow crossed over his face and she knew that he could feel her malevolence.
"You'll want to learn to control that," he told her mildly.
Now it was remorse that flooded through her and the tears began again. "I don't know who I am anymore," she whispered desperately.
"You're the same as all of us," he answered. "You're whoever you decide to be."
With that, he turned and made his way toward the sickbay and Brinna followed, barely able to summon the strength to lift her feet high enough to clear the floor. She stumbled and nearly fell but somehow managed to make it to the sickbay and onto a bed without utterly collapsing.
"Everyone hates me now," she said in what even she recognized as a self-pitying voice.
"You hate yourself," Jolee shot back at her, gently rolling up her left sleeve so he could take a look at her arm.
"Yeah, I do," she said, swiping her right arm over her face to dash away the tears.
"Well, stop it. There'll be time enough for that once this mission has finally ended."
In spite of herself, Brinna laughed, though her laughter was mingled with tears. "You're a pro at consoling people, you know that? What bedside manner. I can't believe you became a Jedi rather than a medic."
"I don't hate you," he told her, as he probed gently at a gash on her arm. He was quiet for a moment and she felt the soothing warmth of the Force's healing glow. "And I don't think anyone else does either. How can they? What have you done that would give them the right to hate you?"
"Carth hates me," she whispered. "He thinks I destroyed his home world."
"Correction: he thinks Revan destroyed his home world. Whoever you are, you don't meet the descriptions of Revan that I've heard."
"But I could," Brinna said, her throat feeling thick. It was a difficult admission.
"That hardly makes you unique, does it? We could all fit that description if we were so inclined."
He moved to her left side and she gasped at the contact of his gently probing fingers. "Broken ribs," he told her and once more he used the Force to heal her.
It felt so strange, that comforting caress of the Force. How could something that could be so dark and insidious, so oily and black as what she had felt emanating from Malak, as she had felt emanating from herself as she had recalled those moments spent on that island, also be so benevolent, so warm?
"That's the eternal mystery, isn't it?" Jolee asked, clearly reading her thoughts.
"You know what it's like too, don't you?" she asked him.
"I do," he said soberly. "And so does Juhani. And so does Bastila. And so do ninety-nine percent of the Jedi in this galaxy. Are we somehow special, are we chosen, because we're Jedi and we're in tune with the Force? If so, it's also something of a curse, isn't it?"
"Yeah," Brinna replied. She closed her eyes, feeling relatively calm for the first time since she had set foot on the Leviathan.
"You need some rest," Jolee told her. "You won't be doing anyone a favor if you collapse from exhaustion."
Far too tired to protest, Brinna merely nodded slightly. In truth, she didn't plan on doing a thing to fight off the unconsciousness that was constantly threatening to overtake her. She feared the dreams that might come but also knew that she could not evade them.
But they're not dreams, they're memories, she reminded herself. It seemed strange to think of them that way but that is what they truly were. Every one of the dreams of the star maps she had experienced had actually been a piece of her old life as Revan coming to the surface. Perhaps this was because her mind was more susceptible when it was in a truly relaxed state. Perhaps there was no real way of knowing.
What was surprising to her was her lack of desire to stave off these dreams. There was no denying that they had been extremely useful up until this point and she could not deny that they likely would continue to be. The question was what she wanted out of all this: redemption or revenge?
All I really want is to go back to being Brinna Warrim, to lose this unwanted knowledge that I have gained.
Yet Brinna was a big girl now. She knew that this childish wish could not be granted, knew that all that remained was for her to spend every day of the rest of her life facing up to what she had once been and trying to figure out what she now wanted to be. On the surface, it wasn't difficult. She had seen what the Sith could do and she wanted to stop them. The infliction of suffering on others was repugnant to her and every gesture of charity she had made on this mission had been driven by the desire to do some good—however small. She did not want Malak to unleash suffering upon the galaxy, the magnitude of which no one had ever before experienced, no matter how their lives had been devastated by the Sith. The destruction of Telos and Taris were child's play compared to the havoc Malak would wreak if he was successful.
This was not all, for Brinna had come to not only care about all of her companions; she had come to love them. Now that she knew she was truly without family, their presence was even more important to her. This was why she had questioned them all earlier, why she had to know how they felt about her. She could not turn her back on them and walk away without suffering terribly in the bargain, even if they could turn and walk away from her without a second glance.
Even if Carth hates me from now until eternity, I'll continue to love him for just as long. The thought made her want to sob anew.
Still, in spite of all this, deciding to follow the path of light was not that easy. Her feelings of love and compassion were matched by her feelings of rage and enmity. She felt that her Jedi masters had violated her in the worst of ways and she was angry that she could not punish them for it. Their deaths had cheated her of that opportunity, had robbed her of the chance to make them accountable for what they had done. Yes, she hated Malak but she felt that she hated her Jedi masters just as much, if not more. Malak had betrayed her and had cut a swath of destruction through the galaxy but the Jedi masters had violated her trust, had played her for a fool, and had cost her everything that was of any value to her.
If Jolee was attuned to these thoughts, he said nothing about them. He ministered to her injuries without word and when he was finished, he quietly bade her goodnight and left the sickbay.
She thought for a moment about heading for her bunk and decided against it. Mission and Juhani would greet her with compassion, she was sure of that, but the fact was that she didn't really even want compassion at the moment. She felt tainted, vile, and had no wish to be in the presence of others. Though her conversation with Jolee had been of some help to her, she was relieved that he was gone.
As she lay on the sickbay bed, she thought of everything that had happened since she had awakened on Carth's ship. So much of what had happened now made sense to her; Calo Nord's interest in her, the cryptic things that others had said, Jolee's mysterious behavior. These realizations were strange and gave her memories a different tone, as if she was now looking at them through a special filter that allowed her to see their colors properly. Coupled with her feelings of rage and betrayal and hurt were feelings of humiliation. It would be kind to say that she was like an actress but it was more accurate to say that she was like a puppet. Bitterly, she thought of how she had been convinced that she was acting of her own free will when, really, she had played into everyone's hands, from the Jedi masters to Malak. All it took was for them to twitch her strings and they got what they wanted out of her. Had she not been on the receiving end of this, she might have admired them for their skill.
Finally, she could hold sleep at bay no longer and she slipped into it without any real struggle, resigning herself to whatever her subconscious might see fit to dredge up. Fortunately for her, it restricted itself to memories of the star map on Manaan.
The world she saw before her was very different. Strange plants stood, swaying in an odd manner. There was an equally odd quality to the atmosphere; it seemed wavy, somehow, and somewhat opaque. Her body felt strange too, restricted in a way to which she was not accustomed, and she had a sensation similar to being in a very small room, a sense that no matter how she gasped, she could not draw enough breath.
Underwater. I am underwater, she finally realized.
Her body felt strange because she was wearing a special suit that enabled her not only to breathe but to resist the enormous pressure that the sea was exerting upon her body. She wanted to move at a normal pace but her movements were sluggish because of the suit. After what seemed an eternity, she finally made it to the dark shape she could see looming in the distance and once more the petals opened and the star map appeared before her.
When she woke from the dream, she checked the chrono that was still strapped to her wrist. It was yet nighttime and she was surprised to see how few hours had passed since they had returned from the Leviathan. It felt as though she had experienced several lifetimes in the span of such a short amount of time. Though Jolee's healing had helped her to feel better, she still felt as though every inch of her had been battered and she knew it would take a very long time for her psychic wounds to heal—if they ever did heal. She wondered if this was how a baby felt at the moment of its birth, emerging out into a world that was cold and entirely foreign, that was filled with sounds and smells and sights that bombarded and overloaded one's senses.
Turning onto her side, Brinna stared blindly ahead. The sickbay was dark but she could still see a faint glow from its instrument panels, as well as a dim light coming from the corridor beyond its doors. For a brief second, she wondered where Carth was but then she forced herself to think of something else, as a means of both punishment and mercy. It hardly mattered whether she thought of him or not; either way, she was inflicting torture upon herself.