Author's Notes: Hello once again, everyone. I got some modest feedback from a few readers last time, so thank you. The reviews are always appreciated. Thanks to What contented men desire, 6tailedninja, and Denizen47 for leaving their thoughts. And thanks to Lord Valentai for leaving a review even though he already has read this story. :P

Now, I'm going to try and post one chapter per week for as long as I can. Hopefully I'll be able to keep up with this schedule. I may change days a few times, but it'll generally be once a week unless something goes horribly wrong. That, as of now, is what I am committed to. Thanks again, everyone, and now I'm done wasting time with notes. On with the show!

Part I: Out of Exile

Chapter One

There was nothing, the epitome of emptiness. Caius felt, somehow, that he no longer existed. He drifted in and out of coherent thought, musing to himself. He then suddenly realized the contradictory nature of his monologue and awoke.

He found himself in the medbay of the Ebon Hawk. He tried, without much success, to determine what had, exactly, taken place on Malachor. But he could not articulate it to himself, not without mixing up the timeline. He looked around, tried to get bearings of his surroundings. He shifted himself up, back against the head of the bed, and stabilized himself. He felt humidity, perspiration from his unpleasant sleep. He ran his hand of his head, trying to wipe off the sweat. Looking around the room he eventually noticed his own foot-his previously shattered left appendage was encased in some sort of black boot. He blinked and looked up. A silhouette appeared in his peripheral and startled him slightly. He rubbed his eyes and squinted, his brown irises shrinking in the darkness of the ship.

"Good to see you're up," said the voice, Atton. "For a while there I thought you weren't going to make it."

Caius grunted, put his hand to his head. His blurred vision eventually brought Atton into focus, although that didn't lessen the strangeness of seeing him in his brown Jedi robes. No matter how skilled Atton got at wielding the Force, it just seemed as though he didn't belong in those robes. Caius asked, "How long was I out?"

Atton strolled into the medbay, "About 18 hours."

Caius marveled at the time, barely muttered, "...Wow."

Atton moved over to the foot of his bed and knocked on the boot on Caius's broken boot.

"Where are we?" Caius asked.

"Aren't you going to ask about this cast on your foot?" Atton asked, seemingly irritated.

"Uh, I guess...Did you put it there?"

"Damn right I did," Atton said arrogantly, "I just wanted you to know how hard it was. I had to set the bone, not a pretty sight. Good thing you were unconscious; the noise it made almost knocked me out."

"Well...thanks, I guess," Caius responded. "What about Mira?" He had no hope that she had survived, but he had to ask.

"She..." Atton paused, his face drooped, but Caius could not read his emotions. He seemed sad, but it was the not the reaction one would expect from a friend dying. "She's still alive," he said. Caius was perplexed, hadn't she died in his arms?

"Where is she?" Caius started, "I...barely remember."

Atton answered his question by moving over to left side of the room. He grabbed a huge gray tarp that had been covering a large tank and yanked it off, revealed Mira's body floating helplessly amidst a tank of kolto. "She's unconscious. The pain and shock knocked her out. She's in a coma right now. Unless we can get her to a real doctor, she won't last very long."

"We'll have to do that as soon as possible," Caius said. He was amazed; he had thought for sure that Mira had died. The intensity of the situation had probably scrambled his mind. He wasn't thinking clearly, so it shouldn't come as a surprise to him that she was still alive. However, she was still in critical condition, it would take a lot of medical personnel to save her.

"That's part of the problem," Atton responded, bringing Caius back down to earth. "The hyperdrive was damaged in the crash and we fell out of transit somewhere in the outer rim."

Caius sighed, let his head fall back, but he hit it against the steel wall of the ship. He rubbed the back of it, said, "Why can't anything ever be easy? Where are we going now?"

"Taris, it was the closest planet that we have the coordinates of."

"Taris?" Caius responded, "but it was destroyed. They won't have a hyperdrive there."

Atton shrugged, said, "We've got no other choice. Besides, that's a big planet, there's got to be something there." He put the tarp back on Mira's tank. He continued, "We're going to have to power down every single superfluous system if we're going to make it, though. I've gone over the numbers a dozen times: the only thing we can afford to keep on is the kolto tank and the navicomputer."

Caius rolled his legs over the side of the bed and rubbed his eyes, decided to ask about something else. He said, "I thought for sure Mira was dead… how did you save her?"

"It wasn't easy," Atton responded. "I thought she was dead too, but her pulse was still there. It was faint, and irregular, but I figure that was a better sign than nothing. I had to stop her bleeding, so I dressed the wound with some of the bandages we had left. I hooked her up to a steady drip of kolto through the IV—and once she stopped bleeding, she became a little steadier. That's when I put her into the tank. Considering she hasn't woken up, she's certainly in a coma—who knows how long she'll take to get out of it. If we even have that long."

"That's pretty impressive," Caius said simply, "I didn't know you knew anything about medicine."

"I don't," Atton said bluntly. "But when you're on a ship with two dying friends, you tend to pick up some things pretty quick."

"Well, thank you," he answered. He switched the conversation again. "What about the rest?" he suggested, trying to somehow divert the talk. He didn't want to think about Mira's dire situation at the moment.

"Nothing new to report. I didn't tell you exactly what happened to Bao-Dur, though. He was with us right before we found you. We were fighting...a legion of Sith acolytes, who knows where they all came from, and they overwhelmed him. Mira and I used the time he bought to elude the horde and find you." Atton turned, his back towards Caius. He put his hand against the wall and sighed, clearly the deaths weighing on him. "So much...death," he said. "All of them..."

Caius didn't say anything.

"It's ironic, really," Atton said. "It was just you and me on Peragus, and now, one catastrophe later...it's just us again. And I feel so...sick. All of them...even the ones I didn't like...they're dead."

His words stung Caius as well, all of the people who'd followed him were dead, except his pilot—and Mira was technically still clinging to life. They all had their flaws and annoyances, but they were, at least, like some sort of demented family. He did miss them. He was curious, though, so he asked, "What about G0-T0? He's not still alive, is he?"

"No, thank all that is good and holy," Atton said, turning back around, "HK killed him."

Caius felt a wave of relief, the first such sensation in...some time. He asked, "How do you know that?"

"Stupid droid won't shut up about it."

"Won't? He's here?"

"Yeah," said Atton, "in all his glory." His voice had some veiled disgust in it. "He and T3 were on the ship when we took off. All he's been talking about since you were out was how he did it. It's been a long 18 hours."

Caius heard a faint noise from the hallway, the distinct sound of metal joints creaking as they walked. "HK?" he called.

"Greeting: Master, you are alive!" HK roared as he burst through the entrance to the medbay. "I've only been able to tell the annoying, pilot meatbag about my achievements."

Atton moaned, "Yeah, and you told me once every 13 minutes. I started counting I got so bored. You can only play pazaak with T3 for so long, too. And the freaking trash can cheats, I found out the hard way."

"Did you really kill G0-T0?" Caius asked.

"Proud: Yes, master. Allow me to explain. Extrapo-"

Caius interrupted him, said, "HK, I love you."

"Disgust: Master, that is sickening!" the droid said, recoiling in horror, "I cannot abide your presence if you insist on speaking that way. Have you no sense of decency?" The droid then bolted out of the room.

Atton's mouth dropped. Caius spoke for him, "That's how you get him to leave."

"I'll make a mental note."

Caius tried to get up, but Atton cautioned him, said, "I'd take it easy if I were you. You lost a lot of blood; your body probably hasn't recovered yet. Don't move too quickly or too much at a time."

"I can handle it," Caius said defiantly.

Atton shrugged and lifted his hands, said, "If you say so."

For the next three days, Atton and Caius sulked around the halls of the ship, unable to speed up or slow down time. They would sometimes speak to each other, followed by prolonged intervals of oppressive silence. HK was his usual wacky self, his eccentricities multiplying every time T3 pulled a prank on him. But generally the two men resigned to sit in the cockpit and merely wait. Wait for anything, the approach of Taris, even the passing of a random space object was intriguing. Caius usually spent the time fretting over Mira. Her condition had not worsened, but then again that was hardly possible. She was, for all intents and purposes, clinically dead. Her organs were simply refusing to stop working. She was living on borrowed time and there was no way he could speed up the process and get her to help faster. He felt helpless.

Whenever the two men would speak, they would usually format their discussions the same way. If you heard one of their conversations, you'd hear all of them, a fact to which HK would frequently attest. One of their conversations went like this:

"So what do we do once we get to Taris?" Caius asked.

"Only one thing we can do: find a hyperdrive."

"What if there isn't one?" Caius responded.

"That's not an option," Atton shot back.

Caius grimaced crookedly, said, "Well, that's a load off of my mind. Okay, so once we find a hyperdrive, we fix the ship, and then what?"

"I have no clue."

Caius grumbled.

"You're in charge, remember?" Atton asked. "I'm only the pilot. I fly where you tell me, it's your job to come up with a plan."

Caius retreated back into his thoughts. He was being tormented by what Kreia had told him before she died. He wanted that old hag to fade into obscurity after death, but she would not leave him be. Even now, her words still confounded him. She had told him that he would follow Revan. That he would join him in his campaign against the "True Sith" threat. Her ambiguity, incredibly annoying in life, was downright maddening as she was no longer there to offer any short of cryptic insight to her enigmatic sayings. He wanted to know what she meant, but he could not. He wanted to punch something, it aggravated him so.

A light screeching noise emanated from the hall behind him, a droid approaching. T3, Caius thought. Consumed in his rage against the old woman, he spun around, pivoted on his nearly concrete boot, and kicked, wanting to take out his anger against something that could actually receive it. He jammed his foot out and smashed into a metal object, sending it careening into the navigational computer. Much to his dismay, he had hacked HK as opposed to T3. The large orange droid fell straight onto his face as his support had been yanked from under him. "Exclamation: Master!"

"Ah hell," Caius said, realizing the childishness of his behavior, "I'm sorry, HK."

"Query: Sorry? Master, that was a phenomenal display! And here I was beginning to think you were too soft to own a droid of my caliber."

"Well, thanks, I guess."

"Suggestion: Now all you have to do is channel all that righteous indignation and kick the legs out from our adversaries and you'll be unstoppable!" HK then trotted off gleefully.

"Why did you do that?" Atton asked, his neck craned to look behind him.

Caius had his back turned, slowly rotated and faced Atton. He shrugged, confused, said, "I...I don't know. It's something Kreia said."

"She told you to kick the droid? Maybe I didn't give that hag enough of a chance."

"No," Caius said, frustrated at Atton's attempt at humor. "She told me about Revan."

"Really? What did she say? Did she know where he is? We could use someone like him on our side at this point."

"No," Caius responded, "she merely said that he was in the unknown regions, fighting against the so-called 'True Sith'."

"Ah, that's great. More cryptic bullcrap from the old woman. Why the hell did we even listen to her?"

"But Revan really is out there..." Caius said distantly, ignoring Atton, "and if he is fighting against a new threat...he would need help, wouldn't he?"

"I guess so."

"She told me I was to follow him."

"Oh damn," Atton muttered.

"What, you don't want to?"

"Track someone who went into hiding in the unknown regions? You're kidding me, right? There are faster ways to kill yourself, sure, but none more certain of success."

"That's what I find strange," Caius said, "why would he go out there alone?"

"I don't know," Atton said, "but you can't ask him now."

"No," Caius responded, "but I can ask people who knew him. Remember that Republic Admiral, from Telos? Onasi, I think his name was. Yeah, him. He asked me about Revan. I should go back and talk to him."

"If he asked you about Revan, how the bloody hell would he know where Revan is?" Atton whined.

"It's a start, and he knows other people, surely." Caius sat back down in the co-pilot's chair. "So," he continued, "we go to Telos after this."

"Great," Atton said dryly, "my favorite vacation spot."

"Look, there's Taris," Atton said, drawing Caius out of his unpleasant sleep in the co-pilot's seat. He opened his eyes and strained out the viewing port of the ship. A distant, gray orb hung in the vast expanse of space, slowly but surely creeping towards them

"How long until we get there?" Caius asked.

"Oh, I'd guess around forty-five minutes to an hour."

"And how much fuel?"

"Uh...forty-five minutes to an hour."

"That's great," Caius muttered, half-sarcastically.

There was an uneasy silence for a few moments, before Caius eventually broke it. He asked, "What have you heard of Taris since the war?"

"Nothing, really," Atton replied. "All I know was that Malak bombed the hell out of it during the Civil War. I heard rumors about the whole planet being destroyed, but I'm sure those are exaggerated. No one could destroy an entire planet, it'd take half the starships in the Republic fleet with more fire-power than-"

"Malak was enough of a brute to try it," Caius interrupted. "But I didn't even know it was attacked until I came back out of my 'exile'."

"I heard something about a rebuilding project, but I don't think anyone wants to fund that kind of thing. Too big."

"Yeah, I don't think I would either."

A barrage of beeping and whistling exploded from behind them, and Caius nearly jumped out of his seat. He turned around to find T3 sitting innocently behind him. He said, "Hell! T3, don't sneak up like that." T3 continued beeping.

"What's he want? Fetch or something?" Atton asked.

"Hmm, that's weird." Caius said under his breath. "He says that he was here when the planet was destroyed. He and Revan. He said that the whole place was completely annihilated."

"That's garbage, if so, then how'd he escape?"

"That's the weird part," Caius answered, "he said that they 'commandeered' the Ebon Hawk and escaped. Apparently this ship really was stolen."

"So you mean that guy on Nar Shaddaa who said he owned it once might have been telling the truth?" Atton asked.

"I guess he could've."

"Oops," Atton said disingenuously.

Several minutes later they entered the atmosphere of Taris. Both Caius and Atton had to suppress exclamations of awe and horror. As they neared the planet's surface, they could see that the destruction was all too real, and complete.

"I guess...we were wrong," Atton murmured.

"Is there even a place to land?"

"I'm picking up one signal, I think there's only one landing area on this whole planet now, unless we try a crash landing."

"No way, we have enough fuel, right?" Caius asked nervously.

"Uh...maybe."

Atton maneuvered the ship over the wasteland of Taris, scouring the horizon for signs of the landing pad. Both men were overwhelmed by the sheer scope of the destruction of the planet. Caius thought to himself about Malak, he had known the man for years before the Civil War was instigated. And even so, he could not even fathom that he had done such a thing. It was impossible to match the actions with the face. It was the same with Revan, he could not imagine either of those men as brutal killers; it just didn't register. He had watched their fall to the dark side, slowly, but he still had a hard time putting the pieces together.

Histhoughts were interrupted by a shrill voice chirping through Ebon Hawk's comm. "Unidentified spacecraft, you do not have clearance to land."

Atton moved the Hawk over the landing pad, Caius had not noticed them approach it. It was truly a modest structure, barely discernible from the wreckage.

"Well, give us clearance because we're landing. We are completely out of fuel, either you grant us permission or we crash on your pad," Atton fired back.

There was hesitation on the other end, but eventually the voice returned, "Permission granted."

"Thank you." Atton lowered the ship gently towards the surface. As they descended, the ship began to jolt and shiver unnaturally. "Uh, that's not normal," Atton said. Just a few yards off of the ground, the ship gave one final heave and then Caius felt his stomach jump. They were in free-fall. But only for a moment, no sooner had Caius felt gravity release him, he was suddenly thrown downwards as the ship smashed onto the landing pad.

"Well," Atton said, "I couldn't have calculated that any better. Hopefully the damage from that little fall is only aesthetic."

"Yeah, it's not as if anyone will notice at this point," Caius responded, "I mean, I can say this ship has been to hell and back and it wouldn't be a lie."

The loading ramp practically fell off as they opened it, slapping the concrete as it fell. Atton strolled down triumphantly, his head even more inflated by his accurate prediction of the fuel situation. Caius limped along behind him, his left foot still antagonizing him. They presented a humorous sight, at least they would've had anyone else seen them. The few dockworkers present were on the other side of the lone building structure. The flat gray pad extended about one hundred yards in diameter, barely enough for one ship. There were a few other flats in the area, though they were somewhat smaller. Walkways led over the rubble from the pads to a modest central building, surely the headquarters of the area.

T3 followed along behind Caius, evading his notice as they left the ship. He eventually heard the gears grinding, and turned around. He said, "Hey, T3, stay behind with the ship and HK. There's nothing to see here."

The droid beeped unsatisfactorily.

"I don't know...repair the ship or something."

An explosion of unfriendly noises came from the droid.

"All right," Caius said, holding his hands out, trying to calm the droid. "You don't have to repair the ship. You could've just said so, there's no need for language like that."

The droid beeped once more and then went back of the loading ramp, creaking all the way.

Caius watched in amusement, but then heard Atton calling him. He said, "Hey, get a load of this guy."

He ambled up next to Atton, looked over his shoulder to see what he was seeing. He was looking behind a couple crates at a blue Twi'lek who had apparently fallen asleep on the job. Atton asked, "What should I do to him?"

"Uh, I don't know. I'm sure they make a lot of progress around here with employees like this, though."

"Here let's go over here," Atton said. They moved a dozen yards up the walkway, and then Atton turned around and held his hand out. The stack of crates slowly began to totter and then fall. The top two crates landed on each side of the sleeping Twi'lek, jerking him out of his slumber.

"Gah!" he exclaimed in a sniveling, nasally voice. "Who did that?"

Atton smirked and then turned around, motioning for Caius to keep going up the ramp. They continued up and then right, into the sliding doors of the building. A short way down the hall sat a receptionist.

"Greetings," she said, "welcome to Taris, these are the headquarters for the Taris Reconstruction Project."

Atton muttered something, but Caius ignored it. He asked, "How's progress?"

"Well," said the receptionist nonchalantly, "it's pretty much non-existent. But don't bring that up, may I help you?"

"Um," Caius hesitated, "well, we need a hyperdrive."

"A hyperdrive? And you come here?" she asked, confused. "Well, I suppose you might find one. But you'll have to ask the administrator. She's not busy right now, so I'm sure you can go on in. Her office is just to the right."

On their way to room Caius thought again of Mira. He said to Atton, "It doesn't look they have the means to take care of her here. They may have an infirmary, but that's it. If we're going to get her medical attention, we're going to need to get off of this planet and take her to Telos." Atton nodded in affirmation.

The two men entered the door into a sparse, white room. Behind a desk sat a small blue Twi'lek, a woman this time. She was staring down at some paperwork, not aware that there were three people in the room now. Atton coughed and the woman's head jerked upwards, somewhat frightened by their presence.

"Sorry about that," Caius said. "Don't pay my friend here any heed."

"Who are you guys?" asked the woman in a voice that sounded naturally cheerful, despite the fact that she clearly was not.

"I'm Caius Lucullus, and this idiot is Atton Rand," he said, gesturing to Atton.

"Pleased to meet you, I guess," she said, "my name is Mission Vao—I'm the administrator around here."

"Your receptionist said that you weren't making progress?" Atton said, half-stating half-asking.

"Very tactful," Caius said sarcastically.

Mission sighed, said, "She would be right. No one cares to undertake a project as massive as rebuilding Taris. All we really do here is try to salvage from the destruction. Our job is made really difficult, though. If it isn't the bureaucracy stone-walling us at every turn, it's the rakgouls running rampant in the wreckage. Not to mention inept employees, you know?"

"Yeah," Caius said, "we saw some loser sleeping out there when we came in."

"Oh, yeah? That was probably my brother, Griff."

"Very tactful," Atton coughed.

Caius shot him a displeased glare, said, "Oh...I didn't mean."

"Oh, don't worry about it," Mission said, "I realize he's lazy, but there's nothing I can really do about it. Now, what exactly brings you two and your banter to this place? You must have a reason for being here, yeah?"

"Um, well," Caius hesitated, not wanting to ask for such an expensive device as a hyperdrive. "We, uh, the thing of it is, our ship was damaged, and we fell out of hyperspace nearby. And now...we can't jump back."

"You need a new hyperdrive?" Mission asked, rather loudly.

"Unless we could get ours repaired somehow," Caius input hopefully.

"Not a chance," Atton said, "I already looked at it. And come on, I'd think that you'd know by now that if I couldn't get it back on line, then it's unfixable."

"Nothing's unfixable," Mission said, somehow taking his statement as something of a challenge. "It just so happens that I've got nothing to do for about a half hour; take me to your ship, I'll see if I can fix it."

"You?" Atton asked incredulously.

"What?" she yelped, "I know how to fix things! You don't grow up a street urchin on Taris without learning how to rig any sort of device to work when the odds are against it." She got up from behind her desk and stomped off in between the two men and out the door. Her voice called around the corner, "Come on!" Caius and Atton glanced at each other, shrugged at the same time, and followed her out the door. They could hear her voice from outside, pulling them like a leash. The slide doors of the complex opened, accommodating them, and they went outside, strolling, or in Caius's case: hobbling, down the walkway. Suddenly Mission's voice stopped, and they came up behind her to find her standing still and staring at the Ebon Hawk. "That ship..." she said almost longingly.

"What is it?" Caius asked.

"It's been, what? Five years? Six? Oh, the time," she said cryptically.

"What the hell are you talking about?" Atton demanded.

"Where did you find this ship?" she asked Caius.

"I think it's more accurate to say that it found me..." he answered.

She swallowed, kept speaking, "This was Revan's ship. I was part of his crew. Back during the Jedi Civil War, remember that? I was at the battle of Rakata Prime."

Caius was completely blown away by her words, there was much more to this young woman than met the eye.

"Have you seen him?" she asked.

"No," Caius answered, "but that's something I'd like to rectify."

"I haven't seen or heard from him since after that battle. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to confuse you guys, it's just...the nostalgia, you know? I have a lot of good memories on this ship, some bad ones too...but, I just miss them all terribly, you know?"

Caius thought to himself, said, "I can understand that." He felt the same way about this ship. It had that aura about it, some sort of strange connection to the past and better, happier days. But then all he had to do was look at it to see the present truth.

"If you haven't heard from Revan," she continued, "have you at least heard from any of the others? Bastila, Carth, Jolee, Canderous, anyone?"

"Wasn't Canderous Mandalore?" Atton asked.

"Yeah, Canderous was with us for a while, he never said anything about Revan, though, and as far as I know he's out leading the Mandalorian clans somewhere," Caius answered. "I spoke to an Admiral Onasi, he asked me about Revan, too. It looks like the others in the crew want to know the same things you do."

Mission stood in solemn silence. It looked as though she were in deep thought. Eventually she broke the quiet, said, "I don't think I could go on that ship again, the memories are too strong. It'll be too sad..." she trailed off. "Hmm, we have one hyperdrive. It's leftover from a flightless old ship, it's just been gathering dust in storage. I'm sure it'll work, though. Just take it, please, and don't worry about pay. Just take it on the house, I want to make sure this ship is taken care of the way it deserves." She gazed at it again, noting its damage, said, "Though I don't think it has been."

"We've tried," Caius said, "but destroying gravity has a tendency to mess up spacecraft. But anyway, thank you so much for doing this for us."

"I don't know if I understand what you just said, but you're welcome. I'll think of it as an investment towards finding Revan," she answered. "Hey Griff!" her voice now a shout. The sniveling Twi'lek jumped out from behind the crates, clearly having been sleeping again.

"Yeah, sis?" he asked, somewhat dazed from having been woken up.

"Go get that spare hyperdrive, the one in storage," she ordered. He darted off, eager to avoid any questions about his sleep habits.

"Thank you again," Caius said.

She turned and looked at him and said, "You need fuel, too, right? We have plenty of that for you. Just do one thing, in return. Find Revan, please. We all want to know what happened to him." She grabbed his hand and shook it, and then turned around and left, ascending back up the ramp. Yet another person who wanted to find where Revan was. Caius was feeling more compelled to search for him. Kreia had spoken of it like it was his destiny to go searching for him, somehow help him. And now people he would otherwise have never met were telling him he should do it too. It was as if fate was screaming in his face.

"Are you really going to try and find him?" Atton asked, displeased.

Caius didn't answer. He only watched as Griff and two other dockworkers struggled to carry the hyperdrive to the ship. He said, "Let's go help them out, the sooner we get off of this planet, the better."