Carth would have given almost anything to have accompanied Sarah to Coruscant, they hadn't made it this far alone and his place was by her side. I swore I wouldn't do this again. I swore I'd be a better husband this time. He'd left Morgana behind and had told himself it was his duty, his responsibility to serve. And he regretted it, every single day of his life. Even after finding Sarah, loving her, it still haunted him. But here he was, doing the same damned thing all over again...with Sarah.

"Dad?" He'd been so wrapped up in himself that he'd missed Dustil's return from school. Dustil was alone, without the warning bell of Mission, and he came in a coat of silence. It was so odd to try to come to grips with the difference that the years on Korriban had crafted in his only child. Only Sarah had the chance and hope of truly understanding Dustil now...

"Yes?"

"What's wrong? Where's Sarah? I can't sense her presence and you feel like you do when you think of mother..." Dustil rested his pack on the table and stared at Carth. "She...?"

"Was called to the Temple at Coruscant. We knew this was coming." Well, yes, that was true. He hadn't really wanted to face it, but he'd known it was coming...eventually. Bringing Revan home was not something that could be ignored or overlooked. Hiding the fact that Sarah was Revan was also not something he saw happening, especially now that they were back and he'd had time to go through what could go wrong. Eventually, even if Master Vandar had not survived Rakata Prime, she'd be recognized. She'd served with the Republic Navy for years before she'd become the complete Revan, mask and all.

"I see. I should be beside her..." Dustil frowned and Carth rested his hand on his son's shoulder.

"I know exactly how you feel." For once, that was the absolute truth. There had always been a distance between him and Dustil, resentment and awkwardness, a gulf he couldn't reach across...until now.

"Ha. For once, you're the one left staying at home. But yes, we should be there. We'd do her absolutely no good there, but we should be there." He shrugged, grimacing. "She's the boss, though."

"Yes, yes she is, especially when it comes to dealing with the Jedi."

"Until we have to go get her." Dustil ended his thought sourly and Carth snorted in half baked amusement. Go get Sarah? From the Temple? That was not even possible...or was it? "It's possible. It would be bloody, but doable. Hopefully it is not the route we end up taking." Dustil pondered it for a moment and honestly, Carth did not want to know. There were certain things he was better off being oblivious to and that definitely seemed to be one of them. He did the flying when they were in impossible situations, that was his job.

No, your job is to remind Sarah that she is not Revan...or rather, not Darth Revan. And it is a full time and often thankless task.

And he was not there to do it.

"She'll be fine." It was Dustil's turn to rest a hand on Carth's shoulder, somewhere along the way, he'd gotten taller than Carth. He was still slimmer than his father, but Carth had been a thin one well into his twenties. "The Jedi are eternal optimists. All she has to do is tell them the truth. She doesn't remember being a Darth. The Enclave shattered that in her." There was regret there and Carth had to remember that Dustil had been trained on Korriban, not Coruscant. He would have been trained to hold a Darth in high regard.

"You know I've asked her to marry me." It wasn't as difficult a statement as it might have been, Dustil had already come under Sarah's authority much more deeply than just as her stepson. She was in a much better position to handle any resentment from Dustil than Carth happened to be.

"I know. And she'll marry you unless the Force warns her not to. She loves you. She relies on you. You love her. You rely upon her." He found something amusing in that and Carth stared back at him. He'd never really gave much thought to the 'I intend to marry again' discussion. He'd never intended to pick up the pieces of his life and he'd come to grips with the thought that he'd never see Dustil alive again. In the space of just a few months, all of that had changed and he was still trying to absorb it.

"What's so funny?" He'd been steeling himself for a lot of reactions, resentment, anger, betrayal...he knew that while things seemed placid on the surface, Dustil still carried a lot of that. It had all been muted by Sarah running referee on them...but Sarah was not here now.

"You...you are the man that the Force believes that Darth Revan needs and deserves. I don't know whether to congratulate you, commiserate with you, or both."

"I loved your mother to the bottom of my heart and soul. I still do, Dustil. I just can't..." He just couldn't keep dying and living all at the same time. He had to make a decision which one he was going with, and he'd made it with Sarah.

"You can't keep holding on to a dead wife. Mom would not want you to. She'd want you to let go, to be as happy as you can be. But you know that. You knew her."

Yes, he had. He'd been married to Morgana for years, she'd been his teenaged sweetheart, and now she was gone. He wrapped his arms around his son, the young man he'd thought he'd lost, his last link to Morgana. "How's school?" He asked, letting his arms drop again after just a moment. He'd been uncertain about putting Dustil back into school, into 'normal' school, but Sarah had said it was going to be so, and that was that. Her reasons had been solid... Dustil was not going to be trained as a Jedi, and his training as Sith was done. Since he was never going to be completely one, he needed to have a foot in the world outside of them. He needed a basic education. He needed to know how to get along off of Korriban. Sarah was right with all of that. She was making good decisions from her position of trust and authority with his son. She had not been the one to send Dustil to Korriban, but she was the one to bring him off of Korriban.

"It's school. When Mission isn't around, it's okay." Dustil shrugged. "If I want to do things later, I need to do things now."

"Mission is..." Carth had no idea how to explain or sell her to his now shadowed and often standoffish son.

"Mission is afraid. She is desperate. I understand it. I just have problems with how shrill and overly ingratiating she can get when she gets upset. That would not have been tolerated on Korriban."

Of course it would not be. Mission was loud and undisciplined and she wore her heart on her sleeve...she would not last a day in the Academy. But Dustil had lasted years. Carth really needed to adjust his own view of his son. He was no longer a child, no longer his little boy. But at least, right now, he was here. He was back in Carth's life and Carth could be his father. Not in the same way that he had been, but admittedly, he'd never been the father he'd wanted to be. Any chance was more than he'd had before any of this had played out. "I know. But she's not on Korriban." And it was obvious by Dustil's expression that the young man wasn't entirely pleased with that. Of course, Korriban would have become second nature to him by now, and there had been a steely serenity and enforced calm there that Carth could see the appeal of. Sarah was naturally the same sort of person, she preferred calm around her and he knew that Mission got on her nerves the same way that she annoyed Dustil. It didn't help that Mission had taken quite a shine to him...

"Sarah will be fine." Dustil dropped the whole line of discussion, returning to the more important subject at hand. "I have utter faith in that."

"And if she isn't?" While Carth was, by his very nature, an optimist, he couldn't avoid the obvious flaws in his optimism. Sarah was Revan, Darth Revan, and she had just traveled alone into the depths of the Jedi Temple on Coruscant.

"Then I call to those who still follow Darth Revan. They were on Lehon, they supported her then...they'll support her now. We'll go get her back."

Well, that sounded interesting in all the wrong ways. Hopefully they didn't have to go that route, but Dustil was correct. He would do it for her, in spite of the consequences in his own life.