Sarah woke up to silence, alone. Every person she was bound to was far away, on Brentaal, and her soul knew it. It left a vacuum deep inside of her, but she needed to face this without them, whatever this was.

It's your trial.

Although she knew that, it wasn't something she wanted to face. How was she supposed to defend herself when she didn't remember? She hugged the other pillow in the bed, the one on what should have been Carth's side, she'd stayed stubbornly on her own side even though he was not there. I am not going to cry. No, she wasn't. She climbed out of the bed and dressed in her under robe, releasing her hair from its nighttime braid. It was getting so very long, a thick, straight heavy fall of black. She was fairly certain she'd never let it go this far before, always choosing to cut it just long enough to be able to scrape it back into a tiny tail at the nape of her neck. Now it was a show, an exorbitance, leaning away from the functionality of her previous life. It required her to spend time on it, which was spending time on herself. It was soothing, it was new, it was something that was purely Sarah. Amasri had never had it, Revan had shut herself off from the world...hiding under a mantle and mask.

I will not hide. To hell with what Malak had said, he'd been correct when he'd pointed out that her true face was more of a mask than her mask had been, but it was still her true face. Revan was dead and gone. I will not conceal. She scooped the mass of hair up into a loose knot with a graceful, second natured ease, and restrained it with a flurry of gleaming pins that shone against the unrelieved blackness. Her eyes were a perfect calm gray, not even a hint of muddy brown in their depths. She wore Carth's ring, her new lightsabers, and her own face. It was time to go get this started.

It was odd to walk among so many young Jedi, the corridors were filled with them. It was so far from how she'd been raised, the Enclave had been small and remote. She'd been lucky to have compatriots from it at all, Alek had been a blessing, and then they'd been called on to help raise the generation after them... Bastila and Meetra.

I would have done better here. Was that part of the problem? Had there just been too few of them? They'd been too close? Played on each other too damned well? Had they simply turned each other into siblings and ingrained all of the strengths and weaknesses of a fully formed family unit into their interactions? Alek had been her everything, she'd been his. They'd fed into each other, deepening the cracks when things started to break down. Alek would have died before he would back away from supporting her. Meetra had been so gifted, such a prodigy, and so damned willing to lend all that to Revan's cause, in spite of the consequences. Even Bastila, left behind on Dantooine, had played her role on Revan's behalf and manipulated those around her in the Enclave.

I left my battle meditation adept padawan right in the middle of my greatest enemies...my own Enclave. She had to laugh aloud at the realization. Bastila's role during the War had been to keep the Masters off balance and off of Revan, and it had worked brilliantly.

"Sarah?"

Ah, yes. Her keeper. Well, at least she'd let him get a good night's sleep. "Yes." And she hadn't even been up to trouble. "Good morning, Luel." She hoped that he wasn't a master, but he hadn't introduced himself as such and even if he was, she wasn't certain she could call him that.

"Good morning." He did look well rested and remarkably happy to see her. He must not know. "Taking a look around?"

"Yes." She hadn't gotten very far and this was a huge, huge place. It was much more like the Academy on Korriban in size and scope than the Enclave on Dantooine, a great, echoing edifice. "Well, this corridor so far. I haven't seen most of it."

"You...did not train here?" He stepped up closely, his size and her attitude keeping most of the rushing students at a safe distance. "You seem unfamiliar with the Temple."

"I am, mostly. I was not trained here. I spent some time here recently, but I did not wander out of the hospital wing." And they'd been happy with that, happy to leave her in Bastila's care here. "When I was well enough to leave the hospital wing, the Order put me up in a hotel." That had been the best for all involved and she had no complaints.

"Hospital?" His eyes grazed over her. She knew she looked...good...well, as good as it was possible for her to look. She had never been a beauty and that was something she was mostly comfortable with and often found it useful. Having average looks made it easy to blend in, to disappear, to leave no marks on minds without even having to rely on the Force. Without the iconic mask, the great and terrible Revan simply looked like any normal human woman. Any normal, healthy, human woman, all of her scars hidden by her clothing. Carth was the one carrying the obvious injuries, not her.

"Yes. Hospital. I was brought here a couple of months ago. After Rakata Prime." She wasn't even certain if he knew about it, on one hand...how could he not? On the other hand, the battle had been joined in an incredibly remote area. But if she was not supposed to talk about it, then they should have told her that. And this was the Jedi entrusted to keep an eye on Revan, he was probably trusted with knowledge of that battle.

"You were at Rakata Prime?" Yes, he'd definitely heard of it. She wondered just what the padawan rumor mill was churning out, or was it still strictly held to the masters like they tried to hold on to all of the juicy stuff? "You...?"

"I boarded the Star Forge." There really was no other way to say it and Sarah was not in the mood to dissemble. "I was part of the team that went in after Malak." I was the one who killed him. It wouldn't pay for all of her sins, but she'd done it. Done it for Carth, done it for herself, and most importantly, she'd done it for Alek.

"And you want to leave us."

"Yes." It didn't really even feel like 'us'. This wasn't her Enclave. These weren't her masters. She hadn't been raised here. She hadn't been here until her world fell apart. Those who had held her up through the War hadn't come from here... the Enclave had supplied the vast majority of the Jedi for the Revanchist cause. They'd been family...these were strangers. Everything about here was foreign, she'd been raised in a small compound, running wild in the grass covered hills that stretched for miles. This was as far from that as it was possible to experience, the giant Temple, and a world so built up that grass was a rarity found only in parks.

No wonder the Mandalorians hate us...them...us. Great. She wasn't even certain which side of that she belonged on, and she'd gone to war to stop the Mandos. Of course, if the Temple got pushy with her, she'd go to war to stop them as well.

Always your answer.

Yes, yes it was. She'd fight for her freedom and to hell with those who wanted to take it away from her. While she might not deserve that freedom, she owed it to Carth, to Dustil, to Bastila. They needed her.

"Is this man really worth it?"

That was laughable. Of course Carth was worth it. She had been a terrible Jedi, but she was going to be a decent wife. He deserved it.

You are a superlative...Force user.

Yes, but not a Jedi. There were too many rules that just didn't sit well with her. Too many nos, too many restrictions, too many things that didn't fit together correctly. She had been born a force user. She had been born a warrior. She had not been born a Jedi, and attempts to force her into that mold had meet with varying degrees of success and failure.

The Force put me in the Enclave. The Force touched and directed everything it resonated with. She could not see where that had been an 'accident'. And if it was not an accident, then all of this was part of the Force's flow. She'd been in place to rise against the Mandalorian threat...

And you are in place to...

She never even saw it coming.