From time to time I’m going to share old posts that are no longer available from my personal blog. This snippet of fanfiction is one such post, from somewhere in the early 2010’s. Enjoy!
I haven’t written fanfic in a long time. This is also a very raw piece. I did not proof it, I did not edit it. I had to write my daily 750 words, and I had some extra time to kill while waiting for some files to copy over to my new hard drive … so I thought, hey, why not?
My point is, I am not saying that what I wrote is perfect or anything. But I decided to give Carth a happier ending than Kotor2 gave him, and probably a happier ending than swtor would give him, since they made Revan a male, canonically.
Carth’s eyes opened suddenly. His breathing was rapid, his heart racing. It took him a few moments to re-orient himself to his surroundings. The room around him was dark, with the faint glow of the city peeking in through the shades on the window. He was in his bed, with the covers pulled up to his waist. The light nightshirt he was wearing was drenched in sweat, and he now felt the chill as it clung to his back. He glanced over at the spot next to him on the bed. She was there.
Of course she was there. She was always there. But that didn’t stop the nightmares.
He took a deep breath and squeezed his eyes shut, trying to focus enough for his heart to slow down.
“You’re getting too old for this, Onasi.” he thought. Nothing that had ever happened in real time had made his body react as strongly as this recurring dream he’d had the last several months. Not when he’d combed through the wreckage on Telos, when he had found out that Dustil had joined the sith, or even when he had found out that the woman he had fallen for was a former sith lord.
The nausea that always came a few minutes after this dream washed over him. He took another deep breath, slid the covers from his waist and walked to the washroom. The first few times that this dream had happened, he had been so weak that he had been forced to crawl. He wasn’t sure now that his body was any stronger, but he had gotten used to the feeling of being completely drained when he woke.
He carefully slid the door shut so as not to wake her, though he knew that this was unnecessary. The light flicked on and he turned on the faucet. He ran his fingers through the water and splashed his face, though his clammy skin seemed colder than the water. Another deep breath. The nausea was beginning to abate, and his heart was slowing down. He turned around – on the nightstand, she had placed another shirt for him. It made him smile. He pulled the sticky, sweaty mess from his body and tossed it into the laundry container next to the nightstand. Every night, she laid out a new shirt for him; her way of supporting him through the nightmares. He knew that she would wake up with him if she could. But the only way for her to sleep at all was to be sedated at night. The memories of what she had once been were just too much. Even the strongest woman in the galaxy was not immune from waking herself up with blood curdling screams. He would much rather that she be allowed to have a peaceful rest, even if it meant that he had to work through these nightmares alone.
With the fear of the dream gone, Carth felt tiredness begin to creep back. He flicked off the light, slid the door open, and made his way back to the bed.
She was still there. She always was.
He pulled the covers back over his waist. The sheet underneath him was damp, as usual. They would deal with that in the morning, as usual. She was curled up on her side, one hand underneath the pillow, the other wrapped around her. He watched as her shoulders rose and fell with the rhythmic breath of deep sleep.
It had been seven years since Malak and the star forge. She was not going to chase some disturbing memory that she had unearthed. They had dealt with her memories – together. Even the deepest darkest ones that he wished to the stars he didn’t have to know. She would not disappear to the outermost reaches of the galaxy, leaving a droid to tell him the news. He would not need to comb every piece of information, both Jedi and Sith, looking for where she had gone. Whereas the first few years, they had traveled the galaxy, trying to right some of the wrongs that she had done, they lived comfortably and peacefully here – not far from the Jedi temple. While she had refused to take an official council position, she and Jolee did stop by periodically to see how the padawans were being trained.
Because she was here, he would not meet a mysterious Jedi who had been silenced by the Force and ask her to relay the message that he was waiting for her. He would not need to, because it was only a very disturbing dream. Revan was next to him, just as she had been every night since the destruction of the star forge.
The only waiting that Carth Onasi would ever have to do was for her to wake up.
