Carth, Outside the Jedi Temple

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!

Another bit of kotor fan fic this morning, set post-kotor. Alternate reality in which kotor2 doesn’t exist. It’s a bit heavy.

Another Jedi council meeting that he was on the outside of. But when had it been any different? He thought back to when he had first gotten tangled with the Jedi, after Taris and rescuing Bastila.

Bastila had informed him that they needed to speak to the council. In person. Most definitely not by holocom. With her unique stare of superiority and secrets, she’d given him the coordinates for Dantooine. She’d practically dragged Revan from the ship on landing. It would be quick, she’d said. Yeah, try nearly a month of losing at Pazaak to a wookiee. Half the time he’d had been stuck on Dantooine, Revan and Bastila had been in secret Jedi business meetings. He’d been bitter then, though much more so now.

He had saved Revan, helped the Republic defeat Malak and destroy the Star Forge, and still he was relegated to the outside. He was not a Force user, and so here he was, on the wrong side of the door. At least Courscant wasn’t as humid as Dantooine. And if he wanted to, he could leave the temple and find something to do. But the council was interfering with their lives – again – and he couldn’t leave her alone for that.

Certainly, there was a part of him – not insubstantial – that was grateful to the council for saving and rebuilding her. He never would have met his witty spitfire of a wife if they had let her die as Darth Revan. But what they had done to her exactly, their utter lack of remorse for the complications and the strings that were still attached; all that made him angry. It had become clear that the council had not thought past her leading them to the Star Forge. They had not considered the possibility that Revan would remain true to the light, let alone that she would live through the ordeal. That left them with a conundrum. She had proven herself such that they could not imprison her, but they couldn’t allow her to be completely out of their reach either. The result of their debating was the much despised ‘nanny council’ that she now answered to.

While she took it in stride – at least outwardly – he could not. They decided to take a trip to Telos on a whim once so that he could show her where he came from; they had been chased down by a Jedi cruiser within two hours. She’d had to undergo a week of psychological evaluation before the council gave their permission for them to marry. But to show any remorse for the half-assed way they had wiped her memory? No, that was out of the question.

But then again, they didn’t have to deal with the consequences, did they? Not on a human level. They didn’t watch her launch into a story about her mom and sister, only to stop halfway through as she wrinkled her nose in confusion. She wasn’t sure whether the story she was telling was true or implanted. They didn’t see how embarrassed she was at times, unable to reconcile who she was, who she had been, and who she remembered. They didn’t have to sit there and hold her after she woke up screaming, having remembered something terrible.

That was why he hated answering to them. They didn’t care about the mess that they had created, they just wanted her kept in line. The weight of it was getting to her at times, he could tell. Her face was more gaunt, her personality more muted. It had been ages since the words ‘nerf herder’ had passed from her lips. They both knew that they were being watched. One fight in a cantina, one sweetener packet falling into her pocket, and the council may decide that she was too dangerous to live.

The thick metal door beside him slid open. Revan was alone. When she saw him, she smiled, but he could see the pain behind the carefully placed smile. As she stepped through the doorway, she took hold of his arm and began to lead him down the hall, away from the council chambers.

“What went on?” he asked.

“We can talk about it in a bit. Let’s go back to our place first.”

Carth stopped. Revan let go of his arm and sighed. He could see her facade crumbling.

“Yes, okay?” she choked. Tears began to stream down her face, and her body shook. For a moment, he thought he could feel the Force flowing through her body like electricity.

“They did it? They really did it?”

She nodded.

He felt anger surge, and for a moment he was light headed. He took a deep breath, forced himself to focus on her.

“All of the things they didn’t think of, but they made sure that you wouldn’t be able to have children?”

She nodded.

Carth wrapped his arms around her, and her composure dissipated.