Chapter Text
Seen from the roof of the Jedi Temple, Coruscant is almost beautiful. This high up, the smog has long since dissipated into the wind, and sunlight glows off durasteel and transparisteel, drenches everything in liquid gold as the sky turns dusky violet and pale crimson. Further down in the canyons between the skyscrapers, neon flickers, bright splashes of color against the darkness of the lower levels, airspeeders and swoop bikes and shuttles crisscrossing back and forth, like bees buzzing back and forth between the levels of their hive. Revan Adarii, Jedi Knight, sighs and leans back against the wall she’s propped herself up against, dangles her boots further over the edge and tugs her cloak more tightly around her against the chill, glances absently down at the datapad by her right hand as she does. She and Alek have only been back from the Outer Rim for a day or so - they’d been tasked with overseeing the distribution of relief supplies to several different Republic colonies. The Mandalorians have been hitting the Outer Rim particularly hard as of late, razing entire cities, entire continents, and all the Jedi will do is send supplies and aid in the rebuilding.
It rankles. The Republic is preparing for war, anyone with eyes and a mind can see it, and the Jedi should be getting ready to help them - one of the oaths they swear when they’re knighted is to protect the Republic, after all. Inaction isn’t the Jedi way! And sure, they’re helping people rebuild, but what is that doing to save all the people who are dying, all the people who are losing their homes and their livelihoods and everything they’ve ever known?
Revan knows she’s not the only Jedi who thinks that way, who feels that they should be doing more, should be joining the fight. She’s been talking quietly to others - mostly younger Jedi, knights and older padawans, finding out just who will support her when she goes to the Council (because she will go before the Jedi High Council and demand their action, demand that they uphold the oaths they took when they were knighted, however long ago that may have been, she just has to find the right time), and there are more than she was expecting; it’s gratifying, really. Master Kae had told Revan people would follow her, but Arren Kae also believes Revan is destined to save the Republic, and as accurate as her old master’s visions may be, Revan isn’t entirely sure what that’s supposed to mean.
The Mandalorians are horrible, yes, but so far they’ve mostly only attacked colonies, territories, or neutral worlds - they need to be stopped, but she’s not sure they’re quite a Republic-destroying threat. Although, there was that one planet, a decade ago - Cathar, the one that just fell silent, and the Cathar themselves nearly vanished-
Something flashes across her datapad’s screen, catching her eye. A news report, an urgent one, and Revan picks up the datapad and brings the video up. A harried news reporter with a reel of images playing behind him appears on the screen, and the words he’s saying- Revan almost can’t breathe.
“The Mandalorians have taken Taris. I repeat, the Mandalorians, led by their ruler, Mandalore the Ultimate, have launched a surprise attack, breaking the Jebble-Vanquo-Tarnith line, and conquered Taris. Preliminary reports indicate death tolls already in the tens of thousands, and estimated to climb; the majority of the casualties are civilian.” The reporter closes his eyes for a moment, and there’s something sick and horrified clawing its way up Revan’s throat, choking her, keeping her eyes frozen to the screen. Oh, Force. “I can’t begin to guess what action the Senate will take, but it looks very likely that this is an act of war, and the Republic military will respond in kind.”
She flips to another news station, almost numb (can feel Alek reaching out to her, mentally - she hasn’t been shielding strong enough to keep this much horror from reaching him), and there’s a young Twi’lek woman looking into the camera, like she’s meeting Revan’s eyes directly. “In this tumultuous hour, when it seems like everything the Republic has stood for for millennia is at risk of coming crashing down around us, we look to the Jedi Order - sworn guardians of peace and justice, defenders of the Republic. The Republic is in danger, the peace has been shattered, and there is no justice in the destruction happening on Taris right now. Will the Jedi stand by their oaths to protect the people of the Republic? Only time will tell.”
This isn’t just an act of violence, slaughtering and destroying people and places and moving on. This- this is an occupation, this is conquering a planet, one of the most advanced and prosperous Republic planets in the Outer Rim, this is-
This is an act of war.
Look at the news, Revan tells Alek across their bond, already shoving to her feet. Oh, this is bad, this is horrible, but she has a feeling the Council won’t respond, not to one planet, not to one occupation. It’s so far away from Coruscant it won’t matter to them. No, Revan will need to find them proof that the Mandalorians will do this again, proof they can’t ignore just because they dislike her (Vrook is a lost cause, he’ll stand against anything she says, he hates her that much, but if she can find something concrete enough, even he’ll have to agree, if only to placate the rest of the Council).
Cathar is the key, she’s sure of it. No one knows what happened there, and the more she thinks about it the more it would fit the pattern: cause destruction, then vanish before any retribution can happen. (It’s almost like the Mandalorians have been taunting them.) But the sheer scale it would take, to make an entire planet go silent- They need to know what happened. There has to be something there.
Revan, what- and Alek’s voice breaks off abruptly as something sick and disbelieving twists across the bond, and she knows he’s seen. For a long minute, as she starts to scale down the nearest tower, he’s quiet, and then: What are you going to do?
He knows she’s been planning, they’ve been talking about how to convince the Council to join the fight since the news first started talking about how bad it was getting out there, but they hadn’t had anything concrete, not yet. Revan still doesn’t know that she’ll find anything on Cathar, not exactly, but the Force is humming like it’s encouraging her to go and after this news, she can’t just sit back and wait for the Council to realize they need to fight. She has to do something. The Republic needs their help - the people need their help.
Gather a few Jedi, she responds, knights, a couple of masters if there are any willing to follow. We’re going to figure out what happened on Cathar.
You think it was the Mandalorians?
Revan doesn’t answer right away, drops down onto a balcony and ducks inside the Temple itself, striding through the light, airy halls as quickly as she can muster. She’ll need to requisition a ship and supplies, and plan out their hyperspace route, and they’ll have to be careful too - the best hyperlane to reach Cathar, if she’s remembering her starcharts correctly, passes directly through the area of space the Mandalorians have just conquered.
Though, she supposes, if they attack a single Jedi ship in force, the Council will have no choice but to respond.
I’m not sure, she says finally. But it’d fit their pattern, and the Force- there’s something important there, I know it.
I believe you, her best friend says, and she can’t help letting out a sigh of relief, even though she never really doubted he wouldn’t. Get the logistics sorted out, I’ll have a group ready to go in two days.
Thank you, Alek, she says sincerely, and she can feel the smile on his face as he sends a pulse of warmth and a little amusement at her.
You can thank me later by watching the newest episode of The Force Between Us with me, it just aired this morning.
Revan lets out an audible groan (getting a couple of odd looks from Jedi in the halls around her). I’m rescinding every statement of gratitude I’ve ever made to you. I’m not watching your trashy Jedi soap operas, Alek.
Predictably, the bond buzzes with exasperation. It’s about the-
-the pining, I know, you can tell me that a hundred more times and I still won’t understand it. They get everything wrong! She pauses, turns a corner and nods her head at Master Vash, the single High Council member she can tolerate. And don’t say a word about Coruscant 99.
Alek sends her a nudge like he’s rolling his eyes at her. I wasn’t going to, he says, which is an obvious lie. Anyway, is this really what you want to be arguing about right now? The Republic is going to war.
You’re the one who brought it up. She can’t help a little bit of fondness slipping across along with the words; as ridiculous as his holodramas are, and as much as she doesn’t understand his obsession with them (the law enforcement ones are equally inaccurate, she’s very aware, but at least they involve intrigue and impressive shooting and speeder chases; honestly, the main characters in Alek’s soap operas are so incapable of communicating with each other it’s unbelievable), she actually will, from time to time, sit down and watch them with him. It’s not because she enjoys the shows - there’s just something about how cheerful and invested he gets that’s nice to see.
For several minutes - long enough for her to nearly reach the hangar - Alek’s only response is a wordless fond amusement, then there’s something like a sigh. Qatya - you remember her? - is going to come with us, he says, and she hums an acknowledgement. She remembers the young knight - two years younger than her, powerful, and gifted with the ability to sever a person’s Force connection, it’s hard to forget someone like that. Qatya had been one of the first people to step forward and say she’d follow Revan and Alek against the Council, if need be, and the fact that she’s likely the first person Alek went to speaks to the impression she’d made on him. She’s been in contact with the other Jedi who agree with us, she says she has a few in mind who we can bring.
Good, Revan tells him. I’m going to requisition our ship - meet me in the hangar? We need to make plans.
By the end of the next day, they have a course plotted out and twenty Jedi ready to follow them. The Council doesn’t know, not yet, and Revan makes sure they’re on their ship and leaving Coruscant before the Council can find out. She wouldn’t put it past Vrook to forbid their mission - it wouldn’t stop Revan, but the other Jedi with her? It’s just better not to have to worry about it.
It’s a week and a half in hyperspace to get to Cathar, and everyone is too somber; more and more reports have flooded it, from Taris, and they’re- grim. The death tolls have finally stabilized, and the Mandalorians are clearly settling in, fortifying their position - more than likely preparing to use Taris as a jumping-off point for further attacks. The news sites say the Republic is mobilizing a fleet, is going to rush to defend their projected invasion corridor, but if the Mandalorians barely had to fight to take Taris-
What can the Republic do? They need the Jedi.
By the time they get to Cathar, Revan is certain of her decision. Mandalorians are warriors without equal in the galaxy - Jedi are the only ones who can hope to match them in skill. She doesn’t know much about their tactics, not yet, beyond what she’s seen from the destruction they leave behind, but she’ll have time to do some research, she’s sure. They may be an insular society, but there is information out there on them - the Jedi Archives will have everything she needs to know. She’s not about to go off to war unprepared. (And one way or another, she will help the Republic, even if she has to go against the entire Jedi Order to do it.)
They land the ship in a large, open area near the remains of a city on the coast. The planet itself has clearly recovered from whatever happened here a decade ago that left this city so destroyed - there are trees and plants everywhere, nature having grown around and over and through the ruined buildings. The ground itself is littered with shattered transparisteel and half-collapsed buildings, duracrete scorched black with ten-year-old ash, and the sunlight falls pale and yellow on the dirt-covered remnants of grenades and the marks of blasterfire. Revan and her Jedi spread out (Alek stays at her shoulder, like he always does) to canvas the city, looking for- something, she’s not sure what yet, any kind of evidence, and she follows a trail further away from the ship, leading down towards the nearby beach.
Here: pieces of a broken vibroblade, partly buried in a drift of dirt; here: a scrap of armor, dulled by exposure but unrusted, with a clear, distinctive ring to it when she taps it against her saber hilt. Here: a piece of torn cloth caught in a bush, color and pattern faded beyond all recognition by the sun and the rain. Here: the destroyed stump of a tree blown apart by some kind of charge, the rotted carcass of its trunk further away, grey-brown and covered in moss.
Here: a beach covered in thin, bleached-white shards of wood.
“Is that beskar?” Alek murmurs, as they draw closer to the beach (several of her Jedi, including Qatya, have gathered there already, looking around with some kind of horror radiating into the Force, and she doesn’t understand), nodding at the piece of metal in her fingers. It’s unpainted, and if there was any cloth or straps or buckles attached to it, they’re long rotted away, but between the lack of rust and the sound it made-
“One way to find out,” she responds, equally quiet, and pulls one lightsaber into her hand, ignites the violet blade and presses it against the metal. The plasma beam fuzzes and disperses against the plain slate-grey, and although it heats up, it doesn’t melt or slice in half, and Revan puts her mainhand saber away again with a shrug. “Yeah.”
Alek makes a faintly strangled noise. “Don’t do that again,” he says, when she looks over at him. “You could’ve cut your hand off.”
“I wouldn’t have,” she says dismissively, tucks the piece of beskar away in a belt pouch. “Honestly, Alek, I’m not that stupid.”
“I beg to differ,” he mutters under his breath, but before she can retort, Qatya stands from where she’s crouched over some of the sticks scattered across the sand.
“Revan,” she calls, voice low and almost shaken, “come look at this.”
“Look at what?” Revan asks, turning away from Alek and stepping out onto the beach. “They’re just-”
Something cracks beneath her boots and she freezes in place. Looks down at the ghostly-white, faintly-curved- things beneath her feet, and oh. Oh, Force. That- it’s not wood at all.
The beach is covered in bones.
“I looked up a reference image on the Net,” Qatya continues, dark eyes meeting Revan’s, “and- I’m not an anatomy expert, but they match the images of Cathar skeletons I could find.”
“I found beskar,” Revan says, almost woodenly, tries to swallow down the choking nausea rising in her throat, lightens her steps as much as she can as she crosses the blanket of bones towards the edge of the water. The indistinct white shapes continue as far as she can see beneath the waves, and oh, Force, she was looking for evidence and she thought she’d find it here but this- this is so much more than evidence, this is- this is a massacre. “The Mandalorians were here.”
The younger knight nods, looks even more pale than she usually does as she rubs her hands against her tunic. “I’ve been taking holos as we looked around,” she says. “We can send them in to the Senate and the Council both as proof.”
Revan barely hears her. There’s something calling her forward, out into the sea, the Force hums this is what you came here to find and she’s pulling her gloves off and tucking them into her belt without conscious thought. There is something here she needs to see.
Revan, don’t- Alek starts, and she knows why, psychometry is unpredictable and the times she’s gotten caught in feedback loops from too-strong sensations is too many to count, but there’s something important in the water and she plunges her arm up to the shoulder into the sea.
Her fingers drift unerringly to something cool and hard, and she lifts the beskar mask from beneath the waves and the vision hits all at once.
“This isn’t right,” the woman says, and the warriors on all sides of her freeze. “There’s no glory in indiscriminate slaughter, Mand’alor.”
In front of them, a sea is full of people. The Cathar, hundreds of them - thousands of them - an entire city’s population, up to their knees or their waists in water and huddled together on the sands, parents holding children and children supporting the elderly. They’ve been herded here, all of them, the warriors and the young and the old and the families, and this was supposed to be a fight for glory, this was supposed to be honor, this was supposed to be testing themselves against another warrior race. She may live for the fight, this nameless woman, but to fight without honor - one might as well call themself dar’manda and be done with it.
This kind of killing goes against every code of honor she’s ever sworn to live by since she donned her beskar for the first time.
“Do you stand against Te Ani’la Mand’alor?” A warrior off to her left, derisive and scoffing, and she steps out from the line, towards the mass of Cathar. “We are at war, defying orders is treason.”
“Every child of Mandalore has the right to question our Mand’alor,” she says sharply, turns to face her people. “What kind of war is this if we abandon our code of honor to fight it?”
“A glorious one,” someone says, fervor in their voice. “The entire galaxy will know and fear our names.”
“Step out of the way, verd,” Te Ani’la Mand’alor says, and she lifts her chin and pushes her shoulders back.
“No.”
“Then your fate will be the same as theirs. Open fire.”
Revan gasps, chokes on the phantom pain of a hundred blaster bolts pounding into her chest, staggers sideways and feels Alek reach out to catch her - she hadn’t even realized he was in the water with her. Easy, he murmurs across the bond, and for just a moment she sags into his solid strength before she grits her teeth and pushes her shoulders back and stiffens like the nameless warrior who wore this mask before her. Before her, because she knows, even as she reaches up to buckle it against her face, that it’ll fit perfectly.
It does. Just like it was made for her. And the HUD comes to life when she activates it - a little fuzzy, she’ll have to tinker with it, but it’s in remarkably good condition given how many years it’s been sitting beneath the water - and she reaches for her violet lightsaber, ignites it and lifts it into the air, catches the attention of all the Jedi on the beach. Their eyes lock onto her like magnets and she holds her saber steady for long enough to ensure everyone’s watching, before lowering it and stepping away from Alek, back towards the beach.
“Ten years ago,” she says, hooking her saber hilt back on her belt, “the Mandalorians came to Cathar, looking for a fight. They never gave the Cathar a fair chance. The Mandalorians bombed their cities from orbit, and when they finally came down to the planet, they rounded the survivors up, brought them here, and had them massacred.
“One warrior dared to stand before her people and say that this wasn’t right. One woman, who wore this mask, stepped forward and challenged Mandalore the Ultimate, and for her audacity he ordered her gunned down with the rest of the Cathar she defended.” The Force is echoing with anger and discontent and horror, the Jedi turning to look at each other, back at her, and Revan takes another step forward.
“I promise you, right now, I won’t rest until the Mandalorians have been brought to justice for the massacre they’ve committed here. For all the dead on a hundred colony planets, for all the bones on this beach,” and she gestures with one hand, watches the way their eyes follow her, “for their own warrior they killed-” and that same hand comes up to tap her mask, “I will bring the Mandalorians to justice. I won’t take off this mask until I’ve avenged the woman who crafted it.” She pauses to take a breath and in the heartbeat before she continues she can feel the way her words hang in the air, the way they echo through the Jedi gathered before her - can feel the anticipation, the tension. She holds them all in the palms of her hands and for a moment all she can think is that Arren Kae would be proud. “So swears Revan!”
Revan. Not Knight Adarii, but Revan, leader of the Revanchists, Revan, destined to save the Republic. The mask’s vocoder smoothes her voice out into iron certainty and she can see the way the Jedi - her Jedi - react to this, the way they straighten and look to her and the Force starts to fill with steadiness and strength and hope.
“We’ll take this proof before the Jedi High Council on Coruscant,” Alek says, stepping up behind her, at her right shoulder, firm and unyielding and sure, and Force, she doesn’t know what she’d do without him, “but if they refuse to act - who among you will follow Revan? Who of you will swear an oath along with her?”
For a moment, there’s just silence, and then:
“I will,” Qatya says, and there’s something like pride shining through her voice as she nods at Alek, then bows to Revan. “On my honor as a Jedi Knight, Revan - I’ll follow you wherever you decide to go.”
Behind the mask, Revan smiles.
~
In the end, every Jedi who followed her and Alek to Cathar swore the same oath as Qatya, and in the few days since they’ve been back on Coruscant, Revan’s had several more approach her to tell her that whenever she decides to go, they’ll be ready. They’ll follow. Master Kae congratulated her, when she heard the news - I told you they would follow you, she’d said, in her dust-dry voice, but she’d smiled, too, put a hand on Revan’s shoulder and squeezed. You’ll do well, Revan.
Still think I’m destined to save the Republic? Revan had asked her, and her old master’s smile had just gone more enigmatic and mysterious, as though Revan can be fooled by those airs like she was when she was twelve.
Of course, Arren had said, without a moment’s hesitation. The Republic and the galaxy itself.
The idea doesn’t seem as far-fetched as it had even a month ago, when the news of Taris first broke. After her vision on Cathar, after seeing what the Mandalorians are willing to do to their own people - the entire galaxy is at risk if the Republic falls. Saving the Republic is saving the galaxy, by extension, and Revan won’t let the Republic fall. Not after seeing the ghosts of Cathar, not after all the worlds she and Alek could do nothing more for than deliver supplies, not after the destruction the Mandalorians are still raining down on Taris.
She swore an oath, to those long-dead phantoms, and she intends to keep it.
On the hyperspace flight back to Coruscant, she’d read everything she could find about the Mandalorians in the Jedi Archives, their history and their lore and their wars, what little the Archives recorded about their mythology and their language. They favor destruction, have remarkably loose morals, though they do have a code of honor that revolves heavily around clan and armor and fighting - their strategies are practically the opposite of anything she ever learned, in the Temple and from the Republic soldiers she’s worked alongside. That won’t be a problem, though, not for long.
She just has to learn about them. Once she knows them, she can think like them, and then she can beat them.
Revan has always been good at dejarik - she almost never loses (the one drunken loss to Alek when she was eighteen and thought betting her offhand saber was a clever idea doesn’t count). And what is war but a game of dejarik with far higher stakes?
(Of course, in war, the pawns are all people, with their own lives. You can’t make the same kind of sacrifices in real battles that you would at the dejarik table. But she’s sure she can work around that - all that has to happen is her strategies need to change.)
She and Alek go before the Jedi High Council two months after the fall of Taris. Since then, the Mandalorians have revealed a camp on Dxun that’s apparently been there for a decade or more; they conquered Onderon itself in a matter of hours, giving them a gateway straight to the Core Worlds. The Republic is scrambling to hold them off and from what she’s seen they only have a couple competent admirals, and despite the huge fleet they command without the tacticians to manage against Mandalore and his top general, Cassus Fett (a dangerous man in gold armor with a pure beskar spear, from everything she’s heard and seen about him), they’re fighting a losing battle. A losing war.
Revan has nearly sixty Jedi at her back, now. It’s time to go before the Council.
All twelve masters are in attendance when she and Alek walk into the circular chamber. The sun is setting over Coruscant, turning the stone in the center of the chamber a vivid orange-gold, and outside the huge bay windows, the capital of the Republic looks just as peaceful and bustling as it always is. The war hasn’t reached this far yet, and won’t for months - but if the Jedi don’t take a stand, don’t honor their oaths, don’t fight, it will.
“Masters,” Revan says, bowing, Alek following suit. Several of them incline their heads at her; Vandar only nods, and Vrook doesn’t even give her that much of a courtesy, just stares her down with an icy gaze. She’s wearing her mask, the weight of the red and black beskar already starting to feel comfortingly familiar on her face, and she appreciates how much easier it makes it to hide her disgust at the old master. “I appreciate you agreeing to meet with us.”
“Knight Adarii, Knight Squinquargesimus,” Vandar says, and Alek scoffs mentally at the name. “You said you had a matter of vital importance to discuss with the Council?”
I am going to change my name one of these days, Alek announces silently, and she presses her lips together to stifle a snort. Anything is better than kriffing Squinquargesimus.
You say that all the time, Squint, and she makes a point of emphasizing the nickname she’d given him when they were younglings in the creche together. One of these days maybe you’ll actually stop saying it and do something about it.
“We do,” she says aloud, clasps her hands behind her back. “I’m sure you’re all aware that Alek and I took a small team of Jedi to investigate Cathar recently.”
“Yes,” Vrook says irritably, “we’re very aware of your propensity for disobeying orders, Adarii.”
Revan’s tempted to tell him she’s not disobeying orders if they hadn’t explicitly forbidden her to go. But that won’t help, so she bites her tongue, takes a breath and clenches her hands behind her back and does her best to breathe everything out into the Force. “I know Qatya sent you the holos she took while we were there - we discovered clear signs of a Mandalorian attack, beskar and a field of Cathar skeletons. Beyond that, masters… you know about my psychometry.” She sees nods from around the room; at least they’re listening to her, she hadn’t been so sure they would. “When I first touched the mask I’m wearing now, I had a vision. The Mandalorians slaughtered the Cathar in cold blood, and they killed one of their own for standing against them and saying it was wrong. They have to be stopped.”
“We’ve been to the colonies they’ve attacked,” Alek adds. “They’re not going to stop there, they’re not going to stop at Taris and Onderon, and the Republic doesn’t have the manpower to fight them. We need to help. People are dying.”
For a moment, the masters just look at each other - Kavar looks considering, thoughtful, Vrook is outright derisive, Vandar as serene as ever. The other nine are mostly unreadable, though Vash is giving Revan a sympathetic look that makes unease curl uncomfortably down her spine. It feels like pity. It feels like Vash already knows what Vandar is going to say.
“What happened on Cathar was truly horrific,” Vandar says in his old, flimsi-thin voice. “I’m sorry you had to witness it, Knight Adarii. But the fact remains that we do not yet have all the facts. There are more pieces in play than even the Council knows.”
For a moment, she almost can’t register the words. “I’m sorry, knight,” Vash says gently. “I know this isn’t the answer you wanted to hear.”
They’re saying no.
How can they refuse her?
“You’re not going to help,” she says, and she knows she sounds- shaken, and she can’t, she refuses to let them - let Vrook - see that weakness, and she reaches for something, anything and comes across a sharp, burning anger. “The Republic has declared war and you’re not going to help?”
Her hands fall into fists at her sides. She can’t bring herself to care.
“We cannot act until we are aware of all the facts,” Vandar repeats, and Revan-
“How can you say that?” she demands, takes a step forward and lets all that righteous, fierce, protective anger in her chest spill out into her voice. “How can you sit back and do nothing while millions die? The Mandalorians massacred an entire planet and they’re going to do it again and again unless we stop them!”
“Control yourself, Adarii,” Vrook snaps, too sharply. “It’s not the Jedi way to let your anger rule you.”
She can’t help a half-hysterical laugh. How dare he lecture her on her anger when he’s hated her since she was a child? When he’s spent years arguing against every accomplishment she’s ever reached? “You’d sit here and lecture me on the Jedi way?” she asks. “It’s not the Jedi way to- stand back and let innocent people suffer while we have the power to protect them!”
“Since when have the Jedi let complacency and fear keep them from helping people?” Alek spits, and his own anger echoes hers, a rushing wave seething back and forth through the Force between them. “If you don’t act now, every single death the Mandalorians cause is on your hands.”
There is durasteel in Vandar’s gaze as he stares them both down. Revan meets his eyes through the mask and pours everything she feels into the Force around her and dares him to refuse her once again.
“Our decision is final,” he says, a heavy weight and a barely-veiled anger in his voice. “The Jedi will not go to war.”
She clenches her jaw so tight it hurts. “If that is the Council’s decision,” she grits out, and Alek stiffens beside her.
We’re not-?
No, of course not, she says, and it takes everything in her not to take her anger out on him. When have I ever let the Council tell me what to do when I know what’s right?
He relaxes, infestistimally. It’s still enough to catch Vrook’s eye.
“If you go to war, Knight Adarii,” he says, his voice low and brimming with a threat she can’t quite name, “you will not come back a Jedi.”
Revan straightens her shoulders. “If that’s the price I have to pay to uphold the oaths I made at my knighting,” she tells him, all the conviction in the galaxy in her bones, “then so be it.”
And she turns on her heel and storms out of the Council chambers.
In less than two days, the news has spread through the entire Temple. Revan Adarii went before the High Council and they refused to fight. Many more Jedi stop her in the halls as she stalks back and forth, planning with Alek and Qatya - they want to know what she’s going to do, if she’s going to follow the Council’s directive, if she’s going to hold to the oath she made on Cathar. Tell your friends, she always answers, Revan Adarii is going to war. Anyone who can’t in good conscience sit back and let the Mandalorian slaughter continue is welcome to join me. Have them give their names to Alek or Qatya, and make sure they’re ready.
By the time it’s been a week since she walked out on the Council, the final tally, not including herself, Alek, and Qatya is a hundred and three Jedi, mostly knights, a few padawans and even a couple of masters. Not many of them, for which she’s almost thankful; she doesn’t entirely trust the masters (besides Arren, of course), and she’s sure most of them wouldn’t want to listen to someone who’s only been a knight for two and a half years. And Qatya, who’s already falling into place as Revan’s left hand, has been a knight for months. Force, they’re all so young compared to the masters - maybe that’s why the Council didn’t want to listen.
But she doesn’t care, anymore, why the Council decided to turn their backs on the rest of the galaxy. Revan has no need of their approval.
She and Alek get in to see Supreme Chancellor Cressa at the end of the week; they’re both wearing tighter-fitting clothes only barely recognizable as Jedi robes (if it weren’t for the tabard and the lightsabers, she wouldn’t be noticeable as a Jedi at all), and Revan has managed to scrounge up pieces of armor - bracers, gauntlets, greaves, a chestpiece. Her mask is firmly in place and she’s wearing a black cloak that blends too well with the grey and black of her outfit, the hood up. No one who sees her will know anything about what she looks like beyond her general body shape, and that’s-
It’s almost freeing.
“Can I help you?” Chancellor Tol Cressa says politely, though there’s a vaguely askance expression on his face, and he looks tired - the Republic lost another pair of space battles recently and the Mandalorians have been moving in on Jebble. He’s a busy man, and it’s not like she has an appointment. It probably would’ve been more appropriate to schedule one, but they don’t have time for bureaucracy when people are dying in the Outer Rim.
“My name is Jedi Knight Revan Adarii,” Revan says, and something like recognition flashes across Cressa’s face and into the Force. “This is Knight Alek Squinquargesimus,” and she pauses for a moment to let Alek grumble silently about his last name. “We want to fight the Mandalorians, Chancellor - we’re here to enlist. One hundred and four Jedi follow us.”
The relief that crosses Cressa’s face as he closes his eyes for a half-second is nearly overwhelming. “Has the Jedi Council voted to aid us, then?” he asks, nearly hopeful, and she presses her lips together behind the mask.
“No,” she says flatly. “I and the Jedi who follow me are acting without the Council’s blessing - but that doesn’t matter. We don’t need their permission, Supreme Chancellor. I have permission to speak on behalf of the Revanchists.”
“That’s what we call ourselves,” Alek interjects quickly. “After her. I promise you, Chancellor, everyone who wants to enlist takes their oath to the Republic seriously, and we all follow Revan above the Council.”
Cressa just studies them, for a moment, and then he nods, though he looks somehow even older than he had moments ago. “Very well. I don’t exactly have the luxury of refusing you; the Republic is in dire straits right now,” he admits. “We don’t have the manpower or the tactical knowledge to hold off Cassus Fett, not yet. We don’t understand how they fight.”
“I do,” Revan says. “I’ve been studying them since I visited Cathar. I’m not going to let the Republic fall, Chancellor Cressa, you have my word as a Jedi Knight.”
“Thank you,” he says quietly. “If you’ll send me the list of Jedi- of Revanchists, I’ll have commissions and orders for you all in three days.”
“One thing,” she says, as Alek pulls out his datapad and starts to send over the information. “Myself, Alek, and Knight Petheir need to be assigned somewhere together, we work best as a unit.”
“Understood,” Cressa says, makes a note. “The Republic appreciates this more than you know, knights.”
Revan thinks she knows exactly how much the Republic will appreciate her; after all, she’s been to the Outer Rim Territories. She’s seen the damage the Mandalorians have done firsthand.
“You’re welcome,” is all she says, though, giving the Chancellor a perfunctory bow. “We’ll leave you to your work, I’m sure you’re busy.” The moment he acknowledges her, she turns and sweeps out of the office, Alek on her heels.
What do you think? her best friend asks silently, as they stride through the opulent Senate Tower, side by side. Revan’s cloak flows out behind her and her mask hides her face and she knows she walks with authority, with purpose - it’s enough to cause everyone they pass to do a double take, to look more closely at her.
Of the Chancellor? I think he’s desperate, she says. He needs us if he wants to have any hope of winning this war - and of winning reelection when his term comes up.
So it’s politics.
It’s always politics, she sighs. I hate it as much as you do, but it works out in our favor - he’s not going to go looking for permission from the Council. We’d be well and truly kriffed if he did, he has the ultimate authority on who can join the military.
Alek brushes his shoulder against hers. Then I guess it’s a good thing we waited until we did for this, he says, and she lets him feel her agreement. He said commissions - do you think he’ll make us officers?
I hope so, Revan says. Whoever they’ve got in command out by Taris clearly can’t handle Fett.
She’s going to have to study the military reports of every attack the Mandalorians have made over the past couple of months; she’d assured the Chancellor she knows their strategy, and she does, she understands them better than most of his officers, she’s sure, but that doesn’t mean she feels ready to go toe-to-toe with Cassus Fett himself. And it’s likely she’ll be forced to, and soon, depending on where she’s assigned. Of course Mandalore’s top general will be leading the main invasion vector.
Can you? Alek asks, deadly serious, and she can feel him asking for an honest answer, trying to suss out how much of her confidence is put-upon and how much is real.
Yes, she tells him. It doesn’t matter if that’s true or not - she has to be able to handle Fett.
She made a promise, after all. She will not let the Mandalorians win. Not when she sees the ghosts of Cathar behind her eyes when she sleeps.
She will not let the Republic fall.
So swears Revan.