Work Text:
Reva was old enough to remember what life was like in the Temple before the war, but only just. The Temple was quieter now. No longer the bustle of Knights and Masters working—any Master or Knight who could be in the field was off fighting. There was a constant tension in the air, and the only thing they ever seemed to talk about was the war, even among the younglings, even if Master Minas chided them and told them to focus on their lessons.
There had been attacks on the Temple. A bombing in one of the hangers a few months before the end, an attack on the Archives early on in the war. There were drills. Her clanmaster, Master Minas always told them that if anything happened, they were immediately to find her or another Master and to follow their instructions without question, and to trust in the Force.
But they had not known, not really. None of them. Not the initiates, not the padawans, not the Knights, not even the Masters. They could not have imagined what would come to pass.
She had never been lonely, growing up in the Temple, with the constant humming presence of thousands of other Force-sensitives. She had never been afraid, even at the height of the war, because she knew that they had the greatest warriors in the galaxy to defend them.
Reva had been the best and the smartest in her youngling clan. She was always the first to master every new lesson they were taught. She won every practice saber duel, and she longed for the day they would be allowed real lightsabers, when she could learn to fight in a useful way, serving alongside the Padawans and the Knights and the Masters away at war. She was sure that it wouldn’t be long until she would be chosen as a padawan. It was happening younger and younger in those days.
Be patient, Initiate Sevander, Master Minas had always told her. Your time will come, but you must focus on the moment now.
Show humility, Reva, she would say chidingly when Reva boasted. We all learn at different paces.
But despite her chiding, Master Minas had known it too, and so did her clanmates.
So when the attack happened, of course they had all looked to her—the bravest and the strongest and the best of them.
She had tried to save them. She really had tried. She had looked for other Masters, after Master Minas had been cut down. But all around her, Knights and Masters were dying. They could only run. And Reva had tried to listen to the Force, to trust it to guide her and her clanmates to safety.
But Reva could not trust in the Force, because the Force was screaming. It was an open wound, and the second she reached for it, she felt the slaughter of her people. The Force told her: We are dying, you are dying, you are going to die-
Reva had known Anakin Skywalker before the attack. Of course she had. He was one half of the inseparable pair that was General Kenobi and General Skywalker, on the HoloNews every day and every night, the men who Knights talked about with respect and admiration in the Halls. The Masters who every initiate dreamed would take them as their Padawan.
She had never met either of them personally, but she had seen them striding down the halls of the Temple. Reva remembered eagerly pointing them out to her clanmates, and they had watched in awe, and then spent the evening speculating on what important work for the Republic and the war effort they must be doing.
When Anakin Skywalker came for them, he did not even look at her. Not really. Anakin Skywalker had more important things on his mind than the life of one girl. That was the only reason why she survived.
She hid among her friend’s bodies.
Jedi initiates are placed in clans at a young age. She did not remember a time before she knew her clanmates—Javal and Ianar’s bickering, the sound of Inestra’s uproarious laughter, Lanai’s constant bothering of Master Minas to take them to the aquatic level to swim, staying up late talking because there was nothing else to do.
These were her friends, her family. They had thought that she could protect them-
She did not know how long it was until she dared to move. Hours, days. It felt like forever, at the time. Sometimes, even years later, Reva felt like she was still there, hiding under her clanmate’s cooling bodies. Sometimes when she closed her eyes, she could still smell the distinct scent of burning flesh caused by lightsaber wounds, could still hear the blaster fire coming from the clone troopers, could still hear the beat of her own heart pounding impossibly loud in her head. She had been so sure that someone would hear her, that they would find her.
Eventually, she ran. She hid. She held onto her life, and she listened to the Force—suddenly so very dark and so very quiet. But there would always be a part of her that never left that hallway. There would always be a part of her waiting for the ground to fall out from underneath her, and to be dragged back there to feel her friends’ cooling bodies against her skin-
It took her weeks to accept that no one was coming to save her.
She hid in the lower levels, sleeping on the streets. Stealing so she wouldn't starve. She had never been to the lower levels before, all grime and rust and dirt and neon lights constantly shining out in the unending darkness. Reva had hardly ever left the safety of the Temple before, except on carefully guided field trips in the Senate District.
But eventually, of course, someone did come for her.
She did not know his name. Not then. He had let her run for days, toying with her, testing her, but there was no escape. There was never any chance at escape. Later, she will half-wonder if the Grand Inquisitor didn’t follow her from the Temple. If he hadn’t been tracking her all along, laughing at her attempts to scrap by.
She did not know, then, why he did not kill her. She was surprised. She expected the blow, just as she expected Anakin’s. But she will come to truly regret it later, when she finds out what he plans to do with her instead-
She knew Vader from the first moment she felt his presence in the Force, once she was allowed to touch the Force again. He might look different, wear that suit of armor and that new name. But she knew him as Anakin Skywalker. She remembered that cold rage, like a star gone supernova. A blight in the Force.
He felt the same as he did in the Temple.
All Inquisitors trained under Darth Vader personally. Reva would come to know him well, and eventually she came to realize that she was the only one of the Inquisitors to know his true identity. It almost made her laugh, when she realized that none of the others know him. Not even the Grand Inquisitor seemed to realize who exactly it was that they were taking orders from.
Knowledge is power. The Jedi taught her that, once upon a time. Or something like that, at least.
Under Vader’s tutelage, under the Grand Inquisitor's tutelage, Reva learned to wear her rage. She clung to it, because otherwise she knew that there would be nothing left of her but a silent servant of the Dark Side, a tool of Vader and the Emperor. She saw it happen to the others. But she swore it would never happen to her. She would do what she must to survive as long as she needed to, but Reva had a higher purpose than mere survival.
She had made a promise.
She would forget this:
The feeling of Master Minas’s bright and constant presence. What her clanmates, her friends, her family, Javal and Ianar and Inestra and Lanai and all the rest had felt like in the Force, what they had felt like when they were alive. Every playful moment and what it sounded like when they laughed. All the childish arguments, every moment of quiet peace and familiarity. All of the pain and the rage would eventually bleed all of this away—every happy moment of her childhood and her life in the Order, until all was left was the Dark Side.
She would abandon the Jedi’s every teaching. Reva would give into rage, into jealousy, into revenge. She would let her grief consume her.
Reva had never truly learned how to let go. She never had the chance to.
It was all she knew how to do to keep on going. She made the promise to her murdered friends, her murdered people, but most of all she made the promise to herself. Reva would never let herself be overlooked again. She would make Anakin Skywalker regret leaving her alive all those years ago. That was her promise.
That was all Reva had left.