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Bastila Shan is seven years old, and her mother and father are arguing again. Her mother will win, as she always does. Bastila hates her for that. Her poor father. And this time, Bastila desperately does not want her to win. This time, she wants to get rid of Bastila once and for all. She wants to sell her to the Jedi.
Bastila doesn't want to go. She wants to stay with her father. He wants that, too. He is a big game hunter, one of the best, and he wants to take her with him to another exotic world to hunt another dangerous, beautiful animal.
Bastila doesn't remember which animal, or where. It doesn't matter. He was sure to go without her, anyway. He had to keep up his exploits to sustain his wife's life of luxury.
And so, Bastila Shan is given to the Jedi. None of them, not her loving father, nor her mother, not even the kindly little Jedi Master less than half her own height, asks her what she wants.
Bastila Shan is sixteen years old, and already she is the best Jedi on Dantooine. She can lift the heaviest boulders the highest and fastest. She can do half a dozen at once. Not to mention her Battle Meditation. The only one who can keep up with her in fencing is Master Draay himself, but he's dead now, buried under rubble in his own estate.
It's too bad. Bastila was hoping to show him just how far she had come in her mastery of Juyo. Master Vrook didn't like her studying the saberstaff. She much preferred it when he was on Coruscant.
Bastila is standing outside one of the plantation estates not far from the enclave, where a huge crowd has gathered -- mostly locals, but a fair number of Jedi, which had been the intention. Standing up on the edge of a courtyard fixture, an alarmingly tall man is passionately orating to the crowd, appealing to the Jedi to join him -- join the Revanchists.
The man's name is Malak, and he is a disgrace to the Jedi. Bastila sneers up at Malak and raises her chin proudly. If the Council has forbid the Jedi to join the war, they must have good reason, even if Bastila cannot think of one. Even if they cannot say why themselves.
Bastila turns to walk away when she sees another familiar figure -- Meetra, Master Sunrider's former apprentice, and one of the only other rare Jedi like Bastila who could utilize Battle Meditation. She apparently inherited her master's wanderlust, because Bastila rarely sees her on Dantooine. The padawan suddenly finds herself jealous, but the feeling is easily conquered by the idea that she might have found a good sparring partner again.
Bastila watches with compounding excitement as Meetra approaches Malak's impromptu podium, hopping right up next to him. Surely, he's about to get an earful. Instead, Bastila can't believe her ears when Meetra proclaims her support for their cause, and joins in his speech. She was always popular. Malak's rally just became sharply more effective.
Bastila shakes her head and stomps away, repeating the Jedi Code over and over again in her head. There is no emotion; there is peace. There is no ignorance; there is knowledge. There is no passion; there is serenity. There is no death; there is the Force. How could they so blindly disobey the will of the Council?
Bastila Shan is twenty-two years old, and she is staring down the Dark Lord of the Sith. It's ironic, she thinks: only six scant years ago, she had considered joining Revan and Malak as they fought for the protection of the Republic, and now they were all too close to destroying it.
Is that what she thinks? Revan smirks. His eyes glint, not with amusement but with knowing, as he holds her glare.
Bastila doesn't want to dignify him with a response, but she can't help it. Revan is the fool. The Council had always known this was where his path into war would lead, and he followed it blindly.
But it is the Jedi who are blind. Revan left their idyllic enclave so he could see, see the true horrors of the galaxy, of war, the truth the Jedi hide from. The truth they, she, cannot hope to understand. She's too young, too sheltered, just as he once was.
No, Bastila could never understand the ravings of a mad warlord. But the Council could not be so blind, if he was now their prisoner.
Not their prisoner. Hers. He is mocking her.
Either way, Revan has been defeated -- but not by her. By the Force? She doesn't know. She hates not knowing.
But she does know he is wrong. Bastila has glimpsed the horrors of war, thanks to him. It looks like friends, entrusted to her command, whose bodies she can never hope to recover, charred beyond recognition, stapled to the deck by a beam of durasteel as thick as her waist, vanished into the vacuum of a shattered viewport. It looks like like running an unconscious man through the heart with his own lightsaber while he is helpless, because in the middle of battle she can't even take the risk of waiting for him to bleed out from his wounds. Not a Dark Lord, but just a man, as helpless as any other.
Revan tilts his head, studies her with new intensity. She suppresses a shiver. On the bridge of his flagship, she had kept herself wrapped tightly, shielded and hidden from him. But now, on Dantooine, she can feel him in the Force. She succeeded handily in healing him in that split-second decision on the bridge; he is very much alive, vibrant and thrumming. Revan is angry he had been betrayed and captured, yes, and afraid of his execution, yes, but he is also possessed by a fierce sort of protectiveness, the kind she felt from Master Kavar, a sense of righteousness. Behind it all, there is a deep well of sadness, scars unseen on his flesh. And something else: an indulgence, a warmth as he looks at her that makes her feel more vulnerable than when he had been leveling a lightsaber at her. His presence in the Force in front of her is a storm of all things, almost overwhelming.
And did that change her, that glimpse of war? Of truth? Of the Jedi sending her and her friends to die?
Yes. She had been changed in a single moment, when her destiny to kill Darth Revan had been taken away from her, and she found to her surprise she did not miss it. That she could not sanction the idea of killing him as he lay there bleeding. Bastila does not say this out loud, but somehow, it feels as if he knows.
She does not even understand what has happened to her, does she? Revan shakes his head, smirking again. She has so much potential, but still understands so little. It's not her fault. It's the Jedi way.
Bastila musters all her composure not to spit in his face. She knows what he's insinuating, and she will never join him.
Revan leans back, smug, as if he is not days away from his death even after she saved his life. He enjoys their little talks.
Bastila Shan is twenty-two. Only twenty-two. It is baffling. Confounding. And infuriating to no end.
She confesses, after much needling and prying. She will not admit it, but she is thankful for it, in a way. No one in the enclave ever cared if she withdrew. It is the Jedi way to be withdrawn. That is what she has been taught. That is how she tries so hard to live, even if she does not know why.
She thought she knew her parents, but she was wrong. All this time, so stupidly naive. Her mother had loved her -- and her father. Helena Shan had never wanted Bastila gone, had never coerced her father out on dangerous hunts to keep them wealthy. She funded his hunts just as much as he did, because they were what he loved. Maybe more than her. Bastila sighs. It was easier when she had thought her mother was selfish, and her father selfless.
Things are always easier in dichotomies, but they're rarely so simple.
There is no emotion; there is peace. There is no ignorance; there is knowledge. There is no death; there is the Force.
She knows. And she'll never get any more answers now. Her father is dead. She just wishes she could keep remembering him as she used to, and not now think he may have been…
Kind of a di'kut? Revan smirks amicably, taking a risk of humor in the somber crew quarters of the Ebon Hawk.
Only a year ago, she remembers, she was sent to kill this man. Now she cannot imagine it. The bond between them is so strong now it is like he can read her every thought. It is infuriating.
And she hopes not. That smirk is beginning to haunt her dreams. Or if not haunting, it is certainly there.
But however silly his adventures may seem to her now, that doesn't change the fact that her father had been brave and caring. Again, Revan seems to be able to read her like a datapad and say just what she wanted to hear.
How is it he can be so wise at times, when she is the Jedi, she is the commander of this mission, and he has only trained for a few months?
And his memories were erased, she doesn't say.
Revan shrugs. He spent years in the Republic's service, exploring uncharted worlds, fighting in border skirmishes. He guesses you just pick it up over time.
She wonders if that's really true, to some extent. How much did the Council erase, and recreate? She doesn't know anything about Revan's real history, the records have been sealed in the Archives. Does he remember his own mother and father, his real ones?
But he thinks she is wiser than she believes, wiser than the Council gives her credit for. She feels things from her heart like a normal person, which is more than old Vrook can say.
He makes her laugh. She thanks him quickly, eager to be rid of him again, but he doesn't go that easily. He never has. Infuriating. It would be easier if she would just talk to him. She knows that. But he doesn't know, can never know, why that is such a terrible idea. The guilt of her complicity pangs through her, and she tries to muffle it through their bond by pulling up all the anger she feels at herself instead. He still has a lot to learn… They both do, she supposes.
She meant to put him in his place, but there's still that lingering glint in his eye. He's looking forward to continuing to learn alongside her.
Bastila Shan is twenty-three, and she is so tired. How can Revan not be tired? He just stands there, in a brown and bronze copy of the armored robes he wore as Dark Lord, his lightsaber inactive, arms held wide.
He has always known more than her, even when he was a complete amnesiac. It infuriates her to the ends of the galaxy and back.
He doesn't know anything more than she does. He's only ready to admit it out loud.
Peace is a lie; there is only passion. Through passion, I gain power. Through power, I gain victory. Through victory, my chains are broken. The Force shall free me.
But she can't. She no longer listens to the lies of the Jedi, but what good would love do her now? She has chosen her path. The Republic can't win, not even with Revan back. He ensured that by his own hand five years ago. Bastila only wants to be recognized for once. At least the Sith are honest about using her, and they'll recognize her when she usurps Malak.
But Revan recognizes her, doesn't he? He has always seen her, even when she could not or would not see herself. She has so much potential. It's not her fault.
The Force shall free me.
Bastila is so sick of not knowing. Of being told she can't understand. She knows this: she loves Revan, and she does not care for any path through this besides the one at his side. She feels it as strongly as she feels the Force coursing through them, tying them together. She doesn't know how this will end, but she chooses to believe in him. He will defeat Malak. What she truly doesn't know is what will happen to them after that.
She smirks, thinking for once he doesn't know, either.
Bastila Shan is sixty-four years old. Her son, Vaner, is visiting her in the Jedi Temple on Coruscant. She reflects the irony that, when he was still unborn, the Jedi Council had rejected what she had learned with Revan -- rejected them, not that they had particularly minded -- only to be appointed Master of the Order a few short years later. Now her son is running for Supreme Chancellor. Bastila jokes that she should have accepted the Grandmaster position when Atton first suggested it, and now they would be a real powerhouse of a dynasty, the Shans.
She was going to end up just like Lucien Draay after all, that old fierfek. She still couldn't believe he had survived after all, emerging from his hidden moon with a whole cadre of aspiring young Jedi to help rebuild the Order in the wake of the Dark Wars. They shared stimtea together every few weeks, reminiscing about all the ways they had gone wrong, and pitying how they were things you could never simply teach.
Bastila focuses. Vaner is talking evasively about some troubles he's running into in the Senate. He's being quite vague. Bastila trusts him to handle himself, even without Force abilities, but she reminds him offhandedly that if he needs anyone quietly taken care of, his mother happens to be an old hand at assassination missions. He doesn't remind her -- smart boy -- that she hadn't been the one to personally defeat either Darth Revan or Darth Malak.
Vaner laughs it off, but she senses he really is keeping it in mind -- not actual assassination, but his mother's still-prodigious skill as a Jedi, a warrior. That worries her. He's never cared for violence, not even as a toddler. She presses him to tell her what's really going on, but he just smirks and says it's nothing for her to worry about.
He's so much like his father. Revan never explained everything to her, either, not even why he was leaving. His message said he was afraid she wouldn't understand, she didn't know war like he did. But he was wrong -- not the first time, she muses. Bastila doesn't share his scars, but she knows him. That is all she needed. That is how she knows he was lying to himself; he had left without her because if he had given her the smallest chance, she would have followed. He had kept them in the dark while he journeyed out into the unknown, but she understands why. That fire of protectiveness, so intense it nearly consumed the galaxy, is one of the reasons she loved him, and loves him still. She knew that pained smirk on his hologram, just as she recognizes the same expression on her son right now.
With mild shock, Bastila realizes Vaner could not have learned that habit from his father. Bastila laughs at herself. Even now, she doesn't know as much as she thinks she does. Vaner is so much like his father, it's difficult to see when he's like her.
Vaner looks confused. Where's this coming from? She's the wisest person he knows.
Emotion, yet peace. Ignorance, yet knowledge. Passion, yet serenity. Chaos, yet harmony. Death, yet the Force.
Yes, that's what makes her truly wise, after all this time. She thought she'd taught him that already. She hopes her grandchildren are learning faster than that. But he is who he is; that is all Bastila ever wanted for him. That is all they ever need to be.