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They do not remember how they got to this point. They do not remember the parts of themself that were Unraveled, but—
Sometimes, if they stop to think for too long, they can feel the phantom of something Dark cold writhing behind their eyes.
The thing is, they do not need to remember everything that once befell them. The Force weeps in ways that echo strangely. Not just echo, but Echo.
They have followed in their own footsteps for this quest, this mission. They do not remember who they used to be, perhaps they never will, because—
The Jedi Order took away part of them that they will never get back, and something in them is all the more hollow for it.
I fought for you, they think. I killed for you, I survived for you. I Fell to prove their return, for you.
And– they know it, feel it even now, the way that the title of Darth had never been their choice. Dread still circles something they cannot name.
What chance did a handful of Knights amidst an entire enemy Empire have?
The Order kept their things then they erased them. A mistake on the Council’s part, when the world whispers so much. It was pure, fool luck that they ripped the link out with the rest of their being, that it was anchored in their Presence rather than their body, and now—
They wonder if anyone realizes how poorly the attempt to rewrite them took. Their soul is jagged and bleeding even now from what was taken from them, and those empty, vague memories playing pretend at being a subordinate acting like bandages covering an unstitched wound.
Like a fragmented crystal. Like a cored fruit.
Shards are missing in ways that some angles hide, but only if someone is not looking closely.
It took them a long time to learn to look. It still hurts to reach for the Force, like they’ve curled their fist and forgotten every time that their claws are daggers. Something intrinsic is missing there.
They used to know the path once, they think. The Force expects them to know the path still. Yet they do not, stumbling through an unlit maze with nothing but a half-remembered feeling to guide them, and every wrong turn hurts them both.
(The Jedi took the Force with all their other memories. Is it any wonder it weeps so loudly?)
They do not remember being Revan. They do not remember ever being a Jedi, or a Sith.
A few weeks of training is not enough to replace the lifetime they stole.
I died for you, they think, and so you ripped me apart again.
How cold, how cruel, how very Sith.
How unfathomably greedy, to erase them and cage them in an unwanted bond. As if they are nothing more than a misbehaving pet. No wonder they tried to make them a soldier, tried to make them obedient.
Revan was a commander, once. They do not remember it, but they have heard enough to know. The Council ignored their worries, their warnings, and so they walked away and took up the fight. And they were right to do so.
They do not remember being a commander, but they think that it is one of the few pieces of them that was not torn out with all the others. The Council tried, they think, to use it as the foundation of the rookie soldier.
The attempt destroyed itself on its foundation’s own bloody edges. Something in them still recoils at taking orders from others. Or maybe just orders coming from backstabbers.
I fought for you, killed for you, died for you—!
Even now, the Council will never believe them. They never believed Revan, never believed their own prodigal knight, thought their concern to be paranoia and their warnings to be arrogance.
(They read the stories. Before their disappearance and reappearance, Revan was praised for being unlike the Jedi. A rebel movement that almost singularly won the war against Mandalore on the Republic’s behalf.)
Why should that change, for the one that shares their face and half their abilities but none of their memories?
They do not remember Wild Space. They do not remember the Empire. Perhaps they never will, and perhaps it is for the best that they will never recall what happened to them there.
They mourn for Revan, for this person they used to be. For this person that died screaming into the Force as they were erased by an Order so clinically cold they must be no better than the Empire they’d never known was hiding.
Revan committed crimes when the Empire subjugated them, yes, but their terribleness is only for their prior reputation. The Empire was always planning its return, that much is clear.
In the end, Revan’s crimes were no greater than the Council’s own. The Order sentenced millions to die with their inaction. Revan saved them, only to sentence just as many with their Fall from grace.
And it was only then that the Council decided to interfere, didn’t they?
They mourn the Knight they used to be, and they mourn the weapon they were turned into.
(They mourn the allies that Fell with them, and the friend they no longer know by heart.)
They mourn all of themself, and they mourn that they will never be whole again.
They wonder what it must have been like, to defeat one Empire, to be subjugated by another, to found one’s own amongst it all and lose it. The whispers, when they can find them, are not strong enough to say.
They are not Revan.
No one seems to understand that, whether they want it to be the case or not.
They are not Revan.
The cage and leash do not understand that, for all that it was their very intention.
They will never be Revan.
(But they will never be anything else, either.)
Something in them is missing, they know.
Their soul is still bleeding. It will never stop bleeding.
They were Unraveled too deeply and too hastily, Rewritten just as clumsily. It is all unstable, a structure made of sabacc cards.
Their soul is still spilling out of them, ever so slowly, and nothing can fix it.
Maybe the Jedi were right to have declared Darth Revan as dead. Their very essence is long gone, and sooner or later the body will inevitably follow.
A cored fruit slowly rotting from the inside.
(A fragmented crystal stained red, abandoned to its suffering and told it’s for the best.)
People have only ever attempted to turn them into a weapon. It worked, when they first forged themself, and when the Empire reforged them. Now, with their third remaking, they have become something brittle.
Something that is not made to last.