Author: Kian
Warnings: MAJOR SPOILERS for KotOR, post-Leviathan, unhappy Carth, LSFR, Bindo crankiness
Pairings/Characters: CarthxLSFR, Jolee Bindo
Disclaimer: The video games, Knights of the Old Republic and its characters are copyright to the appropriate creators and companies, specifically LucasArts and Bioware. Any businesses, logos or characters not belonging to the author are the intellectual property of the appropriate creators and owners. Any of the content (prose, plot, original characters, etc.) that does not fall in the above categories in the intellectual property of the author "Kian" and said intellectual property is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. The individual under the pen name of "Kian" is receiving no profit from the distribution of this story, nor does said author have any intention to receive compensation beyond hopefully some verbal praise.

Author's Note: This is a companion piece to Resurrecting A Fallen Appellation. #cringes at the long name#

I'm afraid it didn't come out quite as well as I'd hoped, but it is what it is. Mostly, this is a slice of Carth's mind (yet again!) as he tries to come to terms with the fact that people can be redeemed and that even Sith Lords are people. (Soylent Green is people!) Read on, read on.

A Rose By Any Other Name

Part One

Carth had evidently overestimated many aspects of Revan's newly exposed identity and the effects that revelation might have on the crew.

He had felt oddly childish when every single other crew member of the Ebon Hawk had rather unexpectedly embraced their leader anew instead of experiencing even a shade of his own feelings of betrayal. Even Mission, young as she was, had discovered a way to accept Revan's presence, though Carth took some comfort that the teenager's method included a rather generous dose of denial.

None of the others had done much more than bat an eye, however, and that made him feel damned foolish quite despite deeply engrained survival instincts and righteous indignation at the Jedi Council releasing him and others into the galaxy with a veritable time bomb without so much as a word of caution. Carth was beginning to see quite clearly that the Council wasn't half as infallible as Jedi seemed to enjoy believing. Well, at least the Jedi he had met previously.

On this trip, it seemed like everything he knew about the Order was turned on its ear daily. Sure, Bastila had harped on and on about the virtues of the Council and how wrong it was to question their judgments or teachings, but Juhani and Jolee had balanced her out – besides, as far as Carth was concerned, Bastila had had far too little life experience to back up her posturing. Particularly in Jolee, Carth found that being a Jedi was a terribly broad definition and that the line between the light and dark side of the Force was a blurred thing, not neatly defined by intrinsic perceptions and gauges of right and wrong.

Still, Carth could not understand the complete lack of panic the rest of the crew seemed to be experiencing. True, the droids had nothing to fear because they would be useful to her, Revan or no. Carth was trying hard not to think about the fact that at some point in the past few years, she had built HK-47 and programmed it herself. Not that it didn't make a certain – rather frightening – amount of sense, but the thought had spurred him to make sure he kept his blaster permanently strapped to his belt.

Juhani and Jolee had evidently been quite contentedly in-the-know already and Canderous was frighteningly gleeful at the prospect of continuing their guerilla warfare on the Sith under the command of the woman who had defeated Mandalore.

Mission, on the other hand, was determined to disassociate the dark phantom of Revan from the woman who slept in the bunk next to her while Zaalbar was as stoic as ever about their circumstances. The Wookiee seemed content to hold to his life debt and he had coolly shed any question of reneging on the deal simply because the woman he followed cast a longer shadow than he had previously been aware of.

And all of this left Carth baffled. That they were in mortal danger had always been a present thought, but they had all been in it together, a ragtag combination of strength, speed, intelligence and raw power. Bastila had been their official leader, as sanctioned by the Jedi Council and he had been their commanding officer according to the Republic, but somehow it had always been Revan they were following.

Her lead had always been the surest, the soundest of the lot, and her wide array of skills and her unusual aptitude to persuade even the most embittered conversationalists to come around and warm up to her seemed to smooth a clear path both before her and in their wake.

Carth had had to accept that she hadn't known of her true identity; had she been willfully hiding and misleading the crew, Carth was certain Jolee would have called her on it, even if only in private. But when Revan had questioned him in the main hold, the aging former Jedi had admitted to sitting on the information out of some strange curiosity to see where her destiny took her.

So Carth knew, and had acknowledged in the presence of the tense, anxious crew, that the revelation must have been difficult for Revan, a woman who had lived for well over a year as a wholly different person. To suddenly be burdened with the knowledge that her past was not only different than she remembered, but that she carried the responsibility of the lives of millions of people on her shoulders couldn't be an easy thing. But that didn't change the fact that they were now making their way across the system to Sith planet, minus a crew member and the safety of the Jedi enclave on Dantooine, with the former Darth Revan and he had told her as much.

She was giving him a wide berth now, he knew. Though engaging in careful and intense discussions with the remainder of the crew, all she had had to say to him in days was a brief and sudden renewal of her promise to help Carth find his son once they landed on Korriban.

Korriban. The thought of such a place unnerved him. The thought of flying in for an extended stay with an amnesiac Sith Lord on a personal quest to destroy the current Sith hierarchy and the stranglehold they had on the Outer Rim made him queasy. Knowing that that same Sith Lord knew of a weakness in his defenses, knew his desperate need to find his son and that, if she so chose, she could turn that against him at any time made his blood run cold. That none of them had any choice but to go didn't help matters.

The Star Forge had to be found and they needed Revan to find it, so long as they could command her assistance. But turning her loose on Korriban with her memories fractured and her allegiances in question was an enormous risk, one Carth wasn't so sure he could take, even for the ostensible good of the galaxy.

He'd been staring at the same four walls for days and the cockpit was getting old, but he couldn't bring himself to stray from the rusty pilot's seat for more than the time it took to use the refresher and inhale some food. Monitoring the gauges was more than a little boring in a freighter class starship, particularly when navigating hyperspace routes. After a brief refuel on Nar Shadaa – a stopover that he had kept as brief as possible, sternly refusing Mission a "look around" - he'd punched up the jump to Korriban. Since then, there had been nothing to do but wait until they were within range of the planet.

And yet, he kept his vigil at the controls. The Leviathan had taken him by surprise, he reasoned with himself. He would not take the chance of being caught again, particularly now that Malak seemed to be holding all the cards. Carth wasn't sure Malak could track them through Bastila and Revan had refused to reveal their mission when Saul had tortured him, but he wasn't taking any chances in this game of Tabaga-and-Vrelt.

"You got a minute?" came a gruff voice from behind him.

Half-turning in the pilot's seat, Carth spotted Jolee just in the arch of the doorway, the glow from the monitors nearby casting him in a soft light that made him look older even than Carth suspected the man actually was.

"Sure, Jolee. What can I do for you?"

The former Jedi moved to the co-pilot's jump seat and Carth suppressed the thought of Bastila's plight. The others were sure that Malak wouldn't have killed the young Jedi padawan, but no one had needed to mention what Bastila might have to endure in the hands of the Sith Lord.

Jolee sat and heaved a sigh as though the journey from the door to the chair had been exhausting, though Carth knew this was mostly for effect. The older man had a certain fondness for the gravitas age seemed to lend him and only Revan ever bothered to cast a critical light on it, though in good-natured teasing.

"You can stop being a damned fool, for starters."

"What?!"

Carth's head twisted sharply to look at the old hermit, a look of sheer consternation crossing his features.

"You've been throwing a hissy fit for days now, kid, and it's about time you started getting your act together."

"Getting my act together…? Jolee, my concerns are legitimate here. Our whole mission is in jeopardy because of what happened back on the Leviathan and what's more, the whole Republic is in danger because of what the Jedi Council has done."

"While I'm not going to argue that the Council always makes the right decision, Revan is the only real Knight they've got left anymore."

Carth frowned at the remark. Surely there were Jedi Knights still around? Jolee noticed the look.

"All the rest fell or disappeared," explained the older man. After a pause, he grunted in a little cough of laughter. "Or they're little runts without a clue about real warfare, like Bastila Shan. Revan was a gamble they had to take."

"And what if Revan falls? She was a Sith when they wiped her mind; who's to say that all of that's not still lurking in there, waiting to be triggered again? The galaxy won't survive!"

Jolee sighed, leaning back in his seat and looking out at the streaks of light passing stars and systems made in hyperspace. His voice was tired and distant in reply.

"The galaxy has taken more of beating than you can possibly imagine and will survive long after you're gone, Carth." Turning towards him again, Jolee adopted a tone of censure as he continued, "And the dark side isn't like some virus – it's a choice, an addiction once you're in too deep, but a choice nonetheless. Revan won't fall again unless she chooses to."

Carth crossed his arms over his chest, ignoring the little jump his stomach made. False hopes and wishes were for the young and naïve. Carth was neither.

"She chose it before. What's to stop her from choosing that way again when more of her memories return?"

The older man snorted grumpily.

"Then that's your problem."

"What?" Carth jumped, his arms falling to his sides again, the reply so unexpected.

"Look, kid. You made a promise back there on Manaan, and I may be old, but my hearing's not all the way gone just yet." Jolee fixed him with a stern glare, "You had an idea of what was coming and you promised you'd help her."

"I didn't know she…" Carth started, exasperated and tense. The older man was poking a little too close to an open wound the Republic soldier was studiously ignoring.

"Was called something else before you met her?" Jolee grunted, cutting off the younger man. "Bah! Let me tell you what I told Revan not so long ago: don't put so much importance in names, son. They're nothing but a way of categorizing something to make it easier to understand. You gotta let people be, kid. Otherwise you're just color coding bantha."

"And what about the Dark Side?" Carth cried. "Even a child knows that the galaxy's not as simple as that. There has to be justice for the crimes people commit. You can't just let everyone run around without taking responsibility for what they've done"

"What is it with you young people and not listening? What makes you think justice is all about blasters or court rooms? Killing Saul didn't really solve your problems, did it? All his death did was quench your bloodlust. Saul still died an evil man and all you managed to do was to keep him from inflicting himself upon any more people. Justice indeed."

Carth flinched in irritation. Killing Saul had been the right thing to do. It had avenged the death of his wife and the loss of his son. That he wasn't really at peace didn't matter. Peace would come in time, once the reality of it sunk in. He was sure of it.

Jolee continued, unconcerned by Carth's discomfort.

"And amnesia doesn't make you any less the person you were, anymore than running away or pretending something never happened does. What matters – much more than whatever history you may have – is how you deal with it. Zaalbar was a madclaw and now he's got some rusty vibroblade strapped to his back that says he's the next leader of his people. So Revan was a Sith Lord. Before that she was the most promising and determined Jedi Knight the galaxy had seen in years. Now, what she will become? Well, I couldn't tell you that, but if you care for that girl at all or even just care about what happens to the rest of us, you'll honor that promise you made to help her, because Force knows she's going to need it for where we're going next."

The old Jedi let that hang in the air between them for a few moments, then grunted and coughed roughly. "That better have helped," he grumbled crankily as he rose from the jump seat in a dramatic show of stiffness and age-weakened muscles. "Because now I'm tired and my throat's dry."

A ping from the navicomputer brought Carth's attention back to the ship, as the Ebon Hawk was now in range of Korriban and needed to be eased out of lightspeed so they could begin landing procedures.

Jolee managed a parting shot at the door to the cockpit before wandering back up the hallway to the hold, "You owe me a drink on Dreshdae, kid."

TBC in Part Two