Author Notes: I can't believe how little time it took me to write this! I hope you all enjoy, this is my first ever fanfic, read and review and such.
Thanks: To Heart of the Guardian from Bioware forums for helping me edit. Thanks to Agharo from Carth Community for edit & support & reminding me of my old creative writing teacher. I'll add more when story has progressed.
Disclaimer: Say I look anything like George Lucas and I'll rip your eyes out with my bare hands. You don't deserve to be making judgments like that. D: Translation? Star Wars and everything related to it ain't mine.
It had only taken a few words from his previous mentor to shatter Carth's entire world, and few more to rub it in his face.
"You didn't know, did you? Eheh…" Saul was choking on his own vocal cords and all he wanted to do was make fun of Carth.
At that moment, the pilot wanted more than anything to beat Saul silly, except he had his damned sense of morality to stay his hand from hurting the dying – Saul was at his lowest anyway. He was lying to hurt Carth even beyond his death, the spiteful schutta… But why… Why lie about that? Of all the things he could have said…
"No. No. It's not true, it can't be… Damn you, Saul, damn you!"
But in his words rang some truth. It would explain why the Jedi trained her at her age (not that she was old or anything), and why she trained so quickly. But it did not explain her current behaviors. Did most Dark Lords of the Sith toss credits around to the poor and plagued by those in power? Usually the Sith Lord was the one in power, plaguing the poor. Besides all this were Carth's emotions, dancing around him and clashing against each other towards a nearly dizzying effect.
He tried to shake it off as he got up and turned towards Bastila, who regarded him with pity, but caution. "You knew, didn't you? You and the whole damned Jedi Council!"
"What, what did he say, Carth?" Elizabeth asked him, appearing by all means innocent. Did she think to toy with him? She was worse than Saul – she had been pretending this whole time. After he had told her so much, after he had begun to… No. He waved his thoughts away like they were an annoying bug.
"Carth, we had no choice. You must understand. We'd wiped her memory so that…" Bastila paused, seemed to think, and then spoke again. "We can't speak of this now; we have to get off this ship. I promise, I'll explain everything." She was pleading to him with her eyes and her tone, and he let in.
"Yeah, well, I'll hold you to that," he murmured. He used the nearby console to unlock the hangar before sulking out of the command center, a quiet Bastila and confused Elizabeth in tow.
Elizabeth glanced at the back of Carth's head every few seconds, as if doing that could help her sense his thoughts or what Saul could have possibly said beyond her being of Malak's bloodline that could have upset him so much. She didn't like to see him upset, despite that mood's way of furrowing his brow in an adorable manner, and she got the feeling this was a very, very big deal to him. Bastila tossed her an unreadable look over her shoulder.
Elizabeth jogged to the head of the group. They made their way through several rooms of Sith captains, soldiers, and a few dark Jedi until they came to a series of blast doors. She was about to proceed when the door directly in front of them opened, and Elizabeth hopped back, startled. Malak himself, the Dark Lord of the Sith, emerged from the door into the red-tinted hallway.
"Down you go!" Carth shouted immediately, shooting Malak with his blasters, only to be promptly thrown back with a force push. Elizabeth glared at Malak and drew her lightsaber. No one force pushed her flyboy.
She had not expected to see Malak here, though she did know he was coming, she had hoped they would escape to the Ebon Hawk in time and spare them from this delightful little meeting. She supposed she'd been dazed by the general idea that the Jedi were infallible. That everything right that could happen would happen to them. That most certainly didn't apply to her.
"Malak, I will end this." Elizabeth said, snapping back to attention after her brief thought train. That always happened. When she was thinking, her head floated off to another galaxy, and it wasn't always so easy to get it back. "You will be stopped." One way or another.
"What a pleasant reunion." Malak replied, leering at her. "I knew you were not dead, but to become a Jedi, Revan? A pity, your potential was great." He smirked at her with his eyes, his jaw not being capable of doing so.
There was a stunner. "Revan? What are you talking about you… You grey-skinned… g-gizka tail?!" My insulting abilities have been drained away on Carth. So much for that. He's probably laughing at me.
In truth Carth was furious. And thoroughly robbed of my dignity, he thought as he stood up, rubbing the back of his head. Blinded with contempt for Saul and Malak… And Elizabeth, too. If she had known that she might not have beaten Malak – in a sense, anyway.
"You really don't know? What pleasure it gives me to be the one to reveal it to you, then." Malak raised his hand, and Elizabeth felt waves of dizziness hitting her. She tried to resist it, but she really wanted to know what Malak was talking about. She let in, figuring if he was wrapped up with giving her the visions it would be okay to be wrapped up with receiving them. Just for a while. Her eyes rolled up as the images and memories descended upon her.
"They say the force can do terrible things to a mind. It can wipe away your memories and destroy your very identity."
"I am afraid this mission shall lead you down an all too familiar path…"
"We do not usually take adults for training, but this is a special case."
And Revan, black robes and bloodstone mask, poised with dignity, oozing dark power like a festering wound, removing her mask…
Elizabeth's face was there- but it couldn't be… Could it? But the visions… and the council's words…
Before the vision left her, Elizabeth easily decided her thoughts on the matter– she simply was not who she used to be. The mind-wipe (what Bastila had been talking about earlier, she now realized) had only helped that, greatly, admittedly, but undeniably, where there was once only hunger and anger and hate, dark and burning, there was now caring, good, down to her veins. She had passions, yes, but she had already decided that the Jedi were very wrong about passions, about love. Some could lead to an inspiration, a sense of goodness, a purpose, which nothing else could. She knew that fairly well. So that was it. She was not Revan, she was Elizabeth. End of story. She couldn't even remember being Revan. Surely that counted for something?
Then the visions lifted and Malak stood there again, as smug looking as a man with half a face could be. How did he talk like that, anyway? Elizabeth wondered.
"So. I'm Revan, eh? Huh…" she sighed and lit her lightsaber, the blue blade of the Jedi Guardian adding a purple hue to the blast tunnels.
Malak looked at her incredulously. "That is it? You were not known before to be so… uncaring about your position."
He would be all high about his new status. He'd certainly made a big show of it, blowing up every world in sight, or as he liked to call it, "wiping the planet from the face of the galaxy". He probably considered himself some sort of pimple-prevention alcohol pad. Wipe away the pimple worlds in only a few minutes!
Elizabeth shook her head. "Malak… I'm not really that way anymore. I'm just not. So, tell you what- This is your chance to give up this life, baldy – the Jedi may show mercy if you give up now, ne?"
Malak laughed. "Mercy? Is that what you call that mind-wipe? They took your very identity, Revan, your prestigious position, to turn you into a slave of the Jedi Code, to further their own ambitions. You call that mercy?"
"And you call a dark lord prestigious? Did they hit your brain giving you those crazy-ass tattoos?" Oh yes. Go me.
"Rev- Elizabeth, you're okay with this?" Bastila asked. "Y-you do know we… We had to do it. They couldn't kill you."
"Of course I understand. And I forgive you."
"You truly have grown weak, Revan," Malak said, lighting his 'saber. "We have power, I have power, more than you will ever now know – because we revel in our passions, instead of turning them aside – peace is a lie, it could never be, and in a place where peace can not exist, it is pointless to try and bring it about. You must play the game to win, and you won't get anywhere by showing mercy for those who are weak."
"No, Malak. You're wrong. Peace can be achieved, but there are too many evil bantha-heads running around in red jumpsuits and raggedy half capes for it to be an easy job on us." There we go. Back on my game again, Elizabeth thought, smiling to herself.
"And that is why you will die here, Revan."
"Excuse me, not Reva-!" Elizabeth rushed to block Malak's attack with her own lightsaber. He caught her off-guard, but she struck at him as he put Bastila and Carth in a stasis, and he barely had time to dodge a would-be 'nick' to the shoulder.
Malak struck again, using hard, generally aimed blows instead of quick, precise ones. Revan had been the master tactician, after all. But they were both skilled with the lightsaber, and each blow was matched nearly equally.
Elizabeth watched for weaknesses in his technique as he fought her, which mostly resembled Shii-cho in its simplicity… Her problem was that Malak was practically made for that form, his lightsaber included: the hilt was thick, larger than most, matching his own physical stature.
As the two did battle so did the colors on the walls, alternating red and purple every few moments. Elizabeth was quicker than Malak, and although he was good at his form she was beginning to gain the upper hand, and Malak was growing angry. He raised a hand and red lightning shot from it, lobbing his previous master on the chest and sucking away her very life to feed it to him – force drain. He drained her until she fell to her knees on the floor.
She groaned and held her head, but realizing her danger she leapt at him before he had a chance to take advantage of her position. Elizabeth threw a punch to his gut, then hopped backwards and force healed herself as he held his stomach and fought the vertigo. She stood still, unwilling to strike a helpless opponent, as he was only too ready to do.
Malak glared daggers at her as he stood up straight again. "Do NOT hold back on me, Revan. It is demeaning!"
"Stop calling me Revan!" It was enough already that the name held this terrible feeling in it, like a scar being cut over again, and she could feel Malak's dark power tugging at every part of her, calling her, crooning and promising terrible things…
"You cannot deny who you are!" Malak lashed out at her with force lightning, but she channeled it away from her with her 'saber and lunged forward to strike at him again. They began trading blows again, neck-at-neck, until it got to the point where Elizabeth could anticipate where Malak would next strike, and block accordingly, and know when he would be open for a counter-strike. It was becoming increasingly obvious that Elizabeth was winning and Malak was tiring, when suddenly he turned and fled, the blast door shutting and locking behind him.
Elizabeth stared after him in disbelief. Did he just run from me? Did he really just run away from a fight? She hesitated for a moment, then chased after him through another blast door.
It took her a while to get to Malak, but there he was, in the center chamber. "Why did you run?" Elizabeth shouted.
"To see if you would follow me. You did. And you will." Malak lit his lightsaber again, and again they fought. It was getting a bit repetitive to her. The same strokes and counter strokes, the flash and blaze of energy… She thought she was beginning to remember… When she had watched over him as he constructed it – she had guided him through it, step-by-step, and watched as he ignited it for the first time…
Then Bastila burst through the blast door to her left, Carth behind her. "Elizabeth, Carth, RUN!" she shouted, lighting her yellow double-bladed 'saber and stepping towards Malak. "It's me he wants."
Carth grabbed Elizabeth's arm and pulled her away, and the blast door slammed shut. The sounds of lightsabers clashing came from behind it. Carth pulled Elizabeth's arm again, but she resisted.
"NO! We have to go back for Bastila!" she shouted.
"There isn't any time! We need to get back to the Ebon Hawk!" Carth grasped her shoulders and forcefully guided her away from Malak and Bastila, to the hangar doors just beyond the blast tunnels. She resisted for a few moments, then ran to the Ebon Hawk, Carth close behind. The boarding ramp lifted and closed after them, and the Hawk rose and flew from the hanger of the Leviathan.