The True Sith-19

Title: The True Sith
Author: Heroes Die
Game: KotOR
Character: Revan
Disclaimer: Everything here belongs to the all-awesome Bioware

Chapter 19

Revan understood on some distant level that she was dreaming. The events were fuzzy, her mind conjuring from events past.

She was striding through metal corridors, the tension of a recent battle cramping her muscles, the smell of blasters and scorched metal and meat itching in her nose. She felt her lightsaber dangling on her belt. Her hair was shorter than she ever remembered it being, barely longer than most human males were required to wear it in the Republic military. Revan was moving quickly through the empty corridors with purpose, like she was looking for someone, so she let the dream take her where it would.

She finally seemed to reach whatever destination the dream had for her, a door sliding open as she approached the end of the hall, the large room behind showing a row of transparisteel panels that gave a view of a city in turmoil, a man silhouetted against its light. She couldn't help think that she knew him. His silhouette and the way he stood…

The man turned, a strand of hair falling against his eyes, and her heart nearly threw itself out of her chest. It was Carth!

Revan wanted to run to him, throw her arms around him and say how much she had missed him, but her dream wouldn't respond to her commands. In fact, Carth didn't even seem to know who she was: only a vague look of acknowledgement showed that he expected her. He turned his head back to the view outside. Revan now recognized it as Taris. Carth said something about thanking her for giving him the chance to defend his home against the Sith. She didn't know what he was talking about and decided maybe she should just ask, even if it was a dream. Instead she uttered something about Grenn wanting her to meet with him. Who was Grenn? Revan hadn't ever known him.

Carth now turned to look at her with more focus on the present. He said he'd read her records and knew how she had been sentenced by the Jedi for doing what she believed, and she understood at least that. Revan had been sentenced for her crimes. But now his eyes swam with a tattered hope, a wish that he dared not utter for fear of breaking some spell. And he said, "You wandered past the Outer Rim during your exile. I ask you…did you find any trace of Revan?"

Suddenly she understood. This was no dream. It was a vision. Through someone else's eyes she was seeing an encounter with Carth which meant he had made it back to the Republic. She wanted to scream out through this body, tell him that she was alive, but instead, what came from her vision's mouth took all hope from Carth's eyes.

"No. I didn't see her again," her host's body said, the male voice touching off some recognition. Revan knew the man Carth was speaking to…vaguely. It was too hard to summon enough clear thought to identify the voice.

Carth turned his head away from her, staring out to Taris's ravaged surface. The vision went hazy then, and she couldn't tell what was said for some time. Revan was only able to focus on Carth, gazing at his pained brown eyes staring at the city he had twice watched burn, her heart aching in her chest at not being able to reach him through this host to tell him she was okay, and he didn't need to worry. After their discussion petered out, the vision cleared up from its haze, and the voices returned. Carth was finishing his thoughts, "I haven't seen her in four years…If you find some trace of Revan…"

Four years? She didn't know what to think about that. By her estimation it should have been barely a month since they had seen each other. Was this a vision of the future? And why was Carth talking to this person about her? Was he trying to send someone out to find her, hoping to bring her back to the Republic? No, he knew she needed to do this alone. Who was this man she was seeing through?

Her host spoke quietly into the silence. "Do you want me to tell you what I find?"

Carth's response was quick. "No."

Revan felt slightly hurt but breathed a sigh of relief. He couldn't keep holding onto the hope that she would come back.

Carth looked through the glass, gazing past the burning landscape of the city, the planet and the stars, lost to a hope. "Simply tell her that Carth Onasi is waiting for her."

Everything grew murky after that, and Revan tried to fight off the darkness leaching into her eyes and dragging her away from Carth…but she couldn't hold on…

*****

Revan was buried in darkness. She was sure it was her tomb, a living death that had snatched her body and sunk it so deep into the earth that nothing existed around her or in her.

She had to be dead.

She couldn't feel anything. It wasn't that she couldn't feel her arms because of inactivity or that she was weak—Revan could feel nothing. There was nothing in her or around her in the Force. There was no Force. It didn't exist. So she had to be dead.

But even in death, I'm supposed to become a part of the Force…this is wrong…

And then thoughts started coming to her through the ocean of black, thoughts of the True Sith and a promise that if the Force took her body it would take them with her.

I have to be dead.

The darkness sucked her back down and banished thought, banished feeling and emotion so she was floating in nothing and nothing was around her and she was nothing. There was only darkness. Darkness was nothing. That's how it was as long as the darkness had her, and so time had no meaning where there was nothing to count the passing of eternal night and there were no more thoughts about Carth or tapping into another vision or thoughts of escape because where would she escape to? The dark is infinite just as the night is eternal.

But it seemed like the dark lessened as eons passed, a dawn filling her horizon, her mind coming to life but her flesh still dead. There was no sensation. At least her mind was awakening, thoughts forming themselves and gathering into a resemblance of sense and order. With the ability of clear thought however, came the lucid sensation of panic.

Dead people can't come back to life.

And if I'm not dead…then why can't I touch the Force?

The horizon continued to brighten until all thoughts were clear and all emotion unlocked. Her heart was beating against her chest with a fury she had rarely encountered in her life, eyes scanning the lightening horizon with furtive sweeps, fingers cramping as they slowly curled in and out. Pain rolled through her as dawn burst into day, her muscles strung, cramped, her head ached, her throat and mouth didn't know the meaning of water anymore, and her stomach crawled. Instinctively, Revan's body wanted to curl up to seek protection from the pain. Nothing resulted from her efforts except various twitching that sent muscles cramping, and her throat tightened with the extra hurt.

Revan realized her eyes were clamped tight against the day, and so she agonizingly peeled them back in order to view this new awakening.

Although the room was dark, her eyes revolted at the scant light, piercing her retinas like newborn stars to space. Her eyelids rolled up and down her eyes like dried petals. With new resolve, Revan tried again to sit up and succeeded only in shifting her shoulder across the hard surface she lay on. She closed her eyes and tried to still her heart and steady her quick, shallow breathing with the Force…There was nothing to reach for. There was no Force. The world was dead around her.

Instead of dwelling on that thought and feeding her panic, Revan tossed her eyes around the room. Black chiseled walls. Black floor. One ancient glowrod propped against a wall. A door to her left. The black table she was lying on. The ceiling that faded into black, just like the rest of the bleak room. She was somewhere, and she was alive.

A moan choked itself out of her throat. Then the Force failed. It didn't take my body…it just drained me and dropped what was left for the Sith to pick through.

Her eyes shot open and her heart started thudded sickeningly again. Which means they're still alive. And they have me.

She wanted to curl her hand into a fist and pound it on the stone under her, but her body was too weak, and the fingers just twitched lamely. She wanted to scream at them, at anyone or anything, but her throat made no sound. But most of all…Revan wanted the Force. How could there be nothing around her? Even if her surroundings were dead, surely she would be able to interact with her own body. The Force was everywhere. It couldn't disappear…

The sound of groaning stone made her heart jump and her head twist painfully to her left. Revan hadn't felt anything coming. There was nothing where a presence was obviously approaching…nothing at all. It had been able to approach without her feeling a thing. But what came from the open doorway pushed that thought far away, freezing her blood, chilling her body, and squeezing her heart in an iron fist.

It was the Sith—the same twisted, rotten form that had greeted her when she landed.

Its fingers still flicked from its sleeves, the dull glint of damp eyes barely visible under the heavy shadows from its hood as it lurched toward her. With a cant of its head its eyes bored into her, its voice and a thousand others suddenly pouring into her already overloaded head and words and sentences became one mess of thought that was impossible to unravel and she couldn't hold them back this time as they shrieked on and on and on…

Then the voices vacated, and her body jerked back down with taught muscles and bones aching from the invasion. And there had been nothing there to push them back. Nothing was her new universe because without the Force…

   "Please rest, Revan. Your body is not healthy enough to take the stress you are inflicting on it. I am afraid you will continue to damage yourself."

Revan realized then that she wasn't even bound to the table, only her own weakened body chaining her down. She concentrated all her efforts on restoring her body to health, but with no signs from the Force she had no idea if it was even working, and stared back at the Sith with glittering fire in her blue eyes. "I warned you once about underestimating me. I won't tell you a second time," she grated out. It felt like pieces of glass had shredded and then pierced her throat. She barely recognized her voice or the semblance of patchy words it had grated out.

The Sith's head twitched disconcertingly. "You are no longer a threat, Revan. Please rest."

"Just because I'm a little weak doesn't mean I can't fight back." A hint of trepidation clouded her voice underneath the glass painfully disfiguring her voice. They had no idea what they were saying. 'She wasn't a threat.' Hah. They were just trying to make her feel helpless so she would stop fighting them and give in, but not this time, there was no way she was going to—

The Sith's voice intruded on her thoughts. "You know what we mean, Revan. The Force is no longer open to you. We have closed the way."

Breath rushed from her lungs and dragged her broken and beaten back to the feet of the monster in front of her. She drowned in her lack of awareness, struggled against the absent weight crushing her chest.

The Force…

The Force hadn't left. It had been stripped from her as a punishment for her defiance. Was it even possible? Reason said yes but hope begged for a no. Revan shook her head slowly, the sensation in her neck as if it was being wrenched from her spine. "You couldn't…"

"Now you underestimate us. Do not forget our power, Revan. The power we still freely offer."

With eyes held shut, she searched herself desperately for the Force, convinced that they lied…Then slowly, oh so agonizingly slowly, convinced that they told the truth.

It was stripped from her. Absent. Completely apart from everything she had ever been. Blank.

And without the Force…what was she now? No Jedi. Just a human. Powerless against anything she now faced on this planet.

Revan growled at the cascades of helplessness drenching her spirit. There was no way that she was just going to give up. So what…so what if she could no longer touch the Force? It was just so empty…a whole existence gone dead.

She forced her eyes open, looked at the Sith without showing one of the deepest pains she had ever felt, and said, "I will never rejoin you, no matter what you do to me."

She watched as its fingers slowed their odd twitching under its sleeve, and it shuffled closer to her. "Perhaps you would reconsider—"

Revan started to laugh at their stupid persistence.

"—when you meet our new apprentice."

The laugh died, and her eyes darkened. Why should she care who they had nabbed for their next pawn? It didn't matter who it was or why they were chosen, they were all going to die. If she no longer had the Force then there was only one option left to her, one that she had relied on initially before the Force had told her it would take care of the True Sith. The markings on her skin were still ready and willing to do their job.

Revan gave a malicious smile. "I don't care who you've taken in. Nothing you say is going to change my mind."

There was a pause, and it seemed as if the room darkened around her. The specter let an odd grating sound come from its rotten mouth. Disappointment perhaps? "We had thought that you could not be fixed willingly. But you are too valuable to lose, our dear Revan. No matter if you refuse us now, we have secured your DNA so your abilities will not be lost."

"What? What the hell are you talking about?"

It nodded a few times which looked more mechanical than organic and shuffled back to the wall. "Humans are delicate, but human females can be most useful for transporting DNA. It took us a few months to understand how to harness this ability to our advantage, but the Force was able to create the other half of the missing DNA to form a full life. Unfortunately, the strain on your body was larger than we anticipated, and you have been made to sleep in order to correct this. Your progeny will be most willing to serve us in your stead."

***

It left her with food, water, and the assurances that it would allow a meeting with their apprentice before she was to be terminated. The meeting was for the apprentice's sake, not hers. Apparently, it had developed an attachment to her through the Force, and it would damage the young one if she were suddenly and inextricably severed from it.

Thoughts passed through her endlessly, but Revan was numb. To think that what they had done…It was impossible to create life simply by utilizing the Force, wasn't it?

And she…

They had used her. Bred her like an animal. It was her child in whatever abstract way or form it had happened in whatever way she wanted to acknowledge it. They had created a being from her DNA in order to ensure they kept her power, whether it was her body or not no longer mattered because the child would be an almost exact replica of her. They had the power they wanted from a willing body trained by them. A person, solely from her and the Force, raised by Sith.

She had been asleep for a total of four years of her life, but it seemed the blink of an eye to her. So that vision of Carth had been a vision of the present, not the future, still hoping that she would come back. It looked like she was never going to now.

And she had a child…

The thought slammed into her again, unfathomable and horrifying, the loose kind of fear born of incomprehension that choked the back of your mind in an inescapable black fog…but she still couldn't help thinking about it in some sort of disturbed curious way. Was it a boy or a girl? Brown hair? What colour of eyes? She was sick and numb, incredulous, but it had to be dealt with. If it was true—if it was absolutely painfully true—then there was a life out there that she was responsible for, that she had a duty to protect even if she could barely bring herself to believe this was real instead of a cruel, shocking joke.

They had actually managed to create life…using nothing but her half of DNA and letting the Force make up the rest.

Revan gulped down another mouthful of water and clenched her jaw, the food and drink pushing some strength back into her body. There was no way she was going to let them harm this child, no matter if it had been hers or not. It was a life undeservedly, cruelly already born under oppression, hate, and fear of the Sith. She was going to finish the job she came here to do, with or without the Force, and then she would get them off this dead planet and back to somewhere safe…

But where would she go? Back to Carth? How would she explain this when even she could barely bring herself to understand?

She shook her head. She would have to make it out of here alive first, something which was now almost impossible. Without the Force…It was like being struck dumb and deaf, then robbed of any ability to touch or sense anything, and left with only your sight to make up for the loss. It was staggering. Disorienting.

With a glance at the black art on her arms she was reminded of the last hope she had to do this, and also of the toll; it would work if she got the opportunity, but Revan wasn't ever going to be the same again. It might kill her.

These things and others occupied her mind for as long as it took to finish the meal and the Sith to fetch her for the meeting. The small amount of sustenance she had been provided however, would never be able to make up for years of inactivity no matter what the Sith had done to keep her body in the relatively good shape she was in, and she found that, although she begged her body to, it wouldn't walk more than a step without a shudder and a threat of collapsing. But the Sith solved that easily enough. With a simple call to the Dark Side, strength was injected like a fierce stimulant into her body, just enough to get her moving and talking without becoming a danger. With that accomplished, it took her silently through endless shadowed hallways, whispers running through her mind as the presences of the True Sith followed her through their ancient domain, and even though these whispers crowded her mind with their constant inane chatter, all her thoughts were focused on the child, seeing if she could feel him or her through the Force…even though she knew she couldn't. Thoughts whirled in cycles through her mind: there was a child of her DNA; the True Sith were going to kill her after this; she was meeting her child; how had they kept the child alive in this place; she had to kill the Sith; she had to escape; would the child be…

This was usually where the thoughts stopped and started the loop again, Revan hesitant to face the possibility. But if the child had been raised by Sith, from birth…then…would it be possible to save the child, or would he or she be irrevocably changed?

Would she have to leave the child? Or would it come to worse than that?

The Sith's incessant shuffling over the stone floor stilled, and her head drifted up as the sound diminished. It gestured through an open door for her to continue. Revan took a deep, steadying breath, and limped inside.