Chapter Text
3964 BBY, Tatooine
8 years before the events of Knights of the Old Republic
Revan
The earth shuddered beneath her and it roared with a deafening cry in her ears, but Revan was mute to it all.
She stood still, her hands taut at her temples, focusing her mind’s eye on images that flashed before her consciousness as the world around her began to crumble. Her physical self, now distant and almost unfeeling, wavered under the concerned weight of a familiar hand - Alek - pleading with her to move, to save herself.
But the Force coursed through her, flashing images before her eager eyes almost too quickly for her to comprehend, but urgent enough to block out the world around her which was fast falling into chaos. A father and child descended into the caverns beneath the sands where she stood, standing before an altar not seen for millennia where an ancient crystal cache called to passersby, like a whisper of sand in the wind, beckoning, waiting, repeating its call – untouched and pristine – shrouded with some sweet, dark sorcery that drew them nearer… but then entered two bright figures, swathed in light and angel-esque, who took the child by the hand, eyeing the altar with wary eyes as they left the father to die, fallen victim to a poisoned mind, like so many others before him. Boots crunch over their bones.
“Revan, please,” Alek’s voice found her from a million miles away, pleading. Revan’s eyes shot open, all movement a mere kaleidoscope of images focusing into one as her mind reconciled the vision still clear in her memory. She inhaled, closing her eyes tight once more, stamping the images on the backs of her eyelids as reminders before they trickled away with forgetting. When she opened her eyes, her saber was at the ready and Alek was at her side.
She hazarded a glance at her partner, all wide eyes and raised eyebrows. His icy blue stare implored her, asking without words if she was alright.
Revan nodded, remembering the small child and the darkness she found with her father just beneath the sand they stood on.
Revan charged, vowing to never forget what she saw. It was unlike the vision she had during the decimation of Cathar, it was unlike what she felt when she and Alek found the ancient Star Maps, and yet somehow it factored into all of this. A bookmarked memory, to investigate at a later date. As she opened her eyes to the scene unfolding before her, she opened herself to the Force, still unaware of just how much of herself she would hand over to it in the name of peace and justice in the end.
3955 BBY, Telos IV
One year after Revan saved the Republic
Nevarra Draal, nee Revan
“You can’t remember anything else?”
“Nothing,” Nevarra sighed. With her eyes still shut, she held onto tethers of images, ghosts of a memory. A girl touting the name Revan and her father, nameless and without shape, stood as entities before an ancient altar all those years ago in some forsaken cave buried in the desert. Ghosts from a past life she was not entirely sure was her own. They felt like memories, but were they implanted or otherwise? She had no answers.
She had been piecing herself together since the encounter with Malak on the Leviathan, picking and choosing which bits of her old and new selves felt right and which parts deserved to stay. In the aftermath, Carth was the calm and steady force that stayed her, but she knew there was much she still could not remember - much that she needed to remember. The anxiety was crippling. She was a ghost in her own living skin, and she feared what her old self may have kept from those close to her, never expecting that her own memories, her own agency, would ever be ripped away from her.
Carth insisted on staying up with her most nights, helping her figure out which memories were hers and where they belonged, but most importantly he supported her in deciding which memories were worth keeping. Since her Jedi reconditioning, Nevarra was tempted to settle into the false security of this second chance, to start over and settle down. But that was a fleeting thing. No, she could not stay idle - how could she? Not when she knew just how much was at stake. But the key to figuring out what to do next remained hidden in the murky depths of her own memory, phantom trinkets submerged and disguised, awaiting her conscious hand at the bottom of a fathomless ocean to be unearthed and rediscovered, plucked from obscurity and made real again.
From the darkness of her closed lids, the Force held still in her memory, Nevarra felt the gentle probing of Carth’s comforting hands at her wrists, coaxing her into the comfort of his presence - away from who she used to be, away from Revan. A faint smile spread across her lips at the feel of him, bringing herself out of the memory, making sure to anchor its imprint in her mind for future reference.
“It’s alright if you can’t. Just remember that,” Carth told her, his voice even, though still laced with the tempered frustration of a man lacking sleep. She could see it in his face: eyes lined with dark indigo shadows, blinking every few moments to keep himself from drifting off himself. But she knew he wouldn’t, not when she still found sleep so seldom. He would not abandon his post.
Her hands began to react to the warmth of his touch as Carth kneaded her fingers, tingling, as if they had been sleeping prior to Carth’s innocent probing.
“I think I should be the one telling you that,” she sighed, hearing the tiredness in her own voice. Even to herself her voice felt hollow, strained and in much need of sleep. “I’ve kept you up long enough.”
Carth resigned, looking proud of her, at least, but feigning to completely mask his relief at being formally allowed to rest. “You’ve made progress,” he said as optimistically as his voice would allow, grating low and soft into a slight yawn, “or at least, it sounds like you have.”
Nevarra laughed silently to herself, chuckling at Carth’s inability to sleep when she could not and at his need to hear her say it before he went back to rest without her. He didn’t have to stay up with her, he knew that and she reminded him, but she never pushed it. She still enjoyed how eager he was to take care of her in any small way, despite her not needing saving. He liked feeling useful, he wanted to help, and even if she said and felt that it was fine that he sleep, she knew he would never rest easy until he felt he had done his part.
Carth still hovered on the threshold to their shared bedroom, lingering between the soft light of their living area and the dense shadow of their unlit chambers. His heavy-lidded eyes watched her, waiting. She felt weighted to the chair she sat in, sunken as if her thoughts anchored her here, but Carth was always so convincing when he was most tired, most unwilling to fight and most likely to surrender to sleep like an overeager puppy who denies he has worn himself out.
The image of a girl and her father at the site of the ancient altar remained in the back of her mind. The weight of it lifted as she gathered her wits to switch gears, to turn her mind to slumber, to rest for but a moment until she would undoubtedly set course for Coruscant to see the one person who may know more about her visions come morning… whether Carth was awake to tell her how he felt about the whole thing, or not.