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Chapter Text

Revan watched the strange opera in front of her with fascination. The Mon Calamari hadn't even been part of the Republic back in her day, so this was the first time she had been exposed to their art. Their already hyperspace-capable culture had come into contact with the Republic just a couple centuries before she was born, if she remembered correctly.

"I have thought on your problem," she said softly.

"And?"

She took a sip of her wine before answering her colleague.

"There are advantages to having an apprentice who's mostly sane, you know," she said wryly, wincing a little bit at the memories that subject brought up. Malak hadn't been sane after he'd turned completely to the dark side by any stretch of the imagination, and both she and the galaxy had paid for that. "Anakin's so impulsive, violent and idealistic at the same time, that when he turns to the dark side, he'll go off the deep end fast if he's not handled carefully. We're all vulnerable when we first turn, but people with his temperament, even more so."

"I assume you speak from personal experience, Lord Revan?" Lord Sidious said with somewhat contemptuous amusement, but it was more than obvious to someone as good at reading people as Revan was that he was lashing out—in a very civilized way, of course—to cover up his anger at the truth in her answer, and perhaps even more importantly, his own inability to notice the fatal flaw in his plans for Anakin without help. Like any true Sith, this man disliked relying on anyone, Revan could tell, and this situation was as far outside of his comfort-zone as it was for her, though for much different reasons.

She took a deep breath and let her own anger die out, praying for patience. It wouldn't do to rip out the Supreme Chancellor's throat with so many witnesses present, after all.

"I was young—under thirty, at the time—when I turned my apprentice. An excuse you don't have, I might add. But you're right; Malak was similar to Anakin in many ways. He was full of so much rage, but at the same time, so...so idealistic, that once I pushed him into doing something that he thought he could never be forgiven for, there was no reasoning with him, and the valuable warrior I had dreamed of having for my apprentice in the first place was destroyed.

"But Malak wasn't the only one I saw affected in this way. During the first year of the Jedi Civil War alone, we captured and converted hundreds of Jedi. We discovered that the quickest way to get them to fall—besides brainwashing them with the Force, a tricky proposition, at best—was to coerce them into attacking who or what they cared about the most, but though that bought their loyalty very quickly because it insured they had no one left but the Sith to turn to, it also sometimes had the side- effect of turning them into berserkers who self-destructed at the first opportunity. If you wanted them to last past their first real battle with a Jedi, you couldn't let them fall quite that far, at least at first.

"If Anakin kills his own wife, for instance, he is going to hate himself at least on some level, and that will affect his ability to protect himself. He'll become more reckless in any duels he gets into with former comrades, and might even blatantly try to commit suicide on their blades. The same goes for if you order him to kill children. Most Jedi, even after they've already betrayed everything they believed in, will go insane for a little while after they're ordered to kill small children."

Blank incomprehension shown in Chancellor Palpatine's pale blue eyes, probably the most guileless expression she had ever seen from him.

"Why? I would think they would be grateful for the opportunity to rid themselves of such emotional weakness."

She shook her head, barely restraining herself from rolling her eyes. Even though she had eventually learned to rid herself of the weaker human emotions, she had once possessed them. She was starting to doubt that Sidious ever had. Revan encountered Sith like that occasionally. Though the dark side tended to come very easily to them, they were at more of a disadvantage than other Sith when it came to understanding certain aspects of human nature.

"Some Sith don't think of their concern for a select few types of people as a weakness when they've just joined our order," she explained patiently, thinking of some of the students, both before and after the Jedi's attempted mind-wipe, that she had met at the Sith academy. "I grew up in a warzone, so I'm an exception. I learned very early that innocence has nothing to do with whether or not you're killed when an invading army decides to bomb the hell out of your planet. Most people don't have that kind of perspective. Even fewer are born with it." She gave him a wry sidelong glance and took another sip of her aged-to-perfection Alderaanian wine. Say what you want about the monster beside her, he at least had good taste when it came to matters of cuisine and culture. "It has to be cultivated slowly even after they have made a commitment to the dark side, or else they'll lose their minds to power, self hatred, or both. Some of them still do, even if you do everything right."

Palpatine went silent for a moment, and because his face was turned slightly away from her and she couldn't see his expression, at first she didn't notice his anger.

"...So that is the extent of your advice? To induct him into our order more slowly, but even after I take every precaution, the disastrous future I have foreseen still might not be averted?" he said with an unusual lack of composure, scorn dripping from every word.

"Wishing you had resurrected a different Sith Lord?" she asked snidely.

"Perhaps Exar Khun would have given me less useless advice."

"He would probably tell you to turn Anakin by getting him drunk on the power of Sith Holocrons. Unfortunately, that really didn't do much for his followers' sanity either, so if you want your apprentice to be less insane, I wouldn't go that route. On the other hand, he might have told you how to create monsters with Sith Alchemy," she said wryly.

As a redirection technique, it was pretty see-through, especially for a career politician like Palpatine, but it would be amusing to see his reaction, nonetheless.

Palpatine narrowed his eyes at her in consternation, reluctantly allowing himself to be diverted most likely due to the sheer curiosity she could see shining out of his eyes.

"You wouldn't— "

"No. Those things are a nuisance, especially Terentateks. Besides, wouldn't they be of limited value to you at this point? You are pretending to be a mostly harmless politician, as far as I can tell. Depending on how long you're planning on keeping up your play-acting, it might be a little hard to explain to your adoring public why you're keeping a bunch of ancient Dark Side monsters as pets."

He narrowed his eyes at her in annoyance.

"You really think you're clever, don't you?"

"Was that a real question?"

"Why wouldn't I want to know how to create the ancient Sithspawn? To expand my own knowledge, at least, even if I can't make use of them in my war against the Jedi."

Revan stared at him. She swore that if Sidious was any less cultured he would have declared that he wanted an army of fanged monsters because it was awesome. This conversation was proving to be even more amusing than she had anticipated.

To be fair to Sidious, though, the little kid in her definitely agreed with him: it was awesome. There was just no way she was sharing her knowledge of alchemy with someone who, though he wasn't even Emperor of the Known Galaxy yet, she was fairly sure was already a little power-mad. Certain areas of alchemy made it all too easy to do things like blow up planets and stars, and giving that knowledge to someone who might put more value in the kind of power-rush such a demonstration would give him than the practical value that kind of weapon would have for the defense of his empire could be disastrous. Besides, the man already knew enough of the forgotten arts to bring people back from the dead. There was no way she was going to give him the knowledge to become even more dangerous when he could turn on her at any moment like the perfect Sith he thought himself to be.

"I'm not teaching you how to make them," she said firmly, feeling absurdly like a mom denying a child a favorite toy, which was just wrong.

"So you're even more useless than I thought you were."

She snorted.

"Right. As for that being the extent of my advice, forgive me if I ape the Jedi and council patience. Given the length of time you must have waited to get to this point in your plan, I would have thought you'd have an abundance of it."

"I normally do," he said tightly. "But to receive such a vivid premonition of decades of my plans for Skywalker being destroyed in an instant, and all because of the boy's foolish pride —"

"And yours." She saw his eyes narrow at her in renewed indignation, and she held up her hand to forestall a response. "Like Malak was destroyed by mine. I was too immersed in the Dark Side by that time to realize that what I asked him to do would destroy him, and the same blindness cripples you. It is the price we pay for harnessing such power, and a risk we must learn to live with. I am merely telling you what my mistake was, so you won't make the same one." She smiled wryly. "The extent of my advice is this: when you send him to kill Jedi, as I'm assuming you eventually will, make sure you order him to spare any younglings. They could be easily brainwashed and turned into valuable agents for the Sith, and your new apprentice will be all the more stable for not being ordered to kill children under five during his first day with the Sith order."

Palpatine nodded after a moment's consideration.

"Not unreasonable, I suppose," he said grudgingly. Revan stifled the urge to applaud sarcastically at him for finally coming to that conclusion, but it was a close thing.

"Now tell me more about the opera we're watching," she said calmly, leaning forward and watching the unearthly effects with fascination while slowly deciphering the melodic Mon Calamari language. She didn't want to distract the performers by ripping the language from their minds, so she was forced to learn it the old-fashioned way. "You were saying it's a tragedy?"

He paused for a second, just looking at her with deceptively calm consideration. However, from the yellow glint in his eyes and the emotions that he was—faintly, due to heavy shielding— projecting into the Force, he was most likely deciding between luring her away from this public venue to torture her so he could deal with what was left of his anger, and satisfying her curiosity. Eventually, he seemed to decide on the prudent route, and leaned back in his seat, entering what Revan knew from personal experience was lecture-mode.

"For a given value of tragedy. The Mon Calamari aren't, as a species, very prone to the darker emotions," he said with some disdain. "More admirably, they're not all that given to realism, even when portraying historical events." She took in the flashes of color and arias that were accompanied by different wavelengths of soft, rolling light. "This particular opera is about the death of beauty in the midst of war. It's set several centuries ago, when the Mon Calamari were attacked by their neighboring species, the Quarren. That...rather obscure historical setting actually has some relevance with today's audience because the Quarren recently joined the CIS in the Clone Wars, betraying their loyalist neighbors..."

Chapter Text

Revan cursed and held her lightsaber at the ready when she felt the presence of several Jedi close in on their location, having responded to some type of silent alarm.

“Somebody restrain her!  They were going to kill me!  They would have succeeded, too, but then suddenly, they started to duel each other.  I don’t—I don’t know why,” Sidious—no, Chancellor Palpatine, said to the Jedi when they arrived, falling into the role of frightened civilian with ease.  He had hidden his lightsaber up one of his wide sleeves and was pressing himself against the far wall as if trying to get as far away from her as possible.

The Jedi looked around the Chancellor’s destroyed office with alarm, raising their lightsabers defensively when they saw a winded Revan leaning on the opposite wall with a disengaged but drawn lightsaber.  Dammit.  While she had expected Sidious to turn on her eventually, she hadn’t expected him to have the gall to get the Jedi involved.  Though the fight had been fairly evenly matched so far, he had tried to use the advantage of surprise to end it quickly, and had likely known that he could not overpower her in a protracted duel.  Sidious was powerful, but so much knowledge of the Force had been lost over the years, and he very well knew how much knowledge she was hiding from him.  Though she had been too surprised by the attack to try this at first, all she would have had to do was render herself completely invisible to his senses, and he would have been done for.  Perhaps, he had thought that provoking his enemies into fighting each other gave him a better chance of surviving whoever was left. It probably had never occurred to him that this encounter could end in any way but with one or more of his enemies dead, especially since he had just told the Jedi that she had come here to kill their Chancellor.  She would just have to make sure that it wouldn’t turn out the way he planned.  The enemy of an enemy was a friend, after all. 

“There was a second attacker?  Where is he?” A tall, dark skinned human Jedi Master asked, moving to stand protectively between Revan and Sidious with his lightsaber raised and foolishly presenting his back to the other Sith Lord.  She very pointedly lowered her weapon in response.  He raised his eyebrows slightly at the action, but relaxed his stance a little, she was relieved to notice.

“I—I don’t know.  He must have sensed you before you came, because he knocked her away from him and fled not a minute before you got here.”

The Jedi Master cursed and snapped orders into his com to search for a trained Force-sensitive attacker that might still be within the Senate building.   

“I had decided to spend the night in my office, because I only had time for about three hours of sleep before I had to get back to work,” Palpatine continued.  “When I woke up, this woman was arguing with a masked man in the far corner of my office, and then they began dueling and throwing lightning at each other.  I think she called him Darth Sidious.  I didn’t hear him use any titles like that when addressing her, but…they were both using red lightsabers.  Does that mean that she’s one of these Sith, as well?”

“Possible, it is,” the small Master who appeared to be the same species as Vandar said.

“Then why were they fighting each other?”

“Nature of the Sith it is to turn on each other,” he said evenly, eyeing Revan shrewdly while sparing only a small amount of his focus for Sidious.  How thrilling it must have been for the other Sith Lord to stand in front of his most powerful enemies without giving them any idea of who he was.

 “Well, I’m glad, because if they hadn’t started to fight, I doubt I would have heard them come in on time to sound the alarm if either of them came here to kill me.”

Revan took a moment to carefully craft what she would say, since she could not currently tell the Jedi the truth of Sidious’ identity due to the binding ritual he had performed on her when he had resurrected her.  Until she could work on weakening his hold on her, she was essentially gagged.  That did not mean that she could not let Sidious know the grave mistake he had made in crossing her, however.

“Rest assured, Chancellor, I was not planning to kill you when I came here.  And it is only the weakest Sith who don’t know how to honor alliances with each other, because they let the dark side control them instead of controlling the dark side,” she added, turning to address the small Jedi, though her words were still pointedly directed at Sidious.  “The feeling of power and invulnerability they get from so completely submerging themselves in their baser instincts leads them to forget about the long-term consequences that can come from betraying their allies.”

“Very true, though think, I did not, that there were any Sith that understood that.”

“Sith philosophy has historically been as widely debated as the Jedi’s.  Sidious has blinded himself with foolish extremism, I’m afraid.  That doesn’t mean we are all so short-sighted.”

“Then admit, you do, to being part of their outlawed order?”

“Would there be any use denying it?  It seems that your Chancellor has caught me red handed,” she said cheekily, waving her still deactivated lightsaber for emphasis.  It took the tall human Jedi a moment to get it, but then he gave her an incredulous look, as if unable to believe that even a Sith would stoop to making such a horrible pun.  She could almost hear him think—caught red handed, and…she’s holding a red lightsaber in her hand, oh, Force have mercy.  The smaller master’s eyes crinkled in amusement, apparently secretly evil enough to enjoy her sense of humor.  “Besides, all I am guilty of is being a member of a religious order that opposes the Jedi.  I have no intention of attacking the Republic or the Jedi, assuming they refrain from attacking me, first.”

“You seriously expect us to believe that as a Sith, you have absolutely no intention of harming any Jedi,” the human master said, his deep voice thick with incredulity.

“Well, not anymore, no,” she said, surprising herself when she realized that, though she had thought it was a lie when she had said it, it rang surprisingly true.  So many things that she would have once cared deeply about before spending thousands of years as a shade of the dark side seemed so distant, now, and her hatred for the Jedi was one of those things. These weren’t the Jedi who had wronged her, in any case.  She still despised the weakness they represented and disagreed with their philosophy, but she didn’t hate these modern Jedi enough to want them dead.  That was a sentiment she would reserve especially for Sidious.

“Why here, were you, if not to kill the Chancellor?”

“I was here because Sidious came here—for reasons that he did not bother to share with me.  I do not think that he expected the Chancellor to be here late at night, so it might have been to steal information,” she invented.  “He performed a ritual on me that bound my essence to his in some way, and I have been working with him under duress.” 

“Has control over your free will, does he?”

“No.  By ‘bound my essence to his’, I meant that he….” she winced, knowing how ridiculous this would sound, “resurrected me by tying his Force presence to mine with a ritual and dragging me from the afterlife.  If he dies, I do, too, though not the other way around, due to…the nature of the ritual he used.  Strangely, he thought that would cause me to hesitate if he attacked me.  He forgets that I have experienced death already, and it holds no mysteries for me.  I never hesitated to risk my life even before I died.  I don’t know why he thinks that would stop me, now.” 

It had been her refusal to surrender herself to the light side and ask for forgiveness she did not need, not a fear of death, that had resulted in her becoming a dark side shade rather than becoming fully one with the Force.  It would still be seen as a moral failing to some, yes, but at least it was not one born from cowardice. 

“Impossible, that is,” Yoda breathed.

Revan shivered, recalling the loneliness of her chosen afterlife, how she had come so close to wanting peace after spending centuries as a mere echo of who she had been in life, but had realized it was too late.

 “If only,” she said quietly.  “Search your feelings, Jedi, and you will know that what I’m saying is true.”

Yoda flattened his ears to his head and narrowed his eyes at her with a level of perceptiveness that left her feeling laid bare.  He shook his head in amazement.

"Able to surprise me, the wonders of the Force still are, even after all these years,” he said. 

“Master Yoda, you can’t mean that you believe this nonsense!” Palpatine cut in. 

“Impossible things tend to become only improbable when the Force is involved,” the human master said with barely concealed amazement. “I can feel the truth in her words, too.” 

“Willing to work with us against Sidious, would you be?”

Revan smiled wryly. It wasn’t as if she had any allies in this time period.  If she was able to convince the Jedi to give her access to their archives, she might be able to find some information that would help her figure out how to break the control the other Sith had on her.  Besides, she would be damned—again—if she did what Sidious wanted and killed his enemies for him, or got herself killed in a duel with them.

“Natural enemies, our orders may be.  But no one betrays me and gets away with it.” She looked straight at Sidious.  “For a chance at revenge, I would be willing to cooperate with even the Jedi.”

Palpatine’s blue-grey eyes went flinty and cold.

“Very well.  I will have my interrogation specialists interview her.  No offense, Masters, but whether she is telling the truth about her…origins or not, she is obviously untrustworthy.  It would be best if there was someone on hand that was capable of making sure that every word coming out of her mouth was the truth,” he said with a small, humorless smile.

Yoda’s eyes narrowed.

“A Jedi matter, this is.  Capable of holding her, your cells are not.  Holding cells, have we, built specifically for housing Force-sensitive prisoners.  Escape, she would, from your prisons within minutes.”

“Then my agents will just have to interrogate her at your Temple.”

“Not allowed, are any Republic forces within the Jedi Temple.  No jurisdiction, have you, there.  A matter of treaty, this is.”

“Perhaps, in the interest of preserving good relations between the Jedi and the Republic, that could be overlooked just this once.  She attacked me in my office, in case you fail to recall!”

“Attack you, did she, Chancellor, or attack Darth Sidious?” Yoda said sharply.  “Thinking clearly, you must not be, right now.  Understand, I do, that you are frightened, but recall, you must, what she said before.  Here against her will, she was.  Felt the truth in her words, I did.  Believe her, I do.”

Palpatine glared at the tiny Jedi Master, livid.

“Come with us, she will.  Poses no danger to you, does she, Chancellor.”  Calmly, he turned back to Revan.

“What called, are you?”

Revan smirked, unable to hide her glee at how easily Yoda had put Sidious in his place, whether he knew what he had done, or not.

“The name that history most likely knows me by is Darth Revan.”

Chapter Text

 When Yoda and Mace had commed Obi-Wan at a Force-forsaken hour of the morning, and told him to be ready in the Council room to coordinate backup because someone had hit the alarm in the Chancellor’s office, he had waited in tense confusion with the rest of his forces until their return, feeling woefully underprepared by the lack of information Yoda and Mace seemed to have been able to gather about the potential threat. If it had been one of their usual enemies from this war, such as Grevious, more information would have been relayed by the Chancellor's security system when the alarm had gone off, and they would have better been able to prepare.  As it was, the facial recognition scans from the cameras outside the Chancellor's office had evidently not come up with any matches from known enemies, and so Obi-Wan could only hope that the reinforcements he had gathered to counter this new threat would be enough, if they were called upon. 

When the two senior Council members had returned to the Temple with a woman who felt more powerful with the dark side than any Sith he had ever met, Yoda had first refused to tell him anything but that the immediate threat had passed, and then had given him the seemingly arbitrary instructions to do research on an ancient Sith Lord and prepare a report on him before convening to a meeting of the full Jedi Council in an hour.  Needless to say, the Grandmaster’s mysterious behavior certainly hadn’t decreased his curiosity about the situation, any.  Obi-Wan frowned in thought as he glanced from the masked figure pictured on the screen to what biographical data that they had on the ancient Dark Lord, fruitlessly trying to work out how the ancient history he was reading, though admittedly interesting, could be relevant to dealing with whatever threat to the modern Republic that Yoda and Mace had dealt with today. 

Names and Titles: Revan Nevarre; Jedi Knight [former]; Grand Admiral of the Republic [former]; The Revanchist; Head of House Navarre, ruling family of Deralian planetary government [defunct]; Darth Revan; Lord of Conquest; Dark Lord of the Sith; Commander in Chief of the Sith Empire [defunct]

Birth Planet: Deralia

Status: MIA, presumed dead.

Birthdate: Unknown

Gender: Unknown

Species: Human

Wait, Obi-Wan thought, that makes no sense.  If it was known that Darth Revan was human from Deralia, why wouldn’t they know his gender?  And speaking of not knowing his gender, wouldn’t being called “Dark lord of the Sith” and “Lord of Conquest” imply that he was male?  Unless Sith titles didn’t work that way, and female Dark Lords were never referred to as Dark Ladies.  He supposed that was possible.  Female officers in the military were referred to as “sir” instead of “ma’am” by their subordinates, after all, and the Sith were, though not exclusively a military organization, an extremely martial one.  Sighing, he decided that he was just going to continue referring to Revan as male unless he found out otherwise.  Thinking or saying "he or she", or never using pronouns at all when referring to him, would just be a headache, and a lot more Dark Lords had been male than female, so the assumption was probably a safe one.

Scanning further down into the more detailed biographical information, Obi-Wan furrowed his brow in confusion.  There wasn’t any early biographical information from Revan’s life prior to the Mandalorian wars besides the listed birth planet, the fact that it had been almost completely destroyed in a Mandalorian assault before Revan had been found by the Jedi Order as a child, and his status as the only surviving member of some important Deralian noble family.  It seemed that any information about the Dark Lord between the time he had joined the Order three months after the destruction of Deralia, and his involvement in the Mandalorian wars, had been lost.  There wasn’t even a picture of him from before he started wearing that mask, which, to Obi-Wan, was even more suspicious. 

It was true that, given the amount of time that had passed, information surrounding the Dark Lord might have just been lost but…why was everything from one specific twenty-year gap in his life missing?  Why not everything else that had been known about Revan, too?  He supposed that most of the information on pre-war Revan could have been stored in a separate database from everything else, but what kind of sense did that make?  The information loss was so thorough, but confined to one specific time-period, that it seemed almost deliberate. 

Obi-Wan sighed, feeling foolish that he was wasting time trying to solve a four-thousand-year-old mystery, because unless some ancient Jedi or Revan himself came back from the dead and explained things to him, he doubted he would be able to figure out anything that the last four thousand years’ worth of historians hadn’t already thought of. 

He read with horror about the Cathar genocide, Revan's official reason for intervening in the Mandalorian conflict (even though it was apparent to Obi-Wan that Revan must have been looking for any excuse to enter that fight, given what had happened to his homeworld), then skimmed through the extensive list of battles he had been involved in with less interest until he got to the end, when he read with astonishment that Revan and several other Jedi Commanders had been charged by the Republic with war crimes after the battle of Mandalor V.  Only one of those Commanders had reported back to the Jedi Council to face justice, however, and Revan had vanished with the others, along with a third of the ships and crew of the Republic Navy, into the Unknown Regions of the galaxy.  When he and his armada had reappeared a year later, Revan and the rest of the Jedi who had gone to war with him had fallen fully to the Dark Side, and were intent on conquering the galaxy they had once sought to protect.  He again skimmed through the details of the ensuing war, knowing from experience that any war, but especially one with the Sith, would just be a list of horror after horror, until came to the relevant events preceding Revan's defeat.

Biographical data: late Jedi Civil War era

A brilliant military strategist and leader, Revan nevertheless faced betrayal from subordinates like all Dark Lords, and Darth Malak, Revan’s most powerful apprentice, fired upon his master’s ship when it was boarded by a team of Jedi and Republic soldiers in the middle of a pitched battle.  It was thought that Malak sought to kill both his master and the Jedi Padawan Bastila Shan in the attack.  Though only a Padawan, Shan was extremely talented at the lost art of Battle Meditation and responsible for nearly halting the Sith Empire’s advance during the last few months of the Jedi Civil War.  Many analysts of the time believed that the Sith would have advanced into the Core Worlds if it had not been for her intervention.

Motives for betrayal besides adherence to Sith tradition included the obvious envy, but also possibly fear.  Revan was the most powerful Jedi of the generation, and had become adept at many esoteric dark side powers after becoming a Sith Lord, including different forms of mental manipulation and brainwashing, and Sith Alchemy and Sorcery.  It is unlikely that Malak could have usurped Revan, as is expected of apprentices, without the element of surprise.

Revan was grievously injured but not killed by Darth Malak’s attack, however, and, after saving Revan’s life, Bastila Shan brought Revan back to the Jedi Council to face justice.  Not believing that the Dark Lord would help them willingly, the Jedi Council made the difficult decision to erase most of Revan’s autobiographical memories and overwrite the Sith Lord’s personality with a more compliant one, so that Bastila Shan, who had accidently formed a strong Force bond with Revan while healing the Dark Lord, could search Revan’s more deeply buried memories for information about the war effort without resistance. 

“What?!”

“Shhh!” Master Nu, the Order’s archivist hissed, but he barely heard her, not able to do anything for the moment but gape at the screen in front of him.  Had the Jedi of that time been mad?  He understood that they had been desperate, but erasing someone’s entire identity sounded like a dark side power, especially since they had done it to ensure that Revan couldn’t fight off their psychic attacks.  Not only that, but the whole plan sounded entirely too complicated to work out the way they wanted it to.  So many things could have gone wrong.  

His eyes went back to the screen, and he began skimming the page faster than he had done before. He had to see if a plan that stupid had actually worked.

And…no, it hadn’t. Surprise, surprise.  Evidently, though it seemed like the so-called “identity overwrite” had worked perfectly at first, as soon as Revan had been transferred to a Republic vessel to embark on his first assignment under his new cover identity, he had escaped on a freighter just before the Endar Spire had jumped to hyperspace, killing everyone in his Jedi guard except Bastila Shan in the process. He had then proceeded to gather his remaining allies within his empire, infiltrate Malak’s ship, and kill him, taking back his mantel as Dark Lord of the Sith within a matter of weeks. 

With Revan back in charge of his forces, the Republic might have fallen within the next year, if Revan had not taken a large portion of his fleet to meet a mysterious threat on the outer rim only two months after retaking his title as Dark Lord, and vanished.  Only the fragments of some of his ships had been found, though not enough to account for all of them, and the high-ranking Sith officers that had been captured had told the Republic that they had lost contact with Revan’s flagship and all accompanying vessels only five days after they had left.  No one who had been left behind, besides some of the Sith Lords on the Dark Council, including Revan’s former Jedi Master, Darth Traya, had been aware of the nature of their mission, and all of them had been killed either in the war or by infighting before they could be captured by the Republic and interrogated about it. 

Darth Revan had disappeared completely, never to be heard from again.  Well, that explained his “missing, presumed dead” status, despite the fact that the Sith Lord had to have died of old age, at the very least, four thousand years ago.  Republic investigators had never been able to piece together enough evidence to figure out what exactly had happened.  While the remains of over fifty ships had been found, including the remains of alien vessels no one had ever seen before, Revan’s ship had not been among them, and it had been like the infamous traitor and former hero of the Republic had just vanished. 

Not only that, but from what little evidence that had been left behind, the most plausible theory anyone had been able to come up with was that he had died or been captured while defending the galaxy from an unknown outside threat great enough to take out a good portion of the Sith fleet in one battle. The Sith Lord, previously near universally loathed for his traitorous actions by Republic loyalists, had gone down in Republic history as one of its most highly contested, controversial figures, and opinions on his true character ranged from an irredeemable monster to a misunderstood hero fighting against some mysterious enemy.  The whole thing had been prime fodder for both conspiracy theorists and historians throughout the years, it seemed, and there were people today who were still fascinated enough by the four-thousand-year-old mystery that they devoted their lives to searching for evidence of what happened to the ancient Sith Lord and the 50,000 Sith crew members that had vanished with him. 

Fascinating mystery, of course, but he still didn’t see how this could be related to the incident today.  Taking one last look at the screen, he downloaded the information he had gathered, and went to meet the rest of the Jedi Council. 

Before he could even leave the archives, however, he was met by Master Yoda, who was standing right inside the entrance hall.  His brow furrowed in confusion, and he looked at his chrono.

“I’m not late,” he said before he could stop himself, only realizing after he’d said it that he sounded like he was afraid of being scolded by the wizened Master like some unruly Padawan. Meeting Master Yoda’s twinkling eyes, he had a feeling that he knew exactly what he was thinking.

“Need to worry, you do not, Master Kenobi.  Fifteen minutes early, are you still.  Thought, I did, that I would come down to see if you were ready now.  The rest of the Council has already arrived, and leave her alone for too long, we should not.”

“Who is she, Master Yoda?  Is she working with Sidious?”

“Working with Sidious, she is not. Discuss this further, we will, in front of the full Council, along with her identity. Far more unusual a person than just another apprentice of Darth Sidious’, have we found.”

**

"How is this possible?" Obi-Wan exclaimed, gaping at Yoda and Mace along with all of the other Council members, knowing that he was merely giving voice to what they were all thinking, even though some of them were taking in this new development with more composure than he was.  He stared blankly down at the picture of the masked figure of Darth Revan on his datapad, having just related his report about the ancient Sith Lord to the rest of the Council, only to be told by the usually-not-insane Master Yoda that the prisoner he had seen earlier was Revan and that she was apparently not as dead as she had been previously. Not only that, but she seemed to know who Darth Sidious was, even if she suspiciously could not tell them, at this time. 

"Tell us, Revan did, that Sidious used an unknown dark side ritual to resurrect her that tied her presence to his with the Force and tore her from the afterlife." 

"That...excuse me, Master, but while I suppose that should have clarified things for me, your explanation only made all this seem less possible."

"Unbelievable, it sounds, but felt the truth in the Force when she told me, I did.  Otherwise, believe her, I would not.  Has a way, the Force does, of making seemingly impossible things possible."

"Yes, but, Master...telekinesis is one thing.  Raising the dead is quite another."

Yoda huffed impatiently.

"Always limited in your imagination, you have been.  Doubt me, you should not."

He recoiled a little bit at the uncharacteristic criticism, but then shook himself, and looked uncertainly at Mace, unsure of what would be a delicate way to ask him if he had witnessed the same things as their Grandmaster had, or if someone had drugged Yoda.

When Mace's lips twitched in what might have been poorly concealed amusement, Obi-Wan had time to think, Oh no, didn't shield my thoughts well enough, and if Mace heard that, then Yoda certainly did, before Mace nodded his head in a way that told him he was backing Yoda up.

"Unbelievable it may seem, but I felt the same thing in the Force.  She was telling the truth."

"But if the Sith were able to hide themselves from us for so long, then surely, they know techniques to keep us from sensing their lies," Plo Koon interjected quietly.  Obi-Wan felt a surge of gratitude for the other Master.  While Koon was not wearing his skepticism nearly as openly as Obi-Wan, at this point, he could always be counted on for level-headed assessments of a situation, and likely wanted to be sure that they had considered this problem from all possible angles.

"True, that is," Master Yoda conceded to the other Master, giving Obi-Wan no outward sign as to whether or not he had heard him wondering if he was currently inebriated, "but while I was speaking to Revan, the Force was also telling me that I could trust her," he said, looking more troubled than confused by that, frowning thoughtfully.  "Far more difficult, it would be, to imitate the Force's guidance, in such a way."

"Then why do you look so unsettled?"

"While getting information about Darth Sidious from the Chancellor and Revan, felt the truth of both of their words in the Force, I did.  But while the Force told me to trust her, warned me, it did, that something disastrous would have happened if I had released Revan into the custody of the Chancellor and his guards."

"Given the way the Chancellor reacted when you told him that we were taking her with us, the warning was obviously just on time.  But then that begs the question: Why would a Sith Lord be in danger from a Force-blind politician?" Mace said grimly.

"Or in danger from someone in his circle?"

Obi-wan narrowed his eyes in thought.

"Palpatine seemed unusually insistent that she should be in his custody, not ours?" he said, looking for clarification.

"He was, yes," Yoda said.

"So you think he was concerned about what she could tell us about Sidious."

Yoda hmmed in consideration.

"Possible, it might be, that the Chancellor was just acting irrationally because he had recently been attacked, and bind her to silence with the ritual he performed, Sidious has.  But said, you did, that she possessed skill in esoteric Sith magic.  Break his hold on her eventually, I think she could, and then able to tell us everything, she would be.  If realized that, we have, then Sidious certainly must have.  Possible, it is, that either Sidious instructed the Chancellor to keep her in his custody before he fled, or Palpatine is simply cautious enough to try to gain custody of her despite the fact that she is bound to silence."

“Or, the Chancellor could just have enough knowledge of Sith rituals to understand that she might eventually be able to free herself of this one,” Mace added grimly.  “Why would he tell us that Darth Sidious attacked him in his office if he is working with Darth Sidious, and most likely spent a lot of time hiding any connection between himself and the Sith Lord?  Strategically, it doesn’t make any sense.  It would make more sense that either there is no willing alliance between the Chancellor and Sidious, or…the Chancellor is Darth Sidious,” the other Council members gasped, “and when he started losing his duel with Revan, he hoped that we would kill her for him when he summoned us,” he said, looking directly to Yoda for his opinion on this, as he was the only other person who had seen the Chancellor’s reactions in person.

Yoda frowned in thought.

“Possible, it also is, that caught, the Chancellor was, directly in the middle of the confrontation between Revan and Sidious and grew frightened, or that he was instructed by Darth Sidious to contact us, because Sidious was losing the fight, as you said, and wanted the Chancellor’s guards and the Jedi to act as a distraction so he could get away.  Ask Revan about this, I must.”

"Are we...are we actually considering that the Chancellor, not just someone in his inner circle, could be the Sith behind this war?" Obi-Wan asked with not a little trepidation.

"In an ideal spot to manipulate both sides, he would be, but spent a lot of time around Jedi over the years, he has.  Find it hard to believe, I do, that he wouldn't have let his disguise falter at least once around a Jedi given the amount of time he has spent around us.  Find it more likely, I still do, that Sidious is one of his close advisors or friends that we do not have as much contact with."

"But if your theory of why he really wanted Revan is right, the Chancellor is, at the very least, willingly working with Darth Sidious, not just a victim of his manipulation."

Mace nodded grimly.

"Unfortunately.  And I am still not completely convinced that the Chancellor isn’t the Sith we’re looking for."

“Not completely convinced that he is, am I, but plan for the worst, we should.  Find evidence of the Chancellor’s connection Sidious, whoever he may be, and to the Separatist side of this war, we would have to, in order to gain Senate support for his removal from office.  A start, it would be, to narrow down the people who could be Sidious besides the Chancellor.  Even if the Chancellor is Darth Sidious, anyone in his life may have acted as intermediaries for him at some point, and should be investigated,” Yoda said, and the other Council members nodded in agreement.

Master Fisto frowned in thought.

"We know all of his advisors, and they are already on the list of suspects, but what about friends, family?" he asked.  “Have we looked into them?”

"No need to look into his family, there was.  Died, his entire family did when young, he was.  Some type of accident, I believe was involved."

"What about friends?"

“Palpatine has made many friends in the Senate over the years," Mace said.  "We have investigated them all.”

“No, no, those are just political allies.  What about people he chooses to spend time with for fun?”

There was dead silence in the Council chamber.

"Has anyone ever seen or heard of him socializing with someone when it didn't involve work?"

"...Anakin Skywalker."

"So, as we can all probably agree that Skywalker isn't Darth Sidious, as that would mean he would have had to been manipulating things on a galactic scale since he was nine, can anyone think of someone else that the Chancellor seems to like to spend time with when he's not working in some way?" Kit Fisto said dryly.

There was once again silence in the chamber as the members frowned thoughtfully, several of the Masters' expressions becoming slightly worried or disturbed when they realized that it appeared that the Chancellor had no friends in the world but an emotionally unstable, twenty-one-year-old Jedi Knight.

A worried Yoda turned to Obi-Wan.

"If Anakin is the Chancellor's only friend, say something that may about Darth Sidious' interest in your former apprentice.  Go to him, you must, and make sure that he doesn't answer any summons from the Chancellor.  If he must, and the Chancellor orders Anakin to meet him, go with him, and notify us before you leave."

Obi-Wan's stomach churned at the thought that he might have let his Padawan keep the company of someone who was much more sinister than a corrupt politician for so many years. 

"Right away."

"Masters Windu and Koon: start searching through the Chancellor's life for an indication of any close personal friendships besides his connection with Skywalker."

"And if it turns out he doesn't have any contact with people outside his capacity as Chancellor besides Skywalker?"

"Then tell us much about him by itself, it will," Yoda said grimly.  "Go check on our prisoner, I must, to see if she can now tell me about-"

Yoda was cut off as there was suddenly a sharp warning in the Force, and all of the Jedi in the Chamber flinched.  What followed was an unleashed wave of sickening dark side energy of a strength that Obi-Wan had never felt before.  Giving each other alarmed looks, the Council members who were actually there in person and not attending the meeting over holo took off as fast as they could towards the holding cells.  

He only hoped that they would be able to come to Revan’s aid before Sidious had the chance to kill the only witness the Jedi had to his true identity.