The Many Faces of Revan

Delah gazed at the body sprawled on the floor at her feet. Bastila's eyes stared up at her, traces of disbelief still boring into her. Part of her still couldn't understand what had just happened. Had she really just given up everything? She had defeated Malak, and would have taken her place as the Lord of the Sith. She could have conquered the galaxy. Was that really what she had wanted?

Her gaze traveled down to the wound in Bastila's stomach. A small perfect hole, the cloth of Bastila's robes charred at the edges. The wound she had inflicted. Thoughts whirled through her head like a tornado, but if there was one thing she knew above all else, it was that this was the right decision. She only wished she had made it sooner. Then her friends. . . Mission. . . Jolee. . . Juhani. They would still be alive.

She turned to face Carth, tears pooling in her sky blue eyes. He was watching her, his gaze filled with concern and love. She couldn't imagine how he could possibly still love her, after all of the things she had done. She let her lightsaber drop from her hand, and it fell to the ground with a metallic clatter. She walked to him, away from Bastila's body.

"You need to go." She said, her voice barely above a whisper. Already she could feel the tremors, as the Star Forge came under full attack. Without Bastila's battle meditation, the Republic fleet was pulling through, though it was still against impressive odds. It wouldn't take long for them to destroy the main stabilizers, and after that happened, this whole place would be destroyed. Carth needed to leave fast.

"I'm not leaving you, Delah."

"You have to Carth." She pleaded. "You can still live, you can have a new life."

"No, I can't. I can't start over, not again. If I lose you then my life will be worthless."

"Please, if you don't leave now then you'll die!" Why couldn't he understand? Did he think she had any choice to leave or not? She couldn't leave this place. Not after betraying the Republic again. Carth's eyes said it all though. He wouldn't leave, and she knew she couldn't make him. She turned her gaze to the Ebon Hawk. Canderous was standing on the loading ramp, and she could see T3 and HK standing behind him.

"We aren't coming." Carth said. "You should get out of here before this entire place is destroyed. Canderous raised an eyebrow in surprise, but he nodded and snapped off a salute before retreating into the Hawk. Delah took Carth's hand in her own, as they watched the ship take off for safety. She sighed as if left the hanger, eliminating any chance that Carth had of survival.

"You sure you know what you're doing, flyboy?" She asked. The old nickname came naturally to her. "There's still a chance we could find another ship in one of the other hangers."

"I know what I'm doing." He said, facing her. A sad smile came to his face. "It won't be long now." The floor began to shake, as if that sentence had been its cue. It knocked Delah and Carth to the floor. Behind them, a support beam fell from the hanger ceiling, crashing with a loud bang. They crawled to the fallen beam, and sat with their backs against it. We're going to die here. Delah thought. That didn't bother her. Suddenly, death didn't sound so bad.

She didn't think she could live with herself after all of the things she had done. To make things worse, she had begun to remember things from before. Back when she had been Revan, and had been a general in the Mandalorian Wars, and after her fall to the Dark side. She had some vague inkling of something that had scared her. Something she had been trying to stop. She couldn't remember what it was exactly, but whatever it had been it would have been a threat to the entire galaxy.

That didn't matter anymore. Even if she did remember what it was, it was too late to tell anyone about it now. Yes, she decided that she was at peace with her death. She only wished that Carth could have escaped. The Star Forge continued to tremble, and she could see flames coming from the elevator shaft. Carth wrapped his arms around her, to keep her steady. She leaned into his chest. He was wearing that old orange jacket again.

Funny, she had used to hate that jacket. But she couldn't imagine him without it. There was a bang, louder then anything she had ever heard before, and she could feel the vibrations from it throughout her entire body. And then darkness.

---

She was lying on something cold. A rough, uneven surface. It felt rocky. A searing pain split her skull. Slowly, Delah opened her eyes. She was lying on the floor in some sort of cave, lit by a few glow panels that hung from its low ceiling. Was she dead? She was surrounded by a group of people she had never seen before, yet all of them looked strangely familiar. She scanned the crowd for Carth. If she was dead, then he should be here too.

No matter where she looked, she couldn't spot his orange jacket. Everyone here looked confused. They were looking around, and murmuring to one another. Was this what life was like after you died? You were sent to live in caves on some rocky planet?

"Excuse me. I would like to have your attention." An amplified voice came from the back of the cave. Delah turned her head to see who had spoken. Standing on a large rock was a woman with long black hair, and flashing green eyes. She was dressed in a grey robe, and had her hands on her hips as she surveyed the throng of people before her. Like most of the others, she seemed oddly familiar, though Delah was certain she had never met her before.

Standing next to the rock, also watching the crowd was another woman. This one had light, wavy brown hair that hung to her waist, and lavender colored eyes. The woman on the rock spoke again. She must have been using the Force to make her voice louder. Or maybe one could simply do things like that when they were dead.

"I'm sure you must all be wondering what you are doing here. I will explain that to you, but first let me introduce myself. My name is Revan." There were shouts of dismay from everyone, Delah included.

"No, I'm Revan." She shouted to the woman, and was surprised to hear her protest echoed by many of the others. What was going on? The woman on the rock waited for a moment until the shouting had died down. Now everyone was studying one another in confusion.

"Yes, I know. We can't all be Revan, can we? To simplify things, you can refer to me as Tavi Nodock, the other name I go by. Chances are, all of you have other names that you go by as well. Now before you all interrupt me again, please allow me to explain. Believe it or not, we are all Revan. We are all from different dimensions." Delah raised an eye brow. What was this woman talking about?

"You don't believe me? I know certain things about all of you. I know that everyone here had their memories erased after Darth Malak betrayed them, and the Jedi council reprogrammed a new identity into all of you. You later joined the Republic fleet for whatever reason, and were stationed on a ship called the Endar Spire. The Spire crashed above the world of Taris, and you escaped with a soldier named Carth Onasi.

"You would later save Bastila Shan, and be trained as a Jedi again. And later you would learn the truth of your identity. Sounds familiar?" Everyone was listening to her now, and all of the murmuring had stopped.

"How do you know all of this?" Asked a man near Delah.

"I know this, because the same thing happened to me. As I've already said, you are all from different dimensions. All of you are Revan, only a different version. How our life could have happened."

"But look at all of us!" Said a woman near the front. Her eyes were yellow, and her once blonde hair was nearly white. "We don't look the same. Some of us are men!" Others agreed nodding and whispering to themselves.

"You are right. We are not all the same. We are not copies of one another. Imagine for a minuet your entire life. Now think about what could have happened if things turned out differently. If you had made other choices, or certain things hadn't happened to you. Everyone who you see around you are what would have happened. You are obviously a Dark Sider." Tavi said, pointing the woman with the yellow eyes.
"There are others here who are as well, but many of us are not. No, we don't look the same, but you may have noticed that everyone here looks some what familiar to you. Take a closer look, and you'll see why." There was a long pause as everyone turned to face one another. Delah studied the face of a man who stood next to her. At first glance he looked like a stranger who she might have seen in passing once.

As she looked longer though, she noticed for the first time what made him look so familiar. His features, were nearly the same as her own. The shape of the nose. . . The set of the eyes. She turned to study others. Many of the other people were of a different gender, or had a different skin color. Not all had the same features that she shared with the other man, but there was always something. It was almost like looking at herself in the mirror, dressed up as someone else.

"If you still don't believe me, we can have tests done. You would find that, although our DNA does not match each other exactly, it would be close. As if we were all brothers or sisters." As Delah looked closer at Tavi, and began to notice similarities there as well.

"Suppose we do believe what you're saying. Why are we here?" Someone else from within the crowd asked.

"Most of you have been in the Unknown Regions, searching for the True Sith. There are different motivations for everyone, but I believe I am right in saying that everyone here wants them destroyed." Now Delah was confused. The True Sith? Some where in the back of her mind, the name set of alarm bells. Everyone else present seemed to understand. There were nods and shouts of agreement.

"I have brought all of you here to make an offer. You are all working to destroy the True Sith, but you are working by yourselves. It is like trying to tear down a mountain with your bare hands. There are many more Revans, with their own dimensions, but I've only brought those that wish to destroy the True Sith here."

"And how did you bring us here?" Asked the woman with the yellow eyes.

"It is a complicated process, and I will try to explain later. For now, this is my proposition. While you are outside of your home dimension, it will freeze in time, and you will cease to age. I ask for your help. I want you to help me bring down the True Sith in my dimension, and then I will help you bring them down in yours. Those of you who do not wish to participate may go back to your home dimensions, but you won't receive help from any of us." There was more talking.

"Any one who wishes to return home must step forward now."

"Wait!" Delah said. "I don't understand. I've never heard of the True Sith before."

"Are you Delah Gray?" Tavi asked.

"Yes." She said. How did she know that? Then again if she was able to pull her out of her own dimension, then that didn't really matter.

"You are a special case. If you'll come over here, I'll explain this to you shortly." Delah stepped over to the side of the rock. The woman with the lavender eyes smiled at her encouragingly. A horrible thought came to her. If she was in a different dimension, then she wasn't dead! And Carth. . .

"Now, will anyone who wishes to return home please step forward." Delah watched as a small group formed in front of the rock.

"Are you sure about this?" The woman with the lavender eyes asked. The small group nodded resolutely. "Then this will only take a moment." The woman took a deep breath, and squeezed her eyes shut. Delah couldn't tell what she was doing, but she sensed through the Force that whatever it was, it was big. There was a strange feeling, as if something in the universe had shifted, and then the group was gone.

This is Arden Grail." Tavi said, gesturing to the woman who had just sent the group back to their own dimensions. "She's going to go around and take down your names. After that she'll explain a little more to you about what's going on." Arden smiled, and went to the group, a data pad in her hand.

"Come with me." Tavi said to Delah, her voice no longer amplified through the Force. Delah followed Tavi back to a small collapsible table set at the back of the cave. Her head was swimming, and still ached though she wasn't sure of that was a side effect of traveling through dimensions, or if it had something to do with the loud explosion from just before. Tavi seated herself on top of the table, and turned her attention to Delah.

"I'm sure you're very confused about what's going on, especially with what was happening in the time frame I pulled you out of."

"How did you know about that?"

"The way this whole thing works is finding the dimensional pattern in the Force. That's the difficult part really. Once you've located the pattern, you can follow whatever thread you want. Imagine it like a tree. If all of us stem from the trunk of the tree, then imagine each dimension splitting off into a different branch, and then others splitting off of that, and so on. All I have to do is pick the branch I want, and I can see what is happening in that dimension. It only works for my alter-ego in each dimension though."

"So you know what was happening to me right before you pulled me here? You know I was about to die."

"That's right." Tavi looked sad for a moment. "Your path isn't very far from mine. That could just as easily have been me."

"What choices did you make?" Delah asked, combing her dark hair with her fingers.

"I didn't fall on the temple." Tavi said. So Tavi had the life that Delah wished she had chosen. Things could have gone so differently.

"What are the True Sith? What happens to me if I go back, and what happened to Carth?" She asked. Fear bubbled in her chest. She didn't care if she died when she went back to her dimension, but did this mean there was a way to save Carth?

"It's like I said before. Your dimension is frozen in time until you return. Arden and I weren't sure if bringing you here was a good idea , but. . . Arden got this feeling about it, and ignoring her feelings is usually a bad idea. As for the True Sith, that's why Revan. . . We, fell to the Dark Side originally. You must have heard stories about Revan going to the Unknown Regions back during the Mandalorian Wars." Delah nodded.

"We - Revan - found the True Sith. An Empire the Sith we know originally spawned from. They were preparing to attack, and we knew we couldn't stop them. So our plan was to unite the galaxy in preparation for their attack, so that we would stand some chance against them. We failed. That's why everyone here has been trying to stop them. That's what this entire gathering is about. We couldn't bring anyone we loved with us, and that narrows down our numbers considerably. That's why Arden and I came up with this plan."

"But I haven't remembered anything about that from my past." Delah said.

"You've started to. It starts out as a vague feeling in the back of your mind. A feeling that something really bad is coming. It starts to come back after that, Slowly, but within a year you would have remembered."

"If I die, then how can I help? I don't want the Sith to take over, but there really isn't much I can do."

"We aren't sure, but we think we can go forward in time, to after your death. Maybe we can give your dimension a fighting chance against the True Sith."

"I don't know if I want to go back. Not if Carth is going to die because of it. Can't you just send me back to my own time? I don't want to survive." Tavi studied her, a sad expression on her face.

"We can do that if you really want to. But think about the consequences. If you don't go to stop the True Sith, what's going to happen to all of those people? Maybe the Jedi Exile will stop them, but I don't know if the Exile will even find out about them in time if you aren't around. If they aren't stopped, then they will enslave the entire galaxy." Delah stared at her feet. If everything this woman was saying was true, then it meant a lot of people would die. Even after she and Carth died on the Star Forge, evil would still win. That didn't seem right. It meant that everyone who had died because of her had died in vain. She sighed, and met Tavi's gaze.

"I'm in."

"Good." Tavi said, a small smile appearing on her face. "Maybe you'll find some redemption from this, in the end."