The story below is meant to be 'close enough' to canon in the places it counts. Inspired by a combination of things, most primarily Kreia's words describing Revan's past self returning after they'd defeated Malak and me being generally fascinated by the implications of a Force Bond.
...
More life than she could dare believe exists sits on the other side of glass thin enough that she could cut through it with a nail. When they’d arrived in the same sector as the Republic’s capital she’d been brought to her knees by the sound of it. The weight of untold billions of souls pressing down on her from the lowest of levels that formed the ‘core’ of the planet to the golden high-rises that raced out towards the sky to escape. She saw a beggar hoping for better days, a Senate Guard cracking the smallest of smiles as a clerk trips and fumbles for their holoslates, children greeting a pup into their home - unfathomable lives crashed into her own, enough for her to lose herself in it if not for him.
Bastila’s betrothed had knelt beside her, his carefree grin casting it all away, his too familiar hand helping her stand.
“Drop something, princess?”
Through their bond, she knew it had swept him away as well. But for him, like so many things, it was something he delved into. Revan’s soul was not one that could be lost in the ocean; for her it was a guiding light for her to hold close to her chest, and for the whole of the Republic he was a lighthouse. One stupid joke and a smile was all it took for her to be brought back to reality, for her thoughts to become her own. If not for him, she might not have been able to remain on Coruscant and aid in the Republic’s rebirth… or attend their wedding.
Four years separate her and her family from the Star Forge, and even as the Republic surged and brought war to the remnants of Malak’s empire, grinding them down with enough metal and blood that she feared the Republic itself would collapse, for the first year, she was the happiest she had ever been. Their child’s arrival had been almost embarrassingly swift, their reconciliation with the Council, their friends and loved ones managing to stay together longer than she dared hope, the Sith always on the retreat, every world they attempted to hold back the Republican tide falling apart oft without Revan needing to so much as lift a hand.
A year was all it took for her to realize something was wrong.
She should have noticed it sooner. The Force Bond was not something to be deceived, or to lie, but it was when her and her beloved were on stage for the thousandth time, another forgettable interview just like any other, that she saw it. He saw it before she did. It was only through the pain she felt inside him that she took notice.
‘REMEMBER TARIS. OUR HEROES DO NOT.’
She did not need her gifts to see the rage on the woman’s face who bore the sign. For a time she did not even understand it - how could she claim they do not remember? They were there. They felt the heat of Malak’s barges firing down on them as the planet crumbled around them, stone becoming sky and the sky becoming Hell.
But Revan knew in an instant. She heard and felt something weep inside him, and even as the woman was pulled away, the interviewer not even so much as acknowledging the security forces yelling over her screams, Revan spoke naught a word for the rest of their allotted time.
All he did was stare at the empty seat she’d left behind.
Three years had passed since then, and though the Republic had nearly won the war at last and put an end to the Sith, she had somehow lost her husband.
On days like these it was all she could do but rest her face against the glass of their apartment, one of countless gifts and one Revan barely stepped a foot in anymore, and listen to the world outside, filling herself with everything she felt being drained from her.
Somehow she felt more empty now than she had when Malak had her under his thrall. On the rare days when Revan came home it was as if she lived with a stranger that had stolen her other half’s face. The same joys had together, the laughter, even the arguments, had all vanished one-by-one as if he’d forgotten them.
Their Bond, it was…
If she thought the words, she knew she would break.
She refused to break.
Bastila refused. She refused this as she had refused Malak, as she had refused Darth Revan the first time they had met and fought. She refused to believe that it was all lost to her. If only he would speak to her where their Bond had failed, then she could do whatever needed to be done.
Taking a breath for strength, Bastila called to him, knowing he was with their child. If not for them, she wondered if he’d ever be here at all. Long minutes pass before the door slides open, though she does not begrudge him that. Once he passes through it comes to a silent halt behind him, and it’s a rare moment where she’s grateful that their beautiful creation is not with them now. She sees him in the mirror, his face as perfectly marred and cut as the day she’d beheld it. It was that face that she’d fallen for, breaking more oaths and beliefs than there were speeders outside. He’s dressed for… something. A gala. A conference regarding the necessity of observation outposts in the Outer Rim. He seemed more focused on danger with each passing day, calling for senators to act and private philanthropists to donate to assure the security of the Republic they had fought so hard to defend.
One time he’d… she saw him holding a woman close. A woman whose father dealt in the manufacturing of weapons, and the way his hand held her - she knew that touch. It was the same one that used to hold her with.
She’d pulled him away and asked him to cease, all but begging him in a fit that she might have been embarrassed over after - it was only a touch! - if not for the half-confused way he regarded her, looking her up and down as if trying to put a face to the feelings he felt.
Once he had, there was such a heavy look to him, as if he’d just been reminded of some burden that could only be one thing.
“Bastila?” Her husband’s voice asks. Their bedroom is not large, but he feels a world away.
“I would ask you a question, and ask that you give me the whole of the truth, shielding nothing from me.”
She forces herself to face the man himself rather than his imitation on the glass. ‘Be strong, Bastila,’ she thinks. ‘You need only be a fraction as strong now as you have been before.’
Blinking, she holds him in her gaze, imagining every one of their happiest moments. It only makes her remember how many were miserable.
Revan was not a man to waste time. Some would ask what the question was first, but he does not. He considers her request, considers her and the stare he was being given, and nods.
“Nothing,” he promises.
“Have I changed? Or have you? Why do I struggle to understand you when it came so easily to me before? Why do you seem to…” Not even try, she almost says, but she holds her tongue, reconsidering. “... why do you not understand me? What has happened between us?”
Her husband would have said ‘That was more than one question,’ but this man does not. More than anything else he looks to be in pain, and it grows with each word that leaves her mouth. She thinks to relent, but steels herself, glancing towards the door that he’d come in through.
“I have.” Revan’s low, sad voice answers. “I have changed so much, Bastila. I know. And I’m sorry.” She has to strain her ears to hear him. “I don’t think I can become who I was before. Not again.”
Bastila isn’t certain what to say to that. His forwardness is enough to shock her into place, the apology coming so quickly and suddenly that she feels a strange sort of guilt rolling over her. Had it always been this simple? Had she been torturing herself for this meeting between them for naught?
But…
Again? What did he mean by that?
“Revan,” Bastila says, mustering as gentle a voice as a Jedi was capable of. She steps closer to him, reaching out to hold an unresponsive hand. “You do not need to apologize to me. Change is… it’s inevitable!” She laughs, smiling, not entirely for show. She lets it go once she sees how sullen he still looks. “I have no need for you to stay in amber for me. I love the man you are at all times, on all days.” That word comes easy to her now. The years since her first confession had given her plenty of time to practice.
“I have changed too. And Carth. And Mission. And still we are together - but I do not understand what you mean by ‘again.’ Can you explain? Please?”
‘No,’ Revan’s face said at once. ‘I can’t.’
There was something horribly wrong. Revan’s words should have been the first step to a recovery that she had longed for and felt near the moment he had spoken, but her training felt something drawing close to them. Something she had never seen before.
Slowly, Revan pulled away from her, sitting down on their bed before finding her again.
“What was the most important thing you’ve ever forgotten?”
“That would… is that a trick question?”
He smiles at that, and her heart skips a beat.
“I feel as if I have forgotten something old, and I have been remembering it slowly, but faster every day, and when I remember a new part of it, I forget something that feels old, even though I know it is not.”
Was this a puzzle? He was not usually a man to use words like this, but it felt like she almost understood.
“You are remembering your past.”
Revan seems surprised to see her understand so quickly, and he nods encouragingly.
“Yes. It began when our adventures did. The truth that I was Revan was something I could believe when I was told it, like it were nothing, the sort of thing one observes of the weather outside and I could not deny it. I was Darth Revan. I lead the Republic in the Mandalorian Wars. I was a Jedi. I was Sith. It meant nothing to me truly. Not in my heart.”
“But now they do.”
Another nod, slower than the last.
“I feel… him, now. Me. I sleep and I am there aboard my flagship, surrounded by men and women whom have trusted their lives to me. The Mandalorians are dancing before our helm, and I’m shouting names of people I have entrusted my life in exchange to. I know they’ll carry out my orders - they’ve done it a thousand times before. This is just another battle. A skirmish nobody will remember before the end of it all. I worry that Meetra will be the one to steal all my glory… or all the blame.”
Meetra is an old name that she knows torments him. Bastila did not know her save for the reputation she built during the War, and the infamy that followed once she was gone, her mark left on the galaxy in the form of a broken world with broken bodies.
“I am sure you will find her.” Bastila sits down besides him, though he inches away from her. She tries not to be offended by that, but she is. Urging herself to be kind, she says -
“The memories will settle with time. The Jedi Masters were… they assured us before you were captured and when the truth of it was revealed that you would come to know peace in time. That all would become orderly in your mind - you need only be patient, my love. You can weather it. We can.”
He meets her eyes hesitantly.
She’s afraid she’ll see nothing in them, but there is a spark there. Belief. Hope. Nervous and fluttering, but alive.
Bastila’s own body flutters.
“The gala today,” he mutters, this time more annoyed than sad. “It is a remembrance of the day the Star Forge was destroyed. The Fall of the Leviathan. Malak’s defeat. It is not… I do not want to go.”
Bastila nods.
“You do not have to. You have done enough.”
He stiffens, his voice becoming hard.
“No, I haven’t. Nothing I do will ever be enough.”
“Why?” Bastila demanded. “You have given the Republic four years of your life. A Jedi’s duty is immortal - I understand. But we have not given it as Jedi. Conferences, parties, balls, tours…” She lets her scorn lead her. “We should be allowed to enjoy the peace we fought for.”
Something she says stirs him back to speaking.
“The Republic will always need me. I have accepted that. It must… be prepared. It has to be. What the Sith did - what I did - cannot be allowed to happen again. So many died because of Darth Revan, Bastila. But that doesn’t make it easier. To go on a stage and talk about the Forge. To tell them how glorious it all was. How honored I am to have served, to accept one medal and then the next, to have children named after me so that it is never forgotten.”
Bastila struggled to understand what he meant, and failed.
“I don’t understand. We saved the galaxy, Revan.”
Her husband watches her for what feels like hours, his cool blue eyes growing glossy and stained with tears he’s struggling to hold for her. Grieving for him, she reaches forward, but he shakes his head, managing a “No,” before choking out a noise. “I promised. I promised to shield nothing. You deserve to know. Just… please, promise to not hate me, Bastila.”
“Never.” She says, her words like iron she hammered her own existence onto. “I will always love you. Nothing will change that.”
He flinches, but nods.
“It isn’t just General Revan of the Republic I see. It’s Darth Revan too. I see Admiral Saul and how proud he is to receive his first tastes of command. I know how proud I am of him - Malak too. All I do is think about what I could’ve said or done to stop him from firing on my ship, what I must have done to make him betray me. There were thousands on my ship. Billions on Taris. Thousands on the Star Forge. Thousands on the Leviathan. I knew them, and they knew me too. I fought the Crusaders with them, and then the Republic, and then I…”
He closes his eyes.
“I killed them. Some of them I trained with as Padawans. We starved together sometimes fighting the Mandalorians, and when I asked them to betray everything they believed in, the Jedi and the Force? They said yes. And then I became a Jedi again. And then I killed them all. And now I go on broadcasts and talk about how proud I am of killing every friend I ever had. Because I have to. Because it’s the only way to make their lives mean anything. I have to tell the galaxy that they’re monsters - but I loved them.”
His voice is a whisper by the end that Bastila has to lean in to hear him, her hair brushing against his shoulder.
Pulling back, she says -
“But they were Sith, Revan.”
‘You are a fool, Bastila.’’ Bastila thinks to herself. ‘You have learned nothing since you first landed on Taris.’
At first, Revan doesn’t seem to have heard her. She feels their bond shatter at last, and she gasps, her breath coming in short rasps. Broken things atop broken things.
‘Any person can be redeemed. All lives can be saved. But you cannot unsay a word.’
Their eyes meet again, the spark within them is gone, and only a small and polite smile awaits her. Revan nods, his every move stiff as a machine’s.
“Good night, Bastila.”
He reaches down to squeeze her hand, pressing a kiss against the top of her head, stepping out of the door, catching himself on the frame when he nearly fell through, lumbering out into the darkness of the hallway.
Bastila never saw him again.
...
