Blindsided

A/N: This fic was co-authored by Dinah Lance.

The first sensation Min felt as oblivion slipped away was the cool metal durasteel floor against her overly hot skin. It took several minutes of lying in dazed silence before she could make out the metal ductwork that twined across the ceiling of the cargo bay, and for a long while she simply stared at it in a stim-induced haze as her mind desperately grasped for the fleeting darkness being chased away by painful consciousness.

All at once, her memories slammed back into her. The Leviathan. Malak. Canderous's declaration of loyalty. Carth's hurt and betrayed face. Bastila missing. Bits and pieces of a past life that were just beginning to surface. And once again, it was too much to bear.

Whimpering, she rolled onto her side. Long brown fingers fumbled past empty whiskey bottles, a pair of blasters she'd swiped from Carth, and a pile of used-up stims until she found what she was looking for. With the last of her energy, she grabbed a fresh stim pack, ripped it open with her teeth, and plunged it into her arm.

Min's hand fell limp to her side and she breathed a relieved sigh. Hazy, comforting blackness closed in on her again, taking her back to where memories couldn't find her and friends couldn't touch her.

She wasn't sure how much time had passed when a pair of arguing voices--one youthful and high pitched, the other a low rumble--nagged her back into consciousness. Her neck ached as she turned her head to the doorway, but all she caught was a smear of blue standing next to another much larger smear of grey. She tried to form the words to tell them to go away, but her tongue was thick and her throat was dry; all she could manage was a low croaking sound.

Heavy footsteps stomped across the room, and for an instant anger seared through her, aimed at whoever had broken through the codes that she'd keyed into the door. This time when her vision cleared, it wasn't metal ductwork that greeted her. Instead, a face hard as duracrete scowled down at her, looking beyond furious.

Frack.

The words scratched at her hoarse throat. 'Bugger off, Canderous,' she mumbled, and rolled over.

Or tried to. A pair of large, calloused hands grabbed her bare shoulders and hauled her off the floor, shaking her violently and jarring every single aching muscle in her body. It took her a couple of failed attempts before her wobbly legs could hold her weight.

'Forget it, Revan,' he growled. 'Fun time's over.'

Min flinched and avoided his eyes, even though she wanted to scream at him for using her name. Instead, she just stared at a fresh stim lying on the floor, wondering how long she'd have to put up with him until he'd just leave her be.

'Go away,' Min croaked, as she tried to jerk away from him, but two days of living on nothing but whiskey and stims had made her too weak to actually break free.

'Not gonna happen.' He dragged her over to a cargo container and dropped her unceremoniously on top of it. Disoriented, she almost slid off, until she dug her heels into the deck and her fingers into the lid of the container. She leaned back against the wall and glared up at him blearily. Canderous glared back and grabbed her chin roughly with one large hand.

'How much have you had?' he asked. It made her dizzy the way his gray eyes darted back and forth to check the dilation of her pupils.

'Not nearly enough. Which is something that I'm going to fix right now.' Min tried to summon the Force to push him away, but her mind was still too fuzzy from the stims. Using her anger at his unwelcome intrusion as fuel, she jerked her chin from his hand and half-stood to stumble past him to one of the whiskey bottles sitting on a nearby crate.

'Get out of my way,' she snarled when he didn't move.

Canderous grabbed her shoulders again and threw her back onto the cargo container. She winced as the back of her skull slammed against the bulkhead. An empty bottle rocked on the crate, teetered, and fell, shattering as it hit the deck. Min winced again at the bright, fractured sound. Canderous didn't seem to notice. Or care.

'Lose the self-pity, Revan,' he snapped.

She rubbed the back of her head. The throbbing ache cut through the remnants of her drug-induced haze, making her want a drink and a stim even more. 'Don't tell me what to fracking do. I like my self-pity just fine. Now get the hell out and stop calling me that.'

He towered over her, arms crossed over his chest, implacable, unmoving, and angry.

'It's your name, Revan.'

Min met his eyes finally, angry that he'd taunt her by using her name again. 'It is my name, but I don't want to remember it. Any of it. The Jedi, the Mandalorian wars, being Darth Revan. I'm going to burn it out of my mind for good and make sure that I can't remember it. Ever.'

She wasn't prepared when he grabbed her again, lifted her up, and slammed her against the bulkhead. He leaned down, bringing his face to within centimeters of hers. Predatory gray eyes filled her vision, and the smell of cigarra smoke and armor filled her nose.

'Forget the Jedi and the Sith if you want. I don't give a womprat's ass,' he spat. 'But you will fracking remember what you did in the wars. You will remember the warriors that you fought and killed.'

Fury and desire sparked between them, fueled by the frustration and attraction that always seemed to simmer beneath the surface. Far too aware of his nearness, Min reeled against the bulkhead, fingers clutching the top of the crate. Canderous was too close, and she needed to make him back off.

'Why?' she shot back. 'So I can remember being a murderer? So I can revel in my lost glory like you do?'

When that didn't have the desired effect, she stooped to a cheap shot, throwing back at him his declaration of loyalty, which had hurt far worse than Carth's justifiable anger.

'You said you'd follow me. You said you were my man till the end. So respect my wishes and leave.'

He let her go, and she slumped, relieved, against the cool metal, but he didn't move. He continued to stare down at her; his arms folded back across his chest.

'And you'll do what? Drown the honor of my fallen comrades in cheap booze?' His eyes narrowed. 'And Bastila? You plan to drink enough to forget her?'

Min screwed her eyes shut at the mention of her bond mate, the woman who had saved her unworthy life twice. She owed Bastila everything, which was why she hadn't found the guts to do what she'd really wanted to do and use one of Carth's blasters on herself.

Her voice was hoarse and dry like her eyes. 'I don't care about the honor of butchering bastards. And as for Bastila, I'll get her back.' But even as Min said the words, she didn't believe them, crushing despair nearly choking her. 'What I do until then is my own business. If I want to spend it stimmed-out on the cargo bay floor, that's my choice to make.'

Canderous just gazed at her for a long moment, his expression closed, his eyes unreadable. Even at the best of times, she had trouble sensing him through the Force, and in her current state she felt nothing from him.

'You're not who you were,' he said finally. When he said it, it wasn't praise.

It was either laugh or cry, and all the tears she'd had were used up days ago, burned away by fury and grief and pain. Min's empty, brittle laughter filled the cargo bay.

She ran a shaking hand through lank, dirty curls and looked up at him. 'Only you would say that like it's a bad thing, Ordo. I honestly wish that were true.'

Deep down, Min knew the truth. While her memories were broken into little shards and fragments, her personality, her flaws, or whatever it was that made her Revan couldn't be drowned out by any amount of stims or liquor or even fancy Jedi mind tricks.

'What do you want from me, Canderous?' she asked, unsure of whether she even wanted to know the answer. 'Why are you even bothering?'

'I explained it to you when we got off that ship,' he said in a low voice. For a second he clenched his teeth; a muscle twitched in his jaw and his nostrils flared. 'I know you heard me because you just threw it back in my face.'

Until he said it, Min hadn't realized that she'd hoped he'd say more. It was bad enough that he respected and admired the part of her that she hated, but that he didn't see her beyond the fact that she was Revan was even worse. Her foolishness would have seemed funny if it hadn't been so fracking sad.

She couldn't keep the bitterness and hurt out of her voice. 'Right. You want battles and glory. You'll get it on Manaan at least.' Angry at herself for being an idiot, and at him for being himself, she lashed out. 'You might even get to meet Darth Revan if you're lucky.'

'It'd be better than this.' He turned away from her and started to walk from the room. 'We'll be on Manaan in a couple of days.' He snatched a half-empty bottle of whiskey off one of the crates as he walked by. 'Let me know when you stop hiding.' Canderous stepped out into the corridor, turned the corner, and was gone.

Min sat on the crate for a long time telling herself that she was relieved that he'd finally given up on her, and hating him for making her feel even worse than she had before. With a groan, she slid off the crate back onto the floor and reached for a stim. As she turned it over and over in her trembling hands, hot shame battled with the desire to drown everything out.

After a few long minutes, she tossed the stim to the side and it skittered across the floor and into the durasteel wall. Moaning softly, Min picked herself up off the ground, kicked the empty stims and bottles aside, and hobbled over to the door. Leaning in the doorway she hesitated, looking down the corridor where Canderous had gone. Min's hands clenched into tight fists, and she turned in the opposite direction and walked away.