Breathing

I floated in the darkness between life and death.  I'd been here before.  There had been visions, visions and a bright light and an exponentially greater tie to the Force.  There was no time here in limbo, but neither did I see or feel anything like had happened the other times.

Again I reflected on what had just happened.  My fleet had ambushed a small Republic force.  A Jedi strike team had infiltrated my flagship.  Malak had triggered a trap of some kind, a toxin released into my armor, and at the same time had fired on me.

Malak had betrayed me.  After all these years, he'd finally done it.

Abruptly the darkness cleared. Senses returned, granted by the Force; I found myself in a sort of shadowy, transparent half-world, a faded copy of the real thing. People "looked" like faintly-glowing ghosts, hearts beating and lungs expanding visibly. They were soft, faded, but more defined and easier to see than the bridge they stood upon. Some were marginally brighter than others, untrained but slightly more in tune with the Force than their fellows. No trained Force-Sensitives here.

Except for him. Distant, alone in the throne-like admiral's chair on the Leviathan. The bridge crew, still tied to him by the fear and awe that I had taught him to inspire, gave him a wide, wide berth. Wise of them.

He'd always hated that chair, I remembered. Too ostentatious, too showy and pretentious for him, planted imposingly before the giant viewport as it was. He preferred to stand when staring out that viewport or giving orders, possibly not knowing that doing so made him look more like a display, not less. No doubt he would have it removed at the first opportunity.

But for now, he was collapsed in it, his hairless head leaned over to one side as if it had fallen and he hadn't the strength to haul it back up. It was obvious that only the enclosing "wings" of the admiral's chair kept him relatively upright. I doubted that he was asleep, no, but... drained. Worn. Trying to muster his strength again. Probably deep within the restorative meditative state both of us preferred over sleep. Meditation dreams were lucid, unlike those of true sleep, which sometimes became nightmares. He must have been truly exhausted to sleeptrance on the bridge. Perhaps someone would take advantage of that and try to murder him.

Not that he was stupid. There was awareness even sleeptranced, after all. Just not the same awareness of being awake.

He was still bright. He had never stopped being bright. Where the brightness of most Jedi are like the luminescent fungi of the lowest levels of Kashyyyk, barely strong enough to indicate colors and cast shadows, he is a luma-lamp, a lightsaber. Kreia once called it "reflected glory", but she never explained why. Ever since the day I first learned to let the Force augment my vision, he has been bright. Using the Dark Side never changed the way he glowed in the Force. It only... muted it, filtered it.

I had no lungs to sigh with as I drifted over him, immaterial.  My lungs and the rest of my dying body had been left on the bridge of my flagship, now light-years from here.  Malak had jumped the fleet into hyperspace immediately following my betrayal.

Always he followed me, when we were little. Since the day we first met, at an age where normal, nonJedi children found it a great feat to dress themselves and stack toys high, we were together. We would get ourselves in and then out of trouble together... mostly exploring or staying up long after curfew, not the kind of trouble certain of our peers would engage in, but still. We changed Temples, from Alderaan to Dantooine, together, and we always backed each other up. The two of us were practically joined at the hip; in lettered messages our friends and teachers didn't address us individually but as "Revan-and-Malak". The day that it finally hit me that being apprenticed to different Masters meant that we would have prolonged periods with no contact was, at the time, one of the worst in my life.

For all that we had drifted apart a little ways, first as Padawans and then, more, as Sith, we had been close in all the ways that counted. So it really was no surprise that this hurt so badly. Like a double-kidney-punch with armored fists. Worse.

Part of me - the soft part that I had thought was dead - wanted to curl up and mourn.  It hurt.  I'd thought that I had finally killed the soft animal part of myself, back when I first touched the Star Forge, and that nothing could touch me or hurt me anymore.  I was wrong.  From sorrow I turned to anger.

I had even worked out contingency plans to be used in event of his betrayal! And I had thought myself to be paranoid and overly suspicious in doing so! Unfortunately, it had been over too quickly for me to initiate the plans that would have resulted in his immediate death, but he would have a far harder time becoming the lone Lord of the Sith than he had anticipated. He was too canny to admit that he had killed me, but it would be common knowledge nevertheless. Certain people who could ignore the backstabbing rampant in all the other levels of Sith command would be uneasy about seeing it at the very highest level. And leading alone meant relying on my preformulated strategies, and facing the hordes of eager rank-climbers without my help.

He would never be as good as we had been. Never.

From little boy to Sith Lord, nearly all his life he followed me. Now, at last, he would not. I was in the one place where I could not expect to turn around and see him, telling me that I was making a mistake. At long last he had stopped following.

Or so he thinks. Death comes even to Dark Lords of the Sith, after all. No matter what methods, no matter what lengths he goes to questing for immortality, he will be killed eventually. If not by the Jedi of the Republic, or the Sith of the Star Forge, then... others, whom he has not anticipated, whose threat he has hardly given any thought to. I can wait.

It didn't bother me much any more that nobody would be able to take a stand against Them. When rallying Jedi for the Mandalorian Wars, I had, among several other mottos, the cry that apathy is death. Ironic, then, that death brought apathy. If I thought about it too much, then it would upset me. Perhaps to the point of despair. There was so much I had yet to do! But I couldn't do anything about it now. I wasn't strong enough to be an apparition. It would be years before I could manifest to any but the most sensitive ghost-speakers, assuming that I was still coherent by that point.

Ah. Finally. It had started. Shed of my physical body, the Force became easier to touch. The connections between all things were brighter than the things themselves, living and non.  I couldn't do anything with it, really, but it was an effort of will simply to keep from reaching out to it. I didn't want to fade away yet. However long it took, I would wait for him.

In the meantime - he had never displayed any aptitude for ghost-speaking, but he could certainly be made to feel something. Didn't the headblind, those without even rudimentary Force-Sensitivity, feel uneasy around spirits? And... we had been close. Very close, and for a long time. His trances would be uneasy. The lucid dreams would not be so easy to control.

Remember, Malak, my old friend. Remember me, and what we were together. You will never be as effective as we were. Who will insist on treatment the next time you are injured? You can't out-stubborn infection. I am no longer here to help you. You've gotten used to my presence. Remember me. Remember Revan. And remember, you are mortal. I am waiting.

We were Sith, I could imagine him telling me, just as miserable as I was, without the triumph that he had imagined he would feel when he had finally killed me. We were Sith. I had to. I had to.

I am waiting, I replied. I will be here. Promise or threat?

I could have continued on in that vein for quite a long time, but that was when the shadowy half-world evaporated in a burst of purely physical pain, the likes of which were, somehow, even more powerful than dying.

AAAAAUUGH!

Pain! My chest - my lungs! Spirits of space it HURTS!

Pressure left my mouth and the air in my aching abused lungs immediately rushed out, but the reprieve was short. Something wet and warm came down again over my open mouth and shoved stinking hot air through it, and my lungs inflated again.

The pain was... extraordinary.

AAAAAUUGH!

I tried to struggle, to fight off this attacker, but the strength was gone from my limbs. They lay and quivered impotently. My focus was gone. I tried to reach the Force, to tap it for energy - and couldn't. Too weak even for that. I could sense things. But I couldn't do anything about them.

It was terrifying.

Open air against my cheeks and forehead, against my ears. Too much light through closed eyes. That shouldn't be. What - My mask! Where'd it go? Where's my mask?! What's pinching my nose closed? I hadn't removed my mask completely since... since...

Oh, oh, no, not again-

AAUUGH!- nostopithurtsgoaway!

Thoughts were fluttering about me like tiny, panicked birds buffeting my head with their wings. Some were mine - what is this what is happening where is my mask why does it HURT so much - and others... weren't. There was an appalling otherness to them.

Stroke, I think. Is it a stroke? Jedi don't have strokes, do we? But - Revan is a Sith!

No, don't, please-

AAAAAUUGH! Bogan that hurts!

A taste transferred itself onto my tongue; some powdery residue, grainy and tooth-dissolvingly sweet.  In a burst of insight I recognized it as the residue left by goldox tablets. They were popular with Jedi about to engage the enemy; eating a few when on the way to the big fight meant a meal's worth of calories without a meal's weight, which was surprisingly critical.  The downside lay in the way that the powdery residue stayed gritted inside of the mouth for hours.

Why? I don't eat those anymore, I chew stimtack, it's completely different. Why does it hurt to breathe? Who's thinking?  That shouldn't happen it's a bad sign wait wait what's happening to me? When did I start thinking with such panic? What's happening what is this why does it hurt so bad -

I felt the other's thoughts again. My telepathy was marginal at best, but it seemed that at this range it worked quite well.

Stop nattering at yourself, Bastila. If you want Revan to live, you have to calm down. The other - Bastila - came down over me again, covering my open mouth with her own. Her sweating fingers tightened where they pinched shut my nostrils.

Bastila? What? Oh, right, she made it to my bridge. Probably the one who ate goldox. But - Wait! Wait-

Aaaaaaaauugh!

I tried to knock her hand aside, to open my eyes, to do something, anything, but I was as weak as a newborn, twitching and trembling. The Force was just out of reach, tantalizing, teasing me with the easy access I had always taken for granted. My lungs - was this what drowning felt like? Bogan and Ashla, Light and Dark Sides of the Force, that hurt.

Useless! Useless!

How long do I have to make her breathe? If she's this damaged, if she doesn't breathe on her own... I can't keep this up.

AH-Aaaaaaauugh!

Breathe on my own - Wait! No! What do - I can breathe! I can breathe! Ah! Ah!

I can't breathe. I can't breathe!  I can't breathe!

Bogan.

Then I must link her breathing to mine.

No! Aaaaaauughhh...

That was shorter. Oh, this is not good not good not good...

Brainstem, that's what it is, brainstem controls subconscious reflex. There- there it is-

I shouldn't have felt anything, but I did. A twinge, a flick-

You fool! Don't you know what you're doing?!

My eyes cracked open, unfocused, but all I saw was blurry ceiling and the edge of her head. The stabbing pain in my lungs gradually became a slow burn.  Dark spangles started appearing in my vision, just as they had when I'd blacked out the first time.  Air. I need air.

There! Her inhalation reflex, triggered by my own- this should work, I hope it works!

There was silence, during which the burning in my lungs intensified. I could have sobbed. If I'd had the breath. Or the strength, for that matter.

What?! No! Why isn't she breathing?!

Bad enough to die... oh, this is so humiliating... If there's a point in the afterlife where the dead swap stories, I'll really have a laughable one to tell. For all that I was half-dead and stripped of at least part of my armor, the notion that my death was being prolonged by this idiot Jedi girl made me want to laugh mordantly. Her strike team must have done all the work in getting her to the bridge. Now they were all dead, and what was she doing? Trying to rescue me. Hadn't they been sent to kill me? So much I never did... there is so much work left to do, and none alive who know what it is.

Why did they send Bastila, anyway? She is perhaps four-fiths of the reason the Republic hasn't yet fallen. Her Battle Meditation is an extraordinarily important asset. I wouldn't have risked her on a strike team. Are the Jedi really so few, now?

Because you are holding your breath, Bastila. Breathe!

Malak really did have a good plan... I thought, suddenly drowsy, wishing the girl would stop so I could sleep. Set the Jedi on me as a distraction, release some kind of toxin into my helmet, and simultaneously fire on my bridge... yeah. Typical of his plans. So much to go wrong. It figures that it all worked out in his favor.

My diaphragm and the muscles between my ribs contracted, expanding my chest cavity and my lungs. I inhaled. The breath escaped passively a moment later, and I breathed again, and kept breathing.

It hurt, a myriad of stabbing painful bursts, but not nearly as much as mouth-to-mouth. What was bothersome was the fragmenting of my thoughts.

Well, he's a worthy heir, with a plan like that. Crazy plan. So many variables. Surprising that it worked. No! NO! He- NO! I thought we were... Strategy games. Sometimes he beat me, usually I beat him. Once he learned the game, he always took the risky chance, the bold all-or-nothing high-stakes maneuver. When it succeeded, it did so spectacularly; when it failed, and there were even odds either way, it was catastrophic. I restrained that tendency somewhat. How will he do? I can't believe it! I can't believe he - I - but... why? Why?

Damn. I think I've taken brain damage.

All through Bastila's dragging me into an escape pod and jettisoning us, I tried to get a grasp on the only thing I could control: my rampaging thoughts. Success was... minimal. I was so tired. Even when the pod was picked up by a Republic ship and the crew gawked and Bastila snapped at them, it just wasn't worth the effort.

I'm going to be swallowed up by Republic Intelligence.  They're going to try and pump me for anything I know.  I know some tricks for resisting interrogation, and for withstanding torture, but I have the feeling that they know them too.  Once they finish I'll be cleaned up, put on trial, and executed.  This happens to anyone of rank who gets captured. There's no ransom among the Sith.  If I could have sighed, I would have.  Much better to die quickly.  I guess this is the end.

Of course, it was only the beginning.