#and probably the council had encouraged him to become a healer because they could see his capacity for violence and fear and hate

[tennessoui]

au where jedi healers take a vow not unlike jedi temple guards, but instead of wearing a mask and becoming anonymous, they give up their sight and wear blindfolds to allow the Force to guide their every action. it’s also supposed to blind them to their patients’ differences, which used to be symbolic but since the war between the jedi and the sith broke out, has become much less so

because jedi healers are supposed to heal regardless of if their patient is a jedi or a sith, when they’re deployed on battlefields after the fighting is over, they use the Force to heal every injured person they come upon.

anakin skywalker, who was chosen from the creche and agreed to follow the Healing path at the age of 9, thinks it’s sort of stupid that they have to wait until after the fighting is over to begin to help because he can feel people dying in the Force, he can feel their pain--

young general kenobi, who remembers his old creche-mate anakin skywalker and how blue his eyes once were, thinks it’s beyond foolhardy that this healer is stealing out across an active battlefield, blindfold over his eyes and bending down to heal karking darth maul and single-handedly diverting all of obi-wan’s attention away from the droids and sith legion because now he has to make sure he’s ok he can’t just leave him to the whims of the Force, he’s unprotected and he’s going to get himself killed----

it’s a headache and a half for everyone involved because general kenobi keeps abandoning his battle strategy and sometimes even position to ensure healer skywalker’s safety and healer skywalker keeps dropping everything and everyone the moment he feels obi-wan kenobi get hurt in the Force to rush to his side, Force Vow of Healing Equality be damned.

but......the Council keeps deploying them to the same battlefield because healer skywalker is never more effective as when he knows he must heal fifty mortal wounds before he can rid general kenobi of a headache, and general kenobi is never as ruthless as when skywalker is on the field close to him, in potential harm’s way

despite how much they insist they hate each other 

[autisticlaezel]

Breaking the Silence - Chapter 1

I’ve been toying with the idea of writing something about Revan and the Exile running into each other before the Reveal, and at the encouragement of @b4d4, I decided to go for it!

Please keep in mind that English isn’t my first language.

[read on ao3]

There are too many Republic soldiers on Manaan.

She should have expected that, of course, with Malak’s Sith constantly attacking the Republic. They’d need the kolto.

She watches them try to avoid the Sith soldiers in the Ahto City cantina. It’s a strange choice to keep them in such close proximity of each other, and she wonders if it worries the Selkath at all. The Republic wouldn’t dare break the neutrality, but a soldiers aren’t diplomats, and drunk people aren’t known for making good decisions.

Not that she cares about the Republic these days. She hasn’t cared since the order cast her out for going to war. Hasn’t cared since Malachor V. It’s just that she prefers them to the Sith.

(She’s gotten so good at lying to herself that she barely even notices anymore. She’s not quite sure where she acquired that skill.

Maybe it comes naturally to runaways.)

She watches as a human man (dark hair and frown lines and a look in his eyes that she recognizes all too well from her own reflection. All barely contained anger and sorrow and loss. A veteran, then), a twi’lek girl (she can’t possibly be more than sixteen. She’s probably younger. She doesn’t belong in a cantina. Especially not one full of soldiers.) and a wookie (tall and proud. Only a few gray strands in his fur.) sit down at the table next to hers.

There’s nothing remarkable about them, but there’s nothing remarkable about anyone here except maybe the two mercenaries that challenged her to a drinking contest weeks ago. She’d won. They’re still bitter.

And is it really eavesdropping if their conversation is loud enough for her to hear?

“I’m not a child, Carth, there’s no reason I can’t help her!” The twi’lek girl pouts and crosses her arms over her chest, looking very much like the child she just denied being.

“Well, Ceeira doesn’t agree and neither do I.” The veteran – Carth – replies sternly.

“You’re just mad because she didn’t bring you either. I’ve seen how you look at her, you know.” The girl’s pout turns into a lopsided grin in record time. “You like her, don’t you?”

“As much as I like any jedi. She’s a friend.” There’s a jedi on Manaan, then. Possibly more than one.

She only has to stay for five more days if her maintenance job stays on schedule. She needs the credits.

She doesn’t want to stay.

“Mmmm sure. Do you stare at all of your friend’s -”

“Mission.” He sends her a look that Senna would probably recognize as disapproval if she knew him better. The twi’lek girl and the wookie both laugh wholeheartedly, and Senna wonders to herself how a solider, a child and a wookie ended up traveling with a jedi.

“Can I buy you a drink?” It’s one of the mercenaries from two weeks ago. No longer bitter, then. Good to know.

“Sure.” She answers, and offers him the closest thing to a smile that she can manage. “I could use a drink.”

She thinks he’s a Mandalorian, but she doesn’t want to know, because she doesn’t want to hate him. If he knows that she fought in the war, he doesn’t say anything, and for that she’s grateful.

–

She sneaks out of his hotel room as soon as he falls asleep, a little less lonely and a lot less tense.

Ahto City is even more peaceful at night than it is during the day, and she allows herself a moment to enjoy its serenity before returning to her own room and her own bed.

-

Fixing droids is easy. She’s done it a million times before, both during the war and her exile. She feels at peace when she does it. More than she ever did meditating at the temple. Maybe that was the first warning sign.

The T1 series utility droid that she just finished doing maintenance on beeps excitedly at her, and she offers it a calm smile.

“There. Good as new.” She tells it, as he pats it absently on its head.

“Beep-deet-bip.” It replies with a little wiggle.

“You’re very welcome.” She gives it a final pat before working on one of the other droids. If she’s efficient, she might get to leave earlier.

-

The next two days follow the same routine as most of her days have since her exile.

She wakes up tired. It’s been years since she’s had a night of uninterrupted, dreamless sleep. She drinks too much caf to stay functional during the day because of it. She knows that she should see a healer. She doesn’t want to.

She goes to work. Sometimes, she works with droid maintenance. Sometimes she’s a slicer. It depends on what planet she’s on and how desperately she needs the credits. She’s not picky.

After work she goes to the local cantina. Sometimes she’ll play Pazaak. Sometimes she’ll drink alone, and sometimes she’ll flirt with whoever is interested. Mostly she just listens to hear what’s going on in the galaxy. That’s how she’d found out about Revan’s death at Malak’s hand. Or ion cannon, rather. He never had been able to best her in combat.

(Sometimes she wishes that she’d been the one to do it.

Sometimes she wishes that Revan was still alive so that she can confront her, if for no other reason.

Most of all, she wishes that Revan was still Rea, and that Malak was still Alek, and that the wars had never happened.)

At the end of the day, she goes to bed. It doesn’t matter if it’s hers or someone else’s. It all depends on her mood and how much she needs to distract herself.

When she wakes up the next morning, the pattern repeats itself until she becomes unable to distinguish between days. She should probably be more concerned about that than she is.

-

The last day before she leaves Manaan, she finds herself in the cantina again. Not to drink, not today, but she does want to say goodbye to the two mercenaries and the guy she’s played Pazaak with a couple of times.

And perhaps to satisfy her curiosity about the jedi presence on Manaan. She never did know when to quit.

(They shouldn’t need Kolto, she thinks bitterly. They have force healers and they refuse to go to war when needed.)

“… I got out of there, didn’t I?” She doesn’t hear the first part of the sentence, but the voice that speaks it is familiar.

She hasn’t heard that voice in years.

“That’s not the point! We cannot endanger the mission by angering the Sith. Do you have any idea how important -”

“Yes, because you keep telling me! I did what I had to. It’s not my fault that -”

“You’re so careless, Ceeira, you need to learn -”

“Control? You’ve said that about a million times, and I feel like you’re singling me -”

“That’s ridiculous. I would say the same to anyone without proper training in the force. You don’t know what you’re risking by -”

“If we want to find the star maps, we have to do what it takes to find the star maps.”

Something ugly twists in Senna’s stomach when she realizes where she knows that voice from.

She looks different and the same all at once. Her hair is the same dark color as it’s always been, carelessly pulled away from her face. Her eyes are the same blue color as they’d been back on Dantooine before they’d turned sickly and yellow during the war.

She’s still smaller than one would expect. All narrow shoulders and skinny legs, and she’d be so very easy to overlook if her very presence didn’t command attention.

Senna knows the tone in her voice better than she wants to. It’s the tone she’d used to recruit their fellow jedi back at the enclave. The one she’d used when demanding that the council take actions against the Mandalorian threat, and then later when her followers dared question her. All anger and righteousness and fire.

She has no doubts about who this woman is.

And yet, her walk is different. She no longer looks like she carries the weight of a million corpses on her shoulders. She does not walk like a caged animal. Instead, she moves like a young woman with her whole life ahead of her and with a carelessness that Senna doesn’t think that she’s ever seen before. Like she’d never let herself drown in the pits of her own corruption.

Her smile is bright and honest. That, Senna has seen before, but it’s been so many years that she may as well not have.

She’s dreamed of this moment for years. Dreamed of getting to confront her old friend. Dreamed of getting back at her for Malachor, and Dxun, and every single other death trap that she’d been sent into. Dreamed of a fight. Dreamed of an apology. Dreamed of a confrontation.

When the moment comes she can’t find her words. All she can do is stare, until her mouth finally forms around two familiar syllables.

“Revan.”