[Story Exchange] [KotOR] Pathos

[Capella]

Author's Note: This is my Halloween entry. I admit openly that I am not 100% happy with the way it turned out and I plan to revise it. That said, for having been done in a day, it's readable enough.

Author's Note 2: This assumes playing of Knights of the Old Republic! That said, if you have NOT played the game and wish to read anyway, here in spoiler tags are the three things you need to know to get this fic:
1.) The player character begins the game as an random soldier. S/he is later revealed to be an amnesiac Darth Revan, the person responsible for corruption of the current Sith Lord, Darth Malak, and the person who started the Sith march against the Republic.
2.) Carth Onasi is the pilot of the Ebon Hawk, the ship you use in-game, and is one of your best companions.
3.) If you play as a female PC, you can romance Carth. If you fall to the Dark Side at the end, he tries to save you. This story assumes both the romance and the attempt to save.

That said, on to the fic :)

Pathos: A Knights of the Old Republic Tale

Rated R for torture and implied sexual content; please do not read at work.

My name is Carth Onasi, and I am about to die.
Not literally. Revan keeps me alive, no matter how many times I try to die. No matter how many times I try to provoke her that extra distance, she never loses control and kills me. No matter how many times I provoke Bastila or Canderous, they are too afraid of what Revan will do if they kill me. I've even tried to kill myself twice when I've been allowed weapons, but every time Revan anticipates me and prevents it.
I don't want to hate her. I don't want to hate this place. I don't want to hate the events that led up to this, or the people that didn't stop it. I don't even really want to hate the Jedi Council, though of everyone, they are the ones I should hate the most. Hate is dangerous, and in this place, hate leads to death.

--

I didn't realize why she spared me at first. When I confronted her on the Star Forge after she'd killed Malak, I saw it in her eyes; she was not mine anymore. I expected her to allow Bastila to kill me, but she denied her apprentice that privilege. When she gripped me in the Force and pinned my hands behind my back, I thought for sure I was a dead man. I didn't expect her to shackle me and drag me, in chains, through the Star Forge to her chambers. I didn't expect her to decide to keep me as some kind of pet. I couldn't understand it; if she didn't love me anymore, what did she need with me?
When she first started torturing me, I thought that my purpose was to become one of her amusements, a way for her to occupy herself when she wasn't busy conquering the Republic. A slave, basically. I think that Bastila and Canderous understood that idea, and I'm fairly sure that was all they believed me to be. They saw only the way Revan slapped me around on the bridge as she forced me to watch her war machine roll over the newest planet to be added to her Sith Empire.
They never saw the way she treated me in her quarters, when we were alone. Then she would give me a weapon, never a blaster, usually some kind of blade. She would arm me and then let me lunge at her. I never succeeded in killing her, or even laying a scratch on her; she was Darth Revan, she had the Force on her side. How could a merely mortal pilot defeat her? But she would let me wear myself out trying to battle her, and then when she tired of my attempts, she'd disarm me and chain me again. Then she'd torture me, sometimes with the Force, sometimes with weapons. She'd torment me until my throat was raw from screaming, and then she'd laugh and leave me there in my own blood until I recovered.
Other times she would force herself on me after we fought. I never wanted to react to her, but she knew how to make me respond. I was never sure if it was her control over the Force causing my reactions, or if I honestly still desired her, even as twisted as she was now. I couldn't defeat her in battle, and I couldn't resist her in bed. She might have owned my reactions, but she never owned my soul.

--

It was months before she finally told me why she wanted me with her. She wanted me to be her Admiral, to lead her fleet against the Republic and then, when it was claimed, preside over it. I laughed in her face, of course; the Republic might have forgotten me, but I had never forgotten my duty. I told her I would never betray the Republic. She laughed and told me that a day would come when I would stand beside her and order the obliteration of Coruscant. A day when I would again willingly be her lover. I thought it impossible; I would never surrender to hatred.

--

I have been unmolested for three months now. Revan is busy with her campaign of conquest. The Republic has finally rallied in a last attempt to push her back before she can reach the Core Worlds. Whether nor not they can succeed is questionable. I should hope that the Republic wins because I want it to survive; the truth is, I want them to win so that the war keeps her away. This darkness is better than her hateful presence. I think the fact that I am thinking this way is a sign of my resistance eroding, but the truth is I can't find it in me to care anymore. Fear and anger are a path to the dark side. I wonder where apathy lies.
I am imprisoned on Malachor V, as I have been for the last eight months; too important, apparently, to risk aboard her flagship. I have learned what this place really is. This is where Revan defeated the Mandalore and had her general activate the Mass Shadow Generator, ending the Mandalorian Wars. This is where Revan then began to train her army of dark side Force users, the army she would then turn on the Republic when she returned as conqueror.
It is a place of dark power. The dark side runs deep in the planet here. I presume that it was dark before the Wars, because Revan found ancient Sith teachings here. I know for sure, however, that after the Mass Shadow Generator was activated, the planet was nearly destroyed, although the Trayus Academy remained intact. I also know that all of those deaths broke something in everyone there, rendered them susceptible to the evil of this place.
I know its effect well. You notice the gravity first, the way it feels like you're being crushed. You don't notice the insidious darkness that pervades the place, not initially. It's not like Korriban, with its palpable aura. Instead it starts with your dreams. It took me a few weeks to notice that all of my dreams were about pain and loss. Fear. Rage. I had assumed it was the enormity of Revan's betrayal and the abuse I have suffered at her hands, but it wasn't. Not when my mind started drifting in those directions while I was awake.
I thought at first that it was that I had nothing good left to think about, so I actively tried to think about the good memories. It worked at first. I was able to remember growing up on Telos, the times with Morgana, or the way that it felt to hold Dustil in my arms when he was a baby. Sometimes, if I dared, I would remember the good times on the search for the Star Forge, but I tried not to think about those on the few times when Revan has stopped by. She uses those memories against me when she sees me, and it brings up the hatred I don't want to feel.
As time passed, it became harder and harder to bring up those good memories. I can't remember playing with my brother as a child. I can't remember the way I felt when I married my wife anymore. I can't remember watching my son grow up. Sometimes I remember being on the Ebon Hawk with a Revan who was gentle and loved me, but it hurts that that's the only good I have left.
This last month, I have found it almost impossible to think clearly. Negative emotions rise easily, even when I try to keep myself completely emotionless; my default state is afraid or angry. I know that if I had been subject to the kind of conditioning that Revan's other servants had been, I would have lost myself months ago. It is a miracle that I've lasted this long. But it won't be much longer, and I know that, so I try to treasure these last moments for myself. This is the last time I will ever be Carth Onasi, Republic pilot.
The next time she sees me, she will challenge me. She always does. I will fight her, and this time it will not be because I feel I need to end the danger to the Republic. I will fight her because I want this to be over, because I want her dead. I know that she will be unprepared for my ferocity, I know I might have a chance. I know that this means I will lose, even if I win, that she will have achieved her objective. But I don't care anymore.

[Capella]

So, on to a little bit of ramble.

I am not 100% happy with this fic, mostly because a.) I started it on Saturday and b.) while I was writing it I also had over guests and was thus perpetually distracted. I didn't really have the time to give it the attention it deserved, and I think the fic suffered from it.

I am going to do a postmortem of it, and I encourage anyone who reads it to join in the postmortem and help me make it better.

Intent

I wanted this story to tie into the theme in two ways: fear and ghosts. Obviously the ghosts didn't show up at all, and that's something I intend to remedy later on. In the game, Revan kills Juhani and Jolee (two Jedi companions) when she turns to the Dark Side. I wanted to have Carth have interactions with the ir Force ghosts that became less and less frequent over time, as a symbolism of how his resistance was fading. In the end, I had hoped to have him dismiss them completely, showing his eventual rejection of the light side.

Fear was the other major theme, and here I think I did well. It's not a stereotypical, external fear, like in so many halloween stories. Instead it's an internal fear, man vs self if you want to call it that. It's the fear of dissolution, the fear that in the end you will entirely lose yourself. My aim was to show Carth's slow descent from believing in the righteousness of the Republic and his cause to no longer upholding the ideals he once held; the way he went from still loving Revan to hating her, and what that says about who he is in relation to who she is. I think I managed to begin to get it across, but I still feel like it was incompletely developed.

Likes

-I like the first person POV.
-I like the fact that Carth loses in the end.
-I like the fact that showing it in scenes allows you to capture his mental state at different points in time.
-Ambiguous ending leaves room for readers to interpret.

Dislikes
-Felt rushed.
-In the same vein, feels too short.
-First person narrative may not have been best choice; could possibly change it to first person present in each scene. (Especially given that people tend to lie or conceal things in their narratives, so having it be non-narrative lets me show the things Carth may not admit to but still feels.)
-Lack of the ghosts
-Lack of concrete ending may annoy some readers


So, when I revise this, my postmortem indicates (to me) that I should change from narrative to present tense; that I should lengthen it out to make it flow better and flesh scenes out more deeply; and that I should absolutely add in the Force ghosts plotline. I am torn between leaving the ending ambiguous or giving a concrete ending; I have a version, in my head, of what happens. What I don't know is whether or not this should be shown to the reader or left up to them.

So, does anyone else want to chime in with their own critiques and suggestions?

[Unch]

I loved it, and I was left wanting more. Although having said that I think that you ended it at the perfect point. I think that the actual final confrontation would have ruined it. It could be interpreted that his final ferocious attempt was exactly what she was priming him for.

It reminded me a bit of I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, which is one of the few pieces of Sci fi that I really like. I haven't played KotOR, but I understood it perfectly well from just the spoilers at the beginning. Actually if anything, I think I enjoyed the story more for my ignorance. I liked being dropped into the story abruptly (much like with IHNMaIMS), and the understanding curve was just right (I wasn't bombarded with too much info all at once and by the end I was aware of everything I needed to know to understand what Carth was going through)

I loved it, you are way too harsh on yourself. :)

[PB PM]

I liked the story too, it may be a little rushed, but not bad at all.

[Robo]

So, does anyone else want to chime in with their own critiques and suggestions?

Star Wars isn't really my thing, but I still enjoyed it (thanks for the spoilers, which kept me from getting too lost :lol:). I think you've already covered the only things I would "critique" about it, which would be that it feels a bit short and rushed - though of course that's understandable, given its short gestation. :eek:

Since you're planning on revising it and lengthening it, I think you'll pretty much have that covered - it's good that you can be so aware of your own writing. There were a few places ("This is where Revan defeated the Mandalore and had her general activate the Mass Shadow Generator, ending the Mandalorian Wars") that felt a bit like "telling rather than showing" to me - not info dumps, but perhaps a bit too close for comfort. But illustrating that happening with a flashback or somesuch in a lengthier piece would get it back to "showing." (Of course, maybe all that stuff about Shadow Generators and Mandalorian Wars is common knowledge to anyone familiar with KoTOR, and could be reduced without confusing anyone; I'm an outsider here, I really have no idea :lol:).

Thanks for having the courage to share your story, and for coming up with the idea for the story exchange in the first place. :D I think that just leaves Kraetos, CoachK, and me. I'll have mine up in a few days, I promise - it'll be coarse and it'll be forced and it'll be pitiful, but that's the Hollywood way I will post it - I'm not working on my NaNo novel until it's done, so...

[Capella]

I'm glad everyone likes it more than I do. I promise I'll even share the fully-revised version once it's done, just because I think it would be awesome to be able to look and see the very concrete differences between draft and final.

Does anyone have any comment on the slight change in first-person perspective I mused about? Is it fine the way it is, or would changing the tense be better?