It was a frigid fall day when Revan, once dark lord of the sith and Jedi, decided to stand up Princess Luna of the night.

Moving through the brown, rolling hills, coated with grass that was either long since dead or vaguely green weeds that were currently dying, he realized that treating his host like that, after she'd given him everything he had needed, may not have been the wisest course of action.

But, if anything could ever be said about Revan, it was that he was first and foremost a trailblazer, with friends usually only coming in at a close second, accidentally inadvertently though that result usually turned out.

"Well," he shrugged, moving the thought far in the back of his head and shielding his eyes from the glaring golden sun. "Too late now to worry about it now," he thought to himself nonchalantly, the knowledge that he should have gone to the princess by now constantly reverberating throughout the back of his mind, coupled with the regret of the earned ire of his host and the guilt of both mingling together like a high proof drink.

The air filled his lungs as he rubbed his hands together for warmth and focused inward to use the Force as a way of keeping himself comfortable, realizing that, in retrospect, it may have been a good idea to either check what the weather was like north of Ponyville so that he might have prepared accordingly. He simply shrugged it off, though, and made an internal pact with himself to just move onward as best as he could. "If some chilly weather is the worst of my problems," he began, staring into the wild and untamed everfree and remembering the stood-up princess. "Then chances are, I'll be alright."

Then he saw it, the monolithic forest that held a key to both a familiar feeling awakening within him and a personal darkness rustling in his soul. An unfamiliar chill ran down his spine, not from the cold, however, or from being nervous. In fact, it was something that was usually more alien to him than most of the worlds he’s visited throughout his long life. “Fear? Huh,” he mused, running his hand through his hair and remembering how many times he’s come to feel that since he’d landed upon this world.

That frightened him as well.

“It’s probably nothing the great Revan can’t handle,” he smiled as he eased himself, his newly found anxiety with confidence laced with caution beginning to take domination of his current state of mind. With a final sigh, he resolved himself to get a move on and enter the eldritch place, knowing that if he didn’t at least make the effort to find some measure of peace with his past, then it would be impossible to imagine any kind of future, with or without standing next to the princess with the indigo wings.

“And if some animal or monster is now living in the Hawk,” he continued to reassure himself. “Then it’s nothing my lightsaber can’t handle,” but the more he spoke, the more hollow his words began to feel, like there was some nagging sensation in the back of his mind screaming at him that this was a bad idea and tugging on every, last part of his brain primitive enough to run from a disaster and steer it away from the crashed glory of the most technologically advanced ship wreck on this backwater world, but refused. Not so much because he had deadened himself to feeling fear over the course of the hundred years and wars he’s existed through, but simply because there was only a very select few enemies that he’d ever faced that he could not prevail against. More to the point was that he would never forgive himself if he just walked away from finding his ship and coming to terms with its, and by extension, his friend’s and crew’s, death.

But the nagging wouldn’t subside. Instead, it only kept pursuing him as he pursued his downed ship, and now matter how many walls of vines he crawled through, how many roots worthy of the trees of Kashyyyk he climbed over or how many branches he had to weave past, Revan could not outrun the constant feeling within the back of his mind that there was something more to this forest than he had ever given credence to the thought of.

And as the darkness, not simply metaphorical but literal at this point, began to encroach upon the older man, Revan could not help but reach out for his newly named lightsaber, Fire-Fang, as an object to see by.

“Not exactly what a saber is meant for,” he mused to himself, beginning to justify the use of a sacred weapon as little more than a flashlight and the distinctive snap-hiss sound and violet light emanating from the blade. “But it should work for all intents and purposes.”

*snap*

He turned a hard left, the sharp sound reverberating throughout the innards of his head and widening his eyes as though he’d been the apex predator of this world, hunting for his sinner. “Who’s there?” He asked once, brandishing out his violet weapon of choice, keeping her position disciplined and level to the Earth.

Briskly and quietly, he moved as if he’d been turned from the apex hunter to the hunted, augmenting his already admirable hearing and vision with the Force, or at least as much as he’d been comfortable using. He was still a stranger to this world and it was practically drowned in the power of the universe, after all.

"Where are you?" He shouted once more, hearing his own voice echo throughout the woods now, the cawing of the crows from on high followed only seconds after, his desire for a battle growing with each moment, losing himself in own cocktail of anger, fear anxiety and uncertainty and his rage continuing to build up further and further.

*snap*

A deep breath was taken as Revan swung his saber with all the speed of contained lightning, keeping his movements tightly within the frenzied discipline of juyo, but losing some form and grace with each passing iota of a second. “You can try to kill me!” He parroted the words he’d once said to a gang of Sith students at the Korriban monastery back during the Jedi Civil War. “You will fail, but you can try!”

The sounds of the haunted and eldritch forest began to sharpen as the sounds of every bird, beast and reptile, from the manticores to the rattlesnakes, stopped simply being ‘background noise’. His heart began to beat faster and faster and this entire world slowing down as he began to feel asphyxiated by the dark side that he’d found so prevalent within these woods. Revan’s eyes darted back and forth, as well, feeling a shadowed miasma like this since he’d been in the presence of the Sith Emperor all those years ago, only to lose it all for almost nothing.

“I SAID WHO’S THERE-” He’d begun to ask one more time before falling back into a pit of mud.

Wet dirt seemed to cover almost all of his body, from his boots to his tunic and some of the grit and the grime even made it to the skin underneath the clothing, all simply from being set on edge and losing his balance.

He shook his head hard in disgrace, feeling the indignity at what had just happened, knowing for a fact that someone out there was laughing hard at him and the disgraceful performance that he’d just displayed.

"Dammit," Revan muttered as he rubbed the mud his eyes, not sure in the slightest at what had just happened, only knowing that it had something to do with a darkness strong enough to make the everfree feel like another planet entirely by comparison to the world of Equestria. He let out a long sigh. "What the Hell is going on here?" he asked himself as he deactivated his lightsaber,knowing the heat would only cause the mud and the muck to dry faster upon him. "I feel like a damn padawan taking the trials,” he took a long sigh, remembering his breathing exercises from his training all those centuries ago, forcing his mind to stand still and take in his surroundings. “When did I get so jumpy?"

Ignoring the filth on him for the most part and removing only the choice bits that would have caked on his joints and impeded his movements, Revan kept on his journey, feeling but trying to shut out the continuing flood of the darkside around him. Even with as much knowledge as the scarred man possessed of the more heinous side of the energy that bound all living beings together. “I can’t let this place get to me again,” he thought aloud, feeling as if all of his vast knowledge had begun to fail him.

“This place...” he began trailing off in his sentence, leaving behind his snared robe and coming to a decision. “I need to be more careful here, try not to rely too much on the force, lest I throw something off balance her-”

“And where do you think you are going, Sir Revan?” A voice now matching the cold surroundings called out.

“Damn,” Revan mumbled as he turned around to see the mighty flapping wings of the night shepherd, Princess Luna, clad within her by now signature casual silk jeans and t-shirt and her arms crossed of seeing Princess Luna, clad in her silk jeans and all of her regal glory, arms crossed and staring down at the now grungy and obscenely dirty middle aged man. The middle aged man then humored himself with a smile. “Took you long enough.”

Luna only arched a single, unamused eyebrow at him. “You stood me up,” she bluntly stated, her expensive shoes finally making contact with the corpse of dead flora. “After you clearly stated your intent on meeting my friends, you stood me up, embarrassing my in front of all my closest companions, outside of my own dear sister, minder you,” she paused to take a breath as she landed on the leaf covered forest floor. “Pray tell, Sir Revan,” he could sense that she was saying ‘Sir Revan’ with a lot less respect and veneration at this point, although it may have been just a hunch. “Why?”

“Something came up,” Revan turned around, bluntly answering her inquiry, still trying to navigate between the vines and the roots of the tainted woods, both of them ignoring the sorry shape his garments were in, mud coated everything and missing cloak.

“That is all you have to say for yourself?” Luna pushed, feeling a great level of embarrassment at having her friends believe her to be bringing a new friend, someone she greatly admired, into their lives only for him to make the executive decision not to be there. “‘Something came up’?”

He hesitated to answer for about two seconds. “Yup,” Revan bluntly admitted finally, feeling the stern trunk of what must have been an ancient tree, though nowhere near the age of the towering forests of Kashyyyk. “My ship crashed out here, didn’t it?” He changed the subject as he made the leap to a large branch, now making the effort to climb so as to get a better view and scope of the woods he was in, hoping to spend as little time there as possible.

“I…” Luna hesitated, feeling that both the tables had been turned and that she should have been straight with her guest from the very beginning about this new discussion topic. “There are many ships that crash in the Everfree, Sir Revan. Some of them are built to last, while others are,” she was only met with silence, the realization dawning on her that she’d already lost this verbal bout when she chose to hesitate at his question. "I did, but tell me, my Knight, is it really necessary for you to leave?” her eyes burst open, the realization of the implication of what she’d just implied dawning on her. “For your ship, I mean?”

She received no answer, but Luna had known that she’d emoted enough within those last few questions for him to be aware of her true intent, if the previous night had not made him all knowing of her feelings for him already. Luna of the night had known that she’d been perhaps laying it on, as Vinyl would say, ‘a little thick’, but she ignored her friend’s advice by and large, and now was no exception, especially now, given the gift of a man who could comprehend her pain and whom she was capable of helping herself.

Luna let out a weary sigh, making sure to mark each reason why she might have fallen so head over heels for the mysterious stranger so fast, taking mental notes on what, pray tell, forced him to strike such a chord with the demi-goddess of the moon, and then she knew.

It was as if he had seen the whole universe and had done it all and seen it all. The way Revan walked, the careful and calculated motion and skill he took with each and every step, and the way he spoke, how his voice seemed to possess an authority reserved for only her sister and the mightiest of kings and emperors, led to the conclusion within the night shepherd’s mind that he, may have in fact, had done it all and seen it all. Truthfully, had he been born an Equestrian, she would have sworn that Revan was the reincarnation of Starswirl the bearded and Commander Hurricane themselves, mixed within a single package of unbridled wisdom and unknown reserves of unfathomable power.

It was then that Revan, grabbing onto an emerald coated branch, finally saw the light of day. A tremendous feeling of great warmth surged over his body, flooding past his residual stubble and into his scars. An endless horizon of ruby red and gold and bronze stretched as far as either of them could stand to see as the sun began to set over on the western side of the nation, showing that it had been nearly time for Luna to act upon her own duties as her sister had taken up her own, but the moment was allowed to pass.

Revan opened his mouth briefly, seeing the very evident impact only half of a mile away. His mouth closed, as if he had wanted say something, but didn’t, instead choosing to allow his movements and his silence to act in a way that his mouth was unable to.

“Revan?” Luna asked after him, spreading her wings and rising towards him. “You know you can never go back home, do you not?” her voice took a softer tone, still having the comforting resonance akin to when she’d aided the young winged girl, Scootaloo, with her own personal demons. “You must understand, Revan. My world, Equestria… it cannot-”

“I’m well aware of the situation, Luna,” he interrupted, softly though, truly knowing that an underdeveloped world such as this would never be able to bring him back home before he died of old age. “But going back to my ship…” he took a deep breath, his speech slowing down as more and more memories of his past began to flood back in the forefront of his mind. “It’s something I need to do... for me,” he added on, taking a long silence, then opening up again. “All my life, I’ve fought harder, learned faster and thought quicker than anyone around me. I’ve stopped wars and started them even worse. I’ve even killed some of my closest friends in my bid for power, but I want…” he thought deeply for moment, pondering upon what he’d truly wanted. “I want to leave it all behind me, Luna. The killing, the responsibility and the power. I just need it all to end, I just need-”

“You need closure,” Luna summarized, putting his thoughts into a single word. A small twinge of disappointment began to worm its way through her skull. Though she knew this man’s past nearly as well as he did from those few times she’d entered his dreams and nightmares, the thought had never occurred to her just how broken he might have become from the experiences. There was the last night they’d spent together within the gazebo, surely, but Princess Luna hadn’t the foggiest idea of what all those memories must have weighed on Revan’s broad shoulders.

It only served to remind her that, while she knew his past, there was still much that she needed to learn about the man that it had belonged to.

“I need closure,” he agreed, looking down, the cool wind brushing his clothes and moving them with the breeze and closing his brown eyes to keep them from feeling the stinging chill of the autumn and knowing that, while it had been 300 years since the death of most of his friends, save maybe the wookiee, this was the first time that he’d actually had the time to process and sift through all of his mistakes. There was a gnawing, unrelenting sensation of lust in the pit of his mind and in the back of his stomach.

The cyan eyes of the princess fell to the roof of the great, dark forest. The desire for closure, for tying up loose ends had been something that ate at her as well. The deep, unrelenting pain still resided within the soul of the goddess, like a poison with no antidote or anti-toxin. “Then I will help you, Sir Revan,” Luna promised, her silken face moving upwards towards the rampant sunshine over yonder, a new sense of determination dominating the young woman.

“You sure?” the man asked. Revan had been on many journeys, and if there had ever been anything he’d found particularly frustrating, it had been the advent of the random passerby constantly asking for his aid. Though there had always been a reward, surely, but the fact had always remained that he’d somehow exhibited a certain... aura about him, like the entirety of his existence had been built upon the need and the desire to help others, no matter how far he’d have to go out of his way to ensure that their issues had been dealt with. “There’s no guarantee that we’ll make it back by the time the train leaves, Princess,” Revan argued further, the knowledge of the irritation of going out of ones way could leave behind in a person. “And you are planning your sister’s birthday party, after all.”

“Revan, my dear Revan,” Luna placed her hand upon the brown clad shoulder of the once jedi knight, folding her grand wings behind her as her feet, like steel with the appearance of porcelain, made contact with the viridian forest roof top. “You think that, simply because I am at peace with this new life among the future, that I have no regrets? No…” her right hand slid down to grasp his own. “My knight, you should take solace in the fact that there is so much that I miss from my own life that I may never make peace with. My teacher, Starswirl the Bearded, may the stars rest his soul,” a tear began to fall from the eye of the princess. “He perished upon his bed, regretful in the knowledge that one of his greatest students had become a beast with the gift of words, wishing naught but death and chaos upon the home she’d once so proudly fought for and defended. “Everyday, though I still have my new friends and my sister to comfort me, I miss him and others so very dreadfully, but their times have all long since passed into the sands of time and into the pages of history,” she then looked up to Revan, whom had been no doubt digesting everything she’d been saying. “If I can help a friend so that they may never feel such an injustice upon themselves, if I can save you, the only man alive who can possibly relate to what I have been through, as both a leader of men and a fallen hero, then I ask you, Revan, why would I not?”

“I… I don’t know,” the man struggled with his own feelings, once again curious as to how this young woman had been able to worm her way deeper within his heart, feeling a certain fondness growing, although it wasn’t merely infatuation beginning to build up within the man’s psyche. No, it was something much more difficult for him to come by.

Respect. That’s the word., he answered to himself.

“Then come, Revan,” Luna commanded, a great smile on her alabaster face, waving her hand and cutting a great swathe through the leaves and the branches of the everfree. “I know you may need to thank me for all this great advice, and believe you me, it shall not come cheap in the days ahead, but…” quickly and over her shoulder, she shot him a warm grin, instilling in him the belief that everything on his shoulders would soon weigh a little less. “This one may be considered ‘on the house’, as Vinyl would say. Now follow me, we have some unfinished business to attend to, do we not?”

All Revan could do, aside from watching his footing atop the canopy of the natural Equestrian Flora, is smile. “Yeah, let’s go,” he agreed. “And Luna?”

“Hmm?” She turned her head, slightly.

“Thank you, for everything.”

…

In the beginning, there was nothing, save the cold, frigid winds of the arctic north and the shattered shell of a mad man thought vanquished by mere children and a forceful blizzard that sent his crumbling remnants to the four corners of the frozen tundra, long thought dead by the each and every being that knew his name, from his subjects to his rivals.

As the frozen winds of Hell’s ninth circle gathered, however, so to did the mind of a man that most had assumed dead. First, there was only a black snowflake that fell to the desert of ice and frigid snow, then came another, and then a third, and finally, as if driven by the will of a mad god, a small flurry of darkened ice crystals began to converge on but a single place.

Then came a haggard breath that brought a new life to a mad dog. At first, it had simply been the desire to hunt down and to kill everything that every opposed him, but rage soon gave way to reason as a blood scarlet cloak formed upon the his wide shoulders, followed by the Stygian armor, crafted from the iron and of the bones of his last great adversary over one thousand years ago.

Finally, cunning came as a plan began to form within his once shattered, splintered mind as his metallic grieves began to march across the frozen and near blinding horizon. As his eyes bled a green and violet light, he moved like a wraith through the frozen landscape of the desolate wasteland of the subzero temperatures, moving as if he had but one purpose with the tenacity of a raging minotaur and the pride of an alicorn princess.

So he moved, and he kept moving, his dark magic keeping him warm and knowing that if he was ever to take back what was rightfully his, if he was ever to cast down those oppressive royals who were angered by his own ability to touch the sun, then he would need allies.

He would need an army, and if his ancient knowledge was still of any use beyond his power in the arcane and forbidden magics, then he knew exactly where to find one.

Over one thousands years ago, the royal sisters sought to eliminate any threat worth their attention, either through coercion or by their magical might, should their hand’s had been forced. Through campaign and negotiation, the two had always been able to find a way to defeat their adversaries, save the their icy brethren of the north.

As his thick, metal jacketed boot crunching snow of the encampment, his red cape flowing through the blizzard, he could not help but feel a small sense of satisfaction all those around him gazed upon his mighty and towering frame, doing nothing save simply standing there, as they’d been frozen in place by their own fear, unable to move themselves or thaw their joints with their rage to try stop or attack the deposed leader from moving any further throughout their home.

The scarlet caped king could only smile at that, feeling some sadistic pleasure in knowing that, while he might not be at his full strength, he knew very well that it was growing. He also knew that power meant more than simply magical aptitude. It also meant having a legion of followers willing to lay themselves down for your supreme will, and after today, he intended to become very powerful indeed.

…

“There it is, Revan,” Princess Luna revealed the down and dead space freighter, it’s once orange paint now charred to nothing more than one of the darkest blacks that the moon maiden had ever bore witness to and it’s frame now contorted and broken beyond any plausible thought of repair. As her feet made contact with onyx colored earth beneath her and the small fires still blazing around the crashed vessel, a new feeling of anxiety marched within her head, singing a chorus of uncertainty. “I know this was my idea, but…”

“But…” he imitated her trailing off, not taking his eyes off the once proud Ebon Hawk for a moment, it’s disgraced landing weighing heavy on his soul. He had been through so much on that ship, from escaping death countless times to saving the galaxy with the help of hit’s mighty engines, vastly overpowered for the size and class of the ship.

“But,” she continued, keeping her chest puffed up and on her guard as much as she could be. “I am… uncertain around this ‘Ebon Hawk’, as you called it on the way here,” Revan turned to her, swearing that he’d just heard a vague trembling in her voice, starkly contrasting with the resolved tone of only a half an hour earlier. “This place, your ship… does it not feel as if something is wrong?”

“What do you mean?” He inquired, feeling something as well but wishing to gauge the opinion of the princess.

“I feel… cold, Revan,” she answered. “I feel hate and pain, much the same to what I experienced lost in my time as a nightmare, but… different, as if the emotions inside were fighting each other on an entirely platonic level,” she looked to him, an expression of recognition painted plain as day on his face, viewing it as one of the loose ends he’d come here to tie. “Is this what it feels like to dance along the edge of both sides of your ‘Force’, Revan?”

“All the time,” he answered plainly, finally moving from his near statue like position and through the mire and the muck of the crash landed starship, firmly gripping the side of the once proud vessel, searching for the emergency access way that had been built atop the roof of the ship. It was true that the crash might have totally mutilated the outside of his ship, but he had to make the try, if only to find some solace in knowing he’d made the effort. He smiled bitterly, remembering the first time he’d broken into the Ebon Hawk, three centuries ago when he’d stolen the ship from Davik Kang of the Exchange crime syndicate. How ironic it was, then, Revan began to muse, that now I need to break into it when I have nowhere to go and no one is in danger, when at first, the Sith were bombing the planet when I entered the Hawk’s halls for the first time.

“Wait, Revan!” Luna called after him, reaching for him with her left and keeping her right close to her chest, still reeling in the uncertainty and the fear of the moment. “Do you even know what you will find in there?! Have you the foggiest conception of what lurks within it’s walls?!”

Standing atop the ship, his back facing the princess and sweet coating his brow, he looked up, struggling to come to mind with a thoughtful answer, but in the end, nothing came, save a cryptic response that would have made his own Jedi master, Kriea, proud of him. “The only thing in there, Luna,” he began to answer as he reached for the entrance to the innards of the veteran freighter. “Is what I take with me. I’m sorry, but I need this.”

As the mysterious man descended into the depths of the alien technology, into it’s darkened halls and began to wonder through it’s decayed electronics, all Luna could do was give a defeated whisper. “But I need you…”

…

The first contact of his leather jacketed feet to the cold metal floor created a resonating echo throughout the hawk. Standing tall once more, the traveling noise seemed to circle back to him, but then, he shouldn’t have surprised by that, given the Ebon Hawk’s interior.

He moved through the ship, quiet as the still air just before battle and sifting through the ancient memories of a time long since past. In truth, within the place that had once been his home, he never felt more unwelcome, as if he were a wraith amongst the ghosts of a world long since dead through a tragedy not of it’s doing, but of someone elses.

Moving passed the medical bay, the vivid imagery of an old and crazy grey jedi presented itself as vividly as any oil painting from Alderaan. The stories of how he’d been a smuggler, fallen in love, fought that love and spared her life, only to go on and kill more, still rang within Revan’s ear drums.

“I don’t care who you were!” Revan turned around briskly, hearing an all too familiar voice from all to long ago. Assuming he’d gone mad, he stilled his breathing, only to hear the roar of a wookie talking about grenades and how he’d already given Revan enough. “You’re our friend now!”

The message finished as the words of the blue twi'lek, Mission Vao, reverberated throughout the charred husk. Her brother asking for money for his botched attempted to get rich with Tarisian Ale and the 400 credits he’d still owed Revan was still a thought that would cross his mind on occasion. “Jokes on him, I guess,” he chuckled at the dark humor of his once good friend’s brother long sense being as dead as the trees that Revan had crashed into.

But he didn’t come here to reminisce about his friends, except maybe one in particular. Bastila had been more than just a friend, though, and as the jedi wandered through the hallowed halls of what he may eventually consider a personal memorial to his friends and allies and droids, a monument to the courage and dedication of two soldiers, a fledgling smuggler, a renegade jedi padawan, a wookie and two droids, one of which having a very itchy trigger finger, he knew that Bastila Shan was the one, true reason he’d come here.

So, finally finding the cockpit of the Ebon Hawk, Revan, the Revanchist, Darth Revan, the Butcher of Malachor, and the Prodigal Jedi, went down to his knees and folded his damaged hands together, still feeling the sting of both the cold and the journey here, to this place of remembering.

Closing his eyes, he began to focus on an order for older than any jedi or sith holocron. “There is no ignorance, there is knowledge,” his first words of meaning sense entry onto the hallowed grounds were something that no living jedi, save Revan, knew. “There is no fear; there is power,” they were words that connected more deeply within him than any words that the Sith, of his own or of the Empire’s, could ever reach. “I am the heart of the Force. I am the mystery of the darkness,” winds swirled around him, his emotions, all the love and the anger and all of his sorrow, fueling them. “In balance within chaos and harmony,” Revan’s voice lowered, now realizing how far he was to the edge and he calmed himself. “Immortal in the Force.”

As the winds subsided completely, another voice rung out, though it was no memory and it was far too loud and clear to be any illusion brought about by the possible ensuing madness of Revan’s current state of mind. “Oh no…”

Across the room stood a man from his past.

Him.

“You have got to be kidding me.”

…

“I should have known I’d find you here,” a strong, authoritative voice sounded off from behind Princess Luna, who’d been sitting on a moss covered log, long since tired of standing, even with full knowledge that her body could take much more punishment than simply being ‘tired from standing’. “Although, to be honest, I’d hoped I was wrong in this.”

“Sister,” Luna responded, long having sense known that her sister would have tracked her down to this place and having a good enough idea of how her sister operated to deduce that. “It would appear as though you were right on this as well.”

Princess Celestia took a deep sigh, choosing a spot yet untouched by the green moss of the wild and untamed forest to sit her plain, cotton jeans on and leaning back, admiring the sunshine that she’d brought about perhaps seven hours earlier. “So you knew I’d come here, Luna?”

“How could I not?” the younger of the two countered, her eyes remaining on the ship. “You implied it heavily enough that his ship crashed to the north of a small town in the south. We arrive to a small town in the south, and you expect him not to attempt to investigate?” Princess Luna purposefully left out the part about Revan not entirely knowing whether or not it was actually his ship that crashed there. There was something enticing about knowing her sister thought Revan was more powerful and dangerous than he actually was, although she had to admit, that could have just been her more female side rearing it’s head: choosing a be infatuation with a man that her family thought to be a threat, in love with a proverbial ‘bad boy’.

“Silly me,” Celestia responded in an only half way bored voice, choosing not to press that particular matter on the subject of their guest any further, if only to get to the real reason while she’d followed them. Still, she thought. It wouldn’t hurt to make conversation with her, at the very least. “So what happened with Soarin’ and Vinyl?”

“The wonderbolt you sent to act as my protection…” Luna trailed off, hardly able to stop a smile from forming on her blue coated lips. “Is currently hiding from his ex girlfriend.”

“Huh,” Celestia raised an eyebrow. “Is that right?”

“Evidently,” she added on with a quirky grin. “The man is frightened to death of commitment. As for Vinyl…” she tilted her head up, struggling to remember where her best friend had gone. “The last I saw of her, I believe she may have gone to the nearest hardware store. Something about ‘getting more power for her ‘wubz’’, as she calls them,” Luna let out a chuckle, wondering how in all of Equestria she ended up being best friends with a ‘disc jockey’. “Or may hap it is about that ‘personal engineering project’ that she has been so busy on with her free time. I won’t hazard a guess.”

“I see…” Celestia added on, trying to feign interest, now choosing to move on with the reason she’d arrived. “Luna, I-”

“Wish to speak with me of Revan?” Luna looked up to her sister with a false smile, knowing from the very start that this was the only real reason her sister would come down here while her party was being planned. No, for the years leading up to the night princess’s eventual banishment, her more sunny counterpart had always been notorious for trying to spy on her birthday celebrations, so her coming down here was no small thing to ignore. “Before you ask, Sister, why else would you follow my comrades and I?”

“Luna,” Celestia struggled to take a softer tone, though failing miserably. She’d had so little experience and practice with this sort of thing over the years, and yet for Luna… As Princess Celestia looked down upon her younger sister, she couldn’t help but notice that she had hardly changed at all from her time as Nightmare Moon. In fact, while she had matured from her own, personal crisis, other than that, she was still almost entirely the same twenty seven year old woman that had been plagued by the nightmare forces. “You have to know that he could be a very great threat.”

“I am aware,” the younger sister admitted bluntly as she stared at the ship.

“Then why do you insist on growing closer to him?” She pushed further, raising her voice in the process and gaining a growing irritation that her sister would not look her straight in the eyes. “Luna, look at me! This man, Revan… you have to know that he isn’t some stray dog you’ve found on the side of the street! We both know how powerful he-”

“No, Sister,” Luna cut her off. “I know how powerful he is, because one thing you have never failed to do was underestimate those that were beneath you.”

The Princess of the day was taken about by the snide insinuations that just left her sister’s mouth. “Luna, what makes you say-”

“Sister, I am not a child and I appreciate you looking out for me, but…” she turned her head to look briefly at her more lightly colored and older sibling. “Ever since we were young, you have always had it in you to consider those weaker than you as a minor threat. I have since forgiven you for it, for what it ended up costing me, but had we brought the elements to war against King Sombra, then may hap I would not have fallen victim to his spells that laid the groundwork for my eventual fall and corruption. And shall I remind you of what happened with Chrysalis at our nieces wedding?"

Celestia took pause at that accusation, knowing that every, last word that her sister had laid out in front of her was one hundred percent true. Ever since they were children, Celestia had never taken who she had gone up against seriously, or simply viewed any challenge as a game or something akin to a mental exercise like a match of chess. It was also true that, although they had brought about Sombra’s alleged final defeat over one thousand years ago, had Celestia been more cautious and brought along the elements of harmony, he might not have planted the seeds of darkness with Luna or sealed away the empire for a millennium.

The fact that Luna’s argument was so correct, however, only made her desire to keep Revan around all the more jarring. “So, Luna, if Revan is so much more powerful than I think he is, why are you protecting him?” A look of shock appeared on the youngers face, the momentum now clearly in the hands of Celestia. “I know he’s powerful, which is something you’ve always been attracted to. What’s more is that we both know that he was holding back when you two sparred at the castle yesterday, if only because he didn’t know how using his power would affect this place or himself, but you need to know, he is a very great threat, so, if you don’t mind my asking…” Celestia took a breath and looked her sister dead in her eyes. “Why do you find him so captivating? Is it the power? The mystery? Do you crave someone that comes from your own starry skies? Is it-”

“He is like me!” Luna blurted out, moving from the dead stump and turning her back to her sister, emotion now creeping into her voice. “You do not know what it was like being up there for that long, Celestia! You do not! But when I hear his voice, when I walk his dreams, when I…” her voice began to choke up as her eyes began to water. “When I see him, standing after the things he has done and to know that he has kept fighting with a shattered heart? It draws me to him, Tia, and last night, in the gardens…” she turned around to see her sister’s face, shocked by the sudden outburst. “I know he is unpredictable, but if I can heal him, another like me…” tears began to flow freely now. “I just want him to know that I know his pain and to know that I may help him. You just… do not understand what either of us have gone through…”

“Luna, I-”

“What?” the princess of the night shouted at her sister. “Did not know how it felt to be alone for one thousand years? Having nothing to keep you company but a voice inside your head, screaming in your ear and amplifying all the hatred you have ever known? You do not know the blunt and rusty dagger of knowing all your friends of a thousand years past having last scene you as a monster?” Luna sunk down, sticking her head between her legs and wrapping herself with her massive wings. “I think you should go, Sister, before one of us says something the other will regret.”

“I…” Celestia stuttered, unsure of what the proper response would be at the moment and holding her tongue like a steel trap to avoid stirring up another argument. “I understand, Luna. But please,” she began to end as she turned away, extending her wings. “Be careful. I don’t want to lose you a second time.”

Luna just mumbled to herself as she heard her sister’s wings break through and create an even larger hole from underneath the canopy. A bitter cocktail of regret, anger and sorrow went down her throat as she left. There was no reason for her to attack her sister like that and she knew it more than anything, but she was not a child any more, and after being caged like a rabid animal for so long…

Princess Luna only tucked her head further between her legs, barely holding back the tears and trying to hide her own weakness, though from whom was another question entirely. “I hate being alone,” she mumbled. “Hurry up, Revan.”

…

Revan stood there, eyes fixed upon the man in front of his, wearing his old armor, with his mask upon the face of a stranger. “Who are you?” Revan inquired calmly, maintaining a level voice and head.

There was only silence, though, as the wraith of his past went about the room at a pace befitting that of a sloth, circling what had once been the communication center, locating in the very heart of the burnt out, corpse of a starship.

His eyesight narrowed and he felt his hands tighten further, forming fists and sending a mild sensation of pain up his arms. This can’t be happening. This isn’t who I came to find, Revan thought to himself, his senses sharpening from every angle and every orifice. That can’t be…

Me?

The two only circled each other from across the middle ground of the vessel, each apparently trying to gauge what the other was capable of, though that was what Revan had assumed his doppelganger had been doing. In truth, the man in brown had simply been trying to wrap his head around the entirety of this ordeal.

Revan shook his head violently. No, his thoughts echoed within the confines of his aged skull. No, this is a trick. A manifestation of the dark side found in this forest. No more, no less. But even he had to admit, the teachings from centuries past that still resonated within him could simply swept aside as a smuggler would the effects of ale-goggles.

Deep breaths were drawn in as Revan closed his eyes and focused inward to force the energy being out from his mind, to try and push it out and to simply be at peace with his situation, but his heightened senses still told, screamed at him not to take his eyes from the man clad in his old standards of violet, red and black.

As they begged, Revan could not help but obey. “What do you want here?” but he was only answered still with more silence, befitting that of a wraith or the ghost that the entity was. Well it was worth a shot, Revan thought to himself, prepared to turn his back the newly found spirit.

Two distinctive sounds, each the tell tale sign of the lightsaber, weapon of the Sith and tool of the Jedi, shook the air as the vibrations reverberated throughout the cold, stale air. Letting out a deep sigh, Revan unclasped his own lightsaber to see a green and crimson light radiating in the sunken corpse of the once proud Ebon Hawk. “I see this is going exactly where I thought it was,” he replied to the challenge in a voice lacking of any emotion, save annoyance. “Come on then,” he moved to a defensive soresu stance, lifting his saber to above his head and and vertical to his shoulders, pointing towards his new enemy. “Let’s see what you’re made of.”

The ghost of the sith lord’s past made the first move, leaping forward like frog towards Revan, sending a spiraling drill of scarlet and viridian straight towards the once Jedi, proving that his move to take a defensive form had indeed been a wise one.

The black robed fighter made a quick slash from the right hand holding red, further complimented the green of a lower slash, only barely kept in check by the acute reflexes of the violet in both hands of the one, true Revan.

His speed is incredible, Revan thought to himself, deflecting a strike from the right side and barely able to dodge another from the left. It’s like he’s me at my prime as a sith. And it was true, as well. As the once bearded man struggled to keep his composure in the wake of the onslaught of red and green, he began to wonder if it was really as wise of an idea as he’d thought, coming to the Hawk for closure.

No, he denied that assertion. This is my ship, and no ghost will ever change tha-

“Gah!” Revan gasped, his thought was cut off as a hard kick from a dark boot hit him square in the chest, sending him reeling back and slamming his back hard into the now black, durasteel bulkhead of the ship that would not be taken from him. He rolled swiftly to the side as a spear of crackling plasma went to skewer him, barely escaping from a long overdue death.

Revan moved to the side and backed through the corridor, recognizing the cold hard and necessary truth of staying mobile, lest he lose his life that day.

Sparks flew throughout the narrow and hallowed halls of the ship, the sabers scraping all around, melting the futuristic alloy and sending bits and pieces of molten metal flying through the air and the strikes. Rainbow lightning dissected the innards of the ship as the thunder rolled between the two and blows that had come at the speed of the most advanced blaster bolts were traded as the two warriors each waged a singular war of attrition against the other, neither giving any ground and each participating in a dance of death that would have meant the end of near any other warrior the galaxy over, but not these two.

Never these two.

Finally, an opening. In an instant, Revan delivered a single, powerful headbutt, reinforced by a small bit of telekinesis, towards his adversary. A strong sensation of pain circulating throughout his head from the hard contact of the Mandalorian mask, but it was set aside for later. It was soon followed up by a swift and rounding slash straight into the neck of his enemy, though it had been blocked by the arm itself, another soon followed straight into where its heart should have been.

The body jolted, it’s form now halted entirely, with the only exception being it’s black, gauntleted hands reaching for Revan’s face, crackling with sapphire electricity. As a final measure, Revan twisted the saber, tearing it through so many more organs as he lifted it up through the shoulder vertically, a way totally reminiscent, but reversed, in the way that a treacherous Sith pureblood had assassinated his once greatest friend, student and ally, Meetra Surik.

The static subsiding, Revan opened his maw for one last time. “So tell me, Ghost,” he accentuated that last word. “How does it feel to die twice?” He asked as his violet saber, Fire-Fang, retreated back within the spiked hilt, sending the darkened armored body crumpling to the floor. “It serves you right,” he spat down at the being before him. “Maybe next time?” He added further. “You might try answering my damn questi- by the Force…” he trailed off as the mask began to evaporate into nothing, revealing something that, even on this world, surprised him above and beyond anything he’d expected. “It can’t be…”

“Luna?” the ramifications assaulted him like Malak’s assassination attempt, only not nearly so gentle. “How, in all the galaxy could it mean? I mean, what could it…” his mind raced with the speed of the fastest swoop bike, but still no answered came. Though he’d imagined that his once teacher, Kreia, might have had a field day of sorts with determining what this would mean. But then, maybe her teachings rubbed off on me?

“My past came back to attack me on this world, and judging by the colors of the lightsabers,” he began to surmised, closing his eyes slowly, clenching his fist around his own unignited weapon. “It meant that not only my sith, but my Jedi past is dangerous here,” the deepest breath that he’d ever taken was executed as he moved back towards the cockpit, ignoring the myriad scars that had now decorated the interior of his starship, his mind and heart now weighing heavy and his soul bearing the mass of a past of greater importance, that had affected more lives and had saved and destroyed many more.

With a very long gaze, he looked down upon the mask, forgotten by the princess upon their first meeting when he’d first landed upon this world. In more ways than Revan could fathom, that mask was a part of him, as much as his lightsaber was to him, or any saber could be to any Jedi, and as much as the force was to the universe, binding all life together in a single, glorious but fragmented entity. “If giving up my past is something I must do to protect this world, then so be it,” he lifted his right hand and released the cast iron grip he’d had on Fire-Fang. “I will be a Jedi, or Sith, no longer.”

The metal clanked against metal and it left a gaping wound greater than Revan had left in any starship in his career as a military officer, but it was done now and it was behind him.

Now he had to attend to his princess.

…

Princess Luna was still crying, even after her sister had left her in her solitude as she’d requested, though if her surroundings, a derelict ship in the middle of a wild forest that had always been something of a chore to be around, were any indication, it was that she’d still had more than her fair share of demons to slay if she intended on helping anyone at all, especially Revan, as much as she had hated to admit it.

She smiled bitterly, wiping a tear from her eye as she remember where she was a few nights ago, when Revan first crashed into her life and all the destruction he’d brought him in the wake of his arrival.

He seemed so simple, she thought to herself, looking up at the beams of light left behind from her sister’s departure, the golden beams offering some of the only warmth to be found within the Everfree. Just a man on a ship from the stars, just like those fairy tales that mother used to tell Tia and I, before…

She looked down again, the ancient sounds and smells of coughed up blood ringing through her ears for the first time in years, even before she’d gone rogue as Nightmare Moon.

“I just…” Luna’s head sank further in both depression and her legs, attempting her very hardest to shut out the rest of the world, hoping and praying with all her might that something changed soon. “I just want to have something for myself, something to…”

In an instant, her head jolted up, the echoing of rusty screeching slaughtering her ear drums as the Ebon Hawk opened from the bow of the vessel, revealing no light as she’d half expected, but instead, a single man different from the one that had entered.

He seems… different, Luna thought to herself, her mind racing to discover why. There is something knew in the way he is walking… and he is breathing deeper than he has ever done since arriving to this world. And he is… the princess’s mouth went agape as her hand moved over it in shock, unable to comprehend what she’d truly been setting her sights on.

“Revan?” Luna asked out, calling his name. Her heart beat playing out as if it were a war drum, her feat arose from the green, slimy marsh and her wings fluttered over, moving her instantly in front of her charge. “Are you… are you smiling?”

A wide eyed grin extended itself along his face as the man quickly grabbed a hold of Luna and embraced her. Smiling herself, she’d accepted his hold over her and covering them both in her majestic wings.

He’s warm, she thought to herself. Like a sunset, or the first day of summer. Is this what the Force feels like? She wondered, but at the same time, she did not particularly care whether or not this was simply what it felt like to be in touch with the so called ‘Force’, or if it was simply her own joy manifesting itself in the form of a simply comfort that both of them could share. All that really mattered to her was that Revan was back and he seemed more alive than he ever had before.

“Luna?” He called her name.

“Yes, Revan?” She replied back, her mind in a constant guessing game as to what it was that he was going to say next and wracking her brain as to whether or not it would be an intrinsic piece of wisdom from his vaunted ‘Republic’, or if it was simply him opening his heart and soul to her, completely and utterly, as she’d been trying to make him do since they had first met.

“I can’t wait for your sister’s birthday party tomorrow, and,” cold air flooded his lungs as his next sentence followed. “And I’m sorry for leaving you with your friends like that. Really. You deserved better.”

“I…” just one tear fell down her cheek as they held onto each other for dear life, both knowing that this moment would last far from forever, but refusing to allow it to end on any terms but their own. “I’m glad to hear that, Revan, and I forgive you. Truly.”

“Good,” he replied, taking her by the hand and moving in the direction that they’d entered the forest from. “Then come on, my lady,” Revan shot her an elated grin. “We have a gala to prepare for, now don’t we?”

Author's Notes:

Well that only took forever.

Sorry it took so long. I really am. College got in the way, and so did a full time job...

So I wonder who that one guy in the middle of the blizzard was. You guys think that he'll be a problem later on?

And Revan fought and killed an illusion of Luna?

Whatever could that mean...

Well, what ever it is, comment below, and let me know!