#im getting sleepy and feverish so. i decline to be normal or make sense

[thatwitchrevan]

Revanna rambling

She didn't need a fresh start to survive or to break out of the pattern of violence and betrayal she was in, and in fact the mind wipe definitely hurt in many more ways than it helped bc it took away her agency in the whole thing and was just a further abuse to prove to them that the world was cruel and they would have to burn down anything that could hurt them to be safe, because even their mind can be taken from them and even the people who raised them were willing to tear them apart.

What Revan NEEDED was a single person to actually care about her and be willing to help her without her having authority over them or them having some agenda. Malak was going to kill her and what loyal followers she had left weren't really friends - she killed all her friends except him - and they couldn't do anything other than follow orders.

What they needed was Bastila, who knows enough of what the Jedi put Revan through, knows from experience what the Jedi put everyone especially kids like them through, and who has compassion for them instead of just pity and disappointment, who cares and wants to help aside from what Revan deserves or what is right because they are hurting and she wants to make it stop.

And then even Bastila can't help her for a long time because she goes along with the Jedi's plan and she has to earn Revan's trust first, and by then they've both already lost so much.

And like the game suggests like 'maybe this was a good thing, a second chance' and I don't think it's a coincidence that it mainly comes from Carth who sees all this in black and white, but he's wrong. It's not a second chance if you don't choose it. It's not a second chance if you have to kill your best friend first. It's not a second chance if you can't keep your name, if you're given a conditional fucking pardon and stuck where everyone can see you and told to behave and be grateful.

Merith doesn't even want a fucking second chance. Aside from the fact that she wants Malak back, she wants her life back - failing that, she's got to carry her life on her back. She can't set it down. She owes it to herself and everyone she hurt and lost to remember and be that person again.

There is no clean slate, no redemption, and the more they chase some kind of absolution the more they get hurt and the more they hurt other people. And after everything they can't pretend it's okay as long as they're doing it for the Republic, for the greater good, for the cause. Killing a Sith army so that they don't have the opportunity to potentially cause another war is still killing a bunch of people. Nothing changes, her life just goes in circles.

All she ever needed was to be allowed to grow up and mature so she could understand what kind of person she wanted to be, to have people that would help her and stop her from going too far, to be listened to. Which is not to say all those atrocities happened because baby didn't get enough love. They chose to go out and play bingo with war crimes. Bastila would've been just as right to kill them right there and take their empire apart. Might've been better for some people. But then, who knows, maybe Mission would've died on Taris and Dustil on Korriban and maybe the Sith would've invaded and it would be just as bad as she always feared. No one can know.

But what Bastila ultimately chose to do was to treat her like a person. And you can't fix a person. But you also don't need to.