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“So.”
“Hello, Carth. How are you?”
The older, lightly grey haired, brunette man looks up at Carth as he lay prone on the rug with a young light brown Massiff pup crawling all over him. Revan grins brightly up at him, and Carth shakes his head in fond exasperation. Really, the things this man seems to get up when left alone to his own devices.
“You don’t trust me to take care of myself?” Revan asks as he squints upwards at Carth as the Massiff puppy crawls over his chest, making soft, happy sounds.
“Well, I don’t know. This coming from the man who has nearly gotten himself killed twice over?” Carth says in a deadpan tone.
“Hey now. Most of those times are complete accidents and definitely not my fault. Just the poorly made decisions of other people that I happened to be around for.” Revan answers in a mock serious tone with his mock serious face and points up towards him.
“Right.” Carth tries valiantly to not smile in response to the other man’s antics, though he know that he has failed when he feels the corner of his mouth twitch upwards slightly. Really, though it was hard for him to take Revan seriously when he had a cute tiny creature with him.
“So, is there an explanation for why you have a Massiff pup crawling over you?” Carth asks as he moves to sit down on the floor next to Revan and the pup snorts into his knee after headbutting it.
“You probably wouldn’t believe me if I told you.” Revan says with a bright grin on his face as he watches the pup trying to crawl into Carth’s lap. Carth snorts as he chuckles softly at the pup’s antics.
"Just tell me." Carth listens to Revan’s tale as the man retells the day’s utterly ridiculous events that led him to being briefly on the run from angry pirates and their wives to finding the Massiff pup, cold and alone in a dirty alley way. All of this happening after Revan somehow accidentally insulted both a Jedi and a Galactic Senator.
“It sounds like you had quite the adventure today.” Carth says quietly as he lays down beside Revan and curls into the man’s side, sighing softly as Revan puts his arm around the middle of Carth’s back.
“Wasn’t much of one without you there.” Revan answers softly as he nuzzles the top of Carth’s head gently while the pup curls up into a ball on top of Revan’s stomach.
“Promise to take me on the next one.” Carth mumbles softly and Revan chuckles into his hair.
“I promise.”
Silence falls between them as Carth gently pats the pup’s head, rubbing gently behind one of its ears, and it yips happily at the attention as a thought occurs to Carth. He glances at Revan’s shoulder. “Does this Massiff pup have a name yet?”
“Nope. I thought you would like to help with that one, Carth.” Revan answers in a soft tone, though Carth is certain that he hears the smile in the man’s voice.
“Well good to know you’re thoughtful enough to not do this part on your own, my love,” Carth says teasingly, before turning his attention to the Massiff pup while he ignores Revan’s sputtering. “Let’s see what we can name you, little one.”
0
Revan wakes up with a soft groan and wonders why his head hurts as he slowly sits up. Revan is fairly certain that the crew hasn’t done anything in recent memory for his head to be hurting.
“Oh good. You aren’t dead.”
He looks up to see Carth is standing near him, leaning casually against a nearby pillar. At least the man before him looks like Carth, but there’s something off about him. There’s something immediately wrong about the situation. Two of them being, the weapons that he has with him and the odd mercenary hunter style of armor that the other man is wearing. Armor that Revan knows he has no memory of ever seeing Carth wear at any time. The sniper rifle leaning against the wall next to Carth’s right leg was another tip-off that something was wrong.
“Carth? What is going on?” Revan asks softly as he tries to get a sense through the quietness in the Force what is happening.
“I have no idea know how you know my name or what you think you are going to do here. But your appearance has interrupted of something great. A grand teaching moment if you will,” Carth says as he ignores the question as he starts to twirl a vibroblade in his hands while he paces in front of Revan.
Right then, he notices his lightsaber hanging on Carth’s belt. Alarm freezes his blood cold as Carth notices his look and one of his hands goes towards Revan’s lightsaber hanging on his belt. Carth holds it thoughtfully in his hand as he looks at it.
“Looking for this, Jedi? Well too bad for you, it belongs to me now,” Carth says in a disinterested tone. He glances at Revan with a grin that leaves him feeling a little unsettled. “I would also suggest that you start running, Jedi.”
Raven bolts as soon as the doors slowly open and he hears the echo of Carth’s harsh laughter behind him. Where were they at that Carth has managed to find himself some kind of underground base complex? Revan forces himself to ignore the way that the shadows of the dark tree trunks seem to be reaching out towards him. Almost as if they want to grab hold of him and stop his escape.
A few moments pass before he comes to a stop at a dead-end, breathing heavily as he tries to find an escape route out of that spot. The quietness in the Force becomes a cacophony of loud whispers as something shifts behind him.
“There you are, Jedi.”
The Force screams around him as he hears the sounds of a weapon just beginning to fire.
Revan opens his eyes with a soundless gasp and sits up in the bed. Breathing heavily, he stares down at his sweaty hands before he looks around the room. Galla, their Massiff, snorts softly as one of her legs twitches while she sleeps at the foot of their bed. Glancing towards the other side of the bed showed him that Carth is still fast asleep on his back with one arm stretching out towards him.
Sighing softly, he pushes off the bed sheets and moves to sit on the edge of the bed. Revan stares down at his sweaty hands as he wills his rapidly beating heart to calm down. What is the meaning of the dream that he had just had? Was it a vision of some kind?
An hour passes in silence as he stares at his hands with his heart finally calm and after a moment, Revan senses Carth wake himself up with a snort. He hears more than sees as Carth pushes himself up before Revan feels a hand touch his back. Revan tries not to tense under Carth's gentle touch.
“You alright?” Carth asks tiredly.
That was a good question, because Revan wonders if he is too or if he has imagined the whole thing. He makes himself nod nonetheless.
“Yeah, I’m fine. It was just a nightmare.” Revan answers softly as the hand on his back starts gently rubbing circles into tense muscles.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“Not really. No.” He shakes his head and smiles a bit as he hears Carth sigh softly behind him.
“Then we can talk about it in the morning if that is alright with you. For now just get some sleep and remember that I’m here with you,” Carth says softly as the tense muscles in Revan’s back finally looses up.
“I love you, Carth.”
“I love you too, Revan,” Carth says softly into the back of Revan’s neck.
0
“So what Pokemon did you catch, Carth? I heard the doors open early this morning. Thought it might be you since no one else wakes up early like you do,” Revan asks with a grin as he offers birdseed to another Trainer’s Pidgey that sits calmly on his shoulder.
Carth rolls his eyes at his husband as he doesn’t immediately answer as his Bulbasaur and Slyveon chirr softly as they play contentedly in the short grass beside them. Revan’s Chespin and Pikachu watch the area from time to time and play with some of the other Pokemon as well. Before they became friends, Carth and Revan met each other in Pallet Town as young Trainers from different regions around the world, aiming to take on the Pokemon League of the Kanto region.
Together they made the decision to take on the other Leagues after that and both of them came away with the experiences that they had been looking for when they had done their matches with stronger, much more famous Trainers. The lessons that they learn together are all very illuminating.
Then Carth had told Revan of his plan to buy land and open a Daycare center where Trainers can leave their Pokemon with him and Carth to help raise the Pokemon to an appropriate level of strength while the Trainers trains with other Pokemon. To his surprise, Revan easily agrees to help him manage the facility, have a part of it to run like a hotel and keep a look out for weary Trainers along the routes that may need a place to stay for the night.
Six months into their newest venture together, Revan surprises him one day by asking Carth to marry him in a room full of Trainers. Young and experienced Trainers alike who had all congratulate them after he accepts Revan’s proposal.
“Not caught. More like rescue before nursing it back to health before releasing back into the wild. It was a Butterfree,” Carth answers as Revan hugs him from behind. "It felt kinder to release it rather than keep it here."
“Sounds like you did well then. Those little guys are rarely seen these days. Both in the wild or among our fellow Trainers,” Revan says softly into Carth’s hair.
0
“So.”
“Yeah.”
“So, that was a thing that just happened.”
Carth nods slowly as he looks up to watch Revan as the man picks up a data pad, looks at the contents that it held, and then puts it back down on the table near the bed. “Do you think that a female you will cause problems?”
Revan shrugs one shoulder. “I have no idea, love. It will certainly make things interesting, I think. Especially since the lady me has a female you with her as well. They seem to be more interested in getting back to their own universe than sticking around in ours.”
Carth sighs. “There has to be something that we can do to help them. I had no idea that rips in the universe could happen.”
“Unless you became a super genius when I wasn’t looking? I have no idea what we can do.” Revan answers with a shrug.
“We can’t just leave them stranded here and left to their own devices, Revan,” Carth protests softly as he watches Revan start to pace the length of their quarters. Part of Carth feels obligated to help these other selves of them, not because they are versions of them from a different timeline and universe. But more because in their timeline, they had just confronted their version of Malak and lost their Bastila. So they were dealing with not only with being flung into another universe, but also the emotional ride that the female Carth and the female Revan were now dealing with.
“I didn’t say that we will do that, love. Bastila –our Bastila– seems to think that we can contact the current leaders of the Galactic Republic and... the Jedi Council for ideas on what to do about this unique situation. Mission and Jolee seem to agree with her idea.” Revan answers softly with a shrug and a small frown on his face.
Carth remembers then that the Jedi Order doesn’t have the best track record in Revan’s mind. They had captured the former Sith Lord while unconscious on his burning command ship and forced a new identity upon him while attempting to use Revan’s memories for their own gain. Or rather for the overall wellbeing and safety of the galaxy according to Bastila.
Even now Carth has still mixed feelings about the entire mess though it did lead him to finding Revan.
It takes nearly a month later, yet somehow the top scientists of the galaxy manage to figure out how to get the two visitors back to their home universe. Carth didn’t quite understand all of the science or the engineering behind it –nowhere near his field–. But he is glad to know that his female self and the female Revan were now back in their home universe.