A few days after the Geonosis massacre, the galaxy erupted in flames.
Thousands of clones, led by Jedi, surged toward CIS planets in a futile attempt to force them into peace.
It wasn't without scandal.
As soon as the Council of the Order announced the mobilization of Knights and Masters for command positions in the GAR, the Temple experienced a genuine shock.
Nearly a thousand members of the Order refused to obey the direct order. Disagreeing with the stance of the Council and the Grand Master in particular, they reminded everyone that the Jedi were peacekeepers, not warlords, not generals, and certainly not pawns in the Senate's political game.
This group expressed its dissent by mass voluntary exile. Demonstratively discarding their lightsabers—symbols of belonging to the Order—they left the Temple in groups or alone, accompanied by the eyes of hundreds of bewildered younglings and Padawans.
Such behavior from the Jedi came as a complete surprise to me. I had never heard of anything like it. Sure, maybe I'd just missed that information, but still… It was all so sudden.
"Where are they going, master?" a girlish voice I found very familiar sounded next to me.
Ahsoka Tano. A little girl of the Togruta race, with disproportionately large eyes and a cute appearance that the Clone Wars animated series had captured perfectly.
The girl stood half a meter from me, watching with obvious interest a group of exiles—about thirty people—whom Master Plo Koon was speaking with. He was probably trying to talk them out of it, but judging by how many lightsabers the exiles had already handed to the nearby Guards, he was doing a terrible job.
"I'm not a master," I corrected the little girl. "Knight Dougan, Padawan…"
"Youngling Tano," the Togruta corrected me. "Not a Padawan. Not yet anyway."
Strange, I thought. "Wasn't she assigned as Skywalker's Padawan at the start of the war? Or did that happen later?"
I should note that while I am a fan of the Star Wars universe, I'm very, very far from the level of fans who know exactly what's what in this galaxy, who is whose cousin, brother, or in-law, and can list all the ships in Darth Vader's Death Squadron from memory.
"Is that so…" I stroked my chin. "Well, I don't think all is lost yet, Padawan. For you, or for them," I nodded toward the departing exiles.
"Do you know why they're leaving?" she asked curiously.
"Who knows," I shrugged. "Everyone is free to choose their own fate, Padawan. But these men and women decided that the true path of the Jedi isn't to wage wars, which the Council is asking us to do now. They," I repeated my nod, "believe the path of the Jedi is peace, tranquility."
"Isn't that what the Code says?" the girl was surprised, raising her huge blue eyes to me.
"Is it?" I replied in a characteristically Jewish way.
The child looked at me in confusion, then stared back at the exiles.
"They're wrong," the little girl declared with firm conviction. "We shouldn't avoid war! We have to end it quickly and return to peace."
"Golden words, Youngling Tano," Secura said, walking past.
The Twi'lek, as before, was wearing decidedly non-Jedi clothing, irresistibly drawing eyes to her figure.
"Knight Dougan," she greeted me with emphasized politeness. "Vokara Che asked me to remind you that you're expected in the Halls of Healing. I'm heading there myself. Would you care to join me?"
"Knight Secura," I replied in the same manner. Winking at Ahsoka, I pushed off from the column. "I'd be honored."
Together, the blue-skinned Twi'lek and I headed to the Temple's aforementioned facility, where I was undergoing rehabilitation.
After Geonosis, the Halls of Healing were overflowing. Not only physical but also mental traumas had to be treated by the Jedi healers these days. Although it wasn't part of my plans, I ended up in the Temple's medical center anyway. After spending two days there, stubbornly floating in a bacta tank, I persuaded the Jedi healer overseeing my recovery, Kaila Omas, by hook or by crook to let me wander the Temple between procedures. And, I have to admit, on the very first day I managed to miss my scheduled meditation.
"Is Vokara Che keeping tabs on me?" I inquired of Secura.
"What makes you think that?"
"I missed a meditation by just an hour, and she's already sending you to find me. Admit it, you have orders to bring me to meditation even if I resist?"
"Oh, no," Secura smiled. "Actually, it was Kaila Omas, your Jedi healer, who asked me. She's worried about your absence. And your comlink is off. It was just a coincidence that I found you on my way to the Halls."
"There are no coincidences, only the Force," I said in a didactic tone. The girl snorted with laughter.
The swim in the bacta tank helped me complete the integration of my consciousness into the body. It wasn't exactly smooth—the memories returned in extremely painful flashes. It felt like someone was tickling me under my skull. It was infuriating and extremely annoying. But it was also beneficial. The headaches and accompanying symptoms disappeared, allowing the body to respond actively to the medicines being pumped into it. By the end of my first day in the tank, my wounds were no longer life-threatening. Just a couple of blaster burns, a perforated lung, and some messed-up intestines. A minor detail, people live without them.
By the end of the second day, I was taken out of the tank. The Order's chief healer, the Twi'lek Vokara Che, carefully examined my wounds before handing me over to the Jedi healer Kaila Omas, a young, pretty girl who had only left the ranks of the Padawans a few weeks ago.
Convincing her to let me get out of the Halls during time not scheduled for procedures turned out to be quite easy. Even in a galaxy far, far away, girls—even Jedi—have a weakness for candy and flowers.
During my time in the bacta tank, I had reflected on Valkorion's words.
And upon leaving the Halls of Healing, even temporarily, the first thing I did was find Secura, before whom I apologized long and hard, almost tearfully, for my behavior on the gunship.
I didn't dwell on the destruction of the missile. Only that my moral exhaustion and long stay in the Unknown Regions had made me unaccustomed to the company of my fellow Jedi. That's why I had uncontrollably closed myself off from her when she nobly tried to help me, to support me with the Force.
In my mind, I knew I was talking complete nonsense. So I reinforced my intention to apologize with a bouquet of plants from Secura's homeworld, Ryloth. I have no idea what those plants were, but the girl accepted my apologies.
I wouldn't say any kind of friendship sprang up between us, but of the options Valkorion had given me—kill her or win her over—I chose to start working on the second option.
After all, if it doesn't work, the clones can always finish her off.
"Right lung and intestines perforated by a blaster bolt, three broken ribs," a young black-haired girl in Jedi robes began listing as soon as Secura and I crossed the threshold of the Halls of Healing. "Not to mention the cerebral hemorrhages. Knight Dougan, you will definitely be dead if you don't stop violating your prescribed treatment plan!"
"Healer Omas," Secura bowed ceremoniously. "Your patient has been delivered. I'll leave you two alone; I need to prepare for my own meditation."
With these words, the girl smiled at us both and headed towards the halls for restorative meditations.
"Glad to see you're confident in my recovery too, Kaila," I winked.
"You won't recover if you keep skipping meditations!" the girl wrinkled her nose. "At least because if Vokara Che finds out about your walks, you'll get a few new fractures. Let's go!"
The girl unceremoniously pushed me toward a spacious hall, lined along its perimeter with unfamiliar but incredibly beautiful trees. Several Jedi were already sitting in the hall—some alone, some with a healer, like me. Aayla Secura, seated on the opposite side of the hall, gave a restrained nod when she saw us.
"Kaila," the girl settled down opposite me, sitting on her ankles. "I'm fine. I've been out of the bacta tank for almost three days, and I feel great."
"Rick, don't give me that," the girl squinted. "Don't forget, I can see your aura. You're a completely shattered puzzle. Even if physical pain has stopped tormenting you, emotionally you're still completely unhinged."
Taking the same position opposite the girl, I mentally groaned.
Do you know anything about Jedi PTSD? Neither did I, until they pulled me out of the tank. By some unknown method, the Chief Healer, after a couple of meetings, assigned Healer Omas to me with a clear task: to bring my mental health back to normal.
And here I was supposed to enter a healing trance that would not only remove the last traces of hemorrhages in my brain but also restore the Jedi-appropriate control over my feelings and emotions. Based on the results of the trance, I was supposed to receive a front-line assignment. But since a comatose state didn't appeal to me, I managed to convince my healer to replace the trance with periodic meditations.
So this forced meditative boredom was my own doing. While I was swimming in the tank, pondering the fate of the galaxy and undergoing the synthesis of my memories with Dougan's, Vokara Che had picked up on traces of the Dark Side emanating from me, aggressive emotions, and something else.
As luck would have it, the ubiquitous Yoda was in the Halls of Healing at that very moment. The true reason for his visit was to oversee the induction into a healing trance of the Chosen One—Anakin Skywalker, whose hand the local artisans were prostheticizing. He stopped by to see me on a whim.
According to Omas, Yoda had absorbed the emanations coming from me for a long time, and ultimately did not consider me fallen to the Dark Side.
"Serious wounds, mental and physical, he has endured," the Grand Master concluded. "In confusion and in search, he is. Help him regain control of himself, we must."
No one argued with the Grand Master, so a course of treatment for PTSD was prescribed.
I understood that there had almost been a real fuck-up in the tank.
As the Jedi liked to say, I had lost control of my emotions. While in a kind of medicated coma, I had unconsciously projected my feelings and emotions into the real world, born of the painful diffusion of memories. In other words… busted!
I obediently followed all of Omas's instructions. Deep breath, long exhale, inhale again. Find the point of balance within myself…
Although Dougan's memory was like a sieve, the memories that returned were from my time as a student in the Temple. I could control and channel the Force. Many simple techniques like telekinesis, pulling objects, and enhancing the body with the Force, I performed almost automatically. I hadn't yet attempted anything more complex, or lightsaber combat—first, it was somehow scary, and second, I didn't even have a lightsaber.
The breathing exercise helped me detach from the outside world. I seemed to slip into a trance. The world around me and Omas's whispers, guiding my meditations, disappeared. Or rather, they reached me as if from underwater.
Then a picture appeared before my eyes.
A bright sky.
Tall grass, waist-high.
A little boy, no more than three years old, with short dark hair and piercing blue eyes, standing in the middle of an ocean of this tall grass, watching a starship landing ten meters away from him. A flash. A moment later, a Jedi wrapped in a cloak walks out of it. A Zabrak, with an ash-brown skin tone. At the sight of him, the boy steps back, falls, tries to run. But the alien quickly catches up to him. I feel the Zabrak putting the child to sleep with the Force, then unsheathing a lightsaber from his belt and slowly walking towards a wooden hut, on the threshold of which stands a figure I cannot see.
The boy is ten years old. He's a diligent youngling, with unremarkable but solid middling knowledge. He's not the best, but not the worst either. He has moments of luck and moments of failure. But he doesn't give up. He's stubborn, persistent, determined. Finally, his gaze meets the Jedi frozen in the doorway. A Zabrak with ash-brown skin.
Flash.
He's fifteen. He and his teacher, the Zabrak Abhira, move through the jungles of an unknown planet. He can't see the sky, hidden beneath an impenetrable canopy of plants. His feet sink into the soil, softened and sticky from the morning rain. He grips his lightsaber tighter in his hands. His teacher is more relaxed, but his blade is also in hand. An instant, and they find themselves in a clearing, at the center of which looms another temple, comparable in size to the Jedi Temple.
I recognized it. The Great Massassi Temple on Yavin 4. The place from which the Rebel Alliance struck the Death Star. But now the Temple is empty. Only wild animals and jungle surround it.
And inside the temple itself, something dark coiled, something belonging to the Dark Side.
"Let's go, Rick!" my teacher commanded. We stepped under the Temple walls, plunging into the corridors beneath the stone vaults.
Flash.
A Zabrak writhing in pain, his body pierced by hundreds of bluish-violet lightning bolts. Me, watching it all with indifference. And the laughter of Valkorion's ghost, tearing at the Zabrak's flesh. Abhira twisted, with his last strength hurling his ignited lightsaber at me in a spiral. In the same second, I raised my hand before me, channeling the cold rage dormant within me through it. Like water through pipes, it ran along my arm, carefully controlled by my mind. No more, no less than necessary. The blue blade struck the invisible shield surrounding me, illuminating it for a moment with a pale white light.
Flash. This time I returned to the Halls of Healing, but the world still wasn't moving.
"They're trying to fix you like a malfunctioning mechanism," said the ghost of Valkorion, stepping out from behind Omas as if from nothingness. Looking at me, kneeling, he tilted his head slightly to the side. "Crude work."
With these words, the Sith's hands became enveloped in blue-violet clots of the Force, which he directed into my head in a thin stream. For a moment, I went rigid. Before my eyes, pictures, scenes began to flash past, so fast that I couldn't grasp their meaning. This went on for literally a couple of seconds, after which Valkorion dispersed the clots.
"What was that?" I jumped to my feet. "What were those flashes? Memories?"
"Ah, that," the ghost said with no hint of emotion. "Fragments of your body's past. They're not important. This Jedi did not reach his mastery," he pointed at the frozen Kaila. "The personal memories of your predecessor are not important. I helped you remember what was truly necessary."
"Why aren't they important?"
"Because it's not your life," the ghost countered. "Focus on your own. These meditations are a good way for you to recover memories of your abilities. Don't waste energy on the emptiness of personal emotions," he advised. Though, by his tone, it sounded more like a demand.
"What's on Yavin 4?" I asked. "What are you hiding from me?"
Valkorion paused for a moment, studying me. Then, I felt a mountain fall onto my shoulders. With a groan, I dropped to my knees.
"You need to be taught a lesson, apprentice," he said in an icy tone. "Find a ship. Go to Yavin 4. And thoroughly hone your skills beforehand."
With these words, the ghost dissolved, as if he had never been.
Without warning, the world returned to motion.
There was a slight buzz in my head. As if someone in a broken clock had finally set the gears correctly and fixed the mechanism.
For the first time since arriving in a galaxy far, far away, I felt like a full-fledged Jedi. The Force flowed through my veins like a raging river, strengthening my body, nourishing it.
Along with the power, the memories of the previous owner of the body flooded into my mind. My training with the Force, the lightsaber, physical exercises... They swirled before my eyes like in a kaleidoscope. The moment I focused on any one, it immediately settled into my memory. Then I moved on to the next.
I came to just as the kaleidoscope ended.
I absorbed into my mind everything Valkorion had awakened from the body's memory. Every last drop.
"The meditation has done you good," Kaila remarked, still looking at me with narrowed eyes. "I didn't expect the result to be so rapid..."
"That's because I was in capable hands," I said ambiguously. And somewhere in the back of my mind, I heard Valkorion's chuckle.