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The Jedi die as traitors.
The galaxy rejoices.
-
The Jedi leave a scar upon the universe.
~
“The Jedi are traitors,” the news says.
“The Jedi are scum,” spouts the propaganda.
“The Jedi did not know what they were doing,” still others reason. “They did their best but they were flawed, old, and selfish. They didn’t know that they were betraying us. Or if they did, they deserve what they got.”
“They needed to change with the times.”
“They never could have survived the future. They were too old and stuck in their ways. Their religious code was too binding, and their rules too strict.”
“Sure they said they only helped children who needed them and that anyone could leave at any time, but what would become of deserters? They never told us that.”
“They were corrupt! They would kill their own if they broke that precious code of theirs.”
~
Mace Windu falls and falls and falls from a great height and has time to think before he dies. He thinks of Ahsoka Tano and how her pain whipped through the force, sharp and damning. He thinks about the weight of all that scrutiny from the entire Republic and the Jedi Order that never left his shoulders. He thinks of refusing to give against the pressures the Republic forced upon him. He thinks of the way that the Jedi could not move without a millions eyes upon their every move, and he thinks of the way the Jedi had to seek approval from the senate (stale and stagnant in its own refuse as it was) before the Jedi could act, and he thinks about all the good Jedi could do if they were free.
Mace Windu thinks of the stories of Jedi of old he was told as a padawan, of how the Jedi traveled the galaxy and freed slaves (so much like Skywalker, and Mace’s chest aches) and answered to no one, much less one lone man at the head of a dying Republic.
Mace Windu thinks of the wrongs he has committed against his fellow beings, against his fellow Jedi (and who is to say Tano could not have been the greatest of them all, for Windu could see her potential shining through her very skin) and Mace Windu thinks of the wrongs committed against him and the way those who perpetrated them will never answer for their crimes. As he falls, Mace Windu feels the crushing, suffocating Dark engulf his family.
Mace Windu hits the ground.
~
Plo Koon only feels the start.
He feels the way the Force moves around him, flowing through him and every one of his men (sons, every one of them). He feels the tide of his dogfight turning in his favor, feels the bright, bright hope that leaks through the Force from far off (Utapau, and Plo hopes and hopes and hopes).
Plo feels the way that hope spreads out from his own shields, how he infects every clone in his vicinity. He has so many plans for them--plans of home and sunlight and space, plans of freedom and rights and recognition, plans of peace and quiet and calm--and Plo feels the laughter burble up in his chest, wanting out.
Plo Koon feels the shift.
Plo feels the way every light around him, every single one of his sons’ minds, winks out of existence, over and over, again and again. Plo feels the shots taken at his ship. Plo feels the way his ship rocks and bucks beneath his feet, the way his controls sway and stop responding to his directions, the way his air flow cuts off.
Plo Koon feels his hope drain from him in all of an instance, and yet still that instance is enough for despair to take hold.
~
Aayla Secura has no warning.
Aayla leads her troops into battle. She is weary, just as everyone is in this war. She is tired, and chomping at the bit to finish this once and for all. Her Master and his master before him, countless of her friends and family, of her men--how many will she lose before this war is over?
Aayla is a symbol. She wears her people’s clothes and follows the Jedi Code. She loves her people and she loves the Jedi. She is two worlds in one, two people at once. Aayla lives as a twi’lek and as a Jedi and she breathes both lives into her lungs and survives as both people. She loves and is loved as both sides of herself. She turns her cheek to the hatred of the Jedi she encounters, to claims that she is vile and wrong, that she steals children, that she does more harm than good. She turns her cheek to the claim that she is only useful for sex, that she cannot live the monastic Jedi life, that she is wrong to try. She raises her chin in the face of the idea that any of her heritage is evil and she spits in the eye of the one who tells her so. She is multitudes and multifaceted, and she exists and demands her space and carves it out for herself.
Aayla Secura exists as many things and dies one death with no warning.
~
Cal Kestis is too young.
Cal is a padawan and his master is so large, larger than life. His master is kind, soft, and strong-willed. His master is protective and wise and quiet.
His master is quiet in death too, lying slumped and unmoving when the clones pounce.
Cal runs.
Cal Kestis is too young and his friends and family are too small and feeble and weak, and they can do nothing, nothing, nothing at all to stop what is coming.
Many padawans fall beside their masters, but Cal runs.
~
Yoda is too old to live through the end of the world and yet…
Yoda is old and his joints ache at every moment of every day. Yoda is old and his mind is tired of going around in circles, tired of subterfuge and blood, tired of secrets the Jedi are not meant to keep. Yoda is old and he knows that the Jedi are not meant for the life he has somehow allowed them to be locked into.
This fight was never meant for the Jedi. The Jedi are not meant to bloody their hands. The Jedi are meant for love and life and peace. The Jedi are meant to aid, not to harm. The Jedi are meant for independence, and solitude, and solace. His people have a message of love. His people have a duty to the galaxy to keep others safe, and a duty to the clones to keep them safe, but also to themselves, to be what they are meant to be.
The Republic was not meant to use his people as marionettes. The Republic was not meant to have say over the religious and spiritual directions of the Jedi Order. The Republic and the Senate’s fingers have been curling tight, tighter, too tightly around Yoda's people, and his Jedi will be buried for their interference.
The Order was never supposed to judge their young harshly, or be the target of political assassinations, or to have hand in governmental matters pertaining to war and not peace.
Yoda is too old to watch his family die, and yet he does so, again and again, over and over.
~
Ahsoka is not a Jedi.
Ahsoka is not a Jedi but she feels their Lights wink out of the Force.
Ahsoka is not a Jedi, but her breath comes short and her troops turn their sights upon her and the Jedi's pain screams through her very atoms, loss coiling thick and strangling around her heart.
Ahsoka is not a Jedi but her family is--used to be--and they are dying.
Ahsoka is not a Jedi but as she stares down death she wishes for one moment that she was, if only so this would all be over.
~
Obi-Wan Kenobi survives.
He is on Utapau, hope brimming in his heart as he cuts down Grievous for the last time.
Obi-Wan survives his fight and the fight to get to his troops. Obi-Wan survives the war as he had so many battles before he reached Knighthood.
Obi-Wan breathes, and fights, and lives. Obi-Wan survives.
Obi-Wan survives his fall from the cliff.
Obi-Wan feels the lights of his troops go out. He feels the way they turn upon him, the vicious, fierce rage that courses through their minds and the Force. He feels the Darkness swell around him as he slices through water and struggles to breathe.
Obi-Wan flees, and survives, and returns home.
Obi-Wan survives, but his home does not. The temple burns.
Obi-Wan survives, but the memory of his best friend and brother and padawan does not. Anakin burns and Vader rises in his place.
Obi-Wan survives.
The news scrambles to find some compelling narrative of daring heroism and traitors and the Emperor’s cunning salvation of the Empire to cover the dead bodies and the fire and the screams.
The troops scramble to find those who have simply disappeared into thin air.
Vader scrambles to find the one man he has sworn to kill above all others.
Obi-Wan survives.
~
So do the Jedi.