Title: To Fall and Rise Again
By Tally (tally_s_sin)
Rating: PG-13
Category: AU.
Warnings: None.
Summery: AU. After The Great Jedi Purge, a Knight, who left the Order, returns.
AN: I wondered what the Force sensitives, who left the Order or who never became Jedi and joined the Agricorps, did after Order 66. As with all things, as I wrote the premise changed, but this is the result of that initial thought. This is my first attempt at writing anything for sometime and this is a series of eight ficlets as I wanted to practice a bit first before writing something longer. I may right a longer fic at some point based on this idea, but for the time being this AU is complete. I am working on Shadow of the Jedi universe, but it's getting a bit complicated and massive so I may break it into two and I've also been going over Jedi League 3 as that's been hanging around for years as well. Thank you to everyone who has been patiently waiting and sorry for the long hiatus. More to follow.
Disclaimer SW: Not mine. George Lucus owns them.
Thanks to: Mady for beta reading.
One - The Jedi
He was in the garden when it came. The roll of pain as thousands died and joined the Force knocked him to his knees. There was a moment, before it hit, when the galaxy seemed to hold its breath; a silence before the storm. It was a warning, and had the moment lasted for longer than an indrawn breath, then maybe he could have braced himself, prepared himself for the boiling wave that pummelled against him.
He had lived there for so long in peace, retreating from the galaxy, abandoned and abandoning. For more than ten years he had lived as a healer to a small, insignificant farming community on a planet no one of importance had ever heard of. And if his patients healed quicker or his medicine seemed more potent, then no one noticed, for it had not always been so. But ten years' experience would improve anyone's skill. None knew that on quiet, calm nights he ran into the distant hills, immersed in the Force, and performed open hand katas that to most would have looked like a dance bereft of its partner. Nor did any see him practice his fine Force control on the dust and rocks that swept the landscape for the pure sake of enjoyment in the moment.
When the Clone War had begun, he had joined his neighbours in defending their homes against the separatist armies. But the battle had been brief, if fierce, and soon they were all forgotten again. For now. No one was looking for him, he knew, why would they? So they would not come for him. Nevertheless they would come, he knew, though it may take years, and this planet may be the last planet the Darkness came to, but Darkness would still come because the Sith would not be content until all worlds bent their knee.
He stood once more and strode back into his home, leaving the spade and gloves he had been working with; they were not needed now and for him would never be needed again. The Force would have its way and he had denied it for too long and now it was time to return. He packed the few things he knew he would need, a change of clothes, a few ration bars and some credits before turning to the box, hidden beneath his bed, almost forgotten in the life he had carved out. In it was a single item, made by his own hands and crafted with his skill and with the Force. It was a metal cylinder, a weapon of legend, and now it would be a symbol for the fallen. He took it carefully into his hands, sensing that it was still serviceable, that long years of disuse had not diminished it.
The blade, when lit, was blue and beautiful; power and magnificence contained within a weapon only the most skilled could wield and for so long it had been the symbol of peace and justice in the galaxy and he knew it would be again.
He shouldered his pack, clipped the 'saber to his belt and left his home.
The space port was not far. He would find a ship off world and he would head back out into the galaxy. The Jedi had fallen and with them so had the Republic. He was needed now as he had never been needed before. A Jedi he had always been and he would leave his safe haven and find the others, those that remained, and gather them to safety before turning their combined gaze upon the evil of the Sith and conquering the Darkness once more.
Thirteen years ago he had left the order, knighted at the hand of Yoda because his own master had already been busy with his new padawan. Knighted, he felt, in name only. He had packed a few things and gone to the landing platform. No one came to say goodbye or stop him from leaving, but at the bottom of the shuttle's ramp had been Yoda, waiting for him with sad eyes.
'A Jedi you are,' he had said. 'Leave you need not.'
But Yoda was wrong and no more words were said. He had not surrendered his lightsaber nor had Yoda asked for it and in the intervening years he had often wondered why. He wondered if the ancient master thought he may change his mind and return after finding his peace away from the temple, returning feeling less like a fraud. But he had not. Now, he wondered if the diminutive master had some how perceived the end that was coming and knew that while the young knight's place had not been as a Jedi within the Republic, it would be as a Jedi in the Darkest time the galaxy had ever known.
As he left the planet far behind, his thought turned to those that may still remain. Who had survived? Yoda and the rest of the council? Friends? And what of his dear master? Had he lived through the purge of the Jedi order? He would not know until he sought them all out.
Aboard a ship heading into the dark of the galaxy, a Jedi sits in meditation. His long years alone, with only the Force for company, had honed his skills to a knife edge and within the Force he could sense them, those that remained. All those that remained. Perhaps he had meant to leave the Order, perhaps the Force had divided him from his brethren for this purpose. To find them, to gather them, to fight with them and finally to save them. Obi-Wan Kenobi, among the last of the Jedi order, would be their salvation and the hope of a galaxy enslaved.