The sun set hours ago, but the Archives still hummed with the quiet comings and goings of knights and padawans. Jocasta was too old to man the glowing stacks at all hours anymore, and enough senior padawans stood on shift to handle the light traffic, but the nagging worry in the back of her mind kept her awake and at her station. Better to be here in the Stacks being useful than fretting in bed.
Something was wrong, but something was always wrong these days, and she was tired.
She pointed another on-leave padawan in the direction of the Wild Space histories then turned herself towards the main console. If Rayce—her padawan-had gotten the downloaded Archive copy to safety, he would have left a message, vague at best for security, but he would not leave her wondering. She still wasn't sure what had possessed her to spend two weeks copying the entire public Archive and most of the restricted data, but the chill in the Force abated when Rayce left. Really, she was surprised she hadn't done it decades ago.
Her shoes, soft and a little worn, padded the floor. The hollow-eyed busts of the Lost watched her pass, and her thoughts went unbidden to Yan and his betrayal.
Since the announcement of his death, she'd spent most of her scant free time meditating. Leaving she understood. Separatism she forgave. His defection to the Sith… it was profane and intimate almost beyond bearing, and three years of meditation and relentless investigation had not slacked the why burning in her soul.
She reached the central desk and pushed the tiring thoughts away. Another night she would deal with them again. With a few taps, her master code unlocked the console and pulled up her messages. A few messages panned down the screen—standard requests for mission data—but nothing that couldn't wait until morning and nothing from Padawan Rayce.
Maybe she fretted for nothing. Tomorrow the newly returned knights and padawans would stage their run on the Archives, some desperate for research for their newly-renewed classes, others for distracting reading, and a few for quiet sanctuary. She would need all the energy she could get, and even if she couldn't sleep, rest was wiser than wandering the Stacks all night waiting for a message that might not come for days. Jocasta sighed and massaged her right temple.
Chilly resolve rolled through the Force, making the hair on Jocasta's neck and arms stand on end. She snapped her head up. A legion of heavy footsteps echoed through the aisles. She logged out of the console, peeved and ready to give a very unJedi-like dressing down to whoever was thundering about at this time of night.
Skywalker strode through the shelves, half a garrison of clones in his wake. Hood drawn over his face, cloak snapping around his heels, this was not the boy who had crept into her collection so many years ago. That boy had blazed like an old sun as he wandered the glowing stacks in awe and quiet reverence, gulping down knowledge like he's never seen a datacron before.
Jocasta's scowl softened. Whatever Skywalker needed, he clearly needed quickly, and no one could find information faster than she. He probably wanted information for Kenobi. She'd already provided a thorough briefing for Obi-wan, but the mission had probably gone hilariously off-course, if the so-called Negotiator's track record was any indication.
The youngest Council member stopped a few feet from the central desk, tall, rigid, and reluctant to come any closer. His singed black robes reeked of smoke, but not from a fire or blaster fire. Jocasta pressed her lips together.
"I need access to the Temple beacon."
Jocasta's frown deepened. Anakin was on the Council but not fully authorized—idiocy if she'd ever heard it, but did anyone listen to her?—and she had no notice from any other council members that the signal needed to be changed. She opened her mouth to demand why?
Danger.
Force have mercy, her nerves were shot. Skywalker was just another war-weary soul like everyone else these days.
Jocasta tilted her chin up to look the boy in eyes. "On whose authority?"
Jaw taut, he reared his head back. The clones widened their stances almost imperceptibly and tightened their hold on their blasters. Danger, whispered the Force. Betrayed.
Oh.
Oh, Force. What did it mean?
She slid into a defensive stance and ignited her lightsaber. Nearby Jedi snapped their heads up. Chairs scraped the floor. The clones snapped their blasters up, but Jocasta stared at Skywalker.
He raised his hand. The Force contracted, knocked the air from her, and wrenched her feet from the floor. He jerked his hand, and she flew into him. Unbearable heat seared her ribs, and his hard blue eyes met hers unflinching. Her vision clouded, and her lightsaber clattered mutely on the floor.
"Skywalker?"
He jerked his lightsaber back and pushed her away. The red Force swelled up around her, catching her as she fell so she never felt the floor.
Muffled shouts rang through the Archives. Sabers hissed; blasters shrieked.
She couldn't think. The wailing was too loud. Who was wailing?
The Force screamed like a bereaved mother. Red and whirling, it swept her away from her body and into a seething maelstrom of familiar souls: Innumerable Lost. The clones knew their work too well.
Jocasta vaguely recalled Yan's dutiful, angry account of Galidraan, how Fett killed Jedi with his bare hands. Once the bounty hunter's clones finished, there would be few survivors. The Temple would be a death trap for any Jedi who returned, but they would come anyway, even if they came to pick through the ash and rubble and separate the bones of friends from the armor of the enemy.
The weeping Force folded her deeper to its embrace, but she couldn't surrender yet. A thousand whys screamed in her head, and she needed an answer.
Blazing through the Archives was Skywalker—Skywalker. Anakin. That sandy haired, starving little boy—he collapsed in on himself in a desperate black hole and dragged all the Temple with him. The Force keened for its children snuffed out too soon and too cruelly. There was no why, only the fear, self-hate, and pain reverberating through the galaxy.
Jocasta wept.
The Force drew her deeper into itself, away from the unbearable betrayal and the blood-hot terror of the living. Her fallen brothers and sisters called from up ahead, and cool rest sounded so wonderful. Why was she still fighting?
Then she spied it. A star hovered on the edge of Skywalker's supernova, fighting to maintain a perilous orbit. It brightened and stretched until it separated into a binary star, whizzing so fast and close that they looked like one pulsating sun. What it meant, she couldn't guess. She was never a seer in life, so she had no skill interpreting dreams. She didn't understand or live to see the binary sunrise, but it was, and that was enough. Satisfied, Jocasta Nu surrendered and passed into the waiting Force.