Grace Notes
This is a sequel to The Final Iteration.
Chronology of my Sith series:
Planet of the Sith:
(7 years post founding of the Jedi Academy)
Subcasters:
(post discovery of the Fallanassi)
Queen of the Sith:
1 (pre Vong War) Return to the Planet of the Sith
2 (during the Vong War) Queen of the Sith
3 (post Vong War) Sith Vs Sith
The Final Iteration:
(a time travel story, chronology is meaningless)
Grace Notes:
(Post death of Darth Caedus.)
Grace Notes
Chapter 1
"You're him, aren't you?" Ongreya asked. "The time lord."
Luke—Lord Luke, but in his new body-- blinked at the bare wall in his office. Ongreya wasn't here yet. What the heck had that been? It wasn't time travel. If it had been, it would have erased his memories again.
The door chime sounded. Such a prosaic thing to have in the Jedi Temple, a door chime. They ought to have a gong, or a young Padawan who went around announcing things in a serious young voice, or they should announce themselves in the Force via telepathy, or something. Luke shook his head; he was trying to UN-grandiose the Jedi, not make them even more full of themselves. "Come in."
Prudently, since he knew he was about to say yes to a very damaging question, he reached out with the Noble Gift and turned off Ongreya's subcasting hat as she walked in the door.
Ongreya's hat made its warning sound, letting her know she was off the air.
"Don't bother trying to fix it," Luke said.
"Ah. Of course. Learned better, have you?"
Luke gestured her to sit. She took a seat on the very plain metal chair in front of his utilitarian desk. Given what the rest of the Jedi Temple looked like, his choice of furniture seemed aggressively military, which was really not his intention. He had been going for simple. Monk-like.
"Well, the other you delivered as promised," Ongreya said. "He said you'd let me back into the Order, and the confirmation arrived as soon as the jump-mail caught up with me. The Jedi Order could get on the Hobgoblin, you know. Join the new millennium."
Luke smiled softly. "Just what we need around here. Another new technology."
"I hear you're embracing a certain old technology. Everybody's talking about the Test."
Luke made a face. "The deliberations of the Masters' Council are supposed to be confidential until we've made a decision."
Ongreya waved a dismissive green hand; she was in her natural form, as she knew Luke had always preferred. "Nobody keeps secrets from me, darling. Er, Grand Master."
Luke chuckled a little. "Titles," he said derisively.
"Well, you've certainly had enough of them," Ongreya probed, her eyes twinkling a little as she realized she was near something important.
"That's for sure," Luke agreed. "Look, Ongreya, I know what you're getting at. You want to know which me I am."
"Certainly. Though," she pointed at her hat and shrugged, indicating she would rather put whatever he was about to reveal into her subcast than keep it to herself.
"Over my dead body," Luke said, and he was not smiling at all.
"Oh," she said. "You're him. The time lord."
"Yes," Luke said. "I'm both of us. We're both in here. One being, one flesh, one soul. Just a bigger soul than either of us started out with."
"That's the secret of your immortality."
"Yes, it is. And if you tell anybody, I will kill you. Do we understand each other?"
"Ah. Yes. I believe so." Ongreya did not look at all perturbed by this idea. She was leaning forward, looking intrigued and pleased.
"I mean it."
"I know you mean it, Luke. But I am a Psy-Healer. The condition you describe is absolutely normal to my people, though I've never heard of a human doing it."
"What?" Luke asked, blinking in startlement.
"We call it skin-sharing. It's the way an elderly Healer teaches his apprentice if he dies before his training is complete. Your Master Obi-Wan spoke to you after his death, did he not?"
"Well, yes. But this isn't exactly the same thing."
"Close enough." Ongreya somehow managed a human shrug without moving her head, a practiced habit she continued despite her subcasting hat not working right then. "The only interest I would have in revealing this would be if I could keep my subscribers, and their purses, glued to their holonet tranceivers with it. Otherwise it is totally a non issue to me."
"Wow. That's not what I was expecting."
"You think I care if you are a Sith Lord? I saw what you did for Piekke. Saving her from the Dark Side. If that's the action of a Sith, then we could do with a few more Sith in the Jedi Order."
"Yeah, well, don't say that too loudly around here." Luke's extremely expressive voice conjured up images of fingers pointing, people running, and lightsabers being pulled.
Ongreya snorted an approximation of a human laugh. "I'm not afraid of the Test. I expect you might be, though. So why did you agree to have it instituted?"
"I haven't, yet. The Council is still debating."
"You're afraid to reveal your own misgivings, for fear they'll suspect who you really are."
As he had done increasingly lately, Luke stared off into space, having a vision. But just like the vision he had had of Ongreya's question to him, it did not just play in front of him like a holodrama, it seemed like he was really there, as if he were time traveling.
He was in the Master's Council room, the big round room with the transparisteel windows with a grand view of Coruscant's traffic patterns outside. It was broad daylight, with warm, yellow afternoon sunlight bathing the room in a cheery golden glow. In that sort of light, horrors seemed even more horrible for the irony.
He was fighting. Lightsabers clashed again and again, humming, sparking, their sweeping, spitting light so intense it outshone the sun. Luke leapt, spun, kicked, played every trick he had—and it wasn't enough.
He ended turning over and over in air and tumbling around on the floor at an impossible angle, staring up at his headless body toppling over and hitting the floor beside him.
He came back to himself with a start. Wide-eyed, Luke whispered, "Yes. I fear that."
