Despite the bright sunlight streaming through the all encompassing windows of the Jedi Council chamber, Marcus Varga felt shrouded in darkness. Anger, fear, uncertainty, guilt, they swirled around him like sea creatures in deep water.
"Master Yoda." Marcus said, bowing slightly toward the Jedi Master, an almost palpable aura of energy radiating from him. "I had no choice but to interfere. I could sense through the Force that Cora was in danger. That is why I was in the room of a thousand fountains at that hour."
He paused a moment, unable to meet his mentor's eyes.
"Titus and Cora, they were... he was attempting to force himself on her."
Yoda was silent for a long minute, the room devoid of noise, save for the muted hum of starships gliding by outside. In a rush of impulse, Marcus envied them. He would have given almost anything to be in one of those ships right now, strapped into the pilot's seat, ready to take off to some remote planet in the outer rim.
And there was no limit to what he would have offered, to have Cora snugged securely into the seat beside him.
"Striking down a defenseless, surrendering boy, you were, when I arrived." Yoda stated, voice heavy with sadness and shame. "Motivated by a desire to save initiate Cora, your actions were not. Consumed by anger and jealousy, your mind was."
"And what about Titus?" Marcus protested, unable but to flinch at his own sharp tone, toward the venerated Jedi. "How is what I did any worse than his actions?"
"Here to discuss that troubling matter, we are not." Yoda said firmly. "Convene, the council will, to discuss this incident. Determined, your fate will be. Have anything you wish to make known, before then, do you?"
Marcus took a minute of his own to reflect, trying to focus his mind, to blot out emotion and darkness and anger, to turn his thoughts back to the light, and to logic.
What would happen to him? The Council would convene to determine his guilt in the matter, and he would not be present to hear the outcome. He would have to wait in his quarters, until someone came to inform him of the verdict.
The thought of having to wait, of not knowing, terrified him more than anything else.
And yet, searching his thoughts, he found something in himself. Maybe it was resentment and anger, but in that moment, it felt like courage.
"The council's words will be irrelevant." Marcus stated forcefully, feeling his hesitation and uncertainty fall away, now that he had committed himself. "Why could it possibly matter, when you have already tried and convicted me in your own heart? The fact of the matter is, Titus was attempting to rape an innocent girl, one that I love, one that you failed to protect. I stopped him, not you, and not the council. It didn't feel like anger, or vindication. It felt like justice. I felt the power of the Dark Side in me, and it gave me the strength I needed to protect my friend."
A flicker of shock touched Yoda's features, before quickly being repressed.
"So before you have your Jedi thugs escort me back to my quarters, there is one thing I would like to make known." Marcus continued, terrified at the implications of his defiance, but enjoying the feeling of harming Yoda with his words.
He stared the Jedi Master directly in the eyes.
"I wish I had burned out both of his eyes, and drowned him in that fountain. That way, he would never be able to hurt anyone again."
Staring out the window of his quarters, Marcus watched the sun sinking behind the buildings, the vast urban skyline of Coruscant glittering like a vast sculpture of steel and glass.
It was a sight he stared at often, wondering what it would be like to finally leave the Jedi Temple, to venture out into that wonderful, massive city, to explore, to descend into the depths of the urban planet, and see just what was down there.
Now, that would most likely not be happening.
They had taken his lightsaber. He had hesitated at that, turning over the weapon, they symbol of his future duties, the one possession he had carried with himself for the last ten years. He was going to be sentenced.
Sentenced. The mere word struck a thrill of dread through him. What could that mean? Being shifted off to some colony farm somewhere would be bad enough, but such things were reserved for those who simply failed to be selected by a mentor. What would happen to him, who had admitted to using the power of the Dark side, expressing a wish to kill a boy who was once his best friend.
Execution came to mind, but he dismissed it as unlikely. More probably that they would imprison him somewhere.
Maybe execution would be better than wasting away for seventy odd years in a tiny cell somewhere, with no future, no hope, no purpose, other than to consume food and die.
He glanced at his chronometer.
Five minutes since he had been escorted back to his quarters, and locked inside. Twelve hours to go before the hearing even started.
He had tried to meditate, with no success. Books failed to interest him, and even a glance at his disarrayed workbench sent his mind back to his lightsaber, and to his imminent fate.
Sitting cross legged on his bed, he thought of Cora for a moment, taking solace in the fact that although she probably hated him, and although he would most likely never see him again, that she was safe from Titus.
Compared to that, his own fate was irrelevant. Yes, he would most likely be imprisoned for the rest of his life, in a cell so small he could spit across it. But Cora was safe. If nothing else, he could always take his own life. Unless they prevented him, assigned guards to him.
In that case, the logical choice would be to do it now, while he knew he was alone. But could the Jedi Order really imprison him like that? Could they really consign him to a fate worse than death, for trying to protect his friend?
In summary, was he going to sit here and accept his fate?
When he finally spoke aloud, to no one in particular, his voice fell dead on the room, like a shout in a thick bank of fog.
"Do I trust the Jedi Order?"
Five minutes later.
Marcus had made his share of hasty decisions, which, now that he had an excellent time to reflect on those decisions, were what led him to his current situation. He had always been loath to dismiss an idea, once stuck in his mind, and the more he thought about an idea, the better and more plausible it seemed. It was a vicious cycle, he decided.
Except, this particular notion was such an obviously terrible one, he made note to slap himself thoroughly and enthusiastically, if he ever had the opportunity to do so again.
The wind whistled by like an army of invisible, insubstantial fists, slamming him against the very substantial side of the Jedi temple, the sleek mass of steel and concrete stretching down before him, the broad base of the structure waiting below, just close enough that he would have time to scream if he let go right now.
His fingers were bleeding from trying to grip the thin spool of high tensile cable, its upper limit secured to the windowsill in his quarters. As he thought of the protective machining gloves sitting on his work bench, the very ones he wore when he had fabricated this idiotic contraption now strapped to his back, the stream of curses that spewed from his mouth would have made a bounty hunter blush.
Using a multitool from his work bench, and a little help from the Force, removing the thick slab of transperisteel from his window had been easy enough. Tying off a length of high tensile cable to the bolt holes in the sill wasn't that hard either, nor were the slight modifications to a few of his recreational creations.
Convincing himself that this was going to work, required an entirely different kind of expertise.
He had lowered himself about fifty meters down the side of the Temple, and had now come to the end of his rope, both literally and figuratively. Gripping the slim cable, blood trickling down his wrists, and into his sleeves, he cursed himself again for not tying something to the end, to hold onto, when he began the really stupid part of this.
Feet scrabbling for purchase on the vertical wall, he began to swing himself from side to side, parallel to the broad wall, seeing surprised faces through the windows of the other dorms, a thought which gave him some small measure of satisfaction.
Maybe this was just a creative method of suicide, but at least they'd remember Marcus Varga.
Running sideways along the exterior wall now, Marcus inscribed a curving path along the side, dangling at the bottom of his line like a pendulum, reaching nearly to the far edge of the building at the apex of each swing.
Close enough, he judged, his heart hammering, for reasons unrelated to exertion.
Nearing the apex one final time, he gave an extra strain with his legs, pushing off as best he could from the vertical surface beside him, letting go of the cable, letting his acquired momentum carry him away from the towering structure of the Temple, and into empty space.
For a glorious moment, as the Jedi Temple fell away behind him, as he hung in the air, his accumulated velocity carrying him upward, it felt like he was flying, like one of the distant starships in the space lanes, bulleting through the glimmering city, whizzing past the towering skyscrapers.
Then momentum lost the battle with gravity, and he fell, tumbling through the windy air, fighting the wave of nausea in his lower chest.
He tugged frantically at the knot of thin cable on his chest, the slick blood from his torn fingers spraying away in the wind of his descent, and for a brief, horrible moment, the fearful certainty settled in his heart that he would die here because he was too good at tying knots.
Then it finally came free, and the broad Dragon Kite on his back sailed free, Marcus catching the short handle at the end of the quickly unspooling cable, yanked back upright as he dangled from ten meters of cable, connected at it's upper extreme to the meter wide Dragon Kite, that he had built from old industrial scraps.
Still plummeting toward the ground below, the kite was unable to arrest his fall, but still reduced his speed considerably, swinging him wildly to the side as the roughly triangular section of molded polymer and durasteel frame caught the wind turbulence from the nearest space lane, an invisible tunnel of air displaced by massive freighters and starships providing the energy to pull Marcus off course, and further away from the Jedi Temple behind him.
For the briefest of times, he was afraid his plan had worked too well, and he would actually be struck by a fast moving starship, but gravity saved him for a change, as he plummeted toward the walkways and rooftops below. He was falling quickly, but not nearly as fast as he would without the kite to slow his descent.
His brief flight reached a conclusion, as he looked down to find a jumbled mass of solid objects rushing up at him, the cable in his hands went taut as his kite snagged on something solid, going taut with a high note of some structural component breaking.
Then came the fall.
Lights, sounds, sensations, (mostly pain and shock) washed over him, and he faintly was aware calling on the Force at one point, surrounding himself with it's aura.
His aching eyes flickered open, unable to make sense of the confused snapshots of images, his ears overloaded by the sounds, but his back telling him that there was something solid pressed up against him.
He had made it.
He staggered to his feet, dimly aware of people standing around him, the nearly kilometer distant mass of the Jedi Temple, shining in the fading sunlight like a beacon of hope and truth.
Marcus's mouth seemed to be filled with cotton, and he spit a few times, the saliva bright red with his blood, before turning away, pulling his hood up over his bleeding face, and stumbling off into the city.