"'No thank you?!' I mean, I get why, but to turn down a knighthood..."
Ahsoka looked at me like I was growing an extra head; after Dooku's flagship was destroyed, his fleet fell apart pretty quickly, and the CIS as a whole followed a few days later with most of the CIS worlds returning to the Republic—though a few stubborn holdouts remained. Upon our return to Coruscant, the Council offered that the incident be considered our trial; Ahsoka accepted, becoming a full knight. As she pointed out, though, I politely refused.
"Ahsoka, I've been part of the order for less than a year; I have a lot more to learn before I'm even partly ready to be a knight. I don't think the Council honestly expected me to accept anyway, even after I told them what Marsh and I were supposed to do."
I looked toward the former Sith apprentice in question, who was staring at his feet while Master Skywalker spoke to him; Marsh was interrogated by the Council shortly after they dismissed Ahsoka and me, but in the end they agreed to allow him to be trained—well, re-trained, considering how much he learned from Dooku—as a Jedi. There wasn't any word on who would be his master yet, but I got the distinct sense that Ahsoka and I were seeing an offer in the process of being made; our suspicions were confirmed by a simple bow from Marsh, who walked towards us after Master Skywalker left.
"It's weird. I told him that I still felt the Dark Side in me, how you felt it too," Marsh said to us with an unreadable expression. "I honestly didn't expect his answer to that."
Ahsoka tilted her head. "So... what was his answer?"
"He said that the darkness in me was exactly why he wanted to take me on as his second; he figured helping me overcome it would help him deal with his own darkness, and his own experience struggling to control it might help him teach me how to do the same."
"Wow," Ahsoka said with mild surprise. "Skyguy's really starting to sound like a grown-up."
We heard laughter erupt from nearby; turning to look, we saw Master Obi-Wan struggle to stop laughing at Ahsoka's remark as her former master rolled his eyes in response.
"Yeah, yeah, laugh it up, old man," Anakin said with an eyeroll. "In any case, what was the Council's decision?"
Kenobi finally managed to stop his laughter long enough to catch his breath for a reply. "In light of everything that happened—both in this timeline and the one that would have been, as well as the speeches Masters Yoda and Windu gave when I told them the whole story—they've decided to change some of the rules of the Order... and the 'no attachments, no love, no marriage' part was the first to go. Congratulations, Anakin; you officially have their blessing."
The Chosen One's smile couldn't have been larger. "That... that means a lot. Thank the Force..."
"Speaking of marriage, how is Padme doing?"
"Better than I could have hoped," Anakin responded. "With regards to the whole 'you're going to be mother to twins in a couple of years, give or take' thing, she couldn't be more ecstatic. She's not even terrified!"
Obi-Wan chuckled. "You do look rather nervous about the prospect of fatherhood still. Though I suppose anyone would be..."
"Oh, don't worry. We're planning on having you take on Luke when he gets old enough, as per 'canon'."
Kenobi was no longer in a laughing mood, instead having a rather interesting expression of mild horror. "Train another Skywalker... Force preserve me."
Anne Madison smiled at the deed in her hand; she was now officially the owner of the abandoned playground where the breach existed, and once she had the money to begin construction of the new "community center" there it would simply be a matter of waiting on Kevin's return. She looked out the window in nothing in particular, reflecting on recent events; she thought she'd have been used to the impossible after the ordeal with Kevin's revelations. When you get right down to it, though, it's difficult not to have a reaction when Not!Ewan McGregor (an actor she had a slight crush on) showed up in disguise to "adopt" the boy in question so as to avoid problems that might arise with his sudden return and disappearance. With a few quick forms filled—as well as a brief mind-trick laden visit with Adoption services—Kevin Caller was now officially the adopted child of "Ben McGregor", an English national on vacation.
"That's very good, Braden! Now stretch out with your feelings..."
Her attention turned to the room; in addition to the whole "fake adoption" thing, the Order had sent one of their human Knights through the breach to give early instruction to the older force-sensitive children at the orphanage—the ones who were already developing abilities but would be too old for the youngling phase of learning by the time Kevin and Marsh returned in roughly five years. It still felt overwhelmingly strange, but in time she supposed she would adjust to what was quickly becoming the new normal.
CRASH!
"Ah! Sorry! I lost control..."
She sighed, walking to the closet for the supplies needed to clean up the fallen vase of flowers. At least some things never change...
"You ever notice how, whenever the world turns crappy, people tend to rush for fantasy or science fiction stories? If you think about it, it makes sense in general. After all, when reality hits you too hard, the urge to escape can be tempting. But that doesn't explain why, sometimes, the stories they run to are almost as depressing as the reality they're running from. And yet, that's precisely what people have been doing for a long while. You see, we often underestimate the relationship between fiction and reality—we write the stories, but at the same time, the stories we read affect our actions and mindset, which in turn affects OUR story.
In a sense, it's kind of a vicious cycle; we see the world going down the tubes, we flock to fiction as an escape—and at first, we head for the inspiring ones, the ones that give us hope. We take that hope, try to put it back in our world, and sometimes it succeeds and the world goes back on its merry way. But sometimes we give up way too early, and lose that hope—at which point we discard the very concept of hope and idealism as 'foolish', 'unrealistic', or worst of all, 'childish'. That's when we turn to the 'gritty realism' (or, more accurately, 'grimderp that is designed to cater to people who have no hope in a cynical moneymaking opportunity while attempting to pass itself off as realism') kind of fantasy or science fiction, where heroes fail, where villains win, where the only real choice is to either burn everything to the ground and start over, or—more often than not—just grab what you can for yourself in what little time remains before the fire consumes you. And when we read those stories, we take that cynicism, put it back into our world, and when the world continues hurtling toward oblivion we act like it was inevitable, when in fact, we are partly to blame; we gave up. Because evidently, giving up is 'cool' and 'edgy'.
I was one of the few people who didn't buy into that crap. That said, I was still part of the problem; I read the hopeful stories and fantasies, but I saw them as nothing more than an escape from a doomed reality. After all, when you're a scrawny 15-year-old geek with no life and no real friends, there's not much you feel you can do aside from read/play/watch your favorite stories—in my case, Star Wars. This was all well and good until the new movies started coming out. Now don't get me wrong, I've actually enjoyed most of J.J. Abram's stuff, and the special effects in the latest movies were top-notch in a way that the franchise had not been for a good while. But as much as it felt like Star Wars for the first time in ages, there was one thing missing, some vital ingredient to the Star Wars recipe that the old canon had, that the new films lacked: hope. These new movies, as much as I loved them, seemed devoid of true hope. Even in the darkest moments of the other ones, even Episode III, there was always some sense that, sure, evil triumphed today, but the heroes will kick ass and everyone will walk away happy in the end. But not in these new tales. Yeah, story-wise, it's obvious the heroes will win in the end. But you don't feel at all optimistic about it. Even when the heroes do succeed, there seems to be some all-pervasive worry that it all might end up being in vain. And that's when I started to feel like giving in and joining the lemmings chuckling to themselves as they walk off the cliff complaining about how much the cliff sucks: when the last truly hopeful stories that I held dear were tempted by cynicism; fortunately for me—and the rest of the world—that's when fate intervened."
"That's all well and good, Master Caller. But that still doesn't explain how you expect all this to work out..."
"Patience, Braden. I'm getting there. You see, the Force granted Marsh and I the opportunity to change the world, but it was still up to us to act on that opportunity; the Force has a plan for all of us, but to ensure the success of that plan we need to have faith and work towards it as best we can. Sometimes we'll fail; even then, however, that failure happens for a reason. Failure teaches us what we need to know; it's not a reason to abandon our ideals or our faith. And I don't just mean faith in the religious sense; faith in our friends, faith in ourselves, faith in the possibility of a brighter future... those are all important to have and hold onto if we're going to have any chance of success in the end. When you get right down to it, sometimes faith is all you have... but sometimes, that's enough. Now the Force has given us another opportunity, and everyone in this room—not just Marsh and me, but every one of you who will form the first generation of Jedi here on Earth—you, Sarah, Alex, Kyle, Michael, Christopher... together, we'll step out that door and introduce ourselves to a candid world. And together, we'll give that world something it hasn't had in centuries."
"Um... what's that, Master Caller?"
"An opportunity, my young padawan. An opportunity."
Whew! I'm finally done! I'm almost sad that the ride is over... but every good story has to end somewhere. There will be a one-shot series that I'll occasionally post a short drabble to detailing the new world Kevin and Marsh will create, but that will have to be on FF only (sorry, Spacebattles. Love you, but those updates will be VERY sporadic and I don't want to catch the attention of the necro-mods). But even that will end once I run out of details to add; the rest of the blanks will just have to be headcanon for the rest of you. For now, I'm leaving the Galaxy Far, Far Away behind and moving on to my other in-progress fics. I hope you enjoyed the ride as much as I did, and I'll see you in another fic!
May the Force be with you,
CoGDork