A Long Time Ago
9. The Temple

Tass was awoken the next morning by Dekabyn swearing loudly. He'd got up, and since the room was so dark had walked straight into a deactivated cleaning droid in the corner.

"Forgot where I was," he muttered. "I'll go outside while you change..."

"You do that..."

Tass got changed quickly, and then let him back in. Something occured to her.

"You didn't bring a change of clothes? Or nightclothes or anything?"

He turned very red and looked at his feet. "I know how revolting it makes me look, alright? But Mum just bought me some new clothes and I didn't want to take them in case they were lost or stolen from the room or something, and a bunch of my other clothes were ruined yesterday because the washdroid malfunctioned, and...well...these were the only clothes I could take."

Tass looked at him, not sure what to say. "Oh. Um..."

"So now I expect I'm all dirty and smelly," Dekabyn muttered. "Great impression to make, really great..."

"Don't worry," Tass said, finally finding her voice. "You don't smell. You look fine. Don't worry." But she was starting to worry herself now.

On the airtaxi, she thought about what her friend had said. She knew in the back of her mind that Dekabyn was worse off than her, but she'd never really...realized. She knew he wouldn't like it if she felt sorry for him, and so she tried not to.

They didn't talk very much. They were both nervous.

The airtaxi eventually came to a stop outside a building. It had statues leading up to the enterance, and looked more like something you'd find on Naboo than something you'd find on Coruscant, but it wasn't anything too much out of the ordinary. No taller than any of the other buildings, either.

The Jedi Temple.

"This is it?" Dekabyn asked.

"Yeah..." Tass said. "Yeah. I saw pictures."

They got off the taxi onto the platform. Tass looked down at the city beneath her. She wasn't actually that far from the ground. She looked up at the Temple once more...all the pictures in the world couldn't have prepared her for actually being here.

"It used to be taller, didn't it?" Dekabyn said thoughtfully. "The tallest building on the planet. Could've reached the sky."

"That's what I heard," Tass murmured. She walked up to the nearest statue...the one at the front. It was a slightly different colour from the others. It seemed to glitter slightly.

"Luke Skywalker," she read. "Founder of the new Jedi Order, and son of Anakin Skywalker."

"There's two more statues around the sides," Dekabyn said. "Anakin Skywalker and Darth Vader."

"That's interesting..."

"D'ya want to stop and take holographs?"

Tass considered it. "Maybe later."

They want past the other, smaller statues...many Jedi, some of them young and some of them old, some of them from species that didn't even exist anymore. Tass held her breath for some reason.

Dekabyn reached the door first. There was a blue button on the side. He pressed it. Instantly the clear sound of a bell rang out. It sounded like it was coming from somewhere deep within the Temple.

"Now they're all going to know we're here, I guess," Dekabyn said, sounding somewhat uncertain.

The door creaked open. Standing on the other side was a boy. He was wearing Jedi robes, but other than that, he looked incredibly ordinary. The three of them looked at each other for a second. Coruscant traffic whizzed by overhead.

"Hi," Tass said eventually.

The boy smiled. "Wait. Don't tell me...Tass Vari and Dekabyn Resh, right?"

"Right," Dekabyn said in surprise.

The boy grinned. "I'm Owen. Owen Skywalker."

"Seriously?" Tass said. Her voice came out high and squeaky. She blushed bright red.

"Yeah." Owen said, grinning. "Luke's great-great-a-bunch-of-greats-grandson."

"Wow," Dekabyn said, clearly impressed. "But you're hardly older than us."

"I'm eighteen," he answered. "Nineteen in a few months. in."

Tass and Dekabyn stepped inside. The door slid shut.

It was all light inside. There were hundreds of doors, and hundreds of corridors, and stairways and lifts...but the light came from the ceilings and the walls, where thousands upon thousands of names were written in shining ink.

"Oh wow," Dekabyn said, for the second time that day.

Tass agreed with that.

"Every single Jedi ever in the Order," Owen said proudly. "Masters, Padawans, Knights...even traitors."

"Why?" Dekabyn asked.

Owen shrugged. "Because they weren't always traitors, I suppose. It was my sister's idea, anyway."

Dekabyn did not appear too satisfied with that. Tass was still looking at the walls, trying to read every name and see if there was anyone she recognized from her studies. But she let Dekabyn pull her away.

They followed Owen up one of the stairways.

"I take it you'd like a tour," he said cheerfully. "If this is all for schoolwork."

"Yes please," Tass said enthusiastically.

"Right! We'll go to...well...I think it's a room you'll be interested in."

He led them through several corridors and up a few more stairs. They stopped a few times on the way, to look into other rooms...the Archives, and a meditation chamber. People were walking about in them. A few of them looked back at Tass, but others paid her little attention.

They reached their destination. Owen said, "Here we are."

It was a beautiful room. The ceiling was made entirely of glass, and a four-poster bed sat in the corner. It looked very, very old...looked like it should be in pieces. But it wasn't.

There were other things...statues and books and pictures...on the glass shelves around the walls. Tass looked up...the sun and the airways were overhead. She could see her reflection in the glass. Ships flew straight through it.

In the middle of the room, the sun illuminating the dust covering it, was a tomb. It was decorated with pictures...of world-changing events and of people. It was Luke's tomb. On the top was a simple engraving of a silver flower.

"The Starwalker Flower," Owen spoke up. Tass turned to look at him. "Originated on Tatooine, extremely rare over here. The people of Tatooine named it. They couldn't use Skywalker because hey, it was taken." He grinned.

"Uh-huh." That was all Tass could manage for some reason. Things had...happened...in this room. And now she was in it. And she'd never know all of the things that had happened, what person had owned the bed and who'd put up the glass shelves...

She walked to the shelves and examined all the artifacts on them. Drawings of various people. A ring with a green stone in it, perched on top of a small but very thick book. Some old lightsabres. Just...things.

She felt sort of strange, as if Time was hanging out in this very room, grinning at her and looking at the pictures and playing with the ring. She looked at Owen.

"D'ya want to stay and take some pictures?" he asked. "Or...well, d'ya want some lunch?"

The Jedi Temple had a cafeteria. Tass had not expected that. It was in a room with floor-to-ceiling windows, so you could look out over all of Coruscant.

"It's based on the old Council room," Owen explained.

Owen's sister, Ami, had joined them. "I wonder what the old Council would've thought about that," she said.

"I wonder too," Tass said eagerly. "The old Council was headed by Master Yoda, right?"

"Yes," Ami said. "One of only two Jedi to survive the Purges, as you know."

"Yeah...and, well, do you have any stories I could tell? Stories to put in my project. I've got a lot of facts, but not much else."

"Opinions?" Owen asked. "Do you have those?"

"Oh. Yeah, I do."

"Stories," Ami said thoughtfully. "The thing is...many of the old stories were lost. There were the stories in that old Journal, I suppose..."

"Whose journal was it?" Dekabyn asked.

"Qui-Gon Jinn's," Owen answered. "Very, very insightful....helped explain a great deal of things." Ami nodded. "So, yes. There's that. But I could tell you what happened after the happy ending."

"Okay," Tass said. "You mean...after the Emperor was defeated?"

"Right," Owen said. He glanced at each of them, trying to hide a smile. "Luke Skywalker woke up after the celebration on Endor. The funeral pyre had gone out. Everything was ashes. For ages he and his twin sister and their friends sat about and planned. Endor is a good place to think...it's the trees that do it."

Tass didn't really understand that, but she listened anyway, hurriedly transferring the words to her datapad.

"Finally, they flew to Coruscant, eager to rebuild the Jedi Order. They had a huge job ahead of them...most of the Temple was ruined, most everyone with Force powers afraid to speak." Tass was suddenly reminded of the other reason she was here. "But they did it. Somehow. Han Solo and Princess Leia were married...the Solo line continues to this day, I'll add...and Luke too found a wife, a young woman who had been working for the Empire."

That had been in the History books, she remembered. In one of them.

"And they slowly learned about their father and mother. They discovered what had become of their mother, and how their father became what he was. They found people who had actually known their mother and father. And they rebuilt the Republic and the Jedi Order. Their names are spoken in awe to this day."

The Jedi around their table were eating and talking quietly, although Tass thought maybe a few of them were listening. She couldn't help but redden. She wasn't a Jedi, after all...and yet she was here.

"An awful lot for just a few people to achieve," Owen said quietly, and Tass thought she knew what he was telling her, although she wasn't entirely sure.

"Thank you," she said. And then she remembered her manners. "Thank you, sir."

"Sir?" Owen said in mock horror. "Call me Owen."

"Just Owen?" Dekabyn spoke up. "Not Master Owen?"

"No, thank you," he said cheerfully.

"Well, ur, Owen..." Tass said nervously. "There's something else we...well, I...wanted to ask you about."

"Really?" he said. "What's that?"

"I have a friend at school," Tass began. "and recently, she's...well, I think she has Force powers. She can levitate things, and...stuff."

Owen and Ami nodded.

"And...well, her parents don't like Jedi and there's no way they'll let her come here...so we were wondering what we could do."

Ami looked thoughtful. "She wouldn't be the first to be in that position."

"Where do you live?" Owen asked.

"Er, quite a long way away from here."

"Hmmm. We give classes, you see, to help those who can't control their powers...maybe she could attend."

"Her parents'd probably notice..."

"Well..." Owen said thoughtfully. "We've got datapads and things we can give you to give to her. That might be of some help."

"That'd be great," Tass said.

"What's her name?" Ami asked.

"Faith."

"Unusual name," Owen pondered. "Very interesting."

They took a look in the Archives next. Tass had wanted to. However, the librarian kept looking at her like she shouldn't be there, so she asked to leave sooner than she would have liked. Then Dekabyn wanted to go to and look at the Jedi starships, so they did that as well.

Then, Owen took them to another room to get the datapads he'd talked about. It was located, weirdly enough, behind a waterfall.

"In the old Jedi Temple, there was a room called the Room Of A Thousand Fountains," Ami explained. "But when it was rebuilt...we didn't really want to rebuild so many waterfalls and things, because it seemed odd to have the Jedi with a thousand fountains while Tatooine had none...so we built just one."

Tass hurriedly noted this down.

"I never really thought of that," Dekabyn said.

Owen gave Tass the datapads.

"Okay," he said. "Your visit is over now, then?"

"Yeah," Tass said, wistfully.

"You can come back any time, you know," Owen said. "Visitors are always welcome, as long as we know who they are."

Before Tass could respond to that, he continued. "Here...I just thought of something. You can have my comlink number." He dug about in his pocket, and picked out a small chip with a number stamped into it. "Here."

Tass stared.

"Give it to Faith too, if she's ever in trouble she could contact me."

Dekabyn was staring too.

"You're the head of the Jedi Order," he managed to say.

"Yes, but I have a good idea of who's trustworthy and who's not," he said. Then he smiled.

Tass smiled back.

A few minutes later, they'd bidden goodbye to Owen and Ami, and were standing outside waiting for the airtaxi. The real world seemed so dull and drab now...

"The head of the Jedi Order gave you his comlink number," Dekabyn said in wonderment.

"Can't see Master Yoda ever doing that," Tass said. She was holding the chip tightly in her hand.

"That was...weird," Dekabyn said. "I wasn't expecting...well, you know, they said how aloof and arrogant the old Jedi were. The new Order...I bet they're hiding something, y'know?"

"Must you be so cynical?" Tass asked.

"Well...yes. I need to balance you out. You always reckon the world's so perfect."

"I do not..."

But neither of them really wanted to carry the conversation on. Tass looked back at the Jedi Temple. Luke Skywalker seemed to be grinning at her.

She and Dekabyn sat together and waited for the journey home.