This is not a happy ending. I'm warning you now. This is Order 66 in its awful entirety with a little bit of hope left over at the end. This is not about them winning, it's not even about them surviving. It's about the Jedi loving each other and trying to protect each other and doing their very best so that some of them can live even when the rest die.
Be warned, most of the people who are tagged who don't already survive Order 66 die (but not all of them)
I did not intend on making this quite so sad but also it's the Jedi Purge so it was already sad although I think I made it worse for myself.
Title is from 'Flares' by The Script. The song very much vibes with the fic.
(also this website really messes with the formatting so please ignore all the random dots down the side, they're there for spacing)
Execute Order 66.
.
The Order goes out.
And all at once all across the galaxy, Jedi fall and die.
But not everyone.
.
Masters fight and hold off the Troopers and so that their Padawans can run. (Run, Caleb!) (Cal, go, move!) (Hide, whatever happens do not let them find you!) (Go, Senna, go!) (Go, Padawan, you must!)(Run, do not look back!)
Knights do not stand and fight but deflect long enough to get away and hide.
Knights fall and pretend their deaths, hoping for an opportunity to run.
Shadows disappear underground, you cannot kill what you cannot find.
Pilots evade and dodge and launch themselves into hyperspace anywhere-but-here and hope against hope they will land somewhere where they have a chance to run.
The Jedi trust their men unflinchingly. It kills most of them. But not all.
.
Obi Wan Kenobi is shot off a cliff side. He falls and falls and falls but he does not die when he hits the water and he has done this before, he has been hunted before, betrayed even, even if never by those who he trusted like he trusted them. He hides and lets them think him dead and gets off planet as soon as he can. (Drag the water. Says Commander Cody, CC-2224, ignoring the part of him that is crying. No one could have survived that fall but we need to confirm the kill. He does not understand why a part of him is weeping.) They never do find his body, and they do not learn why.
.
Ki Adi Mundi sees the betrayal of his men where others fall and realise only after who had killed them. His disbelief is trumped only by the sheer heartbreak at the betrayal, and he tries in vain to deflect their shots. He is surrounded on all sides, the droids do not want him to survive any more than his men do anymore, and he had trained with his men well. When he falls he hopes only (desperately) that his family will know of his death, what it means, and run. (Target eliminated. Says Commander Bacara, CC-1138, not listening to the denials rattling around in the back of his head. Good job, now we continue the assault.) His family hear what they are saying about the Jedi and flee.
.
Aayla Secura feels Kit Fisto die and stumbles. Her Troopers help her up. Then they raise their guns and she looks for the danger. They open fire on her. She feels the first blaster bolt hit her back and knows that she cannot win this fight. But she was trained by a Jedi Shadow. She knows that winning and surviving are not the same thing. She lets herself fall to the ground and draws on the Force to slow her vitals. She loves these men, had trusted them. But they have no reason to know that she can fake death like this. No way of knowing that she lives still when her back still smokes from the blaster bolts. No way to tell that after the first two, the ones that knocked her to the ground, the rest did not injure her. This is knowledge she had never wanted to have to use, skills that she would only ever have used in the direst of circumstances. But these circumstances are dire, and she had promised. (Promise me, Sir, that you will do whatever you have to, to survive, if you ever in that position, even if that means letting us get hurt. And she had said no, she had denied her commander this because she could not abandon her men that way, but he had begged her and begged her until she said that she would but only if she had no other choice.) (Little Aayla, this isn't knowledge I want you to need, but I think you need to know it. Promise me that if the time comes, you'll use it. I promise, Master.) And it hurts, the betrayal more than the blaster bolts, but she is a survivor, was a survivor even before she was a Jedi and she will survive this now. She has to. (Dead. Says Commander Bly, CC-5052, who does not understand why there is something in the back of his mind screaming. Report in, there are still enemy forces on planet, we can deal with the traitor's body later.) When they return there is no sign of the body, and none of their captives will admit to taking it.
.
Plo Koon does not realise who has shot him when the first bolt hits, but the second one breaks his heart. His fighter starts to spin out of control, but he's been a pilot longer than many have been alive. Three more bolts hit his ship and he lets the shielding weather them. He vents the engines, full power to the deflectors, and braces himself for landing. He knows what he is capable of surviving and the risks that may cause his death. He hits one building, two, ricochets, bounces, and plummets to the ground. He counts it out, waits, and at the last possible moment smashes the top out with the Force and rolls forward. He lets the force of the explosion throw him clear, cushioning his body and fall so that he is not too injured. He hides away from the crash site and waits for one of his men to land. (No body. Says Commander Wolffe, CC-3636, something uneasy roiling in his gut, unsure why he feels so convinced that something is so very very wrong. But nothing could have survived that explosion. There's nothing left of the fighter but scrap. Call it in.) When he hears them say he is dead with no emotion and fails to reach them mentally, he runs.
.
Stass Allie is shot down on her speeder bike and lets go as it spins out of control. She hits the ground hard, but her healing abilities do not fail her, and she gathers herself long enough to roll out of sight before doing her best to triage. Her men (not her men, not anymore) find the empty bike as it rolls to the ground and start searching. (Find the body. Says Commander Neyo, CC-8826, not letting the voice yelling at him to stop distract him. It cannot be far.) She survives the day, but not the week.
.
Shaak Ti staggers on Kamino as she feels her brothers, her sisters, her family die, all at once, all across the galaxy. Betrayal. They all weep as they die. Listen. Urges the Force. Hide. She waits for her Commander to be distracted for a moment by his ringing comm and slips sideways into a room that the Kaminoans and the Troopers don't know that she has access to. She hears a horribly familiar voice give her Commander an Order and feels his mind vanish. Her Commander rebroadcasts the Order across the facility and the presence of every single Trooper that she has come to know disappears like they never existed. She has a horrible suspicion about why her fellow Jedi had all felt betrayed when they died. She slips into the vent system that she should not have access to, that is the wrong size for the Kaminoans to enter and makes her way towards the hangar. There are many Troopers in the hangar that she has chosen, too many, but every single one of them is a shiny and none of them are wearing their helmets. They have never seen a Jedi in action, not truly. She allows herself a single moment of grief then drops into the hangar next to one of the only hyperspace worthy ships that can be flown by a single person. She uses the Force to strongly suggest to as many of them as possible that they do not want to be here and should be helping in the hunt, nothing-to-see-here. It would not have worked even an hour ago, but they are not the same men she helped train any longer. Over three quarters of them simply leave without making any note of her presence and she kills every single one that raises their weapon towards her and then flings their bodies into the raging sea. She cannot leave a trace, they will find her soon enough, but she will delay them as much as she can. There is a single Trooper left and he is raising and lowering his weapon like he can't make up his mind what to do with it. Good soldiers follow orders, he repeats and repeats and repeats. Good soldiers follow orders. But he still raises and lowers his weapon without firing. His mind is staticky, sometimes there and sometimes not. And the words he is saying are far too close to what happened with Tup and Fives and that whole mess for comfort. So, she knocks him out, drags him onboard and restrains him before guiding the ship out of the Hangar and setting coordinates that the Force gives her freely without acknowledging where they will take her. She locks the controls so that only a Togruta can use or alter them and takes a moment to breathe and grieve for all the Jedi that have already died and are still dying. (She's vanished. Says Commander Colt, CC-4816, not acknowledging the small bubble of smugness in the centre of his chest that he does not understand. She can't have gone far. Find her!) Her Troopers never find her.
.
Yoda drops his gimmer stick in surprise and shock and heartbreak as so so many of the children he has raised die. He has known them all since they were crèchelings, helped teach them their basics and first lessons and now suddenly so many of them are gone. He nearly falls to his knees with the grief and the pain. Tarfful bends down to ask him what is wrong and Yoda cannot answer, he does not have the words to describe what he has just lost with no warning. He hears Commander Gree approaching behind him and the Force whispers to him urgently. Pay attention! It cries. Be careful. Before he can make any other move, he hears two guns cocking behind him, quiet enough that he knows a human would have missed it over the noise on the battlefield surrounding them, and the Force screams a helpless warning. He does not hesitate; he does not think twice. There are times for caution and times for action and he can no longer sense the two men behind him as individuals. Without pause he jumps and beheads the two Troopers behind him and they fall to the ground, heads hitting before the bodies fall, guns both still aimed at where he was standing. Chewbacca asks what is it what's wrong why did you kill them and Tarfful more quietly but no less urgently says we have missed something, something has happened, Master Yoda what is it. And Yoda listens to the Force. It is still screaming, still weeping, still crying danger! But the immediate threat to him has passed, so he puts his lightsabre away and accepts the help that the two Wookiees offer. He cannot sense Luminara, cannot sense anyone and he does not know if she is alive or dead, does not know if he is the only Jedi left alive. Have faith, whispers the Force, have hope, you are not alone. I am with you. Yoda does not know what to do next, he only knows that the darkness is stronger than it has ever been and the galaxy of twinkling lights that he has spent nine centuries orbiting around has suddenly been extinguished as though it was never there. Yoda is no stranger to death and loss, but this is another scale entirely. What now? He begs of the Force, what is he supposed to do now? Home. It whispers. You need to go home. And Yoda has spent his entire life listening to and touching the Force. So, he does what it says. He goes home.
.
Mace Windu falls and falls and falls and falls out of the window, smoking from lightning (and how ironic that his squadron had been named after the very thing that will kill him), arms gone, and saber lost, down down down. He feels something change in the Force and a shatterpoint somewhere above him bursts into a thousand pieces and then all he feels is
death
as his family starts to die all at once across the galaxy. His bond with Depa
snaps
and he is still falling
down
down
down…
until he isn't. He cannot see, his Force Sense is shot, and he doesn't know who it is, but somebody has caught him and they're pulling him into a speeder and they're talking but he doesn't understand, all he knows is that there is a new shatterpoint forming, a tiny one, that is on the brink of exploding into a supernova that will change anything if only the right choice is made. Mothma. He manages to say. Senator Mothma. He doesn't know if this is the right decision, and
aches
to get back to the Temple because something awful is about to happen, even more awful than what is already happening, his people dying, being murdered, he knows it. But the Force is telling him to trust it and he cannot and will not stop listening now. Mon Mothma had been the dearest friend Adi Gallia had outside the Order and he has his suspicions about the nature of the relationship his crèchemate had had with her, about the feelings that neither of them had ever quite acted on before Florrum.
He can trust her.
And maybe then something can be done… He knows nothing more as he loses the battle with consciousness, despite giving his all because he cannot give up now but the Force sings sadly to him, sleep, sleep and when you awake you will be among friends. Sleep for there is nothing you can do now save die and I do not want my children dead. You are needed still. Sleep. Live.
The Force weeps as it sings and Mace finally
gives
in.
.
.
.
Anakin Skywalker leads the 501st Battalion and the Coruscant Guard and so many many others in an assault on the Jedi Temple. They kill everyone they come across. But that is not quite everyone.
The Jedi in the Temple know that something is wrong before they see the army marching towards them. They can feel their siblings dying across the galaxy, so they are already expecting the worst.
Three members of the Temple Guard fall and die before they can raise a warning, but by the time the third hits the ground the alarm has been sounded through the Temple.
Attack. We are under attack. The Sith are here. They are coming and we cannot stop them. We cannot win.
.
The Temple Guard form the first line of defence. They do everything they can to kill and delay the Troopers and the man that had once been one of them, that they had trusted, who had betrayed them so utterly.
This is not about winning. It is no longer even about survival. It is about fighting and enduring as much as they can for as long as they can because every moment they delay is one more moment that gives one of their siblings the opportunity to escape, every Trooper they kill is one less Trooper to hunt down and kill their family, every strike they aim at the man who was once one of them is one more strike that he has to block before he can get past them.
The Temple Guard fall.
The line of defence falls back.
The elderly, the retired, the newly knighted, those coming off medical leave, the Senior Padawans about to take their trials, step up and hold the line. Because that is what this is.
Hold the line. Reverberates back and forth throughout the Temple to every Jedi that can still hold a 'sabre. The young, the injured, buy them time. Those safeguarding information so that it cannot be used, buy them time. Those sending out warnings, guarding escapes, buy them time.
Hold the line.
And they do. A Jedi falls, and another steps up.
There are so few of the Jedi in the Temple, and so many vulnerable to protect. But these are the people who swore an oath to put their lives on the line to help complete strangers. The people that get whispered about as spacer tales and ghost stories. The people that slavers and criminals warn you about.
There are so few of them, and they are not enough.
But that does not mean that they give up. They are implacable and immovable and they refuse to give way until they have no other choice. They do not let themselves weep for the fallen or indulge in their anger or betrayal. They do not take risks or try to advance.
There is only this: defend. Hold the line.
And they do.
The Force weeps for its children, for every Jedi that falls and does not get back up. It screams loss and pain and betrayal and no no no and why.
And one by one the defenders fall.
They hold the line and they are not enough but they do not stop, they do not falter, they do not give in.
They are pushed back step by step by step and more and more and more of them fall and there is nothing they can do as the people they love and fight with and stand beside shoulder-to-shoulder die.
But they do not stop. They keep fighting.
Hold the line.
Every moment they manage to last, every second that they fight, is a priceless, impossible gift.
For the crèchemasters who place their young charges in the arms of padawans barely old enough to wear braids and injured knights and masters that should not be fighting at all and weep as they tell them run!
For the teachers who urge their students who are old enough to go! Run! Fast as you can! Don't look back!
For the caretakers who tell the younglings to hide! Don't be found! Wait until it's safe to run then go!
For those with mechanical talents who sabotage everything they can find or rig it to explode in the vain hope that it will buy their family just a little longer.
For the slicers who broadcast a message on all frequencies – to Shadows and ExploraCorps and AgriCorps and MediCorps and Educorps and any Jedi that is not dead yet. Run! Hide! It is not safe here! Do not come back! We have been betrayed! The Troopers will kill you!
For the Shadows who erase mission information and destroy the names of Jedi undercover and delete any scrap of knowledge that might lead to their siblings being found.
For the Archivists under Master Nu who are destroying thousands of years of history so that the information cannot be used for ill.
For the Healers for whom every second is precious as they barricade the way to the injured who cannot be moved, the critical, the invalid. Who send every patient that can move under their own power further away to hope that maybe, maybe one of them will make it. Who try battlefield triage for every Jedi that makes it back to them before sending them back out to where they will die because they all know that they cannot survive.
.
Head Archivist Jocasta Nu has twelve Archivists under her purview in the archives when the alarm is sounded. She does not hesitate and neither do they. They lock the doors and then start their work. They download everything they can from the archives. They gather the holocrons and put them in the deepest vaults. They lock down the vaults so that even brute force will not open them without the authorisation of an Archivist and a Council Master. They destroy the locks so that they can't get in even if they use the Dark Side. They erase every bit of information in the archives that the Sith could possibly have a use for, whether they managed to make a copy or not, and then destroy the terminals for good measure. They are Archivists and this is their holy ground and doing this hurts them so so deeply but there is no choice. They lock down all log in commands and put in as many traps as they can in the time they have. Jocasta Nu destroys the two holocrons with data on Force-Sensitives out in the galaxy without hesitation because they cannot risk them too.
By the time the Troopers have made it to the archive doors, a terrible dark presence at their heels, they are almost done. Jocasta Nu hits the kill switch that will destroy the archives themselves, save the precious backup that she has placed against her skin, and tells her Archivists: her pupils, her colleagues, her dear dear friends, that they must run. The Archivists gather empty datapads like they contain valuable knowledge because they know that knowledge is power and anything that can delay and frustrate the Sith can only help even if they are already dead. The Troopers break through the door and into the archives and find a mess that would never have been allowed at any other time and a dozen fleeing Jedi. The Troopers do not hesitate to kill them. But this is their home, their archives. And no one knows the archives like an Archivist. Master Nu drops a bust of the Lost Twenty on the Troopers. A Knight tips over one of the shelves. A Padawan throws tables and chairs and anything they can find at them.
This is their home, their people, and they will run and hide and escape if they can, but they will not make it any easier for these intruders and invading killers than they have to. They already know that their chances of survival are slim, but it doesn't stop them, even as they try to flee and fight and delay their enemies.
Over a hundred Troopers die trying to take the archives.
When the Sith come later they will find no information and nothing they can use.
When the bodies of the Jedi are counted, they will find ten dead traitors in the archives.
Master Jocasta Nu is not among them.
.
Temple Guardian Feemor Stahl is in the depths of the Temple and meditating in the Room of a Thousand Fountains when the alarm goes out. He gathers a small clan of Initiates who are nearby and seem to have been trying to put off going to bed as long as possible. They are too young to be Padawans, but old enough to have been on their Gathering and have made their own lightsabres and he takes them to one of the secret passages that Shadows use to get in and out of the Temple. In another world he would have taken on one of them to be his Padawan, it was the very reason he was meditating nearby, but there is no time for wallowing or regrets now.
Go. He tells them. Run, hide, trust no one but each other. Do not stop, scatter if you must. Survive.
The young Ithorian whimpers and his Rodian crèchemate comforts him.
Hurry now. Feemor urges them, opening the passageway for them, a horrid flash of insight leaving him terribly aware that they may end up being the only ones among his fellow Jedi that he can save. The Tholothian girl looks at him searchingly for a moment longer before igniting her lightsabre and plunging into the dark. The Rodian and Ithorian follow, holding hands. And after a moment of fiddling with his datapad the Nautolan boy follows. Feemor catches sight of a life-signs scanner on the screen and lets himself indulge in this one moment of pride, Clever boy. The wookiee boy follows one hand on his crèchemate's back to make sure he doesn't stumble and the last, a young human boy gives him one long last look before bowing and following. Thank you, Master.
Feemor allows himself one single moment of grief before moving every plant in the hallway three feet to the left in an effort to conceal the passage entrance and moving back towards where he feels his colleagues, lightsabre in hand. If he is going to die it will be doing everything he can to try and give the others time to run. That is his job. It is why he became a Temple Guard.
He holds the line.
He kills Trooper after Trooper, their minds practically indistinguishable from that of a machine, and feels them die just the same.
He gets shot, he gets injured and still he continues, still he endures.
He knows his death is coming but every moment he delays is a priceless moment longer that they cannot hunt the younglings.
When his death comes it is not at the hands of a Trooper. It is at the hands of the young man his Padawan Brother raised, when he moves to block a strike that would have killed the Battlemaster.
When he dies, he does not know if he succeeded, if the Initiates he hurried out before heading to hold the line made it and survived, he does not know if any of those he died to save lived.
But he dies knowing that he did everything he could for them and that is enough.
.
Battlemaster Cin Drallig stands outside the entrance to the Initiate Halls, where there are no more younglings. Their inhabitants are scattered around the Temple in hiding waiting for a chance, any chance to run, or already pushed through escape routes, back entrances, secret tunnels, anything that hasn't been blocked and might just maybe be a way out, hoping that there are no Troopers waiting on the other end to kill whoever leaves.
He stands and waits and when the first Troopers come around the corner he protects and guards the entrances alongside his siblings, his colleagues, his family, as thought their most precious are inside, because every single second that he can buy the younglings is worth his life a thousand times over because it might be the second that makes a difference between their survival and their death.
He holds the line.
All around him people die: his friends, his family, children that he has trained from childhood and watched grow into knights, children whose skills he has nurtured.
They hold the line.
An injured Knight falls defending a Temple Guard who falls defending him.
A Padawan too young to be here who should have run already gets struck down when he tries to evade.
A monster wearing the face of a young man strikes the Battlemaster down and steps over his fallen body to get to the younglings that Cin Drallig died to protect.
The swell of rage that he unleashes when he finds the dormitories empty makes Cin Drallig smile before he dies.
.
Chief Healer Vokara Che cannot afford herself the distraction of weeping as she feels her family get cut down inside their own home. Two of her patients have already died by the time the alarm sounds, unable to cope with the breaking of their bonds (crèchemates, Masters, Padawans, friends, family, lovers) on top of their injuries.
She knows that they will not be the last.
Her Healers are already directing those who are still mobile to either run or help move the critical, the invalid, those too injured to be moved. Vokara Che starts gathering everything she has in the Halls of Healing that can be considered dangerous to humans. As the Troopers and their leader get closer, those in the Halls of Healing turn their efforts from evacuation to defence.
They must hold the line.
Those that cannot leave are in the deepest parts of the Halls. The Healers, Knights, Padawans, even a handful of younglings that remain start to set barricades and booby traps and trip wires. The tricks that every youngling in the Temple learns and had once used to prank distinguished Masters and snooty Knights is turned to a far more serious cause.
No one still in the Halls is under any illusions that they will survive. But for every second that they can convince the Troopers and their leader that their most vulnerable are here and they are all defending valuable targets while they are holding the line, there is a slightly bigger chance that those that they have evacuated through the secret entrances and forgotten tunnels and back doors will get away.
The defenders outside fall back and back and back, and there are only a handful left to hold the line now, Vokara Che does not know if there is anyone else still alive in the Temple, or if those younglings that they'd told to hide and run when they see the chance have already been found and slaughtered, but she knows she will fight as though lives depend on her. Because they do. Just not in the way that the Troopers think.
The last Jedi standing outside falls with a scream and Vokara Che winces as she feels them die. She shares a glance with her colleagues, her fellow Healers, Jedi, who like her, chose their battlefield to be the one where the loss is if someone under their hands dies, and is met with nothing but grim determination. Not one of them agreed to leave or evacuate with the younglings and lesser injured.
They are the Healers who swore to do no harm.
Not one of them regret that that is an oath they are about to break.
They must hold the line.
The first Troopers that burst through the entrance to the Healing Halls are met with acid that melts their plastoid armour to their skin and fall and writhe in agony – they will take a long time to die.
The second wave are met with a wall of hyposprays flying at them, each containing a cocktail that is deadly to a human.
The third wave simply drop. The trick to restarting a stopped heart, you see, is in knowing why it stopped in the first place.
By the time the sixth wave make their way through – their leader still hovering outside the Halls, waiting – most of the Healers have to stop so that they don't expend their energy and risk Force Exhaustion.
Vokara Che takes one last look at her wonderful, brave, loving Healers, and ignites her lightsabre. May the Force be with us. She tells them. The Knight-Healer beside her ignites her own blade, it is with us all. She replies.
.
.
They stand and they fight and they do everything they can to distract and delay and thin out the ranks of the men come to kill them.
It is not enough.
But they hold the line.
.
.
The Force weeps.
.
.
.
By the time Obi Wan Kenobi and Yoda find their way to the Temple, there are no Jedi left alive within its walls.
But there are still Jedi left.
.
And there is still hope.
.
…both our Jedi Order and the Republic have fallen, with the dark shadow of the Empire rising to take their place.
This message is a warning and a reminder for any surviving Jedi. Trust in the Force. Do not return to the Temple. That time has passed. And our future is uncertain.
We will each be challenged.
Our trust... our faith... our friendships. But we must persevere.
.
And in time, a new hope will emerge.
.
.
Ten thousand Jedi across the galaxy are attacked, fired upon by those they considered friends.
The Force screams as all at once its children are killed.
Many many die.
But not all of them.
.
.
And a new path shows itself as a tiny shatterpoint explodes
.
.
.
This is not the end of the Jedi.
.
They will endure.
The alternate titles for this fic are Hold the Line and Hope endures even in Darkness which should tell you absolutely everything you need to know about what I was thinking when I was writing it.
I have not in fact seen Clone Wars S7 or The Bad Batch or read any comics ever so please don't me about inaccuracy with how specific Jedi die.
Also Plo survived the Purge and Stass Allie survived Order 66 but not the Purge like this in canon, I will die on this hill.
Also I don't care what CW7 or TBB say, Shaak Ti survived O66 too, she died in the last year of the purge (I have a very very specific headcanon for how she dies, I don't care what canon says).
Mace and Aayla survive for 'I need them later' reasons and also because I love them, I don't want them dead, and I can come up with a way for them to survive that vibes with explicit on screen canon.
