The temple was exactly how I remembered it as I alighted off the public speeder and started to make my way forwards. I felt home. Finally. After two long years being lost, I had made my own way back here. What stories I'd have to tell, the evidence of my trials adorning my skin in the numerous scars I had sustained from scraping by each day. I looked nothing like a Jedi, in all truth. My hair was long and loose, the jacket I had taken from the ship now worn and ripped in several places, with no lightsaber at my side. However, as I approached the doors, the guardians did not stop me as I continued to face forwards, not even glancing their way as I entered the temple and for a moment, I had to stop and breathe it all in.
Home. This was home, and I was here. I was alive and home. What more could I possibly want? Very few Jedi paid me any attention as I entered, reaching out with my senses in order to try and locate my master, though I could very well guess where he would be. In the training grounds, probably teaching a youngling class in lightsaber techniques. Would he be glad to see me? Overjoyed? Guilty even? I hardly knew, but I could not wait to find out. I hurried in my step, moving rather noiselessly as I had developed the habit of making as little sound as possible over the last two years to evade detection, gracefully ascending the steps before taking a lift to where my master would be teaching, and I could already sense him.
A strong energy was now buzzing through me, eager to return to his side and resume my place as his padawan, stronger and more sure of myself than I ever had been before. Stepping out of the lift, I followed my senses to where he was, entering one of the main rooms where I then saw him standing with his back to me, talking to someone with several younglings training in the background. Emotion burst with a swell of uncontainable motion, surging through me as I let go of the kyber crystal I had been grasping all this while in order to speak. "Master!" I watched his shoulders tense, going rigid from shock before abruptly turning and I smiled at him breathlessly, continuing to move closer as he stared in utter disbelief.
Then I saw the figure standing behind him, the person he had been talking to. She stepped out curiously, frowning in confusion as she looked between us, her long blonde hair loose around her shoulders before she then turned to Master Bondara, and her words caused me to freeze in place. "Master, who is she?" There was something about the way she addressed him that gave me pause, sensing the powerful guilt that now flowed through my master as he remained silent and grave, staring at me as if I were nothing more than an apparition before him. I choked on my own breath slightly, others now turning in order to see what was occurring, sensing the disturbance. Several masters also appeared with their own padawans, but I could only look at my own master, now pulling back as I saw the other girl anchor herself at his side.
"Master Bondara, are you not glad to see me?" I asked him, starting to tremble and my expression displayed every emotion I was feeling as the tears that I'd kept at bay now came spilling over one by one. "Who is that? You can't mean…you…" It took a moment, but the realisation came upon me gradually as my mind worked out exactly who that girl was brought on an overwhelming sense of hurt and betrayal. "You replaced me?" He had a new padawan learner, he'd taken on a new apprentice without ever even confirming that I was dead. "How could you do such a thing? I've been alive all this time, waiting for you to find me, surviving untold horrors just to return to you! How could you replace me?!"
"Theca, you must calm yourself." He finally spoke, and his words hurt me all the more. No apology, no sense of regret or explanation, just a chiding, like I were still nothing more than a child. Powerful urges swarmed through me, driving me to want to attack my former master and his new apprentice, to yell and shout and make him see just how much I had gone through only to have all my hopes destroyed at the very moment I should have stood utterly victorious and praised beyond all recognition. My head swam with my vision blurring, a sudden ache of woe and weariness taking over as I struggled to process the truth, determined to believe that it was all just a misunderstanding, a mistake.
The Force trembled around me, through me, disturbed by my raging emotions until I wanted nothing more than for everything to be silenced so that I might have peace as Master Bondara called out to me, trying to reach out his hand but I lashed out and backed away from him, commanding that he not touch me. I couldn't stand it. I didn't want him anywhere near me. The betrayal I felt was all too real, and I wondered how a Jedi was meant to abstain themselves from emotion when feelings were just so powerful, falling upon you even unbidden. I did not know what to do, or where to go, but I was saved from having to decide as everything that had piled up over the last two years came crashing down upon me.
Every memory and heartache, every fear and sense of pain that I had endured pressed itself upon my mind until everyone around me could also feel the sense of everything I had gone through, hearing my screams and the sounds of monsters and beasts hunting me every waking moment became a vision in their minds. They felt it all, and as I cried out with despair and the final sense of hopelessness, I collapsed upon the ground with violent convulsions, the night terrors taking hold and I was subject to their onslaught. The bitter realisation came to me then. I had not escaped that planet. It would haunt me forever, and no matter where I went or how far I ran, it would always follow.
I had not survived anything.