For the benefit of recovery, I was placed in the temple's medical facility where Jedi healers tended to me night and day. They eased my physical wounds, but there was little they could do about my mental state. I lost the will to speak, and the only sound I ever made was to scream when the night terrors became all too much. They would spend hours at a time meditating around me, attempting to connect to me through the Force in order to soothe my fears, but I felt broken, and I did not want their touch. I wanted to be alone, but not alone, and I wanted to be free, but I knew that it was impossible. It was my deepest conundrum.
Master Bondara would visit me every day, but I refused to respond to him, blocking him from my mind and senses so that I could not even feel him near to me. Instead, I wallowed in my own sense of helplessness as I struggled to navigate the nightmarish world of my own head. Sometimes I would awaken and find myself back on that planet, being hunted and chased like weak prey, and upon being captured and seeing the wide open maw of fangs diving for my throat, I would scream and wake up somewhere in the temple having walked through my own nightmare. This development required that I be secured in my own room, but then I started to use objects as weapons, and if someone approached me whilst I was within a night terror, I would attack them.
Sometimes I would attack upon instinct if someone approached me too quietly from behind, even whilst awake. It was hardwired into me to always be alert, and soon the healers had to take precautions to even approach me, ensuring to always come to me from the front and ensure that I was aware they were there before coming closer. In the quiet moments, I was responsive to them. I would follow their instructions and let them guide me in the hope that their healing would help, as when I was not caught in the evils of my own past, I was physically healthy and often found means to pass the time.
They provided me with reading material and allowed me to take daily walks in order to exercise and enjoy the warm sunlight, though I had become used to colder temperatures so often I would change my room's temperature settings to something far colder than normal in order to feel comfortable within myself. I would meditate and try to find balance once more, but the rupture that had overtaken me upon learning of my master's abandoning me was a pain that blocked my path to recovery. For the moment I was not allowed other visitors, though the healers told me that Aayla Secura often came to see me in order to visit, but I did not want to see anyone physically. I was afraid I would hurt them, as sometimes I could not tell what was a dream and what was reality.
My mind would sink even whilst awake, one moment being calm and reasonable before suddenly switching into a wild creature desperate to fight for their survival. More than one healer had been hurt by me already, and when I had come round and realised what I had done, I would feel the utmost shame and force them to leave so that I couldn't hurt anyone else. Still, one particular healer, an elder who had lived her entire life within this temple, felt that I should not be pushing everyone away and so brought me a new holo-caster and encouraged me to talk to my friend through it so that at the very least, I could see and speak to her. I still could not speak, even when I had tried. It were as if my own voice had vanished, but Aayla continually sent me messages through the holo-caster and I would listen to them once I was alone. She'd grown, just as I had, though physically did not appear all that different.
She would tell me how glad she was that I was alive, and that she and her master Quinlan Vos had even gone to the planet in order to try and find me, but there were so many rivers and places I could have washed up, that eventually they were forced to return back to the temple by the council. They'd spent several weeks searching for me. It was a comfort to know that she had begged her master to help look for me, so I saved the messages and played them again and again, as she continued to tell me all the things that I had missed, including the fact that I was not the only padawan to go missing.
Aurra Sing had been taken by pirates, but her master had chosen not to rescue her, deeming it the will of the Force, but upon rescuing herself and becoming one of the pirate crew, Aurra had returned to swear vengeance on all Jedi, naming herself as our greatest enemy. I could not say I blamed her, after all, I knew what it felt like to be utterly devoid of hope, waiting for one's master to come and save them only for those aspirations to fall short. Part of me wanted to remain bitter and angry with my master, but in truth, I could not bring myself to. I was far too exhausted to devote such energy to being filled up with hatred, I barely had the energy to do much else than take a single walk a day despite my body being stronger and hardened against a great deal of hardships.
It was perhaps due to the fact that I knew in my subconscious mind that I was no longer in any danger that I felt the weight of pressure having been lifted result in my having no energy left for anything other than basic functions. My silent life progressed with little improvement, though I soon began to teach myself ways to understand where dreams ended and reality began. It was all through the Force. It had been my guide, and I relied upon it still. I responded to its tremble, its guidance, and whenever I found myself trapped within the night terror, I would reach out for it and feel its comfort draw near.
The improvement was slow, but definite. The healers were hopeful that in some years, my mental state would recover to a stabilised function, though they made sure that I knew that nothing would be immediate and I would most likely suffer some effects for the rest of my life. I had endured a great deal, after all. Still, their confidence and patience felt more effective in helping me to recover than any amount of tests and probing. They regulated my meals so that I gradually returned to a proper weight, having lost a great deal whilst on the planet, fixed up my body so that I had very few scars left to show that I had been so badly wounded, and after several months of rehabilitation, they allowed me to begin looking after myself a little more each day.
Small steps, yet hugely profound effects. Within the temple, the general atmosphere allowed me to find peace within myself once more, and I looked upon the past with a hesitant acceptance that I had come back a better Jedi, though I was now without a master or a lightsaber. My head healer felt that it would be good for me to try and reconstruct my lightsaber as a personal task, something of a goal to secure myself a victory, so that is what I did. I meditated upon the kyber crystal, trying to ascertain if it were proper to reconstruct it as I had done before, or if this new person I had become needed a new style also. I sat within a meditation room, floating above the ground with smooth grey rocks circling around me with my crystal levitated between my hands, focusing upon its energy and sought out the right form of lightsaber that I would need.
Even as I meditated, sparks of memory slipped through my quiet focus, flashes of fear and echoes of sounds that had haunted me returning as I began to lose sight of my task. I clawed my way back, desperate to not be defeated, but the turmoil and struggle caused another rupture in my meditation and as the Force gathered to me, I felt a surge power itself through my body and as I let out a scream, the kyber crystal broke in two. I dropped from the air and hit the ground, rocks landing with heavy thuds which caused the floor to shake slightly as I gasped, curling up and clutching my head as I tried to focus.
This is real, the past is not. A memory cannot hurt me, I am home, I am safe, I am me.
The mantra repeated over and over again in my head allowed me to calm down, taking deep breaths in order to recover as I lay there, still curled up rather pathetically on the floor with the two pieces of my kyber crystal broken before me. I took them up into my hands once I was able to sit upright, feeling…utterly lost. I could not deny it now. I was a broken thing, as broken as my own kyber crystal, and the Force knew it. Perhaps this was its own way of telling me that it was no use, that a broken thing could not be mended, and that I was deluding myself in thinking I could ever be the same again.
"Great pain, you are in." A voice spoke to me as the door opened and I had to force myself not to react instinctively, lifting my head as the small green figure of Master Yoda shuffled slowly into the room. I straightened up and bowed with my hands resting upon my legs, greeting the wisest Jedi of all respectfully. "Sense you, I did. Tell me, why so much sadness in you, do I feel?" Lifting my hands I opened my fingers to reveal the two broken pieces of my kyber crystal in my palms. "Ah…broken, it is. A shame. However, broken yourself, I sense you feel." Unable to deny it, I nodded my head.
Master Yoda looked at me then with a kind and most understanding smile, lifting his walking stick in order to rest it upon my hand and touch one piece of my kyber crystal as he hummed in thought. "And yet, remade broken things can be. Reformed. A transformation, you are undergoing padawan, futile it is, to cling to the past." Drawing back, Master Yoda then elected to sit down opposite me, also taking up a meditative position as he then waved his hand in order to use the Force to lift up the two pieces of crystal as I watched and listened attentively. "Broken, they may be, but not yet at the end." Guiding the two pieces back together, I observed the crack between them which was a perfect line, as if having merely been cut in two rather than shattered. "The Force with us all, it is. Listen, and you guide it will. What see you as contemplate yourself, you do, padawan? What have you become?"
Taking a deep breath to focus, I lifted my own hands so that I was not holding the two crystal pieces aloft, my hands moving slowly as I sought out the truth with my own senses. I was broken, but not defeated. As I thought, the two pieces pulled away from one another and my fingers began to curl into a grip, as if taking hold of a new lightsaber hilt, one in each hand before drawing them together, fitting them as one. I was fearful, but not cowardly. I had strength in me, strength I had never known I had, and as I felt the broken pieces of my kyber crystal before me, the image of my new lightsaber conjured itself into my mind and the circle of rocks began to rise with me as I felt its grip as surely as if it were real.
Before me, Master Yoda watched as I floated upon the air and found the point of perfect serenity which expanded like a vast galaxy within myself, and I contemplated the true sense of myself as I gathered all of my strength to me, so that when I once more descended, the rocks lightly touching the ground once more and I held both pieces of my kyber crystal in my hand, I could stand upon my own two feet and look down at him as I felt a certain clarity and fortitude that I had never felt before, and for the first time in months, I spoke clearly and with certainty.
"I am a Jedi."