19 BBY, 0313 Hours Centaxday – Fobosi District, Coruscant.
Darkness. Sweet, reliable, proven, deceptive. Blessed darkness.
Seven beings walked the pitch black tunnels, loudly. Not one of them said a word, not one of them saw the bricks around them, the water at their feet, or the person in front of them. Though they had no need of either to see nor to speak. There was nothing for them to say; and though they may have wished for something to see, the black nothingness was almost calming; a respite from that which their eyes had already bore witness to the previous night.
In the front walked Tysha Mandinar, now lacking the youthful exuberance that was so at odds with her large build, carrying an exhausted child. At the rear was Miyuki, mind on the bubble in the back of her head, pondering. Between them the other four might as well have been half the small blind girl's age.
The old Battlemaster had given them their chance to flee, but Cin Drallig had been far beyond his prime, his best years only a memory. He had been wrinkled and white for as long as Miyuki had known him. But he had held them at bay all the same. And then the burning came. They had all felt it, but only she knew. In all their time together, even with him in her head, she had never felt him like that.
The others would have felt it while they were near, but not known; the burning had been fierce, and swift. And explosion of energy that quickly died, though Miyuki had known the fight lasted far longer. He never made it easy for anyone, why should now have been any different. Somehow, she felt a twinge of pride in that; he had not bent, had not broken, and had died has he had lived. And now they were free, far from the Temple District and getting further away by the moment, and somehow, the bubble was still there, funnelling emotion and guidance through to her.
He is dead. She knew it, can feel it as surely as the water at her legs. Yet, he's still... So many questions, so many more possible answers. But with the weight of all that had happened this day... Cahal Meyrick had done everything in his power to equip her for the days to come; But how could he have known? How could any of us know it would end like this? So instead she focused on the position of Tysha Mandinar out in front of her, and the still rising colossal fatigue of the others between them. She was still a Jedi, and that meant more to her than she could even wrap her head around at the moment.
Her arm felt heavy as the last Jedi Knight came to a stop beside the wall, lowering the child in her arms as the rest huddled close. "I'm going to go up first, and then you Miyuki, and bring up the little one."
"Okay." She knew, she would take a little longer than the others to climb, but once she was above she was as capable as Tysha herself if there was trouble. The Jedi Knight was already halfway up the ladder when Miyuki picked up the exhausted, wounded child that Tysha had been carrying only moments before. He weighs almost nothing. Miyuki was small, tired, and a half dozen other things at that moment, and yet she swung the five-year-old onto her back effortlessly and began to climb before Tysha Mandinar had climbed out onto the dark streets of early morning Coruscant.
When she reached the ventilation hole the child was lifted from her back so she could climb out into the tiny side-street. "Be wary." She was told as she walked by the older, sorrow-ridden Jedi Knight.
She in turn said not a word as she drifted silently across the ground, staying in the shadows as she made her way toward the main street. She could feel the wildlife of a park almost next to her, and judging by the direction they had gone and the distance, she figured it was the Skydome Botanical Gardens.
In stark contrast to what had been the case inside the Jedi Temple, she felt ever-compounding worries and fears. No terror, no shock, no courageous races against a lack of time. Now it was calm, and in a very soft way, comforting to know so many cared; but not enough to outweigh the disappointment that everyone seemed more inclined to go about like nothing was happening. They fear. And fear can freeze even the best of us in place. As so often before, she didn't know for certain if that was her mind, or the one in the bubble; what was weird, was that he was dead, which meant the connection should have been broken. Should have.
Nervously, carefully, the young Jedi apprentice pushed a trickle of the Force into her eyes in a way that was for many a type of vision enhancement, but for her, both more and less at once. She saw blurred lines marking the swift, almost carefree movements of the Force in the street ahead. To the normal eye it would have been a half-filled street of people moving to get things done; to her, it was a river of Force currents, flowing this way and that around each other, no solidity to anything.
Tysha Mandinar had pulled three of the five children out of the hole as Miyuki stepped up to the edge of the street, standing within shadows that seemed to wrap around her as she turned her head in the direction of the smoke plume that soared high before seeming to shadow over the already dark night sky.
To everyone else, the fires were still soaring, smoke continuing to burn the air and expand over the city, now seemingly only a breath away from the Senate District. To the small, blind girl in the shadows, the fires were out, and she felt a steady, icy wind pushing by her face as black, slick, shadowy currents flowed up into the sky to create a black cloud system. Not even the jagged electric bolts forking across them seemed to give off any light. The battle was long over.
She stood there, she didn't know how long, unable to rip her eyes from the ever expanding darker than black cloud formation, and the longer she stood there, the more it seemed to look back. The weight. She fell to her knees. The heat. I can feel the heat. Her heart began to beat faster, her blood warming. She wanted, she wanted... What do I want? In that moment, tired, struggling for breath, for thought, she didn't know. Her brothers and sisters were dead, the man responsible, broken. We are who we choose to be.
She had wanted to be a Jedi, but even they had been far from what they had promised. She felt the weapon in her hand, the burning in her heart. I have no right. The Jedi were not what they sought to be, the ones she had looked up to could be counted on one hand, and now they were dead. They did the best they could with what they had, And this is what they get for it.
We all want things, it is the way of life. Her sister had once told her. The trick is not about denying yourself, because that is not trick in itself. No, the trick is to know right from wrong. And in a universe where everyday struggles boil down to subjective choices, the blind man is king. She had first met Sera Keto not ten minutes after entering the Jedi Temple for the first time, Cahal had been taking her up to see a couple of the Jedi Masters, and the young woman had reacted with a shock that she had never been able to understand. But she was a gentle person, As gentle as she could be fierce. She was one who gave you what you earned. And she was welcoming. She had always been welcoming. The moment she had heard where Miyuki had come from had been the first time she had called her sister.
Both she and Cahal had been prodigies both, but never had really been seen as ideal Jedi. Like Windu they were unorthodox, they didn't deny themselves, they dealt with their issues and became better for it. Even Obi-wan Kenobi, who was held up to the young generations as the ideal Jedi Master had had his problems, both past and present. But he lets go. The others never seem quite capable of it. For better or worse.
Can I? Being Jedi meant so much to them, as it did to her once she had understood what a Jedi was meant to be, meant to mean. And they weren't the only ones to struggle to meet the preconceptions, but so few ever managed to rise above them. Her hands found their way to the ground. The heat, it burns. They turned their flaws into strengths and in so doing made themselves more than the Jedi of their day, but in so doing were so much less than what they should have been capable of. What am I?
When Tysha Mandinar pulled out the last child she turned to look for the young girl with whom the hopes for what remained of the Jedi Order now lay, and found she was not where she should have been. Silently the Jedi Knight; from a proud family line in the amount of Jedi they had produced, crept over toward where she had last felt the wunderkind who already had outstripped so many, and found her gone.
In the shadows by the street she saw a small pile; boots, Jedi belt and over-robe with a strip torn free. Sad, but not distraught, Tysha Mandinar immediately let go of the disappointment that the wondrous Cahal Meyrick, the Jedi Master who could do what the Jedi Council had believed impossible, could have so hopelessly failed; raising a girl to have such small mental strength that she broke.
Yes, it had been a harrowing night; a night that will prey on her mind for a long while to come. But she was a Knight of the Jedi Order, an institution that had stood proud for over a millennium. She was a Mandinar, deliverers of prestigious talent and honour for as long as her family history could account for. She would not disgrace herself, her families, or her honour by breaking so easily.
She slipped through the alley to the five children who still needed her, picking up the wounded youngster once more before continuing to lead the others to safety; none of them asking what had happened to the other.
"Staring at the raw power of time and space, just a child. Some would be inspired, some would run away, and some would go mad." - The Tenth Doctor
"Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared dream before." - Edgar Allan Poe
