A/N: Sorry that I haven't updated quickly; I'm trying to solve the problem. The one referred to in the story, that is.
XII
Tionne called her students from their stations with a kind demeanor right between that of a drill sergeant and that of a mother bantha. All of them wore long white tunics and different earthily colored cloaks. They ranged widely; from burly humans Kam Solusar and Gantoris to wispy Streen and the Mon Calamarian Cilghal. A few held lightsabers, most not.
Luke Skywalker found himself pacing before them, stiff and silent not unlike an Imperial officer. Nobility resonated deep within the new Jedi trainees, scuffed still with lack of knowledge, natural darkness, or long youth. Luke felt the orphan teenager Kyp Durron's eyes upon him and thought that he was to late to truly know any of them now.
Did his voice crack and rust in his throat? "You have come far–already. You will begin to change civilizations." Breath. "Feel the Force inside you, and outside you." Now a sighing breath. "I don't really know why I've remained in your presence. I used my powers, the supernatural Force-gift, to form this government along with the senators and soldiers who began the Rebellion. You will use them to form a new Jedi dynasty in partnership with the New Republic."
He stopped and glared out over them, not wanting to appear stone-hard but to fix their faces into his memory, their intrinsic personalities into the grasping cold hands of his mind.
Luke turned on his heel from the short conclave and marched out into the senate annex halls feeling incredibly fake.
Where has my confidence sapped to? Thoughts cascading;, a pile of machinery tumbling, clattering into the sand. What are the answers? To pain? The unlinear path of confusions bumped along in its groove and shoved aside any further thought on the failure situation which may or may not have caused them.
What have I, in all my history and wisdom, learned about coping with failure? Only that time numbs all wounds.
That to have heroes is to realize that they have faults and are not infinitely confidant either, and then that you have become a hero too sometime in the interim, and that it does not mean you are that much different from another person. That nothing becomes simpler.
That some will say it's alright to fail (Leia, Wedge) and some will say it's not (Mara Jade, me, Exar Kun) and that I believe both.
To lean on the Force even when it is only for leaning on, not as partner in warfare.
None of these but the last seemed at all useful.
Master Skywalker had begun to tire of sadness.