Author's Note TLDR: Some stuff will be different from the game. Also, this is the Republic half of the story I'm writing. The other half deals with the Empire and is called "Light in the Darkness."

Author's Note: Before we get started, I want to make sure that everyone who reads this understands the project. This is half of a two-story ongoing series, this being the Republic / Jedi side while the other, "Light in the Darkness" is the Imperial / Sith side. The outline for both first seasons is done and each should be 16 episodes in length. Both stories are set in an altered universe that is going to borrow heavily from SW:TOR and its core story, but will also change a few things. It's not intended to be canon-fitting for either SW:TOR or Star Wars: Legends stories. Also, the story told within will be, at least for the most part, original and not a retelling of the MMO story. Some of the characters in these stories are indeed characters on one of the game servers. Many of them are mine, whether borrowed from the server or completely original to the story; some are other people's from my guild, all of whom have agreed to let me use their characters to tell this story.

Star Wars: The Old Republic

Fading Hope

Season 1 - Episode 1

There is no emotion, there is peace

These words flowed through her mind effortlessly, yet, stuck just long enough to leave some semblance of meaning.

There is no ignorance, there is knowledge

As her breathing continued, slow yet deliberate, Stybla'ree'neushil thought about the various aspects of the Jedi code and what they meant to her. The gentle trickling of the small fountain in the corner of the room helped her to stay at ease as she continued.

There is no passion, there is…

She was abruptly brought out of her thoughts by several startled statements from the hall outside. She took a deep breath, then reached out through the force to grab her lightsaber from the far end of the room where she'd left it on a table. As the real world flowed back in around her, and her concentration faded, she sensed tension in the air, thick and pervasive. This was not the kind of emotional aura she was used to sensing at the Jedi Temple on Coruscant.

As her glowing red eyes flicked back to life, letting the light back in so that she could once again see what was around her, she realized that there were people gathering outside and muttering to one another. Other Jedi and Padawans were apparently trying to figure out what was happening as well. There was no immediate danger, at least as far as she could sense, so this was most likely not some kind of Sith attack, but it was still important.

She stood up, her long pitch black hair brushing against her back and settling around her neck and shoulders. Straightening her white colored robe and its decorative rosy shoulderguards, she walked outside of the chamber to see a collection of various faces from around the galaxy. It seemed that everyone was staring off to her left watching a red haired figure in an ivory cloak moving hurriedly through the hall. The sense She got from the subject was different… it was panicked, stressed, and its mind was screaming a-thousand-words-a-second through the force. Whatever was happening, that person was the one behind the chaos.

She focused her thoughts on the individual as she followed them, tracking them with ease as she made her way calmly through the gathering crowd, trying to ignore the hushed questions that were springing up left and right. There wasn't much space left until the Temple opened up to the Coruscanti speeder pad where she could potentially lose the other person in the congested airways.

Her trail took her around two corners and into the grand entrance to the Jedi Temple, statues decorating the hall on both sides and giving off a sense of power, but yet also peace. Ironic, she thought, given what was happening. As the cloaked figure pushed through a pair of Twi'leks near the speeder pad, it climbed aboard a red airspeeder and took to the Coruscant skyline, disappearing into a cloud of speeder cars from other dusk-time travellers.

As Stybla'ree'neushil reached the pad herself, she effortlessly leaped into a waiting airspeeder, much to the shock of its former operator, and took after the mysterious person, still keeping a tenuous grasp on them in the force. If not for the boiling emotions of the individual, there was no way she could continue her pursuit; but she kept after it regardless, hoping that she would be able to follow them long enough to figure out what had happened back in the Temple.

Taking to the sky and letting the wind push the hood of her robe down her thin blue-skinned face, she took to the airways and carefully trailed her unknowing target. Moving from one lane to the next, but always heading downward, She quickly found herself in a level of Coruscant that she never even knew existed. As the traffic thinned and the sky above grew a distant, dark gray, she followed the speeder ahead through a series of criss-crossing metal pipes and down past what she'd heard referred to as "the works".

Though She continued downward for several minutes, her target never strayed from its path, dropping lower until finally reaching a dusty, smog-ridden landing platform so far down that it might be possible to see what was left of Coruscant's original surface deep below her, though She thought that was unlikely given that it was probably without any light from the overhead city.

With flickering neon signs all around, and graffiti on the walls detailing the trials of the forlorn citizens of deep Coruscant all around her, She landed next to the speeder she'd been following and climbed out onto the duracrete pad, landing with a dull thud that was entirely too loud given her lighter weight. The sound echoed off of the vaulted walls and distant mechanical chambers that made up this dismal area. The setting sun's light didn't reach this far down and so the humming glow of her surroundings was all she had to see.

She walked forward into the street before her, her senses still stretched out as if to try and feel the area around her and be ever alert for what threats might be ahead. She felt only a couple of other beings in the force, and for all but one, they were weak and distant. But the one that was close, it still screamed out from a dimly lit alleyway ahead.

Pain. Pain was what she felt as she walked forward. Just around the corner ahead she could hear something. Not a villain, not even someone angry. It was someone hurt deeply, and terribly afraid. She heard crying, sobbing, and muttering. The voice was soft and feminine, and was, at her best guess, from someone talking to only their own troubled thoughts.

As She rounded the corner into a the small alleyway, the once intimidating and mysterious figure that had run through the halls of the Jedi Temple only a few moments prior was sitting in front of her underneath of a cracked water pipe. The rusty water was falling onto her long red hair and trickling between the small horns on her head. The woman in front of her was a shattered emotional wreck. She was crying, her lighter-skinned face an ugly mess of emotion, tears tracing lines down her dark brown Zabrak patterns.

"Stay away from me!" She cried quiveringly through her clenched teeth. "I'll just get you killed…"

"What's your name?" Stybla'ree'neushil responded, trying to calm the other and simply understand what was going on.

"Right now…" She said through a sob, lifting her head to look at the Chiss Jedi that had chased her, "my name is Hekkenta." Her tone was pained, scared, and uncertain. "What do you want?" She asked darkly.

A slight smile forming under her glowing red eyes; Stybla'ree'neushil spoke in a low voice as if to soothe Hekkenta's worries. "My name is Lareene." She said softly as she looked the other woman over from head to toe, using only her core name so as to avoid further questions. "I just want to know what is going on. Are you hurt?" She asked as she tilted her head and reached out with the force to get a feel for this stranger.

"No…" Was the weak answer that came back. Hekkenta took a deep breath before continuing: "I'm not the one who was hurt." She looked up, somewhat confused and also a little resentful. "You should be checking on the one-handed Padawan I left in the training hall."

Lareene slowly nodded. "I take it that is why you're down here; that you took their other hand?"

A sour nod is all that came back as Hekkenta pulled her thin ivory-robed body up against the wall and curled up on herself as if to be shielded from the aquatic onslaught coming from the above pipe. She finally found her voice again, this time with a bit more venom in it. "Yeah, I took her hand… Well, technically."

"Mistakes happen from time to time." Lareene said, trying to soothe her with her soft words, though her words felt hollow. "Even Jedi Masters make mistakes." She thought about Hekkenta's words a little closer. "Though, I take it this is an unusual circumstance…"

Hekkenta gave a sharp nod. "I thought that I had it under control, that I had won." She shook her head in disbelief. "I guess that was wrong." As she thought about what to say next she realized that the water that had been steadily falling down her neck had stopped.

She looked up, confused, only to see the water stream curving through the air to fall in front of her and splat inches from her brown boots. She glanced over at Lareene who was holding out her hand, eyes closed, using the force to influence the water and change its angle so that it didn't hit her. "What are you doing?" Hekkenta asked as her tone shifted a little closer toward normal.

Lareene looked down at her and smiled. "It seemed to me that you've already had a bad day. Why make it any worse?"

"If anyone deserves it, I do." The Zabrak said with a notable amount of guilt.

Lareene kneeled down and held out a hand to Her. "Why don't we discuss this further back at the temple. Then you can tell me just what is going on."

Hekkenta lifted her face to look at Lareene, seeing the soft, helpful expression she'd taken on, then sighed. "Alright." She took Lareene's hand and stood up, her robe cascading sloppily around her as small drops of water dripped from the bottom near her boots. "But you might not believe me when I tell you the truth about what happened."

Lareene shook her head, her silky pitch-black hair waving slightly from side to side along her shoulders. "If this was a normal situation, I doubt I would've had to chase you all the way down here."

As they walked back toward Lareene's borrowed airspeeder, the overhead Coruscant sky turned to a milky orange and gray, reflecting the lights of the enormous city above as night settled in.

"I promise," Lareene said as they climbed inside the speeder, "you'll get a chance to tell me the whole story before I say or do anything."

Hekkenta let out a sigh as she buckled into the passenger seat. "Oh trust me," she said, "You'll have plenty of questions."