PART THIRTEEN: TWILIGHT
Chapter Sixty-Nine: At the Door
Clink. Clink. Clink.
Every few moments, the sound repeated—ungloved mechanical fingers twirling a cylinder of metal again and again. Anakin was annoying himself, but he couldn't stop—he stared at the hilt of the lightsaber he'd used to strike down Maul, watching it make the same revolution over and over, as if hoping that the next time would be different.
It just wasn't quite right.
Whoever had made the lightsaber Palpatine had bestowed upon Darth Vader—whether it was his, or the relic of some Sith Lord from eons prior—had felt the need for something relatively light. The hilt was shorter than Anakin's Jedi weapon had been, and narrower—a design that could be comfortably gripped in one hand. Use both hands, and the wielder's grip would be off—the right hand straying too close to the emitter, the left so low it nearly grasped the pommel.
In the fight with Valis, he'd compensated. The dark side and his mechanical arm's strength could generate enough kinetic power to overwhelm any ordinary opponent, even with a weapon designed for more delicate work. But now, as he turned the hilt over in his fingers, Anakin found the muscles in his arms yearning for something more solid. For his old lightsaber, freshly bestowed with a scarlet crystal if it would make Sidious happy.
An image rose in his mind—Lord Vader, cloaked in black, knocking on Obi-Wan Kenobi's door. Asking sheepishly if the Jedi wouldn't mind digging his apprentice's trusty old weapon out of storage and swapping it back for a daintier model, and oh by the way apologies for . . . everything.
For a moment he was so caught by surprise at the thought that he wanted to laugh. Then a voice spoke up from behind him. "Sir, we'll be landing in half a minute."
Turning, viciously stomping down on the absurd guilt that flared up within him—it wasn't as though this person could read minds—Anakin stared into a black plastoid gaze. That gaze looked back at him a dozen times over—the same expressionless voids present on every helmet of the Coruscant Guard.
This squad, though, were different. Where the rank-and-file members were binary black and white, these men bore royal blue stripes up and down their armor. The special mark, Palpatine had told Anakin, of the 501st Legion—Vader's Fist, he'd added, chuckling at his own melodrama.
Rising, Anakin spoke over the whoosh of air as the gunship began to touch down. "Do not do anything—anything—until I say so. You follow me and listen. Understood?"
As the helmeted heads bobbed in a chorus of affirmation, he returned the saber to his hip. He'd make do with the tools he had—And hopefully, you won't need it anyway. This is just probing.
Knocking on the door.
As the gunship's engines stilled, silence loomed. Though the sun had risen an hour or so ago, the Classical District lay curiously quiet—almost as if it were conscious of what was happening, holding its breath in anticipation. Exhaling quietly, returning the lightsaber to his belt, Anakin rose to his feet and stepped through the LAAT's side hatch.
Outside, it lay waiting for him: an unassuming stone building at the end of the block, Coruscant Museum of Natural History spelled out in dignified script above the entrance. The letters, Anakin noticed, had begun to fade; the building's occupants, formerly so meticulous, had been letting things slip. Or maybe, he thought, they're not even here anymore. Maybe the groups that tried to snatch Qui-Gon—to kill Palpatine—were the last left on the planet.
Maybe they've evacuated before you could even get to them, the dark voice growled. Given months to escape because of your indecision.
Anakin strode across the street, hearing the clack of armored boots fall into line behind him. As he neared the door, he saw the same flimsiplast sign that had been there nearly a year ago, when he'd last paid the place a visit—Closed for maintenance. When he gripped the handles of the doors and pulled, they rattled in protest—locked, but not too securely. The building's caretakers hadn't wanted to arouse any suspicions.
Reaching into the Force, he probed the mechanism and gave it a gentle twist. There was a click, and the doors parted.
Despite the lack of any artificial illumination, it was light inside—the lobby's glass windows made sure of that. As Anakin and the squad of troops filtered into the room, there was no attendant to stop them, no security to turn them aside and tell them the museum was closed. The sounds of their footsteps were muted by the layer of dust that covered every surface—floor, benches, welcome desk. The plants that had adorned the entry were collapsed in dehydrated husks, not watered for many months.
"It's in the back," he said aloud, his voice echoing in the emptiness. "This way."
Passing through room after room, he saw that some of the artifacts were missing—empty walls where relics of Coruscant had once hung, vacant display cases that had housed the last preserved specimens of native wildlife driven extinct by industrial sprawl. Each of them, Anakin supposed, had been secreted away on a lifeboat like those Maul and Valis had come across.
As he led the way ahead, the dark voice quieted itself. For the Jedi were here, some of them at least—Vader could feel that much, dozens of lights like a nest of fireflies below his feet. Whether they could sense him, he wasn't certain. He'd pulled back his presence in the Force as much as he could, but he remembered what it had felt like, as a Jedi, when the dark side was near him—a sickness in the pit of his stomach, a cold trickle down his neck, an itch that wouldn't go away. Strange, to know he himself probably felt the same way to them now.
Let them fear you, said Vader's voice within his head. They should.
The firefly-specks flitted through his senses more clearly now—Anakin didn't dare reach deeply enough into the Force to put faces to the presences, but some of the lights pulsed with familiar glows. Not all of them were Jedi—one was old, terribly old, and he knew that if he touched it he would sense not a person but a tree, the last remaining tree to grow in Coruscant's soil.
They'd arrived in the rear of the museum. It was a chamber he'd passed through time and again in his years here—one whose walls and floors were always bare. Sun streamed down from a skylight above, throwing the shadows of Vader and his troops into sharp relief. Besides them, only one thing stood inside the room: a bookcase set into the rear wall.
Gently, Anakin reached out and brushed his flesh hand's fingers along the transparisteel that protected the shelves. With a soft click, it swung outward—as it did, the smell of ancient paper rushed to fill his nostrils. The gilt on the books' spines had long since faded past legibility, their cases cracked and fraying. One touch, and it was all too easy to imagine the volumes falling apart.
Unbidden, memories circled within his head. Obi-Wan, eyes twinkling, bringing his new student to this room for the first time and asking if he'd like to check out a book. Years later, Anakin asking the same question of Padmé, who'd looked faintly scandalized at the thought but let him guide her fingers to one tome in particular. Whose eyes had lit up in wonder as the shelf slid backward into the wall, revealing a single steep staircase leading down.
Softly, just enough to touch, Anakin brushed his hand against that same book.
With a wrenching groan, the shelves began trundling backward. Anakin frowned—there had always been a low rumble when it happened, but this was sharper, raw, like the mechanism was in pain. A few moments later, he saw why.
As the bookcase retreated fully into the wall, no pathway surfaced—there was no rush of cool air from a hidden tunnel, no sudden vertigo of looking deep into the ground. What lay there now was simply a flat, smooth layer of duracrete, marred by the scars the bookcase's workings had left as they scraped across it.
For a moment, Anakin just stared at it. Then, lips peeling back from his teeth, he brought his boot down against the stuff. The resulting sound wasn't a hollow thwack but a dead, muted thud. They hadn't just hastily patched over the tunnel—they must have filled the whole thing in.
Behind him, one of the soldiers spoke. "Lord Vader?"
They would not have just sealed themselves in there to rot, said the voice of calm confidence. There has to be another way in.
Turning on his heel, he spoke quietly. "We can't get through this way, but they're down there—a hundred or so. I want six of you to search every room on this floor for possible hidden paths. The rest of you, come with me upstairs to search there."
A dozen blue-and-white-striped helmets nodded back at him.
You won't find it here, the dark voice told him. They're smarter than that. They wouldn't seal off one entrance through the museum only to place another one there.
Be quiet, Vader commanded. But though the dark voice obeyed, he knew it was right.
He forced himself to keep the same even stride as he led his men upstairs, but he could feel his mechanical hand clenching hard enough to tremble. If you'd only made up your damn mind sooner, he berated himself, you might have gotten here in time. If you'd given Palpatine the Temple months ago, the entrance might have still been usable.
Now it was too late. He had no idea where the new route into and out of the Temple lay. Searching for it amid subterranean Coruscant would be like finding a single drop of rain in a cyclone.
And while he hadn't sensed much from the Jedi down below, he knew they had no intention of remaining here much longer.
Long after the dark presence had faded, Cin Drallig stared at the courtyard ceiling. In what she supposed was an irony, the sky reflected in the stone was gorgeous—a sunny spring day, as blue as the choked Coruscant air would allow. It had been a bit of a comfort, until the stranger upstairs had come knocking. Now, though she couldn't sense whoever it was, her eyes traced the vaulted dome over and over again, waiting for something to break through.
Finally, when she grew conscious of the eyes upon her, she broke her stare and looked out at the courtyard's inhabitants. More than there should have been—about three dozen Jedi, over a third of those who had yet to evacuate. But the time for reprimands, she knew, had passed; and it would have hardly been fair to expect everyone to keep working while the dark side roamed around just above their heads.
"I want five knights to stay here with me," she said, keeping her voice level. "The rest of you, back to your duties. Whoever it is, dropping all our work and waiting for them to come back won't help us."
"Master Drallig," called out Luminara Unduli from the rear, her own voice none too calm. "Whoever it is up there . . . they can touch the Force."
"We are all well aware of that, Master Unduli, thank you." Luminara stiffened, but before she could say anything else, Drallig added, "One of you who can spare a few minutes, head down to the labyrinth and tell them to halt the next departure for two hours. No sense in taking chances in case they're still probing about up above."
From the edge of the courtyard, a voice rose in a near squeak. "I'll do it!" Drallig squinted—her eyes, though it wouldn't do any good to admit it to the healers, were not what they'd once been—but after a few moments she identified the speaker. Iscend Mirai had flushed bright red—as the battlemaster met her eyes, she quickly turned away, platinum hair sweeping across her face. Lowering her voice to a murmur, she repeated, "I'll tell them."
For a moment, Drallig could only wonder what the girl was still doing here—she was barely a day over sixteen. But she's here. That can't be changed. Sighing, she nodded. "Very well, Iscend. On your way. Everyone else, back to work."
As the girl bolted off and the rest of those assembled slowly dispersed, the battlemaster spotted someone moving against the crowd. Luminara Unduli, arms crossed, strode forward, pushing past the five knights who'd been reserved to stand guard. "Master Drallig, I have to speak with you."
"Then speak, Master Unduli. We all have a great deal to do."
Luminara looked as though she hadn't slept in days—as she came to a halt, she swayed back and forth on her feet—but her eyes were alert with frustration. "A dark-sider was upstairs just a few minutes ago."
"As I said, we are all aware of this—"
"Don't you find it just a little peculiar," the Mirialan snapped, "that days after Mace Windu gets himself killed trying to assassinate the chancellor, a Sith Lord comes to call at the Temple?"
So that's what this is about, Drallig thought, and felt her lips draw back in a sneer. "Master Unduli, rhetorical questions are beneath you. Say what you really wish to say."
The younger woman's voice trembled with anger. "Windu may have been an ass and an idiot, but he was right. Palpatine is a Sith—he must be the same Sith whose presence is prowling around on our doorstep."
It only heightened Drallig's irritation that she herself seemed to be trembling—she could feel a faint quiver in her hands even as she kept her voice steady. "Say that word one more time, Master Unduli, and you'll be taking Windu's place in the brig until you evacuate."
Luminara took a step closer, eyes flaring. "Even now, you can't admit that you were wrong, that all of us were—"
Strength flared through the battlemaster's arm, the Force reinforcing wizened muscle as she reached forward and grabbed the Mirialan by the shoulder. Sheer animal instinct within her—an instinct whose greatest weakness had always been its demand for others' respect—wanted to grip hard, to drive her nails in until Luminara flinched backward. She ignored it, and instead applied just enough pressure to startle the younger woman into silence.
"Of course I was wrong, Luminara," she hissed, keeping her arm locked in an iron bar. "Do you think I'm that much of a fool? Yes, that's a Sith Lord up there. If Windu had been listened to and Palpatine had been removed from office, that Sith Lord would not be trying to find a way into the Temple right now. If you think that is not the sole thing running through my head right now, you're welcome to read my thoughts for yourself."
For a moment, regret welled in Luminara's eyes; then she fell back a step, and Drallig allowed her grip to slacken. "It must have been Anakin Skywalker," Luminara whispered, "who told him where we are. If we'd reached out to him sooner—tried harder to keep him away from Palpatine—then maybe . . ."
"There is no point, Luminara!"
Alarm rose in the Force—not from Luminara, but beyond. Breaking the younger knight's gaze, Drallig saw that the five Jedi she'd asked to stay behind were all staring at her. Only once she'd absorbed this did she realize that her last sentence had not been whispered but shouted, the echoes of the whipcrack reverberating even now off the courtyard's ceiling.
Forgive me, she almost said, but there was no time to waste on apologizing. Instead, she willed her voice back to a near-whisper, looking back into Luminara's eyes. "Nothing can alter our course now. What we know is that a Sith has obtained knowledge of the old Temple entrance, that they won't stop looking for a new way in. Maybe Skywalker finally chose his side and talked; maybe Palpatine is the person he talked to. It. Doesn't. Matter. What matters is that the enemy is at our gate, and there is still work to do."
She was conscious of the other knights doing their best not to listen in; knew they couldn't help hearing anyway. At this point, that, too, didn't matter. Drawing herself up to her full height—ignoring the protest her old bones made far too often these days—Drallig focused on Luminara alone. "When this is over—when the last of the Temple has been cleared, and we've all made it out of here—you may excoriate me before the rest of the Order if you like. I will richly deserve it. But until we are all safe, any debates will simply waste time and drain morale we do not have to spare."
There was no ending Can I count on you?, no last entreaty to obey. Drallig respected the masters left here better than that—and indeed, after a moment, Luminara nodded.
"If it's all the same to you," she said, loud enough for the others to easily hear, "I'd like to help you stand guard, Master Drallig."
Drallig gave the barest nod; then, after reconsidering, a small bow. "I appreciate it, Master Unduli." After Luminara had nodded back, the battlemaster barked at one of the five beyond them: "Knight Koth, get some rest and then report to the labyrinth passages for your regular duty."
Thank you, she almost sent to Luminara in a mental wave, but sentiment was also something they had no time for. It would keep, until the two of them were on a world far away, setting up camp beneath an unfamiliar sky.
It would have to.
A Jedi knight, Iscend, you're a Jedi knight now, and Jedi knights don't get spooked walking around in the dark. Besides which, there had been two other knights stationed at the entrance to the passageway—real knights, older ones, not junior knights like her—and she knew there would be two more stationed at the other end when she arrived there. It wasn't some unknown cave passageway, just a very long hallway without any working lights.
Still, her hand kept flitting down to the lightsaber at her belt as she walked, wishing more than anything to grip the cold steel and summon forth green plasma to cast away the fear. She'd never do it—besides giving the guards at the end of the tunnel the wrong idea, if she gave in to the urge to wield her weapon like an overgrown flashlight she'd never forgive herself the humiliation. But every time some rodent or insect skittered past her, that resolve thinned just a little.
The real threat isn't down here, she told herself, in the maddening way she often attempted to be helpful and just ended up making things worse. It's above the Temple. Down here you're safe as can be.
"Oh screw you," she whispered aloud, and then bit down on her tongue. In the distance, she could sense the dim presences of her fellow Jedi. She'd almost made it.
If either of the guards bracketing the door had heard her before she came into view, they gave no sign—one, a fearsomely shaggy Wookiee, rumbled a question, and the other, a green-scaled Barabel, translated, "State your business, please."
"I—Iscend Mirai," she stammered, not sure whether to look at the one who'd asked the question or the one she could actually speak to. "I have an urgent communication from Master Drallig that needs to be delivered."
Giving a snuffle that was not unkind, the Wookiee stepped aside. With a wordless nod of thanks, Iscend laid her shoulder against the door and shoved her way through.
She was greeted by the sight of three people standing around a two-seater speeder bike—a turquoise-skinned, orange-eyed Duros she knew and two lavender-skinned Twi'leks she did not. The former turned at the sound of the door creaking open, blinking in surprise. "Iscend?" Qlik said, then hastily amended, "Forgive me—Knight Mirai."
As the two Twi'leks, a male and a female, turned to look at her, Iscend again found herself blushing. "Please, Master Qlik, Iscend is fine."
"Just Qlik is also fine. Both full-grown Jedi, after all." Gently depositing the wrench he'd been wielding upon the speeder's rear seat, he awkwardly gestured at the other Jedi present. "Don't know if you've met—Iscend, these are Lyyra and Aacha Nox, technicians. Were from the Malastare enclave before the recall. Master Nox, Master Nox"—he looked briefly flustered at the repetition, then pushed onward—"Iscend Mirai, Jedi Knight."
They were middle-aged verging toward old—the male, Aacha, had white dots speckled along the length of his lekku, and prominent laugh lines framed the mouth of the female, Lyyra. The two nodded politely, but Iscend could sense apprehension pouring off them—not that she blamed them, with what they were about to do. After stammering a quick hello, she said, "Master Drallig sent me with an urgent message. A Si—someone was prowling around the old museum entrance." She felt her own pulse spike as alarm emanated from the three masters—then, as they stared at her expectantly, she hurried onward. "They're probably gone, but she wants the next departure to wait two hours just in case."
For a few moments, no one spoke, the only sound a drip of moisture in the passage. Then Aacha Nox cleared his throat and managed, "Thank you, Knight Mirai, for telling us." Looking at Qlik, he said with a rolling shrug, "Gives us some more time to fix this speeder, at least."
"Never did keep the two-seaters in the right condition," Qlik muttered, picking up the wrench once again. "Apologies."
Lyyra Nox raised her hands in protest. "Don't you dare, Quartermaster. Tinkering on old bikes like this is fun as far as I'm concerned. Takes me back." She smiled, but the anxiety in her aura lingered.
Iscend knew that, report made, she should head back to the main temple, but she found herself rooted to the spot, watching the three work. Eventually, she managed to say, "I thought the new policy after . . . what happened with Mace Windu . . . was that one person left on the hour, to speed things up but stay covert?"
Once again, Lyyra Nox smiled, looking up from tightening a rusty bolt along the speeder's fuselage. "We married couples can usually find a way to bend the rules. I wasn't about to let them send this one off without me." She ran a hand along her husband's shoulder, love warming the smile into something more than a front.
"Of course." Of course you had to ask the stupidest possible question to stay down here, she reprimanded herself, keeping the thought shoved downward so the others wouldn't sense it—
"You were about to say something earlier," Qlik noted, the sentence said in such a way that Iscend realized he'd probably sensed her thoughts after all and cut across them. "About who was prowling. Would appreciate your insight, if you wish."
Looking down at her boots, Iscend chewed at the inside of her cheek. It's why you volunteered, she reminded herself. You wanted to ask him. Yet now, in the presence of two other Jedi she barely knew, it suddenly felt so childish. "I, ah . . ." Exhaling, she decided it would be worse if she just refused to say anything. "Whoever is up there can touch the dark side. And there've been rumors . . ." She hesitated, then said the next part very quickly. "Rumors about the Sith, in the time the evacuation has been proceeding."
She knew it was silly—the younger Jedi inventing bogeymen to be scared of, cohering their constant daily fears into a single object. But in all the months trapped here in the Temple, watching her friends old and new leave one by one, she'd kept hearing the same whispers—that someone's master had been overheard saying to someone else's master something about a Sith who wasn't Maul or Valis. Hear something repeated often enough, and it started to not really matter whether you thought it was silly.
Nodding, Qlik blinked a few times. "Felt them too." He paused, ran a hand along the speeder's handlebars. "Know we'll deal with it, if the time comes. But best not to dwell on fear. Leads to poor decision-making."
At that, Iscend felt her lips quiver toward a limp smile. She was no technician, but since she'd been brought to Coruscant at age fourteen, she'd always liked chatting with the quartermaster. Mostly just wasting his time, probably—some teenager pestering the man who maintained the gear for the whole Temple—but his literal way of thinking was often an odd, angular sort of comfort. "Yes, Master Qlik."
"Just Qlik." Before she could apologize, his eyes darted down to her hip. It was hard to read the Duros' face sometimes, but his stance relaxed a bit. "Is it still working well?"
"Huh?" Then she understood, and her hand drifted down to the metal cylinder at her side. "Oh yes! I mean, I think so—I haven't had much time for sparring practice lately."
The quartermaster extended his hand. "May I?"
She started to protest, to say she didn't want to waste any more of the Noxes' time when they still had their getaway speeder to fix, but when she looked at the Twi'leks, they didn't look put out. Indeed, the two of them almost looked . . . interested. Flicking her eyes away before they noticed her staring, Iscend nodded, took the saber from her belt, and handed it to Qlik.
He lifted it up, letting it catch the gleam of the dim emergency lighting that ran through the room. Iscend knew it by heart—the flared emitter to protect her lead hand, the coil of thin wire she'd carefully wrapped around the hilt to serve as a grip, the curves of the pommel she'd worked so hard to imbue with a touch of grace. The activation button also held a bit of vanity—she'd dug through a dozen drawers of parts to find a green that matched the crystal as closely as possible. Looking at it now, she couldn't help but flinch a little at the adolescent affectation.
"Believe Iscend is the youngest Jedi on record to build a lightsaber," Qlik told the Noxes, who were intently studying the weapon. "Made the journey to Ilum . . ."
"Eight months ago," she said, when it became clear he was patiently waiting for her to take up the story. "It was stupid of me, really—I almost fell through a hole in the ice trying to get a crystal." Master Urdo had advised against it, in fact—had kept saying up to the minute Iscend left that he wouldn't stop her if she felt she was ready, but in his view it was a mistake.
Any other time, she would have listened. But in the aftermath of the siege—living on a Coruscant that had become a war zone—Iscend had felt an irrepressible certainty that it was now or never. It probably hadn't been the Force—just her own nervousness. But here, on the other end of things, she had to admit that her certainty hadn't been wrong.
"It's a beautiful piece of work for someone your age," said Aacha Nox, startling her from her reverie. Iscend gave a rote thank-you—she'd gotten used to older Jedi saying this without really looking at the weapon, an automatic response to the sheer novelty. But then he smiled, and added, "For someone any age," and she suddenly realized he meant it. Smiling back, she wordlessly let gratitude rise through the Force.
"The most we can ask of any Jedi," said Qlik, turning and lowering his head in a bow as he presented the handle back to her. "To do our best with the tools we have."
"I wish mine were nearly as good," said Lyyra Nox—with a rueful smile, she gestured to a significantly more scuffed-up weapon on her own belt. "You would think a technician could build a proper lightsaber, but somehow I never got around to it. This one is on loan from Qlik's armory."
"To keep," said the quartermaster, blinking a bit agitatedly—this was not, Iscend thought, the first time he'd had this conversation. "Plenty where it came from."
"No, I insist on the excuse to see you again," said the Twi'lek, plucking the hilt from her hip and shaking it at him like a teacher with a ruler. "I'll return it, I promise. Assuming there will be an armory to return it to, once you've gone?"
"Taking all of what's left with me," Qlik affirmed, then looked at the ground. "Except those in the Hall of the Fallen."
Perhaps it was her imagination, but for some reason Iscend thought the Noxes went a little pale at the mention of the Hall. Then Aacha nodded in agreement. "Parceling out a memorial piecemeal across dozens of new enclaves . . . it wouldn't be right to disturb them. It's not as though the Republic can do anything to those who owned the sabers if they find this place once we've left. And even the empty plinths . . . they deserve their rest too." The last sentence had a curious hitch to it.
Somehow the thought was a little comforting. All those lightsabers, from a thousand years ago to the present, continuing to dwell beneath Coruscant long after those who'd put them there had left. A piece of us still here, Iscend thought. Still home.
The room fell back into silence then. Feeling suddenly useless, she tried to say something; then, when she could think of nothing that would fit, she opened her mouth to tell them she would return to the main temple.
Then Lyyra Nox, her voice doing its best not to tremble, said, "It's what she would have wanted, staying here. She loved this place."
For a moment, as all three older Jedi's auras plunged into sorrow, Iscend wanted to ask who they were talking about. But even as the desire passed over her, she knew she couldn't. The time had come for her to leave.
Averting her eyes, weighing whether it was more awkward to be polite or to be rude, she finally murmured, "I should head back."
As she started to turn on her heel, a voice held her in place. "It was good to meet you, Iscend Mirai," said Aacha—when she looked back, his arm was around his wife's shoulders. Pain streamed from him in the Force, but he managed one last smile. "While we still had the chance to. Take care of that lightsaber."
"I—I will," she managed, gnawing at her lip. "I . . . may the Force be with you."
Then Lyyra looked up too, and waved despite her glistening eyes. "And with you."
Before Qlik could do anything more than nod, Iscend turned away and pushed back through the door to the Temple passageway.
Do the best with the tools you have, she insisted to herself on the slow walk through the dark hall, her lightsaber still clutched in her hand rather than clipped to her belt. That's all you have to do. All you can do.
When Master Urdo had left on his ark a few weeks ago, he'd said something similar. You're a Jedi Knight now, Iscend. The Force has given you all that you need. It will be with you, even when I'm not.
She wanted to believe it was enough—that with her lightsaber, and the Force, and the Jedi who would be her companions once she'd left Coruscant, there would be nothing to worry about. But walking in the dark, alone—with the Noxes' grief behind her, and the memory of the dark side above, and even Qlik suddenly uncertain—she didn't know if she could believe.
She didn't know if anyone else truly could either.
