Author's Note: I've decided to add on to this collection! The next twelve chapters will feature stories written for the 2025 Kessel Run challenge, which I host annually on the Jedi Council Forums. This year I'm centering my Kessel Run on OCs Nidia and Eleri Skywalker (daughters of Luke and Mara, seen previously in chapter 7 of this fic, "The Great Temple Lightsaber Tournament"). Overall this is a happy AU, but not everything is perfect, and not everything is peace…
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Kessel Run, Week 1: Write a story between 100 and 1,000 words that ends with this sentence: "She would never hide in the shadows again."
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Supernova
46 years post-RotS (27.5 ABY)
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Eleri Skywalker was sitting in a cold, duracrete bunker many light-years from the front lines, on a planet whose name she wasn't allowed to know, the day her grandfather died.
She'd heard stories about how the pain of a loved one's death would ripple through the Force in violent waves, inflicting enough mental torment on those closest to the deceased to render them practically catatonic – but that wasn't what happened to Eleri.
What happened was this:
She was sitting on the floor of her room, playing a dice game she and Nidia had made up as little kids (they never had gotten around to giving it a proper name), when a hard weight settled in her gut – but not like when she ate too much or caught a nasty stomach bug. It was more like being kicked without warning, or at least how she imagined it would feel to be kicked without warning, when every defense was down. The dice fell from her fingers and scattered across the gray floor, and when she could finally draw a breath, she looked up to see Nidia staring at those dice, tears welling in her eyes.
What's wrong? Eleri stupidly uttered, for in that moment she truly, genuinely believed the problem was the stupid dice, and not the fact that somewhere, somehow, their grandpa had breathed his last and vanished from the Force as if he'd never existed at all. She didn't know that, though – she couldn't know it, and neither could Nidia – and yet… and yet the hard lump stayed all day, lodged way down deep in her gut, and Nidia kept staring off into space, more so than usual, and little Ben grew so fussy that even his sisters couldn't console him. And when word finally reached the place where the Jedi Order hid its children, Eleri wondered if maybe she had known all along, if maybe she had known before it even happened. If maybe she should have grabbed hold of Grandpa Anakin that last day on Naboo and begged him to hide away with them, instead of teasing him about being too old to fight, or any of the other stupid, meaningless things she'd said to him.
Did she tell him she loved him before he left? She couldn't remember saying the words exactly. What she did remember was: See you, Gramps. Don't crash any ships this time.
Oh, don't worry, he replied with a wink. I leave the ship-crashing to your dad these days.
He couldn't be gone. He just couldn't. It didn't make sense that he could be gone. He was the protector of their family, the force that bound them together. How could he be gone when the war wasn't over, when there were still battles left to fight? How could he be gone when there was still so much they hadn't gotten to do together?
How could he leave her behind?
There was no funeral – not for Grandpa Anakin or Uncle Obi-Wan or any of the other Jedi lost on the secret mission behind enemy lines – for there were no bodies to burn. A memorial was arranged, and Eleri finally left the safe confines of her duracrete hideaway and traveled with her parents to Coruscant. The gathering was a restrained affair by Core standards, but still grander than she expected, what with the war raging on. As many Jedi and galactic leaders as could be spared attended, as well as the entire Skywalker family. Nidia explained that it was to keep up morale, to reassure the people of the Republic that even with one of their brightest stars extinguished, the light would live on. His light would live on.
Like the glow of a supernova, Eleri said to no one, still visible eons after its death.
She wondered if her grandfather's legacy would carry that far into the future, if he would be remembered as fondly as he was now, if anyone would know or care how much his family and friends had loved him. How much she had loved him. Or would he become the stuff of fairy stories like the ones he used to tell her when she was little, about the star-dragons and the angels and the world of white lying between the worlds? Or worse still, what if he was forgotten completely, ground out of public memory by the oppression of their strange, brutal invaders?
She couldn't bear that thought. It would be like losing him all over again, and she refused to let that happen. She was too young to go to war, and for the sake of the galaxy, she hoped it would end long before she came of age – but she would be ready nonetheless. She would work hard and be diligent in every aspect of her training. She wouldn't settle for convention either, but would seek out new methods and new techniques, just like her grandpa had done. She would make him proud, no matter what.
And one day, when she no longer needed protecting, she would show the galaxy that Anakin Skywalker's light still burned, and would for as long as she lived.
She would never hide in the shadows again.
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