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I am the last.
But, lately, I've been thinking that perhaps that's not such a bad thing.
I remember when, after Endor, I told my sister that I had to learn how to be a Jedi. Master Yoda (and to an extent Ben) had taught me how to use the Force, but as my experience on the Death Star had proven, there was so much I didn't know about how to actually be a Jedi.
I had nearly lost myself into the same Darkness that had seduced my father that day. Before then, I'd known that the Dark Side could be a very real concern, but it had never struck me really as something I had to be worried about. Surely I would feel myself slipping and be able to catch myself. Surely I could resist that 'quick and easy path' that Master Yoda had spoken of.
But I hadn't. On the Death Star I'd somehow rationalised my rage as serving a greater purpose. I couldn't let the Emperor have Leia. Meager as my training was, it was an infinite amount more than she had ever received, and there was no way she'd be able to withstand even a minute of the Sith's ministrations, even defiant as she is. That was the weight behind my lightsaber, and the strength behind my screams.
I realised all this later that night. As I saw my father's apparition standing there next to his old friends, I realised that he too must have thought his rage had been serving greater good. At least to begin with. My father was never an evil man. I truly believe that the core of goodness he'd revealed there at the end of his life had simply been smothered by the Emperor's malice. I have no delusions that he did horrid things in his tenure as Vader, but there must have been that part of him, still Anakin Skywalker, who'd balked at those atrocities and railed against them.
And now I knew how he must have felt. Now I understood how my father must have fallen. It scared me. How easily I had felt the call of my blood coursing through my veins even as Yoda's warnings echoed in my head.
But Yoda died, I am the last of the Jedi.
I, who had come so close to falling, am the last of the Jedi.
For the longest time I tried to deny it. I thought that surely the Purges couldn't have eradicated all the Jedi. Ben had survived. Master Yoda had survived. Surely others must have as well. But as I soon learned, the Purges weren't just a purge of the Jedi. They were also an information purge. No matter where I looked, even in the Emperor's personal files we were able to recover after the siege of Coruscant, I could never find much of anything about the Jedi Order, or where it's members would have fled.
I visited the Temple, long since closed and left in disrepair, but its archives had been trashed. Infochips crushed and memory banks scrubbed. I thought perhaps I could have gained insight into the nature of the Force there, where the greatest of the Jedi had made their home, but there was nothing overspecial about the temple in that respect as far as I could tell.
And that was my problem. I could feel the Force everywhere, but nowhere could I feel the concentrated aura that I knew swirled around those attuned to its use. My initial thinkings were that perhaps this was simply due to my inexperience with doing so. Ben had died before I'd fully come into my powers. And beyond him I'd only ever encountered Yoda, my father, and Palpatine – and he was so corrupted by the Dark Side that it warped the very fabric of the Force around his body, distorting any of the information that I wished to pull from his signature.
With many months of further introspection, I was able pick threads of what I wished there in the temple, but the overlapping signatures of all those that had lived there over the centuries stopped me from seeing anything substantive.
Even worse, I'd had no contact from Ben, Yoda, or my father since that night on Endor, and there were the only way I could think of towards the illumination in the ways of the Jedi that I so desperately needed.
And so I traveled. To all the worlds were Jedi had been reported during what Ben had called “The Dark Times” so long ago. Most turned out to be dead-ends – hopeful locals seeing what wasn't there was common – but every once in a while I found something.
Felucia was my first big breakthrough. There I found the bones of the respected Jedi Master Aayla Secura, betrayed by those under her command in the waning days of the Clone Wars. The Force still clung to her remains though, and gave me another clue as to what I could look for in finding those who still lived.
But the pattern repeated again and again. Lothal gave me the graves of local hero Kanan Jarrus and his Padawan Ezra Bridger, who gave their lives in order to ensure Bail Organa escaped to further the Rebellion's cause. Geonosis brought me not only to the site of the first battle in the Clone Wars, but also the resting site of Ahsoka Tano and Barriss Offee, who'd killed each other in a desperate duel mere days before Leia had been given the plans to the Death Star.
Again, and again I found graves. I found bones. But never did I find a living Jedi.
Eventually I had to admit that I was the last of the Jedi, deficient as I was in that respect. I had found enough on my travels that I was sure I could identify any who possessed the talent, but I had found none of them either. Even my sister, my twin, had no aptitude for the art.
So that is how I came to be here.
Tatooine was where I was born. It was where my Aunt and Uncle had died. The sand was in my blood, so it only made sense to me that it would be where my exile would take place. If no one was left to teach me the way of the Jedi, then I could not be trusted around those I might hurt if I ever truly fell. I would have to learn for myself how to control this.
I didn't tell Han, or Leia, or Chewie, or even Threepio where I was going. Artoo is my only companion out here in the Jundland Wastes now. I'd tried to leave him behind as well, but somehow, when I'd gone out to my X-Wing, he'd been there waiting – as if he'd already knew what I had planned – and I couldn't bring myself to leave him behind in that moment. Not that I really regret it now. He's been a good companion all these years.
I'm somewhat surprised that no one ever though to look for me on Tatooine, it would seem to be the natural place if anyone truly wished to find me, but there just seems to be something about the planet that keeps people away. No one ever visits Tatooine without a very good reason.
So it's here I've been for the past decade. Training. Meditating. Trying to understand what it means to be Jedi.
And it's here I am when I feel the first flicker in the Force. For half-a-second its only on the edge of my senses. But then it explodes into full existence. It's like nothing I've ever felt before. It's a sun being born in the emptiness of space. It's an oasis here in the desert of Tatooine. It's... it's life. In every sense of the word.
I let myself smile, because I know what it must be, and in the coming days I step up my meditations and training, in preparation for what I know must eventually be coming.
I am not the last of the Jedi.
I am the first.