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The alcove is quiet, save for the trickling of the stream, and gentle rustling of leaves. It is iridescent here, both visually and in the Force, but Dagan cares not for any of it. He only has eyes for the woman knelt down by the plants, inspecting their delicate pink shade.
“Santari…”
“I held such faith in you,” she says, not turning to face him.
Dagan wishes she would, if only so he could read her expression. The steps between them feel a galaxy wide. He never meant for it to be this way.
“Hoped that you would wake up, and see reason.”
There are no words to be said. That can be said. Nothing he could possibly say to explain himself. Still, he tries, searching himself for something, anything .
“I..”
“But I was blind.”
“What?”
She rises, then.
“Blinded by my emotions.”
Finally, she turns to him, and he almost wishes she would turn back around. Her disdain…it burns him, more than any lightsaber wound could.
“Emotions towards you .”
There is a panic sliding down his spine now, an unrelenting fear that grips him. The anger comes easy, then, rising out of him like smoke from a fire, to cover his smouldering hurt.
He storms towards her, closing the meagre distance.
“It was they who were blind! If the Council had not cast me aside-”
“No!”
Like a clap of thunder, the Force lashes out at him in a sweeping arc, pushing him back. The act paralyses him, and it burns, burns, burns …
“Still you insist on chasing this..this selfish obsession of yours. You are the one who has lost sight of the way! Your arrogance, it has blinded you.”
The Force is screaming with her intolerance, a broiling storm that swirls around him like a hurricane.
“Santari-”
“And I was a fool to think that there was anything left of the man I remembered.”
He falls, collapsing onto the ground as if she had struck him down herself. He is burning alive, he must be. What other explanation could there be for this pain?
For just a moment, Santari lingers, observing him with something akin to disappointment—regret. Then she turns her back on him, striding away, even though she must feel it, she must , the sheer magnitude of his despair, his rage, a maelstrom of anguish he cannot escape from.
“Santari,” he calls, but his voice comes out a whisper.
He tries to reach out, but finds he has no fingers to move, no arm to lift, nothing left. Only the phantom pain of a severed limb, and rejection. Betrayal.
“ Santari !”
The name spills from his mouth, and it seems it’s the only thing he can say, the only thing he can manage—prayer, plea or curse he does not know. Still, his voice is feeble, breaking over the syllables, shattering the way he is. He heaves his left arm, fingers scrabbling against dirt like some pathetic wounded animal, screaming into the Force demanding it come help him, but only silence answers.
Santari neither falters nor turns, ignoring him, leaving him, leaving him -
Suddenly, he is drowning, and it is cold, dark. There is a wall, enclosed all around him, and he can’t move, can’t see, can’t breathe-
Somebody is screaming, in his ears, in the very core of his soul, shaking through him like a never-ending earthquake. His lungs burn, and he can’t feel his right arm— where is his right arm —and yet, underneath all the chaos, there’s a voice. Muted and distant, but there, a constant whispering chant of “ I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Dagan, I’m sorry, it’s for your own good, I promise, I’ll come back for you so please, forgive me, Dagan, forgive me- ”
“ Santari! ”
He reaches out, pulls. The Force answers, yanking something into his hand—no, someone.
“Easy!”
There is fabric between his fingers, something soft laid over his lap. He blinks.
Cal Kestis stares down from where Dagan holds him by the front of his shirt, hands raised in peace. It is then he realises where he is, remembers himself.
“Easy,” the young Jedi repeats, as Dagan slowly unclenches his fist, releasing him.
The phantom sensations of the nightmare still plague his body. He tosses the bedsheets asides, pushes himself to his feet, trying to shake them off.
The young Jedi hovers, his concern nudging against him through the Force. He is saying something again, but Dagan ignores him, brushes him aside in every sense as he calls his lightsaber to him, letting the restless thrum of the kyber inside ground him.
His pounding heart slows now that he has a better sense of reality, and he steadies his harsh breathing into something less panicked, more normal.
Weak. Who is he to be bested by meaningless dreams? He is better than this, stronger than this.
“Just calm down.”
Kestis is in front of him, hands outstretched warily, as if approaching a wounded animal. It stokes at his rage, like oil to fire. How dare he.
“Don’t touch me!”
He remembers Kestis infiltrating his dreams, back in that cursed tank. Watching him, those private, vulnerable moments, secrets that were supposed to be his to know and only his to keep.
Never again. He is no victim . He is strong, powerful . The Jedi Council will pay , Tanalorr will be his , and Santari will-
Santari-
His thoughts slam to a halt. Just as quickly as it had risen, his rage disappears, doused in the cold water of grief. The fight leaves him, draining from him helplessly, deserting him as all things do, until all that’s left is the emptiness of despair, a gaping chasm in his chest nothing can fill.
Two hundred years. The Jedi are gone. Santari is dead.
The blade of his lightsaber retracts—he doesn’t recall igniting it. Across from him, Kestis finally relaxes, hand falling away from the lightsaber hooked to his belt. He settles himself by the extinguished campfire, deliberately releasing his tension into the Force.
Dagan enjoys no such luxury. In the wake of his own anger, a lingering wail of desolation echoes through the Force, and he finds he has no words for the young Jedi. No explanation or justification, no defence to his despair. Only rage, to cover his shame, but even that has forsaken him now, betrayed him to expose only his hurt, his grief.
( “I can feel your suffering. Your pain…it’s eating you alive.”)
Right…Kestis had sensed it the first time, too. He tries to recall what it is like to shield his emotions, but it is like trying to shut an overflowing box. Impossible.
This time, however, Kestis spares him the shame of being called out. He acknowledges none of it, the rampant projection of his turmoil, the irrational outburst, the weakness .
“Sit,” Kestis says instead, calm and so very Jedi-like.
Dagan finds no reason to deny him. He sits.
For a moment, it is just that—sitting in silence. There are too many emotions simmering just beneath the surface for him to name, and yet, paradoxically, an infinitely vast void.
When he finally speaks, it is not so much to Kestis, as it is to that damned emptiness.
“There is nothing left for me.”
He expects Kestis to say something, but the silence merely stretches on. He looks up.
Kestis watches him with a sorry expression. It irks him.
“You pity me,” he says, accusing, like the act is some sort of transgression.
It isn’t, but it feels like one. Like proof of his sorry state.
He wants so badly to be disproved.
“No,” Kestis replies. His tone is firm, yet mournful. “I understand you.”
He sighs, and the air changes, his eyes gaining a faraway look. The Force weeps. Dagan wants to tell it to be quiet, but silence would only be worse.
“When the Order fell…I was only a padawan.”
“What?”
The question tumbles from his mouth, as startling as the notion of the Jedi Order falling. It was the first thing Kestis told him, but he still can’t quite grapple with the thought.
He was under the impression the Order had fallen recently . As in, within the last year or so. It was this assumption that had driven him to direct his anger at Kestis. All but a grown man now, with both the fight and character of a seasoned Jedi Knight, he appeared perfectly culpable of the Order’s crimes against him. But if the Order had fallen when he was not even knighted, nevermind being of age...
“When, precisely, did the Jedi Order fall?”
Kestis sets his mouth in a thin line, voice grim.
“Ten years ago.”
“The galaxy has been slave to this wretched Empire for a decade?”
He shouldn’t be all that surprised. The Republic had never been all that capable, led by the conceited and the cowardly, hiding behind their riches and pompous facades. Its downfall was only a matter of time.
The Jedi Order, however flawed, had been the galaxy’s main defence against any and all rising threats. In his time, it had been the Nihil, vicious pirates who ravaged many worlds, including Tanalorr. The Order had fled, then, like cowards with their tails between their legs, but before that, they had fought valiantly to rebuff this perverse evil from spreading its darkness across the galaxy. Had they stood their ground, they would have done so for Tanalorr, too.
His mouth twists in unbridled bitterness. It appears history is naught but a poor teacher. Or perhaps, the galaxy had simply forgotten all about the Nihil after two whole centuries.
Either way, it seems the galaxy had changed very little after all. Still led by a bunch of naive fools, cowed by a stiff breeze; still protected by an Order of blind people, destroyed by their ignorance. Perhaps the galaxy is simply doomed to the same accursed fate, over and over.
“Where was your Master?” He demands.
Despite everything, The Order’s incompetency infuriates him. They were supposed to be better than this. How could they allow for such failure? To suffer such a shameful fate as to be crushed by some worthless Empire ?
“My Master gave his life to protect me,” Kestis snaps, and Dagan knows he has crossed one too many lines.
“There was a war, between the Republic and a group called the Separatists, led by a Sith Lord who was once a Jedi. After countless battles, we were finally close to victory, but…near the end of the war, the men who we fought side-by-side with in all of our battles suddenly turned on us. We trusted them, and they betrayed us, raised their blasters and shot us down without hesitation.” His voice shakes, fists clenched, knuckles white.
Dagan knows the feeling well, of recalling the past, only for it to feel like digging up buried corpses, unearthing age-old pains that never quite healed right, if at all. It was what caused him to snap, after all, pushed him right over the edge, plummeting irreversibly into the Dark.
( “I know what it’s like, to have…everything…taken from you.”)
At first, Dagan had thought he might be lying, but looking at the young Jedi now, it could only be the truth. And yet, despite his sufferings, Kestis sits across from him, angry, pained, but undeniably, Light. He takes a deep breath, calming himself, and Dagan watches with only mild envy as he collects himself, relinquishing his emotions to the Force. If only the Force were that accepting towards him.
“It was only because of my Master that I managed to escape. He sacrificed himself so I could live, but for a long time, I didn’t know how. I was lost. Everyone and everything I knew had been taken from me. The Jedi were gone, the Empire hunting whoever was left. I blocked myself from the Force and all the memories of my training, thinking it would help me move on…but I was wrong.”
“How so?” He asks, voice a murmur. He surprises himself with the softness.
When Kestis looks at him, for a moment, he is not a young Jedi, but older, weathered by the years, yet wizened by the experience. It is humbling. It is terrifying.
“The past, it is a part of me. It always will be. I cannot run from it, only face it, and accept it for what it is…accept myself , for who I am. A Jedi.”
There is fire behind his eyes, a determination wrought from the steel of being broken and remade, multiple times.
“The past does not define me, but it shapes me, and I have made peace with it. I can’t change what happened, but I can change now. I won’t let this be our fate. Not for the Jedi, and not for the galaxy. As long as there’s someone willing to fight, it’s not over. And I won’t give up.”
Spoken like a true Jedi , Dagan thinks to himself, a wry sort of awe only made possible by the fact he is a fallen Jedi now.
“But what is there left for you? You are one man against an Empire. What reason could you possibly have to fight?”
It still perplexes him. He cannot fathom why, how , anyone could still persevere in this impossible one-man crusade against an entire Empire.
But instead of frowning, Kestis smiles, nearly amused, even.
“Hope,” he says, as if that in itself could explain everything.
It doesn’t.
“How?” he asks, incredulous.
How do you have hope in an unforgiving galaxy? In a world set on merciless injustice, determined to be cruel?
“I realised…that it’s when there’s nothing left for us that we can’t give up the most. Giving in…that’s exactly what they want from us. To believe that it is hopeless, and impossible, but it’s not . It’s not unless we choose to stop fighting, to give up on the future. Even if we’ve lost everything, we have to believe in a better fate. We have to hope .”
Something is shaking, deep in the core of his being. Trembling, just under the surface, threatening to fall right out of his chest. He stands, unable to bear it, but his legs are weak, and he sways on his feet.
It is too much, too much. This feeling, some rising sensation within him, nearly nauseatingly so—dare he call it hope?
He cannot bear it. To hope, just to be broken again. To have, just to lose. And what could he stand to gain that could be better than all he lost? Nothing could unwind time. Santari could never return to him.
“There is nothing left for me,” he says again, but this time it is no mournful lament. It is a desperate plea, insistent, begging to be affirmed.
Kestis does not, disproves his very right to just rot away in one swift blow.
“There is,” he says, and it is as much a declaration and a promise as it is a refute—a refusal to bow down to the universe and be defeated.
“Whatever we lost is gone, and we can’t get it back, but that doesn’t mean we can’t forge something new.”
“And what can we forge?”
“A home. For yourself, for others, for the Jedi to rebuild.”
A beat. Kestis lower his voice to a wistful shade.
“You would honour her memory. Fulfil the dream neither of you had the chance to see through.”
By the Force, does it hurt. It hurts so much he can’t breathe.
To do so would be to accept it. To accept that she is gone, that the Jedi he knew are gone, that he could never truly fulfil that dream of theirs, to see Tanalorr into fruition, together. And yet…
To do so would be to honour her. To forgive her. And perhaps…to right his wrongs, however late it may be. To..to apologise . Regardless of what they believed, he had never meant to hurt her, never meant for things to sour between them, to end the way it did, and certainly not before they got the chance to-...before he could even-...
It hurts. It hurts . But at least this way…he could seek some sort of minute redemption in a vastly overdue tribute. And he could realise their dream, to make a home out of Tanalorr, if not for themselves, for someone else. And maybe Santari will see it, since death is not the end, only the beginning, and they are one with the Force, the Force is with them…
And maybe, just maybe, when his time comes and he, too, rejoins the Force, if he is not Fallen beyond salvation, if he has not too far gone, maybe, maybe…
Santari would see him again, would smile, would even be proud of him-
Delusional. He is delusional. But even so, even so……
It’s a hopeless thing, to fight against hope.
He looks up, meets Kestis’ waiting gaze.
“Tell me how I can be of help.”