Work Text:
The Coruscant Temple is haunted.
Not by ghosts, at least not in the way that Luke has known them. What lingers here is far less coherent than the shimmering apparitions that he has seen and spoken to.
What he hears is less than words and more than sound; the echoes of screams, whispers of gasping and stuttering breaths, and the impression of desperate pleas unanswered. Pain and terror suffuse the Temple, undulled by the passage of time and soaking into his skin like freezing rain. Luke suspects even those least attuned to the Force would balk if they entered here.
But the Temple was also beautiful once.
Underneath the memories of suffering that haunt this place, Luke catches glimpses of the wealth of years of joy and comfort that were lived here. Memories of soft laughter, smells of warm food and tea, and traces of affection also linger, quiet, yet steadfast against the cruelties that attempt to choke it out.
It gives Luke hope that one day, the Jedi can heal this place – the horror never absent, but quieter.
But that is not a job he can accomplish alone, and, for now, this is no place to train young Jedi.