Chapter Text
On the day of the Jedi new year, several months had elapsed since the end of the Clone Wars, and the very beginnings of autumn had settled upon the upper hemisphere of Coruscant.
The trees on the walkways were turning red and amber at the edges. The oppressive heat of the mid-months, made all the more stifling and overwhelmingly foul-smelling by the denseness of the massive city, had finally eased. The wealthier citizens streamed back in from their summer homes on more picturesque planets, and the still-scrambling Senate was in session once more.
But nonetheless, celebration was in the air, all throughout the galaxy. Throughout the galaxy at outposts, in transit, at smaller temples, Knights, Sentinels, Shadows, members of the Corps, and Jedi from all walks of life gathered for the holiday – or returned to Coruscant, returned home.
The courtyards, the gardens, the gathering rooms, usually austere in the name of minimizing distraction, were a riot of color. Banners with messages of good fortune and gratitude had been hung from the walls and trees; bursts of colored powder were hurled into the air, leaving nebulae of yellow and indigo and magenta on the stone. The kitchens bustled, the assembly rooms were prepared, as were the garden chambers; children left their rooms in the creche and ran wild through the hallways, laughing and shrieking for joy.
Everyone shed their usual clothes for formal snow-white robes, trimmed in gold cloth, decorated with sashes of turquoise or saffron or emerald or peony or every color but red. People of all ages and species flooded up the Temple steps, returning from endless diplomatic envoys and missions and skirmishes, going to embrace their friends and compatriots.
The air was festive and bright, and when the Jedi came home for the holiday, they greeted each other with real happiness.
But it was not unalloyed. They could not help but count their missing number, the dead and the departed. The absent.
All loved, still.
Though that love couldn’t change the fact that nothing would ever be the same again.
There wasn’t a lot that could surprise Mace, these days. After years of galactic civil war, after decades of missions and raising a Padawan and time on the Council, and especially after everything that had gone down earlier that year. Defeating the Sith Lord embedded in the government he had sworn himself to, ending a war, all the unprecedented topics and issues of the endless politicking.
It seemed sometimes that nothing was shocking anymore.
But the baby was new.
He was four months old, born, disturbingly, on the day of the would-be emperor’s failed takeover, the day they had been forced to stop him. His parents, obviously both kind, determined, good people who deeply loved their son, had brought him all the way from a grassy little world in the Outer Rim. The Lothal system had no Sentinels or Seekers, no technologies for testing midichlorian-count, and they wanted to have all the information before deciding his future.
Good people who deeply loved their son, yes – but their timing was atrocious. The entire Order was caught up in the preparation and celebrations; they didn’t have the appropriate amount of time or attention to devote to testing the child, and so he would remain in their care until after the festival ended.
Mace propped the squirming, babbling baby up against his shoulder, and surveyed the assembly hall and his cast, who were putting the finishing decorative touches on their set.
“Youngling, that paint is not for consumption.”
“Aww,” was the responding complaint.
“And please remember you are decorating the tree , not your robes or your person.”
“ Awww! ”
“Play looks like it’s going to be a good one this year,” came a familiar voice from over Mace’s shoulder. He could almost hear the grin in his grandpadawan’s tone, but he didn't mind. The younglings' play may not have had the same ritual significance as the rest of the ceremonies, but it did matter to them.
“Yes, I remember when it was your clan that performed, Caleb,” he replied in his usual tone and timbre. “You made a remarkably convincing nexu. As I recall, Master Beq had to repeatedly remind you to stop screeching and growling and let your peers deliver their lines.”
“You’re too kind as always, Grandmaster.”
Caleb’s bright, albeit slightly acerbic, tone didn’t falter. He emerged from around Mace’s left side, tipping his head to peer at the wriggly baby. His Padawan braid rippled slightly with the movement.
“Who’s the kid? I don’t remember us getting a new one in a couple months.”
“His name is Ezra; he was born on Lothal, like you. We plan to test his attunement to the Force at the same time as the Skywalker twins.”
“I don’t know why we’re bothering to test the twins,” Caleb remarked. “I heard one of them cracked a window last week just by crying too hard.”
“Protocols are protocols for a reason, Caleb,” Mace replied, though privately he didn’t disagree. He had been one of the Jedi on the scene after Leia’s tantrum, after all. Though he’d been surprised that her father had let him speak to them about letting the twins be tested, or about their possible admission to the Order.
For in the last few months, in all the fallout from what had happened that day, Skywalker had seemed reluctant to talk to anyone from the Temple. Mace had also been surprised to hear that he and his family would still be coming to celebrate the new year; he could not help but wonder how that had come about, and who might have convinced them to do so.
“Well, anyway.” Caleb turned to face the children throwing copious handfuls of green glitter on their set grass and trees and getting quite a bit of it down their robes in the process. “You can tell there aren’t as many of them –” He indicated the younglings, “ – as there were before the war. Getting this kid here and the Skywalkers might be a good thing.”
Little Ezra babbled something that sounded like agreement. Then he blew a spit bubble.
Mace could not be amused. Instead, a sinking feeling opened in the pit of his stomach at how right his grandpadawan was; he turned his gaze back to the younglings, keeping the storm of his thoughts to himself, not wanting to voice his concerns in front of the children.
They’d had barely half their usual rate of arrivals in the last couple years. Not nearly enough to compensate for how they’d kept hemorrhaging promising young Knights and Padawans for those three years. More and more people, as the increasingly unpopular war had dragged on and the Jedi remained the public face of it, had refused to give them their Force-sensitive children, had even blamed them for those deaths. It’d cut Mace to the core, to have to keep watching the Republic cared for so much cave in on itself, while all the while more and more Jedi died.
There was still so much damage control to do, on top of everything; so much rebuilding. No guarantees in the meantime. He could not force the Bridgers to give them Ezra if the child did turn out to be Force-sensitive, and he could not force Skywalker and Amidala to give them Luke and Leia; nor did he want to force them.
The future, especially the future of the Order, was still clouded, even in the renewed presence of the light.
But Mace could not dwell on bitterness. He had responsibilities to his people. So he did not burden his grandpadawan with these thoughts.
“Maybe,” was all he said instead. “Maybe so. For now, perhaps you should go enjoy the preparations and festivities, Caleb. I will see you at dinner tonight.”
Caleb cast him a doubtful look. But he moved to go anyway.
On his way, he paused briefly, reaching a hand up to pat Ezra’s tufty head of blue-black baby curls.
“See you tonight. Hope you’re well till then, Grandmaster.”
Ezra wriggled further in Mace’s grip, almost flipping himself over his shoulder as Caleb departed. But Mace remembered Depa from when she was young, so he easily caught the child and settled him down again in his arms. Ezra blinked up at him, peering up with enormous, innocent eyes.
Mace held him firm, steady, making sure he was secure before turning his attention back to the other younglings. The work was not done yet, after all.
“– Waste of time,” one of the senators seethed after the committee started to trickle out. “Months, years worth of cleanup left to do, and the Jedi are frittering away their time with a party. Ridiculous. After all that they still owe the Republic…”
“I believe it’s an important part of their culture,” someone else said vaguely.
“More important than their duty to the Republic? Feh.”
“You ask me, the Jedi have always been worse than useless,” grumbled a third. The unspoken truth about the Jedi’s role in the chancellor’s death hung in the air, unacknowledged. “How much sooner could the war have been over if they hadn’t been always mewling and whining about rights and conduct? How much more time will we waste with negotiations and peace talks? Damn them, and the softhearted fools like Mothma, Organa, and Amidala who do their work for them.”
The senators in question might have lifted their voices in protest to this, but they had already left the premises. One was already on her way out the building – her duties in session were done for the day, but her responsibilities were not over yet.
A half-hour’s walk from the Temple, the district of Little Keldabe, better known as Kih’Keldabe to its residents, was as crowded and busy as usual. All around, Coruscant’s resident population of diaspora Mandalorians bustled about working, shopping, eating, allowing their children to run loose, and shouting at one another. None of the shouting indicated anger; the tendency to talk at top volume, disorienting to someone who’d grown up in the Temple, here was simply normal.
Ahsoka muscled her way through the crowded marketplace, in the stream of foot traffic. Past two women haggling ferociously over the price of spices, around some kids playing ball in the street, ducking some hawkers and persistent merchants. All the way to the dingy-looking little hole-in-the-wall restaurant she had first heard her grandmaster talking about almost three years ago, that he had taken her and Anakin to, that they had all grown to love.
It was, somehow, even louder inside than outside.
All of the larger tables were playing host to families, one of which had at least seven small children. Two separate couples were obviously going through some stuff. In the middle of the room, one of the patrons had come to blows with another, and was now beating him about the knees with a chair leg.
“Don’t you dare break that kriffing chair, Saxon,” the hostess bellowed as she walked past the melee. “It cost more than that cheap fucking plastoid you’re wearing; you break it , I break you , get it?” To Ahsoka: “Hey, jetii’ka , good to see you again. Your regular table?”
“Yeah, thanks. I’m actually meeting someone here, did you see –?”
It was then that her eye was caught, and held, by the two men who had already beaten her there. One was already seated at her favorite table, perusing the menu while he waited for her, and the other still stood at his companion’s side, hand on the back of his chair. Looking around with the eye of someone used to surveying battlefields.
Her smile held, but became slightly more quavery.
“That them?”
“Yes.”
“Hm.” The hostess gave the two clones a careful once-over. “Alright, then. Go get your seat, your server’ll be with you in a minute.”
Ahsoka picked her way through the chattering crowd and sat down at her table. The suddenness of the motion almost made her dining companion drop his menu, before he glanced up at her and smiled, broad and bright.
“Hey, Commander.”
“Hi, Rex,” she greeted. Then, to his brother: “Hi, Cody.”
Cody nodded, his posture relaxing, just a touch.
“Hello, Commander,” he greeted in turn. “Good to see you well.”
Despite the warmth of their presences, Ahsoka felt her gut squeeze at hearing her rank again from the two of them. It felt so strange to hear now, but at the same time…familiar. Almost a comfort. Especially coming from clone troopers.
And that made her feel even less at ease – that she had been a soldier for so long, that all this time after leaving the Order and months after the armistice, it felt more unusual to not be one anymore.
They exchanged talk, caught up for a few minutes, before the waitress dodged the table of seven children and came over with menus. Cody moved his hand to Rex’s shoulder and squeezed affectionately, nodding to the pair of them. His dark eyes crinkled slightly, distorting the curve of his scar and making him look older than he was.
“Alright. I have to go, but you two have a good lunch before the festival.”
“You could stay too, if you’d like, Cody,” she offered.
“Yeah, come on,” Rex agreed, “sit with us. At least for the food, it’s a damn sight better than any of the slop we were fed for rations.”
Cody’s mouth quirked up at the edge, but he shook his head firmly.
“I have promises to keep to the Gen – to Obi-Wan, and to the lads. Don’t be late, you two.”
He gave Rex’s shoulder one last squeeze and nodded again to Ahsoka, before taking his leave.
It did not escape her attention how many of the patrons watched him go with cautious or uneasy expressions. She knew the conflicted or hostile feelings many Mandalorians held for the clones, especially with Fett as their progenitor. Many were worried that in light of the Senate’s new bill recognizing their personhood and sentient rights, they would try to settle in the Mandalore system and place claims to Mandalorian identity. They couldn’t all settle on Coruscant, after all. It had only been four months since she had ousted Maul and a new ruler had been placed on the throne, and everybody knew that that would be a difficult burden for the strained system, disquieted people, and their precariously positioned leader to bear.
One could argue that it was all a moot point; most clones didn’t think of themselves as Mandalorian to any significant degree, if at all. But few other worlds that had been touched by the war were in any better shape for taking on new citizens anyway.
All that obviously didn’t escape Rex’s attention either. An uncomfortable look settled on his face even as they kept chatting lightly over cups of smoky black tea and bowls of spicy noodle soup.
“So, what else have you been doing since I saw you last?”
“Oh, still with that new aid group. Pay’s bad, but at least I feel like I’m still doing something, you know?” He sipped at the broth. “‘Sides, at least now I am getting paid.”
The joke rather fell flat between them.
“What about you?”
Ahsoka struggled to think of something interesting to say. She had drifted from person to person who needed her work after the Siege, plagued by guilt for never noticing the chips in her men’s heads, for leaving Anakin and Obi-Wan in an argument when that could have been the last time she saw either alive. Just shy of eighteen and adrift, with little to do.
Had she even seen her master and grandmaster since the armistice? She had seen Padme, seen the twins, which she was glad to have done, but no Jedi. She missed them so terribly it ached; why else had she chosen this place that reminded her of their days together, if not to conjure up Anakin’s dashing smile, Obi-Wan’s warm laugh?
She plastered on a calm, neutral expression and tried to fob her friend off with some half-truths about the benefits of the jobs she’d done. But Rex simply knew her too well.
“You don’t have to keep doing that, Ahsoka.”
She stared into the dregs of her bowl.
“You’re free now, like me. You could be doing whatever you want; it doesn’t even have to be related to me, or the Jedi, or anything. What makes you happy?”
Ahsoka tried to think of some other way to say I don’t know .
Behind them, the battered chair finally gave way, shattering into pieces.
“Wonder when General Skywalker’s going to get here,” one of the younger clones from the 501st mused, stepping up to the smooth steps of the Temple. He was promptly shushed by the brothers accompanying him.
“What –?”
“Nobody knows.”
“What do you mean nobody knows? ”
“I mean nobody knows. Not even the other Jedi. Frankly, I don’t think some of ‘em even know if he’s coming.”
“How can the Jedi not know where one of their own is?”
“Best not to wonder, I think.”
Kit, missing his Padawan, had retreated down to the kitchens to try and help some other young ones in need.
With hours until the banquet, the kitchen was a riot of noise and scented steam. The staff, not Jedi themselves but as much a part of the Temple as the Council, had enlisted some of the initiates and junior Padawans to help prepare; an opportunity for the young ones to help learn and care for their community as much as it was a chance to lighten the staff’s load.
Kit moved in circles about the kitchen and supervised carefully as small hands shaped savory cakes, stirred soup, rinsed baskets of rice, slipped morsels into the yawning ovens. When the cream sauce broke or the frosting did not come together, he stepped in to save the day. It helped that his body temperature was much lower than a mammalian sentient’s, and butter literally did not melt in his hands; he rescued many a dessert that way.
Normally, he would talk to the children. Before the war, he used to help in the creche sometimes when he wasn’t busy with Nahdarr, with amphibious or ichthyoid species like himself. Supervise the little ones in their ponds, in their tanks.
But now talking to them puzzled him. For they had used to ask him about all sorts of things. Now all their questions were the same.
“What was the war like, Master?”
“Did you and your troopers go to many battles?”
“What’s a battle like underwater?”
“What’s the most droids you ever fought at once?”
And, most concerningly:
“Did you ever kill anyone?”
The cooks, too busy to be disturbed by such a line of questioning, simply reminded the children not to be too distracted from their tasks.
Kit wondered sometimes whether his presence was hurting, whether he was doing something wrong; the same things he had always wondered about raising his Padawan. But he tried to answer honestly. Tried to forget the suffocating fear, the water pressure he usually felt so at home in threatening to crush him amidst the endless blaster fire, the endless wave of destruction and death. They were only children, after all. They could not help but be curious.
He bent over a cake he was helping decorate, head down, tendrils falling over his shoulder. The little girl on the other side looked up at him.
“Do you miss your Padawan that got killed, Master?” she asked solemnly.
That the head cook noticed.
“ Initiate – ” she snapped indignantly. “You apologize to Master Fisto at once –”
“No need, it’s alright,” he interjected, not wanting the girl to take a scolding on his behalf.
He turned to face her, looking into round cheeks, into large brown eyes. Nahdarr had been so young, so innocent, once. They all had – what felt like so long ago.
“Yes, young one. I do. Very much.”
She nodded seriously, in confirmation.
They were quiet for a while after, focusing only on the cake. The children brushed past the incident as though it had not happened, he was able to keep helping them, and the quiet, for a moment, felt like peace.
There was a small group of black-clad protestors outside the boundaries of the Temple as the celebrants congregated within. They held signs declaring Justice for Palpatine and Long Live Our Chancellor and Tear It Down Brick by Brick , referring to the rage so many felt to see the Temple still standing, still intact, after what had happened. Some demanded the freedom of several officials who’d been convicted in light of the chancellor’s death, some that other senators be locked up for treason – some that the Jedi themselves no longer deserved to exist.
A handful of meters away, the Temple Guard kept a watchful eye on them. Several Padawans entering the premises with their Masters thought of what the chancellor’s ultimate plan had been, and shuddered.
Shaak had been responsible for inviting some of the clone troopers, the ones they had grown closest to during the war. A couple of the Padawans – Cere’s girl Trilla, Jaro’s boy Cal, Depa’s boy Caleb – had helped her out with that.
A bit.
Going over her list of people to invite, keeping up running commentary and making smart remarks; she had to continually remind herself to be patient with the teenagers’ jibes. They were young, it was in their nature.
But nonetheless, they had their moments.
“Don’t forget Commander Colt, the guy who worked with you on Kamino,” Cal, barely thirteen, had reminded her, going serious at the end. “He should be able to come.”
Trilla and Caleb had agreed, and so had Shaak herself. But how could she forget any of her men?
Shaak was sure there was not a single Jedi who’d been on the frontlines, not a single one who’d worked with the clones at all, that could forget their troopers. So much so that even the Padawans, who’d been continually poking at and whispering with each other when they were supposed to be working on their spreadsheets, had treated the subject with the utmost gravity.
Now, some of those men sat or stood in the courtyard with her, gaping openly at the colors. Some of the children and the elderly Masters were going across the courtyard with kites, with prayer flags. Someone had flung red flimsi streamers into the branches of the Great Tree. Several of the younger troopers, looking smaller than she remembered in civilian clothes instead of armor, stared at it all while Shaak sat patiently under the outspread branches, her brown dress rippling in the end-summer wind.
The troopers had visited a hundred vibrant worlds during the war, she knew. But in battle, on waystations, or thousands of meters above the ground in their ships.
When Colt came over to join her, he looked at the colors Shaak had grown up with, as familiar to her as breath, like he had never seen color before. She could feel his awe in the Force, almost see it rippling off him.
“And you do all this every year? ” he asked at last.
“Yes, we try to,” she confirmed. “We don’t always have the numbers at the Temple, and we especially didn’t during the war, but…we try.”
He sighed softly, brow furrowing.
Shaak thought about Kamino’s omnipresent gray stormclouds. The endless sterile white hallways of Tipoca City.
As the troopers wandered around the courtyard, unsure of where to focus, she noticed that someone was singing in the near distance. A very old song, thousands of years old, that they’d all first heard in the creche. It brought peace to her heart, and it made her old commander sit up and listen.
He had always been so stern on Kamino, so quiet. He continued to say nothing even as his brothers turned to listen, turned their faces into the song, expressions shifting with the melody.
“What is that?” one of the youngest men blurted at last.
Colt shot him the don’t bother the General look that he’d patented during the war.
“It’s a rhyming song,” Shaak explained to them, unbothered by the question. “About the growth of a seed into a tree and the reach of the tree’s branches to the stars.”
“...That’s it?”
“Yes. Should it have been something else?”
The young men exchanged looks.
“I dunno, I thought it would have been more…grand. Glorious. You said this was an important holiday and all.”
“Who says it’s not? We teach that all life is grand,” she explained, feeling, in a strange way, like she was giving lessons to the Padawans she’d worked with earlier. “Our new year celebrates the beginning of the universe, and by extension, the beginning of that life. The growth of a single tree is part of all that.”
Colt’s frown deepened as the younger clones exchanged looks.
“ All life,” he echoed, his voice a mutter. Almost as though he hadn’t meant for her to hear it.
Shaak thought of all his brothers she’d watched grow up soldiers and train their lives away for war, before marching off to die. She thought of Fives, of chasing him through those sterile white hallways. Looking on at the colors around her, her heart twisted, and she bowed her head as the song came to an end.
She took a long breath. Squeezed her eyes shut. Before lifting her head again, looking back at the men before her who still lived.
“Won’t you all stay and sit with me a while? It’ll be nice to have familiar faces beside me.”
The young men brightened at once, and jostled each other for a spot beside her beneath the tree, backs to the rough bark. Colt hesitated – shoulders tense, back stiff as though he was still on duty.
But he joined her too. Shoulders tight, head held upright. He gazed out into the distance, across the riotous warmth of the courtyard, as the music began to play once more.
Cody found the former officers and ARCs of the 212th swiftly; they were without the armor of their battalion now, but he could still pick out their hair, their tattoos, their demeanors, with ease. Seeing him again, with the burden of rank no longer upon them, they didn’t hesitate to rush forward to clap his back or throw their arms around it.
“Get off, off already. Are you trying to strangle me, you slackers?” he grumbled, though he couldn’t help but smile.
The courtyard was all but choked with Jedi now, spilling out from the rest of the Temple and its many rooms. Instruments from a dozen different worlds played as a large group began to sing, lifting their voices in sharp, haunting melodies that made the blood still in his veins. He’d never seen so many all in one place; had never been able to enter the complex before.
They had left behind their uniforms and their armor for those formal white robes. They all laughed a little too loudly, talked a little too noticeably around the war, the politics, the chancellor. Cadets – children – scurried around, chasing each other with streamers and chalk, unable to sit still even for the sacred songs. Strangest of all, nobody reprimanded them.
The men talked for a while, sidestepping a fair few of the scurrying children, greeted warmly by Jedi they’d never met, throwing them for a loop. It made sense to Cody though, given what he knew of his own Jedi.
Cody still felt the weight of his armor like a phantom limb. Still had to fight the urge to call them Commander and General. But he tried, tried so hard to smile even under the bareness of his civilian clothes.
He wondered where his own Jedi was…and hoped he was doing alright.
The streets of Coruscant were heavy and rank with the lingering afternoon, the heavy stink and heat of the city inescapable even as summer came to its end. It always reeked in the warm weather, even when the nights were getting cooler, no matter how good the climate controls were. Garbage, speeder exhaust, hot metal, dusty duracrete, and a little bit of unwashed ass.
Not to mention that the two of them were late, as usual, rushing to catch the next hovertrain. The festivities at the Temple had to be well underway by now. The gathering-in, the songs, the dances. The re-dedication ceremony, the banquet, even the younglings’ contributions. Quinlan knew the schedule like the back of his hand, but he’d always clung tightly to every surety about his second family and so he anticipated it, every year.
“Let’s cut through the street behind the Senate building,” Aayla suggested, lekku bobbing behind her as they navigated the crowded roads, the turmoil of the chokepoints. “That’ll be faster.”
“You always have good ideas, kid,” Quinlan agreed, and they took a sharp left turn off the mainway.
It was cooler in the shade of the Senate building, but smelled no better. Funny, in a way, that the richest and most powerful people of Coruscant could lift themselves above everybody else but still couldn’t quite escape the reality of the city’s grime.
While on the other hand, despite the gentle sense of sanctuary the Temple offered, it was a Jedi’s responsibility to well and truly get down in the dirt. To understand and help as many as they could, which so often necessitated getting on someone else’s level, or doing what others were unable and unwilling to do. And sometimes, it was impossible to do that and avoid getting messy. The war had proven that countless times over.
Sometimes, when Quinlan looked at his hands, they still looked bloody. He wondered how long it would take him to touch someone he loved and not worry he was smearing his stain upon them.
“Hey, where’d you go, Master?” Aayla asked, her voice soft, and he blinked. Once again, his hands were normal, calloused and gloved.
“Back to the war,” he sighed, sidestepping a greasy puddle. Not needing to elaborate. She already knew; had already seen all the ugly parts of him. “ You okay, Aayla? This is the first time either of us have been back to the Temple since the armistice.”
The troops he’d been assigned last-minute after the failed Dooku mission had been redirected back to Coruscant, but he’d still been out on intelligence gathering after the chancellor’s failed takeover. At the same time, her battalion had been tasked with cleanup on formerly occupied worlds; not all former Separatist allies and leaders had been so willing to honor the ceasefire.
She smiled faintly.
“Just fine, Master. Or I will be. It’s good to be going home again.”
The truth of that, at least, brightened his spirits once more.
They made their way out of the narrow little street and back into the sunlight, rushing to catch the hovertrain. It was the middle of the day, mostly uncrowded, with only a handful of sentients dozing in their seats. Quinlan sat next to his Padawan anyway, watching her expression stay soft, gazing at the skyline as it zipped by before them. Though it wasn’t long till they hopped off again, and before their eyes the grand, gleaming ziggurat and spires of the Temple came into view.
Plastered to the wall a stone’s throw from the entrance was a tattered, human-sized political poster from several years ago; gazing out from it was a familiar face. Do Not Bind His Hands, it declared above the dead Sith’s placid, almost grandfatherly expression. Grant Him The Authority He Needs To Assure Total Victory!
Quinlan tore it down with perhaps more force than required.
As it fell to the greasy, stained sidewalk, trampled under their boots, Aayla’s gaze fell on the Temple steps, white marble glowing in the light. Before his eyes, the tension in her face eased. The smile that grew was real, full of warmth and life. The upheaval of the last few months, the pain of the last few years before, all seemed to ease a bit.
Like he’d had since she was small, Quinlan put his arm around her shoulders.
“It is good to be going home,” he said, thinking of his friends. Their family. “And look at that, we’re just on time to be fashionably late.”
“Mmm.” Her mouth quirked up further, and for a moment, she looked light-hearted and mischievous, like the little girl he remembered. “You know, I wonder where Master Obi-Wan is.”
He started, even as a flame flicked to life behind his ribs. Glanced down at his Padawan, eyes narrowing.
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“Oh…nothing…” She clapped a hand over her smile.
Quinlan scoffed; he hadn’t seen Obi-Wan in months, as long as he’d been away from home. But even as he did, he kept thinking of his old friend in particular and his chest filled further with warmth.
He rocked Aayla’s shoulders a bit, and they moved to climb the steps together.
Bail was tired.
It wasn’t the typical kind of tired one expected, the kind felt at the end of a long work day. It felt more like that long work day had impossibly stretched out to fill weeks, months, years. He was still only Acting Chancellor at the moment, but the election was finally coming up soon, and his name had, of course, been thrown into the ring. He hadn’t seen Breha outside the ghostly blue of holocoms in weeks, and he missed the rush of her breath, the softness of her skin, the warmth of her embrace.
But he stood there in the courtyard, a plate of foods he didn’t recognize in hand, gazing around at the Jedi. Some had gone into the buildings to help prepare for later ceremonies, to clean, sweeping out the miasma of the old year; they hummed as they scrubbed and polished. Some were chasing after the children. Some were sitting together, talking.
And more than two dozen now had taken up the song in the center of the courtyard.
Alderaan was known throughout the Republic for its artistic tradition, but this was unlike any choir he had ever heard before. They were perfectly in sync, as though singing with one voice. When they pulled back their shoulders and lifted their voices, they did it in sync. When one swept back their arm, so did many of the others.
It might have seemed eerie were he not used to Force-sensitives and the way they moved, like wind on water. Bail’s life was so full of concerns, of uncertainty, but their unnatural grace had a beauty to it, a sense of certainty and harmony one only saw in nature.
He felt, suddenly, overcome by having been invited to celebrate with them. To be considered their friend.
He settled back and closed his eyes, listening to the choir. When the song ended, he applauded, smiled at the dancers. For a moment, all his responsibility and worry faded. All he was was just Bail. Not the viceroy of his planet, not the acting chancellor. Just their friend.
Caleb needed a break from all the happiness and gratitude.
He knew he couldn’t be alone forever. Master Depa’d be expecting to see him later, especially at the dedication and banquet, and he was loath to disappoint her. But he needed a break .
He wove his way past the courtyard musicians; Master Junda was so occupied with the melody she was plucking out on her hallikset that she hardly noticed. Through the entrance, back into the grand hallways of the Temple itself.
He made his way through the halls without anyone either noticing or minding. Celebrations were happening all through the complex by now; voices and music echoed out from every corner, every room, as though the building were one great concert hall, swelling with sound. It would go on and on, lasting till the re-dedications and banquet at sundown and then on again afterwards.
He wandered past it all, wanting away from the noise. From the expectations. Sometimes the cacophony was all too much like the battlefield; sometimes it all came back when he was far from expecting it.
He found the first quiet stretch of the Temple without really thinking about where he was, or where he was going. Only realizing belatedly, with his hand already on the door, that he was at the entrance to the creche.
He paused, gripping the handle.
Then he pushed it open and went inside.
All outside sounds were muffled, blessedly so, as he’d hoped – and the creche itself was unusually silent. Most of the younglings and crechemasters were out with everyone else at the festival, everyone old enough to walk, really. That meant that only the babies and their minders were left, and this year, as his grandmaster had noticed, there weren’t many of them.
The tiny handful of crechemasters still there gave him surprised looks, but didn’t stop him as he found a seat in the corner of the nursery. By the window, so he could look out over the city. Up high.
Caleb liked to be up high, on mountaintops, in skyscrapers, in ships – especially in ships, with an entire world or the entire galaxy lying before him. From up high, everything looked smaller, more connected, and ultimately, more surmountable. Now that the war was over, now that he hoped to never be a part of an army again, he wondered if – or when – he would get back the chance to fly.
Only a few minutes later, one of the crechemasters broke him out of his thoughts when she came over with one of the babies in her arms, looking slightly harried.
“What –”
“Padawan Dume,” she said without preamble, “can you hold him for a moment? I have to go help with some of the others.”
His mouth was still open in surprise when she dropped the baby into his arms and rushed off to go assist the other crechemasters. He stared dumbly at the bundle tucked against his chest, the roly-poly baby with bright, curious eyes, grabby little hands, round brown cheeks, and thick curls of blue-black hair.
Caleb sighed and propped the babbling, snotty little monster up against his arm. The baby patted his neck contentedly, peering up at him in a kind of recognition.
The thing was, Caleb recognized him too. The one that his grandmaster had been watching earlier. The first child brought back in months, whose parents had offered him willingly to be tested.
He was so alive and warm in Caleb’s arms, so far away from the memories he wanted to escape.
He looked back out the window, throat tight. The baby rested his head against his shoulder.
“I remember you, kid,” he muttered. “Ezra, right?”
The baby cooed.
“Think you’ll be one of us, Ezra? It’s hard. Really hard. You…might not want to be.”
Ezra blinked up at him guilelessly.
Then he reached one hand up and took hold of the end of Caleb’s Padawan braid, tugging hard, trying to squish the end of it into his tiny mouth.
“ Ow – kriff – take that as a yes.”
He’d just managed to untangle the braid from Ezra’s tight little fist and prop him up against his other shoulder before a voice came from above the pair.
“Didn’t think you’d be so cut out for babysitting.”
He looked up, and met a set of tired, familiar blue eyes.
Ahsoka Tano. She’d been universally known among the junior Padawans – how could she not have been, as the Anakin Skywalker’s apprentice? Who else could even dream of getting to work alongside The Team, to be part of their accomplishments, to be feted by the Republic even when the other Jedi were being blamed for the instability and dragging-on war? Caleb loved his own Master and getting to learn from her, was justly proud of the lineage he was part of, and even he had felt that admiration nonetheless.
A year ago, her being here might have made his mouth dry, astonished and starstruck. But now, she looked so tired. Like they weren’t home, like it wasn’t a festival day, like the weight of it all, too heavy for someone so young, could not be decreased even by joy.
Caleb understood that.
“He snuck up on me,” was all he said in reply, voice dry. “What are you doing up here, Ahsoka?”
Her gaze became distant. She looked down through his window, out at the courtyard, at the people milling and celebrating below.
“Just needed some…perspective.”
Caleb pondered this. The horizon of the never-ending city stretching beyond the marble steps, something so big that somehow fit in the eyes of two young Padawans.
In his arms, Ezra nuzzled closer. Warm, solid, alive. Keeping him tethered in that moment, to that room, so that he didn’t drift off into memory.
Ahsoka’s eyes, meanwhile, were as distant as the clouds.
The citizens of Coruscant, and further across the Core and greater Republic, had been keeping a close eye on the news – or, in some cases, others’ opinions on the news. The armistice held fast, but peace talks with the Separatists were still ongoing, as were the criminal trials of much of the late chancellor’s staff and inner circle, and every day for months there had been some kind of development.
All morning, people had been walking or riding the hovertrain with their noses in their datapads. Throughout the day, monitoring the major news sources and social media sites, sneaking glances at work or at school or at home. Often pausing at the comment section to add their own two creds to it all.
Updates from the peace talks were frequent, but to most citizens, most of them were of little consequence. Minutia was lost on the public, who wanted a thousand things: to punish the CIS and its worlds, to let those world formally secede, to fold them back into the Republic, to keep the clones, to not keep the clones or grant them rights, to grant reparations, to not have to pay for reparations, and so forth.
But despite all this lack of consensus, the buzz of the work hours was winding down. Day was wearing into late afternoon, the stifling carpet of heat beginning to lift. For though Coruscanti summer nights could be just as oppressive as summer days, now, with the onset of early autumn, evening brought coolness. Relief.
The hot light turned saffron as people began to leave work or school and go home – or, if not home, then anywhere else. The afternoon and its turn into evening would bring a thousand possibilities, and this renewed people’s spirits, and more talk filled the air. That the Jedi would be rejoining the peace talks soon, within the next few days, was common knowledge. Many were glad of that, even some of those who would not have been a year ago, supported them, cheered them in their efforts.
Not everyone did.
But all waited, breathlessly, to an end to it all at last.
Aayla knew the end was far from within sight.
The cleanups she’d been a part of had been ugly, messy, lengthy. Some of the Separatists leveraged Dooku’s death and all that had happened with the Chancellor as excuses to flout the ceasefire. Still others kept fighting, kept their stranglehold on occupied worlds, because that was what they had grown to know, or even to enjoy. It saddened her.
Worse was the Republic’s instability, the corruption and cracks in its foundation that would take years, if not decades, to repair. Aayla was already weary of it all. She was tired of fighting, tired of death. Tired of the darkness that had choked and blinkered all of them, that had tried to wipe them all out. That had, for a time, taken hold of her beloved Master. That had nearly taken hold of her old friend.
Aayla would be glad to see the end of the Sith’s influence when it came. She knew she would be a part of the efforts to ensure that, for as long as it took. For all her weariness, she was glad to do her part, to try and work for a safer, better tomorrow.
But for today, she danced.
The courtyard was full of whirling figures now as the musicians played on and the day grew long. Her robes spun around in her wake, lekku flying out behind her as she spun and twirled. The colored powder crunched beneath her boots and the Uneti tree cast shade cool as well-water over the stones, and the music crested, filling her senses.
She’d once asked Bly, after a long siege, watching the local villagers celebrate their liberation in the town square, whether he and his brothers had ever danced.
“No, General,” he’d said, and it had lodged in Aayla’s head and behind her ribs. “We’re just soldiers. Dancing is for people.”
She opened her eyes as a hand took hers, guiding her in a smooth circle. Their steps quickly matched, his presence in the Force rising like a wave to greet hers. When they spun around again, she and Kit were face to face, his dark eyes puffy. A familiar kind of lingering sorrow warred for space in his presence, but his gaze remained warm and kind.
She noticed with a smile that he smelled like vanilla and sugar, and quickly guessed where he had been.
“You looked happy,” he observed simply, and Aayla’s heart lifted. “May I join you?”
Aayla had danced many times in her life. But it had been a long time – and even longer since she had danced with another.
She squeezed Kit’s hand, interlocking his fingers with her own.
The music reached a new pitch as he turned her beneath the tree, in the dappled light of the leaves, the garlands and banners fluttering above them in the breeze. Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted a few of the clones dancing with other Jedi; she couldn’t tell if Bly was among them, but it still made her eyes well up.
Kit gently wiped under her lashes, and she leaned into his touch.
The music eventually slowed, and they paused for a break. She looked out over the crowd, past the courtyard, at the greater Temple complex.
Aayla had been proud to be a Jedi since the day Quinlan had rescued her, and would return to her duty as one soon, without complaint – but now, she let her breath come out in ragged gasps, let Kit’s presence steady her. Let herself feel it all.
It was the only reason why she was able to spot the three approaching figures when they emerged in the courtyard.
Aayla squinted in the spots of light, putting a hand up to her eyes to block the glare of the sun.
Before she saw who it was – and gasped.
It had actually been a pair of Coruscanti street children who had seen them first. The events of a few months ago hadn’t affected their immediate lives, not yet. But they had felt the pressure of the war, and had noticed when it had caused the trickle of resources to the lower levels to dry up.
They’d snuck up from the permanent shadow of below, the poverty and desperation and hopelessness that the war had only exacerbated, to see what awaited in the topmost level. To dare each other to touch the summit of Umate, to pick some pockets, to play and run in the sunshine for once. They had ended up near the Jedi Temple, stealing glances for the very first time, because, well, who wouldn’t? Given the chance, anyone would want to see it: the stoic, masked guards, the gleaming white walls, the spires that pierced the very sky. The noise of celebration burst up from inside, loud enough to reach the spire-tops.
They’d meant to move on quickly, but they lingered. Hung around the stairs, still looking, until the speeder pulled up and they recognized –
Yes, that woman, she had been on the news. Yes, they knew the two men beside her, who had seemed so much larger than life in the propaganda holos and vids.
The kids might not have been affected much by recent events, but they knew who those people were, and their significance. And so they watched, as the trio departed their speeder and greeted the guards, as they began to ascend the stairs. They watched for a long while, wondering breathlessly about the heroes – what they were like, what they were really thinking, what they were doing here.
They ran back down the street eventually, though, returning to the alleys, to their tattered ball. For all their wondering, they did not linger very long on what they had seen afterwards; they intended to take full advantage of the daylight hours, after all.
Besides, some things were only for the Jedi to know.