Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Of Days Long Past:

Cold Moons.

By Emparra

Disclaimer: This story has been disclaimed. The writer only plays in someone else's sandbox.

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Chen-tsi looked to the grey sky. Soft snow fell as it always did, and as it always would.

The bark of an angry man snapped him from his musing, and he returned to his task; hauling crates along the gorge to the great dome built into the mountain top.

Long ago, before the dark times, the Jeedai had come with their same-men to Orto Plutonia, and with the Pantoran folk they had brokered peace. The small woman had come with them, and called end to the battle, after the warrior called for war. For long years, they had been in peace. They had prospered beside the Pantorans and lived long and well because of it.

But, Chen-tsi remembered the Jeedai who had come after the great battles with the metalmen and same-men best of all. The fire-haired one and the loud, dark-haired one were strange and good-seeming, with their talk of peace and end of fighting. They were war-brothers, and they fought together in peace with angry voices and laughing faces and smiling, and side by side with grim faces and hard voices and sad eyes. They were power and fire and calm wind.

The dark-haired one, bright with his eyes of sunlit ice and a moving storm captive in his warrior bones, with giving on his tongue and tenderness in his mighty hands that offered a sign of goodwill.

The fire-haired man with the soft voice and living eyes was sleeping embers and anger leashed, and power hidden gently. He was old in the eyes and wise in tongue and hand, and good in heart.

The elders and wise ones used to speak of him softly and with much nodding, saying his words again and keeping them in wisdom. The chiefs asked the Pantoran folk many trade-times when the Fire Jeedai would return with wise words, but they did not know. They smiled smiles that were tired and big, and soft-huffed breath and turned away. They said the Jeedai were making peace with their same-men and on worlds far away, like they did on Orto-Plutonia. Maybe they would return when all the worlds kept peace?

But they did not.

The angry men and their new and different same-men came and said the Jeedai were brother-killers and were to be given to the new same-men to be punished.

Chen-tsi saw only two Jeedai in his time of life, but he heard stories whispered in the dark and cold of brown-covered beings speaking in battles with peace and great power, wielding colors of fire that they summoned from metal hand-sticks, and who possessed great powers of mind and air and sight and summoned them only at great need. He thought of the fire-haired one who gave peace in battle, and he believed those stories.

Even as the angry men and their different same-men told other stories of men with fire-swords who killed their war-brothers and slaughtered women folk and the young, he gathered his memories of the time the Jeedai came and spoke by hands and burned sticks to make peace with the Pantorans, even after battle, and Chen-tsi told them to his people, to his captive-mates.

He told of the fire-haired man with the old eyes and wise heart. He told of the loud dark haired one who sought battle and peace and made the fire-haired one glad. He told of the peace they made that lasted until the different same-men came and ended it, and took his people away to labor.

He hid those words in his heart and remembered the day the Jeedai came with peace.

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Finess.

Chapter Text

Of Days Long Past:

Just Plain Odd.

By Emparra

Disclaimer: This story has been disclaimed. The writer only plays in someone else's sandbox. 

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Jedi are the oddest.

Really.

Oddest creatures in the whole galaxy, and that’s saying something coming from a starcruiser pilot, even old Marlowe Deedut. Twice around the galaxy, and Jedi remain at the top the list of Oddest Things.

They’re usually pretty quiet, they hang on the edges of things, plain-looking, dressed up in the drabbest colors, and generally mild-mannered. But there’s the kicker! Jedi are some of the most powerful critters to crawl the galaxy, with that Force and mind powers and the ability to throw tanks and jump over buildings if they want, but they don’t do all that stuff much. Oh, you’ll usually find them smack in the middle of Big Trouble, only they tend to talk first, try to talk people down instead of roundly pass out knocks to the head until everyone sees sense. Now Marlowe? That kind of power would come in downright handy in some of the customs offices he's seen, and he doesn't know that he wouldn't use it to his own advantage...

But when push comes, those Jedi folk will pick up and shove.

Confident buggars, they are! Meek as you like, “we come to serve”, bastions of peace and all that, but they’d walk right into a sarlacc pit cool as can be and walk right out again. And then escape to corners and shadows before anyone "oohs" and "ahhs" too much and makes ‘em uncomfortable.

Once, Marlowe’d seen a drunk hurl a broken vodka bottle at one, and the fellow hadn’t even flinched, hadn’t ducked, didn’t bat an eye. That bottle sailed just a centimeter or so away from his face, and the cool old cucumber just stood there calm as could be. Others he’d seen move so fast that a raindrop in a hurricane probably couldn’t hit them.

The best thing he’d ever seen, though, was this one red-bearded fellow, possessed of the utter height of dry and sardonic wit he’d ever seen! Best delivered too, and weird as hell coming from a mild-looking man and his polished Core accent.

He’d stumbled into that mess on his way to Baros when a gravity mine had pulled his ship right out of hyperspace and into a raging pirate conflict. He couldn’t really say it was a pillaging, because once his ship had been pulled in by an automatic tractor beam and connected to the pirates ship, he found himself in the middle of the strangest standoff; a dozen or so pirates huddled in one end of a corridor with that ruddy-haired Jedi huddled on the other, trading threats and insults respectively instead of blasting each other to vapor. He’d discovered later that the pirates had had horrible aim and the Jedi had been able to bat away every bolt sent his way. Hence the standoff.

After a few moments frozen in shock at the appearance of an ugly old Kaleesh spacer, the pirates had screamed sorcery, demanded that the “filthy Jedi” leave their ship with his summoned spawn, and had fled behind blast doors.

Being fairly quick in the head and an a decent sort of being, Marlowe had bellowed to the Jedi to hop aboard and make tracks for more civil space. In minutes, they had disconnected, the tractor beam released them, and off they went! The Jedi had expressed his thanks for the lift, saying his ship had been destroyed, and would the kind captain please drop him off on Moorja? There was a Jedi Temple there that he could go to and be out of his hair.

Marlowe had laughed and agreed, and spent the remainder of the trip quizzing and conversing with the Jedi, ‘Obi-wan Kenobi, at your service.’ And little gods, if that pale little man wrapped up in his big brown robe and catlike grace didn’t have the sharpest, wickedest sense of humor he’d ever heard! Ten years later, and Marlowe still used some of the quips he leaned to great effect.

Ha!

Whatever came of this godforsaken war, what with those Jedi thrown smack dab in the teeth of it all, old Marlowe Deedut hoped that weird little Jedi found some peace in the end.

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Finess.

Chapter Text

Of Days Long Past:

Lost and Found (and Lost Again).

By Emparra.

Disclaimer: This story has been disclaimed. The writer only plays in someone else's sandbox.

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Eyra Juubi watches the holo and keeps her head down. She works her shift at night and sleeps during the day. She pays her bills, buys her food, and supports herself like any good citizen should. Eyra doesn’t believe the holos. She won’t take part in the gossip of co-workers as they spit venom about the enemies of the Empire, those fools that seek to destabilize a government that has only brought order to a war-torn galaxy. Eyra does not believe because she remembers.

Couruscant is enormous, busy at all times, smelly, and thick with hopes and smoke and crime. Born four levels down, she has only seen sunlight once long ago, on the day she was kidnapped and taken up, up, up to the surface to be tossed on a ship and sold on a planet far away, or so said the cackling Biss that had stolen her from her front step. Four standard years old, and she’d been scared enough and fascinated enough by the whizzing speeders out the viewport that she just had to get closer. He’d never noticed when she slipped behind a grate and out an emergency window into the dock. On and on she had walked, her only aim to go up, and great towers in the distance beckoned her.

As the day stretched on, her pale and wonder-filled eyes earned her a few bites from vendors along the Food Strips, and sometimes she could slip into transports to rest her tired little feet. She had been so very scared, so alone, and so tired, but late in the day as the sun began to go down, the light caught on those great towers! They glowed golden in the sun, so tall and proud!
So taken up by the far away sight, she collided with a being on the sidewalk. She remembers the fear that had struck her, the terror that she had been tracked down! But it was not the one who had taken her, only a very tall creature with horns on his face and a great brown robe, and a kind smile beaming from under its hood. The strange man, for it was a man, took her hand and said he’d help her find her way home. She’d begged to see the big towers in the distance first, and he’d smiled again for a second before turning toward it with her. He was a Weequay, he said when she asked, and those big towers were his home; he called it a temple and said he slept there. Sleeping in a temple sounded lonely, and she told him so, but he assured her that he had many friends there to keep him company.

Just as the sun sunk down behind the big Temple, they reached the end of the street and the whole thing came into view lit so brightly from behind. She’d giggled and said he must have lots and lots of friends in such a big place! He laughed and put her in a speeder and helped her find her way home.

The Emperor said that the Jedi were evil and traitors to the whole galaxy, but Eyra didn’t, couldn’t, believe it. Because when she was so very, very small, a Jedi had found her on the worst day of her life and turned it into the best, and returned her to her home. She had seen the kindness of the Jedi and had kept it hidden in her heart.

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Finess.

Chapter Text

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By Emparra

When the Jedi came before, there was a hush. A sigh. Relief. The Jedi bring peace.

“We come to serve.”

When the Jedi come now, there is a hush. A gasp. Dread. The Jedi mourn for peace. Hunters bay for their blood.

“I’m so sorry.”

They cannot help anymore, and they often die trying. Turmoil follows them like a plague; damned by their training, their kindness, their devotion to service, hunted to the ends of the galaxy. Jedi are shunned, reviled — they still stoop to give aid to the lowest of the low.

Brilliant, beautiful, bright— they stand out everywhere they go, through their muddy-colored robes, through the plainclothes they hide in, the regional garb they adopt. The people mourn in secret for the help that came once upon a time, for these damned creatures that journeyed across the galaxy to speak peace and help the oppressed.

Who is there to help the fallen worlds now, when the great Order of servants are hunted to extinction?
Who is there among the impotent people that can help the ones that have escaped death thus far?
How does one help someone who was once the only being that could help the low people and the common folk?

“Psst! Hey, Jedi right? Hide in here!”

Finess.

Chapter Text

Of Days Long Past:

Taken, Yet Not Lost.

By Emparra.

*sigh*

(insert witty disclaimer here)

Oddly enough, among the peoples of the galaxy, there are few that do not mourn the Jedi. Even though they are often too afraid to help if some uncanny being shows up in their midst, the once Guardians of Peace are mourned with sorrow and a very certain tang of bitter hopelessness and pity. For long centuries, Jedi had numbered in hundreds and thousands, always passing by, calmly cris-crossing the galaxy, lending their own weathered hands as they might on the way. 

The war might have poisoned the systems, the Chancellor may have denounced them, but enough of the small people in the galaxy had looked into the eyes of one Jeid or another and seen truer things, felt kinder hands, found keener wisdom, just enough that they were not wholly forgotten in slaughter. 

Meera Trundigger called herself one-such, and softly sang her stories to her grandchildren as the days darkened. 

Meera had been one of an entire settlement of Togruta colonists that had been kidnapped into slavery to the mines of Kadavo, and Jedi had been the ones to find them and bring them out. Jedi had come to slave beside them in order to see that none were left behind, it was the Jedi that brought them home and reassured them that their captors had been taken down. It had  been Jedi that aided them in building homes and planting new crops, just as they had done for centuries. 
She had not loved the Jedi, not then, not for a long while after. A bruised soul, the Elders had said, not to worry because time could heal. 

And time had, somewhat. 

Respect came first, reaped with the first harvest (the reaping in her soul was a surprise), and she found peace in that. 

Another year to sow, to tend, and to watch seeds grow again, and the harvest was a little greater. 

The next year brought peace to the galaxy, and wreckage to her heart. 

She hasn’t realized that  had begun to heal until it broke again.  In the rubble and the chaos of governance and harvest, Meera’s soul remained still and unafraid- unafraid because wreckage was not new to her, and now she was stronger .

With the next season, many seeds were sown, a few things tended, a little less flourished, but there must still be a harvest. 

That was the cycle of life. 

Meera looked in her soul and found it less bruised, more steeled, and found it far more full with peace than she had ever known. Hard-won peace, which perhaps might have been the sweetest she’d ever tasted. 

Another season, new beginnings, and a family of her own was planted. A new hope, clean and untouched, and fresh joy touched her heart. They sowed many things, built up a few more, steadied themselves against the creeping darkness, and watched the horizon. This harvest would mark another end, another cycle, another gathering of all the fruits of their labors. 

This must be what the Jedi saw as they laid their eyes on the devastation of their home when her people were brought back to it. They must have seen a more completed work, an established people, healing, and the fruit of it. 

Perhaps that was the little light she saw in those eyes, under those earthy hoods, as unjust as it seemed so long ago, for what light was there left after it had all been stolen from them?

The Jedi had seen the kindling of a new light, and offered it a spark. 

Then, it seemed so hopeless, so foolish to dream. 

Now the fruits of their labors were coming in, the Jedi were no more. They would never see it. Meera’s heart had healed, and the Jedi were hunted to extinction. 

They would never see the harvest of the seeds of light they had sown. 

Meera and her husband sowed again, tended their field, and nurtured hope in the quiet. The hands that had helped them were hidden away and gone, but the powerful touch lingered. 

Jedi were no more, but they had done too much to forget completely. 

In the darkness of a failed harvest, Meera delivered the greatest joy to surpass all joys she had yet known. In the darkness, the light of her heart shone on her daughter, and in secret she told the oldest of stories, the stories nobody but the Eldest remembered where they came from. 

Hope must be tended, after all. 

Season after season, cycle by cycle, the land bore fruit and its people grew. They had been planted in good soil and tended carefully, after all, so they had grown well even after guiding hands had left them. 

Meera became one of the Elders, and her tongue became more careful as time became more dangerous and the world even more dark.

She watched young hands sow and toil and reap through the seasons as her own grew knobby and old and weak. 

She watched her children and grandchildren with fading sight that still caught the uncanny, the inexplicable moments that made her heart race and skip , because the Jedi were dead . The Jedi had been hunted and extinguished, and the Jedi had been uncanny .

The Jedi were dead. Meera would soon be. The Empire had sown hatred and dissent liberally, and the galaxy did not prosper. 

Whispers of hope and dissent floated on the wind, aimless, until they reached even her old montrals. 

Meera had nothing to do but sit and hope and murmur her old, old stories and hope the governor didn’t have her killed before she died in her bed. Her eyes no longer saw the sun or the faces of her children and grandchildren, though her hearing still caught whispers that became murmurs that became a roar across the galaxy, and then- and then! 

Word of a living Jedi set aglow hearts across the galaxy and set something right in her old, sad heart that has long lain bruised. 

The last bruise. 

The Jedi were gone. Their hands had left unfinished works for the people to carry on. 

The Jedi had returned! 

New hands would pick up the work of hope again! 

Meera Trundigger lived long enough to teach her children the way the Jedi had imparted their kindness and mercy and love, because somebody half to carry that light for the Uncanny ones, the ones that might become Jedi. 

Meera lived long enough to hear excited, young voices say, “Granny! There’s a Jedi here!”

Her heart leapt one final time, and her soul passed the veil and into the light. 

The Jedi had come, and her people were free. 

Finess.