Private Candleflames in the Dark

[William Thule]

He ran away.

There were no other words to describe it. When they lost Coruscant, lost Arkania, he ran. He tried to rationalize it. Tried to believe that he was only taking a step back to rearm and return to the fight. But the words rung hollow.

He went deep into Wild Space, far beyond the borders of the Alliance, to an old Jedi outpost on Zakuul. Very few Jedi still manned the outpost - only those too weak or injured for normal duty, those who wished to study the unique balance of the Force present on the planet, or... those who were exiled.

The doors of the outpost hissed open and William strode through, clad in so much black that one of the Agricultural Corps padawans reached for his lightsaber the moment William came into view. He held up a hand.

"Peace. It's only me."

The padawan's shoulders relaxed and he smiled nervously, "Of course. Sorry Master Thule, I thought..."

"I know."

"Right ok. Your quarters are just this way, I'll take you there. Will you need to meet with the station chief?"

"No, not yet. I would... like a moment to myself," he offered a smile that barely touched the corners of his mouth.

"Of course. Right this way," they walked in silence for a minute, "Is it... is it bad out there?"

William took in a deep breath and centered himself in the Force. Here, on this planet, that was somehow easier. He sighed. "More than you know."

The boy looked crestfallen.

"This is just the cycle of the Force, padawan. The dark grows, but it will never snuff out the light. We will always remain, illuminating the path."

The boy nodded.

They reached William's quarters - he supposed it was his new home - and he dismissed the padawan. It felt sparse compared to the manor he'd once had on Empress Teta, his homeworld. Very sparse. But it would do. He needed to figure out what steps came next. William unloaded his possessions, which were few enough aside from a crate with some nicer clothes - he didn't expect he would need them here. Then he stepped back out into the hallway and began to walk the station, deep in thought.

A walk would do him some good.

Andromeda Demir

 

[Andromeda Demir]

It had been a little over a year since Andromeda Demir's self-imposed exile, a sort of sabbatical from the comforts of the Jedi Temple on Coruscant. It had begun with a year-long pilgrimage. She traveled across the war front of the Alliance, volunteering with the Service Corps to rebuild, rescue, and recover. It was back-breaking work, but the fatigue made her sleep dreamless and kept her so busy she almost couldn't remember the sensation of a lightsaber slicing through two people.

Almost.

And so she had gone on, until weeks became months, and months exceeded a year, until she barely missed the cafeteria, with its seemingly endless supply of sweets and snacks, or the library, with its stacks and stacks of records that put Andromeda's own rudimentary education to shame, or the dormitory, with its plush bed and hot showers, so unlike anything she had ever experienced on Irvulix V. Upon trying to return to Coruscant, she had learned of the ecumenopolis' sacking, the loss of the temple, and received the coordinates through the emergency transponder to make way to Zakuul.

Life was significantly less comfortable here on Zakuul, yet much more so than on Irvulix V. More than the creature comforts that were missing, the balanced dark and light felt heavy. Andy's experience with the Force, with the New Jedi Order, was that darkness could not peacefully coexist with light, evil with good. It felt wrong, somehow. And that, it seemed, was the point of it. To force one to reckon with the presence of both, despite what would be most ideal.

She worked the fields. It didn't come naturally to Andromeda, who was born to the mines on Irvulix V, but it was the hard work that she needed. Although her shift had ended, she had ventured out again to check the status of a separate batch of seedlings in the greenhouse, sketching the growth in a dogeared notebook. She was studying the notebook when she was returning inside, which is how she came to bump into William Thule . She took a few staggered steps back, a mixture of confusion and surprise on her features.

"So sorry," she stammered automatically, crouching quickly to pick up her notebook, then scrambling a half-step forward to get her pen and cap before looking up. Recognition dawned on her and she inwardly grimaced. Of course she would interrupt a Master on his rounds. "Apologies, Master Thule, I wasn't looking where I was going."

 

[William Thule]

"No, the mistake was mine."

A slip of paper had fallen from the folds of the notebook and still lay on the floor beside the flustered girl. Thule lifted a finger and the paper floated off the ground and into his palm. He glanced at it briefly, then held it out for her to take. As he did, his head tilted a centimeter to the right and his opal gaze regarded her. She was short, with dark hair and copper skin. Her umber eyes were nervous, but kind. She recognized him, but he could not say he recalled her face.

He would remember.

"Have we met before?" his voice was a smooth and polished tenor. Trained and precise. Before he'd been a Jedi, his family expected him to take up a role in politics. Gave him all the best tutors - until he joined the Order. How disappointed they'd been...

William had been preoccupied, his thoughts lost in the fate of the Core. He should have felt her presence in time. He was not the same Jedi he'd once been. Not since Arkania. He felt like he'd lost a piece of himself out on the ice.

Strange.

Jedi were not supposed to have attachments.

William had never been good at that tenet.

Andromeda Demir

 

[Andromeda Demir]

Eyes downcast, Andromeda reached out to take the slip of paper that had fallen from the notebook. She turned it over to see what it was and immediately regretted it. It was a sketch she had made of a pretty, dark-haired boy she knew only as the Shadow. His beauty belied the filth within his very essence. She blushed a little, trapped between not wanting the Jedi Master to think her some stupid, besotted girl indulging in a schoolyard crush and not wanting to confess something that some would consider worse: that she sketched his face to keep it fresh in her memory so that, given half a chance, she could kill Perseus Kotar in cold blood.

"Thank you," she said quietly, crumpling the paper in her fist.

At his question, her lips turned up a little at the edges, a slight exhale through her nose. "No, Master Thule. But in my experience it is best to know the pecking order in a place like this," she said by way of explanation. Her eyes lifted, meeting his inquisitive gaze now. She was beneath his notice -- beneath the notice of anyone of import at the outpost, if truth was told. "I promise if we had, I would try to make a better impression than barreling into you." She thought momentarily about using a false name, but the only other Jedi's name she could remember in that moment was Corazona von Ascania and it would be a poor repayment to attach the reputation of an inattentive klutz to the name of someone so kind.

"Andromeda." She shoved the paper ball into her pocket so that her hand would be free for shaking if the Jedi Master was so inclined. Her other hand went to her chest to clarify she was identifying herself. "Demir. Um, Padawan. Sorry if I've held you up, Master Thule."

William Thule​

 

[William Thule]

"Not at all, Andromeda."

The slightest of frowns creased the brows of the Jedi Master and he folded his hands behind his back. Pecking order. Is that how she saw it?

"I only just arrived on station today."

Quite demure, this Demir. She must have much on her mind to be in such a hurry, or perhaps she was only consumed by thoughts of sullen, dark haired boys. Hence the blush. A gentle smile tugged at the corner of his mouth before fading away like a ghost in fog.

"Would you walk with me?"

He started to do so anyway, hands still clasped behind him, his boots clicking softly against the floor with a confident gait. Walk as if you have a purpose and others will believe you do. Another old adage of a tutor before his time in the Order. Strange, how brief a time that had been and yet how lasting an impact it had had in his memory.

"How long have you been on Zakuul?"

Andromeda Demir

 

[Andromeda Demir]

The Padawan's eyes couldn't help but notice the slight tug at the corner of the older man's mouth, and she thought that he had likely reached the wrong conclusion about the sketch. She thought that was perhaps the better of the two conclusions for him to draw. If he thought she was prone to craving vengeance, not so much flirting with the dark side as planning a dirty weekend away with it, he might alert the Order. That wouldn't work out in her favor.

"If you wish," Andy said agreeably, turning to fall into step at the Master's elbow and half a step back. She tucked her unshaken hand behind her back, joining the other in a facsimile of the Jedi Master's position, though her hands held her notebook where his were empty. "I've been here -- a little more than a cycle now, I think. I tried to return to the Temple on Coruscant, but -- "

Her face darkened and she frowned, her voice trembling and then breaking off. She looked briefly toward the floor plating. " -- luckily," Andy amended course, "they set up the beacon that directed me this way." She glanced sidelong at him curiously. "What brings you to Zakuul?"

William Thule​

 

[William Thule]

What brought him to Zakuul indeed, as if it were a simple research assignment and not a matter of existential crisis.

“I come because I am at a crossroads,” he said softly, “Seeking direction.”

They turned a corner and came upon an indoor garden, meant to be some pale echo of those within the Jedi Temple on Coruscant. It could not compare, of course, but should that detract from the value of these flowers and ferns? No.

“But it is well you made it here, far from the fighting,” his mouth formed into a hard line for a moment as memories crept into his mind. The bodies of so many Jedi Knights scattered across the Temple steps, like fallen leaves.

“In times like these, it is difficult not to be afraid. Of the future. Of what is to become of the Order. Of our friends.”

The trembling note in her voice had not escaped him. He paused a moment in this garden before a cluster of hundred petaled chrysanthemum. Reaching out, Thule ran a finger along the soft sliver of one golden petal.

“A resilient flower, blooming late into autumn, when all others have withered away,” he muttered from memory, almost to himself.

Nearly every Jedi he had known was with the Force now. He wondered if the chrysanthemum felt the same sense of loneliness, knowing it was the last to fall.

“Did you have many friends on Coruscant? Your master?”

Andromeda Demir

 

[Andromeda Demir]

Andromeda stopped at the garden, too feeling what might have been the whimpering echo of the grandeur of the Coruscant temple. Harmed as she was by her upbringing on Irvulix V -- a hard life that she had come to believe no one should endure in a galaxy as abundant as this one -- it gifted her with some perspective. The garden here might have been a pale imitation of others, but it was more greenery and beauty than existed on the whole of her homeworld.

"Beautiful," Andy said with a faint smile. This was one of her favorite places to sit in the morning, to meditate and center herself before the day began. There had been moments she could swear she felt the chrysanthemum petals opening and closing in time with her breathing.

She went around the other side of the planter, positioning the chrysanthemums between herself and Master Thule. She leaned in, cupped a blossom to her face, and gently inhaled. The scent of the flower was refreshing and green. She took another deep breath of the smell in response to his question. The answer was complicated and simple, true and false. "There was a girl. She was kind to me during a difficult time in my life. She showed me how to use the computers in the library." A beat. "That's not to say -- I mean, everyone was -- kind. In their way. But she looked at me and saw a scared child and helped me in ways that the institution simply could not."

She smiled fondly and straightened, letting her thumb brush across the flower. "I saw her on the holonews, of all places, so I know she survived. As much as anyone can survive what happened to Coruscant and the rest of the core." She shook her head faintly. "But I wasn't... I wasn't there long enough to be assigned a permanent master. I traveled, mostly. Along the front lines, after the battles, to help where I could." True, but false. Complicated, but simple.

The padawan noticed a bit of decaying among an adjacent fern and busied herself applying the green thumb she had been developing over the last few weeks to pull the dead bits away. Keeping her hands and eyes busy so that when her question came it didn't seem too impertinent, too nosy. "If you don't mind my asking -- what direction are you hoping to find here? I thought the Council was -- gone." Voice going tremulous again, despite her best efforts to seem solid and stoic. It was the Jedi way.

William Thule​

 

[William Thule]

“Yes,” he said sadly, “They are.”

Eyes dark as onyx watched her work, noting the surety with which she pruned away the dead pieces of the plant. There was a warm strength and confidence in her, underneath that shy exterior.

“But we will always have the Force. I hoped I might see its will better here, away from the Core.”

Something bothered him about what she’d said. The idea that the Order had been so preoccupied with the war that they’d completely overlooked the training of their own. Thule knew he himself had not taken an apprentice since his last one fell. He expected the other Masters, the few who were left, felt the same.

“So no one has seen to your training? Beyond the standard curriculum I mean.” He peered through the chrysanthemum blossoms at her. That was not right. She had been overlooked. Like some of these plants. Neglected. Perhaps their meeting was not mere chance after all.

“Why did you join the Order?”

Andromeda Demir

 

[Andromeda Demir]

Andromeda's pulse quickened at the implied incredulity of the question, and she cocked her head to one side, lips forming and reforming words she couldn't settle on. "It's -- it's -- well, it's complicated," she said, the words tumbling from her lips. She didn't like the idea that she was blaming the Order for her current status. It was her fault -- all of it -- and just like always Andromeda Demir was making a muddle of things. "And it's a long story."

She looked at him, dark eyes wary, clearly giving him an out from delving too deeply into what was probably not especially significant to him or the Order. When he did not demur, she pursed her lips briefly, took a breath, and sighed as if to say I did warn you...

"I came from a small world way out there, which hardly anyone in living memory has ever heard of. I came to find out later -- through research in the Archives at the Temple I told you about -- that Irvulix V was settled as a prison colony, a dumping ground for the refuse of some long-dead planet whose name I don't remember." She glanced at him, shamefaced, and turned to find the refuse collection bin, where she stuffed the dead fern leaves and stalks. She stayed there. "My ancestors were the dregs of that world's society, shipped off. But then there was a sickness. The Gulag Plague. The ships stopped coming. History gets a little muddled; the records are spotty. Over time we forgot -- what we were. Who we came from. We forgot that there was a galaxy beyond ours, we forgot that there were ships that had once come and gone. We were just the people who worked the land or people who lived in The City, the ruling families. I was in a mining village. I was only a girl, not strong enough to swing an axe, so I hauled water down to the miners."

She turned back to the flowers and approached, dropping onto the padded bench that ringed the chrysanthemum planter. Andromeda reached out for one of the low-hanging buds, but stopped short, as if her fingers were unclean and would wither the plants. "No one knows why, but some generations ago, there was a terrible disaster that ruined the planet, poisoned the air and water and soil. Conditions went from dire to desperate.. The City blamed those among us who were tainted with the curse. Those who could touch the Force. Anyone who displayed the slightest aptitude were executed."

Her dark eyes glanced up at William once more, her face a mask of anger and grief. "At some point -- I don't know how or when -- the smugglers that kept the corrupt oligarchs in The City fat and happy learned of the slaughter of the cursed ones. Men and women and -- " She brushed spilled tears away from her cheeks with the back of her hand, unable to put the words into the universe. Children. They murdered the children. " -- anyone. The smugglers hatched a plan to form a kind of -- rescue. Village Chiefs would identify the cursed before The City could, and they would be smuggled offworld, their absence explained as one of the all too common deaths the people were subjected to in the mines or the poison fields."

Andromeda stood and braced herself on the stone planter. "Two years ago there was a mine collapse. It was the first time I'd touched the Force, I didn't know -- how to control it, how to even voluntarily touch it. I was terrified. I held the rocks up from over my head. The Chief saw. Officially, I was one of the seven people that were killed that day. A smuggler named Baig smuggled me off of Irvulix V in what was, for all I knew, the belly of a monstrous metal bird. The smugglers had agreed to take us -- the cursed ones -- to whatever Jedi Order was most mainstream at the time. So, then, it was the New Jedi Order -- first on their ship, then on to Coruscant."

"I studied at the Temple for a few months," Andy went on carefully. "But I had a terrible premonition -- like a vision -- that my brother Ares was in terrible danger. Ares and I were very close, growing up, especially after our older brother died in a gas explosion. The teachers told me that didn't necessarily mean it was true. That a dream like that could be interpreted any which way, that our own anxieties and insecurities could influence them, but -- I knew better." This last came with a bitter twist of her lips into a grimace. "I contacted Captain Baig and... well, I think I must have bullied him into taking me back to Irvulix V. The village was deserted, but we found maps and plans in the village hall, showing some sort of plan to attack The City. My brother, in his grief over my apparent death..."

Here her voice broke, her sadness and grief radiating into the Force around her link an inky black stain into pristine water. She dabbed at her eyes, now red-rimmed and dribbling tears every time she blinked. "You see, it's all my fault. Everything that happened there. Everything that happened since. Don't think harshly of the Order. What I did..." She took a deep breath to steady herself. "My brother had only gone and launched a revolution. He united the villages and marched on The City and destroyed them. But I wasn't the only outsider on Irvulix V." She jammed her hand into her pocket, took out the crumpled sketch. "The Shadow had finagled his way into Ares' inner circle. When I found them he recognized my Force sensitivity. Knew that I was not twisted by the dark side, as he was." Anger mixed into the potent cocktail of emotions that mixed within Andy. "We fought. My brother's friend -- my friend -- got tangled up in it. I can't even remember exactly how it happened, even though I remember it every single night -- and I killed him. Tiny -- my friend. And the leader of The City."

Andy was struggling now to keep her composure. The tears had flown freely, but she hadn't begun to cry, not given into it -- yet. But her voice had grown steadily more shaky, more unsteady, the anguish apparent. "And the Shadow overpowered me. Cut me, destroyed my lightsaber." One hand instinctively going to her other forearm, where she could almost feel the burns and ruined tendons there, long-since healed. "Baig rescued me, and we had to get away. I had to leave Antares behind with that -- monster. And Light only knows what has happened to him since. The teachers were right; I should never have gone. Oh, I would give anything if I had just -- not gone."

"When I got back and told them what happened -- what I had done -- the teachers were horrified. And yet when I submitted myself to discipline, the Council never bothered. So I -- I punished myself. I joined the Service Corps and volunteered for every assignment I could. That's where I've been since I returned from Irvulix V. But then the Empire attacked and I thought the Order would need all hands on deck, I tried to go back to Coruscant, but... well. That's the whole story."

Andromeda took a deep, shaky breath, her dark eyes searching Master Thule's face for some sign of judgment, the condemnation she knew she so richly deserved. "That -- that was a lot. I'm sorry."

William Thule​

 

[William Thule]

The Jedi Master watched with rapt attention, eyes focused solely on her. What must it have been like, he wondered, to grow up thinking that you were alone in the galaxy only to discover the greater universe out there, waiting? But he could feel guilt and pain and sadness weighing down her sense of wonderment and excitement of so many new discoveries. They draped around her like a cloak of shadow. Well did he know that burden of grief and regret.

When his last padawan fell to the Dark Side and he cut the boy down, there were no words to describe that misery or the sense of how utterly he had failed the boy. Perhaps that was why he'd never sought to take another student since. So he could understand something of what wracked her now and did not blame her for the streaming tears or the streaming words that were as good as tears. Had she ever told anyone her story? Had she been so pushed to the side and relegated? Again he was struck by the travesty of it all and felt a pull toward her, indescribable. Maybe it was destiny or the Force, but there was something about her. About the way she trusted him with her story. About the way she looked at him.

Thule moved around the stone planter and rested a comforting hand upon her shoulder, looking down at her.

"You have nothing to be sorry for, Andromeda," he said softly, bring his other hand up and brushing away a tear from her cheek with his thumb, her skin warm and the tear hot with pain. "Thank you for sharing this with me. I know it cannot have been easy to retell. I know what it's like to take a life and wonder if you did the right thing. You were placed in an impossible situation. You made a decision. You took action. You think, you feel, potentially the wrong one - and so you sought to pay a penance for it. If every Jedi put as much thought into their actions and their consequences as you have, then the galaxy might be a brighter place."

But the Council... ah, the Council. The Jedi's very own grinding wheel of bureaucracy. He once respected many of the masters on the Council, but as a whole the decisions produced could be... astoundingly inept. And clearly no one had sought to give Andromeda Demir a second look.

His fingers squeezed her shoulder gently.

"But you do not need to keep punishing yourself. We do need all hands on deck, as it were," he smiled tightly, "Your lightsaber was destroyed... have you built a new one?"

Andromeda Demir

 

[Andromeda Demir]

​

It was the first time she had told the story -- the whole story -- to anyone. Others had heard it in bits and pieces. Andy would have confessed the whole thing to the Jedi Council if they had been interested enough to listen. She could still remember sitting in the antechamber to the Council, staring at the floor, tangentially aware of the sunlight moving across the floor as the sun rose and then began to fall. The worry and wait had been torture, the guilt an exquisite pain that she took as her due for her crimes, but it had all led to nothing.

Some small part of her had hoped that this Jedi Master, who for reasons she could not understand took an interest in the inattentive, distracted padawan, would impose the penalty that the Jedi Council had not. She longed to set her feet to the path of redemption, hoping that someday she would be free of the guilt. But he didn't. Master Thule instead offered pragmatic absolution: the assurance that however foolish her actions, however catastrophic the results, her intentions and her willingness to take accountability was what mattered.

Andromeda didn't know that she believed it. But there was something in the feeling of being seen, being heard, and being understood -- having told the whole story, warts and all, and having it absorbed -- that heartened her.

"My lightsaber," she echoed automatically. Andy realized she had been looking down at her tear on his finger, slowly evaporating in the dry conditioned air of the outpost. Her eyes lifted to the Jedi Master once again. "No -- never. I didn't think I should have one until I could trust myself. Which, I suppose, renders my plan to aid the war effort ridiculous." In her defense, she still had a blaster, and a training saber. It was just blades that could cut through almost anything, including two human bodies, like a hot knife through butter that made her uneasy.

"But maybe -- maybe it's time."

William Thule​

 

[William Thule]

“Yes, I believe it is.”

He let go of her shoulder, folding his hands once again behind his back, which was straight as a rod. Posture was everything, they’d drilled into him. And it was something the Order emphasized as well. So he stood tall, with back straight, and projected an air of confidence he might not fully feel himself.

“The first step toward finding peace again is forgiving yourself. The second is trusting yourself.”

Thule smiled, teeth flashing white. “Meet me in the meditation room tomorrow at seven and we will see what we can do about that lightsaber of yours.”

Then he inclined his head ever so slightly in a gesture of respect, “I look forward to further conversations, Andromeda.” He turned and walked away down the hall.

* * *

The next morning, Thule waited with legs crossed in the center of the meditation room. Components lay spread out neatly before him, along with a series of crystals in different hues.

He spent part of the previous evening reading Andromeda Demir’s personnel file to understand who exactly he was dealing with here. She was right. The Council should have taken some action after her report. Instead, they oscillated uselessly. It frustrated William. So too did the latest news from the Alliance. Without the governing apparatus of the Alliance, planets were falling quickly - and the Jedi blew about aimlessly, able to do little beyond act as swords. What a waste of their abilities, he thought.

Not for the first time, he wondered if the Jedi could be more effective without the fear of how an external bureaucracy might react. Could they exercise direct control over a planetary government and steel enact the Will of the Force? Could they do so more effectively?

He wondered, lips pursed, eyes slightly hooded.

Andromeda Demir

 

[Andromeda Demir]

​

When Andromeda appeared the next morning, she looked a little different. Not just in her dress, though she had exchanged her gardening gear for something more appropriate to the meditation chamber: leggings and soft boots, a form-fitting tunic and a small utility belt. She had tied her hair back into a simple braided tail. When she looked at herself in the mirror while braiding and pinning her hair, Andromeda noticed that her mouth wasn't downturned like normal. Her shoulders weren't stooped under the invisible weight of shame.

She broke her fast with some toast and tea before joining Master Thule in the meditation chamber. Andromeda paused at the door, taking a deep breath to steady and center herself before she touched the controls. The door whisked open and Andy looked in, seeing that Master Thule was already present, though she was a few minutes early.

"Good morning, Master Thule," said the contrite padawan, stepping over the threshold and letting the door whoosh shut behind her. She approached and dropped to her knees opposite from him before settling, cross-legged, onto the mat. She reached into her utility belt and extracted a small, roughhewn drawstring bag, its providence plainly Irvulix given its patchwork nature and age. Andromeda untied the drawstrings and emptied its contents onto the mat in front of her: the two halves of her lightsaber, cleaved in two by the Shadow's blade.

"I thought we might need this," she told Master Thule quietly.

William Thule​

 

[William Thule]

“Good thought, and good morning.”

William reached forward and picked up a half of the cloven hilt. His fingers traced the plasma scoring left by her foe’s lightsaber. It was a wonder he didn’t take off her hand as well with such a blow.

“You said that he cut you?” Thule asked, looking up from the separated half of inanimate metal to the person before him, who likely felt anxious at the concept of recreating such a dangerous weapon.

“I can’t promise you that it will never happen again,” it would be a dangerous and false promise, “but we can give you a better chance. I’m sure you’ve heard the old adage: a Jedi’s lightsaber is not a sword, it’s a shield. We wield them to protect ourselves, but more importantly to protect those who cannot protect themselves. The weak and defenseless. That and that alone should be your reason for fashioning a new one.”

Not revenge. Never revenge. And yet, he was no blameless paragon to show her the way. The Dark Side constantly sought to pull him under after all he had done. Sometimes existence felt like he teetered on a blade’s edge.

“First, let’s start with a new crystal. Do any of these call to you? Touch them in the Force. See if they respond.”

They glinted in the light, some iridescent, others slightly opaque, citrine and jade and azure and violet, even silver and orange.

“A long time ago, the colors represented a purpose as I’m sure you’ve heard. That no longer exists, but your lightsaber is to be an extension of you and therefore it should be a mirror to your own personality.”

Andromeda Demir

 

[Andromeda Demir]

​

At the mention of her injury, Andy's other hand went instinctively to where her arm had been painstakingly reconstructed, muscle fiber by muscle fiber, tendon by tendon. The scars lingered, a grisly reminder of the pain that she had endured. She didn't pull back her sleeve to show him; she thought she had overshared rather enough the evening before -- the memory of which drew a chagrined rosy tint to her bronze cheeks.

"I remember," she said quietly. A Jedi's lightsaber was to be used as a lethal weapon only in the last resort, in defense of life -- barely a hesitation as the blade cleaved into Tiny's middle and then, half a second later, The City functionary's -- Andy squeezed her eyes shut a moment and rested her hands on her knees, fingers curling into her skin. "It seems like a simple prescription," she mumbled, forcing her eyes open again. She looked across the short distance at Thul. Tense first, but then Andromeda softened, her eyes becoming unguarded, almost appearing wider. For once, Andromeda didn't feel the need to answer for herself, to explain that -- defense and protection of the defenseless -- was what she had been trying to do.

He knew. She thought for a moment that he could see every part of her -- her intention, her anxiety, her shame -- down to the microscopic traces of the mine dust that she could swear she still felt sometimes. He's here to help.

Her attention turned to the crystals, listening intently to Thule's instruction. Andromeda allowed herself the exhilaration of touching the Force, letting it wash over her like cool water, clean and pure. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up, and she took a shaky breath. Andromeda Demir smiled, really smiled, for the first time in over a year. To touch the source of their power, the energy that bound the universe together, in peace -- not confronted with brutalized bodies or wrecked cities -- was joy.

She didn't need to touch the crystals with her fingertips, or to look at them, but as Andromeda closed her eyes she allowed her hands to hover over them, one by one, channeling the Force into them. Some of them seemed to whisper into the Force connection between them. Andromeda received something from each -- flashes, ideas, a feeling -- study breathed one; reconcile whispered another; fight! hissed a third. So it went until she was second from the last crystal, an opaque, nearly opaline crystal that didn't hiss whisper or hiss, it didn't simper or sigh. Be Andromeda, it announced but not in words, rather in a flash of a feeling.

What does that mean? she wondered, channeling her curiosity into the connection between herself and the stone.

Grow into Andromeda. Learn what is Andromeda. Become Andromeda.

Her eyes flicked open, inquisitive and alarmed and exhilarated in equal measures. "Did you feel that?" she asked breathlessly. "This one. I -- I know it's this one." Her hand hovered over it, as if she was drawing warmth from its opaline surface.

William Thule​

 

[William Thule]

"Good," William smiled.

The color or lack thereof did not truly matter except as an expression of the Jedi's own persona in the Force. They might all be part of the Force, but that did not mean that they were completely absent of individuality. Rather, they were like trees in a forest, whose roots all connected into a massive network. Each tree both an individual and part of the whole.

"Then that one it is."

Choosing the crystal was the simplest part, unless they brought back the trials in the Ilum caves. And they simply did not have the time. Besides, she'd already built her first blade. Why push her through such a rigorous test for another in the name of tradition?

"Now for the next part. You've done it before. Trust yourself and trust the Force."

She would need to simultaneously levitate each of the individual pieces of her lightsaber and then fit them together using the Force so that each part closed together perfectly. It could be dangerous. An inattentive padawan could let the crystal slip, or get the focusing lens a millimeter off center, with explosive results when activated.

Thule raised two fingers on his right hand and pulled with the Force. A thin strand of molten electrum flowed up from a superheated bowl which sat upon a portable burner on the floor along with the rest of the assorted components. The strand glinted beneath the room's artificial light, shimmering and flowing like a liquid as he exerted control to prevent it from dripping.

"I will hold this until you place the other pieces together. Then use it to seal the cut in the hilt."

Luckily, the cut seemed mostly clean. Precise. It would not be as difficult as piecing back together metal shattered into a hundred bits. But that did not mean it would be easy.

He did not tell her that the electrum came from one of his own necklaces. Part of the Thule collection. This seemed a better use of the jewelry.


Andromeda Demir

 

[Andromeda Demir]

​

Perhaps it was a function of the way in which Andromeda's connection to the Force first manifested itself -- holding the half-dozen boulders threatening to crush her in the air -- that telekinesis had always been one of her strongest talents. It had taken training and honing and focus to fine-tune her ability to control and not just lift, to hold and manipulate multiple things at once. Even more study was required to learn and master fine control as was required for the construction of a lightsaber.

As it happened, she was a little out of practice. During her self-imposed exile, Andromeda shied away from the use of the Force when not absolutely necessary. No fine control was required when hurling duracrete rubble off a trapped family or stopping a collapsing water tower from crushing a shelter. The lack of practice showed at first. Patience, Andy told herself, surprising herself by how gentle the rebuke was. Even her internal monologue had changed since her original encounter with Thule. She was allowing herself to be kind again, as well as firm. One wrong move, and -- no, she didn't want to feed that particular anxiety.

It helped to feel Master Thune's attentive gaze lingering there, his presence in the Force -- not interfering, but there. Observing. At the ready.

Andromeda hadn't expected to be cannibalizing her old, broken lightsaber. She had grabbed the bag on a whim on her way out the door. Now, as she shifted the elements of the lightsaber's inner mechanism together, painstaking movements, her control improving every moment, she allowed herself to wonder why. What lesson was this meant to teach her, what was the point? A literal, physical reminder of the metaphorical truth, that her past -- including her mistakes, her misjudgments, and her misdeeds -- would be with her always? That that which is destroyed could be set to rights? That failure was only fatal if you let it be?

She allowed her dark eyes to flick up to Master Thule's face, and immediately flinched when their gazes collided. She would have wagered he was watching the progress of the lightsaber, not the erstwhile padawan. Andromeda felt a prickling at the nape of her neck of something -- embarrassment? She didn't have time to examine that sensation, to interrogate her reaction, because a discordant sound -- nearly silent, but magnified by the stillness of the room -- emanated from her construction project as some inner mechanism trembled as a result of her wandering attention. Andy resisted the urge to overcorrect, knowing that at this delicate stage, it could do more harm than good.

"I will hold this until you place the other pieces together. Then use it to seal the cut in the hilt." Master Thule's gentle voice came through her focus and considerations.

I doubt it's some kind of budget-related cost-cutting measure, she thought wryly to herself as she brought the gears and gizmos, the focusing lens and the actuator back into harmony. "Thank you, Master Thule," she said quietly, lips turning up slightly at the edges, though she did not raise her eyes or her focus.

The fine detail work took very careful concentration, and Andromeda lost track of time, pausing only to dab a singular bead of sweat that formed on her forehead with her sleeve. Finally, she gathered the two halves of the broken housing together around the lightsaber's new innards. She reached in the Force for the liquid metal, molten and shimmering in air between them. It felt unfamiliar in the Force, and odd -- she knew it was unbearably hot, could feel it in the Force without feeling the damaging heat. And more, it bore an unmistakable trace of Thule himself, in a way that Andromeda could hardly perceive and could not describe.

The material was liquid, and Andromeda experimentally tugged at a point of it, felt Thule's control of it yield. She drew it between them. The process was experimental, manipulating the metal through the air -- letting it cool just a little as she wound it between the wounded halves of her lightsaber. The effect was not a new lightsaber, nor was it an old, broken one, but a treasure. Her lightsaber was bound, almost as if with a ribbon, in the most beautiful gold-silver alloy, which filled what had been an angry slash. The golden color filled in even the tiny cracks that Andromeda hadn't known were there, so that there were little -- veins, almost, or roots -- rising in either direction from the now-healed slash.

Andromeda didn't dare touch it, letting it hover between them as she gently maneuvered the remainder of the molten metal back to the mass controlled by Master Thule. But she allowed her eyes to take it in, rotating it slowly so she could see all angles before she lifted her gaze to Master Thule's.

For once, the oversharing, overthinking padawan was struck dumb.

William Thule​

 

[William Thule]

The remaining thread of molten aurodium rushed back into the cup, an aerial river returning to the ocean, until not a drop remained. Thule lowered his fingers and looked at Andromeda's creation. His eyebrows rose e'er so slightly, dark eyes widening. She exerted such control despite being only a padawan. Impressive. The lightsaber might be built on the same bones as her old one, but its spirit was new.

"Well done," William said, with a slow nod.

Those warm, umber eyes of hers shimmered in the artificial light. Shaken, perhaps, but what she accomplished. Thule suspected that she did not ever believe she would hold a lightsaber again, or maybe that she did not believe she deserved to. She sat there, mute, in her form fitting robes, dark hair in neat braids.

"Your new lightsaber is now more a work of art than the original. The most beautiful things are often broken ones," he murmured, though his gaze was not on the lightsaber at all, "Scars are merely badges of all we have faced and overcome."

Thule bore his own such mementos. A circular scar on just below his right clavicle, mirrored on his back, from where a plasma blade punched through him. And a half-dozen blaster burns besides.

"Ignite it," he urged.

Andromeda Demir

 

[Andromeda Demir]

​

Andromeda opened herself up to the Force, sensing for danger, feeling none in her expansive reach. It was just Thule, the crystals -- even now, whispering, murmuring, hissing -- and other components, and Andromeda herself.

And the lightsaber.

Tendrils of the Force like feathers rushed across the surface of the lightsaber, delved within it, touching and testing every piece, every mechanism, each gear and lens and connection. Looking for weaknesses, looking for faults, looking for any indication of danger. She didn't feel anything, not even the whisper of warning that occasionally alerted her to impending danger, let her turn just right. Nothing but silence.

She didn't find it comforting. Not this time.

Her eyes looked up to the Jedi Master's and this time she didn't flinch. She was earnest when she said: "You should step back." Her eyebrows furrowed a little when he made no movement to retreat. "It could be -- dangerous," Andromeda said. Stupid, really, given his stature. He would have built at least one lightsaber of his own, probably had padawans who'd built theirs. He must have been well acquainted with the dangers. "Master Thule..."

His response was only a gentle smile, which the padawan found to be enigmatic. Andromeda didn't take comfort from that either.

She took a breath and gave a half-shake of her head as if to say your funeral... and she turned the hilt so that it was upright. She thumbed the switch and with a telltale snap-hiss a brilliant blade erupted from the hilt, equal parts sunlit forest verdigris and purest sky cerulean, combining to a vivid nearly-cyan. Both their features were momentarily washed out by the brilliance of the light until balance was restored, the soft thrum of the lightsaber replacing the anticipatory silence.

No explosions. Her hand was still very much attached, and neither one of them had a face full of shrapnel.

"We did it," she whispered.

William Thule​