Private Desert Hermit

[Jend-Ro Quill]

At the ground level, Order 66 succeeded for two reasons. The Jedi had worked closely with their clone comrades, considered them friends. And the clones had acted under compulsion - a complex topic, but suffice it to say there was no malice involved. Malice is the cornerstone of Jedi 'danger sense.'

Thalia Senn 's attack met both of those criteria to one extent or another. And she was fast, strong, on home ground, and moreover she'd picked the perfect moment. Turmoil dominated Quill today - the repercussions of his stunt at the GA/NJO/NIO alliance talks.

All that to say, he had a lot on his mind.

He shied back from Thalia's lunge, eyes wide, and his back thumped on the turbolift wall. The saber cut his right shoulder - a perfect mark of contact if you wanted to take someone out of the fight without killing them. The kid was getting good.

His knees hit the floor. His lightsaber, yanked from his belt a heartbeat ago, rolled through the doors and into the hall with Thalia. Rather than grab for it, he lurched forward with his good left arm-

-and pushed the UP button.

The turbolift slid shut and accelerated upward. He'd bought himself time: to catch up, Thalia would need to sprint for the other lift at the far end of the enclave. Still kneeling on the turbolift floor, he ran through Jedi pain management techniques. His body was going into shock from the third degree burn. He couldn't allow that.

He'd spoken with Romi about the possibility of arrest. He'd decided to go in without resisting. But he'd assumed, naively it turned out, that when the New Jedi Order came for him they'd at least start with words.

 

[Thalia Senn]

​

She physically recoiled when the blade made contact with the Jedi Master, the smell of burning flesh and robes filling her nostrils. What have I done? Tears welled up in her eyes and she found herself dropping the lightsaber. She opened her mouth to sob but stopped herself, cutting it off.

She had to focus. He was getting away and she needed answers. She leaned down and grabbed a lightsaber, her tears, and the darkness blurring her vision. She would have to sprint to the other lift. No time to think, just do. She gave herself a little boost from the Force and was able to get to the other lift. She had to have pressed the button a dozen times before it dinged and its doors hissed open.

How could he do this? How could he betray the Jedi, betray her like this? The lift deposited her onto the landing field, her speeder was already waiting. She revved it and flew over the dunes to where the main turbolift was.

Jend-Ro Quill

 

[Jend-Ro Quill]

Thalia's inner turmoil burned like a bonfire. Quill felt it coming before he heard the speeder. His heart went out to the impulsive Padawan, but he suspected she would do what she perceived as her duty no matter how she felt about it. And right now that involved, at minimum, crippling him. If they met again, she might do something else she'd regret.

It was early morning. He'd become nocturnal since coming here - Jakku had comfortably cold nights - and he'd just been out to tend the water vaporators. His utility speeder's tanks were currently draining dry. He disengaged the hose with a spray of mist, leaving only a few liters in the tanks, and hopped in.

Her speeder roared up. Despite any number of instincts, he gunned the utility vehicle. She could and would disable the vehicle, and with it all kinds of options.

 

[Thalia Senn]

The speeder didn't have any weapons, but did she really need any to disable a utility speeder? She could feel the first taste of warmth from Jakku's sun but it was diluted by the ice cold that lingered in the sand from the cold Jakku night beforehand. Sand pelted her unprotected face but even through the debris she could see the rogue Jedi's speeder now. Why had he run? Well she had just tried to kill him. She felt somewhere deep inside her that she probably should.

She kept that impulse in check even if every fiber of her being wanted to lash out. Her anger was making it difficult to concentrate. Normally, since she'd been practicing Waveform, she could feel and ride the waves of the Force on Jakku but now? It all felt so turbulent it was liable to drown her completely.

She had nearly gained on him now. She didn't trust herself to use the Force and so she leaned out of the side of the speeder, activated the lightsaber that she had thought was her's but now realized it was Quill's, and slashed the rear repulsor. Brutal and unrefined, but efficient.

Jend-Ro Quill

 

[Jend-Ro Quill]

The utility speeder groaned and skidded against the crest of a dune as its rear repulsor block failed. A glance backward told him that Thalia, turmoil twisting her face, was nearly close enough to lash out again - with his own saber. He'd been out on errands, so he hadn't been carrying the Sylus Ren or Kelos Windspeaker sabers like he sometimes did. At the moment, he was unarmed.

The pain was, however, under control. That opened all kinds of doors.

The speeder slid to a halt, embedding itself in a tall curling dune. Quill scrambled free, still favoring his right arm, and got the speeder's bulk between him and Thalia. "How far do you mean to go?" he called over the hum of her speeder and weapon. He raised his empty hands - a warning. "How far, Thalia?"

 

[Thalia Senn]

Her speeder slid to a stop and she stepped out, lightsaber blade still humming. It was the only sound on the dune outside of the wind and the occasional clang of some scavenger out in the distance. Her face was crusted with tears and sand.

"How far are you willing to go old man?!" She shouted. He had put the speeder between them, but she could see the old man's face clearly. He didn't even seem like he was in pain, but he looked to be concetrating. "Why would you help them escape?!"

Jend-Ro Quill

 

[Jend-Ro Quill]

Quill sagged, too tired and on edge to be diplomatic.

"Because they're children like you," he said flatly. "Because I don't think it should be controversial to default to nonlethal options, or at least bring them to the table, if your target is a high school. Because the New Jedi Order and their Imperial allies have no problem slaughtering teenagers for defending themselves with lethal, merciless masters at their backs."

He scrambled over the speeder and moved toward her.

"And that is more important than what color your team wears. Burlap and blue sabers don't guarantee righteousness. Sometimes they just cloak evil. Now do you understand, or do I need to make you think you never found me and send you on your way?"

 

[Thalia Senn]

"They're SITH. They don't deserve to be saved. If we tried they'd just turn on us. Bite our hand as we tried to 'fix' them! They're killing trillions! who cares if a few thousand Sith need to karking meet Chaos?" Starchase and Romi wouldn't have had a problem destroying a Sith Temple. She was sure they'd done just want the New Jedi Order had done several times over. This was war. It was that simple, black and white.

"They wouldn't do that for me..." She muttered. There were tears falling again into the sand. "You...would...really put some Sith's life above the hundreds or thousands they would kill in their future...The Jedi...What if its me they kill next? All because of some overbloated sense of pride." She couldn't even say it without gasping between sobs. She'd really come to like the old man. She had a father, so it wasn't nearly that close of a relationship. But he had been her first Jedi mentor since her old Master abandoned her.

She cursed and threw Quill's lightsaer over the utility speeder and into the sand at Quill's feet., its blade hissing in the sand for a moment before deactivating and falling with a soft thud. She started to reach for her lightsaber but Kaska's words came back. She hadn't been ready to use it last time. That's why Quill was still standing. Her hand was still shaking from feeling that cut.

Jend-Ro Quill

 

[Jend-Ro Quill]

"You've met my new Padawan, Tilon," he bit out, refusing to pick up the saber. "Quiet twitchy kid around twelve? Wizard with plants, spends all his time in the green room? He's one of them, straight from the Sorzus Academy on Ziost. And I thank the Force he's offworld, because based on what you've just said, your next move would be to turn around and murder him."

 

[Thalia Senn]

She felt her mouth working but she didn't have anything to say. She bit her lower lip and hugged her arm to her side to make herself feel smaller. She had met Tilon, though never asked about who he was. Hadn't even spoken to him. It was weird to not be one of two Padawans that called Jakku home so she just ignored him.

"I," she started but et the objection die on the winds. "It's still not right," she managed. "What you said. We're doing our best with what we have." She left the part about Masters doing nothing to guide the Padawans and Knights unsaid. She'd already been abandoned by her Master so she could pursue her own interests so she held no sympathy for Masters talking about misguided Jedi now.

Jend-Ro Quill

 

[Jend-Ro Quill]

"No, you're not. You're charging off to march and purge alongside stormtroopers and masked Dark Side butchers. Plant firebombs in schools. Not even bother to bring nonlethals. Make excuse after excuse, contort your morals, bend over backwards with justifications, sneer at anyone who's fighting on other fronts." He tapped the huge Bryn'adul scar damage all down his right cheek and the side of his neck.

"Thalia, I say this with all appropriate respect to the Galactic Alliance and the New Jedi Order.

"Fuck them."

 

[Thalia Senn]

That was it. The final straw. Anger and sorrow rushed out into the Force and she leaped, clearing the utility speeder. Her own lightsaber was in her hands before she even realized it as she descended on the old man. How dare he. How DARE he. There were so many thoughts in her head about how to respond, to talk to him about how the New Jedi Order had Masters but only the broken, abandoned, and orphaned kids had the strength to stand up to injustice in the Galaxy, how the Masters had left an entire new generation of Jedi to squander their abilities on war when there were plenty of things to focus on in the Alliance.

How a padawan she'd met only briefly in person and become good friends with was one of the nameless Jedi who died fighting the Sith.

She swung her blade down in an arc and fell on the old man.

 

[Jend-Ro Quill]

The fallen saber flicked up to Quill's left hand. A sky-blue blade snapped to life and caught the descending strike. The impact of the block jarred his feet in the sand, but he held firm. He and Thalia had sparred a handful of times; he knew she was quick, strong, and getting there in terms of skill. A Niman stylist, he was no lightsaber specialist, and fighting left-handed did him no favors.

"Fear," he snapped. "Anger." He backed up the dune that he'd crashed into. When the sand slid, he transitioned onto the hood of the dead speeder.

He didn't strike back, not a bit. At the outset, his goal was to let her tire herself out, then cloud her short-term memory temporarily and escape into the crags. The Eremite hermits were out there; this was their sacred valley, and Romi had recently negotiated a treaty with them. They wouldn't obstruct him.

 

[Thalia Senn]

She had to remember that this old man wasn't as feeble as he liked to pretend. She turned on him with a snarl, not hearing his words, the blood pumping in her ears. He was still just an old man, she told herself. She was young, and getting better all the time with her blade and the Force.

She swung her lightsaber in his direction, sending a wave of the force arced like a blade in his direction, a trick she'd picked up from watching Kaska when they first met, a trick she never would have picked up without Quill's tutelage on projected fighting. The Force was filled with her anger and confusion and it made the Force unstable as she tried to tap into Waveform to strengthen her blows.

 

[Jend-Ro Quill]

The waveform-boosted projected strike blasted Quill off the speeder's hood and sent him tumbling over the dune's crest, nursing a cracked rib. Despite himself he felt a flicker of pride: she'd come far.

An idea struck almost as hard. Something that might get through when words wouldn't. They'd talked about Force Light more than once; she'd seen it on occasion. The deeply troubled emotions roiling in her Force connection were a reasonably innocent form of the dark side, and it wasn't like dark energy suffused her, so Force Light wouldn't physically harm her. But in her current state of mind, Force Light ought to dampen her connection-

And, more importantly, give that state of mind a lottery-sized reality check.

He dropped his saber and brought up both hands. Force Light blazed out, a wide-angle glow that turned the desert's soft morning shadows into long stark lines. Thalia's shadow stretched all the way back to the hidden enclave's door.

 

[Thalia Senn]

The Jedi Master was flung off of the speeder and tumbled down the side of the dune. A moment of pride filled her at her feat but was quickly quashed as she remembered where she was. She cleared the dune and was about to launch another powerful waveform enhanced attack when the light flooded her eyes.

Quill was a magnificent user of Force Light. She never really got the hang of it, something about her temper he always said. Either way she couldn't for the life of her figure out why he was using it on her. In fact she could scarcely remember why she had been so angry. She-

The Force exploded in the palm of her hand, pain rushing to fill the short moment of clarity she'd gained. While Quill's intentions had probably been good, her anger had been the only thing keeping her focused enough on the waves of the Force. With that gone and nothing but confusion and those feelings of betrayal returning she'd forced her way through.

Her little boat on the waves of the Force had capsized and she was sinking fast. The waves washed around her, drowning her. She needed help, anyone. Someone-

She was in the sand, screaming, tears streaming down her cheeks and turning it to mud. Her hand up to her elbow was mangled and broken, burns arcing up her dark skin like lightening bolts. There was a lot of blood.

 

[Jend-Ro Quill]

This right here was an inflection point, a crucial choice. Take her wounds and he might not make it far. She might even catch up and finish him off. He considered that unlikely even though she'd now tried to kill him two or three times.

But walk away, even if he called in her location, and she could very well fall to the dark for real.

The decision wasn't hard. He cut his sleeve away and wrapped it preemptively around his own hand. Then he just plain...took her injury.

Not for the first time by any means, someone else's pain flooded his body and drove him to his knees. His hand contorted, shattered like hers had been until a moment ago. Blood darkened the tight-wrapped fabric up past the wrist.

With a shuddering breath, he drew himself up to his full height and raised his good hand.

"Forget which way I went," he said past shock-numb lips. Her body would still be in shock as well, which ought to slow her down. A breeze was kicking up dust through the crags. He had a chance, a good one, to disappear.

 

[Thalia Senn]

The words wormed their way into her mind as she writhed in pain. It was a lot less than before, but she could still feel herself shuddering. Several hours later when the sand finally became too hot to wallow in she stood herself up and walked back up the dune. She was angry at first when she realized that her speeder that she'd been working on had been taken by the old man but all fight had left her body. She just couldn't care anymore.

She found some spare parts in the utility speeder and managed to stitch the rear repulsor into working order and limped her way across the desert. She didn't say anything to Kujo when she arrived. She went straight to the showers, crawled into a corner, and cried with the water on. She didn't know how long she'd been in but the water had long since turned cold when she finally decided to get out and put fresh robes on. Quietly she packed her sack, finding her second lightsaber right where she'd dropped it when she attacked Quill. She gave the Enclave one last look. She really loved this place, but she had done too much damage already. She needed to leave.

It was a long caravan trip to Steadfast where she managed to get passage off-world. Jakku would always hold a special place in her heart but it was time to move on.