Character
Tag:
Isola Delaine
The dormitory on Tython smelled faintly of stone dust and old wood, like a place too ancient to be new again no matter how many times it was scrubbed clean. Sunlight filtered through narrow windows, casting beams across the sparsely furnished room with nothing in it save a bed, desk, and a small closet. It was simple, functional. Jedi.
Jackson Lesan stood alone in the center of it all, surrounded by a half-unpacked duffel and the unfamiliar quiet of a world that still didn't feel like home.
He knelt to pull out a bundle of spare tunics when a box of training tools slid from the top of the pile, teetered, and fell. A small metal dumbbell rolled free clanging once off the side of the bedframe before landing squarely on his foot.
"Frak!" he snapped, hopping back and nearly falling over the edge of the bed.
He caught himself with one hand on the mattress, the other cradling his throbbing foot. For a second, he just stood there, hunched, breathing through clenched teeth as the sting pulsed upward. Then came the wave of frustration not just at the dumbbell, or the bruise already forming beneath his boot, but at everything. The silence. The distance from everyone he knew. The hollow ache of missing CJ. The way this whole new chapter felt less like a beginning and more like being dropped into the middle of a book he hadn't read the first half of.
He exhaled hard through his nose, shaking his head. "Great start, Lesan," he muttered.
The dormitory stayed quiet. No laughter from nearby rooms. No familiar voices. Just the sound of birds outside and the low hum of ancient generators buried deep in the Temple's foundations.
Jackson sat down on the edge of the bed, his foot still sore, and rubbed his temples. He wasn't sure if it was the pain or the loneliness that hurt more, but either way neither was going away anytime soon.
Jackson sat there, staring at the dumbbell like it had done more than bruise his foot. He blamed it as if it had personally summoned every ache he'd tried to keep buried since leaving Jakku.
He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and let his fingers lace together. The silence around him deepened, until the soft whoosh of a desert wind seemed to take its place, a phantom noise from a world that felt galaxies away.
Jakku.
The Enclave hadn't been much. A scattering of durasteel shelters patched with canvas, half-buried in sandstorms and prayer. But it was home. A place where sunrises stretched wide and orange across the dunes, and the only thing more stubborn than the heat was the people who chose to live there. People like Master Romi Jade.
Her presence always filled a room, not with volume, but with weight. The way she moved, spoke, taught… she never wasted words, never performed for the sake of attention. She didn't need to. She was the center of gravity for so many of them.
For him.
He remembered how she'd correct his form without saying a word—just a look, a gesture, a calm presence that reminded him to slow down and breathe. Her eyes could cut through his frustration like a lightsaber through duracrete, until what remained was just clarity and grit.
The last time he saw her…
He swallowed hard, jaw tightening.
There had been smoke. Fire in the distance. A tremor in the Force so sharp it sliced through him like glass. She told him to stay on Jakku. That he wasn't ready. That others needed him more. He didn't want to leave her. But he obeyed.
That was the last lesson she gave him: sacrifice.
His breath shuddered out, and Jackson rubbed his eyes with the heel of his palm. He didn't cry. Not here. Not now. But the weight of it all sat heavy on his chest like a stone he couldn't shift.
The dormitory on Tython didn't feel like home. Not yet.
But Romi Jade had believed in him. She saw something worth saving, something worth shaping.
And maybe that was reason enough to stay.
Jackson stayed where he was, unmoving. The light from the window stretched further across the floor, golden and warm, but he didn't feel it.
He sat with his memories. Let them breathe. Let them ache.
Not every wound bled. Some just settled beneath the skin and stayed there. So in the silence of the ancient dormitory, alone on a world filled with legends he hadn't earned the right to walk among, Jackson Lesan did what Jedi rarely allowed themselves to do.
He grieved. Quietly. Honestly.
And then, when the moment passed,not because he was ready, but because it had simply run out of time, he stood up. Slowly. Carefully. The pain in his foot a dull echo now, far removed from the pain in his chest.
He didn't speak. He didn't swear.
He just went back to unpacking.
