Chapter Text
Chapter One:
Return Home
“The last time 1219 was used, the Rusaan Formation
changed everything, Faie. Everything.”
– Quinlan Vos to Clone Commander Faie Amidala
after the issuance of Emergency Jedi Transmission #09-A-1219
In the waning days of the Clone Wars, the Jedi have been cast like a net across the galaxy with holes the size of planets for their enemies to slip through. There are lonesome Masters at the head of silent armies, too weary anymore to protest the ever onward march. There are exhausted duos of Knights, of Padawans or bastard mixtures of the two, trading hollow looks across battlefields strewn with the bodies they’d failed to save. There are infantile Apprentices, advanced to ranks beyond their comprehension by the necessity of the War’s unending advance.
They glisten in the darkness of the War like pinpoint stars, but their light reaches no farther than themselves, and it blinds them to the beasts that prowl about the edges of their vision. At night, they dream of blood and blasters and bruises and broken bones, and when they wake, their eyes are hollower than when they went to rest. The Force aches, but it never tells them why. It cries, but it never gives word to its sadness. It screams, but it does not point to the source of its pain. And the Jedi can do nothing. Nothing.
Nothing, while the War rages across the entirety of the galaxy. Nothing, as millions die in service to a cause neither side can articulate. Nothing, as the Senate debates in endless congress over pointless matters of banking regulations and executive powers. Nothing, as their Padawans ask when the fighting will be done and cry themselves to sleep when they tell them they do not know. Nothing, as they etch the names of their Clones onto their hearts and souls with each one passed. Nothing, as the War ingrains itself into their psyche so intrinsically that they begin to give it deference, capitalizing the word within their own heads as if it has itself become another living organism that they daily fail to help.
It drives them mad, but they have no time for madness. They must e’er continue.
In the waning days of the Clone Wars, there are over a thousand Jedi Masters, Knights and Padawans scattered throughout the cosmos. When the message comes through on their private channel, separate from the military frequencies and meant only for them, they lift their heads as one to read what words the Council has for them. Some frown. Some smile. Some fear. Some hope. Some weep. Some delight.
Not a single, solitary one of them thinks for a moment of ignoring it.