Chapter Text
Among one particular generation of the Shriek-Hawk Jedi initiate clan, Bruck Chun is the first to join the Force, dead as a Jedi initiate after being manipulated by a fellow Telosian and a former Jedi padawan, Xanatos du Crion, to bomb the Coruscant temple.
The rest managed to attain knighthood, and even mastery for some, but it is worth nothing. They still died far too early. Mostly in a senseless galactic war that broke out a mere couple of decades after Bruck’s death – within it, or during the wholesale betrayal that ended it.
Obi-Wan Kenobi was the last, killed by his own former padawan learner turned Sith apprentice whom he had not managed to kill at the end of the war. A hopeless, tired, broken hermit, by the time of his death, having lived in a desert for close to two decades, spending much of his time being “crazy old Ben” to the populace.
Then, together, they watch the Empire that rose from the ashes of the Jedi Order and the Republic and so many other peoples die, to be replaced by a pale imitation of the Republic that almost immediately struggles to do anything.
Together, they watch as the struggle dies in the second, more permanent death of the Jedi Order, newly resurrected.
Together, they watch as the New Republic tears into each other, and remnants of the Empire gleefully, whole-heartedly take the chance to swoop in.
Together, they watch as the galaxy is plunged into yet another civil war, tired yet no less vicious and painful for that.
The Sith are no more, then, but so is what makes the galaxy a collective civilisation.
The watchers cry out, so does the Force, so do countless beings dying slow, agonising deaths by starvation, disease, war, enslavement, desperate violence as the galaxy shrinks and withers.
`The Sith and the Jedi caused this,` one observes, then.
`The Ruusan Reformation caused this,` another refutes.
`The Battle of Galidran started this,` yet another points out.
`No, it’s Jinn’s death. Dooku loved him,` a fourth snorts, rather derisively.
`No, the Mandalorian Excision did,` a fifth jumps in before an argument could break out, sparked by that inflammatory tone.
`Nah, it’s what Mandalorians did to Cathar, and what Revan’s faction did in reaction,` a fifth argues. `The Sith benefited, all the while.`
`Mandalorians. Jedi. Sith.` all agree, in the end; even those who have not spoken before.
Hindsight is truly the clearest sight of all, it seems, especially when observed from within the Force like this. And it is karking, kriffing, fucking, shab’la bitter to swallow and digest.
`What can we do?` is the next question, naturally, followed by, `What shall we do?`
Suggestions and arguments pour out and clash with each other, in response, even as the galaxy they tether themselves to in the space-time continuoum continues to degenerate messily, agonisingly.
Members of the Shriek-Hawk Jedi initiate clan are – were – chosen and grouped together because, most of all, they are curious, free-spirited beings, and this shows in the debate that lasts until there are only a double handful of true civilisations left from the previous trillions.
Everything is relative in the Force, though, including time and space, especially when one is bodiless, already dead. So, once they all agree with each other, once they have seen and noted all that they wish to see and try to change within the – frayed, fraying, tangled, tangling, dimmed, dimming – tapestry of the Force, regardless of the said time and space, they link their presences together with each other, tightly, and push.
Because they cannot affect changes now, but they can do it before, and they will.