The New Jedi Order: A Vision of Confluence

PART I: THE FIRST MOVEMENT

I: Silent Futures

Now...

This is a day for Luke Skywalker.

In the earliest hours of his day, when he wakes in a bed, unfortunately quiet and empty, he stretches and steps through a cycle of calisthenics. His wife - who is not in his bed, but on Coruscant, continuing to confound the greatest medical minds of the galaxy with her sudden and unexpected remission - is who turned him onto this habit. He has never been lax in maintaining his physical training, alongside the spiritual, but Mara is a woman of action and motion and habits ingrained through a lifetime cannot be shaken. He rises on one foot, palms pressed together, as stable and solid as the ancient massassi stone around him.

From his bare feet, he is anchored through meters and meters of ziggurat to the firm foundations of the moon - then deeper. Deeper and deeper still, plunging through caverns that have never seen light artificial or natural, through trackless, inky depths of aquifers and deeper still. Deeper into the thickly shifting magmatic layers of the mantle, where the gravity of mighty Yavin tugs and plays. Deeper still to the hot iron core, rotating and thrumming out magnetic bands that keep the sleeting radiation of the gas giant at bay.

He ascends through the clouds as he brings his hands out and away, palms braced in the air, stretching pectoralis majoris and minoris, deltoid and infraspinus. Above him many tonnes of temple are as tissue paper - less - and the stars stretch infinite. Yavin is in ascendence, high and bloated and days are brief as the sun peeks between horizon and the gas giant's limb. Life whirls and drifts in those clouds, those layer-cake bands of sweet nitrogen and chilled hydrogen, down to where oxygen turns metallic and sheets of noble gasses crackle under the grasp of the world. Life thrives maximal and minimal from complex and curious to monocellular with loose chains of ribonuclease drifting in cytocellular goo.

Life, all life. Other moons whirl in Yavin's complex and ordained dance, moons of savannah and ocean, forest and valley, moons no different than the fourth, moons that count out to eight and thirteen and into the twenties. Melodies swim in bays and through lagoons, slith slip through warren-homes and gerb mark zodiac symbols in clay.

He is an axis, a fulcrum, a spindle of light that spears through the moon, through the stars, through sky and sea and soil.

He breathes out as he settles back to his feet. He is merely Luke Skywalker, and he dresses for the day.

Breakfast is made by myriad hands. Sometimes Tionne, sometimes Kam, sometimes older children or apprentices. Sometimes, Luke makes dustcrepes and nausage. There is always boxed meals and cereals and fresh fruits for those on the move, who rise at other times. The children are always energetic, bouncing around with the sort of boundless capacity that only the youthful can manage. He smiles at them, offers good mornings and sleep wells? and listens to them chatter about what they did yesterday, what they want to do today.

He is merely Luke Skywalker, and any grownup willing to listen to younglings is their greatest friend.

Anakin has not been eating with the rest in the mornings - Sannah and Tahiri take a share to his nephew and he knows they break their fast together outside. He asked Anakin why, and his nephew shrugged. But the younglings were younglings and they liked to ask him about his exploits and Luke needed no other explanation.

After breakfast, while Yavin the star still shines between Yavin the planet and Yavin the moon, for a few hours the jungle comes alive with activity. He meets with his nephew and they go out to outlying temples. Most were indexed and at least cursorily explored, if not by Anakin than no doubt by other apprentices that passed through the Praxeum. But the Jedi are still few and the ruins are many and the jungle is vast, so there is always something new to find. He takes Anakin and together they wander through old paths and peer into darkened grottos and eat lunches atop weathered old pillars and crumbling walls and temples.

They don't speak much, but it's a comfortable silence. When his nephew is older, he'll find peace in quiet meditation, as Luke has, but he remembers what it was like to be sixteen and he doesn't press for long days in contemplation. Anakin meditates in motion and Luke can commiserate.

He and Anakin return in the evening, when the sun returns from hiding behind the world above. Atmospheric refraction washes the world in reds and oranges for a strange few minutes each time the sun slides behind the disk of the gas giant, filtering its light through the prism of thousands of kilometers of cloud and atmosphere.

Messages are always waiting. From Coruscant and the headquarters there, from friends and contacts across the galaxy, from forwarding chains. He takes more time than he'd like to read them, keeping abreast, chewing his lip as he sees the continued progress of the invaders. Out of courtesy, he's read in on higher classification details, since Jedi might end up requested for actions. He gets regular updates, clinical and short, about the whereabouts of Ralroost and her escorts. He considers the millions of families of others who serve in the Navy across the front and he is blessed that though he might not know exactly what his niece is up to, he at least knows where she is.

And if he needs to, he can reach out to the spark of vibrancy that she is, out among the stars.

Today he clenches his teeth, one mail flagged priority. As he reads further his brow furrows and his mood slides and he sighs.

The two aren't dead, which he is grateful for. Luxum, he imagines, is spitting with rage. Ken - that is complicated. He knows this isn't the first time the Imperium has, politely, reached out to other polities to request that they 'please come claim your people'. A regional power like this doesn't crop up overnight without catching attention. Especially when the Senate itself sat in closed session over them, especially when SELCORE starts favoring them, especially when it's not exactly secret that Jedi were seen abroad to treat with them.

So far, he's aware that Bothawui has received similar messages, along with NRI (more than once) and rumors are the Remnant has as well, though that's less certain. He's sure that various other intelligence apparati and probably corporations have also tried to stick their fingers into that little world and if Karrde doesn't have at least two people already there, well, Luke would eat a bantha.

It has been the height of politeness for NRI and the Bothan Spynet, but he imagines that those for extra-governmental organizations likely merely…disappeared into that world.

Now, for the first time, Luke is on the receiving end of a 'come and fetch' request. For his own Jedi. His first thought is Ilum, to bring her wayward daughter to heel. But that would be further insult, given the Imperium's proclivities.

He hates politics and politicking. His sister is blessed with all the genes for it. Both Ken and Luxum are, reportedly, fine, despite making 'a scene'. The latter it seems took damage to her chassis, but the Shard herself is undamaged. He rests in his head in his hands, wondering just what they were thinking, but knowing exactly what they were thinking. This was his fault.

He makes arrangements for Kenth Hamner to handle the transfer. As a Jedi and a Colonel, Hamner is the bridge between the New Republic military and the Order. The Corellian is calm and practical, pragmatic and disciplined. It's why Luke leaves him in charge of the Headquarters on Coruscant. Kenth can bring the two wayward Knights back and book them passage to Yavin.

Luke will need a long talk with them both.

He meditates again, when he is done keeping track of his passionate, tempestuous Order and the galaxy at large. He centers himself, in the world and in his family all around him, filling the great Temple. Then he climbs into bed and waits for the next day.

The next morning, he rises with the sun. His bed is still empty and diminished, but he stretches and steps through calisthenics. Perhaps this morning, he will prepare breakfast.​

One Month Ago...

The way stories go is that a boy meets a girl. The girl is shy and the boy is adventurous. The girl is sensitive and the boy is cold. They challenge each other and learn from each other, until the girl learns to come out of her shell and the boy learns the value of quiet times. The girl learns to stand up for herself and the boy learns to be caring. They fall in love and get married and do dumb things like have kids and get a house and settle down and get boring.

That's all silly, and also dumb, and it's not how things worked. Tahiri didn't need to learn anything from Anakin, and he definitely didn't need to learn anything from her except that shoes were Sith inventions and maybe how to send an email every now and then because they both were already great. They were Jedi! And heroes! And adventurers!

Master Tionne really liked telling stories but since Tahiri's life was way more interesting than a story, it got a little boring.

Well, it had been way more interesting than a story until her best friend decided to leave. And then never write. Or visit.

She liked Sannah a lot and they got along just fine. Valin was fun and Chitter could be hilarious and Turi was sweet. But they were kids! Anakin went off to play hero and left her to take care of kids! Well, Tionne and Kam Solusar actually did the taking care of, but as the next oldest after Anakin (and because of her adventures, of course) they all turned to Tahiri instead.

Tahiri, take us to the Palace of the Woolamander, Tahiri let's go to the Low River Temple, Tahiri show us your lightsaber, Tahiri, Tahiri, Tahiri!

Sannah got it at least. She thanked the stars Sannah was around, when they escaped out of the Praxeum to go swimming in the river or talk out in the training clearings in the jungle. Sannah wasn't really supposed to go out without one of the Knights or an adult, but Tahiri was basically an adult so it was fine. Tionne hadn't told her not to, after all.

That's where they wrote emails to that other dummy. Did he know how hard it was to come up with constantly nice things to say? She was bored out of her mind. Out of her mind! Sannah turned it into a game, coming up with the silliest ways to talk up something like, oh, practicing telekinesis (not like Tahiri couldn't throw a ronto if she wanted to) or meditating for the millionth time or sitting through history class or science class.

At first Sannah thought that Anakin wasn't getting them, since he never wrote back, but Tahiri laughed it off. It was Anakin. Half the fun of sending him mail was imagining the look on his face as he tried to figure out what to say back.

He might have been her best friend, but that only made poking him better.

If she also found it really hard to write out her thoughts and also that reading back her letters made her squirm in embarrassment, well, no one had to know that part. Anakin was the one bad at communication, not her. Not in a million years.

So Anakin went off and left her alone to be bored out of her skull while he got to have amazing adventures - she pointedly put aside how much it hurt her that he had to be hurting over Chewie and she couldn't be there for him - for months and months and then only said hi to her for a minute when Master Luke called the convocation after the Praetorite Vong were defeated before he jetted off again.

Two years. Just two years. Two and a half actually but it didn't make that much of a difference and besides, everyone knew that girls matured faster than boys. So she was basically as old as Anakin was.

And then the worst part: when he finally sends an email back, what it says -

Crying wasn't anything bad, but it sucked and it made her feel terrible, and that was something she was going to hold over him too.

And then he showed back up like it's nothing! Not even a warning! He finally emailed her and Sannah back and didn't even bother to say 'oh and I'll see you in a week'. The dummy just had to show up with Master Luke.

She sensed him, obviously, the second the shuttle came out of hyperspace in orbit. Tahiri jolted bolt upright from where she had been laying propped on her elbows, flipping through a holocube. Sannah was laying on her back, a series of balls painted like the moons of Yavin circling above her.

"Really!?"

Sannah started at Tahiri's exclamation and the balls fell right onto her stomach, making the Melodie huff out a gasp. Rubbing her stomach Sannah sat up, glaring vibroblades at Tahiri.

"Sithspawn! What was that, Tahiri?"

Sannah swearing was absolutely not Tahiri's fault. It was probably Streen's.

"It's Anakin!"

Sannah's grumpy irritation vanished like an ice sculpture in the Jundland Wastes.

"Here?"

"Where else!"

The reason Tahiri beat Sannah to the hangar was because Sannah wore shoes, which slowed her down. They all took physics class together, it's like no one paid attention. Bare feet just had better traction. It was science!

Other Jedi were there, like Kam Solusar, since Tionne had a class. Streen too, speaking of, but Tahiri only had eyes for the gull-winged shuttle coming in for a landing. Master Luke's presence was warm and deep and familiar, but it was Anakin that dominated her sense of the Force. It was weird, like she'd forgotten what one of the colors was and now all of a sudden she could see it again. Like the world was still fine without it, but then when it showed back up again she wondered just how in space things made sense before.

She reached out, a friendly poke.

And met a durasteel wall. A durasteel wall made of Anakin, but one that her friendly poke flatted against.

Wow. Ouch. Okay.

Sannah didn't notice at all, bouncing on the balls of her feet. The shuttle touched down, repulsors cooling off with gusts of vapor. The side hatch opened, a ramp extended. Master Luke led the way down, before the shape of another person moved and Tahiri decided now was about a good time.

She bolted past Master Luke, who leaned to the side and it was actually a little impressive that Anakin managed to stay upright.

Bright, ice-blue eyes widened, only centimeters away. His hair was a little longer but he still had that curling bang that dropped over his forehead. Eyes dancing over his face, she noticed a few almost imperceptible new scars here and there, just a little lighter than his skin. So what if she knew his face about as well as her own?

He had to suck in a breath, since she knocked the wind out of him, before he could talk.

"Uh, hi Tahiri."

Yep, that was Anakin. Just 'Hi'.

"Oh, yeah, 'hi' yourself, great big hero-from-space who doesn't have time to keep in touch with his friend."

She had his arms trapped at his sides as she hugged him, but he managed just enough to pat her on the back. It was a really bad hug, but that was fine.

"I've, uhm-"

"Been busy, yeah, yeah. What, you think I didn't know all about it? Well, almost all about it, because we get the news late here, which is too bad that someone couldn't just tell me themselves-" she let him go, because Anakin got antsy if you touched him for too long, and stepped back. "I heard all about Ithor and Dantooine and those crazy Exiles and-"

Anakin still hadn't said anything and something about his expression fuzzed her train of thought. He was just looking at her, like he wasn't quite sure who he was looking at.

"What?"

Anakin twitched, blinking.

"What?"

"What are you looking at?"

His cheeks reddened, because it was pretty much just that easy.

"You - look different."

So did he! That kind of thing happens when you don't see your best friend for six months. Seriously, it's like he didn't pay attention to anything at all.

"Like I'm older? Because wow, I am. Fourteen, like last week."

Anakin looked down at the ramp, making Tahiri realize that, oh, right, she ambushed him before he could even fully get out of the shuttle.

"Well, come on," she gestured, skipping down the ramp as Anakin slunk after her.

"Happy…birthday?" He tried.

She held up her fingers, slightly apart.

"A little late for that. But thanks!"

"I - oh, Sannah!"

The Melodie girl had crept up, still bouncing on her toes, smiling as bright as Tahiri ever saw.

"Anakin!"

She jumped forward, giving him a hug too, which was nowhere near as impressive.

"So what're you here for?" Tahiri asked, as Sannah let go of her best friend, smiling a little more shyly, brushing hair back behind her ear. "I know it's not to see me."

He came here with Master Skywalker, so he probably had some super important, galaxy-saving mission to go on again, where he'd meet up with some kind of supersoldiers from another dimension because that's what he's been up to. Probably were just here to check up on something and then leave again, leaving her here, again, with all the kids -

"Well…kind of." Anakin looked unsure, shifting a little.

Tahiri's thoughts hit a wall and stopped. Which was not easily done, mind.

She looked him over and even though he still felt oddly closed off, muted in the Force from what she knew, Anakin could never, ever lie to her. He might be taller, he might be well, bigger, but - really? He'd actually come back to Yavin to see her?

Tahiri didn't blush. It was warm in the hangar, with all the jungle air coming in.

"Oh. Okay then. Well, you could've warned me, dummy." She punched his arm.

A lopsided grin slowly grew, one that Tahiri knew so well, pushing away the stupid amount of seriousness that didn't belong on her best friend's face.

"Surprise?"

Tahiri considered it, screwed up her face, weighing the pros and cons.

"Alright, fine. It's a pretty good surprise."

"I hoped so. Uhm, show me around? Anything new?"

She rolled her eyes.

"It's the Temple, Anakin. Nothing ever changes here. Seriously. Nothing ever changes."

But she still grabbed his hand, yanking him along, past Master Luke, who smiled and nodded to her. Anakin gamely followed, as perfectly in-synch as they always were. Steps the same distance, matching up exactly. Sannah bounced along behind them, already babbling. The Praxeum definitely was always the same, but if showing Anakin all the stuff he already knew as well as she did meant she got to drag her best friend around, then that was completely fine with her. Besides, with how much was changing already, it was nice that there was something in the galaxy that was certain. Like the sun rising, the Great Temple just was. Older than dirt, and full of a lot of empty chambers, but it was home. Home shouldn't change anyway, it had to be there to come back to.

She was glad Anakin was back. He looked like he needed it.

Only Anakin, though.

​

Now...

A nudge of the Force was all it took to depress the turbolift's button. The door slid closed and it ascended. He could feel the young Master's imbalance from across the Temple. Just as he could feel the young Knight's guarded cheer at being around his friends again. Some were simply easy to get a feel for.

News spread quickly at the Praxeum and everyone knew about Ken and Luxum. It'd been a topic of some debate over dinner a few nights, re-litigating the old debate. Intervention versus passivity. Defense versus attack. The role of a Jedi, as warrior or defender. He could hear the echoes of Master Durron in the words, though the young Master himself stayed quiet. He had made his own position clear, and it was enough.

Ikrit had no answer. Once, he would have said that a Jedi should never become so militarized as to even hold rank within an army. It would have been unthinkable, and he would have made his arguments be those that his own Master would have made, or the Jedi he had known long ago.

That was before he had learned that his own Master, the Order of his time, had accepted the ranks of Commander and General and led armies greater than Ikrit could've ever feared. Things not seen since the great wars with the Sith and Mandalorians. The dreadful revelation of the Clone Wars and the fate of the Order he knew and loved had shaken him and he spent many long days in introspection and meditation at the old Palace of the Woolamander. To learn that his own Master, Yoda, had even embraced the role…

Now, Ikrit was not so sure what his answer might be. Every instinct screamed at him that what the young Knight did - what Anakin did - was against the tenets of the Jedi. Those same instincts also screamed at him that what the Yuuzhan Vong did was an abomination, darker than Dark, and his ears dragged when he realized that within him lived the same divide that threatened to split this new Order in twain.

Anakin had more blood on his hands than any Jedi Ikrit ever knew. So many lives taken by the young boy's blade, so many to the point that he admitted, quietly, to Ikrit that he wasn't sure he even felt anything about it anymore.

The Kushiban's heart ached to hear it. So young, too young, for such weight.

The young Master was up near the apex of the ziggurat, alone, and it took a moment for the turbolift to ascend as high as it could. The doors whisked open quietly and Ikrit stepped carefully out. The world was so very large for a Kushiban - the world built for the average being. Even on worlds like Coruscant - much the same, he heard, despite the gulf of years between his firsthand experience and now - that melted together all beings into a whole, he was quite out of place.

Master Yoda and he had talked about this, his Master indicating it was yet another lesson on their place in the galaxy and in the Force. How nothing is perfect, and everything is a compromise. How the Force cares not, and fills all beings, large or small. Human or Kushiban, Rodian or Hutt. Ikrit wondered what it might have been had other Jedi the ability to experience the world as he did. If that humbling might have placed them on different paths. If Anakin's namesake had felt the humbling experience of a world that cared little for you.

Ikrit pushed it out of his mind. It was no being's fault that the world was made that way. The ease of pressing a key in a turbolift would not turn them from the Dark Side. It was a silly notion, for an old Kushiban.

The young Master knew he was coming, of course. Ikrit made no attempt to conceal himself in the Force. Master Skywalker peered over his shoulder from where he leaned, elbows braced, against an outer wall of the Temple. The jungle spread verdant and emerald into the hazy distance beyond them.

"Master Ikrit," he said, as greeting.

"Young Skywalker," Ikrit nodded. One quick bound and he sat on the wall beside the young Master. He curled his tail about himself, flicking long ears back. Gently, he tapped stubby claws on the ancient massassi stone. "I heard of Luxum and Ken."

Skywalker's lips thinned and his hands flexed.

"They aren't wrong," he said.

Ikrit dipped his head.

"I did not say they were."

"I knew what we were agreeing to. The Imperium isn't good. I respected Sergeant Ascratus for his sense of duty and I respect the conviction of their way of life. I don't agree with it and I never will. But they weren't wrong." Skywalker fidgeted, physically reflecting the inner uncertainty that bled from him.

In truth, there was little way to proclaim Luke Skywalker a Jedi Master. Who could? Who had the authority? The atrocity of the Jedi Purge left vanishingly few Masters who could claim authority to elevate the young Jedi. In some ways, Ikrit supposed he could - as a Master of the old Order, of course - but it didn't feel right. It wasn't his place to proclaim any such thing. His time was past and gone. His role was complete. The Massassi children were freed and he was centuries out of time.

There was little way to proclaim Luke Skywalker a Jedi Master in the ways of old, but it was moments like that that proved his title. The young Master never shied away from questioning himself. He pondered his decisions. He weighed right and wrong. He trusted the Force, as any Jedi should, but he questioned his own interpretation.

Compared to Masters Ikrit had known, young Skywalker surpassed them all.

"They did only as they thought was correct," Ikrit offered.

"Which is what I taught them."

"You did."

Skywalker gave his full attention to the Kushiban Jedi, resting his hip against the low wall.

"What would the Order have done?"

Ah, as he expected. It was not the first time Skywalker asked Ikrit of the old Order and wouldn't be the last. Ikrit had been free with stories about Master Yoda, touched that across time and space, he met another of the great Jedi's students. Something that the two of them could share. Yet, those stories he kept circumspect, speaking more about what was done, less of Master Yoda's teachings.

Something felt wrong to instruct Skywalker on the ways of the old Order. If Ikrit wanted, he could fill an entire holocron with recountings of the ways of the Order under the Republic. He had spent decades as a Jedi, after all, traveling across the galaxy, walking the halls of the lost Temple on Coruscant. He could feed Skywalker everything he recalled and work to rebirth the old Order anew, here on Yavin, but when the thought came he recoiled.

The old Order had its time, and it had passed. Ikrit was a relic. A memory. It was why young Anakin called Ikrit Master, but Anakin was not his apprentice. It was not his place. Ikrit could guide the youth, direct him, care for him, but he could not teach him. Ikrit's ways were not the ways of now. They were not the teachings Anakin, or any of the Jedi, needed. The Force guided the young Master to this refounding and the Force would guide the Jedi of this new Order.

As but a mere servant of the Force, Ikrit could - should - only let it happen.

Ikrit hummed, considering his response.

"What would the old Order have done with the Imperium? Or with your wayward Knights?"

Smiling a little at how Ikrit guessed both questions, Skywalker nodded.

"For the first - you know the answer. The Order did not involve itself in politics. For the second-"

Ikrit paused. The next words would sting, though they ought not.

"-it would not have happened."

He felt it, a spike of guilt as the young Master surely internalized it as blame. An indictment of his teachings, that he had not lived up to the measure of the Jedi.

"What I say, young Skywalker, is that in the Order I knew, the chance of such a thing happening would be so rare as to not be a matter to consider at all. Two Knights, acting on their own conviction? Contrary to the known wishes of their Master? It simply would not happen."

That feeling of disappointment grew, so Ikrit spoke the rest.

"But consider. I say it would not happen. Is this a flaw in you - or in us? You say that Luxum and Ken were not wrong in their worry."

Luke shook his head firmly.

"The Imperium is restraining itself. That much was made very, very clear to me when I spoke with their Primarch. The amount that they fear - or even hate - non-humans is dangerous. The way they treat droids is a bad sign."

"A droid is a droid," Ikrit said with a Kushiban shrug, rolling both his shoulders. "The Force knows them, as it does all things, but in no greater way than in a starship or holocube."

"Not to hear Ilum talk about it. Artoo - is Artoo. And Threepio. Are they the exception? The rule?"

"In my experience, neither," Ikrit said firmly. The invader's hatred of droids, and now that of this new 'Imperium' sat strangely with Ikrit, as did some of the passionate reactions of denizens of the galaxy. A droid was a droid - they were not alive, not luminous in the Force. But - he was centuries removed from his time. It was not his place to judge. "But that is my feeling. I admit that I do not have the perspective of Master Ilum. Indeed, it was my Order that cast her and her children out. Having met them, I cannot say I agree, so you see that in my time, we were not faultless."

Luke rubbed at his chin.

"What worries me is what it means. The hatred in their hearts for something as simple as a droid. The last thing the galaxy needs is a repeat of the vong."

"It strikes me that the two share many similarities." Ikrit noted. He cocked his head, stroking one long ear, straightening and smoothing his white fur. "And many differences. The Yuuzhan Vong reject diplomacy. Master Horn's own friend paid that price. The Imperium is willing to treat with us."

"That's what I hold onto."

The two Masters fell into companionable silence for a time. A flock of insect-birds burst from the canopy, shrieking and hissing and winging off into the distance.

"If the concern of these young Knights was not wrong…what troubles you so, Master Skywalker?"

His answer was immediate.

"They could have gotten themselves killed."

"This is a danger for all Jedi."

"A danger doesn't mean an inevitability. A Jedi shouldn't throw their life away. Luxum took an incredible risk - a pointless risk. She was too confident in her abilities to spoof sensors. She was too used to vanishing in the crowd in a galaxy she understood. And Ken -" Luke trailed off. "I'm worried that we've grown too complacent. We feel too safe. It's costing us lives."

Ikrit had mixed feelings on the human Knight, Ken. Unlike most, Ikrit knew of his true origins. Offspring of a catspaw of Palpatine, the last Sith. Child of a Sith-spawned abomination (in his estimation, at least, though Ikrit had never met Triclops), Ken was hounded by his parentage. Almost zealous in his morality, absolute in his views, Ken, Ikrit considered, might have fit in better in the times Ikrit remembered.

But in young Skywalker's Order? There were reasons why Ken rarely ever graced the halls of the Praxeum.

Arguments could be made about the way the young Master shaped his rebirthed Jedi, but it would be a hard argument indeed to say that many in Ikrit's time would recognize it. He couldn't speak to if this was a terrible flaw, or the greatest strength of Skywalker's Order, but he was who the Force had chosen. For good, or ill.

Skywalker embraced Dark Jedi, he took in those wounded and blinded by hate. He let those strong in the Force come and go freely. He took teachings from unorthodox sects, he felt the guiding hand of the ancient tradition of Jedi on his back, but he did not let it dominate him. By the Force, he even welcomed those who had been directly denounced in times past! See where it led him: young Jedi Taral was willing to lay down her life alongside Jedi, though only a few years past, she fought them.

In the end, it was why Ikrit spoke little of the old Order to the young Master or to others.

He was selfish, in a way. He truly wished to see where this path led.

"I wish they had talked to me," Skywalker said finally, a weight taken from him as he admitted it.

"Would you have prevented them?"

"I've thought about it. I think we could have reached an agreement to allow Jedi access to Eboracum, like how SELCORE is allowed observers. I could have appointed both of them."

"It was not being denied access that unsettled Jedi Luxum and Jedi Ken so. Perhaps, by being present in an official role, they might have had a worse reaction. Perhaps Jedi Luxum would have acted to stop what she saw as atrocity. Perhaps she may have died."

"Perhaps, perhaps…" Luke murmured. "Master Yoda always warned about the future and the dangers of trying to prevent events from coming to pass. You're right. If I had seen this coming, and tried to stop them…Ken and Luxum would have found a way around me. And it could have been worse."

Ikrit nodded, pleased the young Master followed his meaning.

"You have taught your Jedi to act. Is it any wonder that they do? Now they have acted, you may act too."

A small smirk brightened Skywalker's face. He cocked his head at Ikrit.

"What would the old Order have acted to do?"

"Training, perhaps, under their last Master. Or seclusion and reflection. I can think of many ways of correction." Ikrit rose to all four feet and stretched, shaking out his hind legs. His tail twitched and fluffed. "Trust in the Force, as you ever have. It has not guided you wrong yet."

Young Master Skywalker turned back to the jungle, crossing his arms to grip opposite elbows, leaning on the low wall. He felt calmer, more sure, less unbalanced than before. Ikrit judged it a job well done. He needn't teach or lead, he needn't try to revive the old Order. All he needed to be was word of advice, now and then. Someone to speak to. A peer. He could be a peer. He could, in fact, be honored to be a peer of Master Skywalker.

Yet, though he was pleased to have relieved at least some of the young Master's concerns, there was one final subject to broach. One he hesitated to, but one for which the door had been opened already in this conversation. Skywalker's mention of the future, of Master Yoda's warnings.

"There is…something else."

Skywalker raised a brow, letting Ikrit continue.

"I have meditated on the past, and the future. I am no seer, as you know, but the Force sometimes gives hints. In the past, I could see murmurs. Textures, if not meaning."

Skywalker's raised brow sunk, dragging the other with it into a frown. He felt the young human's growing unease.

"Have you done similar?"

Skywalker's reply was a long time coming, but Ikrit gave him the space to find it.

"I've…seen futures. Vagues shapes of some, anyway. I - I almost don't want to talk about them. Any words cause ripples."

Ikrit understood, but some words had to be said, regardless.

"I have seen shapes myself. They told me that when this war ends, it will not be by your hand."

"No," Luke affirmed. "It won't."

"But the futures have been silent," Ikrit continued. "The Force is silent to me now. It whispers nothing at all."

Skywalker swallowed. His jaw muscles bunched, relaxed.

"The same," he agreed.

"For how long, young Skywalker?"

Ikrit knew the answer. He had to hear it anyway.

"A month or so."

The two Masters were quiet, letting them both process. A few weeks indeed. Perhaps Skywalker's vague timeframe was true, that he had not tried to ply the future in some time, so he couldn't be sure. Ikrit could. He spent most days in meditation, and frequently cast his mind to the shape of things to come.

It was not 'a month or so.' It was when the Jedi and the Exiles fought on Obroa-skai. Ikrit knew little of the events there, merely that it had happened. He would ask Skywalker and young Anakin later. For now, he had his confirmation.

Ikrit chirruped, a Kushiban throat-clear, startling the other Master. "Enough of gloom! Where is my student? You have been taking up all his time and I have a mind to take you to task."

Though he couldn't smile, he knew Skywalker felt his mirth. It was enough to shake darker thoughts again. Ikrit let the children and family have their time to reconnect in this moment of cherished peace. He was only an old Master, after all, and it was to the younglings that the future belonged. Let them have their fun and their reunions and reforge their bonds. Ikrit had long experience in waiting for the right time.