munnin | (no subject)

Title: Act 1, Scene 3 - Sera. Every second wounds.
Fandom: Star Wars.
Disclaimer: No ownership, no profit and no offence meant. Everyone is of the age of consent in their country and period of history
Author’s notes: This ‘verse started as a first anniversary gift for the members of the Canberra Star Wars Collectors Club. That story didn’t go very far but the idea stuck.

Summary: A week after the Purge, Sera stops to take stock.

A week after the Purge, Sera was finally able to stop and take stock of the situation. It wasn’t a pretty thought. Of the hundred Jedi, padawan and younglings who had called Ilanda home, only eight had survived. Sera had called in every favour and greased every palm she had access to in the system to help the Jedi to new homes and new identities, scattering them like leaves in a storm for their own protection.

Only the frail little healer Janin Bek wouldn’t leave. He was a tiny man with brittle bones and paper-thin skin that belied the fact he was scarcely older than her. She doubted he had ever been well, but in the wake of the attack, he seemed to shrink further still, his mind shattered. He was a pale shadow, pacing the echoing temple halls that had once been a jewel of the Order.

“Everyone will come back.” He muttered to himself, swaying to the forces of a gale felt only by him. “They will come back and someone must be waiting.”

The other Jedi tried to reason with him, tried to connive him to leave before the troopers did come back. There would be clean-up operations. The new Empire would leave no stone unturned in their mission to eradicate the Jedi. But he won’t hear them, perhaps couldn’t hear them. His mind was too far afield.

In the end Sera stripped the cloaking technology off her ship to disguise the storage rooms below the temple kitchen. It wasn’t much but it would give Bek somewhere to hide when the troopers did come back. Somehow, she doubted it would be enough to save him when the time came. At least he would see out what little time he had left in the shadows of his beloved home.

The last Jedi gone save Bek, Sera flew her ship to the far side of the jungle planet. She set down on a high cliff overlooking a great waterfall and sat on the nose of her ship. Now there was her own future to think about.

She was, technically, a free agent. Just as she had always been. She had found herself a member of Jedi strike force more out of luck than design. She had known Master D’rue since childhood. Both descended from once powerful but now all but forgotten race, they had met on the streets of Coruscant. She, a petty thief and he, an apostate padawan always sneaking out to see the world beyond the temple walls. Although time and circumstance parted them, their paths always crossed again and often when they needed each other most.

And now was no different. For all Sera could step back into the world and resume her old trade but she could no sooner give up on her friends than she could will herself to breath under water.

She kicked her feet against the flanks of her ship, watching birds wheel in the valley below. There would be a resistance. There was no doubt there. The Empire had come down too hard and too fast for people not to push back but it was too early yet. Those few Jedi who survived may rally but right now they were hunted, and the wise ones would bide their time.

As she must.

If her Jedi friends had survived, they would have gone to ground. And the strike team were better equipped for such things than the contemplatives of Ilanda. No, the Shadow Jedi would not be found until they were ready and seeking them out would only put them, and her, at risk of exposure.

Sera needed to vanish too. Her identity as an ally to the Jedi was too well known and if the archives on Coruscant were taken then several of her aliases were burned too. Time to start again.

But where? Her ship was too recognisable; she could never leave the system with it. Nor with her cargo of stolen Republic tech. She would have to sell it all and start again.

Three days later, she stepped into the shadows of space-port on Ilanda Prime. Her pockets were lined with what gold peggats and handful of Aurodium ingots all her worldly possessions could be turned into in such a short space of time. She kept only what she could wear or carry: her blaster and pistol; now was not a time to go anywhere unarmed, the lightsaber D’rue had given her years ago; strapped to her spine and hidden by her jacket and the star charts she had been sent to update.

Hidden from view by the overlapping awnings of so many street stalls, she cupped the little star chart between her hands, setting it to random. “Guide me, Force. Show me where I’m going next.” The seven planets in their strange looping orbits came into focus in the gloom and she nodded, pocketing the chart. Corellian System it was. Where better in all the galaxy to be a pirate.