A Bittersweet Homecoming/Part 1

1,385 BBY

The Chasin City Police officers at the door of the hospital nodded respectfully, but it was clear they did not recognize him personally, and he was glad of it. The reception droid had evidently been told to expect Jedi—or perhaps had deference to them hardwired into its programming—so it gave him the room number without objection. A passing medical droid greeted him with a respectful salutation, and an orderly turned to stare, but many beings in the Republic would live their whole lives without so much as seeing a Jedi, so that was likely no more than idle curiosity.

But when he turned into a hall patrolled by more Chasin City policemen, and almost walked right into a Republic Army officer, the young Human's eyes widened with what could only be recognition, and he snapped halfway toward a salute before faltering, unsure if that was appropriate, and lurching into an awkward bow instead. "Grand Master! Sir!"

Tem-Fol-Rytil, Grand Master of the Jedi Order, contained a sigh and glanced at the Human's rank insignia. "Good afternoon, Lieutenant. Please…"

He waved the young soldier back up; the lieutenant came to attention instead, glancing at the pair of Padawans behind Tem-Fol-Rytil before refocusing. "Are you here to see Lady Galera, sir?"

"…after a fashion, yes."

"Down the hall, turn right, third door on the left, sir."

Sensing something being held back, Tem-Fol-Rytil asked, "Something else, Lieutenant?"

The officer blinked, then lowered his voice. "The Corellians are being a little…territorial, sir."

"That's to be expected, given the circumstances."

"Yes sir. I didn't mean—"

"I know." Tem-Fol-Rytil held back another sigh; he had dreaded these meetings since leaving Coruscant, yet all that time for preparation had given him precious few of the right words. "Neither did I mean that as sharply as it came out. Forgive me, please."

"Of course, sir. I could escort you down, if you'd like…?"

The very last thing Tem-Fol-Rytil wanted was to sweep into the ward under guard by soldiers and Jedi alike, as if to proclaim his own importance. "No. No, thank you, Lieutenant; we'll see ourselves from here.  May the Force be with you."

"You…too, sir."

The lieutenant had not oversold the matter; Tem-Fol-Rytil encountered two four-beings patrols of CorSec officers before he even made the turn, and once he did, he saw another patrol, a group of green-armored Corellian Imperial Guards, and two men he recognized at once. One he had steeled himself to face eventually, but not so soon; he rather thought the other might have looked a bit more awkward facing him, or at least not so openly defiant. At a gesture, the two Padawans hung back as Tem-Fol-Rytil advanced to meet the men.

Jedossen e Solo, King of Corellia, stepped through his bodyguards and nodded. "Welcome to Commenor, Your Grace. It's kind of you to come."

Tem-Fol-Rytil bowed. "Your Majesty. I came as soon as I was able."

"It's been over two days, Master," said Tyson Dumiel. "But I'm sure you have a great many pressing matters to attend to."

When a Jedi serves the whole galaxy, not merely provincial concerns, many matters press upon him indeed, Tem-Fol-Rytil wanted to say, but he thought a Master of the High Council ought to have more restraint, so he just raised an eyebrow and stared the Corellian Jedi Master down. After a second, the king turned his head; he did not meet Tyson's eyes, but Tyson nodded once and glanced away. Pleased as he was that the nascent clash had died in infancy, Tem-Fol-Rytil liked less how attuned the king and the renegade Jedi Master seemed. Nawsa had told the Council, months before, that Tyson had the Diktat's ear as well. Senator Rose seemed to give his opinion no more weight than any other Corellian's, but from what Nulu Thini had suggested even before he became Supreme Chancellor, Jendaya Rose was not given to allowing anyone priority influence on her thoughts.

"How is your niece, Your Majesty?"

"Not well. Candidly, the medical droids can't explain how she's survived this long." Beneath the calm, composed exterior befitting a head of state, Tem-Fol-Rytil sensed the enormity of the king's grief; had a clone of the king stood beside the original, wearing those emotions on its face, most observers might not have thought them the same man. "Even what sparks of her life are still flickering are Nawsa's doing."

The emotions underlying these words were indiscrete and resisted easy comprehension. Anger, perhaps, but at Nawsa for failing to save Galera? Or failing to protect her in the first place? Or at Alecto for orchestrating the mission, or the assassin who had struck the blow? And grief and hope were interlocked, though for exactly what the king dared to hope, Tem-Fol-Rytil could not say.

The third door on the left opened between a pair of Imperial Guards, and a woman who resembled King Jedossen—both in features and complexion, and in the terrible, invisible weight hung upon her soul—leaned through the frame. "Jed…"

The breeding and decorum of royalty were just enough that the king excused himself, but he spun on his heel without waiting for a response and followed his sister into the room. The door sealed behind him, leaving Tem-Fol-Rytil in the corridor with the guards, passing medical droids, and Tyson Dumiel.

Tyson strained the tolerance of the High Council as far as it could possibly go, and he was the Grayest shade of Green Jedi Tem-Fol-Rytil knew, but he was not an uneducated man. It made his mounting schism all the more frustrating, but just at that moment it afforded the opportunity for delicacy to the bodyguards all around; in the king's absence, their own grief became more noticeable. Tem-Fol-Rytil asked in High Galactic, "Can the girl be saved, Tyson?"

Tyson met Tem-Fol-Rytil's gaze with narrow-eyed skepticism, but when he rubbed his beard he sighed, and some of that stiff-backed defiance melted from his posture. "If she can, it's light-years beyond my ability. Nawsa's better with this sort of thing than I am, but she's been working with Galera for two days straight, and she hasn't gotten better."

Tem-Fol-Rytil wondered if compassion might keep Tyson's rapier tongue sheathed, but attachment won instead and Tyson lunged. "I suppose you've come to bestow your mastery upon us and save the day?"

"I've come to understand what's happening, and to aid as best I can."

"An unfortunately novel approach from Coruscant." Tyson glanced past Tem-Fol-Rytil's shoulder. "I see you managed to conjure up a pair of Jedi for yourself. I wonder where Galera and Satir would be now if they'd come with Nawsa in the first place."

Tem-Fol-Rytil had wondered that too, and the ache of that second-guessing put some sternness in his voice. "I trust even you won't think I came here with bodyguards by choice."

"Wouldn't have dreamed of it," Tyson answered. "The Council was willing to risk Galera and Satir, but with one of their own in danger? They'd have put Sil Kadych on you if he wasn't still in our care."

The reminder of that debt owed to Corellia did little to improve Tem-Fol-Rytil's humor, and he crossed his arms. There is no emotion, there is peace. "Have you so little faith in the same Order you served most of your life—if not in its competence, then at least in its goodwill?"

"Good intentions aren't enough, Grand Master. The galaxy needs action."

"You've been quick to fault the Order for the incident at—"

"'The incident ' ," Tyson scoffed. "You mean Satir's murder, and what's happened to Galera?"

"—for the incident at the conference," Tem-Fol-Rytil pressed, "but if you were so certain the Republic would fail Corellia, then where were you? Why did you not come with the Solos?"

A muscle twitched in Tyson's jaw. "I would have, and gladly, but Senator Rose and the Diktat thought it more politic to defer to the Republic; they considered it a concession that Nawsa was assigned."

"And you know the caliber of Jedi Nawsa is—what could you have done that she couldn't? Or do you believe your skills are so far beyond hers?"

"Of course not; Nawsa's as fine a—"

"And I hope you don't have so dim a view of the Order to forget that it was the two non-Corellians who gave their lives trying to protect the Solos?"

Tyson took a deep breath—in through the nose, out through the mouth—and Tem-Fol-Rytil realized only by his disconcert at seeing the familiar calming exercise that he had started to think of Tyson as not exactly a Jedi anymore. The realization perturbed him, but neither could he pretend it was wholly inaccurate.

"I didn't say a word to denigrate their sacrifice," Tyson said, his voice softer but his eyes just as stony, "and I'll thank you not to put words in my mouth. They died as true Jedi; I honor their sacrifice and mourn their loss.  But to take your words, Grand Master, they died trying to save the Solos.  They may have been noble and gallant beings, but they still failed, and so proved my point: good intentions aren't enough."

"No Jedi is perfect, nor any operation immune to tragedy when the Sith become involved."

"I know that too. But the darkness becomes that much harder to fight when the light is dispersed over a galaxy—stretched so far that it dims.  If Corellia can bring home its lights, and so provide a beacon in the dark for the sector, even the system, believe me when I say I'll do whatever I can to see that done."

That, if anything, Tem-Fol-Rytil had no reason to doubt. In the weeks after the devastating news from Eriadu, a few Corellian-born Jedi had ceased responding to the Temple's summons, and their beacons had been traced to Corellia. If Tyson had summoned them, Nawsa had not heard of it; they seemed to have been stirred by patriotic sentiment of their own. But that sentiment would likely never have crossed their minds if Tyson had not been on Corellia as an anchor for them, and that made it hard not to resent him.

Galera Solo's door opened, and King Jedossen stepped back into the hall. When the two Jedi Masters faced him, he said, "Grand Master, if we may have a moment of your time?"

"Of course, Your Majesty. Excuse me, Master Dumiel."

Tyson raised an eyebrow. "Gladly."

The hospital room was rather dimmer than most Tem-Fol-Rytil had seen, but he grasped the purpose at once. King Jedossen, his sister, her husband, and their younger daughter clustered in one corner near the door; a dedicated medical droid hovered at Galera's bedside, hooked up to all of her biological monitors, but every living being gave Nawsa ample space. She sat even with Galera's abdomen, clasping the young woman's right hand with both of her own, her head bowed in deep meditation. A ventilator breathed for Galera, but at first glance Nawsa hardly seemed to breathe either; the Force more than any physical sign showed Tem-Fol-Rytil she had not died at her post.

"Your Grace," whispered the king.

He was a bit short even for a Human, but all of the Solos had to look up as Tem-Fol-Rytil turned to them.

"It doesn't seem to disturb her if we whisper," said the king's sister.

"Master Arodion is a very great Jedi," Tem-Fol-Rytil said. "I doubt very much that anything we do will trouble her."

"Still…I want to give her the…the best chance…"

Her husband stepped forward; where his wife held herself together with effort, he seemed simply hollow. He extended a hand in a mechanical way and said, "Your Grace, I'm Boriga Dyden. This is my wife Arewsa, and our daughter Corsica."

Tem-Fol-Rytil had never seen Galera Solo in life outside that hospital room, but he had viewed her holo en route to Commenor, and Corisca Solo was her elder sister a decade or so younger—light eyes, fair skin, and unruly brown hair. He had spent enough time in the Temple to be a better-than-average judge of Human ages, and he guessed Corsica was around the age a Human would be chosen as a Padawan. Beneath her grief, he felt a sort of forced toughness—beyond any sort of royal decorum, she was clearly old enough to appreciate the political consequences of her brother's murder and her sister's incapacitation.

Corsica did not curtsy as an Alderaanian noble might, or bow like a Jedi, but lowered her eyes and nodded. "Hello Grand Master."

Tem-Fol-Rytil might have stooped to put their faces on level, but he sensed the gesture would be far more infantilizing than it would put her at ease. He bowed instead and replied, "Your Highness—all of you—on behalf of the Jedi Order, and from the Supreme Chancellor on behalf of the Senate as well, I offer you our condolences on your brother's death. We mourn with you."

Arewsa Solo squeezed her eyes shut and inhaled a shaky breath, and Corsica's jaw trembled as she nodded, but Boriga Dyden said in monotone, "That's just it, Your Grace—we haven't had a chance to mourn Satir. Ever since we arrived…"

He trailed off, and the horrible, empty silence dragged on until Boriga turned those vacant eyes toward Galera. Even without following his gaze, Tem-Fol-Rytil understood—how could they take the time to really process and accept Satir's death, devoting the time and attention such a pursuit required, when any second might be Galera's last?

"Nawsa has been working over Galera nonstop, without change," said the king. "I'd give her all Five Brothers if she could save Galera, and I'd sit here a hundred years if that's what it took, but if she can't…"

He paused, and Tem-Fol-Rytil, who had interacted with civil, military, and Jedi leaders for most of his life, recognized the look of a man not ordinarily given to hesitation who found himself at a loss—his every thought bespoke his love for his niece, but she was not, in the end, his child. Arewsa seemed to grasp where the sentence had been going, because she turned and set her head on her husband's shoulder; Boriga patted her back in a rote way, staring at a featureless wall.

Corsica Solo looked at her parents, took a deep breath, and said, "If she can't save Galera, she should stop. Galera wouldn't have w-wanted to live like this."

Because it isn't living was too much for even the princess to say, but Tem-Fol-Rytil saw the looming specter of it in her eyes, and felt the same in her uncle's mind. Turning to Galera, he reached out with the Force…and almost stumbled. Seen with the eyes of the Force, Nawsa was blinding even to a Jedi—the sheer volume of light and concentration that radiated from every cell of her body took Tem-Fol-Rytil's breath away. It was a testament to the gravity of Galera's condition that such extraordinary efforts did not make her spring from the bed and burst into song.

No darkness poisoned that light—Nawsa was not maddened by grief or goaded on by a greedy attachment to Galera's life—but even a Jedi could misdirect her light; a perfectly functioning glowrod could not illumine a dark tunnel if it was pressed against the tunnel wall. Trying to see Galera beneath the Force Nawsa had laid upon her felt rather like trying to see a spark past a lightsaber blade's glow. As he concentrated, though, Tem-Fol-Rytil came to suspect that his flash blind mind's eye struggled not merely because of Nawsa's radiance, but because Galera was only a spark where a flame should have been.

Tem-Fol-Rytil did not know how much time had passed when he opened his eyes, but all four Solos were watching him, waiting upon his verdict. As he rubbed his beard, trying to find the right words, King Jedossen asked, "What does the Force tell you, Grand Master?"

"It speaks less clearly than I would like," Tem-Fol-Rytil admitted. "But with your leave, I'll speak to Master Arodion and see what we can discover together."

Arewsa Solo nodded, and Tem-Fol-Rytil crossed the quiet room, carrying a chair like Nawsa's to the opposite side of the bed. He took Galera's other hand as he sat, mindful of the IV in her forearm; no sooner had he touched her skin than he felt the strength of Nawsa's efforts anew. Keeping his eyes open this time, he tried to assess Galera's condition. The collar of her hospital gown was pulled away from her neck, and Tem-Fol-Rytil saw the mark where the assassin's knife had cut. After two days of dedicated Force healing, the skin should have been pure and unmarked, but though the wound remained closed, it was inflamed and, when Tem-Fol-Rytil laid his index finger over it, hot to the touch.

"Nawsa," he whispered. She did not respond, and in the Force, Tem-Fol-Rytil knew she had not even perceived his presence. He said at full volume, "Nawsa."

Nothing.

Sighing, he stretched out his mind to hers. Nawsa!

Her eyelids trembled a moment before they drifted apart, and even then her brown eyes were far away several seconds more. She parted her chapped lips, but her throat only made a squeaky rasp. Tem-Fol-Rytil took an untouched cup of water from a bedside tray and held it out to her, and she drank through the straw until it was half empty.

"Thank you." Her voice was still breathless, and Tem-Fol-Rytil felt her splitting her focus between the conversation and Galera; he was not getting the bulk of her attention.

He nodded. "It's been over two days, Nawsa."

She blinked. "Have you come to help? Did you bring any healers from the Temple?"

"I brought no healers, no. As to helping, I suspect there is little more even we two together can do."

"What? I've kept her alive this long."

"But in what state?" Tem-Fol-Rytil laid a hand on Galera's sweat-slick brow. "There is no fight left within her."

"She's been placed in an induced coma for treatment purposes. Besides, in this war, a thousand systems had no fight left until a Jedi came to their aid.  The least I can do is show that dedication to one being."

Tem-Fol-Rytil considered a moment. "Did the droids identify the poison the assassin used?"

Nawsa shook her head. "Not even from autopsying the CorSec agent; they're not even certain it was a single compound. It seems to be acting like a neurotoxin, but it also caused nausea in the agent, and it interferes with clotting too."

Tem-Fol-Rytil glanced at the angry wound where Galera's neck met her shoulder. "And none of your healing techniques have purged the toxin?"

"It's resisted easy expulsion. I think it must be a biotoxin; it blends too well with her body's own fluids to be a synthetic." Nawsa's eyes tightened. "Or else I'm just out of my league."

"Nawsa, I feel the strength of your efforts," said Tem-Fol-Rytil. "I know few Jedi who could have done more; I don't know that I would have had the power to do even this much. But—"

"I can't just let her die."

He felt the emotion beneath Nawsa's determination now—a powerful commingling of love and shame. In the gentlest tone he could muster, he said, "Death comes for us all in its own time; we none of us can escape it. It's a natural part of life."

For just a moment, Nawsa gave him her focus, and her voice sharpened to a Jedi Master's tone of authority. "But not like this. There is nothing natural in this."

To that, Tem-Fol-Rytil had no answer. Beasts attacked and ate one another, plagues and viruses swept over populations, and natural disasters consumed whole worlds, but sentient beings should have been above such things.

"Help me," Nawsa said. "I haven't come all this way to fail; have you come all this way only to fail to try?"

Being a Cerean, and possessing a Cerean's powerful brain, gave Tem-Fol-Rytil many advantages over other beings, but just now it proved as much liability as asset; not only could he see the debate from Nawsa's side, he could conduct the entire argument in his head, including some strong arguments she had yet to venture. He looked back at the Solos, waiting in the corner for his decision; he sought the Force's guidance, but the paths branching out from this moment were amorphous and fogged, solid and sound one moment only to dissolve into quagmires the next.

"I will do what I can," he finally said, deciding even as he spoke. "Perhaps two Jedi Masters can succeed where one did not. But if not, you must be prepared to accept that."

Nawsa was quiet for a moment. "Elata would tell us not to plan for losing the battle before we fight it. Let's get to work."

Trusting in the wisdom of their absent Warrior Master colleague, Tem-Fol-Rytil bent over Galera and set his mind upon her, channeling her the healing energy of the light, willing every cell to teem with vitality and wellness. He had fought in many battles—both the titanic struggles of millions that decided the fates of systems, even sectors, and the intimate clash of one lightsaber blade upon another that distilled the ancient, dualistic conflict underlying the galaxy into an archetypal icon—and he had not come through them all unscathed. Experience and the guidance of the Force, as much as direct instruction, had taught him how to heal his own body—to close wounds, mend bones, even stimulate the regeneration of tissue. Applying those principles to another being with equal ease was an innate gift possessed by others—he was no more a Jedi healer than was Nawsa—but it could be achieved to some degree by any Jedi with sufficient focus, and whatever merits might underlie critiques of the Jedi High Council from Tyson Dumiel, Karr Shadeez, and men like them, neither Tem-Fol-Rytil nor Nawsa Arodion lacked for focus.

And so they focused, and bound their two wills to the greater Will, that it might be done. It was not meditation in its purest form, for they could not leave the mundane behind—they sought to channel the Force in service to the needs of the mundane, as had become the dreadful burden upon Jedi too often these six centuries. But always in that struggle, true Jedi moved as the Force willed. At their best moments, they swam with the flow of the river; at worst, when the Force was a still lake without ebb and flow of its own, they might direct their paths in whatever way seemed right to them, but always guided by the wisdom of Jedi training and the lessons handed on by hundreds of generations of their forebears. War and the shroud of the dark side it lowered made the latter far more common than the former, even for Jedi Masters, but no true Jedi swam against the current, that his will might triumph against and in spite of the one Will that made him a Jedi at all.

And when Tem-Fol-Rytil realized that was what he was doing, he opened his eyes.

"Nawsa."

She opened her eyes at once this time—had his return to the world brought her mind closer to the surface as well, or had she come to the conclusion too?

"The damage is too severe, Nawsa; the poison did its work too well." Letting go of Galera's hand, he reached over her body to clasp Nawsa's instead. "No one could have done more than you did, but now there is nothing more to do. You have to let her go."

Nawsa opened her mouth, but closed it again without arguing. She gazed at Galera's face for several minutes, but Tem-Fol-Rytil added no more, and did his best not to disturb her. At no sign he could see or sense, Nawsa sighed, and her shoulders slumped; Tem-Fol-Rytil had the vivid mental image of a warrior who had carved a bloody swath across a battlefield, driven on by adrenaline and force of will despite sustaining countless injuries in the process, at last dropping to her knees to succumb to those blows. But after another moment she nodded.

Even before she glanced at the Solos, Tem-Fol-Rytil understood her thought, and he moved to spare her the pain of it. Corsica was curled up asleep in a chair, and King Jedossen dozed with his chin on his chest, but Boriga and Arewsa woke them as Tem-Fol-Rytil crossed the room. "Your Majesty…all of you…I am very sorry. Master Arodion has done everything a Jedi could possibly do, but now there is no more to be done."

Corsica Solo turned to bury her face against her father's chest, but his own face was so vacant Tem-Fol-Rytil was not sure he was really aware of anything around him. King Jedossen sat back down, putting his face in his hands, but Arewsa rubbed her red eyes and nodded. "Do we have time to say goodbye?"

Corsica drew away from her father, wiped her eyes and nose with her sleeve, and took the seat Tem-Fol-Rytil had just vacated. She held Galera's hand for a moment, then leaned over the tubes and wires to kiss her sister's forehead. She gave Nawsa a look Tem-Fol-Rytil could not see, then returned to her in the corner, sitting and watching as her uncle approached. King Jedossen sat and took Galera's hand for a moment as well, but he also took one of Nawsa's. When he returned, Boriga and Arewsa stood over their daughter for a moment, whispering words too soft for Tem-Fol-Rytil to hear, then nodded to Nawsa.

Closing her eyes, Nawsa put one last surge of Force power into the young woman, a technique Tem-Fol-Rytil knew well from the many times he had employed it upon the wounded. When she opened her eyes, she told the Solos, "She won't feel any pain now."

"Thank you," whispered Arewsa.

Nawsa let go of Galera's hand, and Tem-Fol-Rytil sensed her enormous weariness as she released her last efforts. She wobbled when she stood, and the king half-rose from his chair, but Tem-Fol-Rytil took her arm to steady her. She nodded thanks, then brushed Galera's cheek with her hand, and this time Tem-Fol-Rytil was close enough to hear the words.

"I'm so sorry, Little Explorer," Nawsa said. "Rest now—be at peace."

As the Solos crowded around the bed and the medical droid began to deactivate the ventilator, Tem-Fol-Rytil led Nawsa from the room. The Imperial Guards said nothing, but they gathered the worst from the Jedi's expressions and bowed their helmeted heads.

"'Little Explorer'?" Tem-Fol-Rytil asked gently.

"When she was a child…" Nawsa started, then shook her head. "It doesn't matter. Old memories."

He let it go. "She's beyond hurt or pain now."

Nawsa nodded. Sensing the reactions of the Padawans who had accompanied him, Tem-Fol-Rytil looked down the hall to see Tyson Dumiel returning. He, too, needed no words to understand, and his jaw grew rigid under his beard. Before he could speak, though, they all turned toward the door as if they'd been called. Slim and fruitless as his own meditative contribution had been, even Tem-Fol-Rytil was attuned enough to sense the change in Galera's light in the Force, the last glow of an ember fading into darkness.

And Nawsa set her elbows against a wall and her face in her hands, and Tyson knelt in the hall and bowed his head, and Tem-Fol-Rytil—Grand Master of the Jedi Order, closest advisor to the Supreme Chancellor, one of the most powerful men in the Republic, if not the entire galaxy—closed his eyes in weary submission to yet another reminder how limited and ephemeral such power would always be.