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One
Bultar didn’t entirely know how she had ended up shepherding a few younglings, nearly Padawan age now, from one end of the galaxy to the other. She had barely managed to grab them when the clones had marched on the temple, when Skywalker had marched on the temple. She’d only gotten a quick glimpse of him, before Cid Drallig had engaged Skywalker, buying her enough time to grab three younglings and get out of the temple. The owner of a diner that she had once gone to with Master Plo and Master Kenobi, had helped get them get off Coruscant. Katooni, the eldest of the group, somehow knew a pirate, and he was… a test of her patience, but he also knew of the start of a freedom trail for Jedi.
Their fourth stop was a mining planet called Mapuzo. Bultar remembered it slightly, she thought that Master Plo’s battalion had performed a rescue mission there once. The number of younglings was down to one, now. One had taken an offer from a family to adopt him and pretend that he’d been there forever, and he had solemnly promised Bultar that he would never forget the family the Jedi had been and that one day he would come back, and maybe he could be her Padawan? The other… had been killed when they were escaping the second safehouse. Bultar hadn’t been fast enough.
Katooni had refused to leave. She would stay with the Jedi, she said, even after Hondo kept asking her to join his crew and trying to bribe her with stories about his best friend Obi-Wan. (Bultar had, admittedly, taken him up on some of the stories. Knowing that Master Kenobi was still alive, for they had all seen the changed beacon, she hoped that she would get to tease him about them one day, since she would never get the chance to tell them to Master Plo.)
The hidden room on Mapuzo was bare. Functional. It would suit.
So Bultar was surprised when Katooni pulled out her vibro knife and very carefully cut into the wall.
The Force will be with us, always
*
Two
Cal came wandering through Mapuzo after he had nearly been caught by Inquisitors. He… well, just standing by and not doing something would have been an insult to Master Jaro, and they were in danger and…. Luckily, he had gotten away before the Inquisitors had caught him, and he’d been pointed in the direction of the Jedi Freedom Trail. He only briefly stayed, opting to take a job that had been found as a scavenger, but he knew he wasn’t going to be able to risk it again. The rumors were already flying, of who the Inquistors were, who they had been, and he… would not end up one of them.
The room he hid in had a wall. Well, many walls. But one of them… it was starting to show a list of names, of survivors. Cal went over it, trying to find the names of those he knew, of anyone of his crechemates, but he…. Saw none.
Just in case any of them did pass this way, he couldn’t let them think he was gone.
Carefully, he inscribed his name, and then added carefully Even when I cannot be a Jedi openly, I shall always be a Jedi at heart.
*
Three
Caleb, Kanan now, had done what he needed to to survive after Master Depa had been killed. After the clones had killed her. He had trusted them, they had all trusted them. He ran when he saw them now, trying hard to forget the easy friendships he had made, the feeling of safety he had used to have around them, knowing that they would have his back. Before they killed Master Depa. Before they tried to kill him. Before they hunted the Jedi down.
He had been shocked when he’d ended up running into the Freedom Trail, where a civilian who said they’d been saved by a Jedi once had helped him escape after Inquisitors had shown up. The trip to Mapuzo on a smugglers ship was… terrifying, honestly. He’d spent every moment expecting to be betrayed, especially when he saw his contact was an Imperial. He’d nearly run. But he’d had nowhere to go.
Instead he’d found himself in yet another hidden room, tracing the messages that were on the wall. He found familiar names, and nearly lost his control when he recognized one of his crechemates. A feeling of overwhelming joy when he saw Master Vos’s name, and thought fondly of hearing his grandmaster complain about whatever trouble Vos had called.
He just wished that he saw more names.
Signing Kanan wouldn’t bring anyone comfort, nobody knew who Kanan was. But signing Caleb felt… wrong. That wasn’t who he had been. Caleb wouldn’t have done what he’d needed to.
He thought of the names on the wall, and wondered if any of them had needed to compromise. But he remembered what Master Kenobi had said in the message - they would be challenged but they needed to persevere.
That was what Caleb had done.
Hesitantly, he added his name. Without thinking about it consciously, he added a line from the meditation mantra.
There is no death, there is the Force.
Because even in death, the Jedi had still lived. And the Force would bind them together, so long as the memories remained.
*
Four
Ferus hadn’t been a Jedi in years. He’d left the Order well before the war had started, even if he’d never really stopped acting as a Jedi. He’d done his best to do as much good in the galaxy as he could, but well, he had left.
That didn’t particularly matter to the Empire. Any Force sensitive was in danger now. It hadn’t taken Ferus that long to run into Quinlan Vos, who had let him know about the Freedom Trail. Quinlan had been helping a few kids, even younger than Ferus had been when Siri had chosen himas a Padawan, get through, and Ferus obviously wasn’t going to just walk away.
He knew Quinlan had been a Shadow, they had spent enough time together since Quinlan had been friends with Siri, so Ferus knew Quinlan had had more ideas than most of what was needed, but he didn’t have all of Ferus’s connections. Ferus had sent a message to his husband Roan, about working more officially with the surviving Jedi, and providing more IDs to those who were making their way to safety.
Which is how he found himself in the Mapuzo safehouse, staring at the wall. He had left the Order, was it his right?
It didn’t take him too long to decide that yes, it was. If the Empire was going after him, then that was enough. He didn’t know who would remember him, or if anyone even had survived who would, but he still added his name. Along with some words that had brought him comfort when he had left the order.
The Force always gives us something we can use. To survive.
*
Five
It was in her capacity as Fulcrum that Ahsoka first heard about the wall on Mapuzo. She had… mostly avoided the other Jedi. She had left. If she had stayed, if she had made it back to Coruscant before Order 66 went out, would it have been different? Would more people have survived?
There was no use dwelling on what ifs. It had happened, all she could do now was do what she could. So she went to Mapuzo to first, get a better idea of what was happening on that leg of the Freedom Trail so she could better coordinate rebel cells, and second… well, she was curious. To see who else had survived. Who had left her mark.
To hope that maybe there would be friends of hers that had made it. That perhaps her Grandmaster had survived after he’d recorded the beacon message.
She’d long given up hope that Anakin had.
Fulcrum didn’t recognize the people she was transporting. Apparently the mother had decided against giving her child to the Jedi Order. The girl was 14 now, and the Empire had come, looking for any Force Sensitive.
“The Jedi respected my decision when I didn’t want to give Raha up,” the woman told her. “The Empire? They didn’t care. It was pure luck that I found that Jedi on Daiyu and he pointed me in this direction.”
“I’m glad they helped,” Ahsoka told her. The daughter, Raha, had not spoken, and according to the mother hadn’t said a word since the run-in with the Empire. She was hoping that the Jedi on their next stop could help.
Ahsoka was about to take them to the next stop on the Freedom Trail, when she took one more look at the wall. She hadn’t added anything to it, she had left the Order, it wasn’t her right. Even if she had wanted to come back.
She couldn’t sign her name. But leaving without doing anything felt like running away again.
Carefully, she drew the Starbird, the symbol of the Order, next to one of the older messages. It shown brightly, right over the name of a girl she’d taken on a gathering so many years before.
*
Plus One
Leia hadn’t been back to Mapuzo since she had gone there with Ben after he had saved her from the kidnapping when she’d been ten. She hadn’t understood then, why he had been so drawn to the Wall. It was just names. Writings.
But now, with Alderaan gone, she understood more than she ever wished she had. It hadn’t taken long for an entire industry to spring up for the survivors of Alderaan, the return. Leia hadn’t done hers, and she wasn’t sure she ever would, but she knew that for so many, just knowing that others had survived, hearing the messages and testimonies of the sons and daughters of Alderaan, had given people new hope, new faith.
That had been what the wall on Mapuzo had meant to Ben. The way he had said his friend’s name had been like the way Leia herself had said Winter’s, the first time the two had reunited. She still didn’t know who Quinlan had been to Ben, but it didn’t really matter to her. Quinlan had mattered to Ben. The words Quinlan had written had mattered. One small surviving piece of his culture had mattered.
Which is why she knew that she had to take Luke. With the Empire gone, Luke was on a mission to rediscover as much about the Jedi as possible. Mapuzo, Leia was sure, was a good place to start.
She hadn’t even been sure if the wall would still be there; it had been discovered by the Empire on that dark night the first time Leia had run from her birth father. (Sometimes, she still wished that Ben had answered yes when she’d asked him, he had been more of a father to her than Vader ever had been anyway.)
Somehow, some of the wall had survived. She would have been sure that the Empire would have destroyed it, but part of it was still standing.
Luke was looking at all the names, all of the sayings. “I wonder how many are still alive,” he whispered.
“Not nearly enough,” Leia said grimly. Too many had perished over the years, even of the initial survivors. The few Jedi that had been with the Rebellion prior to Luke were all lost. She recognized some of their names on the wall even.
“There is no death, there is the Force,” Luke said, reading one of the surviving writings. “Even if they are one with the Force now, we’ll still remember them, and the fact that they were here.”
Squeezing her brother’s hand, Leia was sure that they could do just that.