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There was that constant silence. It should have been his first warning.

Jayce had always been too loud for them – too passionate, too emotional, too alive. The Jedi trained it out of him where they could, nodded approvingly when he swallowed the heat in his voice and quieted the fire in his chest.

There is no emotion; there is peace. There is no passion; there is serenity.

They expected him to cut himself down until only obedience remained. And for a long time, he tried.

He tried.

But how do you kill the part of yourself that loves?

It started with Viktor. Or maybe it had always been Viktor. All sharp lines and quiet gravity, the one person who saw through the veneer of Jedi calm Jayce worked so hard to maintain. They trained together, bled together, sparred and broke and healed.

And when it finally snapped – when they gave in, let their bodies and souls collide – the Force responded.

The bond between them flared into existence.

And then, Viktor left.

No choice. Just gone, because loving Jayce meant breaking the Code, and Viktor couldn’t bear to be the reason Jayce was cast out. So he made the decision for both of them.

Jayce never forgave him for that.

He tried to stay in the Temple. To make it work. Recited the Code like a prayer until the words turned to ash. Followed orders. Took missions. Bit his tongue so hard it bled.

And still, it wasn’t enough.

Because the rot had already started. The doubt. The fear. The low, rising anger by the slow realization that the Council didn’t see people; they saw weapons. Pawns. Sacrifices.

To the Council, obeying orders is more important than lives. A padawan dying on a mission where Jayce followed what he was told? A regrettable story, but an everyday one. No innocents getting hurt but Jayce stepping out of line by killing an aggressor? Unheard of.

They told him to meditate. To research. To find his inner piece.

He did. He tried. And failed.

Because there was no peace. Not in him. Not anymore, and maybe not ever. Only this aching, breathless weight in his chest.

And so, now he walks away from the Temple without a goodbye and without looking back.

A Jedi no more.

He could go looking for Viktor.

It would be too easy – too tempting – to fall into his arms and call it salvation.

But what would be the point?

To run back into the arms of the man who walked away? To pretend like none of it mattered – the bond, the silence, the decision Viktor made without him, for him, hadn’t shattered something fundamental? To pretend that the one time they found each other again, when they clawed each other open in heat and fury, only for Jayce to leave after, hadn’t already proven how broken they are?

That door closed a long time ago.

He can’t chase someone who didn’t stay. No, he won’t crawl back to the Temple or to the man who left him in it – because if he went now, it would only be to tear the wounds open again.

No. He doesn’t go looking. Not because he doesn’t want to, but because wanting is the problem. And because if Viktor saw him now – saw what he’s become – he’d turn away all over again.

And Jayce isn’t sure he’d survive it this time.

The Temple stays behind him, too, and with it, the only place he ever called home. But what kind of home demands your silence? Demands you sever your heart and call it virtue?

He left because the Code is a lie. Because the Council is blind, whether it’s on purpose or not. Because he burned with a fire they feared so much they tried to suffocate it. And maybe… maybe he’s starting to fear it too.

But now there is nothing.

No Jedi. No Viktor. No future.

Only forward.

So he walks.

He walks.

Through the city, down levels most Jedi never step foot on. Industrial ruins. Old trade sectors flooded with smog and smoke and shadow. He follows no coordinates, only instinct and silence.

He doesn’t feel the bond to Viktor anymore. Maybe it’s still there, but it’s quiet and dormant, like a thread waiting to be pulled.

He isn’t even sure if the silence was created by him, by Viktor, or by the Force itself severing them. Does it even matter? He knows Viktor is happy now; knows he has found a new home. He is not going to be the one to ruin that, so it doesn’t matter why the bond stays closed. Only that it does.

He trades odd jobs for a place to sleep. Hauling crates. Repairing droids. Clearing pests from an irrigation pipe with a rusted spanner and too much time.

He always keeps his saber close, but never once reaches for it. Some nights, he feels it pulsing faintly through the floor beside him. A memory of purpose. Of fire.

He tries not to listen.

He doesn’t follow the Code, not consciously; but doesn’t openly act against it either. He follows whatever the Force and his own feelings tell him is right.

He sleeps in corners of ships. In half-burned houses. In alleys. Sometimes, when the wind is quiet and the air is thin, he almost hears Viktor in the back of his mind. Not with words, just… presence. He always turns away, never gives in, because if he doesn’t, he’ll go back to him and beg for a place in the new live Viktor made for himself.

And he can’t do that.

It feels like he is falling, unsure what to do with himself without the ever-present rules and regulations, and he doesn’t know if he wants to stop the feelings that coil his chest and pull him under a little more every day.

He walks until his feet blister, then bleed. Until the clean lines of the upper levels rot into rust and soot. Until the glow of the Jedi Temple is a memory he can’t quite reach.

He doesn’t know where he’s going, only that he can’t stay.

He buys passage offworld with the last of his credits. No name given. No destination specified beyond ‘anywhere far’. The transport is cramped and loud and filled with people who don’t look him in the eye. It suits him.

The Outer Rim sounds good. Somewhere unimportant. Somewhere the Jedi don’t reach and the war only brushes the edges. A mining moon or trade hub, decaying in the orbit of something once-golden.

There are places in the galaxy where no one asks who you used to be.

He intends to find one.

Bracca greets him with fire, and Jayce walks into it like he deserves to burn.

He steps off the freighter into a world rusting under its own weight. The air reeks of oil, scorched steel, and something older – the slow decay of ambition, maybe. He rolls his eyes at the uncharacteristic lyricism of the thought.

The emptiness hits him quickly – the wide, corroded expanse of the landing pad, the sky stained with bruised clouds, the smell of chemical rain in his lungs. It’s not just the world that feels hollow. It’s him. There’s nothing left to fall back on. No Temple. No titles. No Viktor.

This is what freedom is, isn’t it?

Bracca is too busy dying to care who you used to be. Starships die here, as well. Thousands of them, gutted and torn across horizon-spanning scrapyards.

In some ways, he fits in immediately. They don’t ask questions when he signs on with a salvage crew; not about the burn scars on his knuckles or the way he flinches when someone turns around too fast.

They give him a torch cutter and point to the wreck. He gets to work without complaint, through shifts without breaks, without saying a word.

His saber stays hidden, but always with him.

At night, he sleeps in a cot wedged between coolant drums and stripped engine cores. The Force is quiet here. Not absent, just buried beneath centuries of blood and rust. Or maybe just unresponsive to him.

There’s an ache in his chest that won’t go away. He wonders if Viktor feels it too. Wonders if it hurts him, too. Wonders if he even wants it to. But… maybe Viktor wouldn’t want him anyway. Not like this. Jayce clenches his jaw and just goes on, because if he stops, he’ll break. And no one is coming to put him back together.

It takes five days for something to go wrong.

A cutter platform on the east ridge collapses during a storm and dozens of workers plummet into the trench below, dislodging a ship that will soon follow it hundreds of feet down. The rain turns everything slick. Screams echo through the comms.

Jayce doesn’t wait for orders, he just runs. Because that’s something he can do now. Because it’s the right thing to do.

The foreman’s voice crackles through static: “Pull back! It’s not worth the loss!”

As if people were as disposable as the wrecks they cut apart. His legs move faster, breath burning his throat, fury tangled with fear until he can’t tell which is which.

Lives are always worth it, especially if the only thing he has to lose is his own worthless existence. It crosses his mind that this is what Viktor would do as well: to risk everything to save innocent lives, but the thought is buried faster than it is finished.

Workers are running by him as he makes his way inside. He sees several of them coming through one of the narrow corridors.

“This way!” He shouts, and the moment he does, the first beam comes down. A slab of metal, screaming through the air, with no way for the workers to. He throws out a hand to stop it – simple, instinctive. It should be nothing.

But it barely moves.

The sound the beam makes when it slams into the men will never leave him. Flesh and bone crushed flat beneath steel within an instant. He stares, frozen, breath choking in his lungs, because the Force didn’t answer him. Not the way it always had. Not at all.

For a heartbeat he’s a child again, trapped in ice, lungs clawing for air, powerless. And terror claws deeper now: not just because those people are gone, but because the next beam is falling, and it’s coming for him.

Instinct takes him. No thought, no training – just raw, frantic need. He throws both hands out, a ragged cry ripping his throat. And this time, the metal shudders, groaning in midair, straining against his will. His arms shake, knees buckle, fear boiling through every vein, but the beam shifts just enough to crash harmlessly aside.

He can’t think, can’t breathe; he’s only reacting, dragging every drop of strength he has into the next scream, the next desperate push.

Supports creak. Machinery screeches across the deck. A gap opens, narrow but enough. Workers scramble out, gasping, crawling through mud and rain. Seven make it. Others don’t. He can still hear them.

When it’s over, Jayce collapses to one knee, rain plastering his hair to his skull. His whole body is shaking. He tells himself it was just instinct, that the Force did answer him, that he is not broken. He saved lives. That’s all that matters.

He lies awake long after the camp generators sputter into silence, fingers drumming restlessly against the lightsaber hilt stashed beneath his pillow.

It used to hum with purpose – a quiet, balanced thing. A promise of protection, bound by the rules of the Council. But now, in his grip, it thrums like something else.

Maybe that’s not as big of a problem as the Jedi made it out to be. After all, they were wrong about love; they can be wrong about other things as well.

It’s no longer the symbol of who he once wanted to become; it’s a record of who he is now. Of what he’s allowed. Of what he is capable of. He just needs to decide who he is without the Temple.

He rolls onto his back, staring up at the corrugated ceiling. Rainwater taps a restless rhythm overhead.

They call this a guardian’s weapon.  A promise, but promises can rot.

He remembers his Master’s lessons – the crystal chooses the wielder, the blade answers the heart.

The Force had always answered him. Always. Even when the Council doubted, even when his temper made masters frown, it had been there – steady and clean. But today? Today it didn’t move until terror ripped him open.

He must have been distracted. That the storm, the chaos, the screaming… it clouded his focus. That’s all.

But in the pit of his stomach, he fears that that’s a lie. The Force didn’t come through balance and piece, it didn’t answer until he was afraid for his life. Until fear carried him past hesitation. Until instinct and horror tore something loose.

And that terrifies him more than the storm.

Because if fear is what brings it now, then what does that make him?

He presses his palm to his eyes until sparks dance against the lids. Viktor’s voice slips into the silence anyway; calm, measured, and maddeningly sure. Fear is the path to the dark side. Viktor used to recite it with the weight of someone who believed it. He’d hated hearing it then, but tonight it feels like a warning written across his skin.

He had dismissed his actions prior to leaving the Temple as necessary; as disobedience, yes, but one that saved lives. But now… he isn’t sure about what’s true anymore.

A dead worker weighs fifty-five kilos. A lightsaber weighs less than one. But guilt? It’s heavier than all the workers he saved and all he couldn’t.

He flexes his hand, still tingling from way the Force felt different today. It’s hesitation, his weakness, cost countless lives.

Would Viktor recoil, if he knew? Would he look at Jayce the way those workers had – grateful to be alive, but wary of the man who had saved them? Or worse, would he pity him?

The thought makes Jayce’s chest seize. He can’t bear it.

He tries not to think about the way Viktor always made him want to be better. The way he would have run in there and saved all of them.

But Viktor isn’t here, and Jayce is so tired of asking ghosts for answers.

No, Viktor doesn’t matter anymore. He made his choice, left him with silence. And… if the Force now answers to fear, then so be it – he’ll use whatever he has left. Better fear than nothing. Better terror than failure.

And yet, long into the night, the memory plays again and again: his hand outstretched, the beam barely shifting, the sound of bodies breaking beneath it. He hears it in every drip of rain, in every breath. And he knows, no matter how much he tries to smother it – he is afraid.

Afraid of what it means. Afraid of what he’s becoming. Afraid of what Viktor would see in him now.

He turns the hilt over in his palm and forces himself to breathe through the flickers of anger, the temptation to swing and feel something. Anything. But he doesn’t. Not tonight.

Because Viktor wouldn’t want him to.

Around him, workers snore beneath threadbare blankets, unaware of how close they came to joining the dead.

Jayce exhales through his teeth, presses the hilt to his sternum like confession.

I can’t keep swinging it out of fear. But I can’t let it go either.

Because letting go would mean admitting the Jedi were right, and he refuses to grant them that absolution.

He quickly realizes that he is unable to look the people into the eyes whose friends and loved ones he was unable to save. That died because of his weakness.

And so, barely seven days after arriving to Bracca, it is time to move on.

Driani tastes like copper and ash.

Jayce steps off the freighter and into a landscape stretched too thin. Bleached plains shimmer beneath brittle clouds. The sun hangs low and red, turning the dust into bloodstains. Everything is parched: the land, the people, the hope.

He doesn’t know why he chooses this place.

Maybe it’s the dust. The silence. The fact that no one looks at him like they expect anything noble to emerge from his shadow. After Bracca, after the heat of guilt cooled into ash in his chest, he didn’t want penance. He wanted to feel something. Or maybe nothing at all.

Here, the wind is thinner, the distance greater, but Viktor’s absence hasn’t faded. If anything, it stretches longer between the ridges, echoing inside him like a question he keeps refusing to ask.

No matter how hard he tries not to, he still misses him.

Of course he does. But what would be the point of reaching out now? Viktor would hate what he’s become. The methods. The silence. The rot disguised as freedom.

He doesn’t miss the Temple though; not in the way he thought he would. He misses structure less than he expected, and even the idea of home feels like memory warped by heat and grief.

There’s no going back, and he knows that. Only forward. Whatever forward means.

He trades repairs for lodging in a domed settlement clinging to the edge of a ravine. Farmers nod warily when he walks past. No one asks questions, but they watch him. They recognize the way he moves. The way he listens without looking. The way his hand always hovers too near his belt. Not as a Jedi, necessarily, but as someone who hides more than average, for sure.

The lightsaber stays hidden, but always close.

He helps fix the irrigation system here as well. Replaces filtration coils, reroutes energy packs. Work he can do with his hands. Work that doesn’t involve violence.

But it finds him anyway.

The raiders arrive during market day: ten men on speeder bikes, painted armor, blast rifles loose in their hands. They don’t shoot first. They promise. Just a ‘tax’. Just a warning.

Jayce watches from a rooftop, pulse steady, anticipation and restraint thrumming beneath his skin like a tether pulled tight.

He waits; tells himself it’s because they haven’t crossed a line, because no blood has been drawn, because no one’s screamed yet. But he knows better. He doesn’t move because he wants to see what they’ll do. How far they’ll go. If there’s still a sliver of mercy in the world that doesn’t need his blade.

He tells himself it’s restraint, but really, it’s exhaustion.

If he ignites his lightsaber now, it’s not for protection; it’s for punishment. And he doesn’t want to become that man. Not with children in the crowd and the memory of what he’s done still fresh on his hands.

And Viktor…

So Jayce waits. Lets the knot in his chest pull tighter. Watches with a clenched jaw and hands folded so tight his knuckles pale.

Not because he doesn’t care, because he does.

He forces himself to not intervene and the raiders leave with half the water stores.

But that night, the farmers ask for help. He doesn’t know how they know he can, and he doesn’t say yes either, he just starts walking the perimeter with them after sundown.

A few weeks later, a sand flare rises – red storm lightning streaking across the horizon, blinding the sensors, and the raiders return.

Jayce is in the tunnels when it happens, recalibrating pressure valves. The alarm sounds – short, sharp, and frantic.

He runs.

Scattered voices come through, and he hears the end of a plea: “Please… we don’t have anything left.”

And then, a blaster fires.

The scream that follows rips through him like fire.

He wants to draw his lightsaber, wants to cut the raiders clean in half, but the memory of his failure in Bracca stops him.

By the time he reaches the access hatch, three of the farmers are down and a child’s scream echoes through the dust-choked air.

One of them levels a blaster at a fleeing woman, and Jayce doesn’t think, he just lunges forward, moving before the barrel clears her chest, hand locking on the man’s arm, twisting, snapping bone with a crack that jolts through his own body. The blaster clatters away into the dirt.

The raider falls, limp, but Jayce is already moving again.

Every strike is fast, precise, born of fear as much as fury. His hands seize throats, elbows drive into ribs, his weight slams bodies against the walls. He tries to be as efficient as possible, because every second wasted could mean another scream, another body on the ground, another child watching their world collapse.

The lightsaber stays hidden. He doesn’t even consider reaching for it. Not here, not in front of them. If the Force touches him at all, it’s only in flashes – an edge to his reflexes, a push when his limbs feel too heavy. Nothing like the steady current it used to be. It feels half-absent, and that absence terrifies him more than the raiders ever could.

When the dust finally clears, the woman is gone. Safe. The surviving raiders scatter into the hills, dragging their wounded, too broken to fight. Jayce lets them go. He tells himself the threat is ended. The fight is over.

But when he turns around, he sees the children watching him with wide, hollow eyes, staring at him.

It doesn’t feel like peace.

Later, when the bodies are cleared and the wounded tended to, Jayce sits alone at the edge of the tunnel’s mouth. The children linger nearby, half-hidden behind a broken water tank. They don't speak. Just stare.

And he stares back, empty. He should feel relief. He saved lives, chose restraint, used only the blaster and his hands – no Force, no breaking bodies, no terror.

So why does he still feel like he failed?

Because those eyes aren’t grateful.

They’re afraid.

Because even with the Force leashed, he’s still the man who just single-handedly took out most of the raiders.

Is this his life now? Violence following him wherever he goes, forcing him to act and then leave because he is unable to face the people he hurts in the process?

It’s not fair – if he doesn’t act, they die. If he kills the raiders without the use of the Force, he is branded ruthless and violent. If he calls on the Force again and it doesn’t answer, they die anyway. If he lashes out with the Force to protect them as he did with those civilians before he left the Temple…

Viktor would’ve known how to handle it. Would’ve said something clever, then knelt to the child’s level and made them laugh through the fear. Viktor would’ve made it mean something better.

Jayce can barely look at them now. Because if Viktor were here, he wouldn’t be proud, and that thought hurts worse than the wound he took to the shoulder.

He wants to tell them he’s sorry. That he’s trying. That he didn’t want this. But I saved you feels hollow. I’m sorry sounds worse.

So he doesn’t, he just sits there, hands still trembling faintly, and wishes someone else could explain to the children why any of this happened.

The next morning, he’s tightening a power coil when someone throws a wrench at his feet.

He doesn’t flinch, but knows that it’s time – they’ve come to throw him out of here.

“You call that protection?” a voice demands. Rough. Older. Burned by sun and dust and grief.

Jayce turns slowly. The man is broad-shouldered, eyes sharp with fury. A survivor. A father, maybe. A witness.

“You think scaring kids half to death is a hero’s work?” he spits. “You think wordlessly taking out all those men in front of them teaches anything but fear?”

Jayce doesn’t answer right away. He straightens, hands still dusty with repair grease. “They would have killed more if I hadn’t acted.”

“No one’s saying you shouldn’t have fought,” the man growls. “But we don’t teach our children to cheer for monsters.”

That hits.

Jayce swallows and looks away. “I… didn’t mean to frighten them.”

“But you did,” the man snaps. “And you didn’t even try to explain. Just left them to sit in it. You want to help? Teach them. Show them they’re safe now and don’t vanish like you’re some damned myth.”

He doesn’t want me to leave?

Jayce exhales through his nose and feels the blade of truth in those words. He wants to argue, wants to say the man doesn’t understand what it takes. But he does, doesn’t he?

So he just nods once, and when the sun sets, he sits by the community well, old scraps gathered at his feet. He doesn’t call to the children, just begins sorting through wires and burnt stabilizers, muttering measurements under his breath.

A little one wanders closer, drawn by curiosity more than courage. Jayce doesn’t speak, just lifts a half-formed hilt into view, shows how the pieces connect, how ruined metal can be made to fit again.

The child stares, wide-eyed. Closer now. Reaches out – then pulls back.

Another joins them, older, protective. A sibling maybe. They stand behind, arms crossed, but their gaze doesn’t leave Jayce’s hands.

By the time the sun dips below the ridge, four more children hover in a quiet half-circle, drawn by the rhythm of repair.

Jayce doesn’t look up. He just talks, voice low and even. He shows them how to strip wire, how to tell a broken cell from one that still holds charge, how to listen for the faint hum when a circuit connects.

At first, they only listen, silent, and wide-eyed. By the third night, they come bearing scraps of their own – bent rods, crystal shards, whatever they can find. Jayce helps them build toys from it: crude lamps that glow faintly, little devices that buzz when tapped against stone. Nothing sharp. Nothing meant to hurt. Just things that remind them that hands can make more than they break.

He doesn’t talk about sabers or war, but about balance. About patience. About how light isn’t always gentle, but it can still be useful, because no matter how much he disagrees with the practices of the Jedi, he still believes in the core principles.

He sharpens their attention, not their reflexes. Teaches them how to steady a shaking breath, how to feel the weight of their body on the ground, how to focus when fear claws at the edges. A boy with night terrors learns to breathe through them. A girl with a limp from an old break learns how to find balance in her stance.

The town begins to shift around him. Adults start to nod as he passes, and in a blink, months have passed, and Jayce has built himself a shelter from scavenged panels, a place warm at dusk and cool at dawn.

And sometimes, when the children laugh, when the sun slips behind the cliffs and the world glows gold, he almost believes this could be enough. Something steady. Something that feels like a future.

He still wakes in the dark, half-convinced Viktor is near. Still flinches when shadows move wrong. But here, on Driani, he finds something steadier. Not happiness, exactly, but the closest thing to it he’s allowed.

And Jayce lets it happen. Lets himself believe, for a moment, that this could be something more than survival.

A woman – not much older than him, bright-eyed and brave – starts leaving him extra portions at the food line.

The second time she offers him extra bread, she says his name.

“Jayce. You’re wasting away. Here. Take it.”

He looks down at the soft, flat round of crust in her hand. The sun is low, orange slanting across the clay walls of the settlement, and her smile is easy. Earnest.

“I’m fine,” he says. But he takes it anyway.

“I know. You always say that.” She tucks a braid behind her ear. “Still, you work like ten people. You deserve more than dry protein bricks.”

Her name is Naera. She repairs hydro valves and sings to herself when she thinks no one is listening. Her laugh is loud. She doesn’t flinch when the children roughhouse near her. She doesn’t flinch around him, either.

It’s why he’s wary.

That night, after the repairs are done and the settlement slips into the quiet hush of evening, she finds him outside his shelter, sorting through metal scraps for tomorrow’s work.

“Walk with me?” she asks, and Jayce hesitates – but for some reason he follows her just a moment later.

The air is cooler near the cliffs. The stars have started to emerge, washed dim beneath the dusty haze. Naera talks about water lines first, but the topic soon turns to a cat she spotted skulking near the fences.

Jayce listens and offers a few words in return. It’s easy. Almost too easy.

“You ever think about staying here?” she asks at one point. “Not just passing through.”

“I’ve stayed longer than I expected.”

“That’s not an answer.”

He doesn’t give her one, but she doesn’t press. He likes that.

Later, as they near her door, she pauses beneath the overhang. The light from inside spills golden onto the dust. Her eyes are dark and open.

“Whoever she is – does she know you still look for her in the stars?”

Jayce’s breath catches and he doesn’t answer that one either. But after that night, they talk more often.

Evenings find them walking the dusty paths between the domes, talking about nothing –valves, the price of imported seed, old wreckage buried deep under the sand. Jayce doesn’t think anything of it at first. It’s easy. It’s grounding. She makes him laugh sometimes, and when she does, he almost doesn’t hate himself for it.

He doesn’t notice the shift until the solstice celebration a few months later.

The entire settlement gathers and music filters through scavenged speakers, someone found ribbon and strung it between the fences, children wear face paint and chase each other between food stalls. It’s… domestic. It’s nice.

Jayce helps hang lanterns. He even eats something fried and impossibly sweet.

Naera dances.

And he watches her.

She’s bright. Strong. Steady. She laughs with the elders, spins a child in her arms, tosses her braids over her shoulder as she twirls to the music.

Jayce smiles, and imagines, just for a breath, what it might be like. A quiet life. A home. Maybe a child with a laugh like hers, one who doesn’t know what death smells like. Someone to build something with – not weapons. Not ruin. A simple future, steady and unremarkable.

A life without ache.

He doesn’t realize he’s stepped away from the firelight until he’s at the edge of the barn.

Naera finds him there. “Too loud?” she asks, teasing.

“Too many lights,” he says. She’s come closer, right up beside him now, but he doesn’t back away.

“I’m glad you stayed,” she says, softer. “Tonight. And… here.”

He watches her. Watches the starlight in her eyes. And when she reaches for him – fingers brushing down his arm – he doesn’t stop her.

When she kisses him, he lets her.

And then he kisses her back.

It starts slow and tentative. But her hands find his sides, his beard, his neck. His own fingers skim her waist, feel the dip of her spine. Their mouths move with growing urgency – heat curled into the hollow space between everything they’re not saying. Her breath hitches as she presses closer, and Jayce feels his own pulse quicken in response.

She’s warm. Soft. Her body curves into his like it belongs there.

His body doesn’t resist in the slightest, no, it is already moving… already wanting. Heat pools low in his stomach, his breath shallow and ragged as her fingers tug lightly at his shirt. His hands don’t pull away but roam instead – testing, and remembering what it feels like to be wanted.

And for a moment, he thinks he could do this. That maybe he deserves to let himself feel good, to be touched, to forget.

But then Naera moans softly, and it’s the wrong sound. The wrong shape of need.

Because Viktor never sounded like that.

Jayce’s mouth ghosts over her neck, and all at once it’s not her skin he tastes. It’s Viktor’s.

A flicker of memory hits him: Viktor, beneath him. Viktor, breathless, breaking, eyes wide and wanting. Viktor, saying his name like it meant something sacred. Viktor, Viktor, Viktor.

His knees nearly buckle with the weight of it.

Naera murmurs his name, confused. Her hand is still at the hem of his shirt and his own rests just beneath her ribs, but suddenly it feels wrong.

Not because of her.

Because it isn’t him.

Jayce pulls back, breath ragged and Naera blinks, trying to understand. “Did I—?”

“I’m sorry,” he says, not cruel or cold, just… broken.

She nods slowly, understanding without asking. “She still has you, doesn’t she?”

He swallows hard before he is able to get out a barely audible “He,” and Naera, to her credit, steps away. Jayce is unable to look at her as he turns to leave.

He starts walking back into the dark alone, and feels like something inside him tears. He staggers into his shelter, palms pressed to his eyes like he can hold the hurt back. But it doesn’t help. Nothing does.

The bond is silent, but he still feels it like a ghost under his skin. A heartbeat out of rhythm. A name written across every nerve.

Viktor.

It would have been easier if it had faded, if time had worn it down to a dull ache. But it hasn’t, no, it only gets worse.

He misses him.

He misses him so unbelievably much.

Not just the bond. Not just the touch or the way they fit. He misses his voice. His mind. The way he used to look at Jayce like he was something worth believing in.

And now there’s no one left who sees him like that.

He lies awake until the stars vanish, arms folded around a pillow that still doesn’t hold warmth, and weeps without sound.

A memory surfaces unbidden. Viktor, younger – barely more than a Padawan – sitting beside him in the Temple courtyard with his knees drawn to his chest, a datapad in his lap and a flower Jayce had tossed at him tucked behind his ear. He hadn’t noticed it right away. Jayce had expected a snide remark or a dismissive look.

But Viktor had left it there and kept reading, unfazed. And when Jayce finally said something, he’d only glanced over and said, “It suits me,” with a crooked half-smile that made Jayce’s heart ache even then.

It was stupid. Pointless. Nothing more than a warm afternoon, a moment of shared sunlight, Viktor’s voice murmuring notes on energy transfer and Jayce pretending to listen just to be near him.

He would give anything to go back to that moment. Anything to hear Viktor say his name with laughter again, not grief. Anything to rest his head against his shoulder like he used to, when the galaxy hadn’t gone to hell and neither had they.

The memory is so soft it cuts like a blade, because loving Viktor has never stopped.

But losing him never stopped either.

When the dawn creeps pale across the sky, Jayce still hasn’t slept. He steps outside, drawn by habit or ache – he doesn’t know which. The stars are fading, but a few linger, cold and bright against the thinning dark.

He stares up at them, arms crossed against the chill, and wonders. Where is Viktor now? What planet? What shadowed hallway? Is he alone? Is he safe? Has he moved on? Does he still reach for the bond the way Jayce does – hesitant, aching, always stopping short?

Jayce closes his eyes, and the silence is deafening.

He whispers his name once, too low to carry. A prayer. A wound.

And then he goes inside, lays down again, and tries to forget the stars.

Because he still sees Viktor’s face when he closes his eyes. Still hears his voice in the silence between words. Still remembers the way it felt to breathe in unison. Viktor, who left, but who still lives inside him, threaded through every fractured piece.

And for the first time in months, he nearly does it.

He nearly tears a hole in the wall he built around the bond. Just a sliver. Just enough to feel him.

To see if he’s still there.

To beg him – please, please let me in.

But he doesn’t, because if Viktor answers, Jayce might fall apart… and if he doesn’t, Jayce might never put himself back together again.

And when the sun comes up, he returns to routine as if nothing happened.

But peace is not allowed to stay... It ends on a windless morning.

No alarms, no screams.

Just smoke.

The raiders return, fewer but crueler, and not for water this time, but for vengeance. For blood. They shoot a boy in the leg and leave his mother to crawl for help and torch two storage domes before anyone can respond.

Jayce is too far when it starts. He runs until his lungs rip at the seams, but by the time he arrives, the well is already shattered, the heart of the village bleeding steam and smoke.

The children huddle in the wreckage, clutching one another. One boy grips the toy hilt they built together as if it still holds power, as if it can hold back death itself. Their eyes meet his, wide and pleading.

Something inside Jayce tears loose.

The raw terror that he’s too late again hits him – that he’ll watch them die as he did on Bracca, helpless. But he hears the children shout his name in relief, as if they know he will save them. He hears a boy tell his little sister “It’s okay, Jayce is here,” and the fear ignites into fury, blinding and absolute. Fury at the raiders. Fury at himself. Fury at the galaxy that always demands blood from those who have the least to give.

The lightsaber hisses to life before he can think about pulling it, the sound splitting the air like a scream.

And then he cuts.

He moves through the raiders with precision honed by years of training, but there is no calm left in him, no restraint. The blade sears through bodies, slices through blasters, cleaves flesh and armor alike. Raiders fall in halves, in pieces, the smell of scorched bone choking the air.

The fight is over quickly. Too quickly. His anger has no place to go, so it spills out into every strike, every corpse left steaming on the earth. By the time the last raider falls, Jayce is panting, trembling, the Force thrumming around him like static clinging to his skin.

He lets the saber fall silent.

Dust settles and smoke curls in thin tendrils through the air. The children don’t cry, tey just stare at him, silent, wide-eyed, as if they can’t quite decide if he’s savior or executioner. The boy still clutches the broken toy hilt to his chest, knuckles white, like it’s the only thing left that makes sense.

Jayce wants to go to them, to kneel, to say you’re safe now. But his hands are shaking, slick with sweat, trembling with what he just did. He cannot move. He cannot bear to see the reflection of what he’s become in their eyes.

It takes all of his willpower to stand slowly and walk past the scorched remnants of the raiders. Past the crater he carved into the earth. He kneels beside the boy with the injured leg, checks the wound, binds it without a word.

He lifts the smallest child onto his hip. The others follow, and no one runs from him. They don’t speak. They just let him lead them back to the still-standing community hall. To what’s left of shelter.

That night, Jayce sits by the broken well. The same one where he spent so much time with the children, teaching them about repairs and peace. His hand hovers above the edge.

I did what I had to, he tells himself. But he hates how easy it was.

Bracca had taught him something, hadn’t it? The weight of people dying because of his weakness. The strength of his fear. There was a reason for him not even trying to use the Force here before. A reason for him not having drawn his lightsaber since leaving the Temple.

But now, it broke, and not because he wasn’t strong enough to stop it, but because he wanted to break.

Because when he saw the children scream, when he saw smoke rising and innocent hands clinging to burnt toys, the anger didn’t just surface, it surged. Consumed. And when he called to the Force – when he let it flood him – it came too fast. Too eagerly.

Not with resistance, but with relief, like it had been waiting for him to stop pretending.

The Force guided his blade, yes. But for the first time, he didn’t try to separate fear from action, or anger from strength. He just let it happen.

Now, with the smoke curling low and the silence pressing down on him, his hands still tremble. Not from shame, not entirely. From memory. From the way it had worked – how quickly the fight had ended, how completely he had saved them.

The Jedi had called anger a poison. A path to ruin. But if that same fury could keep children alive… if fear could stop the smoke from taking everything… was it really so wrong to let it in?

He doesn’t answer the thought. Not yet. But he doesn’t push it away, either.

In the days that follow, the village returns to a fragile rhythm, but Jayce feels the shift.

They still nod when he passes. Still bring him scrap, small offerings of gratitude. But their smiles are smaller now. Stiffer.

A mother pulls her child closer when he walks too near the well. The children still play, but when he approaches, they scatter faster than before. One lingers, only to ask, “Are you a Jedi?”

Jayce doesn’t answer, because he isn’t sure what he is anymore.

That night, he sits outside his shelter again and closes his eyes. Not to meditate – he hasn’t really done that since he left the Temple, but rather to breathe. And the moment he does, the ache wells up like it always does. The ache that answers to one name.

Viktor.

He wants – no, needs – him. Not just his presence, but his steadiness. His voice. He wants to curl into Viktor’s lap and rest his head against his chest and let everything else fall away. Just this once. Just once, to feel what it’s like to be held again.

And he almost reaches for the bond again.

He almost does it, but before he can move, before he can even gather the thought, he feels Viktor at the edges of the wall he built long ago.

Gently. Quietly. Not demanding – never that – but asking. There’s a ripple of concern. Of want. Of love. Viktor has felt something, and he’s reaching through the cracks like sunlight through a half-open door.

He wants to let him in. He needs to. And for one impossible heartbeat, Jayce lets it happen.

He lets Viktor in, and memories flood that aren’t his, but feel like they are. The warmth of a hearth fire. The weight of pages turned in quiet. A glimpse of sunlight across stone steps, the faint smell of ink. Simple things, ordinary things, but all laced with Viktor’s presence, Viktor’s thoughts, Viktor’s voice carried through the Force.

It is everything.

Jayce?

Jayce, I—

It is unbearable.

Because if Viktor saw what he’s done – what he’s become – this warmth would curdle into horror. Into disappointment. Jayce can see it already, Viktor’s eyes hardening, his mouth forming the words Jayce dreads: you’re not the man I loved.

And Jayce cannot, will not, survive that.

So he slams it shut. Hard. Faster than he ever has before.

The silence that follows is brutal, like the universe itself recoiling.

The bond throbs with something like mourning, Viktor’s emotions still echoing as if trapped in Jayce’s ribs. He doesn’t reach. Doesn’t answer. Doesn’t allow himself to feel the warm pull of the only person he’s ever loved. Instead, he curls in on himself, and the bond, now still again, hums with something like mourning.

And Jayce chokes on his own breath, chest heaving as he folds in on himself.

The next morning, he packs before sunrise. He catches Naera’s eyes from across the field as he shoulders his pack. She doesn’t speak, but she holds his gaze for a long moment, and nods. A tiny, understanding gesture. One that doesn’t try to tether him.

For a single, breathless second, Jayce mourns the life he could have had. But he is who he is, and that kind of peace was never truly his to keep.

No one stops him and no one asks him to stay as he leaves the settlement.

That almost hurts more than anything else.

Lokori Station is the kind of place that swallows names.

Jayce arrives in a rusting cargo shuttle with engine lights flickering and no manifest filed. No one questions him. No one asks. Here, anonymity is currency, and people bleed over less.

The air inside the docking bay is thick with fuel and synth spice. Neon strips stutter overhead. Grease-streaked workers glance up from crates and data slates, eyes flicking to Jayce – a flicker of curiosity, not recognition.

He wears a coat long enough to hide the saber. Keeps his voice low. His credits real.

No one pushes him.

His boots echo down the metal corridor as he steps into the station’s heart. Lokori is all shadowed corners and forgotten promises: bars carved into refueling nodes, markets tucked between waste chutes, laughter that never quite reaches the eyes.

He finds lodging above a gambling den. A cot. A sink. A lock that doesn’t work.

He doesn’t sleep much.

The first night, he buys a meal and sits in the back of a cantina, watching people lie to each other. A smuggler boasts about outrunning a Republic cruiser. A Twi’lek mechanic pockets chips from a distracted player. No one notices Jayce.

That’s the point.

The bartender offers him local ale, but Jayce declines and asks for water instead. It gets him a look, but not a question.

A girl sings in the corner of the bar. Off-key, but beautiful nonetheless. Jayce listens without listening. His hand rests on his thigh, just above the saber.

Someone brushes against his coat on the way out and he’s on his feet in a breath.

The stranger raises both hands. “Easy. Didn’t know you were jumpy.” Jayce stares at him a moment too long.

“You lost or just dangerous?” the man asks, and he doesn’t answer, just leaves. But he feels the man watching him go.

By the second day, someone slips a chip under his drink.

Coordinates. A time.

No name.

The alley reeks of coolant and old spice. A supply drone buzzes overhead, its sensor lights flickering. Jayce leans against the wall, arms folded, coat drawn tight. He isn’t even sure why he showed up.

A woman steps from the shadows. Mid-forties. Cybernetics in her spine and the kind of stillness that comes from killing without regret. He should know the look, shouldn’t he?

“You’re the one from Driani,” she says without any introduction and Jayce tenses, but she continues, “Word about rogue Jedi travels fast. Don’t worry. Nobody up here cares what you did down there or who you were before. Frankly, most folks wish you’d be in more places.”

Jayce says nothing, just takes the datapad she hands him.

“There’s a problem. Cargo ship’s been hijacked and my employer wants it returned. Crew’s likely dead… the raiders won’t be. Yet.”

“Why me?”

“Because you’re angry, fast, and off the radar,” She shrugs. “And because you won’t ask questions I won’t answer.”

He reads the pad: coordinates, ship signature, last known comms.

“I’m not a bounty hunter.”

“I don’t care what you are,” she replies. “As long as you are good at it.”

Jayce doesn't flinch. Not because she’s wrong, but rather because she’s too close to the truth.

He hated what he did – or didn’t do – on Bracca. Hated what he became on Driani. The wrath. The silence. The ache. And yet, here he is, standing in the neon rot of another half-dead station, considering a job that requires more blood than skill.

Because deep down, he knows this is all he deserves.

He doesn’t want to admit it. Not out loud. But maybe he’s done trying to be more than the Force made him. Maybe the only thing he’s good at now is destruction. Maybe this anger is the only part of him still real.

He looks at the datapad and sees no mission – only permission.

To stop pretending.

“Half now. Double if it’s clean.”

“Good,” she grins. “We’ll be watching.”

He walks away before she can say anything else. The coordinates on the datapad blink. He doesn't look at them until he's back in his room, but when he does, he feels the Force shift around him, just slightly.

He doesn’t know if it’s warning him away, or calling him forward.

The cargo ship floats dead above a sulfur moon, listing slightly in zero-g like a corpse adrift in dark water. No beacons. No emergency signal. Only silence, and the faint magnetic pulse of the docking clamps still barely powered.

Jayce boards through an aft airlock. The lights flicker as he moves down the corridor, saber loose in his grip but still unlit. The Force curls around him like mist, warning him before he sees the blood on the walls.

He finds the first body slumped in a doorway, covered in blaster burns. The crew didn’t die easy. He might have flinched at the sight once, but he doesn’t, anymore. By the time he reaches the bridge, he’s counted four more.

Voices rise ahead. Laughter. Rough. Drunken.

Jayce breathes in and the door slides open. Six raiders around the captain’s chair, loot strewn across the consoles, weapons half-loaded. They turn when they hear him.

“You lost, friend?” One sneers.

Jayce doesn’t answer, he just ignites the saber. They draw blasters, but never get the chance to fire.

Jayce moves like a storm. No hesitation, and no mercy. One falls with a stroke to the gut. Another tries to run, and Jayce only has to reach out for the man to hit the wall with enough force to leave a dent. He breathes out, steps forward, and slashes wide.

Three are down before the last screams.

The final raider crawls toward the console, gasping.

“Please—”

Jayce raises his hand and the Force slams him against the wall, holds him there, trembling.

“Was the crew alive when you got here?”

The man sobs and nods, pleading for his life, talking about his wife and baby. Jayce closes his eyes and hesitates for a breath – just one. The Force hums in his palm, the saber ready, steady, his muscles tight with restraint he doesn’t fully believe in anymore.

But then it happens: a flicker. A brush. The bond, distant for so long, suddenly flares. Not strong; just a thread, fraying and faint. But unmistakable.

Viktor.

Jayce’s breath catches. How?

He’d locked the bond down. Walled it off with layers of pain and silence and the kind of self-hatred that burns like coals. But this… this came through. Viktor’s mind, reaching. Cautious. Concerned. Like a whisper across his pulse.

Did he drop his guard? Or did the Force decide he didn’t get to keep pretending? Did that one moment of weakness weeks prior weaken his walls this much?

For half a second, he wants to lean into it again. Let Viktor in. Let him see what Jayce has become, so Viktor can be the one to say it’s over. Again. So Jayce doesn’t have to.

But then the raider coughs once more.

“Mercy—”

Jayce’s fingers curl around the hilt tighter and the flare of connection dies back. He imagines the look in Viktor’s eyes. The disappointment. The sorrow.

And he decides he doesn’t want to see it. He shoves it away, then closes his fist, and the raider chokes and crumples, dead.

Jayce stands in the quiet and looks at the bodies, then at his hands, which were able to cause such destruction without having to really think about it, for no reason other than being asked to do it. Then out the viewport, where Lokori waits, indifferent and bright.

He doesn’t feel like a Jedi.

He doesn’t feel like a monster.

He feels nothing.

And that, somehow, is worse.

He returns to Lokori Station just before the refueling rotation ends.

No one meets him at the docks. No one asks what he did. The woman who hired him isn’t there, only a terminal pinging the completion code and an anonymous deposit to his account.

Jayce stares at the screen long after the credit balance stabilizes. He doesn’t move. Doesn’t feel like he won.

The credits feel like blood money and the silence feels… earned.

He walks the station in a daze, watching people pass without seeing him. A drunk stumbles into his shoulder and mumbles an apology. Jayce doesn’t respond.

The cantina hasn’t changed. The same girl sings, and he bartender doesn’t ask if he wants something stronger this time. Just slides a glass of water toward him without a word.

Jayce takes it, but doesn’t drink. He looks at his reflection in the glass instead – blurred and distorted.

The hum of the saber still echoes in his mind. The swing. The crack. The silence after.

He leaves the cantina and climbs the stairs to his room, shuts the door and sits on the edge of the cot. No movement or thoughts. Just… existing.

He reaches for the bond once, just for a second. Not because he wants comfort or because he expects forgiveness, but because he’s not sure he exists without someone else feeling it.

The echo comes back faint and hesitant. Concerned. Familiar in a way that softens something raw inside his chest. Viktor’s presence is quiet and questioning, like he felt the ripple and doesn’t know what it means.

Jayce flinches. If he lets that connection open too long, he’ll have to face the look in Viktor’s mind. And he doesn’t want to see the moment Viktor stops recognizing him, so he cuts it off again.

This time, the silence doesn’t feel protective.

It feels like exile.

Zarvos Minor is colder than Jayce expected.

Howling across salt-stained rock, distant chimneys coughing black smoke into a gray sky. The kind of place that feels like it’s been abandoned by the galaxy, and maybe by the Force, too.

It’s perfect.

Jayce doesn’t come for justice. He doesn’t even come because someone asked for help. He comes because something needs to be done. Because he’s the only one who will. Because violence is all that listens anymore.

He’s heard rumors. That’s all. A sliver of information caught in a half-drunk conversation days ago; something about a warehouse and off-grid raiders using civilians as leverage. It’s likely half true, maybe less. But it doesn’t matter.

It’s for the innocent people. Because there is nothing he hates more than innocent people being hurt for no reason.

He’s still doing good. This… is simply the righteous path taken through firmer means.

The warehouse is tucked in the shadows of the cliffside. Industrial ruins surrounding it, the metal ribcage of what used to be a foundry. He walks the path alone.

He cuts the first man down with silence still in the air, with a single, clean flick of his lightsaber. The man doesn’t even scream. Jayce doesn’t know his name. Doesn’t want to. Doesn’t check if he was armed.

There are five more in the next room.

They are armed. Shouting now. Panicking. One raises a blaster and Jayce pulls it from his hands without a gesture and crushes it mid-air. Then the man’s wrist. Then his ribs.

He doesn’t flinch as the Force moves like it’s inside his veins. Hot. Hungry. Eager. Or maybe that’s just him.

The third one tries to run.

Jayce doesn’t let him.

He pins him to the wall, presses until the metal behind bends inward with the weight of a body breaking. Bones shatter like twigs and something wet hits the floor. He doesn’t think about it. He doesn’t want to.

The fourth and fifth fight harder. One lands a hit, cuts across Jayce’s thigh. Pain blossoms, but it’s clean and simple. He lets it sharpen him. Ground him.

He slams them into the floor. Breaks one leg, then the other. Slices the blaster in half. Then the hand holding it.

His saber is efficient. His fury is more so.

And he doesn’t stop, because somewhere between the Temple and here, he learned that not stopping feels better than restraint.

The last one is crying. Sobbing now, snot and spit and panic. He drops his weapon and says something about just doing what he was told. Just moving cargo. Just surviving.

It takes one flick from Jayce’s wrist to choke off the words and lift him through the air.

For a moment, he almost feels the bond tugging again, like a hand pressed gently to the wall of his mind.

What now?

Rage boils up in him, fast and sharp, and the man in front of him gasps. Why is this happening again? Why are his walls weakening?

Why can’t you leave me alone already?

He is finally ready to become who he is supposed to be alone. Defending the innocents through means the Jedi are weak for. Viktor has no place here anymore.

So he closes his fist and the body falls.

Standing in the aftermath, his breath catches in his throat – not from exertion, but from what he sees. The broken remains of men he didn’t bother to know. Blood seeping into the seams of the floor. His saber still humming softly in his hand.

They were bad men. They deserved it, and anger was the only language they would ever understand. If fury can keep children alive, then maybe fury isn’t a sin at all. Because the Jedi were wrong, and he saved all the lives of the hostages he will find in the next room.

His knees buckle. The cut in his thigh tears open wider as he sinks to the floor. Heat pulses with every heartbeat, blood soaking through his clothes faster than he realized. His hands tremble, cold now, weaker than he wants to admit.

His knees buckle. His thigh bleeds freely, weakness making him shake. He sinks into the blood-streaked floor, the scent of metal and fire crawling into his lungs, almost gagging him.

The Force doesn’t recoil. It doesn’t mourn. It sings. Low and steady, pleased.

And Jayce hates it.

The world tilts around him. Smoke shifts in the corners of his vision. And then, clearer than anything, he hears it.

Viktor’s voice.

Jayce.

It’s so close he almost answers. His lips part, throat tight with a sob he didn’t mean to let out. For one heartbeat, he believes Viktor is here, reaching, calling for him.

But when he drags his gaze up, there is only ruin. Only corpses. Only the silence of Zarvos Minor.

And then everything goes black.