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“A Trial of Being Old”
— Yoda (Yoda: Dark Rendezvous)
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Wyck stood outside his newly completed hut with a fresh sense of accomplishment. It looked the same as the one he had built in the gardens of Ossus, even though it was cut from different wood and was much further from the Jedi Temple. But this hut was more home than that one had been, and certainly more home than his tiny chambers on Jedha had been.
He took a step into his new doorway and froze for a moment.
The sitting room was the same. The same it as his old hut the day Nora had come to visit him, shortly before she died on Telos. Her death still got to him, even five standard years after the fact. And more had come since then. More losses and more death. He had outlived so many young and bright lives, and he didn't really like that. But, rather than give in to the emotion, he pressed ahead into his new home and shut the door behind him.
Even though the skeleton of the home—its exterior, its walls and flooring—was new and fresh, the things that truly made it a home had history. One hundred and sixty-five years of history, to be exact. Each item, book, or trinket had a face associated with it. Most of them ghosts long gone... but, some of them still alive and vibrant... for now, at least.
He eyed some of the more memorable pieces of his collection. There was a chipped red kyber crystal hanging from a necklace which was itself hanging from his ceiling and had been taken from the lightsaber of the first Jedi Wyck had seen die during the Hundred-Year Darkness—a staunch reminder that the dark side stole away friends one might never expect to lose, even as it stole away young lives that had only just begun. A reminder never to follow its siren's call, its temptuous whispers.
He approached the crystal and took it between two of his talons, feeling the cold pulsations within against his leathery verdant skin, and closed his eyes. The crystal once belonged to a girl named Siri. A human Knight who had saved a young Wyck from drowning in a deep stream during his Jedi training before the fall. He had always been somewhat of a slow learner, but that day, it had nearly cost him his life. Seeing her lifeless body shortly after the war began had filled Wyck with such a profound sense of failure. She had once saved him, but he had been unable to save her.
He opened his eyes and his gaze shifted to the right, to a small bookshelf with a wooden shoebox crammed sideways amidst a stack of old tomes. He pulled it free, which made the books slump over, sat it on the floor in front of him and lifted the lid. A dented, rusted hilt sat within. A lightsaber hilt, which had served as his first weapon. The crystal now rested in the weapon he now carried. But the casing, the weapon itself, had been destroyed during the Battle of Tython, as Wyck—then just a Knight—fought back hordes to assist the evacuating Younglings in escaping to transports.
So many had died that day. And their deaths had remained unavenged until just a few weeks ago, when Imani led them to victory over the hordes that had taken their home from them.
Imani.
Wyck smiled. His gaze went from the crumbled, rusting hilt to his hammock, where a brown cloak was draped over the makeshift bed, itself woven from kath hound hide. The brown cloak was something she had made for him when she was still his Padawan. It was a lighter color than the one he wore now, and bore burn marks from the battles it had seen, but he didn't have the heart to get rid of it. It served him as a blanket now, and as a reminder never to give up on a student, no matter how hard-headed, distant, and temperamental they could sometimes be.
She wasn't his first apprentice. There had been others. Dozens. Bo-dan Fey. Gale. Visshkar. Imani. Now Albert. Those names were of particularly memorable apprentices. But they didn't even begin to take into consideration all of the Younglings he had helped sheppard and instruct through their various beginning lessons. Even once the rank of Padawan had been abolished by the Council, he had helped raise the children into Knighthood. But, even there, tragedy had struck.
He vaguely remembered a boy who murdered his friend in his own bedchambers before leaving for exile. But the most memorable was easily Alais. The smile faded from Wyck's face. His eyes fell upon a book that had been given to him by Master Vao, the first Jedi Alais had killed. She was such a promising youth: vibrant in the Force. But her promise had been squandered. And, since then, dozens of Jedi had followed her into darkness: Kal, Cregan, and there was even that other Sith... the one Wyck had met shortly after the battle on Devaron. He was certain that man had once been a Jedi Knight... maybe even one he knew.
It was hard to remember, such was the burden of being as old as he. So many faces. So many names. So many losses as the years became decades and the decades became centuries.
* * *
The hut was growing warm now. It was time to make supper. A Jedi needed his strength, especially one of Wyck's advanced age. He snatched a makeshift fishing rod he had built and a wicker basket from nearby his dormant stove and trudged out of the hut again towards the adjacent stream.
As he sat on a stump next to the stream and cast his line, he couldn't help but to think back to the time when he took Alais to Lothal with him. “The honor is mine, Master Wyck,” she had said. “I know many others back at the temple would love to have a chance to go on a mission with you.”
He had only been a Knight then, yet she and many others referred to him as "Master" out of respect for his age and wisdom. Others had asked him why he had waited so long to become a true Master, and what he would do when he finally became one. He wondered what those "many others" would think if they could see him now.
As he silently waited for a bite, Wyck closed his eyes and stretched out with the Force. Out beyond the forest he now called home. Beyond the atmosphere of Tython itself. The Force beyond their home was in chaos. The dark side of the Force was ever stronger. A steady thrum in the darkness drew his attention, and he knew the source was Alais—or Andraste, as she stylized herself now. She was stronger now than she was when he last saw her on Prakith. But, just like the man on Devaron, he could still see the bits of Alais, like glimmering butterflies amidst a sea of darkness, signaling that she was not completely gone. Not yet. There was love in her heart... as long as that existed, the light in her would not completely die.
A splash snapped him from his meditations. He was behooved to find his line severed, his potential dinner having escaped with the bait. But that's what he got for letting his mind wander. A Jedi's mind was always to be in the here and now, lest their distraction cost them. And, in this case, it had cost him his dinner.
His frustration and ruminations cost him again, as a sudden shriek from behind him caught him off guard. Hook bats? How could he not have sensed them? But Provide another opportunity for dinner, they have, Wyck decided as he reached to the air around them and jerked it as one might if they were snapping a curtain shut. The two bats slammed into each other and collapsed to the ground.
They were no fish, but they would have to do. He used his lightsaber to quickly and quietly finish the job, then hauled his soon-to-be dinner inside to be cooked.
* * *
That night, as the fire crackled in his hearth and hook bat soup warmed his belly, Wyck sat beside the flickering light and thumbed through an old book: the book Vao had given him before his death. But his thoughts weren't on the words or diagrams. They were on the memories he had relived earlier in the day and the darkness he had sensed in the Force whilst fishing.
He lamented his role in it. Save Prakith, Wyck had not fought in many battles since the end of the Hundred-Year war. He had stayed back, meditated, learned what the Force had to teach him, and become stronger. He had been patient. Jedi Knights and Masters faced many trials to reach their stations. Trials of Skill, of Knowledge, and of the Flesh. All were measures of their readiness to fill a greater role within the Order. But the Trial of Being Old... that's one they didn't talk about. To use the decades of experience one had accumulated to model for the younger Jedi how a true Jedi behaved, even when everything else screamed for them to move—to do something.
Patience.
So many lacked it. Alais's impatience had led her to torture evil men rather than wait for them to face justice through proper channels. Good intentions. Rash actions. Darkness. It happened so often, yet so few saw the folly of what they were doing until it was too late. Such had almost been Imani's fate as well, during the search for her parents, but Wyck had been able to make her see in the end. And she had become a Jedi Master as a result.
Patience.
Yes, Wyck had been patient. He had waited, studied, trained, meditated. And now, he sensed, the time for patience had come to an end. If he wanted, he could reach out to the Force and try to anticipate what the future held in store; but he did not. This time, he kept his focus in the moment. He closed the dusty old tome and sat it on his kitchen table. Then, he shuffled over to his hammock, below which was a tiny crate containing his holocron. It was still under construction. There was still so much work to do. But if the time for patience had ended, then the time for action was approaching fast.
He sat cross-legged in the darkness of his hut and focused on his holocron through the Force. The little box began to glow, casting a soft blue light throughout the dark home as its various pieces separated and began to float around the tiny Jedi Master. And then Wyck began to record and imprint his memories upon the device. The apprentices he had trained. Their successes, and his. Their failures, and his. He would immortalize all of this, their names and their lives, and his part in them, for future Jedi to learn from.
...and then, when he was done, it would be time to fight.