Lekku. LOG-010. Two Eyes Open.

LOG-010. Two Eyes Open.

The bounty was supposed to be clean.

A low tier data thief, real name Carthen Jull, operating under a half dozen fake ones. Minor charges. Fraud. Access violations. A stolen ship. Half the underworld wanted him for debts. I didn’t care why.

The important part was that the price was decent.

The location was better, an orbital freighter docked at the edge of a shipping convoy over Lothal. Neutral airspace. Minimal interference. My kind of work.

I’d tracked him for four days.

Eventually, I pick my entry point. Time the patrols. Splice the hatch and ghost inside while he’s in the midst of a call, arguing with someone over unsecured channels like he’s forgotten what paranoia is.

Got within six meters before he saw me.

Didn’t even scream. Just ran.

Coward.

—

I cut him off at the corridor junction.

He turns to bolt the other way and I catch him with a stun round to the back of the knee.

Carthen hit the floor hard. Tried to crawl.

I step over him.

Reach for my cuffs.

Then the lights shift.

I feel it before I hear it. That shift in air pressure, that static hum under my skin. The slow draw of something old and wrong and familiar lighting up in the back of my head.

I turn.

A green saber.

Standard looking hilt. Single blade. Held at a downward angle.

The Jedi stands in the doorway like he’s posing for a statue, brown robes, calm face, not a hair out of place. Maybe thirty. Not smiling. Not scowling.

Just there.

“Step away from him.” He exhales, like we’re discussing traffic patterns.

I don’t move.

“You’re interrupting a contract.” 

He tilts his head slightly. “That ‘contract’ is on Republic protection lists. You’re about to commit an act of obstruction.”

“...Not the first time.” I challenge.

Then I look him in the eyes.

Feel it.

He’s strong.

Not flashy. Not theatrical. But steady. His presence in the Force is like stone at the bottom of a river, unshakable, slow, and cold.

I hate that it makes part of me itch.

He doesn’t raise his blade.

I don’t raise my blaster.

We just stand there.

Waiting.

Then Carthen makes a choice.

Tries to bolt again.

The Jedi catches him mid sprint with a flick of the wrist, not even looking, and drags him across the floor with the Force, tucking him behind his robes like cargo.

“Last chance.” He warns.

His voice is still polite.

Still measured.

But there’s something under it now. Something heavy.

I hold his gaze another second.

Calculated.

A dozen options flashed across my HUD. None of them clean.

I turn and walk.

He lets me go.

But he watches.

And I know, fundamentally, that I’ve been seen.

Back aboard Krayt’s Mercy, I sit in the cockpit and pull off my helmet.

I don’t speak.

Don’t curse.

Just sit there, silently piloting my way out.

Trying to remember the exact way his voice sounded when he said last chance.

—

The moon doesn’t even have a name.

Just a designation code. VX-51273, the kind of place that only exists on a map until someone needs to hide. No colonies. No outposts. Just sand, rock, and a gravity field that makes you feel slightly too heavy the second you leave the ramp.

I’m here for repairs.

Hyperdrive power couplings misfired during the jump off Lothal. Wasn’t catastrophic, but it cooked two relay points and a vent coil.

I could’ve paid someone to fix it.

I didn’t.

Instead I set down in a canyon near the equator, pull out the tool kit, and get to work. Take the helmet off. Sweat rolls down my spine. Wind tastes like dust and metal.

Halfway through splicing the junction, I feet it.

That pressure.

Not hostile.

Not sharp.

Just there.

Like the air itself has noticed me.

—

He doesn’t sneak up on me.

Didn’t need to.

I turn slowly and see him sitting on a low rock like he’d been waiting for hours.

Old. Wrinkled. Not frail.

He wears tattered brown robes like he doesn’t care what they used to mean. Hair long, gray, pulled back in a tie. Hands calloused. No weapon in sight.

He watches me for a long moment. Then inclines his head.

“You leak the Force like a cracked crystal.”

My hand doesn’t go for a blaster.

Doesn’t need to.

“Congratulations.” I mutter. “You’ve got good eyes.”

The man smiles at that. Small. Crooked.

“I have more than eyes.” He retorts. “But that’s not the point.”

“Then what is?”

“That no one taught you how to carry it.”

He gestures, vague, slow, toward me. Not just my body. The whole of me.

“All that beskar. All that training. Armour over instinct. Firepower over focus.”

He leans forward slightly. His eyes catch the sun just enough to show the amber beneath the gray.

“You’re surviving the storm by standing still in it. That works, until it doesn’t.”

I don’t respond.

He waits.

Then tilts back slightly. “I was once Jedi. Long ago. Before the Order decided it preferred martyrs over minds.”

“...I don’t care?”

“I know.”

He smiles again.

This time, I hate how much it isn’t condescending.

“I’m not here to recruit you. I’m here because the Force brought me here.”

I scoff. “The Force doesn’t care about me.”

“No.” He nods. “But you’re burning enough of it that it might start.”

The Force user stands.

Walks a slow circle around the ship. Touches nothing. Says nothing.

Then comes back and looks me in the eye.

“I can teach you.” He offers. “Not to kneel. Not to serve. Not to ‘balance’ anything.”

“Then what?”

“To own it.”

It sounds vaguely Sithy.

I don’t say yes.

But I don’t tell him to leave either.

And so he stays.

—

He never calls it training.

Doesn’t give it a name at all, really
.
Instead, he just points at a stone ridge a few hundred meters from the ship and tells me to start walking.

So I do.

No armour. No weapons. Just boots in dust and wind clawing at my throat. The air feels thin out here. The kind of place people come to vanish.

Fitting. I’m sure several members of the clan would strangle me for taking off my armour in front of a relative unknown. Maybe they’d be right to.

Still, it feels right.

The lessons aren’t drills. No sparring. No philosophy. No holos of long dead Jedi waxing poetic about serenity while the galaxy burns.

It’s simpler than that.

He makes me feel things.

Sand moving under my feet. The curve of air pressure just before the wind shifts. The heartbeat of the moon itself, slow and wide, humming through the soles of my boots.

“Not everything you touch needs to be hit.” He says once.

I don’t answer. Just try again.

I stand with my hands still at my sides, breathing slow, reaching out without reaching forward. No pushing. No pulling.

Just…pressure. Awareness.

And eventually, movement.

A rock tilts on the edge of a ridge.

It doesn’t fall.

It chooses to fall.

He never corrects me.

Never shouts. Never praises.

Just watches.

Sometimes he gives short suggestions. Adjusts a stance. Points out when I’m fighting instead of feeling.

And I hate how much that helps.

I’m not built for stillness.

But I’m dangerous in it.

—

At night, we don’t talk much.

He meditates under the wing of the ship. I stay inside, working on upgrades, checking contracts I won’t take.

More and more, I start seeing the galaxy as paths.

Not walls. Not blocks. Not luck.

Just currents.

If I listen hard enough, if I quiet the noise, I can feel which direction things want to move.

And decide whether I let them.

The next morning, I’m balancing on a spike of stone overlooking the canyon, hands out, breath even, when he just kind of appears.

“You never bow.”

I don’t look down.

“You never ask me to.”

“I never will.”

“Good.”

We stand in silence for a while longer.

His name is Master Sarun. Supposedly, he isn’t a Jedi anymore.

Neither am I, though I never was one in the first place.

Instead, we’re something else.

And I think I’m starting to like what that feels like.