The Angels of our Better Nature

[Anbira Hicchoru]

He'd been running for so long. Running from the certainty of something terrible. To that end, he'd abandoned a cause, friends, allies, and took refuge in a bucolic life as somebody else.

Then that life fell apart around him. You could only keep lying for so long.

He'd left his self-imposed exile because he was convinced that the truth was inescapable. Despite what he might want to put aside and forget, it would only take one hard question, one look in his direction to not only endanger himself, but those around him. If the Empire or their agents thought the Twi'lek farmers he worked alongside were harboring a Jedi, the only witnesses would be the guilty and the dead.

So, what then? Go elsewhere? Become somebody else? It rephrased the same question and never once answered it. There was always the life he'd once known on Felucia. He was no stranger to solitude. He could find a corner of the galaxy so remote that no one would touch him, and then?

The time apart from the Jedi Order had instilled in him a truth he'd been unprepared to address. Death wasn't an enemy to outrun. It wasn't an obstacle to overcome, or an animal to slay. It simply was. Coming to that understanding wasn't fatalism. Had he thought there was some virtue in his defiance of it? If so, the slow drip of time had said otherwise.

Cruising alone in a patch of barren space, with a parsec of emptiness in any direction, the Felucian hermit looked at his comm, and a frequency loaded into it. It was a year old now. Whether the Jedi still listened to it, or whether their enemies were listening, these were things he didn't know. It was his link. Where that would take him, half of that was already foregone, but he had to believe the other half was within him to decide.

"This is Anbira Hicchoru. Come in."

[Tell Cho]

This is Anbira Hicchoru. Come in.

He pondered the message for some time. It could have been a trap, but something told him that it wasn't, and to say that he trusted his instincts was something of an understatement.

The Reclamation's End hummed quietly in the background, and the stars in his viewport glittered without twinkling here in the black of interstellar space.

"Humph," he said. "I have been on my own too long; I am starting to enjoy my own company. I would even be partial to a droid."

He raised one digit to respond to the call over the long unused Jedi frequency, but paused just before applying pressure. There was every chance that the frequency was being monitored. He pressed down on the communicator.

The message didn't take very long. It was merely a set of coordinates (his current position) and the four word phrase: There is the Force. Once recorded, he broadcast it across the frequency and waited, watching the glimmering star far off in the distance, surrounded by dust and asteroids - a fledgling system.

[Anbira Hicchoru]

He'd made his decision the moment he hit transmit, so the moment the message came in, there wasn't hesitation. The coordinates were fed into the hyperdrive, and Anbira's X-Wing fighter plunged into hyperspace.

The sight that greeted him on the other side was...unexpected. A Corporate Sector transport?

Anbira cruised near, keeping respectful distance in case this wasn't the fortuitous type of encounter he hoped.

[Tell Cho]

He briefly had a glimpse of a much larger starship when the shuttle exited hyperspace, but shook the hallucination from his eyes and carefully watched the shuttle as it slowed and finally stopped, some distance away.

Settling himself in the pilot's seat (thankfully modified to make way for his tail) and engaging the short-range communications, he made an effort to sound as personable as possible.

"You do know what you have done by using this frequency, yes? Very dangerous decision. Both of our lives are in danger."

[Anbira Hicchoru]

It was an astute observation, and Anbira nodded as he spoke.

"Then we have little time to spare. I have no doubt our friends still wish to avoid Imperial trouble."

So far, there was none to be found. Of course, many dangers often lurked in hyperspace.

"Is there a rendezvous point?"

[Tell Cho]

Humph, he was tempted to snort through the soft buzz of the communicator. There are many rendezvous points to choose from.

But he did not, because there was one particular set of coordinates he would have much liked to go to, but could not; he perhaps could never go there in his lifetime.

"Yes," he replied. "Transmitting."

Tell Cho knew time was short. The coordinates were broadcast via short range communication as well, so the tapped Jedi frequency would not give them away.

The Iego system was infrequently travelled. Thankfully the star-charts of the Corporate Sector still held the location of the planet. They would have to be careful.

"We will speak there."

[Anbira Hicchoru]

Iego.

Anbira had heard of it. Or at least the legends of it. And the curses. Not that such talk deterred him, it just struck him as an interesting choice. Obscure and with a reputation to precede it.

"Agreed."

The hyperdrive was recalibrated, and Anbira accelerated to light speed yet again, eager to secure their mutual safety from those who may be plotting against them.

[Tell Cho]

They reverted from hyperspace some distance from the planet itself, but the creatures, known as the Angels of Iego, began to sing beautifully and glide through space to their ships.

Some had said that to each who looked, the Angels appeared as an exotic and desirable member of their species. Tell Cho did not see Gossam floating through the blackness, but instead saw luminous beings, almost ethereal, and glowing. But they were merely creatures, and their song lost its potency against the power of the Force.

"Be careful," he said through the comm to his new companion, and the first Jedi he'd seen in years. "See them through the Force and their songs will not be so... distracting."

[Anbira Hicchoru]

He's let his feelings guide him before, but perhaps not in such a way until his Jedi companion mentioned it. Closing his eyes, Anbira held onto the yoke of his fighter, passing among creatures that defied comprehension in mundane means.

"That. That's beautiful."

He searched with his feelings.

"You've travelled here before? Who are you?"

[Tell Cho]

"I have," he answered, unable to identify the other through voice alone. "I am Tell Cho. I was once Jedi."

He led their ships through the songs and into the atmosphere of the planet.

"This place is particularly dangerous. But I do not trust holograms and commlinks as much as I did in my youth. We must speak face to face."

They passed over a large town of people, further on to a plateau, where he landed, and marched down the landing ramp onto the arid soil of Iego.

[Anbira Hicchoru]

I was once Jedi

Those words plagued Anbira on the way down. His mind found little peace, even in the aftermath of powering down his X-Wing. The canopy lifted, and he slipped out of the cockpit, using the stowable utility ladder to slide to the ground.

He met the alien there. Alone from prying eyes, their solace was still fragile and dangerous.

"What you said. Up there, before. I'm curious. You were once a Jedi? What happened?"

[Tell Cho]

The Gossam narrowed his eyes at the younger human.

"I refuse to believe you have no knowledge of the Purge," Cho said, huffing. "Purge. Humph."

The Gossam looked down to the ramshackle town below. The demons would be hunting soon.

"The entire Order, decimated. But I did not stop being a Jedi then. Jedi is more than the institution, or the Code, though both need the other, and Jedi need both. I stopped being Jedi when I set aside my principles to achieve my own survival."

[Anbira Hicchoru]

He wasn't ignorant of the Purge, no. It was precisely Cho's second point that Anbira had to understand. Precisely that second point that he had to overcome.

"Did you find a solution to that?"

He looked again to the diminuitive alien.

"Or have we simply met on the same road, walking side by side?"

[Tell Cho]

Cho's almost granite-hewn expression of dourness fell away as surprise took hold.

"Solution?" Cho asked. "There is no solution. We fell, as surely as if we flew with a creator and were struck down by lightning."

Cho shifted resting his weight on his cane and looking over the young man in front of him. He was young yet, a full decade, or more, younger than Cho himself. He'd been born into the desperate dark, the claws and knives in the shadows; and he still felt that he had fallen.

"How may I find a solution for broken wings, or a lost voice?" He shook his head. "There is no true solution to a fall. There is only the climb back to where I once stood."

[Anbira Hicchoru]

"Not the solution we would want, but the one we need?"

Anbira's brow knit at the serendipity of finding one such as this Gossam. He wasn't from the Wheel, and he didn't yet know, did he?

"I used to climb, and I know others still who do. The toil is still better than surrender. It took me too long to realize it."

[Tell Cho]

"A fall in the first place means the realization came too late," the Gossam replied.

He thumped his cane into the dusty soil and grunted.

"When you say you know others, you mean others who call themselves Jedi, yes?" he looked at Anbira through narrowed eyes, and though he couldn't tell that Anbira did mean that, he could feel that there were other Jedi.

The Force had not forsaken him, then.

[Anbira Hicchoru]

He nodded.

"They're out there. Somewhere. Some like you, from the old days. Some like me, who had to figure out their place in the galaxy without knowing."

Anbira looked to the sky, at nothing in particular, but imagining he was able to see far off.

"I'm trying to return to them, and I think you should come with me."

[Tell Cho]

"I will go with you," Tell Cho affirmed after a moment. "But I am not unknown. The Empire has a bounty out for me; dead or alive, it says."

He snorted.

"They do not know where I am. But it is only a matter of time. As it is with all Jedi, young or old."

[Anbira Hicchoru]

A matter of time.

Anbira exhaled. Whispers of his visions returned to him. He wouldn't run from them any longer.

"A death mark gives pause. I know that all too well unfortunately. It's why I ran."

He traced his hands along Jamo Jakatta's stolen X-Wing, closing his eyes.

"I can close my eyes and see them. Out there, somewhere far and remote. But never certain."

Anbira turned, facing Tell again.

"My master once spoke of many eyes, seeing the same thing if they shared their point of view. A meditation. Something of old ways. Do you know of it?"

[Tell Cho]

Tell Cho thought.

"Shared meditation? A common enough practice between Master and Apprentice," he mused, though Anbira's words hinted at a more complex and difficult task. "Also much like battle meditation. A rare art, largely unneeded, though one we could have used more of during the Clone Wars."

Cho shook his head, banishing the distractions.

"I am familiar with the concept," he answered finally.