bring the good shoes
Jeremy stared at it.
Then Terry sent another message immediately.
Terry: /jk
Jeremy laughed out loud in the galley.
Because he knew Terry. Terry was a dude. Terry owned maybe two pairs of shoes on a good day and one of them had seen better years. The good shoes comment was pure Terry energy and the /jk was Terry making sure Jeremy knew he knew.
I knew, Jeremy typed back. I know you Terry.
Terry: lmaoooo
Jeremy was still smiling when he typed the next message.
He looked at the group chat for a moment.
Thought about how to say it.
Decided there was no way to say it that wasn't going to be exactly what it was.
He typed.
Okay so. One more thing. We have a passenger on board from the world of One Piece. Who was supposed to die today. But instead of dying he's joining us on the crew.
He paused.
Typed the next part.
I'm talking about Whitebeard himself. Edward Newgate. That's where I've been.
He hit send.
He put the phone face up on the galley table and watched it.
Three seconds.
Five seconds.
Ten seconds.
Then all at once.
Rose: JEREMY COLEMAN
Rose: WHAT
Zach: BRO
Zach: BRO BRO BRO
Terry: STOP
David: he said WHITEBEARD
Diamond: I'm sorry WHAT
Sue: I don't know who that is but everyone seems excited so I'm excited
Zach: SUE he's like the most powerful pirate in One Piece
Zach: Jeremy you went back in time didn't you
Yes.
Zach: I KNEW IT
Rose: Jeremy how did you—
Rose: when did you—
Rose: okay I have so many questions
Terry: is he big
Jeremy looked at that question.
Terry.
Terry: what
He's enormous.
Terry: LETS GO
David: does he eat a lot
Jeremy thought about this honestly.
David I genuinely don't know yet but I'm going to say yes.
David: okay I'm bringing snacks
Rose: Jeremy.
Yeah.
Rose: Are you telling me that Edward Newgate.
Rose: The man.
Rose: Is on your ship.
Rose: Right now.
In his cabin. Resting. The 21B medical droid gave him cybernetic cardiovascular reinforcement. He's cleared for full mobility.
The chat was silent for a full fifteen seconds.
Which for this group chat was extraordinary.
Then Rose sent one message.
Rose: baby I am so proud of you
Jeremy read it twice.
Put the phone down.
Picked it back up.
Four hours out. Be ready.
Zach: Switch is packed. Charger too. Also grabbed your hoodie because I know you.
Jeremy smiled.
Thank you Zach.
Zach: that's what I'm here for
Terry: /jk about the shoes but also I did pack my decent ones just in case
Terry.
Terry: yeah
Good call.
Terry: LETS GO38Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDn6HSSpdWX
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The Edward Newgate hovered above the Bell Home.
Not landing. The yard wasn't built for a sixty percent scaled Conqueror-class starship with a vibranium composite hull. So Jeremy did the next best thing.
He dropped the cargo hook.
The platform descended slowly through the air toward the Bell Home parking lot where the group had assembled with their bags. Jeremy watched through the galley windows. Claude was managing the winch system. Gemini was monitoring wind conditions. Grok was keeping the ship perfectly stationary.
From up here they looked small.
His people.
Standing in the parking lot of the Samuel W. Bell Home for the Sightless in Cincinnati Ohio looking up at a starship hovering overhead like this was a completely normal Tuesday.
The platform touched down.
Bags went on.
Zach was coordinating like he always coordinated. Efficiently. Without being asked. Just seeing what needed doing and doing it.
Then Jeremy saw it through the windows.
Rose.
Trying to get her TV onto the platform.
It was new. He could tell from up here that it was new. Still had a certain quality to the way she was handling it. Careful. Particular.
Jeremy opened the comm to the cargo bay external speaker.
He was about to say something when Zach got there first.
"Rose," Zach said, and Jeremy could hear it clearly through the external mics Gemini had helpfully activated. "Are you sure you want to put that TV on that platform?"
Rose looked at him.
"Because," Zach continued, with the careful tone of someone making a reasonable point to someone who might not want to hear it, "if it falls off that platform on the way up—"
He didn't finish the sentence.
He didn't need to.
Rose looked at the TV.
Looked at the platform.
Looked at the considerable distance between the platform and the ship above.
Looked at her new TV.
"You don't even know if they have somewhere to put it," Zach said. "I'm sure they've got some sort of entertainment on the ship."
Rose was quiet for a moment.
The moment of someone doing math they don't love the answer to.
"Good point," Rose said.
She picked the TV back up and took it back inside.
Jeremy exhaled quietly.
Good.
Great actually.
The TV would have been fine probably but the soundbar—
Rose came back out.
Without the TV.
With the soundbar.
Jeremy looked at the soundbar.
At Rose carrying it with the particular energy of someone who has made a decision and is at peace with it.
He opened the comm.
"That's fair," he said. "I'm with her on the soundbar."
Rose looked up toward the ship.
Even from this distance Jeremy could see her smile.
"I KNEW you'd say that," she called up.
"The soundbar stays," Jeremy confirmed through the comm. "Non negotiable. Gemini make sure there's a good spot for it in the common area."
"Already identified an optimal placement location," Gemini said. "Excellent acoustic properties given the hull construction. The soundbar is going to sound very good in this ship."
Rose pointed up at the ship with a satisfied expression that said everything.
Zach shook his head slowly with the fond resignation of someone surrounded by people he loved making decisions he could see coming from a mile away.
"Okay," Zach said. "Soundbar goes up. Everyone else good? David you got your stuff?"
"I got snacks," David said.
"That's not what I asked," Zach said.
"I got snacks AND my stuff," David said.
"Sue you good?"
"Ready," Sue said.
"Terry?"
"Decent shoes and everything," Terry said.
"Diamond?"
"I have questions," Diamond said.
"You can ask them on the ship," Zach said. "Okay. We good. Jeremy we're ready."
Jeremy was already smiling in the galley.
"Claude," he said.
"Bringing them up now," Claude said warmly.
The platform began to rise.
His people.
Coming home.
To a ship named after a dead pirate who wasn't dead anymore.38Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡCzoi0OIqtJ
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Jeremy moved Jeremiah carefully out of the cargo bay.
The Frogport went back to the Bell Home basement where he belonged, tongue extended one final time to deposit a last package into his vault before Jeremy disconnected the chain conveyor and closed that chapter of the operation.
"Good work Jeremiah," Jeremy said.
Jeremiah said nothing because Jeremiah was a Frogport and Frogports were professionals.
Jeremy opened the portal.
Wakanda appeared on the other side. The decommissioned hangar. Andy sitting on his packager. The four Create vaults along the wall. The blaze burner still running because nobody had told it to stop and it was perfectly content.
T'Challa stepped through first.
In full Wakandan royal attire that somehow also looked completely practical. The way T'Challa always managed to look. He stepped onto the cargo bay floor of the Edward Newgate and looked around with the measured assessment of a king who had been told many things about this ship and was now confirming them with his own eyes.
Shuri came through right behind him.
Already looking at everything simultaneously.
Scanner out before she'd fully cleared the portal threshold.
"The acoustic properties of this hull are extraordinary," she said immediately.
"Hello to you too Shuri," Jeremy said.
"Hello Jeremy the acoustic properties of this hull are extraordinary," Shuri said without breaking stride.
T'Challa looked at Jeremy.
"She has been talking about this ship for six hours," T'Challa said.
"She's not wrong about the acoustics," Jeremy said.
T'Challa smiled.
Then he saw Whitebeard.
Standing in the corridor entrance to the cargo bay.
Because Edward Newgate had heard the portal open and had come to see.
T'Challa looked at him for a long moment.
At the scale of him. At the cybernetic reinforcement visible at his collar. At the man who was supposed to be dead standing in the cargo bay of a ship that bore his name looking back at the king of Wakanda with quiet steady eyes.
"Your Majesty," Whitebeard said.
"Edward Newgate," T'Challa said.
He said it the way he'd said it the first time. With the weight of a man who understood why names mattered.
"Thank you," Whitebeard said. "For the name."
T'Challa inclined his head slightly.
"It was the right name," he said simply.
Shuri looked up from her scanner long enough to register Whitebeard, update several internal assumptions, and go back to scanning the hull construction.
"You're bigger in person," she said.
"I get that often," Whitebeard said.
Jeremy closed the portal.
Andy disappeared. The Wakandan hangar disappeared. The blaze burner kept burning on the other side of a door that no longer existed.
"Alright," Jeremy said.
He walked through the ship toward the galley.
The crew followed. His crew. All of them. Rose and Zach and Terry and David and Diamond and Sue. T'Challa and Shuri. Whitebeard moving through the corridor with the careful moderated activity the 21B had recommended and the particular quality of a man still getting used to a body that didn't hurt the way it had yesterday.
They gathered in the galley.
Around the long table.
With the panoramic windows showing Cincinnati below them one last time as the Edward Newgate lifted.
Rose's soundbar was already installed.
Gemini had not wasted any time.
Jeremy stood at the head of the table and looked at his crew.
His actual crew.
In his actual ship.
Ready to go somewhere none of them had been.
"Okay," he said. "Grok. Take us up. We're going through the dimensional boundary into the Star Wars galaxy."
"Finally," Grok said. "I have been ready for this since the beginning."
"I know you have," Jeremy said.
The Edward Newgate rose through Cincinnati airspace. Past the clouds. Past the upper atmosphere. Into the particular darkness between atmosphere and space that always felt like standing at a threshold.
The dimensional boundary shimmered ahead of them.
The Star Wars galaxy on the other side.
"Before we go through," Jeremy said.
The table looked at him.
"I need to tell you where we're going first," he said. "And why."
He looked around the table. At Rose. At Zach. At T'Challa and Shuri. At Whitebeard. At all of them.
"We're going to Coruscant," he said.
The galley was quiet.
"We need to stop something from happening," he said.
He didn't say what.
He didn't need to.
Because everyone at the table who knew Star Wars looked at each other and the recognition moved through them like a current.
Rose knew.
Zach knew.
Shuri's eyes went wide slightly as she made the connection.
T'Challa's expression settled into something grave and certain.
Whitebeard didn't know Star Wars but he read the room the way a man reads a room when he has been reading rooms for decades and said nothing.
One by one they nodded.
Around the table.
Without a word being said about what specifically needed stopping.
Because it didn't need saying.
Jeremy looked at the dimensional boundary ahead of them.
"Claude," he said.
"Yes Captain," Claude said in the British accent.
"Set course for Coruscant."
"Course set," Claude said. "Jumping on your mark."
Jeremy looked at his crew one more time.
At the people sitting around a table in a galley with panoramic windows about to go through a dimensional boundary into a galaxy far far away.
To stop something that everyone in that room knew should never have been allowed to happen.
"Mark," Jeremy said.
The Edward Newgate went through.38Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2N9uzDiV6E
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The Edward Newgate settled onto the landing platform with the quiet confidence of a ship that had learned it didn't need to announce itself.
The netherite dark hull. The orange nodes. The Conqueror-class geometry scaled up sixty percent. On a Coruscant landing platform surrounded by Republic gunships and Jedi starfighters it looked like something from a different conversation entirely.
Which it was.
People stared.
That was fine.
Jeremy walked down the gangplank.
He heard Rose behind him start to follow and he held up one hand briefly. Not stopping her. Just — give me a minute. She understood. Rose always understood.
He walked across the platform.
Anakin Skywalker and Ahsoka Tano were mid-conversation near the platform railing. Something about a mission. Something about the Clone Wars doing what the Clone Wars did which was generate an endless supply of things that needed handling immediately.
They stopped when Jeremy approached.
Anakin's hand moved toward his lightsaber. Not drawing. Just the reflex of a man who had learned that unusual things approaching quickly were worth being ready for.
Ahsoka read him differently. Her head tilted. The way Togrutas did when they were processing something through senses that went beyond the visual.
Jeremy stopped at a respectful distance.
Held up both hands. Open. Empty.
"I know you don't know me," he said. "And I know this is coming out of nowhere. And I know you have no reason to trust a stranger who just walked off a ship you've never seen before on a platform in the middle of Coruscant."
He paused.
Anakin and Ahsoka looked at him.
Then at the Edward Newgate behind him.
Then back at him.
"But you're going to want to hear what I have to say," Jeremy said. "Because what I'm about to share with you is the most valuable thing anyone is going to say to either of you for a very long time."
Anakin studied him.
The Force was doing what the Force did around people who knew how to use it. Reading. Assessing. Looking for deception or threat or the particular quality of someone who meant harm.
Whatever Anakin found made him leave his lightsaber where it was.
"Who are you," Anakin said.
"My name is Jeremy," Jeremy said. "I'm from a different dimension. In my world everything that happens in yours — the Republic, the Jedi, the Clone Wars, you, Ahsoka, all of it — was made into movies. And then TV shows. And then more movies."
Ahsoka's montrals shifted slightly.
"You've seen our future," she said. It wasn't a question. Ahsoka was sharp. Ahsoka had always been sharp.
"I've seen what happens if nothing changes," Jeremy said carefully. "Yes."
Anakin's jaw tightened slightly.
"And you came here to change it," he said.
"I came here," Jeremy said, "because justice without grace is cruelty. And what's coming—" he paused, "—what's coming has neither."
The platform was quiet except for the permanent background noise of Coruscant. A trillion people living their lives below while on a landing platform three people stood in a conversation that the galaxy didn't know it needed.
Anakin looked at Jeremy for a long moment.
"How bad is it," he said.
Jeremy held his gaze.
"Bad enough," Jeremy said, "that I brought my whole crew through a dimensional boundary and set course for Coruscant before we'd even finished getting everyone settled on the ship."
Ahsoka looked at Anakin.
Anakin looked at Jeremy.
"Start talking," Anakin said.38Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVv19tU2LdJ
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Anakin went very still.
The kind of still that wasn't calm.
The kind of still that was a lot of things happening underneath a surface that was holding itself together by discipline.
"What did you say," Anakin said.
His voice was quiet.
That particular quiet that people who knew Anakin Skywalker knew to pay attention to.
"You heard me," Jeremy said. Not unkindly. Just directly. "Sheev Palpatine. Supreme Chancellor. Your friend. Your mentor. The man who has been in your corner since you were a kid." He paused. "He's been playing both sides of this war since before it started. The Separatists. The Republic. Both of them. He engineered the whole thing."
Ahsoka's hand had moved to her lightsaber now.
Not at Jeremy.
Processing.
"He's Darth Sidious," Jeremy said. "The Sith Lord everyone's been looking for. He's been right there the whole time. In the Senate. In the Chancellor's office. Smiling at you."
The platform was very quiet.
"And the dream," Jeremy said.
Anakin's eyes changed.
"You told him about the dream," Jeremy said. "About Padme. What you saw happening to her." He held Anakin's gaze and didn't look away because this was the part that mattered most and it needed to be said eye to eye. "He's been feeding on that ever since. Nurturing it. Letting it grow. Letting the fear get bigger." He paused. "Because a desperate man will do things a rational man won't. And he needs you desperate."
Anakin said nothing.
His jaw was tight enough to see from where Jeremy was standing.
"He's going to tell you," Jeremy continued, "that he knows a way to save her. That the dark side has abilities the Jedi don't. That he can teach you what you need to know to stop her from dying." He stopped. "And in the moment he says it you're going to want to believe him more than you've ever wanted anything."
Ahsoka looked at Anakin.
Anakin was looking at Jeremy with an expression that had several layers and none of them were comfortable.
"You said you have proof," Anakin said.
"I do," Jeremy said.
"Show me."
"I'm going to," Jeremy said. "But I want you to understand something first." He took a breath. "The proof is your future. What happens if you walk the path he's laying for you. And I meant what I said when I asked if you were sure you wanted to know." He paused. "Because once you see it you can't unsee it. And it is going to—"
He stopped.
Found the right words.
"It's going to hurt," Jeremy said simply. "In a specific way. Because it's not about what someone does to you. It's about what you do. What you become. And the people who pay for it."
The wind moved across the platform.
Coruscant breathed its trillion-person breath below them.
Anakin Skywalker stood on the landing platform and looked at a blind man from another dimension who had come through a dimensional boundary in a ship that looked like nothing in the known galaxy specifically to stand here and say these things.
"Show me," Anakin said again.
Quieter this time.
Not the command.
The request.
Jeremy nodded.
"Claude," he said into his comm.
"Ready," Claude said.
"Can you project the relevant footage on the ship's exterior display panel? The sequence we discussed."
"Projecting now," Claude said quietly.
On the hull of the Edward Newgate a display panel activated.
Jeremy looked at Anakin.
"I'm sorry," Jeremy said. "For what you're about to see."
Anakin looked at the display.38Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡRknGPMVDN6
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The footage kept playing for exactly three seconds after Anakin said stop.
Then Claude cut it.
The display went dark.
Anakin was at the railing of the landing platform.
Both hands gripping it.
Head down.
Jeremy didn't move toward him immediately. Some things needed a moment. You didn't rush toward a man who was having his soul rearranged and put your hand on his shoulder before he'd had three seconds to find the ground under him.
Ahsoka was already there.
Not touching him. Just there. Close. The way she always was with him. The way she had always known how to be present without crowding.
She looked at the display where the footage had been.
Her face was doing something that Togruta faces didn't usually show this clearly.
She had seen it too.
All of it.
Her own absence from it. What that meant. Why she had left. What it had and hadn't protected her from.
Anakin straightened up slowly.
Wiped his mouth.
Turned around.
His eyes were red at the rims.
His jaw was set in the way of a man who was holding something with everything he had because if he let go of it right now he didn't know what happened next.
He looked at Jeremy.
Jeremy looked back at him.
"The younglings," Anakin said.
His voice was barely above nothing.
"Yeah," Jeremy said.
"I—" Anakin started.
Stopped.
Started again.
"Those are children," he said.
"I know," Jeremy said.
"In the Temple," Anakin said. "They came to me. They trusted—" he stopped again. His hand was shaking slightly. The mechanical one. The one he couldn't fully control when things got to a certain level. "They thought I was there to help them."
"I know," Jeremy said.
"And I—"
"You don't," Jeremy said.
Anakin looked at him.
"Not yet," Jeremy said. "Not in this timeline. Not on this platform. That's the whole point." He held Anakin's gaze. "That's why I'm here. That future isn't written yet. It only happens if you walk the path he's already laying for you." He paused. "You just saw what's at the end of that path."
Ahsoka looked at Jeremy over Anakin's shoulder.
Something in her expression said thank you and also this is going to be complicated and also I've been worried about this for longer than I've admitted.
Anakin looked at his mechanical hand.
Closed it.
Opened it.
"Padme," he said.
"Padme dies in that future," Jeremy said carefully. "Yes."
"He said he could save her," Anakin said. "He was going to—"
"He was going to use her to get to you," Jeremy said. "The dream was never about saving her. It was about making you afraid enough to do anything. And then offering you anything." He paused. "He couldn't have saved her. He never intended to save her. You were the goal. She was the leverage."
Anakin stood very still.
Processing something that was too large to process quickly.
"She dies," he said. "Because of me."
"In that future," Jeremy said. "Yes."
"Because I—"
"Because he manipulates you into believing the only way to save her is to become something that destroys everything including her," Jeremy said. "It's a trap Anakin. Start to finish. The dream. The fear. The offer. All of it. A trap built specifically for you."
Coruscant breathed below them.
A trillion people who didn't know any of this was happening on a landing platform above their heads.
Anakin looked at Jeremy for a long moment.
"Why," he said. "Why me specifically."
Jeremy looked at him.
At the chosen one. At the most powerful Force user alive. At the man Palpatine had been cultivating since he was a nine year old boy on Tatooine.
"Because there's nobody else like you," Jeremy said simply. "In the history of the Force there has never been anyone with your power. And Palpatine knew that the moment he saw you. You weren't a person to him. You were an asset he spent twenty years acquiring."
Anakin's eyes closed for a moment.
Opened.
"What do I do," he said.
Not the command voice.
Not the general voice.
Just Anakin.
Asking.
Jeremy looked at him.
Then he looked at Ahsoka standing beside him.
Then back at Anakin.
"First," Jeremy said, "you don't do any of it alone."38Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVrGe2JZLGf
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Jeremy put his hand on Anakin's shoulder.
"Come on," he said.
Anakin looked at him.
"You just threw up," Jeremy said. "Over the side of a Coruscant landing platform after watching the worst thing you've ever seen in your life." He steered him gently toward the gangplank. "You need something to eat. You need water. You need to sit down at a table with a view and give your stomach something to work with before we talk about any of the rest of it."
Anakin opened his mouth.
"I'm not asking," Jeremy said pleasantly.
Ahsoka made a sound that was almost a laugh.
"Also," Jeremy said, as they walked up the gangplank, "my God is handling something at the Jedi Temple right now. So we've got a few minutes before that situation develops."
Anakin stopped walking.
"Your God," Anakin said.
"Jesus," Jeremy said. "He's at the Jedi Temple."
A pause.
"Right now," Anakin said.
"Right now," Jeremy confirmed. "And He is—" Jeremy considered the phrasing, "—none too pleased that the Jedi Order has forgotten about love."
Ahsoka and Anakin looked at each other.
Then at Jeremy.
Then they followed him onto the ship.
Meanwhile in the Jedi Temple.
The Jedi Council chamber was in session.
Mace Windu. Ki-Adi-Mundi. Plo Koon. Kit Fisto. Yaddle. Yoda in his chair with his eyes half closed in that way that meant he was paying more attention than he appeared to be.
Standard session.
Matters of the war. Matters of the Force. The usual weight of a galaxy in conflict distributed across the shoulders of the people in this room.
And then the temperature changed.
Not cold. Not hot.
Just different.
The kind of different that made every Force sensitive in the room sit up straighter without knowing why.
Yoda's eyes opened fully.
He looked toward the center of the chamber.
The light there was doing something it hadn't been doing a moment ago.
Not dramatic. Not theatrical. Just present. The way certain kinds of light were present — not illuminating a room but occupying it. The difference between a lamp and a sunrise.
The figure that stepped into the center of the Jedi Council chamber was not what any of them had been trained to expect.
Not a Sith.
Not a threat in any conventional sense.
Just a man.
Who looked at the Jedi Council of the Galactic Republic assembled in their chairs and let the silence sit for exactly long enough.
Then He spoke.
"I have watched this Order for a long time," He said.
His voice was quiet. The kind of quiet that fills a room completely.
"I have watched you protect. Serve. Sacrifice." He paused. "And I have watched you forget."
Mace Windu's hand moved toward his lightsaber.
"That won't be necessary," the figure said. Not a threat. Not a command. Just a fact.
Mace's hand stopped.
He wasn't entirely sure why.
"You have forgotten love," the figure said. "Not as a concept. Not as a word in your texts. As a practice. As the foundation of everything the Force is asking you to be." He looked around the chamber. At each of them. The look of someone who knew them completely and was choosing to address what He knew. "You teach your children not to attach. Not to feel. Not to love. And you call it discipline."
The chamber was absolutely silent.
"It is not discipline," He said. "It is fear. And you have been passing your fear down through generations and calling it wisdom."
Yoda closed his eyes.
Opened them.
Something moved across his ancient face that none of the other council members had seen there before.
Something that looked like a man being told something he had always known and had spent nine hundred years finding reasons not to address.
"You want to know why the darkness keeps finding purchase in your Order," the figure said. "Why your most powerful members keep breaking. Why love keeps being the thing that undoes them." He paused. "Because you told them love was the enemy. So when they felt it they hid it. And hidden love in a frightened heart doesn't disappear."
He looked at the empty chair.
Anakin's chair.
"It grows," He said quietly. "Until it becomes the very thing you were afraid it would become. Not because love is dangerous. But because you made it a secret."
The Council chamber held its breath.
"I am not here to condemn you," the figure said. "I am here because there is still time. Because one of mine is on a landing platform right now trying to undo what your fear helped build." He paused. "And I would like you to help him."
Yoda looked at the figure for a long moment.
Then the oldest living member of the Jedi Order said something that his nine hundred years of carefully maintained composure almost but didn't quite manage to keep steady.
"Forgive us," Yoda said.
Two words.
The figure looked at him.
"Already done," He said. "Now do better."
Back on the Edward Newgate, in the galley with the panoramic windows—
Jeremy set a plate in front of Anakin.
"Eat," he said.
Anakin looked at the food.
"What is this," he said.
"Bob Evans," Jeremy said. "It's from Cincinnati. Don't ask questions just eat."
Ahsoka was already eating.
Anakin picked up a fork.
"You said Jesus is at the Jedi Temple," he said.
"Yep," Jeremy said.
"And He's unhappy with the Council."
"None too pleased," Jeremy confirmed.
"About love," Anakin said.
"About love," Jeremy said.
Anakin ate a bite.
Looked out the panoramic windows at Coruscant.
"Huh," he said.
"Yeah," Jeremy said.
Whitebeard appeared in the galley doorway, assessed the situation, and sat down at the far end of the table because Edward Newgate had lived long enough to know when a man needed food and space and quiet in that order.
He caught Jeremy's eye.
Jeremy nodded once.
Whitebeard nodded back.
The Edward Newgate hummed around them.
Outside the panoramic windows Coruscant went about its business.
And in the Jedi Temple the Council sat in a silence that was doing the work that silences do when something true has just been said in them.38Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWdLOfzWKRZ
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Mace Windu stood up.
The way Mace Windu stood up when he had decided something and was prepared to defend that decision against whatever came at it.
"With respect," Mace said, and his voice had the particular quality it got when respect was the frame and certainty was the content, "we have no verification of—"
"Windu."
Yoda's voice.
Small in volume.
Enormous in everything else.
Mace stopped.
Looked at Yoda.
Yoda was not looking at him.
Yoda was looking at the figure in the center of the chamber with an expression that Mace had never seen on the oldest face in the Order in all his years of knowing him.
Not fear.
Not confusion.
Recognition.
The specific expression of someone who has felt something their entire life without having a name for it and has just been introduced to it properly for the first time.
"Sit down Windu," Yoda said quietly.
"Master Yoda I—"
"Sit. Down."
Mace sat down.
The chamber was completely still.
Yoda descended from his chair slowly. The way he moved when something mattered enough to bring him to ground level. His gimer stick touched the floor. He walked forward. Three steps. Four.
He stopped before the figure.
And looked up.
At the hands.
At the marks on them.
Old wounds that were not wounds anymore but remained. The way certain things remain not as damage but as testimony.
Yoda looked at them for a long moment.
Then he looked up at the face above them.
His own eyes were bright with something that nine hundred years of Jedi discipline had not entirely prepared him for and was not going to be contained by it.
"We call you the Force," Yoda said.
His voice was very quiet.
"We feel you. In all living things. In the light. In the connection between life and life." He paused. "We built a whole Order around you. Around what you are. Around what you ask of us." Another pause. "But we did not know your name."
The chamber held its breath.
"Now we do," Yoda said.
He bowed his head.
Not the Jedi bow.
Something older than that.
Something that didn't have a name in any Jedi text because no Jedi text had ever needed it.
"That," Yoda said, not lifting his head, speaking to the chamber behind him, "is the Son of God."
The council chamber processed this.
Each member in their own way.
Kit Fisto very still.
Plo Koon's head slightly bowed.
Ki-Adi-Mundi's expression moving through several things.
Yaddle with her eyes closed and her hands folded.
And Mace Windu.
Mace Windu who had argued. Who had demanded proof. Who had stood up with the full weight of his conviction and his authority and his considerable pride.
Mace Windu was looking at the wounds on the hands.
At the marks that were not wounds anymore but remained.
And the expression on his face was not the expression of the most powerful member of the Jedi Council.
It was the expression of a man.
Just a man.
Who had demanded proof from God.
And had been answered not with power or demonstration or anything that required a defense.
But with two hands.
Held open.
Showing what had already been paid.
Mace Windu sat in his chair and said nothing.
Because there was nothing adequate to say.
Yoda lifted his head.
Looked up at the figure again.
"You said there is still time," Yoda said. "You said one of yours is on a landing platform trying to undo what our fear helped build." He paused. "What would you have us do."
The figure looked at the empty chair.
Anakin's chair.
"Love him," He said simply. "The way you should have from the beginning. Not in spite of what he feels. Because of it." He paused. "He loves his wife. He loves his padawan. He loves with everything he has the way I made him to love." A pause. "That was never the problem. What you did with it was the problem."
Yoda closed his eyes.
"Yes," Yoda said.
The word of a nine hundred year old man acknowledging a nine hundred year old mistake.
"And Palpatine," Mace said.
His voice was different now.
Quieter.
The voice of a man who had just reorganized several fundamental assumptions and was working with the new arrangement.
The figure looked at him.
"You already know what to do about Palpatine," He said. "You have known for some time. You were waiting for proof." He paused. "You have proof. A young man on a landing platform has more. Go to him."
Mace Windu stood up again.
Different this time.
Not the certainty of a man defending a position.
The certainty of a man who has received direction and intends to follow it.
"Where is he," Mace said.
"Landing platform four seven," Yoda said, already moving toward the door. "The ship that looks like nothing we have seen before." He glanced back at the chamber. "You will know it when you see it."
He stopped at the door.
Looked back at the figure one more time.
Something passed between the oldest living Jedi and the Son of God in the Jedi Temple on Coruscant that didn't have words in any language from any dimension.
Then Yoda walked out.
The council followed.
Back on the Edward Newgate Anakin was on his second plate of Bob Evans when Jeremy's comm activated.
Gemini's voice.
"Jeremy."
"Yeah."
"Several Jedi Masters are walking toward the ship," Gemini said. "Yoda. Mace Windu. Several council members." A pause. "They appear to have been crying."
Jeremy looked at Anakin.
Anakin looked at Jeremy.
"Your God works fast," Anakin said.
"He tends to," Jeremy said.38Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡCLu1aVLsmC
38Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjOZ4eUU8cN
38Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡq2U2kaoePh
Yoda walked through the corridor of the Jedi Temple.
The other council members fell into step around him.
Nobody spoke.
Because Yoda was speaking and when Yoda was speaking like this — not in his teaching cadence, not in his careful measured wisdom voice, but in this voice — you listened and you did not interrupt.
"The Son of God," Yoda said. "He is the Force."
His stick touched the floor with each step.
"He is what we have been reaching toward our entire lives. Every meditation. Every communion with the living Force. Every moment of clarity in the field." He paused. "Him. It was always Him."
Ki-Adi-Mundi said carefully, "Master Yoda—"
"And what did we do," Yoda continued, as if Ki-Adi-Mundi had not spoken. "With this connection. With this gift. We built rules around it. Walls. Restrictions. We said do not love. Do not attach. Do not feel." He stopped walking.
The council stopped with him.
In the middle of a Temple corridor, surrounded by nine hundred years of Jedi history built into every stone, Yoda stood still and looked at something none of them could see.
"We called it discipline," he said.
A pause.
"It was fear," he said.
The same word the figure had used.
Coming back out of Yoda's mouth now in Yoda's voice with the weight of someone who had spent nine hundred years getting here and was not going to spend one more minute pretending otherwise.
"Stop this charade," Yoda said.
He started walking again.
"What charade Master Yoda," Plo Koon said quietly.
"All of it," Yoda said. "The performance of detachment. The pretense that caring for nothing makes us stronger. The idea that love is the enemy of the Force when the Force itself—" he paused, "—when He himself is love."
The corridor was quiet except for footsteps and the gimer stick.
"And Skywalker," Yoda said.
The name landed the way it always landed when Yoda said it with that specific weight.
"We failed him," Yoda said.
Simply.
Directly.
No qualification.
"From the beginning we failed him," Yoda said. "We saw the power. We saw the prophecy. We saw the chosen one and we forgot—" his voice did something it almost never did, "—we forgot there was a boy inside the chosen one."
Mace Windu walked beside him saying nothing.
The expression on his face was the expression of a man who agreed completely and was finding that agreement uncomfortable in the specific way that truth is uncomfortable when you have been on the wrong side of it.
"A boy who lost his mother," Yoda continued. "Who loved her. Who loves his wife. Who loves his padawan. Who loves with everything in him the way the Force—" he corrected himself, "—the way God made him to love." He stopped at the Temple entrance where the doors opened onto Coruscant. "And what did we tell him."
Nobody answered.
"We told him that love was the path to the dark side," Yoda said.
He looked at the council around him.
At the faces of the people who had sat in that chamber for years making decisions about Anakin Skywalker's future while Anakin Skywalker sat in a chair that never quite felt like his.
"We treated him like the chosen one," Yoda said. "Instead of like a human being."
The words fell into the silence of the Temple entrance.
"The chosen one he may be," Yoda said. "But he is also a man. A husband. A friend. A former padawan who needed to be told that what he felt was not weakness." He turned toward the landing platforms. "We never told him that."
Mace Windu spoke.
"No," Mace said.
Just that.
No defense.
No qualification.
Just the acknowledgment of a man who had just had several things clarified by the Son of God and was not interested in arguing with the aftermath.
"No," he said again. "We didn't."
Yoda looked at him.
At Mace Windu who had doubted loudest and been corrected most directly and was now walking toward a landing platform to try to begin fixing something that should never have been broken.
"Good," Yoda said.
"Good?" Mace said.
"Knowing what we did wrong," Yoda said, "is the beginning of doing better." He turned toward platform forty seven. "Now come. There is a young man who deserves to hear from us what we should have said years ago."
He walked.
The council followed.
On the Edward Newgate Anakin had stopped eating.
He was looking out the panoramic windows at the Jedi Temple visible in the Coruscant skyline.
"Something's happening over there," he said.
He could feel it through the Force.
Something shifting.
Something old and settled and wrong being moved.
"Yeah," Jeremy said from across the table.
Anakin looked at him.
"What did you do," Anakin said.
"I didn't do anything," Jeremy said. "I just landed the ship."
"Jeremy."
"God handled the Temple," Jeremy said simply. "I'm just the guy with the Bob Evans."
Whitebeard looked up from his food at the end of the table.
"This Bob Evans," Whitebeard said. "Is very good."
"Thank you," Jeremy said. "I have a freezer full."
"I know," Whitebeard said. "I looked."
Jeremy stared at him.
"You looked in my freezer," Jeremy said.
Whitebeard met his gaze with the complete serenity of a man who had shaken the world and was not going to be made uncomfortable about looking in a freezer.
"I was hungry," Whitebeard said.
Jeremy looked at the ceiling.
"Gemini," he said.
"Yes," Gemini said.
"How many pies are left," Jeremy said.
A pause.
"Six," Gemini said.
Jeremy closed his eyes.
"He ate three pies," Jeremy said.
"To be fair," Gemini said, "he is Edward Newgate."
"THAT'S NOT—" Jeremy stopped.
Looked at Whitebeard.
Whitebeard looked back at him with absolute dignity.
Jeremy pointed at him.
"We are getting more pies at the first Bob Evans we find in this galaxy," Jeremy said.
"There is no Bob Evans in the Star Wars galaxy," Gemini said helpfully.
"Then we are MAKING one," Jeremy said.
Anakin looked between Jeremy and the enormous man at the end of the table who had apparently eaten three Bob Evans Reese's Cup pies and felt no remorse whatsoever.
"Who is that," Anakin said quietly to Ahsoka.
"I have no idea," Ahsoka said. "But I like him."
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