Chapter 20: Chapter 20: Discussions and Shelters
Wind found Leia first.
It came up the cliff face in steady breaths, slid over the edge of the hill, and combed through the grass around the temple like it owned the place. After the enclosed space of stone corridors and old dust, it felt almost rude.
But it wasn't, not really. She just thought of it that way because of the mixed feelings she had glimpsed on her beloved brother's face, getting an idea of what was troubling him at the moment.
She suppressed a sigh and kept observing the area. Behind her, the temple’s entrance yawned black in the high noon's light: a wedge of carved rock half swallowed by creeping vines. The holocron’s glow was gone now, tucked back into its recess within the training chamber, and with it the faint sense of being watched by something patient and ancient. Luke came out a beat later, squinting against the brightness. He currently looked like someone who’d slept badly, like his thoughts had never fully stopped running.
Of course, Leia knew better, given that they had had their first passionate night filled with mind-blowing pleasure and then some well-earned rest, before having some glowing morning sex to start the day...
She shook her head as if to clear it and tried to focus, while distracting herself from the fact that she was still as fully naked as her brother. They stood side by side without speaking for a moment, letting the winds cool their temperature and dry off some of the sweat on their bare skin. Then, from the shadowed mouth of the temple, the princess remembered Master Belaerys’ words, her voice echoing in her thoughts.
“Time for a lunch break and for some important work,” she had said, as if she were sending students out from a normal academy in a normal world. “You will return with: water, fruit, and fiber suitable for lashings. Find resin if you can...anything sticky, anything that seals. And bring back straight lengths of wood. Not branches that split when you look at them.”
Luke had glanced back over his shoulder, raising an eyebrow. “We’re building something today?”
“You’re improving your basis for longer-term survival by reducing unnecessary risk to injury, illness, or exhaustion today,” Belaerys had corrected, her tone sharpening just a fraction. “Training without rest is vanity. And rest without shelter brings its own risks. You have three hours. The nearby lake will be useful for drinking water and for bathing when needed, but it is not currently a place to lay your head and sleep. The beach may be where your ship crashed, but it is farther away. You need to build a functional shelter to shield you from the elements closer to the temple, atop this very hill, so that you can take naps and rest more comfortably without having to walk to the ship and the beds within every time."
Luke had exhaled through his nose at the time but nodded in understanding. “Yes, Master,”
Leia waited until she could no longer sense the personality matrix of the Jedi Master at all before she spoke. “Three hours,” she repeated. “She’s making a point with this assignment and a limited time frame for it.”
“I am sure she has her reasons,” Luke muttered, but not with real complaint; more like someone acknowledging gravity.
Leia turned in a slow circle, letting her eyes and instincts map the plateau. The temple sat back from the cliff edge, its stone shoulders anchored into the hill as it had grown there. Grass and low shrubs covered most of the open ground, interrupted by clusters of trees that looked just familiar enough to give truth to Master Belaerys tale about the members of their order planting useful fruit trees from the more common variants in the interconnected galactic economy. She watched as their broad leaves, heavy limbs, and fruit reminded Leia of the seasonal fruit fairs in the open royal market near the palace gardens. The smell of mangoes filtered into the air and mixed with the scent of oranges, while closer to the eastern edge of the hilltop, a few maroon, fibrous ovals hung in groups like a softer, smaller kind of coconut.
Downhill, she could hear water if she focused too; the constant thread of a waterfall feeding the lake below, and beyond that, the faint, patient roar of the sea.
She walked a few paces forward, peered over the cliff edge, and breathed in the soft wind as she closed her eyes for a long moment to savor it while she centered herself.
“Okay,” Leia finally said later, feeling brisk now. “If we’re building a shelter up here, we need to choose the spot before we go collecting anything. No need to haul supplies uphill twice because we changed our minds.”
“Right,” he said after a moment's pause. “Where do you think?”
Leia started walking, letting her still surviving boots search for the firmest ground. The plateau wasn’t perfectly level. The land subtly tilted away from the temple, and she could see shallow grooves where rainwater must run during storms. She avoided those first, cutting toward a cluster of boulders half embedded in the grass.
The rocks formed a natural crescent that seemed waist-high in places, taller in others...almost like the beginning of a wall someone had abandoned. Perhaps she was onto something with that, actually, as she wondered how long it must have taken these Valyrian Jedi colonists and their Voss allies to build this temple without any power tools.
Biting her bottom lip in concentration, she stepped behind them and felt the difference immediately. The wind still reached her, but softened, less of a shove and more of a steady breeze.
“Windbreak,” she said.
Luke nodded, looking up and around. His gaze kept snagging on things most people wouldn’t register, especially if they weren't used to surviving outdoors at times. Things like the angle of the sun, the way the grass flattened in certain lines, a patch of ground that seemed slightly too clean.
He crouched and pressed his fingers into the soil. “This area seems to drain better,” the once farmer said. “Less soggy. Less…crawling things.”
Leia gave him a sharp look. “Blast...I hadn't thought of that one yet. They could be a very bothersome problem.”
His mouth twitched. “Not to mention poisonous and parasitic in some cases. Better take what precautions we can for now until we learn how to harness the force for better preventive and even reactive measures. I have read in my findings that some Jedi could use the Force to overcome the effects of poisons, for example, though I couldn't learn the mechanics of the technique then. Perhaps Master Belaerys would know where to start with that.”
Leia narrowed her eyes at her fiancé’s expression as he said that. That sounded reasonable given the circumstances, but he almost seemed to wince for a moment as he said it. That settled it then; he was troubled.
Still, they had limited daylight to gather any material they could from the island, so she resolved to talk with him about it all when they were on their way. So, first things first.
She walked the arc of the rocks, measuring distance to the temple entrance. Close enough to be convenient, far enough that they could have a wider view from the top, which included the terrain behind the temple itself.
“Here,” Leia ended up saying, pointing to the flattest patch behind the crescent, where grass grew short and stubborn, and the ground felt firm beneath her heel. “Shelter goes here. Near the rocks. Not under the trees.”
Luke followed her gesture toward the nearby stand of fruit trees.
“Why not under the trees?” he asked, sounding genuinely curious, as he looked at her.
"Ah, right, sometimes forget that you lived the first 3 quarters of your life on a desert planet," Leia mused before lifting a hand and counting on her fingers. “Fruit drops. Animals come for it. Insects come for them. Rain drips longer under leaves, and whatever lives up there will consider us annoying roommates at best or trespassers at worst. Also, if we build under branches, the first storm will turn them into throwing spears.”
Luke nodded slowly. “Very well then,” he said before looking down at his own hands, as if remembering that they would be the ones doing much of the heavier physical labor. “So…shelter here. Storage…?”
“Inside the temple, at least for now,” Leia said with a shrug. “It’s dry. Sealed. Harder for animals to get into.
Leia walked to the edge of their chosen spot and looked back at the temple. From here, the entrance was visible but not looming. The stone steps caught sunlight at an angle that made them look almost welcoming, if you ignored the weight of time in every carved line.
She could imagine it now: a low lean-to with a roof of layered fronds, a raised platform of cut wood, a simple ring of stones for fire. A place that would be theirs, not the beach’s, not the temple’s. A haven in the middle of all this made by their own hands.
She smiled, finding the idea appealing.
Luke got closer. “If we’re building here,” he said, “we’ll need longer poles. Stronger ones.”
“And lashings,” Leia added. “Lots. We should gather fiber from trees, vines, and such first before we start cutting anything. Otherwise, we’ll have a pile of wood and no way to make it stay a shelter.”
Luke nodded. “Then we go for fruit and water first,” he said. “And fiber. Vines, palm fronds...anything that can be twisted. If we find resin, we take it.”
Luke started forward, and Leia fell into step beside him without thinking. The plateau stretched ahead, sunlit and deceptively peaceful, the path down toward the lake and trees clear enough to follow if you paid attention.
The slope down from the plateau was gentler than it looked from above, cut by old footpaths that wound between roots and stone. The air thickened as they descended. It felt warmer, wetter, full of green noise. Somewhere below, the waterfall’s constant rush grew louder, as if the island itself was reminding them what mattered: water, food, shelter, then everything else.
Luke moved like someone trained to travel quietly, stepping over loose rock without making a sound, while Leia's eyes were scanning for what could go wrong and what could be used.
A vine looped low across the path, thick and fibrous. Leia reached out and tested it with a tug. “Good for lashings,” she ended up saying.
Luke nodded and slipped a small utility blade from the bundle they’d salvaged...one of the few pieces of mundane equipment that had survived the crash without turning into useless scrap. He cut a length cleanly and coiled it over his shoulder.
Leia watched the motion, then watched his face. He’d definitely been quieter since they left the temple. Well, not withdrawn, exactly. Just…compressed. Like he was keeping something from spilling out until he could decide what it was.
The princess let her beloved knight walk another dozen steps before she spoke again.
“She didn’t tell us everything,” Leia remarked.
Luke glanced at her. “Master Belaerys?”
“Yes. That holocron's personality matrix is…precise. But selective,” Leia noted as she ducked under a branch heavy with glossy leaves. The fruit hanging there was the color of sunset. “She gave us a narrative. A justification. And she left space for us to fill in the rest.”
Luke’s mouth tightened. “Maybe she’s trying to see what we’ll do with it, and that was one of the reasons she gave us this assignment: to have some privacy to process her information and some labor to keep our hands busy while we do.”
“That too,” Leia said in agreement as she slowed just long enough to look back up the hill, where the temple was now hidden by leaves and distance. “Or perhaps she’s been alone with her own conclusions for a long, long time and has made peace with her regrets.”
Luke didn’t answer. His boots scuffed lightly as he walked, as if the ground had personally offended him.
Leia let the silence stretch until the waterfall filled it again.
Then she let her voice out, casual on the surface, yet sharp underneath, “If you were sure the Galactic Senate was compromised by the Sith, what do you do when you can’t prove it and the Jedi Council is unwilling to take you seriously?”
Luke’s head snapped toward her, as if on reflex. “We don’t know that it was. Sure, Palpatine was a secret Sith already when he was gradually growing his influence and advancing his political career, but that Holocron must have been made about half a century before he was even born. The Jedi in that splinter group may have seen something, but they still jumped the gun early.”
Leia lifted a hand in a placating gesture. “Maybe. But for all we know of the barely glimpsed at secret history of the Rule of Two Sith, Palpatine may not have been the first Sith Lord political infiltrator so much as their order's culmination with that sort of thing. And for all these Valyrian Jedi of their age knew, that was definitely a possibility and a very concerning one at that, so they acted like it was all true, even the parts they couldn't be completely sure, because they believed it was the best of the bad options left to them. And that's the part that has been rankling you, isn't it? That they had reason to act like the Jedi High Council couldn’t be trusted, even with a warning about something that could destroy the entire Order, while your old Master, the legendary Yoda himself, was a member of it?”
Luke’s eyes narrowed, thinking. “Probably...yes. I mean, they had...impressions. Visions. Psychometry.” He recounted, the words coming out like he’d been forced to swallow them and didn’t like the taste. “That wasn't proof, especially the visions themselves. There are too many possibilities out there that get triggered by the actions of sentient beings in reaction to the circumstances of the physical universe around them. That's why Yoda assured me that the future is always in motion and that great care must be made if you intend to make decisions based on your ultimately limited insight into the matter. Only the past is set in stone, not the future.”
Leia’s lips pressed together, not because she disagreed, but because he’d walked straight into her point.
“Be that as it may,” Leia said slowly, tilting her head as she did so, “in politics, proof is a powerful weapon. And one way or another, it’s what you usually need to move institutions that don’t want to move for whatever reason.”
Luke gave a short, humorless laugh. “You think the Jedi Council was in deep decline like the Senate even before they were betrayed and used? That they were getting dragged down and tainted by the Old Republic's increasing corruption?”
Leia paused, considering her response. Then she stepped around a patch of ferns and pointed to a tree trunk where sap had bled into amber beads. “I think any group with authority develops habits. Traditions. Rules for what it will listen to and what it won’t. That's inescapable. And the bigger the group becomes in more ways than one, the slower it turns, for good or ill.”
Luke stared at the sap for a moment. Then he took a small piece of cloth from his bundle, held it under the bead, and scraped the useful resin carefully. He worked in silence for several seconds, as if the act of collecting something tangible helped him keep his thoughts in order.
Then he frowned. “If you suspect infiltration, you watch. You investigate quietly. You protect the people you have sworn to protect in what ways you can while you do it.”
Leia’s gaze sharpened. “And if you can’t investigate quietly? If the very act of investigating makes you a target?”
Luke’s hand paused mid-scrape, and Leia didn’t press. She didn’t have to. They’d lived that reality for years under the Empire's oppressive gaze, after all.
Luke resumed then, slower now as he took a deep breath. “Then you still protect people in what ways you can. That’s…that’s at the very core of being Jedi.”
Leia took the resin-smeared cloth from him and folded it carefully, as if it were evidence. “Then take the time to answer the other question that has been making you uncomfortable,” she said with an empathetic sigh. “Was it cowardice for them leave...or was it strategy?”
Luke’s jaw worked. A small animal darted through the undergrowth to their left, a flicker of brown and white, and vanished again. Her twin's eyes remained at the spot in the foliage where it disappeared, and he rubbed his forehead.
“It depends,” Luke said finally, and Leia could hear how much he hated that answer. “If you as a Jedi leave to save only yourself and abandon the fight completely despite the oaths you swore then…yes, I would be inclined to call that cowardice. If you leave so that you can come back with the power to stop what’s coming or at least help those that do...that might just be strategy.”
Leia’s brow lifted. “So you do understand why they ran.”
Luke sighed deeply. “I understand the logic behind their actions.”
“And?” Leia prompted.
“And I don’t like it,” Luke said, sharper now, as if saying it out loud burned. “Because the people they left behind weren’t just…an abstract ‘future.’ It was the Clone Wars. Entire worlds on fire. Jedi dying. Civilians dying. Whole worlds bleeding. And then the Empire...” He glared at the ground, his voice having hit that word like it was a stone in his mouth. “They didn’t just disappear. They disappeared while all of that happened.”
Leia bit her lower lip once more, thinking. She didn’t disagree with him. Not really. But she also saw the other side too clearly to ignore it outright. “If their Order survives, maybe the Jedi will have an easier time surviving later on and guiding the next generation of Force-sensitives without them needing to reinvent the wheel even after all that was lost. Is that still a betrayal then?”
Luke’s hand froze on a branch. For a second, Leia thought he might not answer at all. Then he lowered the fruit he’d been holding and looked at her fully.
“It’s…complicated,” he admitted, and the reluctance in his voice somehow made the words feel heavier than if he’d shouted them. “Because part of me...part of me is so grateful that anything survived. Even a holocron. Even an echo of training. But she claims there must be more members, apprentices, and descendants from the original founders of the order elsewhere on the planet. Knowing that alone makes me feel relieved in ways I rarely felt in my entire life, sister. Because, for a few years now, I have had this concern in the back of my head that made me lose sleep at night; a whisper that if Empire had destroyed everything, if there was nothing left but stories… then how could I build a New Jedi Order that wasn't anything more than a weak shadow of its former self?” He fretted.
Leia watched her beloved brother and felt the urge to kiss his forehead while in the middle of a warm and comforting embrace. But then the Jedi Knight continued, forcing himself onward. “But if you can help now, and you choose not to…and then take measures that will ensure you cannot help the people of the wider galaxy the Jedi are supposed to serve, and for over a century at that...then what does that make you? What does that make the Jedi as a whole if so many of them can be swayed by such fear that they decide to throw in the towel for so long and precisely because the rest of their order could not be swayed to take the existential threat in their warnings seriously?”
The princess of Alderaan closed her eyes for a moment before stating her opinion. “In short? An institution that failed to overcome its internal flaws in time to avoid its collapse, like so many others,” Leia said flatly.
Luke blinked, startled by her words.
Leia took a deep breath and chose to elaborate. “Luke, I’m not insulting you or your values. I’m, however, telling you what history teaches its students time and time again. Institutions that refuse to adapt to evolving circumstances that gradually compound upon their burdens eventually die, even if they have been broadly successful in their methodology for a long time. And when they do, they often get replaced by something worse. We should know, we lived through such times.”
Luke’s eyes narrowed again, looking defensive by instinct. “So, you are saying the Jedi deserved it?”
“I said nothing of the sort,” Leia replied immediately, her voice cracked like a whip. “So do NOT put such words in my mouth.”
He flinched at that, then looked away, looking chastened.
Leia took a breath and steadied herself before remembering one of the first lessons that Mon Mothma had taught her about engaging in a political argument while tempers flared. "Arguments made in passion and anger are easy to counter. Precision gets your point across better."
“I think the Jedi proved themselves to be…too vulnerable to both internal and external pressures hitting them at the same time,” she finally said. “They fought a war they weren’t trained to fight after their forbearers had been able to successfully keep the peace for a full millennium, once the New Sith Wars were over. It’s unlikely any of them was old enough to have been an experienced veteran of that war, not even Yoda, given what you have told me before about his age, which was very long, yes, but still not that long. They also trusted an increasingly corrupt political institution that didn’t deserve their trust, but kept at it because of historical inertia and because their duties and interests had become so intertwined with those of the Galactic Senate that they were unwilling to take the time to develop reforms on the matter. And through it all, there was a monstrously evil mastermind plotting their downfall after being elected to the highest political office of their age. Which was made all the worse by the fact that Palpatine was, unfortunately, extremely patient and obsessively determined.”
Leia reached for another branch, twisted the fruit free, and lowered it carefully. “So, when I think of what we just learn from Master Belaerys about her splinter group hiding on a secret world as a contingency plan,” she said, “I see something ugly…yet nonetheless practical.”
Luke’s eyes flicked to her. “Ugly.”
Leia nodded. “Because it means they accepted the galaxy burning for a while as an acceptable cost if it meant enough Jedi and their teachings could survive past the Dark Times ahead, rather that continuing to try their best in their era, in the hopes that they could maybe, just maybe, eventually track down, expose and defeat these secretive Sith infiltrators ahead of schedule, perhaps before Palpatine was even discovered by whoever his Master actually turned out to be.”
Luke’s face tightened. “Exactly.”
“And practical,” Leia added, “because their worst fear WAS correct in the end...and if the main Order is going to be hunted down and erased...then having a hidden backup preserves knowledge, training, history, and perhaps most importantly, actually living institutional memory. It makes rebuilding possible without needing to reinvent everything, never sure that you are doing all that well without the proper experience to compare it to.”
Luke looked away again, and his voice dropped. “It still meant leaving the Republic behind and its people to suffer.”
Leia shifted the fruit sling higher on her shoulder, her frown deepening. “Luke, the Rebellion had a secret cells, too, you know. We hid people and supply caches. We kept secret and sensitive blackmail material on Imperial Moffs and Planetary Governors as evidence waiting to be used when the time was right in classified bases all over the galaxy. Sometimes, such as before the Battle of Endor itself, we even redirected resources and manpower to those hidden locations before such major assaults in case they failed in disaster, so that the Rebel Alliance did not have to begin from scratch either. We didn’t tell entire sectors about those secret bases or what we knew because it could get their worlds bombarded from orbit by an alarmed and vindictive Empire if such news came out. In such cases, we made choices that…looked like betrayal from the outside, for the people that would have been caught in the middle had they known.”
Luke stared at her. “That’s different.”
“Yes, but not as different as you want it to be,” Leia said, gently now, because she could now see the shape of what he was protecting: a belief that the Jedi were supposed to be better than partisan politics, better than compromises.
She felt like sighing at that realization.
Luke’s gaze drifted toward the waterfall’s direction, where the sound grew louder, and the air cooled. “We fought,” he said stubbornly. “We didn’t hide on a planet no one could reach, and hope history turned out okay.”
Leia’s mouth tightened. “Maybe not. But what do you call Obi-Wan and Yoda hiding in Tatooine and Dagobah like hermits for a couple of decades instead of using their considerable power and experience to help the early rebel cells, if not a Jedi contingency plan? The Empire continued consolidating its expansive tyranny while your future mentors waited for you to grow up. But they knew that they had to make sure they would be able to survive long enough teach you what you needed to learn in the ways of the Jedi, in order to help us all win the war and overthrow the Sith-run Imperial regime, or no one else would, at least as far as they knew. That happened as a direct result of their contingency plan and the decisions they had to make to ensure they could last long enough to accomplish it. That’s my point.”
Luke opened his mouth...and then stopped. "I..." He hesitated, trailing off.
She watched him exhale through his nose, clearly frustrated, but then took a deep breath, knowing he could sense her emotions through their growing bond enough to get that she wasn't trying to besmirch his mentor's memories. But context was important after all.
“You’re not wrong,” he admitted at last. “Obi-Wan and Yoda did hide. And they did it because they believed there had to be...something left. Someone left. A way to rebuild when the time came.”
Leia’s shoulders eased a fraction, yet she said nothing, since she sensed he wasn't done.
“But,” Luke continued, voice tightening again as he proved her right, “they weren’t a whole Order. They weren’t an academy with students, allies, and resources. They were two lone survivors being hunted down by the most powerful government in the galaxy and its military. They didn’t have the option of helping openly without eventually getting caught and killed...and losing the last of what they could pass on in the process.”
Leia’s gaze flicked toward the trees ahead, toward the vines they still needed to cut. “And Belaerys’ people did have options.”
Luke nodded once, sharply. “That’s what I’m trying to say.” He lifted a hand, then let it fall, sighing. “There’s a difference between taking cover because you’re bleeding...and building a fortress somewhere no one can find, knowing that you are neglecting at least some of the duties you had vowed to uphold while the rest of the galaxy burns.”
Leia’s mouth tightened, thoughtful. “Unless you have solid reasons to truly believe the galaxy burning is inevitable, no matter what you do.”
Luke looked a bit bitter at the thought. “I suppose that's one way to look at it. I just don't like the implications, regardless.”
Leia turned the fruit in her palm, studying the skin’s texture as if it might teach her something. “So...what’s the line, Luke?”
He stared at her, tilting his head as he did so.
“The line,” Leia repeated, quieter now. “Between strategy and surrender. Between survival and abandonment. If you had been on the Council of that era...” She asked, hesitating to pause, choosing her words carefully. “If someone you trusted had come to you with what Belaerys was claiming...through these visions, psychometry, and other grim warnings...and you simply couldn’t prove it...what would you have done?”
Luke’s throat forced itself to work as the answer came slowly, like he had to drag it out of himself.
“I would have tried to help anyway,” he finally said. “Even if it was messy. Even if it wasn’t enough. Because that’s what the Jedi are supposed to do.”
His gaze dropped, voice lowering. “But I also understand why someone would want an emergency back-up plan. I understand...why you don’t want everything you care about to die in one place, to put all the Krayt Dragon eggs in one hover basket, so to speak.”
Leia’s expression softened. “Then we’re not arguing about whether contingency plans like these should exist.”
Luke looked up again, and the stubborn fire returned. “No. We’re arguing about what you should do while you’re making one if you also want to keep calling yourself a Jedi in good conscience.”
The adopted Princess nodded before too long. “Sounds about right.”
They stood there for a beat before Luke turned his head towards the nearby hill and, by extension, the temple atop, his naked back straightening. “We take what Master Belaerys offers,” he finally said, voice rough. “We learn. We get stronger. We diversify our repertoire of techniques to improve our versatility and the options at our disposal while wielding the Force. Eventually, we find the other Valyrian Jedi still living on this world.”
His jaw tightened. “And when we can find a way to go back...we go back in force, and we go back in earnest. We don’t just let them stay hidden for another century. Jedi don’t get to just completely wash their hands off the galaxy,” Luke declared. "Not if they want to remain worthy of their knighthood."
Leia’s eyes didn’t leave his face. She couldn't help but smile in pride, “Agreed wholeheartedly. And if you keep your commitment and ideals on track like that, I am sure they will name you their Grandmaster one day."
Luke raised an eyebrow at that but said nothing. Well, not with words. But his eyes said plenty as her beloved looked at her with affection.
And so, the princess' grin grew, suddenly finding herself pleased with the realization that their first heated argument as an engaged couple was so amicable and productive in its resolution.