You’re happy for them. You really are! But, it’s hard to show it when you’re the only one who can’t share in the success. All your friends passed their Trials and have spent the last week excitedly discussing their experiences. You’re tempted to simply leave the room whenever they do so as it gets grating over time. However, you combat that feeling by sitting and watching them. As they speak, their true-selves glow with joy and pride, and you can’t help but feel an echo inside of you, wiping away the tinge of bitterness that festers within.

It’s clear that Gilt was truthful in her own retelling of her experience with the Trials, as all of their stories share the same pattern. Each of them was tested in three parts. First, a recitation of the Jedi Code. There’s no way you can mess that one up when it’s your turn! After all, there’s a reason why the sticker of Knowledge is now stuck to your mask. The second test was a round of combat, in which each Initiate was blinded by a hood and pitted against a Knight. Obviously, each of your friends passed that one easily as all one needs to do is show competency. The third test was far more varied, as each of your friends demonstrated their connection with the Force in their own way.

A training droid whirls around you, firing stunning bolts in a staccato rhythm before switching it up into unpredictable bursts. You stand in the center of the room, lightsaber weaving through the air, doing your level best to deflect or dodge each shot. You block bolt after bolt, tracking the droid with your Force Sight and allowing the Force to guide your blade.

Each time one of your friends brings up the third test, you feel a mixture of irritation and hope — irritation, not because of your friends, but because of the Council’s ban. Hope, because you know there’s no way you’ll fail the Trials. Not now; not after training in so many different Force techniques! You’ve continued practicing Force Sight by yourself over the past week. It’s almost impossible not to, after all! Without your warp-eye, Force Sight is the only method with which you can see your surroundings, so if you don’t want to trip over something or bump into anything, you’re forced to continuously use it. Your hard work pays off though, as you duck under another burst of bolts from the droid.

You swing your lightsaber over your head, deflecting another shot, then attempt a Force push on it to gain some space. Unfortunately, it shoots right at that moment and you have to spend the next few seconds rubbing your shoulder to soothe the pain from the impact, while applying some fancy footwork to avoid the merciless onslaught. However, the faint mutters of annoyance from your right almost distract you. A half-dozen meters to your right is Cho’an, also suffering the attacks of her own training droid. She too has been practicing for the last ten minutes, but has had far less luck than you and is nursing bruises on every limb.

She, like all your other friends, is now back to work, practicing for the lightsaber tournament. Unfortunately for her, she has always had problems with this particular exercise, and so has decided to use her newfound time to improve herself. A wise use of time.

You, on the other hand, are still recovering, but Master Corr has released you to do your more typical exercises like this one. Her rationale is that you’ve regained enough strength and dexterity to participate in things like this without injuring yourself if you don’t push it. These exercises will help with the recovery of both your health and your skill — being stuck in the Halls of Healing has been rather good for the former, but absolutely terrible for the latter. You’ve decided to get back to bolt-blocking since it’s a great way to train up your body, your lightsaber skills, your Force-sense, and your Force Sight all at once. Very practical, if you do say so yourself!

The problem is: you’re tiring. Your stamina has never been great and the months spent recovering have not helped that one bit. The intense exercise is getting to you, so after another minute, you wave the droid away and stop to take a break.

You pull the training helmet off and sigh in relief at the feeling of cool air blowing across your scalp, then doff your headband and mask in turn to dry your face. That’s another disadvantage of the mask, you suppose; it feels terrible during exercise! Your sweat pools on the inside of it and your breath makes it almost unbearably hot and humid. You’ll have to get used to it though if you want to continue wearing the mask in the future. For now, though, you keep it off so you can finish drying your face and get a drink of water.

You watch Cho’an continue her own training as you relax. She’s hyper-focused on the task, her thoughts compressed into a tight ball. She rolls her mind around, looping and spiraling in thought as she works. You follow her motions as she dances around, twirling in fanciful steps to keep the droid in front of her, and her lightsaber in between.

The droid spits out bolts faster and faster, forcing her to keep up lest she be forced to suffer even more. And as she moves, you follow her steps, thinking about how you would move instead. You would duck that bolt instead of wasting energy blocking. You would step forward instead of backward, keeping distance with the droid at this moment instead of trying to gain some space. You can see more efficient movement from here — better positioning and better technique. You find yourself twitching with every move, sometimes matching her result, other times departing from it inside your mind.

You find something strange, however. The longer you watch, the more it seems that Cho’an’s movement matches your notion. No longer do your legs twitch to move left while she steps right. No longer does she block when she should instead dodge. Instead, she flows from step to step — smoother than before, her exhaustion seemingly gone — mirroring your instinct.

Following your direction.

You gasp, concentration broken, and Cho’an collapses, chest heaving as she tries to catch her breath. You leap up from where you sit and rush over to her, pushing the droid away and into standby mode with the Force.

“Cho’an! Are you alright?” you ask as you reach her.

“Y-yeah,” she stammers out, rolling onto her back. You help her sit up then sit next to her, letting her lean on you as she rests.

“What was that?” she asks, voice still breathless. As you’re about to answer she suddenly turns away and hawks up some phlegm, the viscosity of her saliva causing the remains to drip down from her mouth instead of flying out cleanly.

“Ugh. Can you grab some water for me?” she says, doing her best to wipe it away.

“Sure.”

You dash over to her gear and grab her towel and water, then run back over. Thanking you, she gulps down the water greedily, then uses the towel to wipe the sweat away. She leans back, still breathing harder than normal, but seems fine.

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You slow your own breathing, feeling the panic recede. You’d done something, but you’re not sure what. This time, however, you did something to someone else besides yourself! Your eyes feel hot, your arms tingle with a fiery memory. You got lucky this time, but what happened?

Cho’an turns to you after another moment, questions tumbling within her mind but just out of reach. “What hap— hey, where’s your mask?”

“Huh? Oh, right.” You’d left it and your headband where you were sitting earlier in your haste to check on Cho’an. Unwilling to get up, you drag both items of headgear through the air with a pull of Force, then affix both back in place. Fortunately, you’d kept your eyes closed by habit, so Cho’an narrowly escaped the gaze of your warp-eye.

“So, what happened, Xena?” Cho’an says as you finish putting your mask on. “I felt something back there, like I was being guided, but not just by the Force. Was that you?”

“I— I’m not sure. It probably was. I was just watching you, then following along with you in my mind. And then, you started syncing up exactly with what I thought you should be doing. Maybe… maybe that was Battle Meditation?”

“That’s what Lasah is teaching you, right?”

“Yeah. Didn’t seem to be very meditative though. I was just watching you train, and then it happened.”

She shrugs, then gives you a bright smile. If you could properly see her, you would likely be seeing almost all her teeth. As it is, your Force Sight allows you to see every single one, even with her mouth closed.

“Why are you so happy?” you ask. “That almost killed you!”

“Nah, don’t be so dramatic! I was just a bit tired. You’re not gonna kill me with a bit of meditation!”

“But—”

“Look, I felt like I could stop at any time. I just didn’t want to! It was like I was no longer tired and moving so much better than before!”

“I… see.”

She smiles again and bumps her shoulder against yours. “Don’t be so hard on yourself, especially when a good thing happens! Look, I know you’ve been down because you had to miss the Trials. I don’t really know what to say, but I think you shouldn’t worry too much about that, or about things like this. Just think about all the other things out there to worry about!”

“How’s that gonna make me feel any better?”

“It brings things into perspective. That’s what Master Binaj says.”

“She told you to think like this?”

“Yeah! It works for me!”

You give her a hard stare to demonstrate your incredulity. Of course, it does nothing thanks to your completely opaque mask and headband. Sighing, you decide to just humor her. The panic you felt earlier is gone now, but slight worry remains. You did do something good after all. You didn’t think you’d even be close to being able to apply Battle Meditation, having only had about two weeks of lessons. However, this is the first time you’ve actively influenced someone else with the Force. While the Force is infinitely less scary than the warp, there’s no doubt about its own dangers. And, by now, you’ve definitely learned your lessons about playing with things — with powers — you are no expert in.

“So, what kind of worse things are out there?”

“There’s the whole Separatist thing!”

“Ahh. Don’t remind me.”

“And there’s the vote on an ‘Army of the Republic’ in two months!”

“That too… Aren’t there a ton of people against that? There’s no way it’ll pass, right?”

“I dunno. But, I don’t know if it’ll be a good thing if it doesn’t pass.”

“What do you mean? If there’s an army, there’ll be a war, right?”

She hums in thought, pulling up her legs and resting her head upon her knees. “There’s no war, yet, but everyone says it’s inevitable. If the Republic doesn’t create an army, then there’ll be nothing to stop the Separatists from breaking away.”

“There’s us.”

Cho’an grimaces, then shakes her head. “If we, the Jedi, could do something, wouldn’t this whole thing be solved already? It’s our job to head things off before they get this bad. At this point, I don’t know what can be done!”

“There’s no hope?”

“I don’t know… Master Binaj doesn’t think so.”

“You’ve been talking with her a lot. Hoping to be her Padawan?”

“Yeah. I think she’ll take me on. I at least listen to her, unlike you and Tera.”

“Hey! It was just that one time!”

“She was sooo mad when she found out.”

“I know! I’m the one who got punished.”

“Yeah, but you got away without getting yelled at too bad. You’re lucky you got caught so late.”

Cho’an looks at the clock on the far wall, then pushes herself up to her feet. “I need to get going. Do you want to try that again later? That really did feel amazing! Maybe we can see if you can do that for more people!”

“Maybe. I’ll think about it.”

“Great! See you later!”

≡][≡ ⬦⬦⬦ ≡][≡

Now that you’re mostly healed up, you’ve returned to the normal Initiate’s schedule: taking lessons and meditating for hours on end. You’re happy to get back to learning about the greater Galaxy and your role within it as a Jedi, but the mandatory meditations are starting to be… boring. You do get out of a couple of meditations per day thanks to your extra lessons with Master Lasah and Master Nu along with your physical therapy with Master Corr, but the ones that you are still expected to do are indeed an issue.

For the past year, you spent a great deal of time using your warp-eye for inner exploration during these periods. This helped to accomplish quite a bit, but now that you’ve resolved to stay away from the ship, you’ve held back from doing this kind of “introspective meditation.” The problem is, you’re bored. It’s hard to just sit there when there’s so many other things you can do. You could use your warp-eye to star-gaze during these sessions, but that’s obviously against the spirit of the thing. Of course, your mind does wander sometimes, so you do end up doing that anyway, but that’s beside the point.

There is, however, an idea that’s been niggling at the back of your mind. You only really decided to avoid the ship, but there are some other things you’d like to take a look at. Perhaps you could use your meditation sessions to examine your arms, or even your eyes?

What changed? What didn’t? Maybe you can find this out?

Or maybe you’ll just slack off and star-gaze anyway. Now, if only the constant noise of others’ thoughts didn’t constantly intrude on you when you actually try to meditate…