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There are screams all around her. From Jedi, padawan, and youngling alike. Screams that fill the air and pain that hits her own developing Force awareness like a starship crashing to the surface. She’s too young to shield against it, too weak to do anything as the despair of her friends, her family , burns through her body. She’s only eight years old. What is she supposed to do?

Reva had watched their Jedi Master die, sacrificing her own life to bring them to  this room to hide. Master Velti had been so utterly kind to them during her time training them together, as a youngling clan. Sometimes, kinder and softer than perhaps she was supposed to be. Yet, despite her kindness, despite her power, despite every effort she put forth… She is gone now. In her last act, she had brought them to as close to safety as possible. Found them somewhere to hide. It was always a plan, in case something happened during their war, to hide in this safeguarded room. When they arrived, they found another group of younglings, those trained by a different Master. She can’t remember who, at this moment of panic, nor can she recall what they called their clan. She supposes it doesn’t really matter. All that matters is that the Jedi training them got them here to this place. All that matters, heartbreakingly, is that the Jedi is now gone, too. Yet even this room didn't feel fully like a shelter; they were still stuck, sitting and waiting for their fate, one way or another.

The way they see it is this: they have two options, as younglings. They can stay here, in this room, and wait to be rescued. Hope that a Master comes through those doors, having defeated every clone in their path, and brings them to freedom; one step further than Master Velti had been allowed to go. Hope that the defenses hold, even when other defenses have clearly crumbled around them. 

Alternatively, they can run. Run and hope they find someone new to protect them. Run and hope they can make it out alive.

They’re split on what to do, her friends. Some want to stay right there, trust in the power held by the masters, trust that no one will know where they are hiding. There may be Sith on the side of the Clone Troopers, but their Force signatures could be muddled up in everything. Those who want to stay choose to believe in this, choose to believe that only those familiar with them will know where they are.

Reva doesn’t want to stay. Doesn’t want to trust that crowding in one little locked room could save anyone. Part of her wants to, of course, wants to preserve Master Velti’s final act of heroism and make it worth something . Yet, it just seems too optimistic to believe in the power of four walls, of a contingency plan never meant to be used.

She also doesn’t trust that running has any benefit, not really. The problem is… she’s not sure that any thing can protect them. She has to try. If she doesn’t try, doesn’t search for someone to rescue her friends, has she truly done her duty? What is the purpose of being a Jedi if you cannot succeed in protecting those around you?

Don’t form attachments. The reminder rings in her mind but she doesn’t understand it. Not yet. How can she not become attached to the only people she knows; the only people she has been taught to trust?

She’s only eight years old.

A small group of younglings go with her, settling their helmets snuggly upon their head to climb up into the vents with her. Five of them, all together, crawled through the ceiling until they found a corridor free of fighting to drop down into. 

Sors, at only six years of age, stays behind with his clan, promising to keep them safe. She doesn’t know how he plans to do that, what makes him so confident in his own plans. He’s not from her clan, she’s too overwhelmed to remember a thing about him, except the name. 

(Later, she repeats his name over and over again as she lies awake at night, mourning him, mourning them all.)

Reva is the oldest, the one closest to becoming a padawan, but she is not yet trained enough to know how to hone in her senses to detect distant Force signatures. Even if she was, she’s not sure she could sort through the massive amounts of pain that are slamming into her every single second. It’s all too much and she feels crushed under the weight of every unbearable second of living while others die.

They don’t have lightsabers. They can hardly control the force. But they press on, looking for someone. Anyone .

“I think we should find Master Skywalker,” Tuck whispers, following closely behind Reva as they hurry along the corridor. 

“Or Master Yoda,” Elis replies, voice hopeful.

“There’s no way the Clone Troopers could take all of the Jedi, right?” Eyan inquires.

“Absolutely not,” Vanland assures.

She can feel them looking at her, waiting for her to speak. To give them some sort of answer, some way to keep hoping. Reva doesn’t want to kill their hope, tell them not to cling on to the one thing that often keeps those in despair alive. Yet… she feels that hope might be dangerous here, now. It… disquiets her.

She holds her tongue. Maybe it’s better to neither encourage their hope nor discourage it. Just let them have it without confirmation. She knows they’re counting on her for guidance on where to go, what to say, how to feel at this very moment. 

Reva, the unspoken leader. 

Reva, the oldest. 

Reva, the terrified.

She’s only eight years old.

As luck would have it, they do find Master Skywalker, just as Tuck had wished for.

Except…

He is flanked by clones, the hood of his Jedi robes pulled over his face. Master Skywalker’s brows are furrowed and the usual bemused smile that he shone their way is wiped clean off his face; it is replaced by a glare made all the more wicked by the scar on his face.

Reva swallows. This doesn’t feel right. She tries to use her senses to seek out the master’s Force signature. With him so close, it should be able to ping right off of her consciousness, as familiar as it is to them all. But there’s this choking feeling instead. Something rotten, corrupted. Though it is not a tangible thing, it fills her nose and her lungs. She wants to vomit.

Master Skywalker strides forward, lightsaber in hand. Tuck, so hopeful, so overjoyed at seeing the Jedi he looks up to most, rushes forward to greet him.

It’s faster than Reva can comprehend. One moment, her clanmate, her friend, is alive. The next moment, he crumbles to the floor and Skywalker’s lightsaber in alight. Blue, the color of a Jedi, not red. He’s supposed to be on their side. He should be protecting them.

She doesn’t cry out, but she moves forward to protect her remaining three younglings. Her younglings. Because even though she herself is only eight years old, not yet a padawan and certainly not yet a Jedi, she is their leader. It’s her place to keep them safe.

If the feeling of despair all around her burns, then the next feeling is like the sun itself passing through her chest. If Tuck dying is the world at triple speed, this moment is the world on pause. She stares at him, Skywalker. She knows her face reflects the utter shock, betrayal, and fear that take over her brain. His face, for its part, flickers for a moment. A grimace. A quiver. Or maybe that’s foolish hope, taking over again. To imagine him regretting this, even for a millisecond. 

And then he stabs forward. This is where the world stops for those moments. So that Reva is living in pain for what feels like years before she collapses to the ground. Her eyes shutter, her breathing stills.

She waits to die, at eight years old.

Death doesn’t come for her. Stars above, how she wishes it would. Wishes it would take her away from this moment, this corridor, this planet. Wishes that she hadn’t just passed out. Wishes she hadn’t woken back up only moments after her world went dark.

Reva is smart. The Masters were always telling her so. As the sounds of the world around her come back into focus, as her lungs beg desperately for air, as her voice wants to cry out to express the pain and fear she is feeling… she does not allow her eyes to open. She somehow manages to control her breathing. She does not allow her muscles to twitch or spasm.

He missed her heart.

The great Jedi Knight, the renowned Jedi Master, Anakin Skywalker… missed her heart.

She wishes he had struck true, as her Force senses reach out without her consent. She can feel the fading of the Force signatures around her, like dying stars. With a willpower she’d never had before, she draws her senses back in. Wills them to shut down entirely before Skywalker’s own nudge up against hers. 

Reva doesn’t know how she does it. Doesn’t know how, while she lays wishes she was dying, she is able to use her powers more effectively than ever before, but somehow she succeeds.

She thinks, in the very distance, she hears the doors to the room where the other younglings are hiding slide open. She thinks she can hear Sors’ hopeful voice say “Master Skywalker.” If only she could have told them to run, run before he found them.

When Master Skywalker comes back, she hears him nudging at various corpses. Checking for movement. She can hear the clunking boots of a Clone Trooper walk up to her and she wills her heart to stop racing, her body to stop sending adrenaline to the wound sight. Whatever the clone sees, he is satisfied.

“This one is dead, General,” he says, before moving on.

Skywalker doesn’t check her himself. She was the first to fall. Perhaps he trusts she stayed dead.

She’s only eight years old. No reason he’d think she could survive his wrath, his treachery, his blade.

Reva doesn’t know how long she remains there, among the corpses of the other younglings. Minutes, hours, days? But she stays still, continues to play dead until she is confident that everyone is gone, or at least not nearby. If she lays here much longer, she’s afraid her wound really will kill her. She manages to escape the detection as a second round of soldiers come through, searching through the corpses. Pretends not to be a survivor. Pretends to be dead and growing cold. Then, they are gone, and she can breathe again.

Slowly, unsteadily, she forces herself to stand, taking stumbling steps towards the medical wing. She is crying silently as she moves, cautiously making her way around the rubble of her fallen home. She sees the faces of those who trained her. The faces of padawans, who she’d celebrated with as they came back with kyber crystals, excited to start their futures as Knights and Masters. Reva is grateful that she won’t have to pass by the room they’d hid in, the room where she knows the rest of the younglings lie, slaughtered.

Eventually, she makes it to the medical wing, nearly collapsing from the exertion. It is a miracle that she made it, she knows this, knows that her chances of survival are practically nonexistent. What she’ll even do if she can fix up her wound is unknown to her.

Leaning against a doorway, allowing it to support her weight, she scans the room nearest her. It is empty, she expected nothing less, but it is also devoid of medical droids. Skywalker must have told his Clone Troopers to take them, to loot the place of everything they would need to survive. 

She hates them. Skywalker and clones alike. They have destroyed everything, killed everyone. 

Reva has no future now.

How sad, to have your life end at only eight years old.

She manages to gather enough supplies to clean her wound and bandage it. It’s a sloppy process, her small hands shaking with exhaustion. Medical lessons were always her weak point. Reva could hardly patch up a wound on another youngling. To patch up herself, in such a difficult spot, when she could barely keep upright for more than a moment? It was more difficult than any lesson. So, yes, her patch job is sloppy. But she still manages it. 

It may be foolish, she knows this. To let herself rest, stay in one place. She also knows that if she doesn’t sleep, for even just a few hours, she won’t be able to escape. She may have no future, no plans, no idea what could come next after the destruction of her entire world. Yet, there’s just the smallest of chances that with some sleep, she can do this.

Reva feels, very suddenly, much older than she did when she awoke this morning. 

Can she really only be only eight years old, still?

She doesn’t know how much time passes until another presence is sensed at the Jedi Temple. It could have been multiple days or only just one; it could have been mere hours. Time is odd in the aftermath of it all. Reva sleeps, many times, but she doesn’t know how many hours she’s awake or out. 

She’s creeping through the halls, hazily looking for food, when she feels a presence. It’s… familiar, like an echo of happier times long gone. (Except, those times were just a few days ago, weren’t they?)

Yet, she cannot be sure. Cannot be sure that this presence is still friendly. She’s not experienced enough yet, with the Force, to know corruption immediately. Skywalker’s had blindsided them all, hadn’t it? She’d only been able to sense it because he’d been corrupted so absolutely. She also has to assume that he was not the only who Fell.

Reva hides. Climbs into the same vent systems that she and her friends had attempted to escape through. She moves through them. If this is a Jedi, they will sense her. If this is a Sith, they likely will, too. There are two likely outcomes: rescue or death. There is one utterly unlikely outcome: go undetected.

The voice, it’s familiar. It tells the Jedi that if they come home, they are coming into a trap. 

Is that true? Or did Master Yoda fall to the Dark Side as well? Is the trap coming home or is it going into hiding?

She hears the footage playing, hears Skywalker and the Clone Troopers killing everyone. It’s like reliving the nightmare or watching your own memories. It’s like having the story of your own death told by someone else, at your funeral.

Reva holds her position. She watches the old Jedi as he searches the temple ruins. If coming home is a trap, why is he here? Why is he spending so much time looking around?

There is a moment where she thinks he senses her. He passes right underneath her hiding spot and looks up, sharply. His look is odd, unreadable. She holds her breath, stays as still as she possibly can, despite her fear and pain.

Then, the unlikely outcome plays out. 

Yoda leaves.

He leaves her, an eight year old youngling, scared and terrified, in the ventilation system of a ruined temple. She doesn't know why.

More time passes. Again, she does not know how much time, simply that it is passing. No more Jedi return; however, neither do any more Troopers. Neither does Skywalker. 

She eats all of the food that she finds. Every day, it seems like more of the Temple is collapsing around her. There are moments when there will be a strange tug in her gut, and she will jump out of the way only for a piece of the building to fall directly where she was.

She is healing, but she isn’t. Physically, her wound is getting better, yes. Mentally, though? Mentally, Reva is fraying at the edges.

There are ghosts around her. They roam the halls of the temple and she feels the chill of their presence as they pass her. The ghosts press into her brain. They are not the same as the Force ghosts she'd heard stories about. They are more... haunted is the only way to describe them, as one-the-nose as that seems.

Reva cries every single night.

She is eight years old (is she really still only eight?) and the only people she knows are ghosts.

Reva needs to leave. Needs to leave the Temple, escape the ghosts and the memories. She knows she has healed enough to enter the city, to try and find some sort of transport off of  Coruscant.

She doesn’t know where she will go. She just knows she can’t stay here. She’s out of food. Out of sanity. Out of lucky chances.

The freshers still somehow work and Reva finally washes off the layers of grime that have built up. She washes off the blood, the pain. Reva doesn’t know why it took her so much time to wash. What sort of morbid sentimentality made her want to keep the layers of pain sitting on her body, in this form of a physical reminder?

Reva combs out her hair. She braids it, wishing Master Velti was still alive. In those rare moments of softness that Jedi were not supposed to show, the Jedi would sit her down in the fresher. Her agile fingers would work through the knots in Reva’s thick curls and carefully plait her hair. Reva wants to look presentable, just like Master Velti had taught her to be.

Presentable means she is more likely to get transport, right?

She gives her helmet a sad look, before carefully placing it on the remains of her old bed. She folds up her training robes, taking care with them. It is the last time she’ll fold these, last time she’ll touch the rough fabric.

Reva finds a pair of blacks in the guest rooms of the Temple. She has to climb carefully down there, around the bodies of those who died during the attack. The innocent guests of the Jedi Order, there on diplomacy, felled in their sleep or while sitting down to a meal. 

But, thankfully, there were also natural born soldiers staying in the temple. The blacks she finds are for a smaller soldier. Judging by the hairs still stuck to them, they belonged to a Kushiban. She’s never met one, just heard the legends of Jedi Master Ikrit, and seen them from a distance when they visited the temple.

It doesn’t matter, though, who they belonged to before. Trying to solve it is just another case of sentimentality, useless to her. Useless to a Jedi.

She's becoming weak.

But does it matter? Why does she want to adhere so strongly to a code that isn’t going to serve her? She’d never become a padawan, never become a Knight. It's ironic. Holding on to a code out of some need for attachment. The very code that taught her not to become attached. 

Reva shakes her head. Shakes the useless thoughts from her brain.

She cannot shake the ghosts, though. She’s only eight years old and no one has taught her how to do that yet.

Reva leaves the Temple, but she cannot leave the ghosts behind. They claw at her, beg her to stay, beg her to save them. The further into the lower levels she goes, the further into Coruscant’s underbelly, the louder the ghosts become. Reva finally begins to recognize the voices, recognizing who is trying to drag her back.

I’m sorry , she tells them. I cannot save you. Let me go.

Tuck's voice, saying that Skywalker will save them. He killed you, she reminds him.

Elis, saying she must find Master Yoda. He left me here for dead. You saw it happen.

Eyan and Vanland, questioning her, questioning why she does not trust them anymore. Because, she thinks. Because trust got us and the Jedi nowhere.

Reva is so overwhelmed by the ghosts, so overwhelmed by the fear, that she misses the feeling in her gut that she has begun to recognize. Due to this, she doesn’t notice the fragility of the floor beneath her feet. Doesn’t notice that the floor simply… ends. She is too busy fighting the ghosts.

She only notices when she falls through the hole.

Reva is only eight years old and she is certain she is plummeting to her death. For real this time.

Once again, Reva does not die. It seems that, no matter how much she consciously wants to die, the piece of her that contains her Force powers does not. Her fall is slowed, even as she falls three levels down. She feels herself doing it, that piece of her forcing her own motion to be arrested.

The landing still hurts. The pain in her chest from where Skywalker stabbed her flairs and she can’t help but cry out. She crawls her way to a semblance of safety, and lies in the nearest city alleyway, away from the rubble of the fallen Temple above. 

Reva wants to get up and run. She wants her plan of escaping to work out. Concurrently, she wants her wishes to die to be carried out. She wants anything to happen that will change her circumstances.

Stay with us, the ghosts say in unison. A Jedi is coming.

There is no Jedi coming, she tells them. 

Hope is lost.

And then it is not.

She is crying again, finally. It has been a few days since she has been able to let it out. Reva had thought that perhaps she’d shed every tear left in her body. When she cries, any defenses that she has learned to build completely and utterly crumble. She knows this but she just cannot care. Let them find her.

It is while she lies there in the alley, crying, that she feels the smallest push against her mind. Not the usual gut-pull, telling her to dodge danger. Not the intrusive push or sharp tug of a ghost. It is a curious push, soft and gentle. She pushes back, desperate. Desperate to be found, to be saved. 

The ghosts were right. She feels him. A Jedi is coming.

Funny. Moments ago, she was desperate to die. Eight years old and desperate to not live a year longer. But she thinks she knows that Force signature, even just vaguely, because they’d never met. She knows it in passing. More importantly, she can feel that it wants to find her. That, in some ways, changes everything.

The last thing she remembers before she falls asleep is a friendly face and the feeling of strong arms, holding her like she matters. When he offers those arms to her, she so willingly clings to him.

The first thing she sees when she wakes back up is that same face. He is watching her with concern. His expression is soft, curious, and full of an odd mixture of pain and compassion.

“My name… is Reva,” she tells him. “I was a youngling, training with Master Velti when Master Skywalker attacked the temple. We thought he was there to save us. Tuck, especially. He… fell first. Rushed to him. I tried to help them, but I couldn’t. I was too weak. When he left, I played dead, hid with the bodies. Felt them go cold.”

The man’s face crumbles. He reaches out, hand soft, and she both wants to shy away and lean into the touch. She knows this face, this man. How can she trust him? He was Skywalker’s master. Skywalker was his padawan.

But she needs his help. She needs someone, anyone.

"Do you know who I am?" he asks her gently. 

"You're Master Obi-Wan Kenobi."

He nods. "Yes, but I cannot use that name anymore. People will be looking for me, and if anyone finds me, it will not end well for either of us."

Reva thinks on this, turns the words over in her mind. Does this mean he wants her to stay with him? He said “us” and that usually means together. She understands what he means, understands that he is telling the truth. Reva nods. "Can I keep my name?" It might be a silly question, but she hopes he understands what she means by the words.

He seems to think about what she has said, studying her with curiosity.  "Yes," he replies, and she can hear certainty in his voice. "We will both need a new surname, but your given name should be safe."

Reva does not have a smile left in here, cannot bring one to her face. She cannot look him in the eyes, for fear she will reveal how badly she wants to stay with him. He is Master Kenobi, new name or not, and he will not look kindly on her becoming attached. For all he did in training Skywalker, she knows that he was a good Jedi. 

She can feel his Force signature, feel him trying to press a calm feeling over her consciousness. He is being patient with her. It almost hurts.

"Can I stay with you?" she finally asks. She hates how small she sounds. 

"If you wish to," he allows. Reva blinks. He answered so quickly, so definitively. She was not expecting that. But then, he speaks again, and the words drain her of the glimmer of hope she’d let herself feel. “It will be quite dangerous if you do," and then, "You would be safer elsewhere. I could find someone who could care for you." 

All she wants is a family again. To be surrounded by the Force. If she cannot have that, then she is scared of that dark place. Without a Jedi by her side, can she fight off the ghosts? Her mind is so quiet right now.

"I…" She starts but then her voice stutters out. Perhaps he won’t fault her for attachments. He is… softer than expected. But she still needs to think over her words carefully, not seem small and desperate, even though she knows she is.

“Yes?” He prompts, though he is not pushing so hard as to make her shrink back into herself too deeply.

"I know I should go somewhere safe," Reva says carefully. "But I want to stay with you."

Is she imagining it, or does she feel the same relief coming from him that she herself is feeling? He says “alright” and it washes over her.

Perhaps it is foolish. Perhaps she has learned nothing during this time of solitude, from seeing her friends perish at the hands of a Jedi Master they trusted. But she can just sense the honesty radiating off of Obi-Wan. 

He tells her to sleep again and she does.

She’s only eight years old, and her trust has been destroyed, but she thinks that he can help her piece it together again.

There is a baby gurgling in Reva’s arms. Her name is Leia and her infant-smooth skin is alabaster pale against Reva’s own. She has the softest curls and Reva cannot miss the way it feels like a piece of her heart is slotting back into place looking down at her. 

There’s also this nagging feeling, as she looks at the baby. This familiar presence, lurking just behind the already strong ones of the twins. Not the corrupted one that hit her, made her choke on that bitter feeling, but the kind one. The kind one that used to smile softly at her.

She looks at Obi-Wan – Ben, now, she reminds herself – and cannot help but say something. "They're his, aren't they?"

"In blood alone," Ben replies, looking down at Luke in his arms.

Reva believes him and something new breaks in her. It’s a new fear, a new protectiveness. Protectiveness she thought died in the Jedi Temple.

"Would he hurt them too?" she asks, quietly.

"Yes,” he says, and it slashes through her, making her feel cold. "Whether he intended to or not, he would destroy them."

That new protectiveness surges in her. "I won't let him.”

Whether she was ready for it or not, she knows this: they belong together. The four of them. They are a new family now. She finally has one.

Before they’d left, they’d had to get the twins from Bail and Breha Organa. She’d known from that moment that, no matter how dangerous attachment might be, she had found something important. She knew because, when Bail asked Obi– Ben – if he truly wanted to take the twins, she’d wanted to scream. And that made her so afraid of the weight of her own emotions that she’d stayed quiet. It was only when they left again that she could breathe.

She is only eight years old but she has never felt more certain of anything in her life.

Reva turns nine surrounded by her new family. She loves her siblings, loves that she is allowed now to love freely. To be attached. She thinks she sees a similar sentiment in Ben.

Reva is nine now. She hates sharing her family. But Luke and Leia have a blood family on this planet and she knows she must. She’s beginning to understand now that love is best when shared. Even if you don’t want to.

What helps is that Ben is struggling with the same. Struggling to give Owen and Beru a place in their home, their new family.

It is over a year later and Reva finally asks Ben to train her. The twins toddle about the home, getting into trouble, and she needs to protect them.

Reva is nine years old and she is loved. She is ready. She is free.