It starts like this.
Little Kellan is brought to the Jedi temple before his third year. A wide-eyed little human who asks oh so many questions. Who wants to know everything.
Kellan is just a little too different for most of his crechemates, less enamored by lightsabers and using the force and more interested in all he can learn about the galaxy.
He learns of the ancient wars the Jedi once fought in. He learns of the force. He explores the legends of every planet he can find. He deciphers mechanical instructions. He studies everything he can get his grubby little fingers on, much to the chagrin of the adults who would rather not find all the sticky datapads in his wake.
One day he stumbles on a datapad claiming to cover the history of Mando'a and well, little Kellan's not immune to his crechemates' burning curiosity for their ancient enemy. He finds much more than a language's history. He finds his love.
It goes like this.
Little Kellan meets Knight Auldren in a little corner of the archives, buried in datapads about an ancient long-extinct language. She asks him about it and he, quietly so as not to disturb anyone, tells her everything he knows. How interesting the sounds were and which ones are impossible for most species to reproduce and how the politics of a neighboring planet was a deciding factor in its extinction and how much he mourns the loss.
She smiles and asks him questions and it might be the best afternoon of his life! He loves his friends but they just don't understand and they try but... there's only so much they can hear about niche languages they'll never need to learn on planets they've never been to before they get bored.
He asks her about what she's here for, the Crechemaster always says it's polite to ask other people about their loves in kind, and she tells him about the civil wars she's studied. The great system-wide conflicts and the small ones that don't span a whole planet. He listens as she gets more animated and describes the impacts of events over hundreds of years, even throwing in what she knows about how it impacts language for his benefit. Kellan feels like he's finally found someone just like him.
Everyone expects little Kellan to be a scholar of some kind. A child like that seems destined for it. When Knight Auldren asks if he'd like to follow her and learn more about the galaxy and the force with her he agrees wholeheartedly, ecstatic for the chance to follow his love and help the galaxy. There is war on the horizon but all is light for the two of them, excited to teach and to learn.
It ends like this.
Little Kellan, perhaps not too young a padawan to a peaceful scholar but much too young to see war, has seen three years of it. His master has done her best but war shows no deference for youth. He has long since given up his languages and linguistics for strategy and war.
There is hope, the war nears its end and they all hope that this time it's true. That this time it is really over and they can go back to serving the galaxy the way they were always meant to. They are recalled to the Coruscant temple, Knight Auldren with an unfortunate leg injury the respite will hopefully heal.
He sneaks out of the temple to get some of the pastries he knows his master loves.
He feels her die, in confusion and betrayal, on the walk back. He feels her fear not knowing if he's safe and her desperate hope that he survives this. He feels all of them die, one after another, none so intensely as his master and in the deepest parts of his mind is horribly grateful for that. He doesn't know what to do, he doesn't know what killed his family. There is nothing left for him, he runs and tries with all that he has not to fall apart.
He watches the new Emperor declare the Jedi traitors, he watches the people react with indifference or approval, watches the soldiers who were once his comrades patrol the streets searching for survivors.
He cuts his braid and sheds his cloaks. He whispers a remembrance for the dead, and an apology, that he cannot see them laid to rest as they deserve.
It starts like this.
Kel is a lowly dock worker on a backwater outer rim planet, quiet and unremarkable. Their main export is bombs for the empire, the local factory owners deciding droids are too expensive to risk for the delicate process. Sentients may require a little pay and food but are much easier to replace when something goes wrong. Something is frequently going wrong.
There are grumblings among the workers, they risk their lives to create instruments of death for scraps. There are rumors of atrocities on other worlds, of people standing up only to be crushed without mercy, of workers killed for asking for enough to feed their families. Nothing has changed they say, we are no better off than we were before, the Empire has delivered none of its promises. There are whispers of equality, of freedom, of change.
Kel keeps his head down and listens. He doesn't say anything when he hears swapped tactics for neutralizing half-finished bombs, not enough to catch the attention and ire of the Empire, but enough perhaps to give a lucky few a second chance. He's survived so much, he carries the last memories and remnants of a culture within him, he cannot risk it now.
He watches the Empire take more and more. They've sent troopers and officers to the dock where he works and they've started checking everyone's identification. People have started to disappear. The whispers have been growing in intensity but not volume, never volume.
A child watching her mother led away pushes a trooper in a panic without touching him, no one ever sees her again.
It's getting harder to ignore the whispers, it's getting harder to ignore the ache in his heart and the fury in his veins. Kel is angry, deep down in the depths of his soul. He wants to avenge them, his master, his family, the little girl he watched marched away. He wants to stop being afraid.
It can't continue like this. It will tear him apart.
It goes like this.
Kellan buys all the flimsi he can afford and writes down everything he can remember about his people. He writes of his friends long since dead, his master and how she always listened to him, he writes of his favorites places to hide away and meditate, he records the tenants and teachings, he forces himself to remember even when it hurts. The little things that remain important to him, the big things that made the Jedi what they were. He pours out his heart. He writes and writes until there's nothing left.
He has no one to give it to so he hides it as best he can and hopes the force guides the right person to its hiding place someday.
Kellan knows where all the meetings are. He knows when they are and he knows their secret phrases.
He listens to their passionate whispers of a better world. One without a Republic or an Empire. Dreams of a galaxy, or at least their planet, free of oppression and slavery. The end of the factory policies that kill and maim, the end of factory owners who allow atrocities for profit, the end of sighs of relief when a neighbor is taken instead of you.
He watches for patterns and makes himself even more invisible than before, just a lowly dockworker, utterly uninteresting. He remembers where the officers and troopers go when they're on leave and conveniently forgets when they don't return on time. He fails to notice or report the posters crying for revolution. He delivers messages he never questions. He doesn't know why some of the crates aren't full upon delivery.
It ends like this.
It's so different from the battles he's faced before. There's no trained soldiers fighting at his side, no master protecting him from the worst, he has no lightsaber. It's just Kellan, a few half trained guerrillas and an old-fashioned blaster, the outcome decided from the start.
There's a warning called a second too late and he falls.
He wishes more than anything that he could see the sky, but he's fallen forward into the ground and he knows he's not getting up. His comrades don't have the time to stop for him. He hopes they make it to the ships, if they can disable them they might do enough damage and buy enough time to hide away before the retaliations start.
He wonders if it was worth it, surviving the destruction of his people just to die fighting a doomed battle in the street on some backwater outer rim world. It has to be, it has to mean something.
He can hear shouting and the screaming of engines in the distance.
He reaches out one last time, the force welcomes him as it always has before and guides him home.
There is no one but the force left to mourn little Kellan who loved languages and his people more than anything.
And still the galaxy turns, as it always has, as it always will.