Topic - Getting Away with Murder

Graedyn Chaimera, Jedi Knight
Star Wars – Original Character
Rating – G
Word Count – 462
deviant_muses

From the memoirs of Graedyn Chaimera, Jedi Knight…

I have pondered many times about the manipulations of the Emperor Palpatine. How did a man who was a dark lord of the Sith persuade us all that he was a champion of freedom and justice? Each and every step he took was orchestrated to place him in control of the very universe. How could he have done so much without any of the Jedi Council knowing it? How could my own Master, Mace Windu, have failed to notice his corruption? I believe what we forget is what a manipulative genius he was. We get wrapped up in the basic history of his reign and how he went about getting so much power that we forget all that he did behind the scenes. But as a Jedi, I watched it all. I just wish that I had known what I was seeing at the time.

Jedi do not kill unless it is absolutely necessary. To manipulate us into a war that kept us distracted, Darth Sidious had his cohorts create an army of droids. Cannon fodder that the Jedi would feel no grief in killing, hundreds, growing into thousands, then millions of killing machines with only a few Jedi to protect the free people of the Republic. We destroyed as many of the machines as we could, joining with the Clone troopers who fought by our sides, coming to care for the clones as we would any other human being, until their lives became a cause for us to channel the Force to fight harder still.

We were so tired by the time the Sith Lord played out his hand. Skywalker was supposed to be the chosen one, he who would bring balance to the Force. They say that going to the Dark Side, he betrayed the prophecies, but I believe that was his purpose. The Order had stopped being able to hear the Force. The ranks were filling with arrogant children who had known nothing but war. I should know. I was one of those Jedi, too young in the ways of the Force to see the nose at the end of my face back then.  Master Windu told me that Skywalker was a danger, but I think that was also part of Palpatine’s manipulation. Keeping our eyes on Anakin meant we weren’t watching him closely enough.

I do not wish that I had killed either Skywalker or Chancellor Palpatine. I’m sure many of the other survivors of that time wish they had. After all of these years, I know that their rise was needed to scour our ranks, so that only the best of the Jedi would survive. I hope that I live long enough to see the return of the Jedi.