The bartender gives me a strange look when I ask what day it is, and grunts out before moving on to another customer. I watch the beads of condensation roll down the side of my glass, the ice melting rapidly in the sweltering heat. Even in the cantina there was no respite from the glaring wrath of the two suns, making this wasteland planet a perfect place to go if you didn’t want company. I realize with a start what the bartender had said; today was my birthday. Today I was twenty years old, and, for all I knew, one of the last Jedi alive in the galaxy.
It had been two months since Order 66, since I had been betrayed by the soldiers I had fought alongside with, yet it felt like two lifetimes ago. The thought of the clones turning on their Jedi generals made my insides churn with the bitter sting of betrayal. From what I had heard, not one soldier had hesitated when given the order, not one man stopped to think if what he was doing was right. It was hard to reconcile in my mind, how our loyal clones, our friends, had so easily pulled the trigger to end our lives. Everyone had swallowed up Palpatine’s lies, believing that the Jedi Order could really be capable of such treacherous deeds. I was now a notorious galactic criminal, and for my crimes I had been sentenced to death. The worst part about betrayal was that it never came from your enemies. These were thoughts I pondered every day, and as much as I wanted such musings to stop, I could not move on.
I scan the cantina for any threats, and then settle back into my seat, content that there was no sign of Imperial presence. I was always on edge, roaming the Outer Rim systems to ensure that the new Empire couldn’t track me down. I had roamed deserts, rifled through dumpsters, and even spent some nights in an underground sewer system-- all to avoid Imperial detection. I wore tattered robes and had wrapped my head in a scarf so that I was just another forgotten face on this wasted planet. I had become nobody.
It was still a mystery to me how I had survived, I had merely been in the right place at the right time. Master Yoda had sent me on a solitary mission to an abandoned temple on Tython to collect some ancient holocrons for the archives, and, by some random chance, Order 66 had been issued and I had received Master Kenobi’s message before reaching Coruscant, giving me time to flee to the Outer Rim before the Emperor had assumed control of the entire galaxy. Certainly I was not one of the few that deserved to live, there was nothing I had ever done that made me deserving of reaching my twentieth birthday. After all, I was Jedi who had once fallen to the dark side and betrayed the Jedi Order. I should have been alongside Master Secura, I was supposed to be on Felucia with her. If I had not been sidetracked by the mission to Tython maybe I could have saved her, maybe I could have taken the blast shots instead of her.
I get wrapped up in my thoughts and pound my fist on the table angrily, making my glass rattle to turn the heads of a few concerned patrons. The bartender gives me a sidelong glance and narrows his eyes, muttering some annoyed words in a language I didn’t understand. I take a deep breath and regain my composure, reminding myself that if I didn’t remain invisible, I was dead. I was no longer a military commander, I was no longer a Jedi knight. I was a fugitive criminal, a dead woman walking. Without the Republic, without the Order, what identity did I have? I was just Septima Searsha, and I had no idea who she was. I throw some credits on the counter and walk away, leaving my drink full without a single sip taken. I join the bustling crowd in the marketplace and disappear once again into mundane obscurity. When the bartender came to collect the credits that had been left beside the full glass he did not remember the shadow of a woman that had once been seated there.
