@orphanedshadow / post order 66 starter.
There is no ignorance, there is knowledge.
The maw that existed, the ragged edges of the lives that had been torn out of the Force felt like a tangible, open wound inside of her, and while she may not know yet who all of her allies and friends had lost their lives in the recent days, she knew it was likely most of them. The attack ... attacks, had been efficient, brutal, timely. Coruscant and the Temple had likely been the largest force, the clone troopers that had served as allies, that had fought and bled and died beside the Jedi for years, cutting down servant, youngling and Master alike, without hesitation. She had replayed the recordings over and over, as if she'd needed to watch them more than once to remember every frame, every detail, every face, every sound.
There is no passion, there is serenity.
It would have been the simplest thing in all the worlds; to flip the metaphorical switch within her coding, to shut down the torrents of emotions that were the bane of logical thought and that went against the tenets of the code by which she had chosen to live when she accepted a position within the Jedi temple. After all, rage was only a few simple steps from grief, and hate and anger were the path to the darkness that she had vowed to fight against -- but grief, and love, they were the same side of the coin, and for all that she was meant to not be ruled by her emotions, to deny them made her less than what she was -- less than what she wanted to be.
There is no chaos, there is harmony.
And to deny her grief, and her rage, to simply shut them off, instead of allow herself to work through them and find her way back to the peace and balance that she served, that was as much an injustice to the Order as it was to the memories of the many that had fallen in the attempt to protect its precepts. So many. She had recovered snippets of recordings of distress calls sent from hundreds of Jedi across the galaxy as padawans, knights and masters had found themselves betrayed, cut down, calling out for help or trying to warn others of the impending, concurrent betrayals.
There is no death, there is the Force.
Grief, and anger, sat heavy in her chest, and for all that she knew that they should not, she knew as well that it would take time. Time, and meditation, and the weak salve that came with knowing that if she, and the youngling that lurked in the shadows of the ship that she had commandeered, that she inhabited, and had used her nanites to shield, to conceal; if they had survived, so, too, others had. There had to be others. The statistics alone reinforced that thought. No matter how cohesive, how strategic the attacks, there was no scenario in which the totality of the Jedi were eliminated in one single strike, no matter how many prongs of attack. There would be others. She would find them.
She had done what she could, with what she had. Even now, miniscule fragments of her code crept through the web of the Republic communication systems and seeped into the cracks of the intelligence network, scanning for any signs of life, any hint of a survivor, survivors, that she might find before the Repu -- the Empire could.
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In the interim, she had to focus her attention on what she could do, in the here, and in the now, to keep herself safe, and perhaps more importantly, the unlikely ward that she had found huddled and hidden away in the depths of the ship that she'd absconded with. The youngling had barely had time to make herself familiar with the Temple, having arrived only a few days before the attack, and had already been frightened, uncertain, a mix of timid and feral that had caused the council to voice their concerns. She .. Kara, had not even been assigned a Master yet, when it had all fallen apart around them.
Elizabeth had done what she could to keep the youngling comfortable, keeping the lights dimmer, the environmental systems warmer, even introducing a low thrum of vibrations through the ship that would so subtly mimic the sound and sensation of a heartbeat, to give some small creature comforts. She'd also ensured that the food and water rations had been made accessible, but otherwise had done little to interfere or interact actively with the youngling. She had integrated herself into the ship's systems, occasionally making announcements of the time, or navigation changes, or similar ship alerts, and she had easily modified a few of the small repair droids to work as her physical hands, or eyes and ears, where needed, but she was content for the time being to remain enmeshed into the ship. It was safer for them both, for now, if the ship appeared to be automated, and uninhabited.
The small droid, six legged and squat, clasped a box in its forward limbs, the next serving of ration bars and filtered water, as well as a small electronic pad that would allow limited access to the ship's databases (primarily entertainment and educational programs) with the virtual assistant with the voice and projection of Elizabeth's default form was scuttling its' way to where the youngling was cocooned, issuing a soft but insistent series of chirps and beeps to get her attention.
