If she's ever declared competent to stand trial.
After reading my report on Haruun Kal, Supreme Chancellor Palpatine-in his characteristically warm and compassionate way-took time from his more pressing duties to come to the Temple and look in on Depa personally.
He was accompanied by Yoda and myself; the three of us stood alone in a darkened observation room, watching through a holoviewer as three Jedi healers attended to poor Depa.
She hung suspended in a bacta tank. Her eyes were open-submerged in bacta one has no need to blink-and they stared fixedly through the transparisteel at something only she could see.
Depa has not spoken-has not moved-since her collapse. The greatest Jedi healers of the Temple can find nothing organically wrong with her. Bacta has cured her physical wounds; it cannot touch the rest.
When the healers touch her through the Force, all they find is darkness. Vast and featureless.
She is lost in infinite night.
The Supreme Chancellor watched only for a moment or two before he sighed and shook his head sadly. 'Still no progress, I take it?' Yoda watched me gravely while I struggled to find words to answer. Finally he sighed and took pity on me.
'To end her life, she tried,' he said. 'Most tragic this is: to have sunk so deeply into despair that she can no longer see light. Yet we must not follow her there; hold on to hope, we must.
Recover she may. Someday.' Though perhaps I should not have admitted it, the truth pushed its way out of me. 'I would almost have preferred to lose the planet, if I could have saved Depa.' 'And do you know what caused her breakdown?' Palpatine pressed his hand against the holoviewer, as though he could reach through it and stroke her hair. 'I recall that learning this was one of the stated purposes of your mission to Haruun Kal, and yet your report offers no definite conclusion.' Slowly, I admitted, 'Yes. I do know.' 'And?' 'It's difficult to explain. Especially to a non-Jedi.' 'Does it have anything to do with that scar on her forehead? Where her-what did you call it?' 'The Greater Mark of Illumination.' 'Yes. Where her Mark of Illumination once was. I recognize that this is painful for you, Master Windu, but please. The Jedi are vital to the survival of the Republic, and Master Billaba is not the only Jedi we have lost to the darkness. Anything we can learn about what might cause one to fall is incredibly important.' I nodded. 'But I cannot offer a specific answer.' 'Well, the scar, then. Was she tortured?' 'I do not know. Possibly. It is also possible that the wound was self-inflicted. We may never know.' 'It is a pity,' Palpatine murmured, 'that we cannot ask her.' Some few seconds passed before I was able to respond. 'I can only speculate in general terms, based upon what she told me, and upon my own experiences.' Palpatine's eyebrows twitched upward. 'Your own?' I could not meet his gaze; when I lowered my head, I found Yoda staring up at me. His wise wrinkled face was filled with ancient compassion. 'Fall you did not,' he said softly. 'From this, strength you can take.' I nodded, and found myself once again able to face the Supreme Chancellor. 'It's war,' I said. 'Not just that war, but war itself. When every choice you make means death. When saving these innocents means that those innocents must die. I'm not sure that any Jedi can survive such choices for long.' Palpatine looked from Yoda to me, his face a mask of compassionate concern. 'Who would have thought that fighting a war could have such a terrible effect on a Jedi? Even when we win,' he murmured. 'Who would ever have thought such a thing?' 'Yes,' I could only agree. 'Who would have thought it, indeed?' 'Wonder, one must,' Yoda said slowly, 'if that might be the most important question of all.' There followed a long, uncomfortable silence, which Palpatine finally broke. 'Ah, sadly, questions of philosophy must wait for peacetime. We must focus on winning this war.' 'That's what Depa did,' I said. 'And look what it did to her.' 'Ah, but such a thing could never happen to-say, for example-you,' Palpatine said warmly. His lips wore an enigmatic smile. 'Could it?' I didn't tell him that it could. That it nearly had.
I think about that a lot, these days. I think about Depa. About everything she said to me.
And did to me.
I think about the jungle.
She was right about so many things.
She was right about her Jedi of the Future. To win this war against the Separatists, we must abandon the very thing that makes us Jedi. Yes, we won on Haruun Kal-because our enemy broke under the club of KarVastor's monstrous ruthlessness.
Jedi are keepers of the peace. We are not soldiers.
If we become soldiers, we will be Jedi no more. f Yet I do not despair.
She was wrong about some things, too.
You see, she got lost fighting someone else's war. She was fighting: the wrong enemy. | The Separatists are not the true enemies of the Jedi. They are ene- Jj mies of the Republic.
It is the Republic which will stand or fall in the I battles of the Clone War. f Even the reborn Sith are not our enemy. Not really. f Our enemy is power mistaken for justice.
Our enemy is the desperation that justifies atrocity.
The Jedi's true enemy is the jungle, Our enemy is the darkness itself: the strangling cloud of fear and despair and anguish that this war brings with it. That is poisoning our galaxy. This is why my dreams of Geonosis are different now.
In my dreams, I still do everything right.
But I do in my dreams exactly what I did in that arena.
If the prophecies are true-if Anakin Skywalker is truly the Chosen One, who will bring balance to the Force- then he is the most important being alive today. And he is alive today because my Jedi instincts were working just fine.
Because my mistake on Geonosis wasn't a mistake at all.
If I had done as Depa said I should have-if I had won the Clone War with a baradium bomb on Geonosis-I would have lost the real war. The Jedi's war.
Anakin Skywalker may be the shatterpoint of our war against the jungle.
