A Youngling's Tale
Reva lay perfectly still beside the cooling bodies of her crechemates, and tried very, very hard not to cry.
The clone troopers with blue paint on their armor were roving around throughout the fallen forms scattered like trash all over the temple. Occasionally, a blaster went off. The lightsabers, in contrast, had all long since gone quiet.
If they find me, Reva realized, They’re going to shoot me.
None of the clones were on the walkway anymore, at least not for the moment. They had seen Knight Skywalker swing at her, had seen her fall along with all her brothers and sisters. None of them noticed that his saber hadn’t cleaved all the way through her helmet; he’d swung too high. Maybe he was more used to killing people his own size.
Younglings weren’t a threat, not like knights or masters. She supposed that that’s why the clones were checking the grown-ups’ bodies first.
She slowly moved her arms underneath her, choking back a whine when her elbow hit something fleshy and crispy and small enough to roll away. She thought it might have been a piece of either Mirax or Phad, but she couldn’t bring herself to check who it belonged to.
Reva got on her hands and knees and crawled. Over Tane, around Muna, their eyes staring at her unseeing as she left them behind. She was slow, playing dead whenever the Force told her to, hiding in plain sight. She’d always won hide and seek when she played with her crechemates. All she had to do was find somewhere to hide, and then she’d be safe.
She didn’t know how long she crawled, inch by aching inch. Long enough that bluish predawn light was starting to show through the windows. It had been nighttime when the attack started, but before bedtime. She thought, for one detached, floating moment, that the commissary droids might be making breakfast right now, unaware that no one was coming.
Reva heard boots marching against the marble floor, mosaics scuffed with the remnants of deflected blaster shots, and froze, heartbeat rabbiting in her throat. A panel in the wall beside her opened; a cleaning droid, barely tall enough to reach her knees when she was standing, beeped frantically and corralled her into the network of tunnels throughout the temple that it and its brethren used to move around, then slammed the panel shut behind her.
“What’s that?” said an indistinct voice from outside, slightly distorted by a helmet.
“Cleaning droid. Keep moving, trooper, we need to round up any traitors that might be hiding,” came an identical voice, and the boots she’d heard earlier marched away.
The tunnels were cramped, but they were a great hiding place. She just had to go further in and no grown up would be able to reach her, because they wouldn’t fit. Especially not… him. He was too tall. He’d towered over her, in the few seconds he’d looked at her before he—
Reva started crawling again.
The tunnel came out in the nursery. She wished it hadn’t.
Most kids came to the Order after a few years, when their Force sensitivity started manifesting, but a lot of people left their newborns on the Temple steps if they couldn’t or wouldn’t take care of them. The babies weren’t always Force sensitive, but they needed a place to stay until the Jedi could find them an adoptive or foster family. So they stayed here.
Or they had.
Reva didn’t look too closely at the overturned cribs or the little bundles of blankets on the ground. She didn’t want to know if this had been Knight Skywalker’s doing or a clone’s. A lot of these kids never would have become Jedi, anyway, but they’d died just because the Jedi had cared for them when no one else would.
Reva heard a soft, frightened coo. She whipped around, and saw two huge eyes peering at her from inside a wastebasket in the corner. The baby squeaked and hid, the lid coming down as they ducked to hide.
“It’s okay,” Reva croaked. All at once, tears flooded her eyes. Someone else had survived. Another youngling had survived.
She crept over, knelt, and opened the wastebasket. She stuck her hand in, tentatively patting the little head. She carefully lifted the baby out when tiny clawed hands reached for her, frantically hushing him when his big dark eyes started to grow wet.
“Please, Grogu,” she implored, “You have to be quiet.”
Grogu was still a baby, but he was also almost 30 standard. He was the nursery’s longest resident by far. He’d only just begun to walk, which is most likely how he escaped the fate of the other infants; the clones hadn’t known any of them could do that yet. Grogu was supposed to move into the creche with the big kids and begin training with them in only a few months. Master Yoda had been so excited.
Knight Skywalker hadn’t known Grogu could walk, either; before last night, he’d avoided all the younglings like the plague. He’d been nicer when he was younger, but then he turned nineteen and something had changed.
“It’s all right,” Reva whispered, bouncing him slightly in her arms. “I’ll get us both out of here alive, I promise.”