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❝The thought was this: 

that all my life had been murk and depths, 

but I was not a part of that dark water. 

I was a creature within it.❞

― MADELINE MILLER, Circe

◂ 𝐖𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐄 𝐈𝐓 𝐀𝐋𝐋 𝐁𝐄𝐆𝐈𝐍𝐒 ▸

𝐈𝐟 𝐬𝐡𝐞 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐰𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐝𝐢𝐞, Rowan Buteö had always thought she would come back as a bird of prey.

The ambiguous parallels between woman and creature were of grim delight, for she loved to live as feathers love to brush through air, as falcons love to tunnel through clouds, as irony loves to strike when least expected. But the promise rebirth is not a gift easily granted to the living; like any paradoxical renaissance, it glints with divine danger in the sunlight, a knife which can only be held at the blade.

Reincarnation of copper talons and splintered gaze, shifting defender of an iridescently crystallized, infinitely azure sky - it seemed all too tangible to the Jedi Knight, for people already seemed to see her as a winged ghost sprawling over the moon. Intimidation permeated the graceful honor that elevated Rowan's mystical role in the blossoming Order, that of a hawk swooping through the sky above all foes, daring nature to desire its distant vulnerability.

A strange sort of raw normality swirled within this daunting nonchalance, for she had little difficulty spotting her prey with the force flowing freely at her side. Strategy. Attack. Victory. Reservations about striking down enemies to the Republic with devastating blows were few, for was it not a waste to have power and never use it? Familiarity became a beacon of blinding hope within the isolated ways of the Jedi, justifying her apathetic faith without revealing the rot in its core. Even as the woman herself obliviously balanced upon a fraying patchwork of glory and despair, confidence's beauty prospered in the heights of ignorance.

But all that soars must eventually tumble back to the ground.

Rowan has fallen further than most and she plummets downward still, ribs crushing into a cage of dust, vertebrae snapping against choking, tar-like soil, on and on through incandescent magma and molten core until at last she has nowhere left to turn save for hellfire's obliteration. Yet she lives despite it all, not as a bird but as a murderer, trying to bring back the dead.

When Order 66 rang through the air, the world split in two - ripped, gouged, sliced with duality and sorrow beneath a bleeding lilac storm. On one side was Rowan, writhing in terror and guilt, a silver-crested sea creature suddenly drowning in cursed azure depths. On the other was her Padawan, Danae, skin like silver-dusted cherrywood beneath crescent clouds, graceful, hollow bones like Endorian reed flutes, blood glistening in the fresh-fallen snow like a ruby sunset ripping through untouched, ivory horizons.

As plasma shots rained down in streaking daggers of delicately dissolving loyalty, Rowan was paralyzed, lightsaber shuddering to life at its own will, eyes peeled open like planets bursting at the seams. The bitter truth was one told a thousand times over, yet no one ever seemed to listen: betrayal is always between beloved. And now it had spread to her most trusted allies, Kondór squad, the same indigo-armored soldiers who had braved the Unknown Regions at the Jedi's side for years. Stitching wounds with gently calloused fingers, watching her back like the brothers she'd never had, lifting her feet above the ground with their incessant laughter and unyielding companionship. Rowan had always thought that she would take her last breath in her squadron's arms, that she would tell them she was proud as the light in her eyes faded, that they would be the ones to dig her grave.

History would be correct when it noted that the first shot found its wretched mark. Heat carved into the Jedi's shoulder - cauterizing, scaring, eating her flesh alive with a programmed vengeance. The pain blossomed in vivid bursts of blazing muscle, yet its agonizing petals were a thing of beauty too; they echoed with the feral sentience of life (perhaps a bit too much of it danced within the single, fearful soul that was Rowan Buteö).

There was a pause in what would quickly become a battle, as if reality itself was holding its breath, struggling to comprehend what was flashing before its eyes. That, or the bare-toothed universe was simply waiting for Rowan to fall.

It was the second shot which would race towards her chest, a curving blue serpent that hungered to at last obliterate the Jedi's beating heart with the precision of finality. Nerves pounded like knives beneath her skin, senses flooding with entropy and bewilderment, as if she were simultaneously falling through the atmosphere and trapped six feet under ash-rotted soil. Thousands of hours of preparation and training became far too few as all control was lost to oblivion within those identical pairs of brown eyes, glazed with unrecognizable detachment. 

In truth, peacekeepers can hope only to shun the little-death that is fear, for they do not understand the amygdala's cruelly twisting thorns, warped intention, and ravaging deprecation. The greatest enemy lies within oneself. And when fear at last comes forth through all faux barriers, whipping its razor-sharp wings and burying its ravenous beak into sanity, no Jedi can hold it back.

The force - usually glittering with the golden courage of endless vitality - left Rowan as a desolate shell, fleeing from the beast of terror in her thoughts and the prickling spear of lightning which swiftly arched towards her. The raven-haired woman's wrist twisted in the stagnant trance of certainty's rubble, raging with no restraint as her fingers thought only of survival. She'd deflected hundreds of bolts before with the ease and accuracy of a blacksmith's hammer upon steel, and yet now, bathed in the ruins of trust, nothing remained as it once was. The bolt was like a kyber-cored star, millions of tons of light and unalterable consequence barely pushed away with an undefined, struggling flourish. Yet again the air paused, hesitating and questioning, balancing upon the edge of eternity.

And then it all fell, in a suffocating wave of crimson ash.

For Rowan realized her mistake right as it was too late, turning around in horror to watch the redirected bolt slice through the center of Danae's chest, surprise still plastered on her youthful face as she crumbled.

There was more than one type of treachery that reigned within the sun-kissed bonds of fidelity which now lay broken, deadly shards beneath Rowan's feet. Breath deserted her lungs, mind churning and choking with immobilizing denial as the single inaccuracy reverberated through the air; all other betrayal was dwarfed by her own. Some accidents cannot be forgiven.

Death laughed upon its throne of irony-bound tragedy as the clones turned their fire to the shell-shocked Jedi, standing with nebulous atrocity at her fingertips and a Padawan no longer at her side. But they had underestimated the vengeance of one permeated with self-blame; as she let herself go, Rowan was brimming with hatred that could not find a place to rest.

The woman's world was frozen with the broken marriage of hate and fear, the violet blade of light her hands flickering with wrath. Darkness consumed its servant, for Rowan could not bear to lie beside Danae until she felt all of the pain in the galaxy - just as she deserved.

History, however, would be wrong when it whispered with the tale of how she had ripped the souls of a dozen programmed soldiers from their bodies. Still, they were dead before they hit the ground, just like Danae.

The lining of the Jedi's mortal flesh was lacerated by disgrace and speared by sin, throbbing with numb regret for the girl who had barely reached the age of twelve, the girl she had sworn to protect. Murderer, her conscience whispered, blurring with the thought of how easily the living rope which once tied Master and Padawan together had been severed (torn through by a fault of the very hands that were meant to hold it together). Strangely, it was the child's laughter that spirits brought to the fringes of hearing's illusion next, a sound like waves crashing against rocks. Rowan remembered it well, for it could shake an entire planet to its core with vivacity and joy, reminding the Jedi of a place on the most distant reaches of her memory (a former home of sea air and salted souls that she'd never truly know - the fading past would not define her in the slightest compared to the present's fury). In that moment, Rowan knew she would do anything to bring Danae back, to repay her mistakes and wash her hands clean of blood. She would crush comets, slaughter mountains, raze suns with her fists, until at last, splintered and broken, her guiding touch could reverse death.

(If her rapidly blooming plan truly worked, perhaps it would be more simple than it seemed, for nothing is impossible when a human mind cares not of the aftermath.)

But for now, clarity only shed blinding light on a single truth: the shadow within Rowan's soul had finally found its purpose, and she was ready to set it free.

As one of the last living Jedi kneeled over the corpse of her Padawan, touching the girl's cold, distant, greying cheek, tears wouldn't come. Though frost had begun to clutch at her eyelashes, the supple beginnings of a tomb of ice, acceptance was as unreachable as ghostly mist. Rowan gently cut a lock from the wreath of hair that framed Danae's sleeping face, sliding her apricot eyelids shut as if submerging twin cyclones beneath a final skyline. It could have almost been peaceful if it weren't for the blaster wound gaped from the center of the girl's chest, a hideous crimson iris which stared through masquerading grief with no remorse.

The Jedi's lungs heaved with an earthquake of cloaked assurance, as Rowan had an answer: Kamino. A way to quell her guilt and end in peace, a beacon of hope which promised to cleanse her ravaged palms. It's science, not the mystery of emotion. It cannot fail, she reminded herself, without regard to the fact that absence of feeling leads to as much desolation as its abundance. She clutched the dark curl tightly in her fist, thinking of how something so miniscule could recreate a person, rebuilding one anew with the miracle of mirrored sentience. In Rowan's tortured, dreaming heart she was certain that a clone of Danae could replace her, that they could both start over and find the long-lost paradise of redemption.

Second chances are a difficult notion to resist; the flawed never cease to flock around them rays like staggering, paper-winged moths. And so it was far easier than it should have been to walk away from the bodies which had fallen at her own hands, disappearing into the untouched snow with mirthless alacrity. 

But deep within the woman's abyss of newfound solitude her mind continued to dance, for a strange feeling was gnawing within her core: that perhaps this had been her destiny all along, a paved journey of bloodshed and remorse. After all, on a planet of Jedi-slayers trying to repay their debts, it seemed that Rowan would fit right in.

Fate had finally decided to swallow her whole.

◂ 𝐈𝐍𝐓𝐑𝐎𝐃𝐔𝐂𝐈𝐍𝐆 ▸

merve boluğur as ROWAN BUTEÖ

the jedi with blood-stained hands

❛it's my fault. all of it.❜

luke pasqualino as HUNTER

the leader with razor-sharp senses

❛i don't break promises.❜

amandla stenberg as DANAE AKRI

the reason for vengeance

❛even jedi can be happy if they try.❜

and all other characters as DESCRIBED or as THEMSELVES

◂ 𝐃𝐈𝐒𝐂𝐋𝐀𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐑 ▸

I do not own Star Wars and its respective plots and characters, however my own storylines and characters do belong to me.

◂ 𝐖𝐀𝐑𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐆 ▸

This story will contain violence, grief, trauma, death, peril, and graphic descriptions. It will also contain SPOILERS for the The Bad Batch series.

◂ 𝐀𝐔𝐓𝐇𝐎𝐑'𝐒 𝐍𝐎𝐓𝐄 ▸

Welcome to another round of me having no restraint when it comes to *certain* animated characters - and of my summaries quickly becoming prologues. Like most of my ocs, Rowan is a stubborn, fault-filled mess who I'm very excited to share with you--

As of right now, this story doesn't tie in to the other published books in my Star Wars series, particularly because Rowan has only existed about three days now (I'm occasionally impulsive, what can I say?), and also because I have no idea what will happen in the coming Bad Batch episodes (all I know is that I'm very excited)!

Anyways, thanks for reading and love you lots!!

- 𝐉ynni

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