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"Why do we fall, sir?...so we can learn to pick ourselves up."
-Alfred Pennyworth to Bruce Wayne in The Dark Knight Rises

It was as barren as the place her last memory was born in. A wasteland wasted further by the Clone Wars. She'd look back on that days later and find it both ironic and fitting. Some of the jackals she'd met along the way believed that deserts were the gardens of the Gods...maybe they were right.

In a place of nothingness, where even the loose earth beneath her paws was moved by the weakest of winds, something long hidden stepped into the light.

"Stay down, Wielder!" he commanded her as she struggled to sit up. His cultured voice was pleading, but it was cut short by a kick to his stomach and ended in a blood soaked cough.

"Listen to your pretty little boyfriend, whelp," Tenga's Apprentice cooed through a cruel smirk. "Maybe if I take long enough on him, you'll be dead by the time I move to you. Maybe your Lupine Gods will be kind enough to call you home instead of letting me dispatch your mangy soul."

The once proud wolf snuffled in the dirt and sand, leveling her muzzle to look at her lover who also lied splayed out in pain on the desert floor. There was still the kind smile lighting up his blue eyes, and though she was grateful for it, it couldn't have made her feel any worse.

...she should listen to the Bladeborn's apprentice. Obi-Wan Kenobi...one of the Temple's finest lay bleeding like a sacrificial nerf. If the Dark Sider had dealt with him so easily, Wielder knew she didn't stand a chance. A whimper escaped her throat, and she closed her eyes, unable to look at him any longer.

And then, memories...almost as old as her first bright and clear ones, raced forward, as if delivered by some unseen force that called to her to simply remember...

"Her midichlorian count isn't that high," Windu observed. "Certainly, she's gifted beyond normal standards, Knight Moonfield, but I see no reason why we should attempt to train a child so far along in her development. We would only be setting her up to fail."

That's right...she'd been in the Council chamber to hear that. Nothing special. Wasn't like that particularly bothered her. Simply not having anywhere to go, nor anyone to really even be bothered her...

...but moments later, in a training room, there she stood, hands clasped in front of her a training saber burning between her palms as she focused the Force into her palms to buffer some of the heat. Her one and only benefactor, Okari, was nowhere to be found...still negotiating her fate at the Council's feet.

"Say it," the hyena growled, his voice made of squeaky youth but somehow menacing as it rang in her now adult ears. "Solah."

Puppling Wielder had not understood the word, and her large ears had pinned backwards. She didn't need to know it. She knew what he wanted to hear. He wanted to hear her concede defeat. To give up. She'd been through hell the past few days, and the last thing she was going to do would be to grovel at his soft-padded feet.

"Never."

A hush fell across the room, and she felt the blade waver even as it burned deeper into the pads of her right hand, her strongest hand. "You have to," Aaltos whined, scowling deeper. "If this was a real lightsaber, you'd be dead. You hafta give up."

Freedom was her strength, and Aaltos could not take that away from her. "Well, I'm not dead, and that's all that really matters." The words had shocked the Hopeful, and she'd used that as an opportunity to sidestep him, catching him off balance. He fell forward, and she caught him with a right hook before he landed on the floor, rolling over immediately to stare in disbelief at the newcomer's smirking face.

"Ain't never fought a Jedi before, but I've dealt with more bullies than you have. Seems they're the same e'rywhere you go." That was when she'd felt the presence of her first Master for the first time. Tehro the Crone, who had traveled all the way from the satellite Temple of Almas.

The old gray bird smiled at her. "Now this is what I have been looking for in my last years."

By then, Okari and Windu had entered the training room at the behest of the Junior Jedi who had gone to fetch help when she couldn't break the Padawan Hopeful and the wolf apart. Windu repeated his observation from the Council Chambers in front of everyone since Tehro had not been there to hear it. "Master Tehro, your skill as a teacher is legendary, but this child is too old and has a midichlorian count too low to make up for years not spent training..."

The Fosh's milky lavender eyes glinted like metal. "Master Windu, in my hundreds of years, I have seen many a..."gifted"...student. And I have seen them fail...and worse. This child..." She reached out and grabbed the pup's burnt hands and held them up to not only Mace but all the children around them as evidence of what she was about to say. "...this one has heart. In three years time, she will be ready to come back to your Temple, and she will be amongst your finest Jedi. You have my word."

And that had done it. Through Okari's promise and Tehro's faith, her place in the Order had been secured until she could earn it herself.

And now she was letting them both down along with Obi-Wan...and so many others...

...her husband...who died because of another's treason.

...her Clones...who died for a Republic who thought them expendable.

...her father...who died protecting her...

...and her mother...

Then it came back to her. The memory of who she'd been before all seemed to have been taken from her. Memories of training with her mother...a Jedi the Temple had no knowledge of. A follower of a Way older than that of the Temple at Coruscant. She saw her family's last day, how long her father fought...long after he should have been dead. Her mother's blade in battle, and then herself...draining the life out of Tenga as she herself died from the raven's blade.

How could she have had so much heart back then and so little now?...

"Because my heart was not in chains," she whispered under a snarl as she pushed herself out of the dirt, rising from a desert much like the one the Jedi she would one day become had been born in. "This Order will no longer tell me what good to serve!" It was a warcry she howled in the direction of the Bladeborn Apprentice and Kenobi, and the desert winds howled with her as she stood. Her right hand, still bearing the scars of her childhood courage, flashed out to her side and called her saber back to her, and she readied herself for what she knew would be her last battle as a Knight of the Jedi Order.

The Apprentice smiled and turned from what surely would have been Kenobi's execution and focused on the wolf. "Why don't you just lay down and die already, bitch? You couldn't save that last fucktoy of yours, what makes you think you can save this one?"

She smiled back, feeling the black and red power within her unfurling from its long slumber. "Everything."

A flash of disbelief fluttered through the Dark Jedi's eyes before she regained her composure. "Think that Jedi Blade will save your neck and Pretty-Wan Kenobi's? My cortosis blade will extinguish that flame and my soul will extinguish yours. This is your fate, Jedi. Everything about you is weak to me. You aren't good enough to beat me."

Obi-Wan swallowed as he saw her clip the lightsaber to her belt. "You're right. But I won't be fighting you with my lightsaber." She pivoted into a stance of Teras Kasi, and instantly, she was that puppling with nothing to lose and a life to gain once more. "I plan on killing you with my bare teeth, bitch."

It had made him shudder. Those words. Maybe they were meant to bolster her own courage and to shake that of her opponent. After all, the woman he loved was well known for shooting off that mouth of hers, but as he watched in vain as the two brawlers fought, he knew she was not kidding. Moves banned by every Jedi manual or holocron either of them had ever read or studied sent the Apprentice flying back. He could practically feel the impact of each unlawful blow to her organs, and though she still held the signature vibroblade of a Bladeborn, she had yet to land so much as a hairline scratch on Wielder again.

Once the Apprentice was reduced to pants and releasing dark energy through the Force irresponsibly...dark energy easily redirected back at her by a Wielder Obi-Wan had a hard time recognizing, it was over. One use of Force Speed and Wielder had the younger female by her throat, lifting her high up into the desert winds and cutting sand.

"You can't..." The Apprentice could read the wolf's intentions, and now...she knew fear. "You are a Jedi...I am unarmed..."

"Not according to me...you bare ill will against my pack...against my mate...that is weapon enough."

"By what line of the Code you supposedly live by?" She was struggling to speak now. Wielder's hold was unbreakable and only tightening.

"My own." Obi-Wan closed his eyes as he watched the wolf's jaws open in that characteristic snap of her kind. No sound other than the nearly metallic closing of those jaws were made. When he opened his eyes, he saw her standing over the slumped body of the woman who would have indeed killed him, but she looked less strong now and much more vulnerable.

"Wielder...what have you...what have you done?" he begged of her, slowly getting up and falling when his cut tendons offered no support...

...but she was there in a flash, her shoulder catching his weight. "I protected the Light that has always guided me, Obi-Wan. What kind of Jedi...what kind of person would I have been to let you die when there was anything I could do to stop it?"

"My dear," he whispered, "I know...I know...and I love you all the more for it...but there is nothing I can do to protect you from them now...nothing."

She followed his blue eyes to the dunes behind her. She did not know how long they had been there, but there stood the long lost reinforcements including some of their Jedi brethren. Though they were far away, she could feel the disapproving stares, and it only fueled her rebellion.

The wolf steadied the man she loved before she began to stand. "It's okay, Obi," Wielder reassured him softly, her voice growing weak as her energy left her and the reality of her fate set in. "This was never gonna be the endgame for me anyway. Knew that from the beginning."

The handsome maremma mix looked down at the sands beneath him, searching for answers and solutions and finding nothing. A metallic clank hit the desert floor, and he looked up at her, astounded. "Wielder...your saber...?"

"I'd rather you hold onto it than one of them, Obi. We both know the only way I'm going back to Coruscant is unarmed and in binders." And with that, she began to rise as tall and proud as she could carry herself despite her wounds, and walk to meet her fate.

So Wielder's story has changed a lot, and here's an updated version...and a rough one...of what happened here www.furaffinity.net/view/44668… . Most likely not gonna be Sith Dissay because I could never kill mah OdissaBurrrr even if she was a Sith thang. Anyway, this is my first piece I have completed in completely digital means. Sooooooo yay!

Done in Photoshop CS3. Go me!

Description
"Why do we fall, sir?...so we can learn to pick ourselves up."
-Alfred Pennyworth to Bruce Wayne in The Dark Knight Rises

It was as barren as the place her last memory was born in. A wasteland wasted further by the Clone Wars. She'd look back on that days later and find it both ironic and fitting. Some of the jackals she'd met along the way believed that deserts were the gardens of the Gods...maybe they were right.

In a place of nothingness, where even the loose earth beneath her paws was moved by the weakest of winds, something long hidden stepped into the light.

"Stay down, Wielder!" he commanded her as she struggled to sit up. His cultured voice was pleading, but it was cut short by a kick to his stomach and ended in a blood soaked cough.

"Listen to your pretty little boyfriend, whelp," Tenga's Apprentice cooed through a cruel smirk. "Maybe if I take long enough on him, you'll be dead by the time I move to you. Maybe your Lupine Gods will be kind enough to call you home instead of letting me dispatch your mangy soul."

The once proud wolf snuffled in the dirt and sand, leveling her muzzle to look at her lover who also lied splayed out in pain on the desert floor. There was still the kind smile lighting up his blue eyes, and though she was grateful for it, it couldn't have made her feel any worse.

...she should listen to the Bladeborn's apprentice. Obi-Wan Kenobi...one of the Temple's finest lay bleeding like a sacrificial nerf. If the Dark Sider had dealt with him so easily, Wielder knew she didn't stand a chance. A whimper escaped her throat, and she closed her eyes, unable to look at him any longer.

And then, memories...almost as old as her first bright and clear ones, raced forward, as if delivered by some unseen force that called to her to simply remember...

"Her midichlorian count isn't that high," Windu observed. "Certainly, she's gifted beyond normal standards, Knight Moonfield, but I see no reason why we should attempt to train a child so far along in her development. We would only be setting her up to fail."

That's right...she'd been in the Council chamber to hear that. Nothing special. Wasn't like that particularly bothered her. Simply not having anywhere to go, nor anyone to really even be bothered her...

...but moments later, in a training room, there she stood, hands clasped in front of her a training saber burning between her palms as she focused the Force into her palms to buffer some of the heat. Her one and only benefactor, Okari, was nowhere to be found...still negotiating her fate at the Council's feet.

"Say it," the hyena growled, his voice made of squeaky youth but somehow menacing as it rang in her now adult ears. "Solah."

Puppling Wielder had not understood the word, and her large ears had pinned backwards. She didn't need to know it. She knew what he wanted to hear. He wanted to hear her concede defeat. To give up. She'd been through hell the past few days, and the last thing she was going to do would be to grovel at his soft-padded feet.

"Never."

A hush fell across the room, and she felt the blade waver even as it burned deeper into the pads of her right hand, her strongest hand. "You have to," Aaltos whined, scowling deeper. "If this was a real lightsaber, you'd be dead. You hafta give up."

Freedom was her strength, and Aaltos could not take that away from her. "Well, I'm not dead, and that's all that really matters." The words had shocked the Hopeful, and she'd used that as an opportunity to sidestep him, catching him off balance. He fell forward, and she caught him with a right hook before he landed on the floor, rolling over immediately to stare in disbelief at the newcomer's smirking face.

"Ain't never fought a Jedi before, but I've dealt with more bullies than you have. Seems they're the same e'rywhere you go." That was when she'd felt the presence of her first Master for the first time. Tehro the Crone, who had traveled all the way from the satellite Temple of Almas.

The old gray bird smiled at her. "Now this is what I have been looking for in my last years."

By then, Okari and Windu had entered the training room at the behest of the Junior Jedi who had gone to fetch help when she couldn't break the Padawan Hopeful and the wolf apart. Windu repeated his observation from the Council Chambers in front of everyone since Tehro had not been there to hear it. "Master Tehro, your skill as a teacher is legendary, but this child is too old and has a midichlorian count too low to make up for years not spent training..."

The Fosh's milky lavender eyes glinted like metal. "Master Windu, in my hundreds of years, I have seen many a..."gifted"...student. And I have seen them fail...and worse. This child..." She reached out and grabbed the pup's burnt hands and held them up to not only Mace but all the children around them as evidence of what she was about to say. "...this one has heart. In three years time, she will be ready to come back to your Temple, and she will be amongst your finest Jedi. You have my word."

And that had done it. Through Okari's promise and Tehro's faith, her place in the Order had been secured until she could earn it herself.

And now she was letting them both down along with Obi-Wan...and so many others...

...her husband...who died because of another's treason.

...her Clones...who died for a Republic who thought them expendable.

...her father...who died protecting her...

...and her mother...

Then it came back to her. The memory of who she'd been before all seemed to have been taken from her. Memories of training with her mother...a Jedi the Temple had no knowledge of. A follower of a Way older than that of the Temple at Coruscant. She saw her family's last day, how long her father fought...long after he should have been dead. Her mother's blade in battle, and then herself...draining the life out of Tenga as she herself died from the raven's blade.

How could she have had so much heart back then and so little now?...

"Because my heart was not in chains," she whispered under a snarl as she pushed herself out of the dirt, rising from a desert much like the one the Jedi she would one day become had been born in. "This Order will no longer tell me what good to serve!" It was a warcry she howled in the direction of the Bladeborn Apprentice and Kenobi, and the desert winds howled with her as she stood. Her right hand, still bearing the scars of her childhood courage, flashed out to her side and called her saber back to her, and she readied herself for what she knew would be her last battle as a Knight of the Jedi Order.

The Apprentice smiled and turned from what surely would have been Kenobi's execution and focused on the wolf. "Why don't you just lay down and die already, bitch? You couldn't save that last fucktoy of yours, what makes you think you can save this one?"

She smiled back, feeling the black and red power within her unfurling from its long slumber. "Everything."

A flash of disbelief fluttered through the Dark Jedi's eyes before she regained her composure. "Think that Jedi Blade will save your neck and Pretty-Wan Kenobi's? My cortosis blade will extinguish that flame and my soul will extinguish yours. This is your fate, Jedi. Everything about you is weak to me. You aren't good enough to beat me."

Obi-Wan swallowed as he saw her clip the lightsaber to her belt. "You're right. But I won't be fighting you with my lightsaber." She pivoted into a stance of Teras Kasi, and instantly, she was that puppling with nothing to lose and a life to gain once more. "I plan on killing you with my bare teeth, bitch."

It had made him shudder. Those words. Maybe they were meant to bolster her own courage and to shake that of her opponent. After all, the woman he loved was well known for shooting off that mouth of hers, but as he watched in vain as the two brawlers fought, he knew she was not kidding. Moves banned by every Jedi manual or holocron either of them had ever read or studied sent the Apprentice flying back. He could practically feel the impact of each unlawful blow to her organs, and though she still held the signature vibroblade of a Bladeborn, she had yet to land so much as a hairline scratch on Wielder again.

Once the Apprentice was reduced to pants and releasing dark energy through the Force irresponsibly...dark energy easily redirected back at her by a Wielder Obi-Wan had a hard time recognizing, it was over. One use of Force Speed and Wielder had the younger female by her throat, lifting her high up into the desert winds and cutting sand.

"You can't..." The Apprentice could read the wolf's intentions, and now...she knew fear. "You are a Jedi...I am unarmed..."

"Not according to me...you bare ill will against my pack...against my mate...that is weapon enough."

"By what line of the Code you supposedly live by?" She was struggling to speak now. Wielder's hold was unbreakable and only tightening.

"My own." Obi-Wan closed his eyes as he watched the wolf's jaws open in that characteristic snap of her kind. No sound other than the nearly metallic closing of those jaws were made. When he opened his eyes, he saw her standing over the slumped body of the woman who would have indeed killed him, but she looked less strong now and much more vulnerable.

"Wielder...what have you...what have you done?" he begged of her, slowly getting up and falling when his cut tendons offered no support...

...but she was there in a flash, her shoulder catching his weight. "I protected the Light that has always guided me, Obi-Wan. What kind of Jedi...what kind of person would I have been to let you die when there was anything I could do to stop it?"

"My dear," he whispered, "I know...I know...and I love you all the more for it...but there is nothing I can do to protect you from them now...nothing."

She followed his blue eyes to the dunes behind her. She did not know how long they had been there, but there stood the long lost reinforcements including some of their Jedi brethren. Though they were far away, she could feel the disapproving stares, and it only fueled her rebellion.

The wolf steadied the man she loved before she began to stand. "It's okay, Obi," Wielder reassured him softly, her voice growing weak as her energy left her and the reality of her fate set in. "This was never gonna be the endgame for me anyway. Knew that from the beginning."

The handsome maremma mix looked down at the sands beneath him, searching for answers and solutions and finding nothing. A metallic clank hit the desert floor, and he looked up at her, astounded. "Wielder...your saber...?"

"I'd rather you hold onto it than one of them, Obi. We both know the only way I'm going back to Coruscant is unarmed and in binders." And with that, she began to rise as tall and proud as she could carry herself despite her wounds, and walk to meet her fate.

So Wielder's story has changed a lot, and here's an updated version...and a rough one...of what happened here www.furaffinity.net/view/44668… . Most likely not gonna be Sith Dissay because I could never kill mah OdissaBurrrr even if she was a Sith thang. Anyway, this is my first piece I have completed in completely digital means. Sooooooo yay!

Done in Photoshop CS3. Go me!