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Jaster broached the question on a quiet afternoon.The Jedi had only been on Manda’yaim for a few days when he had noticed, Master Yonna-Serra and Padawan Irida having agreed to spar with a few verde. The spar was friendly, and a good show of the Jedi’s skill. But then one of the verd, Cali, went for a grapple. It was small, and only a few were watching close enough to see, but Yonna-Serra jerked back, pulling her wrist out of the verd’s hold, ducking and then lashing out, sending the woman flying. She ended the spar quickly after that, and excused herself to clean up before late meal.
~***~***~***~
Jaster entered the apartment, steps light and perhaps more hesitant than necessary. The Jedi seemed to have settled in well, and both Master and Padawan were friendly, exploring the city and Keep, making friends with the verde, baji, and ruyot'baji they talked to. In the week since they arrived they had obliterated most of the preconceptions about Jedi being unfriendly, heartless, or cold.
In a way, knowing that made the question all the more difficult to ask, as he did not want to make Master Yonna-Serra uncomfortable.
“May I ask… why did you flinch when Cali tried to grab your wrist?”
The question should have been nothing, but Jaster felt like he was staring down the barrel of a blaster where he had expected a friendly greeting.
Yonna-Serra sighed but straightened from where she was tidying a few data pads away, face drawn and resigned, “What do you know of the Jedi’s relationship to slavery?”
“Given what I know of your oaths and what you consider your duties, you're against it, but like the Republic, you don’t do much about it?”
Yonna-Serra moved as he spoke, bustling around the kitchen, gathering cups, filling teapot with water, putting it on a tray with a jar of shig and cookies, and then moved to sit in the karyai. Closes her eyes, breathes, sips her shig. It seems to settle her, and Jaster tries to project calm and patience.
“The Jedi are irrefutably tied to slavery and the Freedom trail. Most of the Order's allies are Conductors on the trail, and many Corps outposts will take in Freed until they can establish themselves. And beings fear what they don’t know, and seek to control what they see as giving them power. Jedi and young force sensitives are prime targets for slavers.
“But- we’ve always known it would be hard! Nearly futile. How do you fight greed? I know people think we are all invincible, heartless warriors, who care about nothing but the senate's orders, but it’s been killing us, to leave the Hutts, Tandroshans and Zygerrians to their own devices, only freeing a handful of slaves here and there!”
Her voice caught, rough and bitter, her breathing heavy. She rubbed her palms over her face, shoulders shaking as her breath hitched, before sitting up and pushing back a few stray hairs. Jaster had the sudden urge to comfort the Jedi, despite the fact that she was a master and closer to his age than Jango's. Aside from that, they still didn’t really know each other.
Yonna-Serra grimaced, but continued, “The Jedi have been fighting slavery since before we were an order, back when we were just Jeh’dai, Star Children. We’ve been fighting slavery since it first existed, and freed the first Amavika when they were still called Aldenka… We have never been enough to end slavery, but seven hells, we tried, try to keep everyone safe and free.”
Her eyes shone with unshed tears, and Jaster thought they might be glowing slightly. She sniffed, taking a sip of her now lukewarm shig. Jaster took a bite of a cookie, hoping to give her a moment to calm herself. He'd never heard the usually composed Master speak this much, and it wasn't pleasant to witness her distress.
“I’ve been enslaved before. The way Cali grabbed me pulled me back for a second. At least fifty percent of the Order will experience slavery at some point in their lives, minimum. And around ten to twenty percent of our total number are freed from slavery before they are brought to the temple, it's a part of our reality. We try to reach the force sensitive children quickly, but parents don’t always want their child to go to the Order, and sometimes we just aren't fast enough.
“As for what you said about the republic- ha! There's not much we can do now. Since the Sith Wars, our population has dropped, exponentially. We had to abandon one temple and the three currently operating are only about half full. Many Jedi on missions will go out of their way to free the slaves they encounter and get them to safety, but since the Ruusan, the Senate has become more and more canny and controlling, and we can’t risk taking longer than can be explained to complete any mission. We don’t have the people needed and Senate oversight has strangled any efforts we could have otherwise made.”
“And you can’t just ignore the Senate?” Of course they couldn’t, he knew that, he read the contract the Senate sent them, the control they had of the Jedi. But, they had the Force, they had other allies, couldn’t they argue for more action.
Yonna-Serra hissed like a disgruntled tooka, “The Senate controls the Orders budget. The temples are self-sustaining, but missions are funded by the Senate and donations. On top of that, we’ve tried, and the Senate starts making veiled threats. Force, we don’t even have a senate seat since the Reformation! The Coruscant temple was supposed to make it easier to help those who needed it, the partner with the Senate. Instead, it’s given them more and more ways to chain us down. If we can’t make the Senate step back, or leave the planet- I’m not the only one worried about the Orders future. We know this isn't sustainable, just look at how I came to be here-” She laughed, then choked, “perhaps it is folly, but any Jedi would accept death to spare others a worse fate.”
~***~***~***~
Jaster sat in thought, his presence in the Force swirling worse than the storms Yonna-Serra had seen on Telorka-3. She did feel a little bad, it was a lot of information to dump on him all at once, and a heavy topic.
Finally, he looked up, sighing like the weight of the galaxy had settled on his chest.
“I may have an idea, but we’ll have to run it by both our councils. It's not well known, but on Concordia, there are some strange ruins. I found a book that mentions them, and it led me to believe that Tarre Vizsla built a Jedi Temple on Concordia, in the hopes of building a better relationship between our two peoples.”