Stars Also Dream, 5) things you didn’t say at all
Attachment is discouraged–no, worse than that–attachment is blasphemous.
And yet, what could the bond between master and padawan possibly be otherwise?
Still, you keep such questions to yourself. No need to cause complications for Master Bant, and you are reluctant to prove yourself anything less than the perfect student. (Pride, that’s blasphemous, too.)
The bond between you and Master Bant grow even as missions turn from tense assignments to fraught battles, the galaxy going to war. She teaches you negotiating and healing and fighting and how to tell when is the right time for each. She teaches you how to survive, she teaches you to be independent, she teaches you that sometimes the most important things are the ones left unsaid.
You never told Master Bant “thank you” because the relationship between master and padawan inherently revolves around teaching. It would be like thanking gravity for pulling you to the planet, or thanking the stars for burning bright in the void of space.
You also never told Master Bant “I love you.”
You didn’t have the words for it until long after Master Bant’s light had gone out.
—
The couple who find you–you and the wreckage of your emergency shuttle–stare at you with wide, kind, and concerned eyes, not a drop of fear in them.
How foolish. You could hurt them. So easily. Your lightsaber unlit but steady in your grip. You are mourning, ravaged with your grief, and you understand now how Jedi could fall to the Dark side. You are nothing more than your emotions, your loss, and these people mean nothing to you.
But they are kind and fearless–oblivious–they see only a crying child, and not the battle-hardened warrior you truly are.
But perhaps they aren’t entirely wrong, either. When the woman draws closer, labor rough hands gently wiping at your tears, you do not attack. You collapse into her embrace, body wracked with sobs, grip tightly, desperately, to the fabric of her clothes, aching to hold on.
A few days later, you erase this particular moment from their memories to keep them safe from your past–or to keep your past safe from them–but maybe, you think, in the future you will tell them the truth.
A few years later, another war of a smaller but no less horrific scale breaks out.
You are the last Kinokawa.
—
You have learned by now about keeping things to yourself. You know so well the poisonous coursing of regret in your heart. Words bitten back and left to fester because those who would hear them are no longer alive.
You want to tell your family. Or, rather, you don’t not want to tell them before it’s too late.
That deadline approaches, tensions rise, the familiar vanguard of war. Your family sent out to the front lines, in the thick of it, already scarred by the dangers you couldn’t shield them from. You have your youngest child to think of, but what kind of mother would you be if you didn’t do all you could to ensure the world Eerin grew up in were as safe and peaceful as could be?
Send me, send me, you do not ask, do not say.
You do not need to. You send yourself.
~
A/N: the last one isn’t really SAD canon compliant with the whole “post-Gelel Yoshino involves herself with the events of Episode IV” plot… probably it’s part of the post-Jashin!AU?
Also! In somewhat related news: I’ve maybe figured out how to get the DoS podfic onto apple podcasts/itunes? Still working on it–will keep everyone updated!
JackSGreyson Says 