you repeat the name softly. it is not one you have heard, but now that you do, you understand it. perhaps you knew the ghost of this name. perhaps it lingered around him, perhaps if he had been unmasked you would have seen this name written in darth vader’s eyes. would have heard it unwhispered on his breath. he spoke to you in a way you think he did not speak to many; you think it’s because you were never afraid of him, because you welcomed him.
maybe anakin’s shadow came with obi-wan. some sort of omen, some sort of passage. you can feel such things so clearly from time to time, and yet never needed to give it such close consideration. and what do you feel from alana?
you close your eyes against her flurry of movement. you do not fear it; you try to make sense of it. the same, over again. a cycle. her desperation to belong, her loneliness, her apartness, that she would sacrifice much—maybe all—if only for a shred of the love which you so reluctantly know to be forbidden to her kind. yes, that a part of her wishes for the martyrdom of those whose footsteps she tries to walk in, that she would throw herself into the jaws of death if it would save anything at all, if it would make her just and righteous.
and that she, so very lost, needs somewhere to place her allegiance.
poor girl. you fold her begging fingers back over the metal of her saber.
“your saber is yours alone. i do not dare to accept your service in such a capacity, when the jedi pursuing some alliance with me has only thus far led to ruin. i will not take your weight upon my shoulders on the same day you tell me that darth vader has met his end; i will not hear you say sir kenobi’s name and then turn and spite him.”
you wish there was a place to put this pain, to put it down. “i will not make you leave, alana, if you wish to stay here for a while. but i will not bind you here. i refuse to.”
the desperation is palpable, isn’t it? doesn’t it mean you need to be somewhere? doesn’t it mean you want to belong? and it beats restlessly in your breast. how she closes your touch around the saber once more, and you’re left peering up at her, eyes wide and desperate. there is so little you would not do in this moment. or in anything. you would die for anything, if only it meant to die, wouldn’t you?
you don’t know what you want, but sometimes, you know what you want is sleep. slipping away to silence. anything that will bring calm to this world. anything that will quiet your suffering.
you slide your saber back to your belt and you try to quell the white-blue anger the color of your eyes roiling inside your body, restless and bubbling. it always goes just over, but you remember how to take yourself back and back. master windu’s voice is one you always seem to remember so well-- it’s both, not one or the other!
you’re not lost at all. you’re here, in this second, and you’ve been cast out, you think. tossed off. cast out. not even to be taken in when you offer your life, your fealty, your truest heart.
you feel a pain and you could curse obi-wan-- anakin. could curse them for both leaving you-- returning to the living force to keep their days between each other, forever enshrined in the stars. you hate them both for leaving you this way. you hate them both for making you beg just like this-- for making you feel just like this. you hate them because moving on must be so much easier than the suffering of life. so much easier than the throbbing sense of aching emptiness. your body feels like a fresh bruise. and you? you’re much too old to feel this kind of indignant humiliation, somehow.
your fingers keep clenching. unclenching. when you close your eyes you imagine a thin line of electric blue and you see how it begins to shiver, to shake. you see it in the back of your eyes and behind your eyelids, a place only you can go. you center yourself in this second. the surge of emotion was what it had been, you think-- you haven’t felt this much in years.
“it has been my mistake. i ask to be forgiven,” you feel nothing but this blustering storm in you, lightning crackled and thunder loud. you have never felt this, not this way. not with such ferocity. you have none to blame but you. “i...-i do wish to stay. whatever calls me here, something does.”
your head dips and you peer down like a scolded child. but your head tilts, glance upward, “i don’t ask as jedi. i ask as myself, not on behalf of the council, or any council. the order has no hold over me anymore.”