Disclaimer: Star Wars © George Lucas and Lucasfilm, Ltd. This is a nonprofit fanwork. Written 9/1/08.
Haunted
by Fushigi Kismet
Lying awake in the dark of night, sometimes she felt the embrace of phantom arms.
She would wonder if his ghost had come to visit her. But that was impossible.
He had not died at peace. He had not died to come back to her. He had not died that way at all.
She could let herself think it now. He was dead. But the tears did not come.
Part of her was glad. She would no longer have to look at what he had become . . . see the man before her and wonder who it was that stood in Jacen's skin, spoke with Jacen's voice, and looked at her with Jacen's eyes. The man who had made her burn like Jacen never had.
Yes, part of her was glad.
No one else had loved him the way she had loved him. Had hated him to the extent she had hated him. Had despaired to the depth of her despair. Not his parents, not Luke, not Jaina. Perhaps Jaina might have once, but their bond had grown thin, stretched taught, and in the end it had snapped, no, it had been severed. Now there was regret. Afterwards there was always time enough for these things, but she had never regretted, had only lived, day by day, her heart squeezed tight, knowing that they needed to make an end of things, but unable to be the one to end it.
She could have killed him as surely as Jaina; she knew it. For Allana's sake she could have done that much. But she would have been consumed with him in a rush of rage and pain, love and hate. She would have killed him but she would still have loved him to his last breath, would have pressed his mouth to hers to taste the sweet and bitter taste of his dying breath. She would have lost herself in him, to him, she with the iron control. So she had turned away from him and left him to his fate.
A Jedi craved not these things.
She had chosen being a queen over being a Jedi. She had chosen being a woman, a lover, a mother over being a queen. That alone had been her failing. Her secret, selfish desire. And now she had made one last choice. She had chosen to let go of that part of herself that she had kept and quietly nurtured, that part she had cherished and loved, hated and despaired of, that part that could never be regained again, that would never come back to her.
Now she was alone at last. A queen to the end.
But sometimes, in the night, she could still feel the embrace of phantom arms.
Silently, she let herself be held.