There were many words that, because she loved him, would forever go unsaid. The many ways he made her think of Him the most important among them. She could never say how, as she watched his straight-shouldered march through the Republic Military Academy, it made her wonder if He would have walked like that, had she never started Him on the path to darkness. How many times, since the gradual resurfacing of her lost memories, she had risen from their shared bed in tears, not because of the knowledge of what she did to the Galaxy as he assumed, but because of recalling all she had done to Him. The knife that twisted in her gut when their casual banter boarded too close to the words she and He had once so often exchanged would never be mentioned. That she could only love him because He had loved her first were words she could never say. Because she loved him, these thoughts were hers alone.
Where He had sworn to stand by her for all her days, he swore only to love her for all his life. She often wondered, as she watched him play with the children or button his Admiral uniform, if He would have made a similar vow had she met Him when they were older, instead of as the foolish children they had been when their destinies first intertwined. Had He been given the time to fortify his own beliefs, given the strength that maturity breeds to determine them on His own rather than having His personal code so tainted by her own convictions, would the man she saw before her and the one that had died by her blade have been so different? With a certainty she could never tell him, she knew the answer.
She could never explain these thoughts to him. Even as he had forgiven her the evils she had committed in her own quest to save the Galaxy, his condemnation of Him remained unaltered. They never spoke of his lingering loathing for the fallen Sith Lord, and she forgave him his ignorance with the same wordless understanding with which he forgave her the unchanging affection for Him. She could never expect him to accept the man that was responsible for the death of his first wife, along with so many countless masses, and he held no expectation that she would reject the man that had been the second half of her own self for so long and through so much. She said nothing when he named their daughter for his fallen wife, and he accepted with stoic silence as she named their son in His memory.
It was the differences between them, however, that allowed her love to thrive. Though doubt was a burden both men had always carried, his was not born of uncertainty for his cause. Where in times of trouble He had wrestled with what convictions blocked him from their shared path, his doubt did not steam from concern over the righteousness of his beliefs, but from his own ability to live up to such lofty ideals. Where His beliefs had been born of a forging between his theories and her own twisted morality, he never turned to her to stand as his moral compass, his own was made from far stronger stuff than a mere Jedi or Sith could form. And as she waded into the ocean of darkness before her, he did not dive in along side her as He once did. Rather, he remained behind on the shore, the lone shinning beacon calling her back to the light even as the void surrounded her.
When she departed Telos, the burden of what she had done and what she still must do finally calling her forward, it was this last difference that made her love him most of all. As she ventured once more down that path that from the very beginning had belonged to her and her alone, she could never express how much she saw of Him in him that last day. How He had been his very shadow, the dark longing within him to chase after her, to stay ever by her side that she saw in his eyes as she left him behind. And she could never say how much she wished He had had his strength as he staid behind; the conviction to do what was best rather than what felt right, and how she loved him more than she could say for not being Him at that moment. However, because she loved him, this too remained unspoken.