Author's Note: Prequel to my main story Someone to Fight For. Begins right after Act I of the JC storyline, so spoilers for the Act I ending and on through Balmorra.
Someone to Stand For
Chapter One
It's as if she's walking through a dense fog on a stormy day: her vision and her thoughts are blurry and slowed by a chill Gaerwen can't shake off.
Everything feels empty, hollow, and cool to the touch. The reality of what's happened hasn't yet crashed down upon her; she expects it will happen soon like water bursting from a dam. It's only a matter of time before her barriers crack. She doesn't want to lose it in front of the unsettling members of the Jedi Council nor her two crew members, both of whom are also grieving. Once they're back on the ship, safe and sound to fight and perhaps die another day, Gaerwen tells the droid to take off from Tython to head into deep space with no clear heading. The emptiness of space might be cathartic.
As the promise of escaping the others becomes a pressing need, she quietly excuses herself from Tharan, Holiday, and Qyzen to retreat to her quarters. Any longer and she'll crumble to pieces.
Once behind the safety and security of the door to her quarters, back pressed against the hard steel, her composure is gone. Gaerwen slides to the ground, covering her mouth but hardly able to stifle her sobs and hard, body-racking shudders. She curls in upon herself, pulling her knees to her chest, burying her head, tugging at her red hair with her hands until it hurts.
Twelve pages of names and five faces cross her mind, haunting words and images that she'll have to bear on her shoulders until the day she dies. She hopes that day will come soon; she isn't sure how much more of this she can physically and emotionally take—it's what everyone's waiting for, anyways. Everyone knows the fate of the one who stood against the plague milennia ago.
Gaerwen's strength hasn't returned despite the previous possibility for recovery, but she imagines her own grief has sapped it dry. Her hands shake, and her eyes hurt from being shut so hard until they've swollen.
Names and five faces—faces and names she should have been able to save. What did all of her own pain and anguish really mean if this was to be the end result? Did the ends justify the means? Did the means justify the ends? It's questions that deplete the last bit of her resolve, and she shakes her head roughly, as if attempting to rattle her brain so that it might snap from her brainstem or perhaps the guilty voice will slip out her ears if jostled around enough.
The Council had entrusted her to save lives; she was the only one who knew the technique. But what did it matter if the cure couldn't work in the end without a steep cost? It seems like a cruel trick and nothing more than a long, arduous nightmare.
Finally, when her eyes are much too sore and her body aches, she crawls to her bed and divests herself of her dirty clothes down to her breast-binder and a pair of tight shorts. Gaerwen's body screams in both relief and agony when she lays down under the soft, warm covers and sheets. In this sense it isn't right; safe and secure in the warmth of her bed at long last. In the end, she's only free from the questioning stares and muted sympathy. She'll battle her own doubt, will, loneliness, and sadness alone. That's not unusual; she's gone this far by herself, she'll keep pushing on until it kills her.