Please read and review! If you review, I will give you a prize...how about a free can of lime green paint? Haha, just kidding.
Note: If you haven't read Legacy of the Force, (or at least finished Revelation), don't read this? It ties in to Thrawn's death but is from a later perspective and has spoilers.
Written from Pellaeon's perspective.
Pellaeon
"History is on the move, Captain."
Oh, so you're about to shoot me, are you?
For Darth Caedus and his new Alliance?
Sounds an awful lot like an empire
To me. Rest a moment. Let me tell you
About an empire, far worthier,
But still it fell.
The great events of history do not
Happen in neat clean pictures as though viewed
Through the pristine lens of a holodoc
Camera: they happen in the moments
Between glances, in the spaces between
Sight.
In the instance between reading, looking,
And turning away, an empire fell.
I'll never admit this fall to anyone,
But there it is. It's gone. He's gone. We're gone.
Me, caught off guard, staring at the controls
And suddenly shadows choke me on the floor
I stagger up, but wildly off balance
And my throbbing eye fixates on the red
Buttons of the holopad. One up, two left-
Their locations fixed on my mind
Indelibly, those odd last sights before
I see the real one. Well. I guess I don't
Have to reiterate it, you've heard, you
Know. Thrawn died. Stabbed in his chair. Rukh did it.
Maybe, just maybe, if I'd gotten up
One second faster-was that all between
Him and life? But the core of common sense within me
Tells me I couldn't stop a battle-mad Noghri.
So I float, out of free will and
Out of responsibility, these days.
Maybe, just maybe, if I came up with
Some brilliant plan-I should have learned
Something after all those years listening
To lectures on psychology, art, life,
Strategy. But in the end, only one
Lesson remained: Do not waste life lightly.
It wormed its way into my brain as, "Do
Not trust yourself." It came out, of course.
I had to lead lives and men every day,
And, I guess, I did a fair job. But still-
Departing worms of doubt left empty space
In me, which fills with cold steel every day.
It takes work to coordinate the retreat.
It takes work to lead a dead Empire.
It takes work to forget the dead, much work.
It takes more to forget the dead you've killed.
I may have retreated and cut deals and
Worked for a dishonorable peace, but
I never wasted a life, spilled any
Blood that pours down, stains corpses to the floor,
Smiling, dead-both wrong in so many ways.
Young woman, history repeats itself.
Always: one assassin, one victim, yet
One onlooker, helpless for now, but there.
Shadowy, rising up, these ones compose
History's known annals and images.
Tahiri, who do you think watches you?
So shoot me-I'd rather now than later-
And scorch our indelible silhouettes
Into the black canvas of time itself.