Notes: Today's event is the 4x100 Relay (4x100 words on four types of love: affection, intimacy, friendship, and charity). Up until now we've been going in chronological order, but for this entry, we'll be skipping around the timeline a little. "Intimacy" and "Affection" take place in 42 ABY, in the aftermath of Luke and Tenel Ka's deaths, respectively. "Charity" and "Friendship" occur in 44 ABY, directly after the rescue mission shown in the previous vignette, "Night Must Fall". The title is a quote from Matthew Stover's superb novelization of Revenge of the Sith.
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V. "The Dark Is Generous" | 42-44 ABY | 4x100 Relay
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Intimacy | 42 ABY
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She sits down next to him, her hand reaching out to lightly ruffle his hair. He glances over at her and tries to smile.
"Hey, Mom."
She doesn't answer at first, eyes roaming the gleaming cityscape in the distance. The setting sun's rays reflect off a sea of chrome and durasteel, and he thinks absently that the skyscrapers resemble blades in a red-hot forge.
She inhales deep. "It's okay to miss him, Ben. It's okay to not be okay."
She wraps an arm around his shoulders and pulls him close, and neither of them speaks again for a long time.
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Affection |42 ABY
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She shies away from him when he reaches for her. He wonders, with a pang of guilt, if she knows how uncomfortable he is around her. It's not her fault, not at all; but he can't help it. She might look like Tenel Ka, but his sense of her is Jacen, and that's still too raw a wound. And yet…
And yet he can't watch her cry. He knows the pain of losing a parent, and he can only imagine how much worse it is for a six-year-old.
So he sits with her. For now, that's all he can do.
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Charity | 44 ABY
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Maybe it's for the best. If he couldn't save them, maybe it's best that they go out in a blaze of fire, consumed in an instant. That has to be better than living through hell.
He looks down at the little Twi'lek girl in his arms, her pale green skin marred and cold. She doesn't wake when he tries to rouse her. He knows she will never wake again.
The explosions have long since torn through the fortress, and in the Force, all is silence. This is mercy, he thinks. For the children left behind on Yalena, death is mercy.
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Friendship | 44 ABY
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They don't talk about Yalena with anyone. Ben doesn't want to, and Elias isn't able to. Jedi are supposed to be able to rise above their grief, aren't they? But Ben doesn't feel like he's rising above anything; more like surrendering to a rip current that keeps dragging him out to sea, over and over. He can't pull Elias up either; it's taking all his strength just to keep from drowning.
Tahiri eventually finds them. She sits down between them, puts an arm around each of their shoulders, and gathers them to her; and she doesn't promise it'll be okay.