Notes: Thank you so much for coming on this angsty little journey with me, guys! I hope you'll enjoy the final event for this decathlon: the 1500 Word Dash (a 1,500-word story about your couple with any theme).

This takes place in the immediate aftermath of In Dreams We Dwell (59 ABY), and then it moves forward through the next two years, ending just slightly after section V of What If This Storm Ends? (61 ABY), when Festus pursues a target to the planet Argeneen and discovers that Allana is there as well.

Title comes from "Hurts Like Hell" by Fleurie.

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X. "I Loved and I Loved and I Lost You" | 59-61 ABY | 1500 Word Dash

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Letting go, it turns out, is a lot easier said than done.

Allana Djo returns to the Temple and is received with sympathy, with understanding. How was she supposed to know Festus and Ferrus would be there? She couldn't have been expected to fight them both, especially without her lightsaber; and besides, she managed to keep the queen and the other guests alive. Who even knows the damage the Sith might have done if she hadn't been there?

It makes her sick. She wants to scream at them to hate her, to judge her for what she is – a stupid, foolish girl who was so distracted by the dreamlike glimpse of the life she might have had—

(and his eyes and his touch and his lips brushing across her skin)

—that she lost sight of reality. Two of the queen's ministers are missing, along with two of Kurin's most influential entrepreneurs, and that's all Allana's fault.

Ben is the only one who doesn't offer any comforting words, and she can't decide if that's better or worse. When they're finally alone, he puts an arm around her shoulders and pulls her close, and he kisses the top of her head like he's done since she was small. Whispers that he's glad she's safe. His relief is a gentle ocean swell rolling over her, calm on the surface, but thunderously powerful underneath.

She doesn't tell him anything more than what she's told everyone else, but she wonders how much he suspects. Sometimes she thinks she hasn't been hiding the truth from him so much as she's been playing a game where they both pretend not to know what that truth is.

(she still refuses to give the truth a name, because if she does that, then she might actually break)

Life moves on, and she tries to move on with it. She doesn't take solo missions for a long time after, preferring to work with her friends, or with Ben. Sometimes she works with Geridan, too. They've settled back into a fairly comfortable friendship, almost like the old days. Once or twice she wonders if she should try to rekindle what was once there, but then she remembers the parts of her she's walled off, the things she's packed away and hidden from sight.

(the piece of her heart she can't get back)

She wonders if that's what caused her to pull away years ago. She always tried to convince herself it was because of her heritage, because she was afraid of where she came from and what might come from her, someday. And even though that's still a part of it, maybe more than ever, she knows now that it was her brief stop on Kordros that truly changed things.

Even now, she still dreams of that beach and those rocks and the waves shattering against them.

Months go by. A year. She starts accepting solo missions again. Ben worries at first, but when nothing bad happens, he grows more comfortable, and so does she. The fledgling Republic still has a long way to go toward achieving galactic unity and peace, but they're making strides every day. And she spends as much time as she can with the younger members of her family, marveling at their energy and their strength in the Force, watching them grow into confident Jedi apprentices.

She doesn't think of him. She's stronger than that.

She has to be.

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Darth Festus hides behind a wall. He has for years, ever since he first lay shivering on the doctor's table. It was the only way he knew to protect his brother, to keep his pain from bleeding across their bond; and over time he built up that wall to be nearly impenetrable. He spent so long defending it that to do so now is like breathing – an instinct, something he hardly gives any thought to.

From behind the wall, he can be anything. Whatever he needs to be. He plays at being charismatic, at being volatile and unhinged. He plays it so well that he often can't see past the act. He doesn't want to see past it. Sometimes – most times – he's not actually sure it is an act. He thinks maybe he was always this way, that all he needed was permission to give in and be every terrible thing he ever tried to hide from.

He remembers the day his master offered him a new identity, a new life. How Lord Krayt reached out to him in the depths of his despair and loneliness and gave him meaning and the promise of rebirth. How grateful he was to finally belong somewhere, even if the things he had to do and endure to get there were unspeakable. He remembers how easy it was to reach for the darkness that day, to pass his master's final test and claim the name he'd bestowed on him. What was one more line, when he'd already stepped over so many, not even looking back until he was too far away to see them?

It's been years since he's leaned into the insanity of his life like he once did. Since he hated anything or anyone as violently as he did while under his master's tutelage. There was a time when that realization – the thought that he was becoming anything less than the vicious Sith Lord he'd forged himself into – would have driven him mad. Oh, he still hates pretty damn fiercely, and he doesn't ever flinch away from the violence he inflicts on others. But he already knows he'll never again be that same stupid, deranged boy who held the life of a frightened, helpless girl in his hands and nearly ended it.

(sometimes he sees that moment in his nightmares, hand around her throat, screaming at himself to stop, and he wakes up shaking at how close it was, how close he came to killing the most precious, beautiful soul he's ever known)

For the first time in a long time, he thinks he might actually be going crazy.

He can't sleep, and he can't eat, and he can't stop remembering the way she looked at him outside that ballroom – furious, on the verge of tears, hating him.

Gods, she hates him.

She hates him.

It's so damn perfect, isn't it? He deserves every ounce of that hatred. He deserves the torment of having held her in his arms, of imagining that she might have ever wanted him the way he wants her.

He deserves to never see her again.

Stars, what if he never sees her again?

He can't breathe thinking of it, can't see anything past that all-consuming fear. It crawls up into the hollow place inside of him and settles there like a stone, pulling him down, down, down.

Behind the wall, he's drowning.

He knows his feelings for her are a weakness, one that he can't afford to have, even now. He has to carve that weakness out, or bury it deeper than ever, alongside everything else he can never have and everything else he can never be. He has to be what he is, what he became to survive. What he was always meant to be. A murderer and a liar and a sick, manipulative bastard. Weird, creepy psycho. Detached and smug and flippant and stubborn. Indomitable. Always indomitable.

Darth Festus doesn't just hide behind the wall. He is the wall.

He has to be.

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Two years after Kurin, Allana receives a new assignment on the planet Argeneen. She balks at first, because a border dispute on a tiny, isolated world hardly seems important when there are still spice dealers and slave rings and crime syndicates stretched all across the Outer Rim.

(there are still remnants of the Sith Empire out there, too, causing their own special brand of trouble, but the Republic doesn't pay them much mind these days, and neither does she)

At the end of the day, though, she's a Jedi Knight, and no world is unworthy of assistance, even in matters that may seem trivial from the outside. So she goes to Argeneen to meet with the king and the barons, and to discuss the disputed territory. And as she stands along the main promenade outside the palace, awaiting the last of the dignitaries, she's hopeful that this will go quickly, and then she can return home.

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Festus waits outside the palace, sitting in the driver's seat of a stolen speeder. He stares down at his lightsaber, turns it over in his hands. Positions the emitter up under his rib cage. He's such an idiot, thinking he could bury this. Pretending he hasn't been in love with her this whole time.

He blows out a shaky breath and clips the weapon to his belt. That's not the way this story ends, he tells himself. Every knight needs a monster to slay. She has her part to play, and he has his.

At least he'll get to see her one last time.

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Fin