Chapter 4

For him, I will smile... and I will never smile again.

Mother is dead. Anakin is dead. Jacen is dead.

My mother. My friend. My love.

I did not understand mother until this day.

To love is to live.

I have loved my parents and my friends. I have become a part of them and they a part of me. I have become a part of something greater, a part of a whole that could not be stopped. A part of something special.

Today, all of that died.

My friend Anakin Solo has been torn from me by fate. Dying to allow us the chance to escape; a noble death.

My Mother has been stolen through deceit and deception. Withered through poison; an ignoble death.

My love... Jacen... my love...

I did not known pain until this day. I have felt my soul shredded, fragmented with his loss. I have wept as I have not wept since the loss of my arm. The pain is unbearable, but bear it I must. My mother's mother taught me to bear pain, physical and emotional, to sweep it aside and concentrate on the issues at hand.

I find I cannot.

Did my mother know this was to come? That to love, only to have it shattered through loss, would be my fate? If she had, would she have told me?

I do not think so.

I am unable to smile. My muscles do not lift; will not lift, after years of training.

They did once. For him, for my love. For his presence, his compassion. They lifted for amusement at his antics and his caring of my welfare. They lifted with joy and my soul lifted with them, confident in the knowledge that he knew the gift of which he was given.

They will lift no more.

Not in amusement, as they no longer have a reason to laugh.

Not in joy, as they no longer have a reason to grin.

Not in love, for my love is as dead as the coldness in my chest.

I am the Queen Mother of Hapes, the ruler of 63 worlds and peoples. I live only for them, for their prosperity. I do not live for myself. Inside, I am dead.

I, Tenel Ka Chume Ta Djo, do not smile.

I will not smile; I cannot smile.

My best and only reason for doing so is dead.

The young man I knew is dead. I have been confirmed as the Queen Mother of Hapes and my duties have become my life.

I am a Jedi, a protector of the Peace. I am the ruler and protector of sixty three systems.

I am nothing.

I am no longer a daughter to a loving mother. My mother is dead.

I am no longer a Jedi, for Jedi know only peace. Peace is a myth; I know only inner turmoil.

I am only a ruler, for rulers decide without passion. Passion has left me, my desires and wants. I yearn for nothing beyond death.

Death, to take the pain.

Death, to take the sorrow.

Death, to remove my burden.

Yet, even as I yearn for death, he returns.

His shape, his form are the same. The features are the same.

But the young man I knew is dead.

I will never smile again for in his place...

In his place is a cool, familiar stranger.