-This is an RPG-related work of fiction based on the Star Wars universe, created by George Lucas (and adapted into a game by LucasArts and Sony Online Entertainment). It is drama/angst. Rated K, and appropriate for all audiences. The masked man is the property of H L Taylor, and is used with permission. This work is written purely for entertainment value. Please don't sue me.-
She'd been studying the same dance for so long that she rarely paid any attention to what she was doing, preferring instead to chat and flirt with the clientelle. Or maybe it was the sight of her fiancé, who she'd assumed was dead. Either way, she fell.
It was not the first fall she'd taken while dancing, but it would be her last. She gasped as her ankle snapped, instantly ballooning to the size of a Maroj melon.
She looked up in disbelief. 'It can't be ... you?'
The tall, masked man looked down at her and spoke softly. 'Ana...?'
The pain in her ankle was nothing. She staggered to her feet, backing away, her mind reeling.
'You're ... you're dead...'
She ran - stumbled, really - out of the cantina. He couldn't be back. He was dead, dead and gone, and she had just managed to put him out of her mind. She had a new protector now...
...but he wasn't there. She needed him; needed his healing abilities, needed to hear that she wasn't crazy, that it was all right to grieve and move on.
She couldn't find him.
Sitting, stunned, in the medical centre in Theed, she thought about her luck with men. She couldn't keep a single one. They died, or they found another woman, or they just ... left. No word. No letter. Nothing to indicate that there was ever anything there.
She swallowed hard and winced as the medical droid bound her ankle and cautioned her to be more careful. But she ignored him. She wouldn't be dancing again. Not now, not when her ankle healed... Not ever.
There was no longer a reason to dance.
Keana was never one to do things in half-measures. She headed for her shop, gave her vendors a final paycheque and a handsome bonus, and waved at them as they departed. A short while later, she signed the deed to the shop over to a tailor, and made her way out into the galaxy, beyond the reaches of civilised space. Maybe someday she would come back, but for now, the charted systems held too many painful memories.
Her dancing days were over.