Okay, now that finals have begun (at least at my school), I came up with the idea of the final finale. (Yes, I do know that I'm not in the "finale" of A Love Alphabet but I needed a name.) So for each of the next 4-5 days of finals, I'm going to post a new chapter.
So, for Day 1 of my final finale, unfortunately we get another slightly sad chapter. . . My apologies.
Chapter Two: B
B is for Breaking
The bounty hunters sedated her heavily, pumping enough drugs in her system to knock a full-grown bantha out for a week. A fully trained Knight might be able to use the Force to overcome that and escape, but Elanor is not a Jedi Knight.
Not yet, anyways.
Then they put a powerful collar around her neck to control her. It disrupts her ability to use the Force, and, when they wish to be cruel or want some entertainment, causes her such agony that she collapses on the floor and screams and wishes that she was dead. A fully trained Knight might be able to use the Force to deactivate the collar and neutralize the drugs and to escape – but she is not a Jedi Knight.
Lastly, they sold her. A fully trained Knight might be able to use the Force to trick her captor, to deactivate the collar, to neutralize the drugs, and to escape with the aid of the Force – but she is not a Jedi Knight, and now, she starts doubting that she ever will be one.
Because now she is a slave, stripped of her name, stripped of her value, stripped of her humanity.
At first, she fights back and tries to escape. Elanor remembers the dignity of the position she held as a Jedi Padawan, she remembers her name and the pride she had in it, she remembers the equality with which she was regarded in the Order.
She refuses to stoop to every order and be subject to these humiliations. She is not a slave; she is a Jedi, and she will act like one even if she isn't a full one.
But after a while, she stops fighting back. With every fight, she is punished more severely than the last, deprived of food and water and human contact and light – and the Force. Alongside that, she is beaten severely, with whips and torture devices that test her limits to the very edge.
So she refuses quietly. She cannot afford to keep resisting out loud, but she feels she must do something, something small, at least, that will remind her – and them – who she is.
But after a month or so, she stops that too. Even when the refusal is quiet and the task small, the punishments are severe and carried out to the letter.
She knows that if she continues this, she will not survive for another week, much less long enough to escape.
Sometimes, though, when the mood strikes her, she wonders idly what would happen, what it would be like if she did die. How she would just float away and join the Force. How she could get away from all this pain and cruelty and darkness.
All she would have to do would be to close her eyes and will herself to die, to depart, to join the Force in the footsteps of many other Jedi who have died.
She knows that it can be done, even without the Force to aid her.
And that is what scares her.
How can she consider death? She may be a slave in name, but she is still a Jedi, one of the members of the most powerful and legendary Orders to ever exist. She still has a duty, to herself, to the Republic, and to the galaxy.
But sometimes, during moments where all she can do is lay there and pant and wince after a particularly long and cruel beating, she drifts in and out . . . and she can no long remember.
It scares her, but it is the truth.
It is during one of these times that she realizes that she just can't remember. She can't remember her Jedi training about calming the mind, about healing the body, about suppressing the pain. She can't remember the warm, beautiful, perfect days when she was a youngling, laughing and playing and learning under the gentle, affectionate guidance of her crèche instructor.
But worst of all . . . during those times, she can't even remember her own name.
And these times are becoming more and more frequent. They are creating gaps in her memory that are beyond her knowledge of when they happened or how long they were. She doesn't know when the last time was, and she doesn't know when the next time will be.
She knows what is happening, and she dreads it. To her, it is as close to a death sentence that she can bestow upon herself. To her, it tells her that her late Master wasted his time training her. To her, it symbolizes the ultimate failure a Jedi can suffer.
Elanor is breaking. Slowly but surely, she is breaking.
B is for Beating
Obi-Wan Kenobi's mind is taking a beating.
The beating is – in his opinion – even worse than any physical torture or any emotional turmoil that he has ever suffered. It haunts him at night and mocks him during the day. It takes all of his training and willpower to keep going.
Elanor has been given some kind of Force-suppressant, and she is suffering.
Thus her shields have slipped. Many nights now, her pain will seep into his dreams and he will often awake wincing from a wound he doesn't have or groaning from a headache that only exists in his mind. He does not know what her captors are doing to Elanor, but he knows that she is gravely wounded.
Because the very small portion of clear sensations he is sensing from Elanor seem to mainly focus around pain.
That is why nowadays, when he isn't watching over Luke Skywalker and the Lars farm, he is out scouting, using the Force and anything else to try and track her down.
The phantom pains that he receives from Elanor drive him to this. He doesn't know what is going on, but her pain wounds him greater than anything else.
She is just an apprentice – just a girl, really. But the torturous pains that are creeping into him are a thousand times beyond what even he thinks he would be able to take. He doesn't know why or how she is able to hold on.
He needs to find her, and soon.
He knows that her control is slipping. He knows that her agony is sometimes beyond her. He knows that sometimes she feels like she is dying. He knows that if, one day, things go too far, Elanor will will herself to die.
He doesn't think that Elanor knows she is projecting.
And that is what scares him all the more. If she doesn't know that she is projecting, it tells him two things.
Firstly, that she is not herself when this happens. She is going through the torture, through the pain, right then and there, or lying on the floor trying to recover right afterwards. But without the Force, her recovery is most likely slow and painful, and she is not at the level where she would be able to overcome that yet.
She is a mere apprentice. Just eighteen, if his memory serves him correctly.
It also tells him that she is not lying or deceiving him; on the contrary, she is fighting to shield her pain. That tells him that most likely he isn't getting half the pain, because whenever she is lucid or conscious, his rapport with her vanishes immediately.
Obi-Wan knows all of this, and he fears for Elanor.
He also knows that he must find Elanor, and soon . . . otherwise . . . well, he has seen too many other Jedi who were not rescued in time from things like this.
Obi-Wan's mind is taking a beating, and he vows to rescue Elanor soon, no matter what the cost. He would rather live a lifetime with this mental pain than to stand another second of knowing that she is suffering it for real.
Otherwise, if she dies, he knows that he will blame himself for her death for as long as he lives, because he had a chance to save her.
However short his life is, of course.