Day 2 of my final finale, unfortunately we get another sad chapter. . . My apologies.
Chapter Three: C
C is for Ceaseless
The torment is ceaseless now.
The master – she refuses to equate him with the Jedi who trained her, but she has never told him that and if she calls him anything other than that title, she is automatically given yet another beating – is entertaining some new guests.
They are always drunk, very rude, badly dressed, and, as far as she can tell, filthy rich. The worst combination of qualities, in her opinion. They are the lowlifes of society, the scum of the social ladder, the despised and the worst creatures around.
These guests saw her one night, lurking in the background and glaring at the master. They were half drunk and their minds were far from clear, but one thing registered in them. And the next they demanded, as a favor, that they . . .
Well, she doesn't even really recall what they said.
But they have carried it out.
Elanor is only eighteen years old, but because she was sworn to the path of a Jedi Knight, she has never had time for anything outside that. She has dedicated her whole life to training as a Jedi, and sometimes her reflexes, instinct, and training were the only reasons she survived the wars.
But all of her training deserts that one, fateful night.
The night they seize her from her cell and drag her into their room. The night they cause her agony beyond anything she has ever felt. The night they tear her innocence from her in the most brutal way that can be done.
And she cannot fight back. She has no strength to, no will to. She has nothing against them that might protect her.
Not even her status as a former Jedi is enough.
She is sure that they know that she was a Jedi. She is sure that is why they are so harsh on her, and why they delight in violating her every single night, overpowering her with sheer strength and numbers.
It is ceaseless, endless, ongoing.
During the day, she is beaten and tortured by her master, who is determined to break her completely. As a Jedi, Elanor knows that her master relishes the challenge of breaking one. So she suffers more than she ever thought she could ever possibly endure.
And during the night, the men take their pleasure from her and they violate her. It causes Elanor as much emotional pain as it does physical pain, enduring what they do to her and not being able to strike back or push them away
The torment is destroying her. Before, she had respites, times where she could catch her breath and think things over and calm down. Now – Now there is none of that.
She moves from one thing to another – from the tasks where she is beaten, to the cell where she is tortured, to the room where she is violated. The suns rise and the moon sets and then the suns set and the moon rises, but the passage of time no longer really means anything to her except that during one time she must turn on the light and during one time she can do without it.
She feels like she is running a marathon that never ends, that drains her of anything – her energy, her emotions, everything – and that makes her a soul living in an automaton that she no longer remembers how to control.
No, not a marathon.
A gauntlet.
A gauntlet of death.
And it is merciless.
Her clothes are in rags now, only held together by mere threads that she prays will not break. Her hair is a mess, and she knows, and she cannot do anything about it. Her boots have long since been worn down. She is dirty and exhausted and violated – and she can't do anything about it.
Elanor's torment is ceaseless.
C is for Cycle
Obi-Wan's life is becoming a cycle that never ends, and even his legendary patience is beginning to desert him. It is unbecoming of a Jedi Master and a general, but he no longer really cares about that anymore.
Elanor's shields have collapsed completely, and one night, for the first time, the pain was so bad that he woke up from a sound sleep screaming and writhing, trying to push away imaginary torture devices and trying to soothe phantom wounds.
The screams were entreating, pleading, begging, and what they begged for scared Obi-Wan more than anything else.
Because Elanor was pleading for someone to kill her.
Obi-Wan barely sleeps now. He can't. Nightmares won't let him, for one thing, and they drive him to spend every waking moment trying to do everything he can to find Elanor.
So when he awakes, if he's managed to sleep at all, he is still half-asleep and full of phantom pain. And then the cycle of what Obi-Wan's life has become begins again.
He spends the morning shadowing Beru as she goes about her chores, Luke strapped securely to her back. She is perfectly capable of doing the chores, but he wants to make sure that nothing happens to her, or to the child. He remembers vividly the look on Anakin's face when the boy told him about his mother's death at the hands of Tusken Raiders, and he is determined to make sure that it doesn't happen again.
He spends the afternoon reaching out to the Force, trying to find some sort of trace that Elanor might have left behind. It doesn't relieve the pain that he feels from his rapport with her, but when immersed in the Force he feels like he is actually doing something and so his conscience feels a bit lighter.
He spends the rest of the day well into the night searching on foot for Elanor. He keeps her lightsaber by him all the time as a foundation upon which to base his searches in the Force.
He also keeps it as a reminder of why he is doing what he is doing, which to most people would seem useless.
But he will not give up on it, no matter how hopeless it seems on the outside. For one thing, she is a fellow surviving member of the Order, and as a Jedi Master he feels obligated to protect her. And for another – well, she saved his life once when he was in one of his most desperate times. It only seems proper that he save hers now that she has fallen into that same situation of desperation.
As pain ripples through him and a flash of irritation spikes through him, he is forced to remind himself that Elanor is not herself when this happens. Without the Force, without her lightsaber, alone, under pressure and pain and torture, she is not herself.
Obi-Wan is growing impatient now. Elanor's pains plague him constantly, and he wants to find her before things go too far. He grows fearful whenever his rapport with her vanishes, although now that the abuse she is subjected to seems to have been ramped up the next four levels, that rarely happens.
He is grateful and scared because of this.
He is grateful because it tells him that she is still alive and that he still has a chance to find her, to save her.
But he is scared because it means she is in pain and she is suffering and she has not been saved yet.
Obi-Wan's life is becoming a cycle that he wants to break.