Chapter Title: The Bench
Series Title: Unlikely Brothers
POV: Tanner
Ages in this chapter: Tanner (17) Dashen (23)
Chapter Summary: While on a job with Dashen, Tanner waits on a bench for his brother, feeling the essence of a Jedi recently killed there.
She sat here. The Jedi. To rest. Not long before she was killed. This bench. This place. I can feel the leftover residue from the Force. It happened not long ago. I'd come here with my brother for his job. At the time I wasn't certain why I rode with him on this trip. Rare were the days that I worked with him or even cared to tag along. This was different. He'd mentioned this run and the planet...and I knew I needed to go. I just hadn't known why.
Now I did.
Here. This place. This bench. I didn't know her, but I felt something. With my left hand, I felt the darkened, aged wood, closing my eyes, reaching out. Trying to sense more about her. In my most recent visit and training session with Ben Kenobi, he'd taught me more about how to sense the immediate past through the Force. Fleeting it often was, and for me, not all that useful, but I'd wanted to learn. Perhaps this had been why.
I caught a glimpse of something in the Force. Her skin. Green. Her hair. Black. Eyes...haunted. She'd been running a long time. Tired. Exhausted. Mentally. Physically. Emotionally. Never having found a place to truly call home since the time of the Jedi Purge nine years ago. Unlike me, she hadn't been so fortunate to find a home. A family. Safety.
She'd been brave in death. No surrender. Dying as she must have lived.
No one had been here to mourn for her. To remember her. So, I would take up that mantle. I would remember her and mourn for her. Her life as a Jedi was to bring peace and stabilization. To help. None had been here to help her when the Empire ended her existence.
I sunk into myself. Into the Force. My left hand still pressed to the bench. Slowly I found that final tendril of this most recently of executed Jedi as she was wholly caressed into the Force. One who'd dedicated her life in the pursuit for peace for others, was finally at peace herself. I smiled as a stray tear streamed down my cheek.
A hand on my shoulder. Dashen.
"Time to go, little brother. You okay?"
He didn't ask details. I'd tell him when I could.
"Yeah. I'm good. Home?"
"Home."
Standing, I smoothed my fingers over the bench - the timeworn wood - one last time. To say goodbye. To wish her peace.
My brother's arm around my shoulder then...we headed for home.
END
