-Sadie-
Empty. The world around me was empty. I was in an inky void, alone with my thoughts. There was no way of knowing where I was. The laws of nature didn't apply here. I could be standing upside down and wouldn't even know it. I've tried laying down. It just makes the bottom of my feet the 'floor', with gravity changing to pull me to that floor. There was no bed, no food, no water, and no life. I couldn't sense anything. As a matter of fact, I couldn't even sense myself. I was in a weird state of limbo, not sure of anything. Was I dead? Was I alive? Did it even matter?
There were no suns or moons. No stars. No galaxy I could see above me, below me, or to any side of me. I had no way of knowing what time it was. I tried to sleep at regular intervals, but that proved to be challenging. With my inability to count days due to the lack of a day-night cycle, I decided to use sleeps as my measuring stick. This proved to be problematic as I lost count of how many sleeps I was at at about 117, and that was long ago.
Is this what happens when you die? An eternity of oblivion? A ceaseless solitude?
Darin had said that your soul becomes a part of the Cosmic Force upon death, where it loses its identity.
My name is Sadie Wren. I'm a Mandalorian. My parents died when I was five, which is when I moved to Coruscant with my grandpa, who died when I was 19. I'm a twenty year old high school dropout who happened to be Force-sensitive. I met Darin in a gladiator style arena battle, where we were assigned as partners, then he was captured by a Sith lord and taken to some random ship in space, where he was experimented on. I followed in an attempt to save him, and I like to take full credit for him still being alive. Darin Kravhenn was my teacher and best friend, and recently I started feeling... differently… about him, which is stupid since it's completely forbidden by the Jedi Code, which he grew up in. Darin managed to get me in the Order as his padawan, even though I shouldn't have been able to because I didn't grow up in that world. I didn't know how, and never really wanted to find out. But then some Council member died, and Grand Master Sorsee took over Assignment. He instantly terminated the apprenticeship, reassigning me with Darin's old master, Fral Joren. A distress signal from Ryloth sent us there, where we found a beautiful lady who captured us before revealing herself to be a Sith. She then told us that we were bait, and killed Fral Joren since she only needed one to lure Darin to his death. She showed her sadistic nature afterwards, finding pleasure in murdering Fral and then torturing me, physically and psychologically. Darin arrived, walked into the trap, and then she used Force lightning on me, bringing about an unbearable wave of pain. I could feel my life draining away. She had some Force shield/cloak/barrier thing to keep Darin from protecting me in any way. As the pain hit levels I could never imagine and as the life was almost completely drained from me, something happened. The world disappeared, and I was here. No pain, no bindings, nothing. Just floating through this place.
If I could remember all of this, then that meant one of two things: either Darin was wrong, or I wasn't dead. Most likely it was the former, as Darin has never died before. If that was the case, it was awfully cruel. Let the person float in unending nothingness with the only thing available to do being to ponder your life. Most of the time here, that's all I've been doing. Unfortunately, the majority of my life sucked, and the good parts were tarnished as the Sith's words scraped against every memory I thought of, leaving me feeling hopeless, worthless, and unwanted. Like I didn't deserve the very few good parts, like nobody ever cared about me, like my very existence was a waste of organic matter.
If the latter were true, and I really wasn't dead, then I probably wouldn't remain this way for long. Darin was powerful with the Force, but he still blindly ran into a trap. She had every advantage she could possibly want. I had no way of knowing what all she had set up for him, but I had serious doubts that Darin could withstand everything, and then win. Every fiber of my being wanted him to win, prayed to gods I didn't believe in, even prayed to the Force itself, even though I really don't think that that's how it works. But the reality of the situation was that she had the advantage. Plain and simple. The probability of her winning was overwhelmingly high, in which case I would die soon after.
Jeez, I was starting to sound like Darin.
At this point I kind of accepted death, unless I was already dead, in which case I would have liked to have amnesia as well.
Something stirred in the darkness. I squinted, but couldn't make anything out. Maybe it was Death itself, finally ready to whisk me away into the underworld. Maybe I was on a caravan heading to the fields of damnation, we hit a bump, and I fell off, and he's just now coming back to pick me up. As ridiculous as that sounded, I lived in a world where some entity everybody called "the Force" lived inside of me and allowed me to lift things with my mind, so really nothing was out of the realm of possibility.
I felt some more movement, and realized that it was the darkness itself that was swirling around me. I tried to move my body, but realized that I was no longer in control of myself. My arms and legs moved with the flow of darkness, like I was letting myself get carried away by a river of sentient water. Except I wasn't letting it happen. The river was just forcing me to go with it, and it wasn't allowing me to resist in any way. I felt myself get pulled up, or at least up in whichever way I was. As I traveled, I noticed the tiniest pinprick of light. I started getting pulled faster, and the light became larger. I realized that the light was like the edge to this place. Finally, I can officially be alive or dead. I began to worry that I was going to be shot out and splatter against whatever was on the other side of it's shimmering surface. By the time I was almost at the edge, I was moving at like mach 300, and it wasn't slowing down. I closed my eyes and braced myself for impact as I was shot through the surface.