It took time for word of his betrayal to reach the capital but it was not the missive from the OSI that had informed her of his fate. She knew already. The orange crystal had been silent for sometime now after the magic had run its course. The warmth in it gone, the small shard had become inert without a flicker or a pulse. She idly wondered if the blue one still contained the cold and frost that had come to embody their distance over the years. She did not think he kept it, it was a trinket of a time not worth remembering, surely. She believed that he must have discarded it because it was easier to accept than the idea that she might have been wrong.
He was the first thought in her mind when she awoke after the crash.
Immobilized in a tank of bacta, she had been sedated for months. Part of it had been necessary in order to deal with a head trauma she suffered in the wreck. The rest of the time was purposely to keep her away from the galaxy. The ones responsible for the events of that day needed to believe her dead and so until the mysterious benefactors of her survival were assured that the threats to her were eliminated, they kept her sedated and out of the way.
A couple days to be cleared after she had awoken, then a packet of papers, money and clothes. Someone had crafted her a new identity, given her a sizable chunk of money to start out with and the after action report of her disastrous last mission and the fall of the NSO. She was left standing on the street on Garqi, a remote agricultural world that happened to have a world class medical center. All she could think of was him.
The money bought her a ticket off world but it never bought her answers, just more questions. She tracked him, traced him like a shadow for over a year until finally she managed to find him.
It did not go as she expected.
Frozen in her steps she watched the thing she had become completely obsessed with carry on through his day oblivious, to her knowledge at least, that she was even there. He had carried on with his life. It seemed so bizarre to her at the moment that he might, as she had lost herself completely in the need to find him. She did not train, she did not advance herself. Every waking moment had been devoted to reuniting with him and the very idea that he had not pined for her in death crumbled every broken and misguided thought in her head.
It seemed so obvious in the glaring light of day, as he crossed an open courtyard, his familiar stride pulling the lump in her chest. Of course he would get over her. She died for all intents and purposes. He was truly free from her.
But she was not so free of him.
It is a sharp wake up call to learn that all your truths are misconceptions.
It took every ounce of willpower she had to turn and walk away from that courtyard, to throw herself back into the grand game once again. She did not avoid the One Sith. No, instead she simply faded into the background of it. Between armor, masks, and clandestine operations on far worlds from the capital, she would toil away and remember the darkest lesson in all of her long years. Attachment was a weakness and it had eroded her until the only thing that had remained was her desire for him.
She had vowed to herself that she would never give into it again. She fought it, for to grow fond of others is a trait of humanity. She could not forsake her humanity, but she could deny it. She did not avoid crossing his path, but she remained a silent observer of his life, preferring he remained ignorant of her survival and tenure with the One Sith.
It had pained her for years. The ache had become a familiar companion by the time she met Lord Carach. And even still, she held him back from her, stalwart in her adherence to this personal tenet. She would not let another in. She could not, she would not.
The piece of flimsi in her grip fluttered in the breeze as she stood on a high balcony, the sun setting behind the jagged horizon of Coruscant's skyline. The pain in her flared into mourning and she crumpled the sheet in her fist, hurting from something that wasn't hers to lose, that wasn't hers to mourn.
Wasn't it?
She had loved him in her arms for the blink of an eye, and from the other side of the galaxy for years. Nothing about her daily life was going to immediately change except for the foolish notion she harbored that one day, somehow she would see him again without a mask, without a facade and without supposition.
A deep breath in, a deep breath out. Her cheeks were wet under the mask but for all the waking world to see she remained stoic, steadfast, and unmoved.