The wind moved softly through the Corellian graveyard. It wasn't cold, but Katarine Ryiah felt a chill anyway. She stood at the edge of the stone marker for a long time before stepping closer, boots quiet against the pale ground. The galaxy hummed around her, ships passing overhead, distant city noise, but here… here there was only stillness.
Stillness and memory. Memories of Mist Mayweather. The name was etched simply. No titles. No mention of the Force. Just a life reduced to a line in stone.
Katarine swallowed.
"I didn't know if this place would still exist." Her voice sounded unfamiliar to her. Too soft. Too careful. As if the centuries she had slept had taken something with them.
"I suppose that's… selfish. Of all the things that could vanish, this should have been the last." She lowered her hood slowly. The light caught her face, unchanged by time, untouched by the years she had lost. A living relic standing before the dead. "I've been gone a long time, Mist. Longer than I deserved." The Force stirred faintly around her, but it felt… distant. Like trying to remember a dream that refused to come back clearly.
"I thought when I woke up, things would make sense. That the galaxy would… offer me something. A purpose. A direction." Her lips tightened. "But it didn't. It moved on. Without me. Without you." Her gaze fell to the grave as soft tears blurred her sight.
"I used to think exile was punishment. That if I removed myself, if I carried the weight alone, somehow that would make things right." She let out a bitter, quiet exhale. "It didn't." She stepped closer now, kneeling slowly in front of the marker. The motion was deliberate, almost ceremonial, like a Jedi returning to something sacred, or something broken.
"I need you to hear this. Even if you can't."
Her hands rested lightly against the stone.
"I failed you." No hesitation this time. "No excuses. No justifications. I wasn't distracted, I chose to lose myself."
Her voice wavered, just slightly.
"I let grief consume me. I let anger hollow me out. And I told myself it was healing." Her eyes closed as in a soft prayer. "James leaving… it broke something in me. Something I thought was stronger." She sat there in silence, her eyelids covering her deep green eyes. "I should have faced it. Sat with it. Let it hurt. Instead, I ran."
The word lingered on the air.
"I ran into the dark. Into numbness. Into… him." She didn't say Christian's name again. She didn't need to. "The dark side made everything quiet. No pain. No guilt. No memory."
Her voice dropped.
"No responsibility."
Silence stretched between her and the grave, heavy and long. "And you paid the price for that silence." Her fingers tightened slightly against the stone. "I wasn't your master when you needed me. I wasn't even… myself." A tear slipped down her cheek before she could stop it. It fell quietly, disappearing into the dust at the base of the grave.
"I don't know what the Jedi are anymore. I don't know if I still am one."
Her eyes opened again, searching the carved name like it might answer her. "The galaxy has changed. Everything we knew is gone. But this isn't." Her hand remained against the stone. "This… is still mine." Her failure. Her grief. Her responsibility. "I can't undo what I did. I can't bring you back." Her voice steadied, though the emotion beneath it remained. "I don't know what my path is yet. I don't know if I deserve one."
The wind shifted again, brushing past her like something almost alive.
"But I know this.." Her thumb traced lightly over Mist's name. "I won't forget you. Not again. Not to grief. Not to fear. Not to the dark." Another tear followed the first.
"I am so sorry, Mist." The words barely carried sound, but they carried everything else.
Katarine stayed there for a long time after that. Not meditating or seeking guidance, just staying and sitting with the sins of her past.
