Location: Name
What so few ever saw were the scars etched deep into Des's mind, heart, and soul.
Not the small wounds of everyday life—missed chances, petty disappointments. No. These were the kind that shattered.
The kind born from losing her parents before she even knew how to mourn. From family who should have offered unconditional love, but withheld it like judgment. Words unspoken, affection denied. Always not enough. Always wrong.
Loved ones, gone. A homeworld, lost. Cast out. Exiled.
Unwanted.
Even among the Jedi, it was no different.
Teachers who gave up halfway. Lessons left unfinished. Days of silence when she needed guidance most. Forgotten in the shadows of the Temple, like a blade misplaced and left to rust. The pain of believing she'd failed, without ever knowing how.
Guilt. Shame. The quiet ache of
why not me? That sharp-edged loneliness.
So she took up the pieces.
Trained alone, day after day, year after year. She shattered herself to rebuild. Pushed until she broke, then pushed again. Forged herself in solitude and sweat and suffering. Under the cruelest master of all—
herself.
But even broken, she never let the Light go.
Not once. Not for a second.
She chose compassion when anger would have been easier. Mercy over wrath. Grace over vengeance. Again and again. She bled for the Light. Burned for it.
And like Kintsugi, she rebuilt herself—every fracture filled with gold.
She wore her damage with quiet dignity, the way others might wear medals. And still,
somehow, she remained kind.
This—
all of this—is what Milya saw now.
The ache, the fire, the radiant strength beneath the ice. A soul made of storms and sunrise. Beautiful not
despite her scars, but
because of them.
Des was frozen now, yes—locked in a moment, unsure how to step forward. But it wasn't weakness. It was the pause before the thaw. The silence before the storm breaks.
And through that stillness, her soul whispered to Milya:
I don't know how to accept this. I don't know how to be loved like this. But I want to.
Stars help me, I want to.
There was a long moment where Des just… stood there.
Frozen, like her own heartbeat might shatter if she moved too fast.
Her sabers stayed in hand, humming low and steady. But they were forgotten, really. The danger had passed. There was no threat here—no enemy. Just the thrum of her pulse in her ears and the heavy, aching echo of something too big to name crackling in the space between them.
She wanted to move. To step forward. To say something, anything.
But her body wouldn't obey.
So instead, slowly—
so slowly—she lowered her sabers. The blades hissed out, vanishing into silence.
And her head bowed, just slightly. Not in submission, not in defeat. In
restraint. The kind that took more strength than any strike.
Her voice, when it came, was low. Not cracked. But close. Like something was pressing on her chest from the inside.
"This… isn't the time or place for this."
The words weren't rejection. They weren't warning. They were
longing. A plea, unspoken. A wound, still red and raw beneath gold-laced scars.
Milya would feel it—radiating from her like heat off sun-baked stone. That same scar tissue, pulling tight under pressure. Echoes of pain she thought she'd outgrown. But the way Milya had touched her, without touching her at all, had
stirred it.
The riverside rose behind her eyes. The light, the water, the confessions spilled like poetry in the dawn.
She wanted to reach for it again. For
her. But not now. Not here.
It was all too much—and not enough.
