:: HERO of KORRIBAN ::
The gardens were supposed to help.
Judah understood the reasoning behind them. Someone had probably spent a great deal of time deciding which plants belonged where, how the paths should curve through the grounds, and exactly how much running water was required to convince wounded Jedi that everything was going to be fine. It was peaceful in the carefully constructed way medical facilities tried very hard to be peaceful.
He still hated being inside.
The gardens were close enough to count as part of the facility without feeling like another room he was expected to recover in. That was enough to make them tolerable. Judah sat on the edge of a stone bench beneath the shade of a broad-leafed tree, elbows resting against his knees while his hands hung loosely between them. The clothes they had given him were simple and comfortable, which meant they were nothing he would have chosen for himself, but at least they were not another medical gown. Judah had drawn the line there as soon as someone decided he was healthy enough to argue.
The healers had done what they could with the physical damage. Most of the bruising had faded, the cuts had closed, and the worst of the damage had been treated. What remained would disappear with time, or so they kept telling him.
Time seemed to be everyone’s favorite prescription.
Judah glanced toward the small pond several meters away. A breeze disturbed its surface and bent the reflection of the trees until nothing in the water looked quite like what stood above it. He watched the distortion for a while because it gave his mind something uncomplicated to follow.
There were moments when everything seemed perfectly clear. He knew where he was. He knew who he was. He knew Srina was not standing behind him, waiting for him to make the wrong movement. He knew the voices drifting from the nearby halls belonged to healers, patients, and Jedi moving through their day rather than guards or captors.
Then something would happen without warning. A door would close too hard. Metal would scrape against metal somewhere inside the facility. Someone would move too quickly at the edge of his vision, and Judah’s body would remember before his mind could remind it that he was safe.
He had not talked much about that part.
The questions were easier. Did he know the date? Usually. Did he know where he was? Yes. Did he know his name? Judah had nearly laughed at that one, though the humor had died before it reached his face.
The memories were more complicated. Some came back clean enough to hurt, while others arrived in pieces that refused to fit together. There were faces without names, names without faces, and places he knew he had been even when he could not remember leaving them. Entire stretches of his life felt torn out of sequence, as though someone had ripped pages from a book and expected him to keep reading without noticing what was missing.
The memories he wished had stayed buried were worse.
His jaw tightened when Katara crossed his mind.
He could still remember enough.
Judah lowered his gaze to his hands and rubbed his thumb slowly across one palm. Some details remained uncertain. He still could not always tell where reality ended and whatever had been done to his mind began, but guilt did not seem particularly interested in the distinction. It arrived whether the memory was complete or not.
He looked back toward the pond.
Leaves shifted overhead. Water moved across stone. Somewhere farther inside the facility, voices rose and faded again.
The healers told him he did not need to prove anything. Nobody expected him to walk out of the medical wing and immediately become the Jedi Master he had been before more than a year in Sith captivity. Judah understood the logic of that. He even agreed with it when someone else said it.
Accepting it was something different.
There were pieces of himself that still felt familiar. The humor was there when he could find it. So was the instinct to push when someone told him to stop, though even that felt dulled around the edges. Other things seemed farther away, buried beneath too much damage and too many memories that did not sit where they belonged.
A crooked smile briefly touched the corner of his mouth.
“Brain’s still swiss cheese,” he muttered.
The joke sounded different without anyone there to hear it.
Judah leaned back against the bench and lifted his face toward the warmth filtering through the branches overhead. He let his eyes close for a few moments and listened to the garden instead of his thoughts.
He had survived.
Some days that felt like enough.
Other days, Judah still had no idea what he was supposed to do with that.
