Private Hope For Tomorrow

[Briana Sal-Soren]

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Briana hated the medical ward.

No matter where she went in the galaxy or where she found herself, all of them felt the same, and all of them she despised. Not the people who worked in them, no. Healers and those who practiced medicine would forever have her gratitude; it was the surroundings themselves, and the feelings those surroundings dredged up, that held her ire. The scent of cloying antiseptic that perpetually stung the nose, the cold, clinical light that cast everything around you in the most sickly shades, the beeps and blinks of sound that served as a constant, silent vigil. The memories that haunted every corner, the reminders of suffering.

She'd spent a good portion of her own life in rooms just like these, on various occasions. It was the place she'd had to heal after she almost died fighting Darth Wallgof as a Padawn. The place where Cybelle Sal-Soren recovered after she'd been stripped of her Force sensitivity by the New Way. The place where Lossa Aureus practically lived, every time her body decided to fail her before the alchemic intervention. The place where not one, but two of the men she'd cared for had once laid in a coma, each subjected to a litany of surgical interventions and a prolonged stay in a bacta tank to try and save their lives.

Only one of them hadn't been permanently lost to her.

Bacta could not correct everything, after all... could not bring back memories that'd been lost.

Now, it was the place where the once former New Jedi Order council member, Elias Edo , spent his time recovering. She'd made sure to keep a bead on his condition ever since their harrowing return from the Netherworld, receiving reports between council meetings, early morning lessons, and every briefing. Stable and responsive, with no overt signs of any residual possession, they'd all said. No sign or shadow of the demon that'd once possessed him, the demon that Kahne Porte had sacrificed himself and everything he loved, to protect them from. To protect the Republic from. Not because he had to, but because he was, if anything, the arbiter of hope, the scion of peace. A man who believed ardently in the promise of a better and brighter tomorrow.

A promise and hope that she was guilty of not always being able to see, herself.

My friend, Briana.

I've seen you struggle for a really long time, struggle with loss, pain and feeling powerlessness. It is not the end, as I had told you before. You get to decide how they are remembered. You are not alone, I know it didn't always feel like it, but I was still here because I believe in you. And I always will, just like your brother Brandyn does, and Vizion, and Lossa.

All of them, they see the strength in you. There is so much that you still have yet to do. I foresee there are a many great things.

Farewell

Remember, the force will be with you, always.

And so, she'd excused herself from the tail end of a council meeting, just to make sure she was the first one to greet the once Quartermaster in that damnable place, the tear stained letter clutched tightly in her hand as she made her way further into the room. The door to his wing wooshed closed behind her with a final 'click' as her thoughts continued to marinate on the late Masters words.

You decide how they are remembered.

Those words had struck her, stuck with her. If memory was an act, then the best way to remember and truly honor Kahne, to honor his final sacrifice... was to carry that torch of hope he extended to everyone, forward.

Especially to the one who had been used, against his will, to kill him.

She was certain he would have wanted that.

Tag: Elias Edo

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