Katarine Ryiah
Never Hide Your Heart
Just a castaway, an island lost at sea, oh
Night lay heavy over Naboo, warm and breathless, the kind that usually carried music and waterlight and laughter drifting up from Theed below.
Tonight, it carried blood.
Katarine Ryiah staggered up the long marble stairs of the Shiraya Sanctuary one step at a time, her body moving on instinct alone. Every breath burned. Every muscle screamed. Her boots slipped against stone slick with dew and something darker.
She was barely holding herself upright.
James Terran's weight dragged against her side, his arm slung over her shoulders, his body limp and frighteningly cold despite the humid air. He had been frozen for centuries, centuries, and whatever miracle had pulled him free had left him fragile, hovering between life and death. His breaths were shallow, uneven, more memory than motion.
Katarine looked little better.
Blood streaked her sleeve and matted her hair, not all of it James's. Her hands trembled violently as she tightened her grip on him again and again, refusing to let go. Her skin was pallid, drawn tight over sharp lines that hadn't been there before. The drugs still burned through her system, leaving her vision swimming and her connection to the Force distant, muffled, unreliable.
She was starving.
She was injured.
She was breaking.
It had been over a year since she'd vanished after the operation on Lothal, over a year since the galaxy had swallowed her whole. A year of captivity. Of silence. Of endurance measured in heartbeats and sleepless nights.
A year she had not survived unscathed.
The Sanctuary loomed above her now, its pale stone catching the moonlight, serene and unforgiving. The Jedi Temple steps stretched on longer than they should have, each one a trial she no longer had the strength to pass.
Her knee buckled.
She hit the stone hard, pain flaring white-hot through her side. James slipped from her grasp, his weight finally too much, and she dragged herself forward anyway, fingers scraping uselessly against the steps.
"So close," she whispered hoarsely, not sure if she was speaking to herself, to the Force, or to someone who might still be listening.
Her strength gave out.
Katarine Ryiah collapsed at the foot of the Temple steps, her body curling instinctively toward James as darkness rushed in to claim her. The night swallowed her whole, bloodied, broken, but home at last.
