Themed Drabbles, set Two

Hours

Dead.

She sits beside his body, this shell of who he was. Her face is a blank emotionless mask, betrayed by the steady stream of tears.

She touches his cheek, disconcerted at how warm he still feels.

His hair has been combed, and his body scrubbed. The signs of battle and death gone, washed away while they prepared his body.

She reaches out, and gives his hair a tussle. That looks better.

Her face contorts as she can no longer deny her emotions, a wave of grief and anguish, her serenity dashed by a single, inconvertible fact.

Anakin is dead.

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Days

Breathe.

She has to keep reminding herself that yes she is alive. The hole is there in her heart, and grows bigger every time she checks.

She wraps his robe tighter around her, comforted by the smell of him.

Then there is the crackle of flame on wood, and she opens her eyes, as tears flows once more. She pulls her eyes away to watch the motes as the wind lifts them away. A bright pinpoint against the night sky, which fades so quickly. They are like him. Bright. Dead.

A burning in her chest.

That’s right, she must breathe.

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Weeks

Pain.

Grief.

Despair.

She fights them daily, often by running in these woods of Borelias. Teasing the Yuuzhan Vong that are hiding in them. They strike at the oddest times, triggered by the strangest things and she can never predict it.

But what scares her the most, is the fact that each time it hurts less. She’s healing. Moving on. Getting over him. She hates it, and hates herself. She wonders why she has to be so strong, why she can’t give into the despair.

End it.

End herself.

She hates that he is dead.

But she likes the pain.

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Months

“Anakin is trying to kill me.”

She can’t believe she just said that. Anakin wouldn’t try to kill her. He loves her, and she him. She wonders why she would say that, what would make her say that about her love, her life. Then she remembers. He is dead. And by his death, she is dying. He is trying to kill her, just by not being here.

She screams into that Anakin shaped hole in her consciousness. “You’re supposed to be here for me.”

No reply returns to her.

So yes, in his silence, Anakin is trying to kill her.

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Years

She stands in a clearing on Hapes.

Early autumn. Just cool enough where an oversized, ratty old Jedi cloak can keep her warm.

She can almost believe that it’s his arms, in his cloak, wrapped around her chest.

Dirt. Ash. All that remains of a funeral pyre from so long ago. No body, no grave. Just a small mound of ash. Any reminder long since reduced in nature’s inevitable cycle. There are no tears any more. Just a melancholy ache, of what might have been, but no tears.

She grieved. She raged. She despaired.

Today she accepts, and she stands.