The Jedi And The Warrior

The Construct Of Peace

It seemed wrong, somehow.

Malco should not be lying sightless, purposeless, an abandoned vessel that had lost all agency.

And it should not be because of her.

There was blood on her hands, etched there from her family and from Ben Kenobi and now from this, from them — from the people who had destroyed and saved her.

There had been blood on her hands for so long now, and there was nothing she could do to wipe it clean.

"Flyra." Obi-Wan's voice was tentative, gentle.

It was only then that she looked up from the corpse that had once been her commander and took in the surrounding gully.

It was littered with bodies. All around her the Warriors of Fate lay, unmoving, the desert sand stained with splatters of blood. Obi-Wan's white robes were untouched by it, however, as she slowly dragged her gaze up to his.

They were alone, now, amongst a valley of the dead.

But all he said was, "Thank you."

The audacity of this man, to thank her after all that she had done... She just shook her head.

"I thought I'd feel more than this," she said hoarsely.

His brows contracted, and he risked a step toward her. "Revenge cannot ever bring peace," he told her, then nodded to Silva, and Sol, and Kai, sprawled upon the ever-shifting sands. "They're not dead," he added, and she cocked her head.

"Why?" she asked, though the question was hollow. "It's a necessity."

The Jedi just shook his head. "They are your deaths," was all he said. "This is your decision. I won't take that away from you."

Flyra stared at him. She wanted to cry — wanted to sob, actually, or scream, or maybe just curl into the rock and join with the dust floating on the vacant wind. Instead she ignited her lightsaber and strode over to the unconscious bodies.

She killed them, one by one, watching the blood gush into dust, before she dropped the saber to the floor and stamped on it. Hard enough that her foot screamed in protest, hard enough that the metal crushed into the rock.

Obi-Wan dared another step toward her, but she couldn't bear to look at him.

"What happens now?" she whispered, unable to tear her eyes from Malco's corpse, from the hate still glittering in his glacier eyes.

"I don't know," Obi-Wan said. "I can get you to a transport before night sets in." There was a pause, in which she stared at the last tendrils of sunlight disappearing below the horizon. Then he added, "But there is a place for you here, with me, to stay for as long or as little as you need. If that is what you would like."

Flyra just stepped past him and knelt beside Malco's body. Tucked within his orange robes was the thing she needed to find, but her hand hovered over them, unwilling to touch. She couldn't delve into his corpse.

"Obi-Wan," she whispered, without looking at him. "Help me."

His footsteps crunched in the sand, and then he was kneeling beside her. "What do you need?"

"In his robes, there's a... cloth bundle, with a Crystal inside it." She took a deep breath. "Please... find it for me."

Without a word, Obi-Wan twitched back the outer cloak, and reached into a pocket of the tunic. After a second of groping within the folds, he pulled it out — and went still at what he was holding.

"This is the Crystal of Amarth, isn't it?" he said softly.

She nodded and took it from his grasp. "Yes," she answered. "We were all required to look into it before initiation. It showed us one of our fates — a fate to which we were then irrevocably bound."