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When Tess was ten years old, she lost everything.
Her home. Her parents. Her leg.
But the thing that hurt the most was losing her heart. It stopped beating the day something inside her snapped, the day she saw that her parents weren't holding hands, the day her screams pierced the cosmos, blistering black and agonizingly loud. When she slept on the streets, no blanket to warm her shivering body, no one to hold her as she dreamed of oblivion, of the sweet confines of death. It would be so much better than the life she was leading. If she were to stop breathing, stop moving, eyes downcast and life seeping from her fingertips. Tess might be able to see her parents again.
She thought of those days when she was just a small, innocent child, a girl who loved machines, who was the dawn and the light of her family's life. They seemed like a far off dream, despite only having happened three days prior. She lost her leg, she lost the will to fight, she lost everything. Those first few days, Tess wished for death. All she wanted was to rest. To stop the beating of her heart, stop the feelings of agony and torment working it's way through her body and mind.
But when had Tess' wishes ever been answered?
Instead of dying, Tess got something worse. Her heart froze. It still beat, it still worked, but there was nothing left on the inside. No love, no hate, no compassion for anyone but herself. Frost lined her organs, ice stained her lips, and storms found a home in her eyes. She became an enigma, a paradox. She became heartless.
And for a while, Tess lived with it gratefully. She decided it was better to live without a care for others than to love as she once had. Love like when her parents were still alive, when they told her each night that when the dawn came, it was a new day to fight. Tess knew better after they were dead. She knew that they were wrong, that the very words they preached were the very thing that had gotten them killed.
Tess wouldn't live like that. She couldn't live like that.
As she stood beside the two men, looking out across the sands to where three Tusken raiders were yelling towards and gargantuan cavern, she realized that this had all been a mistake. This wasn't what she did. She wasn't a fighter, she didn't join in battles or stand to watch them. Whenever there was conflict, Tess would walk the other way, hiding behind her blistering frowns and eyes of lightning so that no one would even think to get her involved. She was a mechanic, nothing more and nothing less.
