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The screams were always there.
His one constant this past year and some - the incessant screaming, of agony, misery, hopelessness - and worst of all, all-consuming, inescapable fear.
He would give everything he had to hear them again. He would give everything he had to keep hearing them, now, anything to cover this silence that befalls when the hammer strikes and all is lost.
But he has nothing left to offer anymore. No sacrifice to be made in his name. No case to plead. No one to hear it.
Just the blood on his hands that he’s sure is going to drown him until he’s nothing but rust red phantom of regret.
And maybe blood is not so different from the Force? Both run through his veins as surely as the knowledge the sun will rise tomorrow, no matter how much he wishes he never had to face daylight again; both because he couldn’t stand to face the guilt of what he had done, and because sunlight felt too much like Stellan’s warm, ever-constant presence.
Stellan Gios used to say they were all stars. And that was true enough; he had always been Elzar’s guiding light through the stumbling darkness that was his directionless existence. But he was also an impossible, all encompassing light, with all its warmth and life, but with none of its harshness and cruelty.
Weeks passed, and no matter how much people tried to get him to speak about it, he was silent. Saying Stellan’s name now felt worse than sin - worse than decimating a grave - it felt like comfort, and love, and safety - and he did not believe himself worthy of feeling that, not now, and not ever again.
But the voice in his head, his voice, would not let up, would not stop. “You can say my name, Elzar.”
What is there to say? For all of his life, Elzar never had a path; life was too large, too impossible and endless and full of possibility to narrow down to a straight line. But a lack of path did not mean a lack of vision. Now everything seemed as if a grey veil befell it, and he could not see further than the next couple breaths. He did not think he was going to die - though the ache in his chest seemed to reach through his body to suffocate every part of him - it was worse than that, and in sadistic way, more fitting. More like what he deserved. The everlasting state of torpor. An existence fixed into a spot, where no movement could penetrate it. His very own glass jar, frozen shut.
His once worst nightmare.
He’s not sure when he stopped feeling time pass - days coming and going, suns falling and moons rising, waves crashing and melting on the shores at the edge of his awareness. The sea that was the Force. The sea that was Stellan. They were one and the same now, and impossible to separate or sever. He could not feel the Force without feeling Stellan.
He could not feel Stellan, no matter how much he felt his friend trying to get in. He would not let him get in.
He wanted to let him in more than he ever wanted anything in his life.
For his sin, and Stellan’s grace, he must stay here, in the endless eventide.
———
Elzar Mann was never much afraid of death.
But not being afraid of death didn’t mean he welcomed it.
In his head, late at night, he used to imagine how his end would come. Sometimes, in his arrogance, or what he himself preferred to call simply self-assurance, he hoped he had a good and long life, and his death was not a chapter abandoned half through, but a satisfying conclusion to a thousand page long story.
Most of the time, though, his end came at a terrible price. Most of the time, the price was served by his very own hand.
Elzar Mann wasn’t exactly what one would call a prophet. But even his harshest critics could not deny he had moments of undeniable truth.
He never anticipated his death to be one of those times.
—————
What does a Jedi do when the very core of his identity becomes a graveyard unbearable?
What do you do when the solace of the sea becomes a cathedral collapsed? The light breaking the surface a spear aimed right at your throat.
Once he called himself Stellan’s right hand. What does that make him now? A severed arm without a body to belong to is just a grisly meal for scavengers. Elzar felt half eaten by big birds of grief.