Shattered Stars (TCW)

Chapter 17 -- Open Wounds

General Rokanh looked angry when she returned to the cruiser.

"What happened, General?" Ace asked forwardly, standing just outside of her dock as she climbed out of her ship.

"I—" she struggled with what words she should say. "It doesn't matter, it's not related to the Army anyway. I need to write a report for the Council." She rushed past him, headed to the office adjoined to her quarters.

"You should go talk to her after a bit," Lark suggested. "She might want to be alone, but it looks like she needs someone to talk to."

Ace groaned inwardly. He knew that Lark was probably right, but he didn't want to disobey the indirect order from his general to leave me alone.

After waiting for what he thought was a respectful amount of time—about as long as it took for him to plan out what he was going to say and convince himself it was okay—he hesitantly knocked on the general's door.

"Who is it?" She called.

"It's, um, it's Commander Ace, General," he said, looking at the floor.

There was a long moment of silence, as if the general were considering whether to open the door or not.

The thin panel slid open, revealing the general in only her leggings and white undershirt. "What is it? Do you need help with something?" The skin around her eyes was red, but she hid the fact that she had been crying well.

"Well, uh, no," Ace admitted, shifting his helmet in his hands. "I just... I might be overstepping here, but it seemed like... you needed someone to talk to."

She thought about the proposition for a moment, finally stepping aside. Ace took that as a signal, and stepped into her quarters, noting that they were almost as dull as his own. In the place of the small marks of graffiti and boot scuffs that characterized the clone barracks, there was a small table with a mirror on the wall above it, though the mirror was mostly obscured by the maps and printouts of Jedi texts all around it. On the table was only a cloth, her lightsaber and belt, and her vambraces. Her boots sat up neatly against the wall right next to the thin mattress she slept on, which was covered with a thin tapestry—it looked prettily and subtly decorated but otherwise uncomfortable. Strewn across it was her long robe and her holopad, which looked like it had been tossed aside in frustration. The only thing that indicated this was a Jedi's quarters and not just some slummer's—beside the lightsaber, of course—was the mat placed perfectly in the center of the room, obviously where she meditated.

"Are you going to say anything?" Taska asked bluntly, her words startling the commander out of his observations. "I'm sorry, I just... I don't know what to talk about, but I know I should, if that makes sense."

"Why don't you tell me what happened? I don't even know what you've been doing since we were on Coruscant last," Ace suggested, careful to keep his voice quiet and slow.

She leaned against the wall, arms folded. "A lot. Um, the Council assigned me to this, uh, this mission, to apprehend a family of Mandalorians. I went after them because they had killed people. And, innocent or not, those people didn't deserve to die," she explained, her voice starting to crack.

"Right," Ace encouraged. He was starting to feel more in his element now—he might've been speaking to his general, but he had comforted dozens of shinies that sounded just like she did now. "Why don't you sit down," he offered, clearing a path for her to sit on her bed. When she did, he sat down beside her. "What else?"

"I found... a lot of people," she said cryptically. "First, someone I wasn't really looking for. She said she was my grandmother."

"I thought you didn't know anything about your family."

"I didn't," Taska snapped tiredly, though her face was immediately filled with regret. "I still don't, really. According to this stranger, I'm half Mandalorian, and my mother is some terrible traitor that killed her own father.

"I thought that it didn't really bother me," she said, her voice going eerily quiet. "For all I knew, she was a liar, just trying to get in my head.

"But if she was, it worked.

"I killed one of them, Ace," she whimpered, with the same teary voice as a shiny whose brother had died in his arms for the first time. "I have never, ever killed someone. Not like that. It wasn't like even 5,000 droids, or, or a pirate who was holding a town hostage. I was always calm. I could always find a way to disarm before I had to kill. I wasn't angry, or distracted, or afraid.

"This time, I was all of them."

"You're human, General," Ace reasoned with her. "Sometimes we can't help feeling that way. And we can't help making mistakes."

"But my mistake cost more than one life," Taska argued. "I let the rest of them get away, and now they're going to hurt more people, and they're going to be hurting--"

"It doesn't matter," Ace said firmly. "I mean, it does, but it doesn't do you or anyone any good to blame yourself. You did the best you could with what you had. That includes your state of mind."

"I feel like I've left the path of the Jedi," she confessed, and Ace's heart ached for her. The Jedi way was her entire way of being. "And it took so little to push me off of it."

"Then it should be just as easy to make your way back," he remained strong. "Don't give up, sir."

They sat for a while longer in silence, Taska watching the floor and Ace watching her. Both were thinking.

"Thank you," Taska finally said. "For being there when I needed you, commander."

"It's what I'm here for, sir," he said, though he was almost sure that wasn't what the Kaminoans had in mind when they created him.

"I'm glad."