Their Lady Adyé [Star Wars]

From Fara to Varykino

"I'm glad you were able to make it." Athara and Luke turned at the sound of Commander Adyé's—no, just Orran, he'd insisted—Orran's voice. He looked tired and worn, but not quite so sad as before the ceremony. The closure had been good for him. "My Father would have been pleased to have his granddaughter here." Athara managed a wan smile, her eyes flicking almost of their own accord to the small crowd gathered a short way off.

They kept looking over...they kept looking at her.

Brahm Adyé's funeral had been well attended, though not so extensively so as the memorial the day previous. The number of people there had staggered Athara. He'd had a long life and had been a fixture of the Adyé Attire and Vestments dressmaking house in Fara, so he was a well-known and beloved public figure.

A few of the people who had been invited to the actual funeral today, mostly family and close friends, were eyeing Luke and Athara with thinly veiled but wary curiosity, especially Athara. No matter that it had been years since she'd purposefully touched the Dark Side, there was still something about her that made people instinctively wary in a way that always reminded her of her days as Obscura.

Perhaps it was that she was always wary and watchful herself, the instinct making others nervous.

Or maybe it was because they unconsciously sensed the lingering traces of the Dark Side that she knew she'd never be able to shed entirely. It was bothering her a lot, recently, knowing that the Dark Side would always cling to her no matter how hard she strove to be rid of it.

"I wasn't sure at first, but I'm glad I did," she replied quietly, forcing her eyes back to her uncle, "but it still feels odd; I barely knew him." Orran glanced back toward the gathering, a knowing look coming over his face.

"He wouldn't have cared save that you were here. You are Neva's daughter. That's all that mattered to him. He was just happy to have the missing piece of his family, a piece of her, returned after believing you lost for so many years." She looked at him carefully, not bothering to hide the questioning look on her face.

"It doesn't bother you that I never told him?" Orran's expression was unreadable, though there was a trace of fondness written there.

"Told him what?" She could sense that he knew exactly what she meant, but was trying to make a point. She got it; she just wasn't convinced.

"About who—what—I was," she said softly, not expecting the words to sound so sad until she heard them coming out of her mouth. Luke's hand tightened in hers. She glanced over to her Farmboy, reassured by his steady calm. She wasn't sure how he did it, or if he even meant to do it, but she was always grateful for the aura of calm and peace that he seemed to exude when she needed it most.

Orran looked at her with consideration, his eyes narrowed faintly from the sun's brightness.

"Perhaps a little," he said simply, "but we knew he had little time left. It was better for him to be happy that you were alive than to spend that time grieving for what you had to live through. And he would have; that was the kind of man he was. He already grieved for the time you lost with your family, with your mother, especially." Athara sighed, still unconvinced. Orran's brow furrowed as he studied her.

"He wouldn't have condemned you for it, Athara," he said soberly, "for the shadows of your past." Athara fought back the tears suddenly prickling at the corners of her eyes. Yes; that was what she feared. That's why she'd been so inexplicably grateful when Orran had made no mention to her grandfather of her past as Vader's Shadow. She was not ashamed of her past; she refused to be. She regretted, yes, but she was not ashamed of who she had become because of it. But now she had a real family, and she was wary of how they would react were they to know the whole truth. Orran was the only one who knew all of it. His younger brother Tani knew some of it, especially given how close Tani and Mona seemed to be growing. The rest, not that there were many Adyés immediately related to Athara, knew less still. She knew she would never be close with them—the gulf of time and her past saw to that regardless, as did her not knowing how to let people truly get close to her—but even so, she didn't want them to hate her for what she'd done. Luke's hand squeezed hers again.