The Clone Wars Gets A New Victim

Chapter 23: Scars Of A Burden

Returning to the Jedi Temple, Grim and Obi-Wan had to go to the Halls Of Healing.

Alma, the kind and soft spoken togrutan healer that had helped her and Master Kenobi when they returned had told Grim off for getting into a fight without a proper plan and ending up hurt again.

"Stop getting into so many unnecessary fights," Alma told Grim as she patched up the padawan. "Every time you do you end up hurt."

Grim was going to retort, but she bit it back and nodded. "Yes, Master Hart."

Making sure Grim was alright, Alma told her: "I'm going to go check on Master Kenobi now," and left her alone.

It had been several hours since Grim and Obi-Wan were allowed to leave the Halls of Healing.

Since then Grim had been sitting in her room, thinking about all that had happened.

In the span of only two years so much of her life had changed.

Grim had appeared in another universe and become a Jedi. Although Jedi were keepers of the peace with becoming a Jedi she had also become a soldier.

A commander.

She was just sixteen years old and yet she had gone through so much.

She fought in a war, a war that was created to break the Jedi. Grim knew this and yet she still chose to fight in it. She was the only one who had been given that choice.

She had seen death, and she had caused death.

Grim would never forget what she had done to Krell back on Umbara, as often as she tried to push the memory away. Sometimes at night she would still hear his final words.

"And you've seen it too, you're not a true Jedi either." ... "Yes, I can feel your anger, your fear, your hate. You keep playing pretend, little girl, but reality will catch up with you soon enough."

She wished she could push the memory back. And how she had replied.

Grim lifted her hand and grabbed Krell's neck with the Force. ... Krell lay on the floor dead.

"You know nothing about me," she had said coldly.

Grim had encountered Sith Lords and been tortured by them.

Maul was not the first Sith to have tortured her and that's what made it worse.

Nobody knew she had ever encountered Sidious. That she had fought against him and lost. That she had been tortured by him. And she didn't know who she could tell. Her fear kept asking "what if you make things worse?"

She was still only a kid and yet she fought a war, had been tortured, and witnessed and caused death.

It was so much, and it hurt.

And just as she couldn't push away the thoughts of Krell, and his death at her hand, she couldn't push away the torture she had received from Sidious. How she believed she would die. And how she had broken.

Sidious had broken her.

As her mind wandered into her memories of her encounters with Sidious she brought a hand up to the left side of her face and traced the scar there.

Scars.

Didn't Grim already have enough? Hadn't she already gone through enough?

She was too young to be carrying scars.

The scar on her face was not her first. She never looked, but she knew that she bore scars from Zygerria as well. It was something she and Obi-Wan shared. From the torture the two Jedi had endured on that mission.