The Clone Wars Gets A New Victim

Chapter 36: The Day Before Night

Grim sat in the garden. It was her favorite place in the Temple. The life and light that filled it brought her peace.

Except for today.

Today the garden could not bring her peace.

Nothing could.

Today was the day the Jedi would die.

She had failed to stop it.

That is why she sat, holding her knees to her chest as she sobbed.

She could hardly breathe as she sobbed so much. There was so much light and yet she could hardly see it. Because now she knew she lost and hours from now all of the light would be extinguished.

She was mourning something yet to come. Grim was mourning something that was still around.

Her grief blinded and choked her.

It was all she was as she cried.

This was the last time she would be at her home, and she didn't have the strength or courage to embrace the moment as it was now. She couldn't find it in herself to attempt a last desperate chance to save lives and change the ending.

There was a chance.

She could speak to the Council.

She could kill Sidious.

She could warn Anakin.

She could kill Anakin.

She could get help.

She could take things into her own hands.

Yet she didn't take a single one of these chances.

She surrendered.

Yet still she was determined to fight. To survive past whatever horrors came tonight. And yet at the same time she could barely find it in herself to be alive.

So many emotions ran through her, and all of them choked her as she sobbed and mourned what was not yet lost.

"Grim?" Somebody asked.

She looked up to see Obi-Wan standing there. "Oh, hi Master," she said as she wiped away her tears, not wanting him to see her in such a state.

She was supposed to be happy, wasn't she?

To everyone the war was about to end and they would win. Except Grim knew the truth, and because of that she could not find it in herself to be happy.

"What's wrong?" he asked, sitting down beside her.

"I'd tell you, but there's no point to that now," she said. She didn't look at him, she only looked at the beautiful scenery around her.

Yet nothing beautiful lasts forever.

Everything came to an end eventually, and everything one day dies, but the way things would unfold in the night would be because of a crime.

It would be a crime that this universe would never recover from. For even when the Jedi came back, it would not be the same. For so much will have been lost.

Grim looked at her Master. "How do you let go of something that is gone, when it isn't yet gone?" she asked him.

Obi-Wan considered her words for a moment. There was more behind the question than was said.

She had told the Council before that she wished to stop the destruction of the Jedi. Is this what she was asking about?

Did she feel as if she had lost?