Star Wars: The Last Qymaili | ✔

7 | Impurities

Dedicated to NBNiar

Thank you for reading and commenting.

Song: "Maz's Counsel" from The Force Awakens OST

Bent laughed when they returned to the settlement, his great shoulders quaking. "Qymaen! Contact has been received from Unen and Kudlaa. They will send reinforcements for the attack at Kaleela."

He addressed Shia. "Men have been wounded today. They are around camp."

"Very well. I will attend to them." She left, her gold head-scarf blowing about in the evening wind.

Bent placed a hand on Qymaen's back, steering him gently to a place by the ocean where they sat alone. "You're ill."

Qymaen tilted his head. "I don't understand. Just because I'm—" the rest of his sentence was choked off, and he was silenced. Just because I'm still grieving doesn't mean I'm sick. "I'm just tired, Bent."

"Your eyes look different," he said. "Too much moisture."

He rolled his eyes. "Enduring pain is courageous, and I will lead Kalee to victory. I will make the Yam'rii pay for what they did to Ronderu."

An eye-roll. "You're of age. You would do well to act like it."

He flinched. "Bent, you don't understand—"

"Listen," Bent said, closing his large hand around Qymaen's shoulder so hard that it hurt. "I do understand. Ronderu was my friend too, and I grieve for her as you do today. The difference is that after the fight, I had to lead our forces while you stayed inside by yourself."

"You will never understand what Ronderu and I had," he growled back. "Never."

"Maybe, maybe not." A sigh. "Her death is taking a physical toll on your body. I don't mind leading the kolkpravis for now, but you must listen to yourself."

Qymaen pressed his lips together. Fatigue had caught up to him immensely. But as his grief hallucinations were telling him, victory was right between his claws. "I will rest when Kalee is free again."

"You don't know how long that will be," Bent said, shaking his head and walking away from the shore.

✺✺✺

After the next training session, Shia asked him a surprisingly personal question. "How are you really?"

A pause as he fiddled with the moss. "I'm your trainer, not your friend. There's no need to—"

"You're in pain, Qymaen."

The sound of his name on her lips, rather than the title Your Grace, prompted him to raise his head. Shutting his eyes, he forced himself to tear the memory of Ronderu's lips against his the day before she'd been slashed to pieces by the Yam'rii.

"I could have saved her," he murmured. "It is a stain on my honor."

She scooted closer to him, but didn't touch him. "Nobody thinks that except you. When you love someone, you'll blame yourself for their passing."

"We were political allies, nothing more."

"Have you no honesty?" she asked. "I heard what you said in my bay. There's no use in hiding the truth. You loved her."

Relief cascaded over him as sorrow bubbled from his throat. And he collapsed into her arms, letting his tears out quietly.

✺✺✺