The Children of the Stars

The Lost Years

In the tedium of hyperspace, Nellith had decided to go to the bed that had once belonged to her parents, and sleep through it. After all, she hadn't gotten much the night before.

Not after what Kyp and Valin had told her.

But in her attempts to sleep through the journey to Ahch-To, she remembered dark things— a lightsaber, poised to kill— betrayal on her brother's own face as Sith guards pulled him away— the feeling of lightning from her own sister—

Was it any wonder that Nellith Skywalker woke screaming from her dreams?

Instinctively, she reached out to Allana— only to remember why she couldn't when she hit the equivalent of a brick wall in the Force.

She forced herself to sob into a pillow. Shaking with the implications of what came pouring in through the dream world—

"Are you okay?"

Nellith sat up to see Kyp Durron standing in the darkened doorway. She threw the sheets and the like to the side, and stood. Her coat and scarf hung in the closet— one of the few things her tired brain managed to do before passing out.

She didn't acknowledge him, instead reaching for her jacket.

"Hey, Nellith?" His voice was softer. "Are you okay?"

"I think we know the answer to that." Her voice was low as she shrugged on the jacket. She focused on the feeling of the worn leather beneath her fingers, the warmth of the silky lining on her bare shoulders, the sound that the hem of the Hapan gown made as she moved. They were grounding her, distracting her from what should have been at the forefront of her mind.

He stepped closer, letting the bright corridor of the Falcon fade into the relative darkness of the bedroom.

"You're starting to remember, aren't you?" His voice was filled with compassion, sympathy.

Nellith wrapped her scarf around her bare collarbone, hiding the sweetheart neckline of the Hapan gown. She was layering herself in what she had. Why was she still shivering? Why was she still so cold?

"Yes. Bits and pieces— enough to know that you got it right." Nellith couldn't help the bitterness in her tone, like the Alderaanian teas that Ben and Anakin and Thea liked so much. "Not that I want to remember more."

"It might be for the better," Kyp agreed. He had not come any closer, instead staying away like she was a rabid kath hound. "Some memories are hell to live with."

"She stole years from my life." It hadn't hit till now, as Nellith shivered in the cold of hyperspace in the Millennium Falcon, with circles under her eyes.

She whirled around to face Kyp. "I could have helped Jacen, I could have— I could have found Allana, or my mother, or Jaina or Dad— but my body and life was stolen from me by my own sister and she made me into—"

The words were stuck in her throat as she sobbed.

Murderer. Traitor. Monster.

"It's not your fault," Kyp assured her, finally stepping closer. "There had to be something else going on, I remember that it didn't feel right, quite like you when you showed up—"

"I still did it, didn't I?" Nellith swiped fiercely at her own tears. "I did whatever she made me do. It doesn't matter if she forced me or brainwashed me—"

"It does." Kyp was earnest, dark green eyes luminous in the dark. "It matters."

Without even thinking it further, she hugged him, crying and clinging to his cloak and tunic. He was something that was familiar, something that existed before everything burned down.