Catharsis: Strangers in the Night
"Citizens of the civilized galaxy, on this day we mark a transition. For a thousand years, the Republic stood as the crowning achievement of civilized beings. But there were those who would set us against one another, and we took up arms to defend our way of life against the Separatists. In so doing, we never suspected that the greatest threat came from within."
--- Emperor Palpatine in his "Declaration of a New Order"
Tizza Faaran was no Jedi. Most days this was not something she regretted, for all the years being a close friend to two of them had given her a unique insight as to the downside of that existence. Today, however, was not most days.
She’d put the little girl down for her afternoon nap after they’d had their midday meal; they had shared a few laughs when Nya had told her a funny story about the antics of one of the other kids she had met at the temple. There had been a sticky moment when she’d mentioned her father promising to take her to Coruscant the next time he went – if she promised to behave in his absence – but Nya had not turned teary-eyed and emotional as other kids might well have at this sudden memory of her father’s absence. It was as if her 5-year-old soul already had a grasp of the responsibilities inherent to her kind, and Tizza had once again been left feeling at once in awe of the girl’s extraordinary maturity and a little freaked out by it. She’d bustled her off to her bunk in the make-shift bedroom, tucked her in with her doll under her arm and a sweet smile on her face, and left her to do some much-needed tidying up.
She’d just been putting the cleaned dishes away into the locker when she’d heard the scream. It didn’t sound like anything she’d ever heard – the unexpected and unnatural loudness of it had frozen her in mid-motion. Still unsure of the source of the noise, she‘d turned to check the habitat controls but seen no indication for external or internal danger, and only then had it dawned on her that it was the child. The plate she’d been holding crashed onto the floor behind her as she’d run out of the kitchen area, across the hall and into Nya’s room.
It was then that she wished she possessed Jedi senses.
The little girl was sitting up, her body trembling all over, her eyes wide with shock, the little face undergone a complete transformation since she’d last seen it. From between her lips came that dreadful scream that had so surprised Tizza, and now that she was so close it rooted her to the spot.
At that moment Tizza would have given anything to be able to see past the obvious. Anything – if it meant she could gain some kind of insight into what was happening, or how she should proceed. She didn’t feel she was emotionally equipped for dealing with this kind of situation. The list of possibilities that would cause such a reaction was rapidly running through her mind – but it was not adapted to a child’s view of the universe, least of all a Jedi child. For that brief moment that felt like an eternity, as the screaming kept on going, she felt truly at a total loss.
But then something deep inside her soul shifted, the sight of the child’s distress stirring a maternal instinct inside her that she hadn’t known she possessed. Her temporary inability to move passed, and she rushed into the room and scooped up the girl and held her – held her close with all the might she had, imbued with a sudden need to make this child feel safe. It was a truly strange feeling, utterly alien and yet utterly exhilarating as she sat there rocking the girl, patting her head, cooing, making soft hushing noises. Now that her inner walls were down, it was a flood of emotions rushing over her, wanting to comfort the girl as if she were her own.
And within moments, Nya’s screaming died away as the child seemed to have exhausted itself, or perhaps simply because it sensed that she would keep it from harm. The little body that had been so taut and rigid against her as she had scooped it up relaxed, and then two thin arms coiled around her neck and the girl responded to her tight hug with equal force. The screaming had turned into a brittle wail, and then even that passed as finally great, heart-wrenching sobs were racking her small body, and Tizza found herself mumbling “there, there… it’s gonna be okay, sweety, it’s gonna be fine…” and patting the child’s head as she pressed her against her heart.
Thus occupied, it occurred to her that for all of the child’s uncharacteristic maturity, there was still only a child beneath that Jedi veneer – a child responding to the same comforting as any other child would. She realised then that her inability to respond to the girl at first had also stemmed from her feeling of ineptitude compared to the Jedi that had crept upon her somewhere along the years of her friendship with them. Poor Nya had ended up on the same pedestal that she had erected for the girl’s parents in her ordinary mind, and she’d not expected to share their world other than from an outsider’s point of view. But now the scales had fallen off her eyes and she could see the child behind that picture of serenity that was nothing but an imitation of both of her parents’ calm Jedi mask.
What has she dreamed of? Tizza wondered, for the first time confident in thinking that she knew the reason behind the child’s behaviour. Flashes of an old and long-forgotten memory of her own childhood days put a certainty to that thought; she remembered waking up screaming, then the comfort of her mother’s arms as her mother was soothing her, promising her the monsters weren’t real. And she remembered the feeling of absolute acceptance of her mother’s promise. For a moment she felt the old emptiness, the hollow pain she’d felt when her mother had passed away, then the moment was gone and instead there was this child who needed her now as she had needed her mother.
Nya’s sobs were ebbing away, but the force behind the girl’s embrace did not relent. Tizza held on to her just as tightly, instinct telling her that this was what the girl needed just then. She wanted to ask what was wrong, but that same instinct told her that it would be better to wait until the child had calmed down. But the minutes passed, and the quiet sobbing still continued, and her neck was starting to feel a little sore. Finally, her concern – and curiosity - got the better of her. Stroking Nya’s head, she whispered into her ear in as soothing a voice as she could muster, hoping that the girl would somehow sense that she could understand her fears, that here was someone who had once been a child just like her who once saw the same monsters in her dreams.
"What is it, sweetheart?"
But instead of calming further, Nya tensed again, and Tizza could feel another storm of sobs approaching. Quickly she hushed her, and renewed the force of her hug, hoping it would make the girl feel even safer.
"Was it monsters, sweetheart? Did you dream of bad things?"
This stopped the girl’s sobbing so completely that Tizza was taken aback. The child’s arms unwound from her neck, and she pushed herself back so she could look at Tizza with eyes bruised and swollen from crying. But even so, her eyes were haunted by a look that Tizza could not interpret at all; her face an odd mirror of every raw emotion that Tizza had ever seen, and for a moment, it infused her with fear even though she could not have said of what.
"Daddy... he is gone."
And as if to make sure that Tizza would understand her, Nya added, with a dread certainty in that voice that was still brittle from crying yet suddenly surprisingly unemotional: "I felt him go."
Then, with a change as sudden as the last, the emotionless mask faltered as another storm of tears broke over her like a wave crashing into her helpless body, and she flung herself back against Tizza who - despite all her newly found understanding of the girl's distress - felt once again at a loss for how to react, and wishing she had a Jedi's senses. If only to have the power to keep one little girl safe from her worst fears.
"Hush now, he'll be here soon, hush!" she whispered into the girl's ears. "It was only a dream... only a dream..."
