She wanted him to know that a quiet, slow ebbing-and-flowing growth built just as strong a root as her brighter, ecstatic growing. Slow like the sea turning the cliffs into a beach, and sand falling into the reefs, catching in shellfish, and even more slowly turning to pearls.
“I killed someone,” he blurted out.
Silence continued to reign for a drawn-out moment, and Elzar couldn’t believe how fast he’d lost any semblance of control of this situation.
“Killed, have we all,” Yoda said almost tentatively. Or as if he were talking to a child.
For years, Elzar had tried to keep up with Stellan and Avar, but if he was truthful with himself, if he was truly honest, he knew he’d always be in their shadow.
And perhaps that was okay. Perhaps it was his place to help others achieve greatness.
JJ-5145 waited for Elzar at the end of the long entryway to the Senate building. The droid offered Elzar a rehydration packet with one arm and a change of robes with the other. JJ-5145 always remembered Elzar struggled to make time to care for himself.
The Force roared around him, crashing waves, and Elzar felt buffeted by the strength of it. His connection to the Force was immediate and vigorous even in this little dark bubble of a closet. If all that was required of Elzar was communion with the Force, he’d be unstoppable.
“We’re moving, I promise. Just not in ways you can see. The Force doesn’t feel the need to announce its actions. It just acts.”
He removed his hand. The senator was stunned into silence, which was the idea all along. In fact, everyone present seemed pretty surprised as well.
“We have to find a way to get the information out. If Elzar and the others knew…”
“They’re already on the right track,” said Porter. “They just don’t realize it yet.”
Avar frowned. “Meaning?”
“It was Elzar who gave me the idea in the first place,” said Porter.
“The Force can send your mind across the galaxy - to the past, to the future. Connect you with others. Let you talk to beasts. Make you the best warrior anyone’s ever seen. And much more. It’s the greatest power in the universe. Do you think learning to use it should be easy?”
“I’m assuming you’re as cut off as everyone else?”
“So it would seem,” Elzar replied, looking her up and down. “Are you ever going to explain how you keep those robes pristine white even through explosions?”
“No. Now stop wisecracking and fill me in.”
Everything I do ends in suffering.
Am I really so blind?
So lost?
Stellan would never have made this mistake.
It should have been me who went down with the Beacon, not him.
I’m not good enough.
I’m sorry, Avar. I’ll never be good enough.
She picked up a few boxes and a chunk of pink stone in order to make room on a chair. “I don’t have anything to offer you except some blue milk, sorry.”
“I’m not thirsty. But are you feeding yourself?” Elzar frowned.
The scowl Avon shot him reminded him intensely of Ghirra.
“I nearly dismissed him as a distraction. I’m not as wise as you think.”
“Ah,” said Elzar, grinning. “That’s where you’re wrong. Because you didn’t dismiss him. You chose to listen to what he had to say, despite your initial inclination. And it led to this.”
He’d been resisting his own good emotions because caring so deeply had driven him to desperation and had made him so upset and furious that he let it consume him for the moment it took to murder Chancey Yarrow.
But it had also been caring that pulled him back.
“If it were Avar Kriss, you’d keep looking. Am I right?”
“Probably.”
“Well, I heard she left too, and Stellan Gios died up on Starlight. Guess you don’t have a home either.”
What if trying really was enough?
That’s all Stellan had been trying to do, wasn’t it? The right thing. And Elzar, too, when everything went wrong for him on Starlight. They’d all made mistakes. Terrible mistakes. They’d allowed the Nihil to win.
But at least they’d tried.
“Avar—”
“Would you let me go alone?”
“That’s not the point—”
“Elzar Mann exceptionalism, then? I see.” Avar’s expression had closed off.
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“Being patronizing.”
“Stellan was better at it,” she said, with a little smile to show she was teasing.
When he finished, Elzar felt pinned down by the weight of what Avon had delivered.
He hit the comm and ordered up a priority channel for Avar Kriss on the Elder Lily, where she was heading for the Stormwall.
“Avar, wait for me. I know how we can find Marchion Ro.”