One Less Frown

[Cedric Dorn]

Diana simply shrugged.

“Many things could happen. For all you know Avalore could have slipped in the bath tub and broken her neck ten minutes ago.” That was rather crass of her to say, but it didn't seem like she was trying to be hurtful, simply pointing out the flaw in his logic. “The Sith prey upon anything they can find, even the lack of attachment and emotion.”

She gave him a stare.

Her gaze wasn't accusing, it was simply knowing.

“There will always be a target on the both of you. You are Jedi, that means they are your enemies. They will hunt you, hurt you, no matter what you do. It helps to have someone there, someone to lean on. Someone you can trust, someone you can love and depend on.” Diana had picked the wrong person for that.

 

[Hal Terrano]

Well maybe the person that restored this place installed really crummy and slippery bath tubs. Yeah. How about those apples?

Hal simply looked at the Force host as she gave him a horrifying scenario of Avalore succumbing to a bath tub. Thankfully he lacked imagination and couldn't picture that scene in his mind. Likely for the best. We didn't need new mental scars to inflict upon an already vulnerable psyche.

His frown remained as she made a jab observation against his own repressed demeanour.

“I understand.”

That statement didn't mean he was going to take her advice, naturally. That would be too easy. Hal Terrano was not easy.

There were so many factors that held him back, that prevented him from just accepting the notion that it was okay to have feelings. The risk, the horde of what-if scenarios that ended in nothing but tragedy, his own sense of hypocritical failure as a Jedi, fear.

“Thank you,” he said very tersely.

Would it be left at that?

 

[Cedric Dorn]

[member="Hal Terrano"]

“I can't control your actions, nor would I ever seek to. However, I know Avalore. I know here better than probably anyone else in the galaxy save for her old Master.” Who had mysteriously disappeared, but that wasn't important, Diana had never really been bitter about it. Her and Avalore had been close, as close as they could have been, and even in death Diana had watched over her.

“But...” She paused for a moment, looking around the garden. “I think she would want to know.”

Maybe not strictly true, but even ghosts lied from time to time.

Avalore wasn't one to live in a world of ignorance, that was for sure, but this would add a new dynamic to things. In the end though, Diana believed that it would be for the better. Repressed feelings led to just as much hurt and anger as things that could be born of it. It was easier to talk, to work through it then to let it sit and pull at your insides.

“Eventually Hal,the bottle will break.” She tried to lay a hand on his shoulder.

 

[Hal Terrano]

Despite Diana's insistence that Avalore would want to know, Hal did not feel the same.

They were his feelings, after all, not hers. What he kept to himself was his to keep. It did no harm to Avalore if he kept these things shoved far beneath the surface. She wouldn't even know, and if she didn't know, it couldn't hurt her. Sure, his feelings would simmer and boil deep inside of him, burning his own insides but hurting himself was inconsequential.

By this point Hal had shut his eyes again, thinking that he could end an unpleasant conversation just by moving his eyelids.

But a tingling sensation upon his shoulder interrupted this method of suppression. The bottle will break. He grimaced, quickly opening his eyes again to look the spectre in the face again. Not his bottle. It may have been shaken, and cracked through times of turbulence in his life but it was not broken, it would not break.

“I will meditate on it,” he returned, voice still very terse, and then he said it once more, “thank you, Master Moridena.”

[member="Diana Moridena"]

 

[Cedric Dorn]

That was all she could have really hoped for.

She had always doubted form the beginning that Hal would have some huge emotional revelation that would drop him to his knees and confess his love for Avalore, she doubted very much that he would ever have such a moment, but at least she got him to think about it.

That was enough.

Enough for today.

“Do that.” She said with a smile, then suddenly turned about as if a voice had called to her. She nodded to herself firmly, then looked to Hal. Her hand swept through his shoulder and her eyes settled on his, a calming gaze falling to him. “Remember what you've been through Hal, remember who you are, and remember that change is not always a bad thing.”

Those words seemed fleeting, her voice passing away even as she spoke.

“Tell her.” Diana said one final time as a wisp of wind caught her.

The ghostly apparition of Diana Moridena was swept up into the air, pushed by wind and tendrils of air into nothingness.