Aryn sighed and began braiding her hair back from her face, hair not gray only because of a genetic quirk in her maternal line. Thirty years, she marveled. Those days of pilot training were among the happiest and the most sorrowful in her memory. She had gained an invaluable friend. Qui-Gon was someone she trusted implicitly, and he had rarely disappointed her. They had gone on several missions together or as part of a group, and though they lost track of each other for years at a time, whenever they met, it was as though they had never been apart. Aryn was more than content with their friendship, always knowing that somewhere in the galaxy there was one person who understood her completely, though she had wondered a few times what a deeper relationship, allowing them to be always together, would have been like. But she had never pursued that.

Now she would never get the chance. And only now, when he too was gone, did she realize the depth of her love for this gentle, compassionate man, and the depth of the part he had played in her life.

Grief was different for her this time, not the difficult acceptance with hot tears that Tora's death had sparked when she was young. It was instead a slow crushing ache inside, something that would never leave completely, a vacuum that could never be filled. She didn't want it to be.

Aryn watched the sun set beyond the towering buildings of Coruscant, her mind suffused with the memory and face of her friend, and quietly wept until she had no tears left. Too exhausted to think or meditate, she stretched out on the floor and slept, with one hand curled around the hilt of her lightsaber.