starwars100 | Prompt 21b

Title: What's the going price of innocence? (It can't be the same)
Prompt: Purge
Author: peppermint_shamrock
Rating: T
Characters: Tala Durith
Pairing: None
Star Wars Media Property: Obi-Wan Kenobi show
Word count: 300
Warnings/Spoilers: Canon typical depictions of violence, genocide, and child death
Summary: Tala, seeing the truth of the Empire on Garel.
Author Notes: N/A
Beta: None, it's just me

Read on AO3

The prisoners were weeping.

Not all of them – in fact, it was the parents more so than the children, the latter being more confused and worried as their parents clutched them tightly.

One woman looked up at Tala, past the shields of her cell, a child in her arms.

“Please,” she said desperately, as her young son fixed Tala with an unblinking stare. “Please,” she repeated, asking for everything and nothing.

And then the officials they had been waiting on arrived. They weren’t the tax collectors Tala had been expecting.

The questioning, if it could be called that, wasn’t quick. The Inquisitors were almost deceptively leisurely as they approached the trembling prisoners, alternating between gleeful threats and sweet promises of service to the Empire.

When that failed, the red blades appeared.

The Inquisitors did not immediately attack. Instead, with words and pain unseen, they pushed and they pushed until one child broke. It was a feeble, paltry effort, but unmistakable proof of the Force in the child’s hands.

And that was all the excuse needed for the slaughter to begin.

It ended far more quickly.

“Pah!” One Inquisitor said, as they left. “Small fry. Wish we’d have some real Jedi to deal with for once.”

Tala had stood frozen throughout all of this, numb with shock. The situation did not feel real. It could not be real.

She desperately wished she could convince herself of that.

There was no ground beneath her feet. That thin veneer had been ripped away, showing her the truth in the lifeless innocents being cleared away from the holding cells.

There was no blood on the floor.

It was all over Tala’s hands.

Was this all she had been working to achieve?

Yes, even if she’d been ignorant of it.

But no more.

No more.