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Miraluka can’t cry. The thought passes through Kira’s head while her master is off meditating somewhere. She couldn’t cry if she wanted to. She barely cares about her own suffering, torture of the body was hardly worth her time.
She remembers crying as a child. After escaping, after she’d been used to hurt people she had cared about she’d cried herself to sleep. But she didn’t have Jedi training then and she was a child. And she had eyes.
She stalks through their Defender towards Onyril’s quarters. She doesn’t know what she could say or do that would help but she understands. The missing memories, the waking up to blood on her hands, she knows and she hopes that can help in some way. After all the risks Onyril has taken to support her at every turn, she can’t feel right doing anything else.
Onyril really is mediating when Kira finds her in her quarters. She’s calm, Kira can’t help but feel angry at that calm. It couldn’t be real, not even the greatest Jedi could just shrug off being possessed by the Emperor and torturing their friends but Onyril refuses to admit to weakness.
Kira doesn’t know what to damn. So she goes to her room and loudly damns everything she can think of. Starting with the miserable Hutt stain that calls itself Emperor. She damns the Jedi and Jedi training and every word in the Code.
Onyril is dutiful until the end. She fights and fights and gets politely blank when Kira tries to talk to her about what happened. Says she doesn’t remember as if not remembering what she did undoes the trauma somehow. Kira takes out her exasperation on Doc, Lord Scourge, and the Jedi Council whenever they ask for something stupid.
Eventually they win. Sort of, at least. The Emperor is gone at least. Some time after being made a Jedi Master and getting word from Theron Shan, Onyril confesses to Kira that she thought the Jedi plan to capture the Emperor was stupid. That she hadn’t offered the option of surrender or capture - when she won the fight she dropped a pillar on him.
Kira does her best to assure her that she did the right thing. She isn’t asking, not exactly, but Kira knows guilt when she sees it. Maybe not for smooshing the Emperor but for disregarding orders, for being given the title of Master even though she went behind their backs and refused to do the incredibly stupid thing.
She’s got the advantage of knowing what it’s like to have the monster in her head. When she tells Onyril it’s all right, she can see the tension ease from her shoulders. A little of the tightness in her own chest eases. Being allowed to help, even in such a small capacity, takes the edge off her anger and stress.
It isn’t until Rishi, until she spends all her free time in a bungalow or helping the poor, desperate residents that the real healing begins.
After a long day of moving debris for the people of Rishi, Onyril comes back from wherever she’s been going (and Kira can feel Master Orgus’s ghost through the Force so she has a pretty good idea what’s happening - she’s frustrated that she couldn’t help but so grateful that someone finally did that it’s forgotten almost immediately) and stands in front of her.
She stumbles over a strained apology. Kira can practically hear the rawness of her throat, as she catches herself on her third “I’m sorry.”
She may not have cried on their Defender that day but she would have now.
Her own throat feels raw as she takes Onyril’s face in her hands, pulling her forward until her forehead touches Kira’s.
“I know,” she says past the lump in her throat.
“I’m here,” she whispers as Onyril begins to tremble.
“I’ve been waiting,” she tells Onyril, as she wraps her arms around her.