What's in a name?
I never really cared about it before, I don't think I should care about it now. I have no right. My name is not who I am. My name is the name of a dreamer, of an assassin, of a shifty pazaak player, the name of someone whole and good, the name of someone worthy of atonement and making up for all of the wrongdoings he's done. That man isn't me. I am no one.
Jaq was from a life so far away, a life so distant that I can barely even remember it now. He was born on Alderaan, the rolling ice-capped hills, the farms, the grasslands. Jaq, the one with a sense of humor and the lack of fear for anything, and that boldness, that certainty that he held in the glint of his eyes, was what led him to war. What led me to war.
I don't know where Jaq ends and I begin. I'm not a funny person. I couldn't crack a joke even if I tried. But when I play the part of who I've become, I retreat into the best parts of Jaq and pull them out into the light, so that people may see what I might be like and avoid everything I've done. I've switched names so many times that I cannot even find one that matches who I am, my soul, my identity.
I… I'm sorry I waited so long to tell her the truth. Sweetheart, sweets, those pet names for her, there were so many. But the taste of her real name on my tongue was like pure goodness and light, but with just a hint of weariness and the sorrows of the past to give it some texture. But overall, it was sweet. Sweets. I'm sorry I never talked about it to her. For all the things I should be apologizing for, this is the thing I will apologize for the most. Not spending enough time with her, not being there for her when she needed it. But it isn't like I knew how. The last woman I loved I gave everything up for after killing her, after feeling the life in her flick out like a candle and smelling the faded blood on my conscience for years. I can still waft it now.
I bet I could look through the Force to figure out what name she used back when she trained as a Jedi, someone brave and whole and willing to fight for what she believed in and face the consequences, even if it meant sacrificing what she knew as her life.
Yeah, well, isn't that what I did? No. No. My life is an endless card game, my names are left all up to chance and the snap of a finger, my morals taste like the dirty, addicting smoke that I inhale from a cigarra. She's outfitted someone as cruel as me to do the job of an angel, and I just can't. I'm an overachiever, always have been, but I can't. This is the one impossible thing.
She was the only one who understood what it was like to be stripped of a name and realize that a name means nothing, that a name is something you call yourself and think of yourself as, but if you don't know who you are or you think your true self is a void of something that was once there… you circulate between names you like the taste of until there's nothing left. That's what I did, and she was the only one who knew it.
My name is such a funny one, because I chose it after doing all of those horrible, bloody things. I thought it sounded like the word "atone" because everyone needs some atonement in their dark lives on a planet like Nar Shaddaa where the sun never comes out to play. I've thought of changing it so many times, after she left. I barely even think I deserve a name.
But Meetra... I'll keep being Atton for you.