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Once upon a time, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away there was a slave on a desert planet. But this slave was a boy and his name was Anakin and he didn’t want to be a slave anymore. He wanted to escape and go off and live awfully big adventures far away from the sand on which he had lived for all of his life. Slaves don’t get the opportunities to go off and explore the big, wide universe so he settled for what he had. He knew that one day he would fly away so he held on to that hope as he lived out his days.
Then one day, out of the blue, on a day that had seemed to Anakin to be like any other ordinary day something quite wonderful happened. He was visited by two brave Jedi knights and a disguised Queen. They had found him quite by accident, quite by chance, but these Jedi knights did not believe in chance. They believed something else had brought them to him. They believed that the Force had led them right to Anakin. The Force was trying to tell them something. The Force was trying to direct them towards something important, someone important. These brave and legendary Jedi knights found Anakin and found in him something they hadn’t been looking for: a Chosen One. The elder and wiser of the two Jedis thought that Anakin was prophesied to bring balance to the Force. He thought that he was someone quite special indeed. He thought that Anakin was born for greater things than just living out his whole life as a slave. He was only a young boy and the great Jedi thought that like every young child Anakin deserved his chance to be all that he could be.
The Jedi took a chance on Anakin. He gave young Anakin a chance to prove himself. He gave Anakin a chance to fight for what he wanted. Anakin wanted his freedom. So the Jedi Master gave him the chance to win it.
Now Anakin didn’t have much as a slave but he had his brains and his skills. He could build a podracer from the scraps that he had and he could fly it as well as the next pilot. He was resilient when he declared that he was a pilot. He was resilient in following through on his declarations. Young Anakin went and entered the Boonta Eve Classic. It was a dangerous path for him to go down but he was sure that he could come out of the other side unscathed. The brave young boy went up against the experienced pilots, the scum and the skilled and he flew with every ounce of skill he had. Anakin won the race and with it his freedom and left with the great Jedi to become one of their own.
The council of the Jedi were less welcoming and accepting of him than the first Jedi had been. They did not trust the great power they felt that Anakin had and they thought that he was too old to be trained by them. Still, the great Jedi pleaded for boy’s case and they eventually agreed to it.
The great Jedi’s victory in securing training for Anakin would be one of his last victories as he fell to the power of the dark side and the blade of a double edged lightsaber.
All was not lost, as the second Jedi took up the mantle of his Master in order to train Anakin. Anakin had a Master in Obi-Wan Kenobi, but in later years he would find a friend in him too. A friend who would make sure that Anakin stuck to the path that he was meant to and who ensured that Anakin was trained as well as he could be.
Years passed, long and gruelling. As Anakin learned how to be a Jedi Obi-Wan learned how to be a Master and a teacher. It was not just the light that was growing and learning. The dark had been as prominent in these years as they had in the years previous. They were the lurking evil in the background, the dark shadows that outlined the stars, ready to snuff them out at any moment. The dark was a poison that was about to infect the light and spread across the galaxies, spreading its hate as far and wide as it could. The dark had been festering in this time, in this decade and now it was stronger and an ever present threat to those still fighting for the light and the good and the right.
Now it had been ten years since the slaveboy Anakin had won his freedom and ran off to the stars with those brave Jedi knights. Now he was a Jedi knight in the making and meeting again the angel who had been his good luck charm on the day that he had needed it most. The angel had been the queen in disguise on the day they met and now her term as queen was over; although her people had loved her enough to try to change the rules in her favour. Now she was a senator, a politician fighting for the democracy for which she stood for. She was more beautiful now than she had been as the teenage queen. She had grown into a beautiful and strong-willed woman as Anakin had grown into a brave and powerful Jedi.
He was assigned to her to keep her safe. She tried to hold her own and tell him that she didn’t need to be protected but he had his orders. He was sworn to protect her.
Anakin disobeyed his orders to be with her. He still protected her at all costs but he did something that he had sworn not to do. He went against the Jedi code, his own code to follow his heart. Against the bodies to which they belonged and knowing all the downfall they could incur the senator and the Jedi did what they should not: they fell in love. The beautiful former-queen and the brave knight fell in love when it was against the Jedi code to form attachments and reckless for a politician to be emotional. They tried to suppress their feelings but when they were faced with the immediacy of an imminent and a horrible death she turned to him and confessed. They had decided not to fall in love but that is not a decision that they had to make. They fell in love anyway. When the smoke cleared over the battle and the enemy had been pushed back for now and the troops either lay dead or dusted themselves off to carry on for another day the worst of it was over. It was a new day. It was the beginning of the war for the Jedi and for the Republic but for Anakin and his queen it was the day they decided to run away from it all. They decided against their own best wishes or intentions to follow what they wanted. They married in secret away from the world that would try to tell them what to do or who to be.
They kept their secret safe for years but it was not enough. On the third year that they had been married something quite marvellous happened. Something quite wonderful happened to them. It was a burst of light to stave off the oncoming darkness. They were to have a baby. This baby would be a theirs to love and to hold and they would have a real family. A family of three to love. A family of three to care for and fear for and be scared for.
Then, like the dreams that foreshadowed the fate of his mother Anakin’s doubts were gripped with a deathly fear of loss that he became obsessed with stopping. In order to save his wife and their child he would do anything to make sure that she didn’t die in childbirth. He would go to any length, to any extreme to make sure that she lived on. He would go down any path to stop his dreams from becoming reality; even down dark paths that she would not follow him down.
In order to save what was most important Anakin lost every part of him that mattered. He became dark and twisted, he murdered those he used to respect and innocent children who had looked to him. He became someone new, someone that was supposedly more powerful just because he looked to the dark side rather than to the light. The light fell to the rapturous applause of the dark and the world became clouded over by ash and smoke and doubt and fear and death.
Padmé fell to the choking hand of her deranged fanatic husband who thought that she had betrayed him. Anakin fell to the power of his old Master who looked down in despair at the brother he had lost and the man that was now burning away into nothing, as Anakin he knew already had.
Anakin was saved by his new Master, the one that wanted to be the Emperor of the Sith and the galaxy. In saving Anakin the Emperor drained the life of the woman who was carrying the child that had the power to bring the balance to Anakin.
Far away from where her husband was being repaired and built into pure evil Padmé gave birth to not only Anakin’s son, but also to their daughter. Luke and Leia entered the world only moments apart, only breaths apart, only heartbeats apart. They entered together into the world that was marching towards war and into a family that was fading away. They were all the family they had left but what was left of the Jedi decided that it was safer and smarter to take the twins and separate them. Luke was given to his father’s step-brother and left to be raised on the home planet they shared with Obi-Wan to watch over him, while Leia was given to a Senator to be raised as his own daughter right in the heart of the war. And so it came to be that the Skywalker story came to an end, as the twins were carried away to live separate lives and their mother was returned to her homeworld for her funeral. All was lost.
Except hope. Hope was not lost as long as their was rebels to fight for it. As long as there were those that would give anything to give hope back to the galaxy then everything would be alright. It was nearly two decades later, after nineteen long years of shadow, before hope returned. Hope was found in a code, in a blueprint, in a message left by a father that a brave daughter went and found. She banded together rebels like her and went on a suicide mission that would leave the world with a chance of success against the threat of evil that hung over them all.
So it came to be that nineteen years after Luke and Leia had been split up that they found each other again. In that message of hope that Luke happened upon, in a droid that had been his father’s and another that had been built by his father’s hand, his sister gave him a message that was to be passed on to the man that had been watching over Luke and keeping him safe all his life. The Force was always strong in the Skywalker family and now it was calling to Luke to step up and go on this brave quest in order to free the princess and defeat the Empire. The Force was calling to him to go and be the one he was always meant to be.
It was a dark path, as any path designed by destiny and fate is, but in the wake of casualties and death Luke found a new family; a true family. He found friends in the most unlikely of places and family where he never thought they could be. He found that he could be a hero. He could be the pilot he always wanted to be. He could serve the Rebellion as he always hoped he could, he could be useful to them and he could do it. He could believe in the Force and he could use it. He was Luke Skywalker, son of a Jedi knight and he could use the power of the Force to triumph over evil.
That was what he did. Over and over, Luke helped the Rebellion. He shot the fire straight into the heart of the beast, right into the core with only the Force to guide him.
They went on to do great things; that band of Rebels they had. The smuggler became a captain with the Wookie by his side. The princess became a general and swapped politics for war rooms. The farm boy became a Jedi knight; went off to a deep and murky swamp with mystery hanging heavy in the air to learn the true secrets. He learned more than he ever thought that he would, more than he thought that there was to know.
The farmboy from Tatooine found in the evil he hated not only the man who had killed his father but the man who had once been his father. This great evil who had forsaken his family while trying to save it, who had hunted Luke down across the stars to have this great reckoning.
It took Luke a while to accept the truth but when he did, he accepted only that Darth Vader had once been Anakin Skywalker and that Anakin Skywalker was still redeemable. He accepted that his father may be alive somewhere he was going to fight for him. He had to search his soul to believe in this truth.
However, he didn’t have to search to believe in the other truth he had found. He knew that Leia was his sister from the moment that he heard that he had a sister. He knew that she was something special to him but he never could have imagined that she was his other half, the twin he never knew he had. Now he knew though and he would do anything for her and for the rest of his family.
He would leave his training early against the wishes of his new Master to save his friends, even when he knew it was a trap and that it would put him in danger. He would return to his homeworld after three years away in order to go against the gangster that ruled the sand planet to free a friend that had been taken and imprisoned. He would put himself in any danger if he thought it would get his friends to a safer place. If he could die so they could live then he would. This was his new family, this was his real family: his sister, the smuggler and the Wookie.
They were a team like you could only dream of. They were the families that fairytales were written about. They had their happy ending.
Luke was right about Anakin. Somewhere behind the mask and the dramatics and the devotion to the dark Anakin Skywalker still lived. Anakin lived long enough to see his son suffering and reached out to him, reached out to save him. In his last breaths Anakin looked upon his son for the first time and all was as the Force wills it. Balance had been restored to the Force. The light had vanquished the dark and celebrations were had all around.
Yet in the celebrations and the time that followed the darkness still lurked in tendrils and coils, in secrets and in shadows. A baby was born, Force-Sensitive like his mother and grandfather before him and he was sent to be trained by his uncle. They tried to keep him safe, tried to keep the dark far away from the innocence of his heart, as wise people had tried to do his mother and uncle a long time ago.
This time it did not succeed.
Luke Skywalker had not been tempted to the dark side no matter how those on the dark side had tried to convince him and steal him away. He was not so easy to break away from the family that he had and turn him towards the dark. Luke Skywalker was a legend of the stars and his family was all he had.
When he let them down more than he ever had before he ran away. Luke was the last of the Jedi and now he had failed everything he stood for: his cause, himself and his family so he exiled himself far away.
The nephew that he had tried to protect fell to the influence of the dark and then the boy that was Ben Solo was no more the sweet boy who had ran among the rebel base in his youth but was now Kylo, a knight of Ren who wanted to burn the Resistance.
Then the princess general, weary of all the stress that her family had caused her, heard of a way to find her brother. She heard of a map that the vile First Order had been tracking down that would lead them right to her Luke and so she sent out her most daring pilot in the hopes that he could find the missing piece before they did so that Leia could be sure that she could find her brother.
The daring pilot went to Jakku and met the man that held the key and the man gave the pilot the secret that would lead them to Luke. Hope was on its way to being restored now.
But the daring pilot was caught when the First Order raided and burned the village.The pilot was unable to escape so he did what he could and he knew that if he could not escape that his little droid would and the brave little BB unit would carry within it the map that both sides sought to find.
The pilot was captured but he did not lose his spirit even as he was being tortured for information that he tried so hard not to give up. It was only when the information was taken against his will that he gave it up; unintentionally and painfully.
Yet there was another hero who found this pilot. A brave man who did not have a name, only a code, who decided that he did not want to be a pawn of this First Order. He knew that he could escape now if he was brave enough to take the chance. So he took it. He went and he freed the prisoner, the pilot, his pilot, the one who would get them both away from this place that they didn’t want to be.
The pilot and the stormtrooper escaped from the clutches of the First Order and went back to Jakku to rescue the droid the pilot had to leave behind. The pilot found out that the brave man who rescued him did not have a name so he decided to call him Finn and the man liked his new name and was truly happy for what seemed like the first time in forever.
Then they crashed down on Jakku, shot out of the sky by the evil they were trying to escape and the heroes were separated from each other. Fearing that the pilot had died poor Finn walked alone under the blazing heat thinking that once again he was all alone in the world with nothing but a jacket to remind himself of the friend he had found and seemingly lost.
It turns out that taking the jacket made him identifiable by the very droid that the pilot had been looking for. The droid had also found a friend and when the droid alerted the scavenger girl to the so-called thief she went after him demanded answers and in him she found a friend. Together they vowed to get the droid back to the people who were needed him back. They took a ship from the junkyard of Jakku, a ship the scavenger girl declared was garbage only seconds before relying on it, and together they flew away from all that oppressed them. They outran the First Order that had tracked them down and went out into the open sky.
Then they found a long lost legend: a man who was once a smuggler and a war hero and now like the family he had thirty years ago, had mainly descended into myth. He came back on board his home and with it came a rush of relief that was welcome after years of struggles and heartache. The smuggler Han found Finn and the girl, Rey, who had piloted his ship away from the junkyard of Jakku and he told them that their quest was not a folly. He told them that once he had not believed in the Force but that it was real and he agreed to help them get the droid back to the Resistance.
The band of heroes ran from Rathtars and found themselves in a little Palace owned by a wizened woman who claimed that she had lived for so long that she had begun to see the same eyes in different people. She encouraged them to follow the paths that were true: she told Han to go and face Leia after all the time he had spent running from her, she knew Finn wanted to run yet could sense that he would stay when his friends needed him to and she comforted Rey when she found a powerful lightsaber that had been passed down generations and was now calling to her.
Yet the First Order found them where they were and although Finn nearly escaped he stayed to try to protect Rey but he failed and she was taken by the First Order to help lead them to Luke. However, by staying Finn found the courage to stand up to the Stormtroopers that he had once stood by side-by-side in combat and now stood against them. By staying Finn also learned that the pilot Poe had not perished on their crash landing but had survived and returned to his base. The heroes were reunited and they agreed to go and get Rey back.
Finn took the charge and took the Falcon to Starkiller Base, returning to the place he had only just escaped despite his own fears in order to rescue a friend who was in a more dangerous position than he was. When Finn and Han got there they found that Rey had managed to unlock a deep power within herself in order to escape. She didn’t quite understand it herself but she didn’t have time to explain it because they still had a mission to complete.
They still had to foil the First Order before they blew up anymore star systems. They had to stop them before anymore life was lost.
They succeeded, but they failed. They blew up it up and Starkiller Base was no more. But Han had fallen to the betrayal of his son while trying to call him back to the light. Not only that but while trying to defend Rey the brave Finn was cut down by the red lightsaber of the child of the Sith.
Rey felt the new power within herself, the Force. She felt it call out to her and used it to channel her anger at this man into her attack. She used the Force to defend herself and to fight back. As the ground split beneath their feet Rey chose the light; chose to go and be with her fallen friend, her fallen hero.
When they got back to the Resistance base Finn got the medical help that he needed and Poe kept a watch over him to make sure that he was going to be okay.
In the meantime Rey took the plans they had uncovered and went to find Luke Skywalker. She went, once again, out into the unknown, away from all that she knew, and went chasing after someone she thought was just a legend. She found the exiled knight, alone on his mountain by the water and offered back to him the lightsaber that was rightfully his.
.
.
.
“Then what happened?” Rey asked, interrupting Poe’s story only at the end.
“You know how it ends,” he replied, smiling down at her, where she was curled into him.
“Yeah we know,” Finn added, his head resting against Poe’s chest with Rey’s head on his shoulder, “but we like how you tell it.”
Poe beamed down at them, his loves who had given up so much to finally be here. Neither of them had had a family before but now they had each other and it was suddenly the most important thing in Poe’s life. It was the family he didn’t think he needed or would have but now it was the family he would love for and care for and live for and die for. He was theirs and they were his. They loved each other equally and without hesitation. They were a blessing, they were his miracle. He leaned down as far as he could and kissed Finn’s head and then leaned over and kissed Rey’s as well. “Okay then. This is how it ends.”
Rey was smiling from where she was curled up, hair loose around her shoulders except from her Padawan braid at the bottom. She was beautifully at peace, letting down all her defences so that she could be in this moment. In one hand she held Poe’s hand tight and next to it her other hand was entwined with Finn’s so she was holding on to them both.
Next to her Finn was leaning back into Poe’s arm that was around him and leaning towards Rey as he kept her close. He looked younger like this, humanised by love and family and happier away from the pain of war and conformity. He was listening intently to every word Poe said as though this was the first time Poe had told them this story and not the seventh, or the eighth. Truthfully Finn just loved to hear all of Poe’s stories, loved to hear how he told stories of heroes and villains, of light and dark and evil and love. Sometimes Rey would close her eyes when Poe told this story, as though she was trying to picture it all but Finn always kept his eyes on Poe; loved watching the expressions on his face as he told the tales.
“It ends like this. They lived happily ever after.” And Poe meant every word.