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It’s like Yavin IV all over again.
I don’t know how many times I have lost everyone I have known.
I am older now, and I have weathered many losses and victories in turn. But sometimes I still feel like that nineteen-year-old, missing a home and grieving a planet.
Another set of worlds lost, another close tie broken, another chance at redemption. Another family found. I feel like I’m running in circles.
Checking my schedule, I divert an afternoon meeting for another day and head to the infirmary.
But I can make it right, this time. I have to make it right.
I answer his questions, I hold his hand. He’s lost so much – we all have – but I feel a keen connection to him. The Empire destroyed our lives and way of being. It was hard, but I rebuilt. I had a family, I had a purpose, we won.
And then we didn’t.
It doesn’t have to be like that for Finn. Just because I had a to fight for everything I have, it doesn’t make it right that he faces this alone. He doesn’t have to, not on my watch.
Finn flashes me a grin as he makes those last few steps to his chair. A swell of pride hits me, and then guilt.
He makes his way to the cafeteria after another difficult session of physical therapy, and I try to reconcile the knowledge that my son did this. At first, I was worried Finn would blame me- that he wouldn’t want me near him for what Ben had done. I keep myself just busy enough that I don’t have to think about what pushed him to the dark side. About whether it was my fault. It wasn’t easy growing up, maybe I had been too hard on him.
I’d lost my seat in the Senate- the scattering of Alderaan’s diaspora was so far that no one could really justify a representative. I threw myself into the Rebel Alliance and rebuilding the New Republic. But I was a teenager- a junior official, who’d managed to be in the right place at the right time. No one took me very seriously- and honestly, who would?
It’s not like I had a wealth of references who knew me, and not my father. Bail, bless him, was a good man, but he didn’t leave very clear instructions. I don’t know if any of us thought we’d win- or plan for what came next.
Who plans for next week, when you can already see tomorrow’s dead?
I get up, and I feel too old. My body is not what it was, and everytime I feel I like I might have a handle, it slips away. But he’s not alone, not like I was. I have never been a storm trooper; he’s never been a politician. But I know what it’s like to wake up one day, and by the end of it everything you know is gone, and you can never go back.
He doesn’t have to be alone.