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Everyone leaves, eventually.
she has always been here, trying to not choke
on the tick marks, the shuffled cards
and sometimes at night, when she lies under the stars,
she can dream, for a still, silent moment-
of love, of people to love, of people to love who stay
but this all she knows, so this where she suffers her days-
and there it is again, an ache in heart, no matter how she pushes it down
To belong, she wonders persistently, to belong to a heart other than my own.
She had always been in Jakku.
At least, that’s what her mind tries to convince her. The scratch marks on her wall are nothing, a calendar of emptiness. The dust would swallow her up if she wasn’t careful, if she didn’t crawl up every morning. What am I living for? She wonders, as she clings onto helmets, onto a scrap of a memory, a vague ghost of a dream that whispers this is not where you are from.
Rey does not know what she wants. She wants….to not starve. She wants to not thirst. She wants to fly away in a ship, if ever her courage would find her, and she wants to live the stories all people of the dust whisper to one another.
She wants a home.
But perhaps the dust is her home.
What are you so afraid of?
Her life is simple. Chokingly quiet, for all the hustle and bustle of the market. Her life is- empty ships, long dead, long forgotten. She curses them for being able to even be forgotten, for the barest chance of being remembered. Her life is- watching the horizon, tracing shapes of who could come, perhaps, someday. Hope is a hard thing to kill if it is all you possess in the world, even if it is only the barest scrap of it. And Rey is chained to hope; it weighs her down, it keeps her where she is, this very spot. Her hope grows as vines over her throat, choking her rationality that is so quick to question, question.
What if they're never coming back?
She has never slept well.
In the night, when her bones and very soul ache too deeply to rest, she clambers to the top of the ghostly, forgotten ships, and looks up, up, deep into the sky. She flings her arms open, and pretends that she can hold this multitude of light in her arms. It would crush her, but she would be content, just to be- bright, for a moment. To not be alone.
What would it be like- to have as many people to love as there are lights in the sky?
And when she looks up, she dreams, despite everything; somehow, there is still something alive deep in her that can dream. She dreams of faraway places, of water in the sky and water on the earth, of stories and myths and legends.
She dreams of her parents.
There is a pull in her, an ache- a desperate call in the dark, a scream in the desert.
She wants- she wants to belong. She wants to be looked for, to be wondered after. She wants care, and she wants to care. She wants the warmth of a name, the crown of a family.
She wants to be known.
But she belongs to the dust, the void, the grey.
She belongs to herself, she always has. She is the call in the dark, the scream in the desert.
But that desperate call for her- the dream that won’t give up, is not satisfied with the dirt and the girl asleep in it. It wants- power, promises, comfort, ease, home. Belonging.
She doesn’t want to be alone.
She wants to be known. And she wants to be known by someone other than the dust and the sand and the sky. She wants people, to fill her home and hearth and heart. She wants life, a life full of love, not just to survive until the next day.
Rey still hopes.
And hope is like a flame- if even the smallest spark of it exists, if only a hint, a scrap, a crumb is there, hope will spread and grow and hurry and survive. It chains her, it chokes her, it will be there forever, it will not leave her side.
Hope is easy to survive on if there is plenty, if there is enough to go around. But when it is only a little, when it is the last drop, when it is all you have left to you, your grand inheritance, it grows into something desperate. It grows into despair, it becomes the darkness of a sky without stars.
Hope is all she has.
That, and the eternal sky, and with it the people who vanished into it who will never come back.
*****************
Everyone leaves, eventually.
He was born being wanted, he supposes
But that thought doesn’t guide him through the silence of the night,
The empty tables, the walks on his own
And sometimes, when he's home, he doesn’t sleep, he doesn’t turn on his lights,
He wonders if he’ll ever be forgiven for being born;
And when he lies awake in his bed, too tired to fret, he dreams-
Someday this emptiness in my soul will not be there,
Someday I’ll be whole- I’ll be better, I’ll be better.
He had always been alone.
He was born into love, he supposes. His parents are kind, kind in the way that it is stitched into their souls and they never notice it, not even as it creeps into the silent actions they do.
His father shows love in crooked smiles, in sideways compliments, backwards promises. His father shows love as someone who never learned to give it- silently, but exactly when it is most needed, even if you no longer believe it is there. His father teaches him to load a gun, to fly a ship, to tease Ben's mother. His father is a scavenger. A scoundrel, Leia grins. Han can only kiss her cheek in response.
Ben feels like he knows him inside and out, even if his father had never known how to look inside Ben.
It was alright. Han was a scavenger, not a savior. Ben knew who his father was.
His mother was a harder being to name.
She was… a princess. A queen. A warrior. An orphan.
A child. A girl. A woman, grown up too soon, thrust into a world that needs her.
A wanderer with no home.
A safe harbor in her hands, and sunlight upon her brow.
Ben used to think he could see light radiate from around his mother when she would stand above a crowd, the lone statue. He loves her, because it is impossible not to, but also because he wants to. He wants to love her. And Leia loves him, Ben knows.
He knows love from her in quiet words and quiet actions, in halfway smiles, in crooked laughs. His mother is always busy, always worrying, always changing, but she kisses Ben’s brow. She teaches him how to shake hands, how to stand still, how to keep your chin up, even when you believe all hope is gone.
His mother is the first person to teach Ben what hope is like, how to cling to it.
Nobody teaches Ben how to love.
He learns to do it silently, like his father, and carefully, like his mother. His parents are good at loving one another- and they are also good at fighting, and hiding. When love turns cold, and it hides under storms and silences, Han can crawl into a spaceship and a different life, he can disappear into the stars and the booming silence of the sky. Leia can cover up her heart by saving people, by the light of wordplay and policies and the shining smiles of people who do not care who she is, really, they just care what peace and prosperity she brings them. They can content themselves with being apart from one another, with not being needed.
So that is all Ben has ever known about love.
He has nowhere to hide when everyone leaves.
He has-
Power, fear, promises. He has whispers of who his family is, who he comes from. He hears stories, scraps of what his parents lived through, what his eternal uncle has done for the world, the universe. He has home in different ships, different planets. He always thought the real home was his mother’s laugh, his father’s lopsided smiles, the pat on his head that must be from Luke, the vague shapes of love and laughter in his life.
There was always- him. Vader.
The first time he hears the name of his grandfather, an old man stops stock-still and stares at Ben. “He looks…so much like the young Vader.” Ben reaches out with his mind when he’s still young and he can’t stop himself, and it is whispered. “Just like Vader was supposed to!” Ben’s mother tells him of how Anakin Skywalker was saved, but fewer people want to tell him of how he even fell in the first place. Ben is twelve before he reads about it on his own, searching for the truth.
He thinks, they think I might be like….this?
They think….I might turn out like that?
He says to himself, I will never be like him. I will never….be terrible, like him.
Just like a monster. I cannot. I will not.
Just like a spark, he keeps that thought to keep himself warm, throughout the night. When his father flies away into the sky, and his mother disappears into her councils, Ben turns out all the lights and sits in the dark and reminisces on that decision.
He was born into love, he supposes.
But the cracks in his soul appear anyway, seemingly overnight.
Everyone leaves, eventually, and you end up all alone in your room with the lights out. What use is there in light if you already know what you’ll see?
What use is there in being loved if you know you’re not worthy of it?
If you’re not worthy of them?
And love….is all he has. It spills over and overflows, he cannot move with love being somewhere, etched into him. Terrible, messy love. His family loves him, and he knows it like he knows the moon is there, even if he cannot see it right now. And he loves them like he knows nothing else, like nothing else in the world is there but them.
But he is nothing. He cannot be his mother, he cannot be his father. He cannot be his uncle, with his belief shining bright. He cannot be….any of them.
So why were you born?
That whisper haunts him, stabbing into his sides. If you cannot be great like them, they’ll leave. Just like they already do.
He swats the thought away, buries it as best he can. But it comes back. They will never love you as you love them. They’ll just leave.
He tries to pay it no attention, but the cracks in his soul know what he fears. You’ll only bring them pain, you know. Someday they’ll see who you really are, and they’ll run away for good.
He will not be that monster.
But maybe….
Maybe he already is one, and no one ever looked long enough to notice.
Maybe he will only bring pain, and hurt, and destruction.
Fear is like a flame- it only takes the smallest spark before it consumes your whole life, touching and changing everything you know. It eats up his hope, his heart, his love.
Fear is all he has left, eventually.
That, and the people who will never be able to survive him.
*************************
Someday, there is a forest. A forest of all places, drenched in perfect, untouched snow. They meet, not for the first time. They clash in a battle of lights and flashes and wills, and that is not for the first time, either.
He looks at her.
Perhaps this sky full of stars, this girl, this snowstorm, will bury the fire all over his lungs, burning fast like fear, this all-devouring flame.
He falls to his knees.
The snow falls gently as ever.