Work Text:
Ren clutched Martyn’s hand tighter in his. The stars zipped past the windows of Dogwarts — thank goodness for autopilot, really, because Ren was in no state to pilot. How many near misses would be too many?
Martyn still had rope marks on his arms, a slowly-healing wound carved deep in the flesh of his inner elbow. They tried to be cautious about these sorts of things on the shadier port planets, but Ren had turned around and Martyn was gone. The bad kind of gone, and even if he was back in Ren’s arms a couple hours later, the loss still ached in Ren’s chest.
“Falsie was giving me some Lumian stories,” Ren said. “But she doesn’t know that many of them.”
“Trying to distract me?” Martyn smiled, inched closer on the couch.
“Trying to distract myself,” Ren confessed. “I feel like I let you down, man.”
“Never. You’re not a god, Ren, you’re a dog, and I wouldn’t have you any other way.” Martyn paused for a breath. “I don’t know if I have any stories for you. My parents weren’t really into deep tales of our people, or whatever.”
It was good to just feel Martyn next to him, very much alive. “Falsie said something about a… blacksmith? And the sun?”
“Oh, yeah, that one!” Martyn laughed. “That one’s for babies, basically. Everyone’s got their own little version.”
“Tell me your version then, dude,” Ren said, half to cover the way he was trying to press closer. From the way Martyn threw his arm over Ren’s shoulders, it wasn’t as subtle as he’d thought.
“Don’t expect me to remember everything.” Martyn took a deep breath, like he was steeling himself. “So, once upon a time, there were two suns around Coruscate, a bright one and a dim one.
The bright one was praised among the people for bringing light, and warmth and making the forests grow. There were three days of celebration and, like, volunteering — spoiler, my parents made me do it as a kid, really boring stuff — in the bright sun’s honor. No one cared about the dim one. She was just kind of… there.
And eventually she started feeling like the reason no one cared about her was because she wasn’t shining brightly enough.
Ren pouted, although Martyn couldn’t possibly see it. “No one at all?”
“Nah,” Martyn said. “It’s a story. Now let me get back to it.”
Maybe if she shone more brightly, she could be just as useful as her sister. And if she were just as useful, she would be loved. A two-for-one combo deal, Ren, how could she resist? So the sun decided that she needed to become brighter. She started looking around for how to become brighter.
She looked all over the little trees and the medium trees and the big, big trees for the brightest Lumian dwelling of all. Finally, she found the workshop of the biggest blacksmith in all of Alula — that was the biggest city on the planet when I was a kid, but I think my parents just threw that in there to teach me geography, really — anyway. Where was I?
Right, the sun poked her head into the blacksmith’s shop.
“And the smithy didn’t die?” Ren cut in. “I’ve been pretty close to stars. They almost killed me, dude.”
“He was in Lumian form or something,” Martyn said. His gestures were getting broader, even with the injured arm, like he was starting to get into the rhythm of storytelling. “Just suspend your disbelief.”
“Anything for you.” Ren leaned back, felt a sappy smile tug on his lips.
Like I was saying, the sun asked — no, I’m not gonna do character voices. The sun asked, “What is making your workshop glow so brightly?” and the blacksmith replied, “It’s my forges. Obviously.”
And the sun said, “I wish to take the light of your forges for myself!”
Blacksmith isn’t really the best translation, he’s more like a… coal maker? But the point is he had really big forges, and he made fuel, and he had fuel to power the forges.
The blacksmith said, “Hey man, that’s like, my whole job, I’m not just gonna give you all my stuff.”
And she said, “I am the sun that shines in the sky, and if you do this favor for me, all the world will benefit! Your name will be honored for generations!“ Didn’t work, obviously. No idea what that guy’s name was.
“Aren’t there two suns?” the blacksmith asked, but he let the sun walk in and eat all of the fuel from his furnaces and all of the fuel he was making, and when she walked back out she was so hot and bright that her footsteps scorched the wood.
She sailed back up to the sky and awaited the praise that was surely going to be waiting for her in the morning.
Ren grinned. Some of the stress was easing its way out of him, slowly, but a comforting kind of steadily. “Nice foreshadowing, dude.”
Martyn nudged him “I’m just telling it like my parents did.
Anyway, the sun rose in the morning, and she was so bright. Brighter than the other sun! You couldn’t even look at her without shielding your eyes with both hands.
And she waited for everyone to cheer him, but no one did. The next day, no one cheered her, either. On the third day, the sun started to get impatient. On the fourth day, finally, someone came up to the sky to talk to her. Yeah, it took them long enough.
“Are you planning my feast day?” the sun asked. “Now that I am bringing all this light to the world, I mean.”
The Lumian ambassador looked away like, “uhhhh…”
“I think four days of feasting will be just right,” the sun continued.
“The trees are dying,” the ambassador said. “The pools are drying up. The children can’t go outside for fear of burning to a crisp. You’re shining too brightly!”
“I could never shine too brightly,” the sun protested, but she peered closer at Coruscant. Sure enough, there were hardly any Lumians to be found, and no children at all. As she looked more closely, she saw that the great big forests of the planet were getting brown at the tips.
“Please,” the ambassador said. “Lose some of your light.”
“I just wanted to help,” the sun said miserably. Ren, stop laughing! I’m almost at the end, anyway.
“You help by being you,” the ambassador said. “Please. We know to celebrate you, now.”
And seeing the destruction that her bright fire was causing, the sun sighed once, and pushed all of its newfound light out at once. It went out in lots of different spirals and sparks, and it settled through all the Lumians in all the forests.
“There,” the sun said. She was now just as dim as she had been before, but now the ambassador was shining in dotted patches. Down on Coruscant, all the Lumians had started glowing in different colors, and on the inside they had started glowing too.
And there were another four days of celebration and volunteering added to the calendar, and everything turned out well.
Martyn let out a heavy breath. “The end.”
“That was lovely, dude.” Ren tipped his head back. “You should tell stories more often. Give me a piece of you for when you’re gone.”
“With any luck, I won’t be gone that often.” Martyn coughed. “Wow, that was a lot of talking. Good distraction?”
“Perfect distraction.”
“I hope the message about how maybe you shouldn’t put pressure on yourself to save everyone didn’t go over your head.” Martyn leaned his head on Ren’s shoulder.
“As long as the bit about asking for the things you need didn’t go over yours,” Ren replied, his eyes falling gently closed. “Nap time?”
Martyn sighed, heavy and content. “Nap time.”