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Reva stumbled into the Lars’ farm with a vague plan of killing the child. It would be something, the closest she could get, it would be enough. Close enough to what she wanted that she could die at peace.
She was met with the indomitable force of the child's surrogate parents, and some shell in her chest cracked open. she fell to her knees before them, sword in the dirt.
“Help me,” she said, and they looked at her and each other with shock.
Kenobi arrived not long after, to the sight of Reva sitting, curled in on herself, at the kitchen table, the Lars across from her. They were watching her warily, but after Kenobi determined no one had been hurt, he turned to her.
Why did you come here, he asked her, an answer demanded, not requested.
She shrugged.
He waited.
“I don’t know.” she said, flatly, unsure. “I don’t know.”
They offered her a job.
Not for pay, they couldn't afford that, but for food, for a bed. She helped with the work, and she watched the child when his protectors had to leave. He was introduced as the nephew of Owen and Beru, Luke. they didn't give her a last name, and Reva wondered how much of the secrecy was Kenobi’s doing.
It wasn't hard work, and he was an easy child to mind, as long as he had enough parts to toy with in the garage. She could stay well away from him, and still keep him safe. It was an arrangement that worked well for her.
It had to be from a distance, of course. She didn't dare go near him. It pulled on her in ways she didn't like, and it was a problem she didn't know how to fix.
A lightsaber to the gut had always done the trick in the past, but these were problems unsolvable with violence. They required emotions, and she couldn't-
She avoided the child. It hurt too much to be near him.
She didn't mind her new life.
Sometimes she missed the clean, uncomplicated hallways of imperial crafts, where she knew her purpose, but most days she was just happy to be alive. The work distracted her from the complicated tangle in her chest, the feeling of tetherlessness, and she could try to put aside the anger that burned inside her.
Roasting in the hot suns was good for that.
One day he approached her. Both his aunt and uncle were out, and she must have been the next in line in his eyes. He looked about as nervous as she felt, and asked her haltingly if she could help him with a repair to his speeder. He couldn't lift it enough to fix what he needed. Usually his uncle would help, but he wasn't here, so would she mind helping for a moment?
It wasn't as if she could say no.
So she follows the boy out to the garage, where a speeder is in a state of disarray, and lifts it for him so he can fiddle with the undercarriage for a few minutes. After the speeder is settled carefully on the ground once more, he grins at her, wide and innocent.
She offers a small smile in return, and it hurts a little less.
She doesn’t approach him on her own yet. It hurt too much to be near him. He was everything she was, young, hopeful, with a family around her, and nothing to fear on his horizon. He had the future she never got, and that was why she had wanted to kill him, but now-
This boy with a brilliant smile, this child so full of life and possibility.
She didn't hate him, anymore. She wanted to be him, but she would never begrudge him his loving family, his future.
She begins to not mind when he sits next to her with his toys, with his toolbox. She stops moving away when he walks by. She cares for him, eventually, and as she knows him more, he knows her more, and she considers him a new family, even if it’s just in the privacy of her own mind.
She doesn't know how he feels about her, but it's enough, for the moment.
There's a particular evening where they are curled on the couch in the living area, mugs of warmed bantha milk- almost empty- clutched in their hands. It was a long day of work, and Owen and Beru are asleep. She had been trying to sleep as well, but it hadn't arrived.
The child- Luke, Luke, had crept into her room, full of anticipatory energy that told her he had had a nightmare, and asked if she could sit with him. She had obliged- she could never say no to him.
She had obliged, and suddenly she had found herself cocooned in blankets as he had murmured his stories of the day to her in a hushed voice.
It’s an evening where Reva can handle the child's warmth against her side, where she almost wants to lift an arm and wrap it over his shoulder and tuck him into her.
He goes quiet, and when he speaks again it's about something that has never occurred to her.
I don’t know who my parents were, he confesses in a low whisper that only a child can manage. No one will tell me. Ben especially. I’m not supposed to ask him about it, Uncle says, but I think he might know something. I think he’s not supposed to tell me.
Reva mulls the words over, letting them slide around in her head. The child's parents could have been anyone, realistically. She couldn't help him with this, at least not right now.
But she didn't know her family, her first family, and she would give a lot to have known them, known anything.
I’ll ask him, she says, and she means it, wholeheartedly. Maybe he’ll tell me.
He looks up at her with wide eyes, and he smiles, a little. She returns it, unflinching.
She does ask Kenobi, next time she sees him. He gives her a firm look and hisses at her to not speak a word to the boy, then tells her a sad, sad story of a woman who died, and her children who lived, and her husband, who is dead but walks the earth in a metal shell. Reva listens, and absorbs the new information into what she knows of the world.
It's not a big change, but it’s a change.
That evening, she lies to the child for the first time.
He wouldn't tell me, she tells him. I don’t know who your father is, I'm sorry.
He looks upset, but not unduly so. Just resigned.
She ruffles his hair, and life moves on.
Some days she looks at him and struggles to reconcile the image of his smiling, golden face with that of his fathers inky, metal helmet, but mostly she puts it aside.
The boy his not his father, and she knows that if she had known her greatest enemies son was in front of her when she had arrived on the farm, she might have killed him, but now, it's so far from her mind it might as well be a core planet for all she that was standing on tatooine.
She has been on the farm for three years when things shift again, almost imperceptibly. Reva is by the door, about to enter the house for dinner, taking off her work boots in favor of house shoes. Inside, she can hear beru and owen pottering around the kitchen, setting the table.
Luke, Owen says. Go and get your sister for dinner.
Reva stops where she is, and stares at the door blankly.
Sister.
She’d been a sister before, the Third Sister. It wasn't a real family, despite the names. It had been a bitter competition.
This was different. This was a real family. Luke's family. Her family. Her family?
She wants it, so badly. She wants to step inside, call Owen uncle, call Beru her aunt, and call Luke her brother. She wants to accept Beru’s forehead kisses with a smile and a groan, wants to let luke wrestle her to the ground and roughhouse with him, wants to fight with him and be assured that they will make up twenty minutes later, wants to protect him from bullies, because he’s her brother. She wants to be his sister.
She thinks that might just be her new purpose.
She snaps back to herself as lukes footsteps approach, and he opens the door to the sight of her. He leaps back with a jolt of surprise, then grins at her, turning around to bolt back to the table.
She hesitates a moment longer, then steps inside.
A family is clearly waiting for her. She’d be a fool to pass it up.
She’s been on the farm for four years when the rebellion gets off the ground. She hears rumors repeated by Owen about how the rebel forces have a fleet, how they’re making a name for themselves. The tiny mewling thing she’d been helping eradicate had claws now, albeit untested, but claws nonetheless.
She considers the idea. There's nothing to suggest, at the moment, that this will go anywhere, that it will get off the ground past where it is. The formation of a fleet is something, but it's not nearly enough to threaten the empire. At the moment, the rebellion is a pipe dream, a happy lie to tell yourself to try and ignore the truth.
She’s more than happy to accept it, but she won’t believe in it, not yet. She knows better than most the power of the empire.
Life moves on, as it is wont to do, and she puts it aside for now. She’s not ready yet anyway.
She’s been on the farm for seven years when the news is announced that the rebellion is real- it's official. A declaration was declared, a line crossed. The empire begins to take the threat seriously, and the rebellion begins recruiting openly. Progress is being made against the empire, and Reva finds herself thrumming with tension.
They are doing good things. She could help. She could be a part of it.
Luke is seventeen, and itching to get off the rock he has lived on his whole life, but there is no way in the two suns that he is getting permission from his aunt or his uncle anytime soon. So he refocuses his attention on his podracing, and Reva-
Reva thinks.
She thinks while she works, she thinks while she eats with her family, she thinks while she helps Luke with his speeder modifications, and she thinks while she tries to sleep.
Sleep doesn't come, and so she thinks some more.
And in the end, she opens the box at the foot of her cot. It contains very little, only the remnants of her armor and a lightsaber wrapped in black cloth.
She unfolds its covering and kneels, contemplating the thing in her hands.
It’s sleek, deadly. It has killed. It has broken, it has maimed, it has destroyed. It can hurt and harm, but-
It is more than that. Its potential is untapped. It can do more. It can do good.
She wraps it up again, puts it back in the box.
Stops.
Takes it out, takes out the armor, and replaces the lightsaber.
The armor goes outside with her. She sets it against the side of the house, contemplates its color, its shape, its curves and hard edges.
She goes and gets Luke, and they gather all the paint they can find in the garage. Together they splash beige and cream and pale pink and white and gray and olive green and red all over the armor's surface.
They stand back and admire their handiwork. It's a riot of color, and the wall of the house is tainted with it, and once it dries they will pick up the pieces and there will be gaps of paint on the wall, and the pieces will feel rough and waxy and sun-warmed under their fingers.
It is unorthodox. It will not be useful as camouflage, not anymore, not with the colors splayed across it.
But it is new. It is not the armor of an imperial soldier, or a commander, or even a warrior for anything. It is new. It is blank, despite its cacophony. It is potential, still retaining its hard edges and curves and shape, but awaiting a new purpose.
She intends to put it to a good one.
She tells Luke the next day. She thinks he might have known. He smiles, a young man full of energy and a future, and hugs her. She feels his arms, strong and safe and family, and remembers the night she first met him, standing, uncertain, in the doorway of the kitchen as she huddled on a chair, hurting and broken.
She's better now, much better, and she embraces him in return. She needs to make amends, wants to do something good with the power she has. She needs to do this.
She doesn't have to explain it to him, and barely has to explain it to Owen and Beru either. They know.
Kenobi knows too, without her even having to say. He just has a twinkle in his eye like he knew all along.
She packs. She looks around her room, once bare and lifeless, now cluttered with the detritus of seven long years of growing and healing. It is in itself a testament to her progress, and she carefully packs a few trinkets in tissue paper to bring with her, a piece of her home.
They send her off with homemade bread in her satchel, her lightsaber hidden underneath the still-warm loaves, and her newly painted armor on full display, except for the bits hidden under the cloak she has buckled over her shoulders.
She will run her fingers over the rough surface, again and again, until it is smooth. It’s a little piece of herself, of her new life, of her family. It's something uniquely her, something no one else can touch.
She finds the rebellion easily, on these outer planets. They welcome her with open arms, yet another castaway of the empire, but they don’t know that.
In the rebellion, she is not the Third Sister, the Grand Inquisitor, right hand of Lord Vader.
To them she is Reva Lars, from Tatooine, force sensitive and ready to fight for the rebellion.
The rebellion is stronger than she thought it would be. It makes sense that they would keep portions of their power hidden from the view of the common public, as a reserve. They fold her into the existing formations, and she rises in the ranks with ease, just like she had in the Empire.
Except this time, the achievement was something she could take pride in, something she could send a holovid home to the farm about, because she was doing something good. Something to be proud of.
The rebellion is a purpose she can throw her whole being into. In a way, she realises she is still fulfilling her original goal. She’s trying to depose the empire, she’s trying to kill vader, but this time, it's a more righteous cause. It causes her some guilt to know that the man she’s trying to kill is the father of her adopted brother, but at the same time, she knows, she’s sure, that if he knew, he would forgive her.
And time marches on, along with the war.
Despite the rebellion's deceptive strength, they are still no realistic match for the Empire. It’s an illogical fight, one that there is no guarantee of winning. Really, they’re fighting a losing battle, and as time crawls forward in the depths of the fiercest battles, the rebellion begins to lose hope.
Leia is a surprise.
Reva had known, vaguely, that Luke had a sister. A real sister. She had even met her, almost tortured her, though she hadn’t known it until kenobi had told her.
But there was something different about knowing and seeing.
When she sees leia organa, diplomat and leader, in front of the rebellion, she is nostalgic for something she has never seen. Luke would do well in the rebellion, as much as she wants him to keep out of danger. He would thrive.
It is said that you should take care what you wish for.
After two years in the rebellion, The Death Star sends shockwaves through the galaxy, and the news of its destruction is met with the great relief of those in the rebellion and outside of it. Within the rebellion, however, there is celebration as the hero’s of the hour are lauded and awarded their due.
Reva, stationed elsewhere, sees a photo of the duo, and nearly stops breathing.
Her brother.
And then she sends him a holomessage in a panic-she doesn’t exchange them often for their own safety, but this is important- to make sure he’s okay and that he’s not hurt, and to ask him how in the two suns he got offplanet without owen and berus permission, and she waits eagerly for a reply.
It’s scarce minutes later, and she can still hear the sounds of celebration in the background when she picks up his incoming call.
Hi reva, he says, and she can hear the smile in his voice. It’s good to hear from you.
She lets herself bask in the relief for a moment, before it is shattered by his next words.
And- um- I tried to send you a message but I couldn’t figure out how to say it, and things got away from me, and-
His breath hitches and reality comes crashing down on her shoulders.
Uncle- Owen and beru- they’re gone. They were killed, by troopers. And- and so is Ben, but that was later.
There’s something roaring in her ears as the words hit her brain, then reflect.
I’m sorry, Luke says, but she barely hears him as it sinks in that most of her family is dead. The only one left is- the only one left-
Luke sniffles, and Reva comes back to the world.
“I’m sorry too,” she whispers, and for the first time in many years, she cries, and many light years away her brother cries with her.
Reva nearly leaves after that. She nearly calls the whole thing quits because what is the point, if there’s nothing to go back to afterwards.
She doesn’t, because wherever she goes she hears stories of Luke, of her brother. Contact is sporadic, but when they can connect she is regaled with stories of his adventures, and she congratulates and commiserates with him at every turn.
And if he can do it, she can too. She has to, because she’s his big sister after all. She has to be a good role model. Set a good example.
And the war continues, for four more years.
And then one day, after six years with the rebellion, she is on mission at a far flung post when the news breaks.
Vader is dead.
That alone is enough to wreath the base in whoops of glee and howls of celebration, but when the photos of the savior of the galaxy were thrown across the holoweb, Reva had her own celebrations.
Her little brother, her Luke. Defeater of the empire.
Oh, she knows the empire isn't over, she knows that the fighting will continue for a good while yet as the empire thrashes its way to its inevitable death, but for now, it's enough to have hope, its enough to know her brother is safe, is sound, and is a hero.
When he calls her in a distraught state a few hours later, she will comfort him, and apologize for keeping her secrets, and they will cry again, because the war is over and there is no one for them to go home to. But they have each other, so though they are sad, they are grateful.
She might not have any other family, but she’s got someone. She’s got Luke.
And it's enough.