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A pin drops in the middle of the universe and you hear it. Everything around you shatters in a soundless explosion, and all you hear is that tiny pin bouncing on the ground.
Your eyelids flutter as you hold back tears and excuse yourself from the command room. No one follows you or questions you. There is still plenty to keep everyone busy and occupied, so you duck down an empty hallway to a tiny supply closet.
Your hands shake and your chest and shoulder burn, like something slicing right through your bones and organs. It feels like the ground under your feet is also trembling and the walls are closing in. You check the door to make sure that's not the case. The walls are still, the floor is solid.
Outside, you hear people running down the hallway and chattering back in the control room. You trace a line in a crack in the stone wall.
The entire operation is hidden underground; if the First Order bombed the surface, you would be safe for a while, and there are more escape tunnels that lead into the deep forest of the planet. You saw that in your dreams sometimes. Fire and explosions, running barefoot in the mud and sticks, reaching back for your friends, your mother.
Your mother.
You quickly crack the door open a crack to peer into the hallway to check for her. No sign of the general, just your coworkers and some droids. You hold your breath and try to count, but everything starts slipping through the cracks in your head.
The chattering down the hall, the arguing from the command room, the deafening silence that was the absence of your father. You went through training with your uncle, and your mother taught you too, how to block out thoughts and feelings that were not your own, but sometimes you couldn't do it. You didn't think you were strong enough. Not as strong as them, not as strong as your brother.
It was a cracked crevasse in your mind. Your breath catches in your throat at the thought of him. You reach to the spot on your body where the lightsaber had cut through your father, quick and hot, like the sound of a snapping branch. Your heartbeat quickens and you can't breath. Tears run freely down your face.
"Kaydel," someone says. It's far away and staticky; you can't tell if it's in your head or someone calling you from the hallway. You ignore it.
"Breha." The sound of your true name cuts through all of the noise, of the static and the voices.
Your head snaps up. Kaydel Ko is the name of a distant relation. You didn't want people knowing your parents or your lineage; you didn't want people thinking you received your rank because of your last name. There was enough of that in the academy.
You wipe under your eyes and move to a standing position. "General," you say.
And there stands your mother in the doorway. Your beautiful, strong, mother, her arms folded, her head tilted slightly and that half smile on her face, a long recognized look from your childhood. "You ran off," she says.
"I did," you admit, wiping under eyes again. "I had to check some, on the supplies."
She steps in and the door closes behind her. "Take all the time that you need," she says. She speaks with a lump in her throat.
She stands across from you, just...staring, her eyes welled to the brim with tears, but she'll give you the space if you need it, or want it. You thought about running somewhere else. Out the emergency tunnels and deep into the forest, but your feet are stuck, like cement and the weight of it all starts to crumble you from the inside out.
"Amah," you mutter and she's reaching out for you and gathering you into her arms, like you were still a child. The both of you slip to the floor. She threads her fingers through your hair and kisses the top of your head. "I felt it," you sob.
"I did too."
Of course she did. Your uncle, where ever he was, probably felt it too. The Force is strong with your family.
You stay like that for a good, long while, crying. She says a few soothing things to you, but she cries too, holding you tightly. She did that sometimes, embraced you so hard like she was afraid to let you out of her grasp. You don't blame her, not after what happened with Ben.
Ben.
Suddenly the thought of him burns in your chest like coal. You pull back a big and inhale what feels like the first time all day. "I hate him," you say. Your voice sounds like it's been dragged through glass. "I hate him. I want to kill him."
Your mother frowns. "Breha."
You blood boils and you think that it's going to burn and leak right of your skin. The fixtures in the room start to vibrate with your rage. "He can't get away with this. Amah, we have to make him pay. For all of it. For Abba, for what he's done to everyone. Uncle thinks that it's his fault and it's not. It's all Ben."
A box of supplies falls off a shelf as you and the room tremble. She reaches out and takes your hands, rubbing her thumbs over your wrists.
You take a breath and count to ten; the room stops shaking.
"We have to watch our anger," she said. "You know that."
The Darkness flowed through you just as much as the Light. She and your uncle taught you how to resist it, how to work through your anger and rage, through the negative.
Of course she still loves your brother. She is his mother, his creator. In the end, you knew that your father still loved him too.
You wipe under your eyes. "I know," you say, taking another breath. "I know."
She kisses you on the forehead. "We have to keep going," she said. "There's still more work.The fight isn't over yet." She stood up. "You stay here as long as you need." She wiped under her eyes as well and took a deep breath. She was raised a princess, a senator, and now a general. There are stories of your other grandmother, a queen, a senator as well. this steady posture seemed to be etched in your bones.
"I'm ready," you say, quickly standing. "I'm ready."
You go back to your station, and she goes back to hers. People still hustle and bustle around you. Orders are being called out, maps being looked at.
You pick up your headset and plug back into the chatter. The pilots are making progress.
Deep in the back of your head, you hear his voice, calling out to you across the galaxy. You used to play this game as children. See how far you could go and still hear each other.
you know who she is, he says. He's in pain. you know where she comes from.
you'll never get her, you reply. she's stronger than you.
He doesn't answer back.
You wipe under your eyes again and glance up at the map in front of you.