You hear little from the inside of your cell, noise dampened alongside everything else. There’s no way of knowing if it’s because they’re trying to be kind or trying to drive you mad. It’s so quiet that the ringing in your ears does double the work; the sound keeps your mind focused on the moment, this very moment, each one as it comes, and distracts you from the future, a future that will soon become a present that will become the past that will become something else entirely. In your time, you’ve read the scriptures of so many Force cults that they’ve begun to blur together, but most of them concur on one point:
This is not the end.
You can only hope the scriptures are wrong even though you know for a fact that they’re not. Or rather, you still trust enough in the people who’ve said otherwise to believe the stories they used to tell. You have no proof of your own to guide you, no specters, no visions. No apparitions have seen you around, kid. Nothing that you haven’t brought upon yourself has deigned to haunt you in these, the final days of your life. And yet still, this is not the end.
And that’s the worst part, you think. There is a chasm between you and what comes next, one that no amount of meditation, prayer, cajoling, bargaining, begging can bridge. You have no idea what’s there and you don’t particularly want to know. Your goal has never been immortality after all, not on this plane or the next.
If you could stop what comes next, you would.
Not because you’re afraid of dying, no.
No. That’s not it at all.
It’s something else entirely that you’re afraid of.
*
You dream of archipelagos. Of waves crashing against the shoals. Of golden marlins and sky-faring beasts that look like X-wings from a distance. The name Lew’el sits on your tongue, barely heard, barely even given voice.
It sounds like Luke’s voice.
You awaken from these dreams with your cheeks tight and dry, little left to show for any of it beyond the salt-crusted tracks left behind on your skin.
*
Except for the usual, regular whirr of the droid that brings your meals, you’re entirely alone. If you didn’t already know the place employs sentient creatures, you’d think it’s an entirely automated prison. They have those in some places, mostly First Order territories, but a few of the New Republic’s less well off places have them simply because there are no other options, no money to finance more. You can’t decide if you would prefer one over the other. Nothing as mundane as isolation can even begin to touch the grander tragedies of your life. Whether or not you see another living being is immaterial to whatever peace you’ve managed to spackle and scrap and claw together with both hands and the fierce determination of someone who has nowhere else to go, nothing else to do. Your fate is decided; your attitude is not.
A part of you sneers at yourself for the sentiment. It sounds exactly like something Lor San Tekka, the fool, the believer, would say.
It’s for this reason alone that you startle when the sound of boots hitting duracrete echoes throughout the hallway outside your cell. You’ve learned not to expect it. The fact that it takes you by surprise anyway, that’s the troubling part.
You reach out with senses that are rusty, malformed from disuse. They feel nothing, touch nothing, struggle against the confines of your mind, so much more secure than any cell. After a moment of struggle, you give up, both wary and weary at once. The urge to press yourself against the force field that holds you in place is almost overwhelming, but you refrain. It might be anyone. A reporter, an investigator, a nobody who wants to cut his teeth against the fearsome former leader of the First Order’s armies, navies, and peoples. They are nothing. They can do you no harm.
But you know the hurried cadence of those boots. And each footfall strikes fear into your heart, and shame, everything you’ve tried to keep at bay for so long and failed. You might be incarcerated, but far more reliable is the cage inside your mind. There is much to fear here. It is no reporter, investigator, or nobody who comes searching for glorious prey.
His approach cuts through one of the hard-won links that hold the remaining pieces of you together. After a moment, the rest tumble away and you’re back on Crait, back piloting that blasted TIE silencer against your mother’s capital ship, back in Tuanul, striking down the people you perceive to be your enemy. You’re stuck behind a mask, your own breath, humid, echoing throughout the interior. Even now, each inhalation sounds like the pathetic gasps of a dying man.
Your gloved hand holds tight to a lightsaber that no longer exists; the hum of its purposefully misaligned parts vibrates against your palm. There is so much more power in damaged, unpredictable things.
A part of you scrabbles for the scraps of your self-control, knows that you’ve weathered much worse than this, but another part is just as certain that you’ll prove everyone right once and for all.
The footsteps stop. A shadow falls, muddled, through the wall made of translucent, pure power.
“You cut your hair,” Poe Dameron says, somehow having reached your cell before you’re ready for him to and that’s so very like him that you almost laugh. There’s a bitter, biting smile on his mouth and you sense—not through the Force, simply through instinct—that there’s a story here, that this incongruous statement means something to him that you’ll never be privy to. You want to hate him for speaking in riddles, but your insides have long been scraped of anything as simple as hate.
Longer still has it been since you’ve felt love, but you don’t mourn that fact now, not like you do for this far fresher sting.
But this is fair, too. This is what you’d never known you needed.
You grab hold of that sting, keep it close. This is how you rebuild yourself now, by focusing on it.
“I didn’t have a choice,” you answer, bland. Your voice cracks around vocal cords trained to believe they are obsolescent. There’s a droid that comes at haphazard intervals, with razors and determination. You still sometimes reach for strands that once fell to your shoulders, thinking you might braid back the more troublesome pieces. That isn’t something you’ve done in years—or even wanted to do in longer than that. Now that the option has been taken away from you, it’s sometimes all you think about. All you can do is scrub your hand across the fuzz at the back of your neck and wonder if you’ll remain here long enough to feel the slip of your hair between your fingers again.
The past always seems to catch up to you in the strangest ways.
Poe wouldn’t be here if that weren’t true.
He tips his head in acknowledgment, his mind still on the conversation you’re both having, his lips quirking to one side in consideration. You’ve already moved on to wondering why he’s here and whether he even knows the answer himself. “That’s prison for you.”
An awkward silence falls between you, as fragile as the shimmering, wavering image Poe presents to you from behind the force field. Like a mirage, a false image. It’s not a true gleam you see in his eyes, but the effect is haunting despite the inaccuracy of it. Maybe even more haunting than if it had been genuine. You’ve caused enough people anguish to understand the way it can manifest in people. The fact that Poe is here, now, and seemingly calm about it doesn’t make quite as much sense as a glint of misery.
Anguish, you get, and misery. Utter indifference—and from Poe at that, who’s never been indifferent about a single thing in his life—is a new experience for you.
“Why are you here?” you ask, already tiring of this interview—if that’s even what this is. You haven’t seen another living being in months and this is definitely not the way you would have wanted it to happen even if that fact bothered you more. “I didn’t know to expect visitors. I didn’t even know I was allowed them.”
“It’s your lucky day then,” Poe spits out and this time the flash you see in his eyes is most certainly from him. That’s no mere artifact of the field between them, no. That’s one-hundred percent Poe Dameron spite right there. That spark is more comforting than you want it to be.
You dredge up the carcass of your old self from the swamp that sits in place of your heart. This is Poe’s true gift. He sure as hells knows how to get at a person. “I take it it’s not yours?” you ask, dry, looking at your feet instead of at him. Your boot heels tap against the floor. You are, you realize, a little embarrassed to be meeting him while sitting on the cot upon which you sleep. Perhaps it’s a miracle that you can still feel something as mundane as embarrassment, but a burst of annoyance at that fact manages to prickle along your nerves anyway. Another tiny miracle.
Poe crosses his arms and narrows his eyes. His hair, you note, is nearly the same exact length it’s always been, though his curls are a little less tamed than you remember. A few fall across his forehead, help shadow his face to what small degree they manage. No part of you longs to reach out and push them away from his forehead. Both of you are too far away from one another for that.
“Seeing you again will never be a highlight, I can say that for certain.”
That’s not the cruelest thing he could say to you. The words can’t even bring themselves to strike a glancing blow. That’s nothing like the Poe you remember, who always struck quickly, quietly, and efficiently. You look at him as closely as you dare and see a new smattering of fine lines around his eyes and mouth. The curls you’d thought merely more wild than you remember are now shot through with the occasional silver strand. His jaw, too, is shadowed with graying stubble.
He looks as tired as you feel, but more settled, too. Distinguished. Like nothing at all can stick to him, not like it used to, back when anything and everything tore him up inside.
You can’t figure out if you regret the change or not. There’d been something so vibrant about the man Poe had been. This one doesn’t quite compare, is diminished in ways you don’t quite understand and don’t particularly want to. This is not the man you loved once, but he could have been. “Then why bother?”
Poe’s mouth twitches and his eyes flash, daring you to do something foolish. But you have already done a lifetime’s worth of foolish things. You won’t rise to this bait, not the way Poe wants you to. If Poe is going to leave, it will be of his own accord, not because you have chased him off. Not now. Not this time.
You’re not lonely; you don’t know how to be that, but you are—you know you don’t want to be the reason Poe turns away for the final time. This, at least, feels important. Important enough that when Poe doesn’t answer, you don’t push or do anything more than tilt your head again. You don’t stand either, fearful that Poe will take it as a challenge and clam up further. It comes to you suddenly, obvious: it wasn’t his own choice that brought him here. Of course he wouldn’t come here of his own accord. Why would he?
There were only a handful of people who could force such a task upon him and they—
They were already dead.
Every last one of them.
Your head shakes and you long for the sort of braids that you won’t have time to grow before…
“Who spoke with you?”
Poe’s head snaps up and his eyes hone in on yours with such laser focus and so much hatred that you would fear for your safety if he had more than the usual degree of Force sensitivity found in exceptional pilots the galaxy over. No power would save you from his wrath otherwise. Nor, you think, would you want it to. This is the Poe you remember, the Poe you helped hone into the weapon he’d been for the Resistance, an inadvertent side effect of all the things you did to the people he loved.
Including yourself if you allow yourself that much indulgence on the matter. Because he did once love you, too, or who you were before you killed him—or thought you did, until you resurrected an imperfect shade of him. You wouldn’t normally think like this. Any other time, you’d only allow yourself the comfort that what you became bears little on the life he’s led; he’d never give you the satisfaction of letting you dictate how he gets by. You have no idea what he does know, where he ended up, how he feels through the day-to-day trials of his existence. You would like to imagine he gets by, that he dates and takes lovers, works a job he enjoys and comes home from every day satisfied.
It’s not the life you would have wanted with him—you never let yourself think about that—but it is a life, and the sort of one that most people cherish and fight for and die to protect.
The ring that belonged to his mother still hangs around his neck, telling you everything you need to know, but the chain is sturdier than you remember it being, more permanent.
He wears it like he expects it to always be there.
That answers that, you suppose.
You feel… sadness for him. And that sadness would consume you, has consumed you, will likely find a way to consume you again before the end. You’re not looking forward to that moment, but you can’t deny that you will deserve it, do deserve it, have deserved it. For every bit of hell you’ve inflicted on others, you deserve more than that in return.
“Who do you think?” Poe’s voice vibrates with brittleness, as though one wrong word would shatter him into a thousand pieces.
The answer? Truly, it could have been anyone. The Force works in mysterious ways and as far as you can tell, it’s been stranger than normal ever since—
Well, the Supreme Leader had said there’d been an awakening, hadn’t he? The Force ebbs and flows now in ways you don’t remember from your youth. There is no great Darkness blotting the warp and weft of its fabric, but there is no blinding, shimmering grand Light either. You and your opposite have guaranteed that much. In that final confrontation, you’ve ensured peace, both of you have, and yet the Force already ripples as it recovers from the aftershocks. It might be a comfort to you if you let it. The Force persists despite you. It holds the galaxy together still.
You are no longer arrogant enough to believe things will not go back to the way they were; this balance you bought will only hold until the next cycle of Force-damned and Force-blessed disruptions wreaks its havoc upon the cosmos. The galaxy continues to cycle, destructive and creative and destructive in turns.
You weary so of destruction and creativity and destruction.
Nothing you have done will leave a mark forever. You are grateful for that much, at least.
It is a mercy to know it’s not your responsibility any longer. The Republic has stripped all but the waiting from you. You could cry at the feet of the judge responsible, a woman who doesn’t know a thing about you beyond what the prosecutors at your tribunal had told her. Your defenders had tried so valiantly to save you—no, not valiantly, they hadn’t considered themselves heroes for putting forth a solid defense, it had merely been an abhorrent, necessary job to them that would force them into the footnotes of history as The Beings Who Defended Supreme Leader Solo whether they wanted to be there or not. They’d honored justice more than they hated you, a rare commodity in this galaxy that would have seen you executed in the immediate aftermath of the war as a sign, a symbol, a violent, punctuating conclusion to the fight you’d pushed so far to the brink that it’s a wonder anything came back from it.
“The people of Apalarian VI would consider you exalted by god,” you answer.
“The people of Apalarian VI know shit about it then.” His arms wrap around his elbows and his fingers dig into the soft, worn leather of his jacket. His fingernails, for all that you know, might be the only thing that holds him together. “There’s nothing exalted about—” He grits his teeth and says nothing more. Not for a long moment anyway, his eyes going distant, lost in memories. “—we’re going on a trip.”
His tone brooks no arguments and offers no hints as to what it means.
You consider asking, but you know better than to expect an answer. And besides, you don’t particularly want to know.
The time it takes to ready for departure is minimal, shockingly so, and not only because you have nothing to take, nothing to pack or prepare. Still, this is a maximum security facility in which only the most heinous of criminals reside. You are isolated by miles of red tape, the justice system, and your status as the most hated individual in the entire Republic. There’s no reason you should be allowed out in anything less than weeks, but Poe disappears for about thirty minutes and returns again, one of the enforcer droids at his side.
After a moment, the force field disengages and a moment after that, the enforcer droid steps back. Its ocular sensors flash red and then flip to blue. Standby mode.
If you wanted to, you could disable it entirely and take Poe out, too. He seems to know it as well; his hands reach for a blaster that isn’t there, his fingers tightening into a fist at his sides. You’re not sure he wouldn’t shoot you if given half the chance, no matter what his spectral visitor had told him to do. There’s too much bad blood between you to so easily fix though. Poe may have been loyal to the people most interested in protecting you, but they are no longer a shield against harm. And he’s a man with wants and needs as much as anyone else.
One of those wants, those needs, may well be seeing you ended.
So end it, you think. It would be cleaner than this.
You do nothing to provoke him and he does nothing to suggest he intends to kill you. Instead, he jerks his head toward the doorway you haven’t stepped foot through in more years than you care to count and doesn’t bother to wait and see if you follow. You’re fairly certain that he’d be as glad as not to have you stubbornly avoid doing so.
You do so hate to disappoint him, but you follow him anyway, you do as you’ve been told and you hope that one of you can find some peace in that. Him possibly, since you don’t anticipate anything of the sort for yourself.
“Where are we going?” you can’t help but ask, your curiosity in this instance finally getting the better of you. You might not want to know why you’re going there, but knowing the location… well, you can’t always help yourself. That’s all there is to it. Poe invites all sorts of small impositions. Even when you know better. Even though you owe you him a great deal more than you can repay already and not imposing upon him would be a start. He’d helped stop you when you couldn’t—or wouldn’t—stop yourself. You’d been grateful for that, though less so when he’d turned you over to the Republic authorities instead of taking what had been his by right as the leader of what remained of the newest iteration of the Rebellion.
Frontier justice. Surely it would have placated the Rebels who remained after you massacred them.
But he’d seen further ahead than most of them—a surprising fact given his past history of only seeing what was right in front of his face and chasing it like a hawk sighting prey—and had earned himself a commendation instead of a court martial upon returning to Republic space. He’d said some pretty words about healing the wounds the First Order had inflicted upon them all, words written for General Organa by her aids. They’d had her cadence and Poe’d done well, but not well enough. It would never, from Poe’s lips, become one of the great speeches of Republic history.
Not the way it would have been if General Organa had been alive to shape and recite it herself.
Even so, every Rebellion survivor has been deemed a hero instead of a criminal by the weight and dignity of Poe’s words. That speech sent him places, made him into so much more than he’d ever have wanted to be.
If you were more cynical, you’d call it a coup, bloodless and clamored for though it might have been.
If Poe hadn’t looked so miserable at all that power he’d accrued, you’d call it a political masterstroke.
But you’re a realist these days and the truth is as simple as this: Poe Dameron had wanted every former Rebel to come home to their families who’d remained behind. And if that had required turning every last First Order officer over to the Republic to allow them the pound of flesh they’d been too cowardly to take when it had mattered the most, that doesn’t seem to have troubled Poe much. Even if Poe had more reason than most to want to keep you for himself and his closest compatriots to dispatch as they saw fit.
Poe probably hates the power he now wields, the influence, but everyone has payments to make to fate and his is the gift-curse of responsibility.
For a hotshot who’d expected to die sometime between first push and last, that has to hurt.
“You’re going where I take you,” Poe answers after what feels like an hour’s delay. Time flows strangely here—or perhaps it’s merely your perception of it. “And you’ll stop complaining about it if you know what’s good for you.”
It’s enough of a cliché, the words falling awkwardly in the space between the pair of you, that you laugh, deep and bitter. “You sound like a goon from a bad holonovel.”
“You watch a lot of bad holonovels in here?” He turns and looks at you briefly as you wait for the enforcer droid to key in the code that would open the lift. His eyebrow quirks in what you might call morbid amusement. From the looks of it, he doesn’t want to think too hard about how your days go.
Long and slow and devoid of anything except the meals promised to him by the various laws that codified the treatment of prisoners, even prisoners as exceptional as him. “No,” you reply, cool. “I don’t watch any.”
He sniffs, almost laughs, and shakes his head, none of it in amusement. You think you hear the words, that must suck for you, but you can’t be certain of it and before you can say anything, the door to the lift opens and the moment has passed.
He says nothing else and you manage to keep your mouth shut the rest of the way.
It’s going to be a long trip, no matter how far away you have to go. You settle in for an arduous journey and know that no matter how bad it is, it can’t be any worse than sitting here for even another minute.
You shouldn’t be thinking like that, you tell yourself, because the minute you come back here, it’ll only be that much worse to stay.
*
The quick jump to hyperspace is as familiar as breathing to you, so much so that you ache in remembrance of the freedom you’d always taken for granted. Poe doesn’t let you into the cockpit, but when you close your eyes, you see the long stretched white of stars, the twisting coruscating light that follows.
You feel like you’re home for the first time in a very, very long time.
You don’t know how to feel contentment anymore, but if you could, you think it would be something like this.
*
You know even before he does it that you’ve reached your destination, that a short trip through sublight and you’ll have the answer you’ve been waiting for for more hours than you’d expected to even have to wait. When the ship shudders and makes the never quite smooth transition out of hyperspace, you feel your mouth quirk in satisfaction that you’d been right, that you haven’t lost this part of yourself, too.
When the comms crackle to life and Poe’s voice issues tinnily from it to say, “We’re here,” like it wasn’t already obvious, you almost smile. He clears his throat and says, “I hope you, uh, brought your raincoat.”
Before you can ask why, you hear the pattering of water against the ship and then: not pattering, but a pummeling deluge, constant for the handful of moments you keep your full attention on it. It’s loud enough that you can’t actually hear the door that separates the cockpit from the rest of the ship and you’re almost surprised when Poe steps up to you, shrugging into a different jacket that doesn’t look like it’ll do much better in a storm than the one he’d worn while picking you up.
You’re even more worse off than that, but you can’t bring yourself to mind too much. You hadn’t expected to see the outside of your prison cell again. Even the cramped confines of this ship is worthwhile; even a rainstorm is a novelty.
You never liked the rain before.
Poe’s eyes narrow and he gives you a strange look. “Welcome to Lew’el,” he says as though that’s supposed to mean something to you. “Your—” His mouth twists into an ugly grimace. “I guess Skywalker never got around to telling you about it, huh?” He scratches at the base of his neck and lifts first one shoulder than the other. You imagine his muscles rippling under the motions, tensing and relaxing in turn, until you remember that that’s not something that belongs to you any longer. “Figures.”
Anger twitches at the base of your spine, tries to take root in the space between your vertebrae, climb your spine and choke you about your neck. But there is no soil in which it can grow and so it withers, impotent, and dies inside of you leaving behind little but coldness and the knowledge that Luke Skywalker is still a sore subject for you. The past still haunts you in all the ways that truly matter.
Let the past die, you think, scoffing. Kill it if you have to.
You’d shake your past self, kill him if you could, so arrogant in his manifesto-sharp certainty that you’re nearly sick with how much envy you still harbor. How nice it had been for him to believe in something so deeply during such comparatively simple times. Those diatribes had fallen from lips that didn’t understand the true depths of the bullshit they were spewing. You hadn’t had much back then, you know that, but by the Force you’d been so sure on this one point, this one single point. You could have gotten drunk on that conviction; you could have slaughtered the galaxy with it—and you almost did.
Let the past die.
You can’t kill something that doesn’t exist. Its armor is solid, seamless. There are no weaknesses through which to strike, to hurt, to maim. You can’t even slow it down. The past writhes through the present and lays traps well into the future. It’s there with you always, clinging tight with talons sharpened on the razor-wire of experience. Your former self was just too stupid to realize any of it.
As Poe might say: figures.
His fist slams against the control switch for the shuttle’s hatch and with a hiss almost as violent as the storm outside, it opens. Shuddering, the ramp lowers and you’re immediately hit with a billowing gust of frigid, salt-tinged air. Sand peppers your face and the sudden barometric change almost takes your breath away.
It’s so very humid and so very uncomfortable and you want to turn back. There’s nothing for you here. Novelty be damned.
When the wind rips at your clothing this time, it’s not just a physical attack. Every part of you feels buffeted by the onslaught. The sand would scour you; the rain would erode every inch of you; the sun, whenever it comes back out, would bleach the remnants of anything recognizably yours. After a moment, you settle. You yearn. You want things you haven’t wanted in years and know better than to hope for.
You and the storm are one and the same and you feel more peace than you’ve known since the General first sent you away, your father backing up her call.
“What is this place?” you ask, not expecting an answer, not really wanting one.
Poe eyes you, suspicious. “You’re supposed to know that,” he says through clenched, chattering teeth. His curls take a beating from the rain, hang heavy in his eyes and across his forehead. They drip water onto the floor of the shuttle. He blinks through eyelashes that clump together in a bid for safety in numbers.
“That something else dear uncle Luke told you?” You jerk your head toward the gray-brown sand outside, soaked through already with water.
Poe’s eyebrow arches and his mouth pinches and you don’t understand why Poe won’t talk about this one thing. Still, he gives nothing up and you’re no closer to deciding which of your illustrious family members has seen fit to visit him than you were before you’d so inelegantly prodded for an answer. For a moment, you’re back on the Finalizer, gloved fingertips nearly touching his bloody temple. It had been so much easier then. Even doing battle inside his mind for his precious droid’s location, struck by the laser fire from a dozen X-wings, manifestations of Poe’s mental defenses, weak though they may have been in the end, had been easier than trying to gauge anything from the steely-eyed glare he gives you now.
“Can we just do this thing?” Poe asks, plaintive, more than a little whiny.
“You’re not just my pilot?” you ask.
“I can’t exactly let you out of my sight, can I? They’d be throwing me into prison as a collaborator.”
This doesn’t feel like the right time to point out that you’re a Force-user. A rusty, painfully out of practice Force-user, a Force-user who’s had their abilities dampened by years of quite-probably-illegal therapies forced upon them by those same enforcer droids that freed you, but a Force-user all the same.
Besides, you’re bigger than he is. Even if he now has a blaster, it’s possible you could escape.
It might be a sign of progress that you haven’t once considered doing it. You’ve never given it a shot before and there’s nowhere in the galaxy you can go now where you can be truly free. The inside of your cell is no different than the beach outside of this shuttle. That’s something Luke could never have taught you. This you learned all on your own
You want to argue. You intend to argue. But before you can think of something to say, a pair of children rush toward you. They’re dressed for the weather in hooded cloaks made of some sleek marine creatures’s skins. They are black and sheened in the weak, storm-ridden light, and water streams in rivulets down the fronts of each. Beneath the hoods, these kids peer curiously at you—and only you.
Poe might as well not even be there, which seemed to serve him well enough as he crosses his arms and leans against the side of the open hatch.
“Aya said you would come,” the one on the left says.
“She likes to be called Flux,” the other replies, gruff for a kid. This is an age-old argument between them if the first one’s rolled eyes are any indication. Of course, they’re seven if they’re a day, so that means little enough to you, who doesn’t even really recall what it was like to be seven, other than that you were small and fearful of everything and everyone and wouldn’t have argued with another seven year old about—
“Who are you?” you ask before they can launch into a full-blown fight over names.
“I’m Siiva,” the first one says, drawing out the vowels of their name. She point at her bristly companion. “That’s Rewwn.”
“Good to meet you both,” Poe says quickly, pushing himself away from the hatch’s surface. His hands wrap around each of their small shoulders as he stoops a little to better look them in the eye. “Why don’t you take us to Aya?”
“It’s Flux,” Rewwn insists, stubbornly jutting out her lower lip. You remember a time when you did the same thing. And it had worked about as well for you as it had for Rewwn here—at least with your father. The general had been another matter entirely.
“Flux,” Poe says easily, as though that’s what he’d meant to say the whole time. You can imagine the smile that graces his face now, one meant to soothe. I’m your friend is what that smile says. Trust me. The kid certainly seems appeased, turning abruptly and racing back the way they came. Her legs rise high in the air to keep from getting too mired in the soaked through sand. “I guess we should follow your pal, huh, Siiva?”
Siiva shrugs her shoulders. “I guess.” And then she, too, is off, running and laughing through the rain, arms thrown out. You were definitely never like that when you were a child, but if the brief, sizzling quirk of a smile that appears on Poe’s face is any indication, then he certainly remembers being like that himself.
You wish, among all the other things you’d change about your life, that you’d known him at that time, that you even knew what he looked like when he was that age. All curls and eyes, you decide, and maybe a starfighter pilot’s helmet.
It’s easy to imagine him at that age with a helmet.
Why had you never asked when you had the chance? When Poe would’ve happily told you everything, given you everything, even if it was with a sarcastic quip at the ready. Poe’s a generous man deep down inside, but he likes to pretend otherwise when it suits him. It had always suited him with you and you’re still not entirely sure why.
“What are you looking at?” Poe asks, throwing his hand out to indicate the settlement you’re sure exists just over the dark nearby dune where Siiva and Rewwn are currently climbing on all four limbs. You don’t realize until he asks, unhappy, that you might have been staring.
Your cheeks warm, but with how dark and miserable it is outside, you think you’re safe enough from scrutiny. “Nothing,” you say, because admitting the truth is something neither of you want.
You move to step past him, your shoulders barely brushing as he all but plasters himself against the hatch to avoid your touch, and gasp as your boot touches the sludgy, wet sand. You feel nothing at first; a void grips at your heart and that terrifies you in a way you’ve almost never experienced, not even when Snoke… well, when your ideas about the Force were twisted into something else entirely by him. You wonder what madness Poe has walked you into, what you’ve trusted him to deliver you to, and nearly stumble. Hands on knees, you don’t turn to look at him, but you want to. He wouldn’t know this is a betrayal, not the way he is—no non-Force-sensitive being would—but you are fully willing to unleash—
An undertow rips your footing out from beneath you, yanks you off-balance and it’s only the strength of your will alone that keeps you upright. This isn’t an island you’ve landed on, no. It’s a thousand-billion grains of feldspar and mica and minerals you can’t even name that could only be present in this particular mix on this particular planet at this particular time. It’s millions of crabs and worms and insects digging about in the land searching for food among the detritus of their fallen brethren creatures in an endless cycle of birth, life, consumption, death. It’s a thousand nearby birds gliding on turbulent pockets of air as they dive at the fish that fight against the ocean’s currents. It’s hundreds of people huddled together, chilled to the bone around dozens of fires telling thirty different stories about the tide as they laugh and find comfort in one other, mending nets and clothing and relationships when while there’s nothing more pressing to do than wait out the storm.
Not the tide. That’s not what they’re talking about.
No. It’s the Tide. You’re sure of that. There is a distinction and one you recognize well.
The words hang, palpable, in the air, whispers given hazy shape and form. The Tide. You’d have to be completely incompetent in the ways of the Force to not know what they truly mean.
You gasp, unable to catch your breath for all that happens around you. The Force is present here in a way you’ve never experienced before, never thought could be possible. Dragging air into your lungs feels so much like drowning, like strangulation that your fingers lift to press against your neck. Your pulse throbs and bounds against your palm.
Why in all the hells would Poe bring you here?
Why hadn’t Luke told you this place exists before?
What are you supposed to do here? Why now?
“Let’s get this over with,” Poe says, noticing nothing amiss about you or the situation around you. It must be lonely for people like Poe; the galaxy must be so quiet. Probably it’s restful. Hopefully, it is. Then again, with the strain around Poe’s eyes, maybe he senses something, too. You’d have to be a complete Force null to not sense that this place is something else all together. He wouldn’t know what it is he’s feeling, but surely he’s feeling something.
Lightning lashes across the sky, thunder snapping overhead nearly as quickly behind the bright flash of light that seemed to illuminate everything in sharp relief, deep black shadow and harsh blue-tinged white.
Poe flips the collar of his jacket up and hunches forward, miserable and cranky as they trudge toward the encampment. He takes the lead from you, determining your route forward because you’re too distracted by the world around you to take notice of where you’re going. Lew’el, Poe had called this place. You’ve never heard of it outside of a dream that must not have been a dream. You’ve never even imagined its like, in sleep or awake.
How had Luke learned of it? You and he used to spend hours pouring over old, dusty tomes searching for answers. Surely you wouldn’t have missed a find as big as this.
Surely Luke wouldn’t have hidden it from you.
You tamp down on your own naïveté. Whatever else Luke was willing or unwilling to do, he’d never been entirely truthful with you. Close enough to it that you could believe in him, be shocked by his actions just before his school’s destruction, waste so much of your time and pain on ensuring he didn’t survive his encounter with you. It wouldn’t have hurt so much if you hadn’t trusted him despite yourself.
He was family. As much as General Organa and your father had been.
And just like with them, you’d failed one another. Sometimes, you’re not sure who was more at fault; at others, you know with a certainty that it had been him—or yourself—or Snoke.
The real truth of it is you don’t know who holds the majority of the culpability. It’s not like it matters all that much anyway, the logical, mathematical breakdown of blame. You’re here now. The rest of your family is dead, moved on to a place you’re terrified to end up, and wouldn’t want to go to regardless.
You shake your head. Water drips from your eyelashes and stings, salt-harsh, at your eyes. This isn’t what you’d wanted at all and you didn’t want to come here to realize it.
None of this is what you wanted.
What you’d wanted more than anything…
That doesn’t matter now either, you think. You’re not even sure you know what you wanted, can’t remember what it was like to not feel the eternal pull of the Force upon you, not just from the Dark Side, but the Light as well.
You’re so tired. So very tired.
Of everything. Of all of it. Of being dragged through life upon the back of a power too great for you to wield and too determined to drag you along to be ignored. For too long, you wanted to be special, stronger than everyone else. Now, you’d give it all up to be normal, a nobody.
You want to be your father’s son, an equal partner for Poe. You want to get by on the same strength and skills most other people do.
You’re pulled from your musings as the pair of you crest the same dune the children had clamored up moments ago. You’d been right in what you’d felt earlier. Few enough people sit huddled beneath tents and near fires that sputter when a particularly healthy gust of wind flares up. Though you’d been quiet upon your approach and the storm is a cacophony of noise, every person lifts their head to look at you, even the ones with their backs turned. Some of them even notice first, turning before their companions raise their heads.
There is a part of you that feels shame at the attention coming your way. The rest merely feels empty.
They can know nothing of your treachery. You just don’t think that’s possible. This is a place forgotten by the galaxy. But somehow they all of them see right into the heart of you.
Whatever of it is left. It can’t possibly impress them.
An older woman nearest to the center of the encampment rises to her feet. Siiva and Rewwn sit on a log opposite the woman—you can tell it’s them even though they’re still covered with their cloaks—and you’re certain they’ve told her about you. Whatever they had to say, it doesn’t cloud her vision, make her peer at you with anything other than openness.
It’s… you haven’t felt that in a long time, much longer than you care to admit. It tugs at you in a way you find uncomfortable. It’s difficult to explain and you’re glad that Poe doesn’t care enough to ask. Once upon a time, he might have wanted to know; once upon a time, he’d wanted to know everything, peppered you with so many questions asked so quickly that you couldn’t keep all of them straight. Can you feel it when I do this? What does that do? How do you manage to lift rocks with your thoughts? Doesn’t it scare you?
Your answers then had been easy, straightforward and offered as quickly as they’d been asked for. Now, it’s far more complicated.
Everything is so very painfully complicated.
The woman approaches. Her poise nearly staggers you and her quiet affinity for the Force tugs at you in a way you find discomfiting. It reminds you of the twisted bond Snoke had forced open between you and Rey, but this is purer and has nothing at all to do with you. Before you even realize what you’re doing, you relax.
You hadn’t even noticed that you’d tensed up. Nor even when you tensed up to begin with. It might’ve been just moments ago. Or it could have been forever as far as you could tell. It’s like every inch of you feels—safe.
Safe.
She smiles at you, Aya and Flux, one and the same, and you can’t imagine her as anything other than both of those people at once. “We’ve expected you for a long time,” she says, her voice soothing and pleasant to the ears. Like an ever-calm sea, you feel as though you could skip rocks across its surface. Her eyes slip to take in the raucous shoreline nearby. “Come, take a seat around the fire.” Her eyes see everything and if she didn’t somehow know everything that had transpired before, she knows now. “There is much to discuss.”
Poe mutters something about his appreciation of the fact that someone around here is sensible and follows her even more quickly than you do. He hunches even further into himself as he walks, head down, back bent forward. You think you see a shiver wrack his frame, but it’s not your place any longer to notice things like that, so you shove it as forcefully from your mind as you can.
It hurts more than you might have thought it would to deny yourself this thing that you’ve denied yourself all along, ever since before Poe found himself on the opposite side of this war of yours, even since you never intended to turn back and face the consequences of all those choices you made. It doesn’t belong to you, this tie that binds you tight to Poe. It belongs to the Ben Solo of before, a man who’d never return, maybe never even existed to begin with.
Sitting heavily on one of the giant driftwood logs smoothed by years of exposure to sand and wind, Poe shifts slightly to give you room as well. You don’t accept the implied invitation immediately, but when you realize it’s your only option except for the soggy sand beneath your feet, you’re less resistant. He doesn’t seem to notice one way or the other when you do sit, utterly uninterested in the fact of your proximity.
“Your master once visited Lew’el. He sends you now to us?” Aya asks, disrupting the piqued line of your thoughts.
You swallow. “My master is dead.” That is true two times over, you realize, and both are your fault entirely.
Her eyes glimmer orange in the firelight; her lips quirk as though they withhold a grand, terrible secret. “That does not answer my question, young man.”
You merely swallow again and you look over at Poe. You don’t feel young at all. “I can’t answer that question.”
Attention flicking to Poe, she tips her head. She doesn’t repeat her question to him and Poe doesn’t offer an answer in return, but she seems to find what she’s looking for regardless. “I suppose it doesn’t really matter,” she says, another secret curling at the corner of her mouth. You perhaps should be more concerned that neither of them will tell you the truth, but it seems like such an unimportant thing that you can’t help but let it go.
You’ve learned something about that in your time. It’s been a hard-won lesson, but it’s truly something you can grasp and shape and use to help you through these exasperating moments.
You don’t know what you would have done before, but it probably would’ve been… pointless, exhausting, painful to you.
Everything was painful to you back then. You were an exposed nerve, every sensation too much and too little at once. You were raw and unfocused and even if you’d wanted to, you never would have learned the lessons you were supposed to.
If things had been different…
But they weren’t—and they can’t be now—and so you’re stuck sitting on a beach in a storm for reasons that no one has seen fit to share with you when you should be rotting in a jail cell until the date the judicial system decides to take its pound of flesh in retribution for his many crimes.
“You would not survive on Lew’el for long,” Aya says for no reason that you can see. You’ve neither asked her for her opinion, nor have you done anything to suggest it would be anymore difficult than surviving in the isolated forests of Luke’s Temple or the duracrete wilderness of the capital ships of the First Order. You’re a survivor; you know this about yourself. It’s maybe the one thing you do know for certain. You’re not proud of it—what you’ve had to do to survive isn’t worthy of pride—but you do recognize it for what it is.
Before you can ask Aya to clarify, she adds, “But that is all right. You do not have to.” She smiles anew, placid, and you wish you felt any of that for yourself. “What do you hope to find here?”
“It wasn’t my choice to come here at all,” you say. “I hope for nothing.”
“You speak more of the truth than you know,” Aya says as Poe glares, incredulous, at the side of your head. You sense that Poe knows more than he says and you sense, too, that he’s happy to keep it that way. What truth could it be? That he hates you? That he regrets ever knowing you? That’s not news. And despite everything, you believe that Poe’s loyalty to General Organa will keep him from withholding anything truly important. He can have the spite he feels and express it, too. Whether it helps or not… you don’t care quite as much about that.
You’ve never claimed to be perfect.
Aya rises to her feet again and gathers her robe in her hands. “Enjoy our hospitality, Poe Dameron,” she said, tapping him lightly on the shoulder. “I should like to borrow Ben Solo for a moment.”
You startle at hearing your name. It’s not often that people call you by it any longer or even seem to remember it. It is a blessing, because just hearing the reminder of your legacy stabs at your heart, a splinter that can’t be removed or shifted. It pains you, needle-sharp, and you know from experience that the ache will remain long after this moment. The only salve you know is distraction and you decide to abuse it now as Aya guides you away from camp.
“You knew Master Skywalker?” The title and name settle, heavy and awkward, on your tongue. It had never sat right with you, you who would have called him uncle and Luke instead.
“For a time,” Aya answers, “when we were young and he was headstrong. He treated the Tide like a bludgeon. I liked him very much.” There is so much fondness in her voice that you are nearly staggered by it. You’ve never known Luke to be headstrong and he never treated the Force with anything but respect, if sometimes grudging it could be. You wish you could have known the man your uncle was before you were sent to him, but even now all you see is the man who’d stood above your bed, who’d thought to kill you for deeds yet undone.
Had it been inevitable even then? And had he known that when you yourself did not? Were his actions those of a wise man or a fool? You prefer to believe you’d made your choice in that moment, but it still makes it easier to think that he would only do that if he’d been certain.
But you can’t be sure. You can’t be sure of anything.
You don’t even think he would have told you if you’d asked.
“I can’t imagine Master Skywalker showing anything but respect for the Force,” you reply. It’s deliberate, your rejection of the name the people here have given to that power that has so defined and damned your life. It is a force, a power. Better not to forget it. Ever. Besides, you can’t bend a tide, but you can twist and reshape the Force into anything you want it to be if you’re strong enough, if you don’t care enough about anything except the pursuit of evil—or even good—ends. The Tide is a lie, but the Force knows itself for what it is.
“Then you need to broaden your imagination, young one, and see past yourself,” she replies. It isn’t a rebuke, though it sounds a good deal like it should be one.
You arch an eyebrow. How many times have other people said nearly the same thing to you? A dozen? A hundred?
Probably more.
“You know why I’m here,” you say. Impatient sparks along your nerves, wends and winds its way through the delicate lattice of veins just beneath the surface of your skin. It flickers and crackles. You could release it into the void if you wanted to, but you harbor it in your chest, keep tight hold on it. The Force is no longer yours. You no longer use it, nor seek comfort from it. It simply exists as something that no longer belongs to you, not because you can’t do exactly what you want, but because you no longer want to.
What more can the Force do to you or for you that it has not already done?
“I do,” Aya answers. “Do you? And answer me truthfully.”
For a moment, you don’t want to answer. You don’t know the answer and you’ve hated nothing more in your life than not knowing something. That your family ensured you didn’t know many things—where you came from, who you are, what you were capable of doing—is only part of it. The rest is an angry, empty clawing in your chest, a void that knowing would fulfill. Knowledge could have saved you, the basest part of you believes. The rest knows that for the simple fallacy it is.
“I really don’t,” you answer. “It’s not often that the man I lov—that I’m dragged away from prison for a field trip.”
“And yet, I think you believe,” she says and she smiles as though you’ve pleased her. “That’s a better response than I’d been led to expect from you.”
You and she walk in silence for a handful of moments, far enough from camp that the water laps at your boots, at the hem of your dark robe. The water soaks in, heavy, the fabric beginning to tug even more insistently at your shoulders. It isn’t any different than the weight you carry with you all the time, so you hardly notice it. “Then why ask at all?”
“Because I value evidence over hearsay. Perhaps my sources want to mislead me. The Tide has its own way of moving. I cannot comprehend all and I can misinterpret anything.” Her eyes search yours, keen and sharp. You suspect she sees things that no one else—except perhaps for Rey—might have been capable of intuiting. That thought sends a hammer through your heart, shattering pieces of you you’d long since thought scabbed over and healed. If not healed, then at least solid, secure. “I am no God.”
Your mouth pinches. “I didn’t think you were.” It’s a churlish, graceless reply, but you are a churlish, graceless man.
She takes it far better than you deserve, reaching for your arm and squeezing your elbow briefly. “No more games, child,” she says. “We can offer you sanctuary here. That is why you’ve come.”
Your eyes narrow. You search the skies, her words, yourself for proof that this is the truth. The skies, her words, you offer yourself nothing. “That’s ridiculous. I’m a Republic war criminal—”
“You have friends.”
You scoff. This, too, is preposterous. “I don’t have those.”
“You have interested parties, then,” Aya concedes with an unhurried tilt of her head, like arguing with you is pointless. Given enough time, she could probably learn how to play you nearly as well as the Supreme Leader had. You find that thought less terrifying than you think you should. “The consequence is the same. You have a choice.”
“Who gave me this choice?” Generosity is not a concept you’re familiar with. And you’ve learned to see strings everywhere. “And why?”
“Important questions with unimportant answers.” She waves her hand. “Under the right circumstances, the Tide shields all. These are the right circumstances for you. You will be safe here, provided for so long as you contribute your share. You can find peace. And you will never leave. Is that a price worth paying?”
The way she says it, you know what the answer is supposed to be.
You are supposed to fall to your knees in gratitude at the turn of your fortunes.
Because the alternative is returning to your jail cell deep in the heart of Republic space. You will be scorned, likely executed in time, forever at the whims of public opinion. These things draw themselves out, your lawyers had said. It’ll take time. Your lawyers doesn’t care.
And neither do you.
“You cannot repent from within a stone cage,” Aya says.
Your teeth creak inside your skull, molars grinding together. “I can’t repent at all,” you say, turning from the storm-tossed shore. Some things are too big for repentance.
“You shouldn’t fear the darkness,” she calls. “Light and dark. It is all one with the Tide.”
Your feet slip on the sand, saturated and shaded to deep brown with rain. You put your hand out, catching your balance without the Force to guide you. It isn’t your first instinct, but you’ve grown so used to denying yourself. “Tell that to my uncle,” you call in response. He adds, more quietly, “If you can.”
She hears you anyway.
“And you think I have not?” She laughs. ”You know the price of the power you wield. There is strength in that, and wisdom. You would be welcomed here. You have refused the call of your gifts. There is strength and wisdom in that, too. The Tide is not a tool. You no longer use it as one. We respect that here.”
The crash of thunder swallows your snort of disbelief. You don’t turn around or acknowledge her.
This is just a bigger cage, no different or better than the one back home.
You’ve wasted a trip.
You wonder what Poe will have to say about that.
*
It turns out he has a lot to say about it when you’re standing over him and telling him it’s time to go. At first, he merely stares up at you, slack-jawed. And then the fire ignites in his eyes, a fire you remember and loved once—a part of you still loves it, a part of you that you cannot acknowledge for fear of… simply for fear—and he’s on his feet, shoving at your shoulder.
The people of this village quietly and quickly turn away, pretending they don’t see what’s happening. You, finding an infinitesimal shred of shame in you, grab hold of Poe and push him toward the ship, toward privacy, toward an altercation that has probably been coming for a very, very long time.
“You—” The word is spit out, barely a word at all through the haze of Poe’s anger. “You’ve gotta be kidding me. Do you know how much—”
You don’t look behind you to ensure you’re far enough away to keep you or Poe’s dignity intact. It doesn’t really matter anyway. You’ll both be long gone before the end of the day. At best, you’ll become an aberration that is spoken of when there are no better stories to tell. At worst, you’ll be forgotten entirely. There are lucky worlds that you have not touched, you nor the First Order. And somehow this is one of them. Even more lucky: what is left of Ben Solo cannot do the same damage Supreme Leader Kylo Ren had done.
“People loved you.” Poe’s words are barely above a whisper, but they strike you with as much force as if he’d yelled them from the heavens. “Despite you’re—you’re… despite who you are and what you did. They love you.” He is so very earnest, leaning heavily on that word, love. Love is for other people. You’d never known you had it when you needed it and now it’s too late. “And you’d throw it away? Again?”
Again.
“So you do remember,” you say. You hadn’t been sure.
He slaps you and the ring he wears on the wrong hand, for all the wrong reasons, cuts across your cheek. He must have put it on while you were with Aya, one last damning piece of evidence that there is no place in his heart for anything. You are definitely sure now. It’s less of a relief than you’d like it to be. For one shining, crystal clear moment, you think you can do this. You can stay here. You can accept the gift that has been given to you, do this one thing—for your mother, your uncle, your father, maybe.
For Poe, possibly.
And then the sharp, throbbing pain in your face fades and reality asserts itself anew.
You were never meant for gifts. Gifts turn to curses. Poe knows that as much as you do and he doesn’t need you to remain. There is nothing in him that still cares for what is left of you. His fight is a token one, propelled forward by bitterness and loyalty to the family that cannot let you go. He’d been right. Whether it was his uncle or his mother, it didn’t matter. The people who love you, they’ve burdened him as much as they’ve burdened you.
It’s not fair to him.
But he’ll have resolution, one way or the other, soon enough.
“You’re as selfish as you ever were,” is the last thing he says to you, but he does as you ask, stomps toward the shuttle, goes through all the pre-flight checks. His fingers snap across every button in the cockpit, unvoiced remonstrances that echo in your thoughts.
You should feel relief.
You’ve taken from yourself the chance for repose. There is grace here for the taking, even you see it, and you turn from it. This is what you’d thought you wanted, back when you were stuck in your prison cell. And you give it up now. That has to be worth something in the great imbalances of your life.
There are billions of beings in the galaxy who will draw comfort knowing that you will pay to the fullest extent. There should be grace in that, too.
But all you know is the storm that rages on Lew’el is next to nothing compared to the fury that froths and bubbles inside of Poe’s mind. Even if you had not cut yourself off from the Force entirely, you would sense it.
He dumps you back at the prison you’d only just escaped, surprising the hell out of everyone there. A few of the guards seem pleased even to see you. Not you, precisely. Not you, the person. But you, the symbol, the evil that the Republic has not yet vanquished.
Oh, yes. They’ll have resolution. You feel that in the very marrow of your bones.
You just hope you won’t be around to see it.
That is, you think, the only relief you might ever find.
It’s the only relief you want.
You see a flash in ghostly blue, figures from your past and future both.
It’s the only relief you fear you won’t ever get.