Log:On ghosts and family

On Ghosts and Family

Location: Kath Hound base, Nar Shaddaa
Participants: Leia Organa, Luke Skywalker

Leia is a very strong woman.

The things she's had to deal with and continue functioning is enough to cripple most, but she stands tall and presents the iron front that people have come to expect from her. The unbending, unwavering rock of the Rebellion, the Republic, and the Resistance.

But there's only so much one person can possible be asked to endure without showing cracks. Without the weight of it bringing the whole illusionary house of cards down into a heap.

The General walks through the empty Resistance base with the hood of her white robes hanging over her head. The quiet is deafening. It tells the tale of every loss of every young face that followed General Organa against a fools errand against an enemy everyone told her didn't even exist. She looks at those empty halls and it reminds her of all that she, personally, has lost. Of Ben... an ache only a mother can truly appreciate.. she leans against a wall and slides down to where it meets the cold floor.

Of Han.. Taken from her long before he was killed and then killed long before they could make ammends.

Of Luke. Each death felt sharply through the Force that she doesn't understand. Tearing into her resolve until all she can do is cry.

"Aren't you a little young to be this sad?" Is the voice that comes suddenly, filtering in from somewhere beyond the room, seemingly. By the time Leia has the wherewithall to look up, Luke has formed behind her, near one of the walls. It was a callback to the first time she had seen him, and Luke felt appropriate, being that it might be their last moment to share between them.

He was as though he had appeared on Crait, again, in his favored black robes. His hair was neat, his beard shaven down to a respectable look. The sheen about his form matched his once-cerulean eyes, but he had that gentleness about him once again. As if the edge had finally sloughed off and left him ... happy.

Until Crait it had been over a decade since she heard that voice and Leia knew it as familiar as her own.. Her brow furrowed when it filled the empty halls and, for just a minute there, she worried she'd finally lost it. Until she looked up to see the slight glow surrounding her brother and that serene look on a face that had slowly grown more troubled as they'd grown older.

"Luke...?" She asks, one part unsure if she's seeing things and another comfortable.. Somehow she just knew this was real. "How... I.. felt...?" She manages, pushing off whatever she was leaning on to wipe at her eyes, trying... probably in vain.. to clear tears damaged makeup.

"Hello, Leia," Luke offers, as he takes a moment to glance around them. The apparition, as it may be, approached her as a slow pace. "Like old times?" He asks, before bending to sit against the wall beside her. It could easily be waved off as a fever dream, but, he suspected Leia knew better. As he said: nobody is ever truly gone.

Leia continues to stare at the apparition in awe, but she's not so juvenile to reach out and try to see how real the vision is. She's a smart woman even if she didn't have a feeling inside her that this was, in fact, her brother. She looks around after a moment as well, following Luke's gaze at the empty corridors, "The more things change, the more they stay the same..." She finds her voice and looks back to the Cyan blue glow of her brother, "I have this feeling inside me, something I've never felt before. Not in this way, anyways. Like I'm being pulled towards..." She extends her hands trying to put it to words, but there's no words because she doesn't know where or what it is. "Is that what this is?"

Luke seems to consider this for a long moment, though he sits beside her, his eyes don't drift too far from her. "I don't think it's for anyone to say," he says, before pausing, "We set out to make things better, and what we got for it was age." He offers the words bittersweetly, though, his voice lilts gently upward as he speaks. "Father knew when the final price of his sins became too great, even in the end. I fell into his footsteps, but, I don't think that's your fate," he offers.

Leia remains stationary where she sits against the wall with her robes bundled up around her like a white pool of silk, "Everything we did.. it has come back to haunt us. Have we even made a difference? Have I?" She may well think that some of what Luke is telling her now is her own thoughts being spoken back to her, so unfamiliar is the Force is she, but there's another part that is letting repressed senses extend outwards. A welcome to what she's tried to avoid, "I don't think I can lead them anymore.." She says, motioning to the hallways, void of the sounds of soldiers, "I've become a liability. I didn't understand it on the Tydirium, but I know now how you must have felt with Anakin.. With our father."

"Leia," Luke says, shaking his head. "I think they'll need you now more than ever. These scars--They aren't who we are, but they are what made us. I..." He pauses a moment, seeming to take a breath. "I forgot that, and I failed us. You, Ben," Luke pauses again, "Han. You were the one that always knew the way before us, and you'll find your footing now. You can pass on our failures, and be better than either Han or me could have been."

Leia lowers her head and looks at her hands in them with her brow curled inward upon itself, "I hope you're right." She has very rarely been without an assertive kind of confidence that borders on bloated ego, but it was always what kept her going forward in the darkest of times. Now it's dimmed, ever so slightly. "What failures? If you mean running..." She presses her lips together and shakes her head, "I don't intend to run. I intend to learn. The Resistance doesn't need a General anymore, Luke. They need the Force. They need Rey... they need a Skywalker."

"The Resistance has a Skywalker, and you'll teach Rey. Teach her to be better than the Jedi, and more like Leia. I always regret that you never came with me, to learn," Luke explains quietly. "Rey is already stronger than the Jedi--But, she'll need your heart before this is over."

Leia takes a breath and watches her brother, "I should have." She admits, "Maybe I could have... maybe 'we' could have.. We were always stronger together, You, Han, and I." She smiles, but it's a sad expression. "I'm going to miss you both. I wish I'd told Han that... I'm glad I can tell you."

Still she nods and looks around at the empty base. "I'll help her." Which he had to have known already, nodding. "Maybe she and I can..." Reach Ben? Bring him back. She closes her eyes, "Is he still in there, Luke? I know our father came back, but has my son gone too deep?"

"Nobody is ever truly gone," Luke offers quietly. He begins to rise to his feet slowly, and it became clear their time was fading for the moment. "Han and I will be with you, Leia," he says, "Always." More time is taken while Luke eyes Leia carefully. He seems to consider something to say, but it doesn't yet come.

Leia looks up when Luke begins to rise and pushes herself onto her feet as well. Older, sure, but she's hardly a cripple and still has some spring in old bones. She hesitats to say anything, herself, but her eyes say everything she can't vocalize; she's not ready for him to leave... even though she knows that he has to. "So you've told me." She finally manages with a smirk pressing onto her lips, a single tear rolling down her left cheek. "Will I see you again?" She asks this, the answer, no matter what it might be, already weighing heavily on her.

"Of course," Luke offers without hesitation. It was a simple answer, with no clear meaning one way or another. Luke didn't know, but then, he wondered if Leia would ever need him as she had in that moment. It was impossible to tell. "May the Force be with you, Leia," he offers, finally.

Leia sees the answer for what it is and knows exactly what it means, but it's not nearly as sad as she worried it would be. It's calming, warm in that even if she never actually sees her brother again, she will one day join him whereever it is he is now. "I love you, Luke." She's unsure if she's ever actually told him, certainly she had to have, but it seems important now. Despite everything, she feels better. Han and Luke, they are with her.

For the briefest moments, there's a smile on Luke's lips that seemed to count back the years. He may as well have been back in that yellow jacket with a medal around his neck. "I love you, too, Leia. I left something of yours on Ach-to, with everything. Rey knows the way," he offers, before turning to walk away.

You've received a +nom from Luke Skywalker. +nom/pending to review.

Nothing, no amount of resolve, can keep Leia's tears from falling freely now. Her hands knot in her robes, dirty from sitting on the floor, as she watches her brother walk away. Until the glow of the apparition fades from the white fabric and she's left standing completely alone in the bases central station. She too is smiling. A dark haired firecracker of a Princess who pushes Wookie out of her way to shoot at Stormtroopers.

When she finally blinks away the blur of tears, she looks around slowly and lays her hand against the stone wall to slowly move her fingers across it. Some of the simmering ambers rekindled into an inferno of willpower warming her in a way that she's not felt since Endor. There's a new kind of life inside her now, an energy that has been keeping her standing for decades without her realizing it.

She has several things she has to do in the next few hours.. things to ensure the fight continues while she's away, that there's a fight for her to return to. A list to complete before she and Rey can leave for Ach-to. Now she's found the strength to do them and turns towards the halls leading to the offices to get those things done.