Musings of a Literary Wannabe

She buried the lightsabres as she had planned. Laying to rest the past, at last.

“Let the past die, kill it if you have to. It’s the only way to become who you were meant to be”

His voice murmured in her head, in memory or longing, she no longer knew. She wished she could comply with his wish more than ever now, to make herself forget her sad lineage.

When she was asked her name, she replied Skywalker, aware than Leia and Luke were watching. They looked kindly at her, and she blinked tears from her eyes as she turned back to the Falcon, BB8 trailing after her. The droid was quiet, always sensing far more of her emotions than most people did.

What Luke and Leia didn’t know, couldn’t, was the vast hollow Rey had carried in her chest in the month since that night. The night when she was cleaved in two. She named herself Skywalker, because it gave her a reason to say the name, to think of the family she had almost been part of, for one, shining second. It gave her an excuse to picture his face, for even just a moment.

She slept that night on the Falcon, staring out at the velvet night, long after the suns had set, streaks of purple and gold gently fading from her sight. The cockpit was cold, but she barely felt it. She barely felt anything anymore.  BB8 rolled away to power down, after trying to convince her to go to bed. She kept her vigil of the emerging stars. Where she had fought for her life, died and been reborn, and lost everything all in one turn.

A sharp throb in her chest pulled her attention back to herself, from her lingering memories. She placed a hand over the sudden pain, lancing suddenly sharper, and grit her teeth against it. She didn’t shy away from the terrible feeling, the twisting, aching agony of the wound inside. She welcomed it. It wasn’t a very healthy way of coping with any of it, but when the pain came, everything else fell away, and she almost felt closer to him. So she simply placed her hand there, and sank into the comforting depths of her discomfort.

She let her mind travel over the desert, searching, as she had started to each night. The throbbing in her chest eased slightly, as her mind searched for him. She knew he wasn’t here, and yet, her body’s mourning calmed when she looked for him.

The first time she had crept out at night, she didn’t have a particular plan or destination in mind. The sprawling city of Coruscant was full of life and energy, but as Rey had moved wraith like through the crowds, she’d seen none of it. She had walked for hours, searching the face of every tall, broad, dark-haired man who had walked past her. When she finally got back to her rooms, she’d slept for hours, the first proper sleep she’d had in weeks.

Now, she searched with the force, reaching out to the far reaching energy connecting all things, looking for him, again and again. She always came up empty, but, maddeningly, not as empty as she needed, to truly start to heal. She had heard from Max that a true force bond would never heal, she would always carry his loss, always feel the absence of him inside her, and be lesser for it. Incomplete. Alone. She had been born one half of a whole, and now, she struggled to remember what she was supposed to do, how to pretend to live, which mask to wear and what part to play.

Finally, hours later, she felt herself start to drift off, the pain in her chest had lessened to the degree that she could now relax, exhausted. The pain only went away when she looked for him, and some days, she thought that was to be her destiny. To look for him in every face she came across, wandering all over the galaxy, just searching, without hope.

She had waited her entire childhood for parents she didn’t know to come back for her, and it seemed now, she was fated to wait the rest of her days for a man who couldn’t.

That night, she dreamed of Ben Solo. In her dream, they were somewhere warm and safe, and she was cradled in his arms. Tears fell down her cheeks, hot and wet, they streaked down her face and fell onto their joined hands, placed over her stomach, the place where he had given her everything he was, every last piece, to let her live, instead of him.

“Why are you crying? We won” his voice was warm, full of humour and affection, and it filled up all the empty dark places inside her for a moment.

“It doesn’t feel like it” she replied softly, and cherished the way his arms tightened around her. It was quiet a long moment, as she turned her head to try and catch a glimpse of her dream surroundings.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, after trying and failing to make out anything in the room.

“Waiting for you” he murmured quietly.

She awoke with a start, the warm of the dream fading to the cold reality of her loneliness. She felt fresh tears spring to her eyes, the well spring of bitter salt never exhausted, running in rivulets down her cheeks, crusting along her lips and dripping into her hair. She curled her arms around the cavern within her, rolled onto her side and pulled her knees tight into her chest, and only the sound of her sobs, echoing through that empty chamber, within and without, accompanied her through another endless night.