A Glimpse of Starlight

A Star Wars: The Force Awakens fanfic. I was talking to a friend about this movie, and we agreed that sometimes fanfics can express things better than an analysis can. Maybe I’ll still write a non-fiction review of the movie or what Star Wars means to me, but until then, enjoy this. 

Oh, and spoilers, of course. 

~

No one could understand my journey.

I could say that in all truth to anyone in this universe. Anyone but you. You are the only person that could possibly understand.

Remember what it was like to grow up orphaned, surrounded by desert and drudgery and the wearying fight against despair?

Remember what it was like to finally be free and journey and adventure and get caught up in something so much bigger than yourself except that this fear always gnawed at you that you’re not enough?

Remember what it was like to be given a lightsaber, a legacy, to close your hands around it and know your world was forever changed, whether you liked it or not?

Do you remember? That is the question I ask myself incessantly as we soar through this star-streaked sky.

And what will you be like and what will you look like and will I remember, because they say I used to know you and what will you do and where will you be and—

Breathe. In, out. Hand Chewie a tool. Fix a circuit. Correct the course. Feel giddy about going into hyperdrive again even though you’ve done it before. Just breathe, Rey. The questions will be answered soon enough, and until then, there’s not much use to asking them.

~

But now we’re here.  And now the questions assault me, pounding out through my veins as I push myself to the top, winding around the edge of cliffs and slipping a little on crumbling stones. I catch my breath when I find evidences of you.

The world rushes at me, heady, dizzying, when I see these bits of you, scattered on the lone hilltop. You’re real. You’re here. You’re alive. You’re—

You’re right in front of me. Twenty paces, that’s all it would take. Your back is turned, but I’m not deceived. You know I’m here. You can feel me, just as I have been able to feel you, the feeling growing stronger, stronger, bringing back with it a tide of faded memories, hushed beneath pain and fear and time and who knows what else until they are a gray blur but still, I can taste them at the edge of my subconscious, and you are bringing them back.

You turn. You look. Our eyes meet. The wind whistles past, oblivious to the earth-shattering truth and terror of this gaze.

I almost don’t know what I am doing, but then, some deep part of me knows exactly what I am doing as I pull out the lightsaber.

These are your first steps, Rey, the voice had said.

Well, these are the next steps. Every moment, every choice, every breath is a step forward, taking me—I don’t know where. That’s why I’m here. That’s what you’re to show me.

My hand does not shake, but my heart is, with longing, as I stare at you, willing you to listen, to take it, to guide me.

Questions, questions, questions, and I know you can read them in my gaze:

Can you tell me what to do now? Can you tell me where to go from here?

Can you tell me who I am? 

Please, just—I need to know. My whole life I waited and it was the thought of them that kept me alive and now—please. You understand. You must. Please, can’t you tell me? Can’t you guide me?

I know you flinch from that word, that the thought of the others who you tried to guide but lost is crippling you. I know your heart is a mass of scars, a dying fire, but could it not reawaken?

The force awakens, they say. Maybe love and hope can too.

We all make mistakes. We all fall. What defines us is how we react. Your own father, Luke—the stories say he was redeemed in the end, and Han says the stories are true.

Please, prove to me that they’re true.