Fire Meet Gasoline | Poe Dameron

Four

Leia

I put my head in my hands and for the first time in so long weep.

I was harsh, but the words were nothing but the truth no matter how she may have interpreted them. As brilliant as she is I've raised an entitled child who isn't afraid to use her own pain for her personal benefit, never afraid to pull the dirtiest cards to win an argument. To this day I truly do curse pushing her into politics, if she's learned nothing else it's how to argue.

I'd always admired her stubbornness, her refusal to back down, until I happened to be at the receiving end of the very qualities she'd inherited from me. I know she's better than this, I've seen her determination. I just need to give her a reason to believe in the cause again. When I was her age every single day I questioned if what we did was making a true difference, times aren't as desperate as they were then but they will be if she isn't out there fighting how the Resistance needs her to be.

It pains me for her to physically recoil from my touch when in the days after the temple burned she'd laid in my bed with her head in my lap for the first time since she was a child. As I had at the same tender age when an accident had also taken from me someone I'd cared for. I knew she mourned her friend Aylee, a Twi'lek girl Hope had always harboured feelings for but never acted on, but I suspect that had changed shortly before the fire as she'd turned up at my door after they'd fought, high strung and not wanting to return to the temple.

Whatever was said Hope had taken it to heart and has been utterly sour towards the idea of any closeness with anyone since, even as friendship. I'd tried to get her to understand as best I could that one adolescent fight doesn't leave a person scorned for life, and it was during that ordeal she came to the first meeting of the Resistance. She decided to devote herself to the cause until Ben had demanded she return with him as she had also committed herself as his apprentice, and for the first time I saw my daughter look at him in fear even if she returned willingly.

I thought they'd be safe with Luke, and then days later the temple burned.

Whenever I'd tried to tell Hope I had also lost someone who meant something similar to me at that age she couldn't bare to listen to it, especially not when I told her a greater love found me mere years later. She didn't want to hear it, and in truth neither did I at her age either. I think it was then she'd decided the only way to ever avoid feeling such pain was to not love, something I wish I did not understand.

I remember well my own resolution even now and debating the reasons behind it. Because I couldn't trust anyone completely, because I didn't deserve to find love, because I didn't know how to bear another loss like it.

Except I would, I would find love and I would certainly know loss.

As will she.

At only seventeen when she woke from the aftermath of the disaster she pulled away from everyone she cared about, she lost contact with the Naberrie family on Naboo, even with the cousin with whom she had spent her teenage years being raised alongside by my aunt. But she did not just lose a girl she cared for that day, if that was all she'd lost perhaps she would have mourned and healed, she lost far more than that.

She lost herself.

It would not be until the aftermath I'd learn from of the fights that had occurred between my children in the lead up to the disaster. The bruises Lando had seen on her arm and R2 having reluctantly told me Hope had to order him not to stun Ben when he'd lost his mind following the revelation of who Anakin Skywalker became. Her faithful droid, putting himself between her and my son to protect her. He'd already harmed her before that fateful night, that much R2 has confirmed. He is a loyal droid, but when it comes to Hope's welfare he puts that above all else. So when I hear Hope now in tears trying to bring Ben back... it only leaves me feeling ill, knowing she has somehow convinced herself him falling to the darkside was her fault.