Star Wars: Edge of Hope

Chapter Twenty Six: Lessons We Learn & Lessons We Pass On...

Poe: Are we primed for the jump?

Chewie: aaaaahnr huuguughghg huurh raaaaaahhgh raaaaaahhgh hnnnhrrhhh

Poe: Hey, there's no need for name calling...Alright, BB-8 better hold onto something buddy it's going to be a bumpy ride! Punch it!

The roar of the TIE's fade out with the brilliance of the stars exploding around as the Millennium Falcon makes her escape. The bright white and blue light streaking along the tired worn skin of the Falcon. Even after all this time, she was still there, still flying through the star filled skies always a jump ahead of whatever troubles her passengers managed to get themselves in, always there to take them where they were needed to go, even if they didn't know it themselves. Silently, sleeping for so many years in the memory files of the Falcon watching the years tick by, collecting all the moments they would never remember like plot points through the infinite stars. The Falcon was alive in more ways than they gave her credit for. She knew them inside and out, knew their secrets, their fears, and their sorrow...She saw it all over the years they'd been together. She knew their stories, an though some of them had ended before their times, she could tell which ones would last. She knew because in so many ways they were already part of each other's story. Their threads woven together as they'd traveled along the way over the many long years. They were her family...and while she might not agree with every pilot, every plotted course, or destination chosen...she was glad to have been along for the ride. No matter where the road led them one thing was true, it always brought them back together,just as she had always brought them home.

Leia's mind was traveling farther and farther a field these days. She spent so much of her time looking back on moments from long, long ago. For Leia, some memories were painful to hold and admire for too long. She  had begun to feel so alone in a world which was becoming more and more foreign to her. It was no longer the world she recognized...Or perhaps she thought maybe it was the world that couldn't recognize her any more. She couldn't be sure. But as she'd grown everything became more complex and connected than she ever could have believed possible before...before Ben was born. She had seen in him all her hopes renewed and all the wrongs of the past made right. He wasn't going to be bound to ghosts from the past the way she and Luke had been. Ben was going to be free to decided for himself what he wanted his life to be. 

Leia: Everything changes...

"It wasn't all bad, was it? Some of it was...good."

Leia: Pretty good...pretty good. I wish it could have lasted...I wish I'd been with you...maybe then you both would have come home. There's so much I wanted to tell you, so much I have left to say...I wish I knew...

"I know."

While Leia could feel the slow march of time catching up to her. Her worry wasn't for herself, but for those she would be leaving behind. Leia fretted over the if's and the hopes that plagued most people. She tried to prepare them, tried to make them strong enough, to give them enough of the love and Hope...to hold onto after she was gone. She could feel the light calling to her. Leia knew what it was to live on past the ones you love. She knew better than most the sour taste of loss and the ways the pain could turn inwards on you, making your entire world go dark. People were built to only survive so many things, so many times in their life times. But the long history of her family was something she had begun to believe would claim them all in time. Still Leia found hope in the world where she could and she held onto it as her own private life preserver. Her hands tightened around the cold smooth edges of the medallion. Her fingers rubbed at it smoothing the finish of it, struggling to clear away the smudges and the age until it shined. Leia felt in many ways like all the world needed was a pair of hands to pick it up, clean away the smudges and the age, and it would shine like new. She thought back to how all her hopes had hung on the possibilities of the new world they'd fought to bring to life. But perhaps the stumbling block which led them to where they were now had come from them believing they could shape the world to fit their ideals. It never worked out that way, the more into order she'd tried to force the world, the farther away it was pulled away from her. Until finally it had fled so far out of her reach it left her arms hungry for the feeling of family. She had began her life with one family and lost them. She'd found a new family...one that had always been there waiting for her...and even time had found a way to pull that way from her now. Then there were the ghosts of the past ever haunting the emptiness in her heart. Faces and voices she couldn't recognize, but whom she felt a connection, whether one of soul or one of blood she didn't know. And then there was Ben and Rey, even they too had been pulled away from her....from what they were meant to be by the Will of something other than their own. Leia sat remembering the moment she'd felt the same realization of who she was...Of who she was born to become, but had ultimately stepped away from...