As my eyes flickered open, I felt all of my body begin to ache. My limbs felt like I had taken a beating, and my head felt like it could split. The first thing that came to mind was the image of my father dying, and then the way Kylo Ren begged for mercy. I swallowed, blinking as I felt a pain in my chest from grief and sat up to see I was laid out in my old room.
I hadn't dared come in here for so long, even when I was exiled alone on the Falcon of Jakku. It contained too many memories, too many emotions. I knew Chewie would have put me in here, bless him, although even looking at the walls made me want to cry. Since we never stayed in one place, my room on the Falcon was my sanctuary, and I hadn't been afraid to decorate it as such. All over the walls I had plastered posters of my favourite cantina bands, a flag from Corellia, even some political posters for the resistance, the ones the academy had featured on, and First Order posters which had been graffitied over, spray paint decorating it with crude words and symbols of rebellion. When I put that one up my parents were horrified, but I had simply smiled and said my deviancy was taking the power out of the fear of the First Order.
Naive fool; the fear and strength of a tyrannical dictatorship had caught up with me at last.
Every other inch of my wall was covered in photographs. Some were from when I was little, one of me building pods and racer ships with Uncle Luke, another had been from when my mother took me to the republic for the first time and she had dressed me in a long white dress with my hair similar to hers, a habit she had for whenever we went out in the public eye together. There were a lot from the Academy, training photos, photos of us all hanging out together in the dorms, and a few end of year pictures, all of us wearing our jackets, our hair tied back and our faces serious. We all looked so hard, so smart with our faces like that, no one would have thought we were all just teenagers, only fifteen at most.
Underneath that, I saw the ones of dad. One photo showed us both grinning as we stood outside the Falcon on my eighth birthday, holding my first blaster proudly, another was showing Chewie holding me up on his shoulders as dad looked up at us both grinning and then one from my sixteenth birthday with both my parents, one of the last times I saw them both smiling together. I had been wearing a long sleeveless light pink dress, and my parents both had their arms linked through mine. As my eyes went across this image, a small smile formed as I remembered and then I saw Ben. Dad had his free hand resting on Ben's shoulder almost carelessly, and whilst the three of us were smiling happily, my brother looked almost sullen. Next to this image there was another family photo, when when I was thirteen and Ben had just turned ten. We were all grinning on that one, especially my father, his eyes so full of love, and his face radiating pride for us.
A wave of anger rushed over me suddenly as I looked at these two photographs and I realised I was staring at nothing but the smile of a dead man. Before I could stop myself, I tore down the two and holding them in my shaking hands, I ripped them in half, leaving myself, mum and dad on one half and Ben on the other. The lonely, sad-looking boy now truly was alone and I couldn't care less; he had murdered my father. Looking at the torn pictures, I felt tears begin to prick at my eyes and I suddenly started to feel very overwhelmed, like the walls were falling in on me, all the happy memories which were surrounding me caving in on top of me.
I threw the pictures down on the bed and stormed out of my room, practically marching out of the door and down the corridor at a fast pace to just get myself away. I made it into the main area to see Finn collapsed out on the medic sofa, looking highly wounded, whilst Rey was sat by the table Chewie once taught me to play holo-chess on, resting her elbows on the table, her head resting against her hands as her eyes stared off into the distance.
"Are you okay?" I asked her, and at the sound of my voice she jumped slightly, not expecting me to be behind her.
"I should be the one asking you that," she offered me a sad smile as I took a seat next to her. "Oh, Luci, I'm so sorry!"
"Please, don't cry," I said quickly, sensing her sudden shift in emotions. "I'm fine,"
"You're not fine," she said, looking at me with a frown.
"No, you're right, I'm not, and I don't know if I ever will be again," I admitted. "We were once such a happy family, I can clearly remember days where my mother would be sat outside of our home on Tatooine reading, whilst my brother would be sat, listening to stories from Uncle Luke. I'd heard all of his stories so many times, so Chewie would be fixing up the Falcon, and I would be with my father doing target practice. Me shooting used to annoy my mother, she always said that I wasn't a soldier, and I guess if things had been different I would have been called a Princess, and princesses aren't meant to shoot and fight and kill, though none of that stopped my mother. Dad always used to smirk at me when I was taking aim, and it's only now that I know he was looking on at me with pride, since Ben had very little concern with blasters. He cared more about the force, the fucking force mattered to him more than his family, and now look where that's gotten us,"
"I always thought your brother was dead," Rey said, her tone gentle as if expecting her words would upset me. "You told us he was dead, Han... he never even mentioned that he had a son,"
"My brother is dead," I spoke the words sharply, as if to convince myself of them too. "My brother, my father, and probably my uncle too. All that's left is me and my mother, and the resistance. I was fourteen when the First Order destroyed all of our homes in the galaxy in an attempt to kill me. Luckily I was at the academy, but they tried again, and again, and again, bombs and arrests and torture, but look at me, the last Solo left standing!"
Rey sat there, frozen. I could tell she didn't know what to say. I felt like I had turned on a tap and all my emotions and feelings had started flooding out, and now I had started I didn't know if I could stop.
"I've been chased by bounty hunters all my life, and yet I manage to get captured by a fucking stormtrooper in a pimped out suit? For force sake! I escape arrest and then execution several times before I even reached the age of sixteen, but I just got tortured by Snoke, just because I knew my brother was on the same planet as me, only to watch my brother kill my father! Do you know what it feels like? To be mentally and physically put under so much strain through a life force current I have dedicated my life to study and practically worship as well as trust, tortured to the extent of hallucination, seeing my uncle begging me to keep a hold of myself, only then to see my father murdered in front of me by my own brother, with the only thought in my head saying that the pain of watching him die is so much worse than the torture?"
"Luci..." Rey began, but I could tell that she still didn't know what to say. Instead, she moved her hands to grip my arm with one and with the other pull me into an embrace. I let my head fall onto her shoulder, feeling defeated.
"I hurt him, my little brother..." I breathed out, the sight of him writhing in pain because of my actions playing out in my mind. "I don't care how much I tell myself that he's dead, he's still my brother and I-"
All the emotions overtook me in that moment and as if I knew it was going to happen, I quickly pulled myself away from Rey. Only seconds after we separated I felt an electric current surge through me and out of my fingertips. Rey jumped up out of her seat, though I couldn't tell if it was in fear or in shock. I watched, my own eyes wide with worry as I saw the small purple bolts shoot out until I took a sharp intake of breath and held it within me, this action putting a stopper on it practically as I immediately felt the electricity stop within me.
"What was that?" Rey asked, and her voice seemed more amazed than afraid.
"I don't know yet, but I'm the first Jedi to do that, it's a sith power," I explained and then looked down at my hands in horror. "Maybe Snoke did break me without me realising, maybe I am a sith now,"
"Don't think like that, you're good, you aren't like-"
"Like my brother? Like Ben?" I said, and it sounded more aggressive than I intended it to.
"Yes, well no, I mean you look like him a bit, but you're not like him," she said almost hurriedly. "You're like your father,"
"My father..." I spoke the words, imagining his smirking face, and then the image was suddenly replaced by that of him lying dead on the floor, his chest impaled. I flinched, and felt sick, my body starting to tremble slightly.
Before either of us could say anything else, I felt the Falcon jerk to a sudden stop. Yelping slightly, I felt myself get tossed to the ground, only to pull myself back into the small sofa behind the table. Chewie came out of the cockpit and I blinked back whatever tears were forming, forcing on a smile, even though I knew Chewie was one of the few I didn't have to be strong in front of, since I knew he felt the exact same.
"Hey, Chewie," I greeted, and then heard myself; I sounded like my father. "Are we back at the resistance? Good, I need to see my mother,"
In this moment I felt so lost. So lost, confused, torn and broken. I could feel myself falling apart but I knew I had to keep myself together for just a while longer, since we'd just scored a great victory against the First Order, though it had come at a price, and I had seen it be paid.
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Word count: 1885
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~Olivia