Selfishness in Silence

Shadow on the Wall

He kissed her in her sleep. She'd felt it, a whisper against her soul begging for warmth, and she indulged him. The next morning she wakes to his loneliness shadowing her steps, the kiss forgotten.

.

.

"The bounty on your head has tripled." Leia affirms with a stern softness. "I refuse to have you traveling alone."

"So you make up some excuse to have me travel with you on this mission instead?" Rey cocks an eyebrow.

She smiles. "I need someone I trust with me. Besides, I can't have you running off on your own right now and getting hurt. You're too important."

Rey catches the shift in her tone with the word 'important' and the true meaning behind it. She glances outside the cockpit to the destination, a tawny planet where Maz Kanata currently resides, and asks a question that has been lingering at the back of her mind for months. "Do you miss him?"

"Every day." Leia replies without hesitation.

Rey fidgets nervously, still looking at the stars. "What was he like... before?"

"He was perceptive, willful, and he had his father's penchant for trouble. I always knew when he was up to something." Leia pauses, turning her eyes on Rey. "My son could never hide his true feelings."

Rey peers furtively at the her from beneath low lashes. "His face is rather expressive."

Leia smiles again, a painful smile. "Han's was, too."

.

.

Jakku feels like some faraway tale of someone else, some other girl who waited too long in the desert, but where Rey stands now doesn't exactly feel real, either.

The weapon crackles softly, a strange lamenting purr Rose says reminds her of the birds from her home planet. Rey stares down at the dual blades, her lip caught between worried teeth. They sizzle erratically, damaged and colorless. A part of her feels guilty, ashamed even. The kyber crystal fragments now housed in her staff had meant something special to Luke, to his father. It represents a piece of his family. Things like that cannot simply be erased.

Her heart swells painfully at the thought. It represents a piece of Ben.

Back in the castle on Takodana the lightsaber had beckoned her, in the snow on Starkiller Base it had chosen her over the scion of its own creator and in Snoke's throne room, strained by their battle of wills, the lightsaber splintered apart. She hadn't thought in that moment, she'd only acted, driven by a desire to protect those close to her, her family. And Ben... His eyes—she swallows. They conveyed nothing but raw pain, betrayal. Rage.

I know everything I need to know about you.

You do? Oh, you do...

Her shoulders deflate. Assumption. Brashness. These things have cost her... and him. Every decision requires a payment; no choice goes without consequence. By this war's end what payment will she be willing to give? The thought terrifies her. And what of her hubris? Yes, hubris. The memory of Ben's anguished expression pervades her mind, forming a lump in her throat.

Consequence.

Simplicity and complexity, right and wrong, good and evil—constructs of the subjective mind and yet absolutes. A lie cannot exist without some kernel of truth. The war is a falsehood, but it stems from a truth. Therein lies the sophistication, the malevolent nature of the machine at the center of it all, always hungering, never satisfied.