a star wars thing, just ‘cause

nonasuch:

I’m at ECCC all day today, but here is a thing I wrote a while ago to tide you over.

Somewhere in the galaxy, there is a hall, bright and high-ceilinged and bedecked with flowers. It’s full of people, full of reverent silence and the muffled sound of weeping. At the front of the hall, there is a low stage, and a podium, and a body, lying in state.

A man steps up to the podium, somewhere in the galaxy. He’s tall, unbent by his years, with steel-gray hair and a salt-and-pepper mustache. The smile lines that usually mark his face are all smoothed away by grief. He’s dressed in blue, like many in the hall, but the cloak he wears is lined in black as deep and sparkling as a starfield.

He doesn’t speak, at first. The little droids that float through the hall, recording holos of the mourners and the flowers and the reverent silence, helpfully add his name to their feeds, and the long list of titles he was heaped with in the years after he joined the First Rebellion.

“We didn’t do this often, in the Rebellion,” he says. “We rarely got the chance. We still don’t. Most of the time, the friends we lost, the comrades and the leaders, they were lost in ways that didn’t leave a body behind. They left us, and we kept going, without time to mourn or space to mark their leaving with much ceremony. So in a sense, we’re lucky to be here today. We’re lucky she left us the way she did, with this chance to mark her passing. We should be grateful.” He falls silent, but his face doesn’t crumple, his composure holds. “I am grateful, I think.”

He looks out at the rows of people that fill the hall, turns to regard the people who fill the stage. “There aren’t many of us left who knew her, back in the old days.” he says. “She was still so young when I first met her, and even then she was already the bright, fierce heart of the Rebellion. I could never imagine her as anything else, and I’m not sure she could, either, by then. She kept that light burning for so long. She used it to kindle the New Republic. She used it to kindle the Resistance. She gave a piece of it to everyone she ever knew. We carry it with us, and always will.”

The little holorecorder droids swoop low over the stage, buzz past the flowers, pause to exchange a quick trill of Binary with the droids clustered at the back of the hall. They keep their volume muted, out of respect. They capture every detail carefully.

“People called her the mother of the New Republic,” the man at the podium says. “I don’t know if she ever liked that much: she said that democracy has to be built by as many hands as possible, as many parents as possible, if we want it to be strong. But she was called the mother of the Resistance, too, and I don’t think I ever heard her complain about that. 

“She felt a very strong sense of duty, all her life. She was the daughter of a queen. She outlived her homeworld, she outlived most of the people she loved, and I think.” He pauses; he falters, for the first time. The droids back off a little, let their lenses go a touch blurry. “I think all she really wanted was to know that her children would outlive her. That the things she brought into the world would survive, and thrive. That they would keep the light burning, when she couldn’t any longer.”

He falls silent, again, searching for his next words. “There aren’t many old-timers like me left,” he said. “Most of you here today are children of the galaxy she fought for. It’s not quite the galaxy she wanted to build, I know. But we’re getting there. A little closer, every day.

“If I could ask you to do one thing, for her sake, it’s that you keep the light burning. Keep fighting for the things she fought for: for peace, and for justice, and a galaxy free of tyranny. Do the work that needs to be done, even when it’s hard. Even when we’re weighed down by grief. That’s what she did, every day of her life.”

He steps back from the podium, and bows his head. “Goodbye, Princess,” he says. “May the Force be with you.”

On the stage, a young woman sits, facing the crowd, her face a stone mask. She wears her hair tied in three knots down the back of her head, and her clothes are not quite the Jedi robes of old, but they are something like it. She wears a lightsaber at her hip.

She doesn’t turn to the man who is not, really, in any sense but the metaphysical, sitting next to her. She doesn’t need to, or want to.

“Well?” she says, though she doesn’t say it out loud. He hears her perfectly, anyway. “Is this what you wanted?”

There is a long silence between them. The mourners are singing a hymn, an old Rebel fighting song tuned to a minor key.

“No,” says the man who is not sitting next to her. “No, this isn’t– I didn’t mean–”

And suddenly he is not sitting next to her at all, in any sense or manner or plane of existence.

He doesn’t matter, anyway. The last Jedi stands, to join the other pallbearers.

On the other side of the galaxy, the Supreme Leader of the First Order– of what’s left of it, anyway– sits alone, too stunned even to rage.

Everywhere else, in all the places the thoughtful little droids beamed their transmissions to, people are mourning, or weeping, or raising toasts, or singing old Rebel fighting songs.

In each of their hearts, they keep a little piece of Light aflame.