Week 2: Force

[sholio]

And we are back for week 2 of Star Wars Flashmeme!

This week's prompt is:
Force

Interpret however you like. Obviously this could refer to The Force, but it could also mean using force against someone (or entire planets), forcing an issue, etc.

You have a week! This challenge will close and a new prompt will be posted next Friday (probably at about this time).

Rules in brief:

1. Any Star Wars canon is welcome here (prequels, sequels, OT, EU, etc). Art and other media are welcome in addition to fic.

2. Post your fill, or link to it, in a new comment to this entry. Fic up to about 2,000 words will fit in a comment, or you can link to a tumblr post or work on the AO3. If you comment with a DW account, you can edit your comments and get notifications for replies, but feel free to post anonymously if you don't have one. You can sign your work, or choose to leave it completely anonymous. You can crosspost your fic anywhere you like, and there is a starwarsflashmeme collection on AO3 where you are encouraged to include it.

3. THIS IS AN EPISODE VII SPOILER ZONE. No headers or warnings are required except spoiler warnings for any unreleased canon (such as the next movie) or for the first week that new canon (books, comics, etc) comes out; after that it's fair game. Therefore, this meme is a choose not to warn experience. However, headers and warnings (especially on longer fic) are strongly suggested as a courtesy. The standard AO3 header info (title, which canon, pairings, rating, summary, and any warnings you think are applicable) makes a good guideline; you can leave out anything that doesn't apply to your fic. See an example header in the main rules post. And here is some DW formatting help for making italics etc.

4. Be kind to each other; this community is for fans of all pairings, characters, and Star Wars canons.

Comments

Untitled Leia fic

[sholio]

Not sure if I will eventually clean this up and post it at AO3 or not. It just ... happened.

Set post-TFA, references to past Leia/Han. No content notices beyond references to grief/mourning.

--

Grief, on Alderaan, is -- was -- a private matter. Individual families had their own rituals. More than thirty years after the destruction of her homeworld, Leia realizes that she may never have fully grasped the magnitude of its loss until now: all those individual lifeways gone along with the lives that supported them, known to no one outside the family, entered in no database.

Quietly, in a dark storeroom deep below the Resistance complex, she places candles. She can no longer remember exactly how many candles, or where to put them. She was fortunate in her youth, perhaps, that she rarely witnessed her family performing a death rite. Grief touched her seldom, then. But now she is the only living person who remembers her family's mourning traditions, the sole carrier of knowledge that will, she suspects, die when she does. Certainly her son would not wish to learn --

Her hand shakes. Across the room, a candle topples without being touched. She crosses the room and picks it up by hand, replaces it in its holder.

As she kneels in the circle of candles, she smiles slightly at herself. Han would have laughed at her for making all of this fuss. She wonders what Correllian mourning traditions are like. But he probably wouldn't have cared about those either. He hated ceremony and scorned religion.

I'm not doing it for you. I'm doing it for me.

She sits in the circle of candles and lights them with a thought. An indulgence, perhaps. But her knees ache, and it saves her the trouble of getting up and doing it by hand.

Leia has always been strong in the Force. She never realized that was what it was until the truth of her heritage was revealed to her. She used to think everyone had the same feelings she did -- the same acute awareness of other people's emotional states (it made her a skilled diplomat and negotiator, but she'd had to train herself as a child not to let it overwhelm her), the same occasional flashes of premonition. After learning what it was, and seeing firsthand the consequences of letting it get out of control, she locked it down as hard as she could.

But it is still there.

You could be stronger than I am, Luke told her once.

I don't want to.

She didn't then; she doesn't now. Especially not now. Some power is better left untapped. Just because man is capable of building weapons that can destroy planets doesn't mean they should be built.

Just because a fire burns in someone's heart doesn't mean it needs to be fanned into life.

It is dark in the back of the storeroom. Crates are stacked between her and the door. This is just one of a hundred interchangeable rooms hollowed out of the rock, each identified only by a number. This one stores winter clothing, but it's summer in this part of the world right now, and they aren't fighting on any ice worlds. She won't be disturbed for hours. When normally every minute of her day is scheduled, a few hours to herself feels like forever to do all the things she needs to do.

Whatever those are.

She sits quietly in the circle, closes her eyes, and sinks into herself. She's not sure what she's searching for. There would have been words to say, once. Prayers and poetry. She remembers it vaguely from when she was a child. But she no longer remembers it, and all those who would have helped her remember are dead now, because of her father.

Somewhere in her heart, there is a flame, but it is sealed tightly, her willpower closed around it like a fist. Still, little tendrils shine out now and then. She senses things, feels things.

She can light a candle with the touch of her mind, and she knows she could do much, much more than that.

She also knows that, with the anger and grief that burns inside her now, she could burn worlds to the ground. And she will not.

That's what sets her apart from Luke, she thinks. Not that he would want to do such things, but that he won't admit it's a very real possibility.

You could be stronger than I am, his voice echoes in her memory.

And then, she thinks, who would stop me?

In the flame-tinted darkness behind her eyelids, she casts a tendril out into the darkness. There were many long nights after her brother left, after Han left, that she searched for Luke while her body lay still in her empty bed. She never found him. Now, she wonders if Luke finally learned the trick of closing that fist in his heart. Did he even feel Han's death, as she did?

Maybe grief is not meant to be shared.

Maybe it cannot be.

Somewhere between the stars, a young girl -- not too different from the girl Leia herself might have been if her life had taken a few different twists and turns -- is flying to find Leia's brother. Leia could have gone with her, but chose not to. I have responsibilities here, she tells herself. And it is not untrue, but ...

... but maybe she just didn't want to fan the flames. If Luke made the same offer to her now that he made all those years ago (open up, let it in, learn to use it like I have) she's not sure if she would have the strength to resist him ... but she would be accepting for all the wrong reasons.

And she knows very well where that path leads.

I hope you are strong enough, she thinks to that shining girl in the darkness, and to her brother, wherever he is. The galaxy needs you now, but I hope you are strong enough. Both of you.

Re: Untitled Leia fic

[(Anonymous)]

Oooh, I like it. I like Leia's acknowledgement of her own dark side and the fact that she has the strength to reject the power. Nice look at her character with some interesting worldbuilding tossed in. You should totally post it to AO3.

Re: Untitled Leia fic

[sholio]

Thank you! <3 <3 I probably should -- I was feeling too lazy last night to want to come up with a title and so forth.

Re: Untitled Leia fic

[senmut]

OH! This is gorgeous.

Re: Untitled Leia fic

[sholio]

Thank you! <3

Re: Untitled Leia fic

[ju_lii]

This is absolutely beautiful, every word. But this particularly hit me...

"She also knows that, with the anger and grief that burns inside her now, she could burn worlds to the ground. And she will not."

The strength of this woman.

Re: Untitled Leia fic

[sholio]

Thank you! <3 I got to thinking about why Leia doesn't use the Force, or appears not to, and this came out.