Time for Our Sorrows
Dec. 17th, 2015 03:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
matrilGrief was not convenient. It would not be compartmentalized; it spilled out of the edges of everything, refused to be postponed.
Leia had learned to wear the face of stoicism in her few years as the youngest member of the Imperial Senate. She knew how to look impassive. At times she even convinced herself it was more than a superficial mask. When pain threatened to overpower her, she sternly sent it back below the surface. "We have no time for our sorrows," she told the general upon her arrival at the Rebel base, and she believed it. No time for uncontrollable sobbing while blasting her way out of her prison cell on the Death Star. No time to mourn on their way to Yavin as she formulated the Rebel's plan of attack, knowing the Empire was at their heels. It would have to come later.
But it did not come when she would have scheduled it, in a quiet moment after the Rebellion's gleeful victory celebration. It came when she was standing in the middle of a crowd of cheering Rebels, with Luke and Han on either side of her, laughing and teasing each other. The thought came that she'd like to introduce these men to her parents, and suddenly it was like the floor had been yanked out from under her. Her smile became fixed, a politician's mask. She quickly excused herself, slipped away from the mob and found an empty room just in time for the first sob to wrench itself from her throat.
She could imagine it so vividly. Bail would give a brief, formal bow; Breha would offer them each the customary forehead kiss. Luke would grin sheepishly and Han would smirk. Leia would be just a little annoyed that her new friends, as dear as they had become, were so graceless in a courtly setting. She wanted to feel that annoyance. She would give anything to feel it. Instead there was only this absence, the could-have-been.
Quickly as possible, she dried and cleaned her face and emerged into the rejoicing crowd once more.
It came again, two days later, after the medal ceremony. She was rather pleased with herself for not breaking down during the ceremony, letting the happiness of her friends and the glory of the victory wash over her. Luke had lost everything too and he was beaming; surely she could do the same.
It didn't occur to her that he might spend much of his private time actively mourning his uncle, aunt and mentor.
But after, as she packed what few things adorned her quarters in preparation for their flight to a new location, she reflected on how this would be her life for the foreseeable future, never with a permanent home. No home - and then came the memory, with painful clarity, of Alderaan's snowy mountain vistas, the view she had seen from her bedroom window every morning throughout her childhood. She had taken it for granted the last time she was there. How could she know she would never see it again? She was suddenly furious with herself. She had always left knowing she might never see Alderaan again, but only because her life had been in constant danger since joining the Rebellion. That she should still be alive while Alderaan was dead - it was unforgivable.
When the bout passed, the only indication of her breakdown was the remains of a lamp, thrown to the floor with strangled cry of rage.
She could never predict when it would strike her. A hundred times a day she was addressed as "Princess" and she took it easily, as a matter of course, then the hundred and first time, a voice in her mind howled I am the Princess of nothing, of rubble, of a people massacred while nodding dumbly and deafly at whatever General Dodonna was saying until she could flee and be alone in her misery.
A princess without a planet, struggling to piece together the remnants of her inheritance. Twice orphaned. The dual pain of losing the parents she had known and loved, and losing the unnamed mother and father who had given her life.
Breha had corrected Leia at first when she claimed a memory of her birth mother. "I'm sorry, dearest, but that's just not possible," she sighed. Bail, meanwhile, had that odd look he wore whenever Leia seemed to catch a sense of something just before it happened, or when she excelled so much at targeting practice that her instructor said he had nothing more to teach her. "And yet it might be possible after all," he said. "Stranger things have happened. Don't discount your intuition, Leia. It's a precious gift."
Intuition. Like the voiceless urge that had led her to place the plans for the Death Star in an unassuming R2 unit. The impulse that pushed her from one ingenious solution to another in her escape from the prison block. That whisper telling her she could trust Luke as if she'd known him all her life, even when they'd only just met. She wanted to understand it, to grasp the mystery behind Bail's cryptic words. Now he could never provide an answer.
As the days passed into weeks, she assumed that the worst grief had already come and gone, that it could not become any more raw than those first few bouts of choked sobs, that she was steadily healing. Most days were quite bearable, occupied with the search for a new base and the training of new recruits eager to join the cause following the Rebellion's first major victory. Occupied, as well, with her friends. Luke was bright but sadly lacking in most of the education provided in more developed systems, so Leia had taken it upon herself to provide him with lessons in history and government. It was a pleasant way to spend her free time. Her interactions with Han were equally engrossing but not quite as straight-forward. She might call them spirited debates. She could just as easily call them heated arguments. Either way, she spent many an hour before falling asleep at night formulating fresh retorts to his imagined attacks, determined to gain the upper hand at their next bout.
After months of scouting and searching brought them to Hoth, Leia worked alongside her fellow Rebels in the hard labor of building a base and adjusting to the harsh extremes of the climate. And it was then, caught in the midst of a brutal snowstorm while laying the foundation of the eastern wing of the base, that she felt her loss as acutely as if it had just happened all over again.
She was transported in her memories to her first trek into the mountains at age ten, carrying a pack that seemed to weigh more and more with every step upward, gasping at wind that threw snow into her face. Bail chuckled at her dismay. "This is nothing. Did you know there are entire worlds entirely covered in ice and snow?" She shuddered and declared, "I'm never going anyplace like that, ever!"
The cold of Hoth cut her to the bone, and she wept.
Fortunate that the storm concealed her tears and provided explanation enough for her red-rimmed eyes and raw face afterwards. She could not afford to reveal such weakness if she was to provide any kind of leadership. She must be the strong face of the Rebellion, unshaken, steady in her resolve.
Her friends could not be fooled.
Luke saw her and knew in an instant. He drew her into a hug. She allowed it, and even allowed herself a watery laugh when he said, "I never thought I'd find a place that made me miss the sand and the heat of Tatooine!" And a few days later, when she was ready, she described to him the beauty of an Alderaan sunrise against the mountains. She recalled the words of a poem her mother used to recite when she was putting her to sleep. She cried, and Luke honored that grief with tears of his own as he talked of Owen and Beru.
Han's response was of a very different sort. She insulted the Falcon, as she often did, and instead of his usual snappy retort, he shrugged and said, "Yeah, maybe. But she's like home. Hard to imagine life without her." And his eyes carried that rare look she had caught only a few times before, a glimpse of vulnerability.
Softly she answered, "I suppose you have to make a home wherever you can find it." She was gazing a little longer than she intended, and he was leaning close.
She cleared her throat, stepped back. "So, thanks," she said briskly.
"For what?" He was closed off again, annoyed.
"For staying. The Rebellion needs men like you."
If there was anything else she needed to say, she wasn't ready to say it then.
But she thought about his words for a long time afterward. She, like he, would need to start making a home wherever she found it, bringing along whatever was left of Alderaan inside of her. And she would have to find time for her sorrows whenever they demanded it.
Leia had learned to wear the face of stoicism in her few years as the youngest member of the Imperial Senate. She knew how to look impassive. At times she even convinced herself it was more than a superficial mask. When pain threatened to overpower her, she sternly sent it back below the surface. "We have no time for our sorrows," she told the general upon her arrival at the Rebel base, and she believed it. No time for uncontrollable sobbing while blasting her way out of her prison cell on the Death Star. No time to mourn on their way to Yavin as she formulated the Rebel's plan of attack, knowing the Empire was at their heels. It would have to come later.
But it did not come when she would have scheduled it, in a quiet moment after the Rebellion's gleeful victory celebration. It came when she was standing in the middle of a crowd of cheering Rebels, with Luke and Han on either side of her, laughing and teasing each other. The thought came that she'd like to introduce these men to her parents, and suddenly it was like the floor had been yanked out from under her. Her smile became fixed, a politician's mask. She quickly excused herself, slipped away from the mob and found an empty room just in time for the first sob to wrench itself from her throat.
She could imagine it so vividly. Bail would give a brief, formal bow; Breha would offer them each the customary forehead kiss. Luke would grin sheepishly and Han would smirk. Leia would be just a little annoyed that her new friends, as dear as they had become, were so graceless in a courtly setting. She wanted to feel that annoyance. She would give anything to feel it. Instead there was only this absence, the could-have-been.
Quickly as possible, she dried and cleaned her face and emerged into the rejoicing crowd once more.
It came again, two days later, after the medal ceremony. She was rather pleased with herself for not breaking down during the ceremony, letting the happiness of her friends and the glory of the victory wash over her. Luke had lost everything too and he was beaming; surely she could do the same.
It didn't occur to her that he might spend much of his private time actively mourning his uncle, aunt and mentor.
But after, as she packed what few things adorned her quarters in preparation for their flight to a new location, she reflected on how this would be her life for the foreseeable future, never with a permanent home. No home - and then came the memory, with painful clarity, of Alderaan's snowy mountain vistas, the view she had seen from her bedroom window every morning throughout her childhood. She had taken it for granted the last time she was there. How could she know she would never see it again? She was suddenly furious with herself. She had always left knowing she might never see Alderaan again, but only because her life had been in constant danger since joining the Rebellion. That she should still be alive while Alderaan was dead - it was unforgivable.
When the bout passed, the only indication of her breakdown was the remains of a lamp, thrown to the floor with strangled cry of rage.
She could never predict when it would strike her. A hundred times a day she was addressed as "Princess" and she took it easily, as a matter of course, then the hundred and first time, a voice in her mind howled I am the Princess of nothing, of rubble, of a people massacred while nodding dumbly and deafly at whatever General Dodonna was saying until she could flee and be alone in her misery.
A princess without a planet, struggling to piece together the remnants of her inheritance. Twice orphaned. The dual pain of losing the parents she had known and loved, and losing the unnamed mother and father who had given her life.
Breha had corrected Leia at first when she claimed a memory of her birth mother. "I'm sorry, dearest, but that's just not possible," she sighed. Bail, meanwhile, had that odd look he wore whenever Leia seemed to catch a sense of something just before it happened, or when she excelled so much at targeting practice that her instructor said he had nothing more to teach her. "And yet it might be possible after all," he said. "Stranger things have happened. Don't discount your intuition, Leia. It's a precious gift."
Intuition. Like the voiceless urge that had led her to place the plans for the Death Star in an unassuming R2 unit. The impulse that pushed her from one ingenious solution to another in her escape from the prison block. That whisper telling her she could trust Luke as if she'd known him all her life, even when they'd only just met. She wanted to understand it, to grasp the mystery behind Bail's cryptic words. Now he could never provide an answer.
As the days passed into weeks, she assumed that the worst grief had already come and gone, that it could not become any more raw than those first few bouts of choked sobs, that she was steadily healing. Most days were quite bearable, occupied with the search for a new base and the training of new recruits eager to join the cause following the Rebellion's first major victory. Occupied, as well, with her friends. Luke was bright but sadly lacking in most of the education provided in more developed systems, so Leia had taken it upon herself to provide him with lessons in history and government. It was a pleasant way to spend her free time. Her interactions with Han were equally engrossing but not quite as straight-forward. She might call them spirited debates. She could just as easily call them heated arguments. Either way, she spent many an hour before falling asleep at night formulating fresh retorts to his imagined attacks, determined to gain the upper hand at their next bout.
After months of scouting and searching brought them to Hoth, Leia worked alongside her fellow Rebels in the hard labor of building a base and adjusting to the harsh extremes of the climate. And it was then, caught in the midst of a brutal snowstorm while laying the foundation of the eastern wing of the base, that she felt her loss as acutely as if it had just happened all over again.
She was transported in her memories to her first trek into the mountains at age ten, carrying a pack that seemed to weigh more and more with every step upward, gasping at wind that threw snow into her face. Bail chuckled at her dismay. "This is nothing. Did you know there are entire worlds entirely covered in ice and snow?" She shuddered and declared, "I'm never going anyplace like that, ever!"
The cold of Hoth cut her to the bone, and she wept.
Fortunate that the storm concealed her tears and provided explanation enough for her red-rimmed eyes and raw face afterwards. She could not afford to reveal such weakness if she was to provide any kind of leadership. She must be the strong face of the Rebellion, unshaken, steady in her resolve.
Her friends could not be fooled.
Luke saw her and knew in an instant. He drew her into a hug. She allowed it, and even allowed herself a watery laugh when he said, "I never thought I'd find a place that made me miss the sand and the heat of Tatooine!" And a few days later, when she was ready, she described to him the beauty of an Alderaan sunrise against the mountains. She recalled the words of a poem her mother used to recite when she was putting her to sleep. She cried, and Luke honored that grief with tears of his own as he talked of Owen and Beru.
Han's response was of a very different sort. She insulted the Falcon, as she often did, and instead of his usual snappy retort, he shrugged and said, "Yeah, maybe. But she's like home. Hard to imagine life without her." And his eyes carried that rare look she had caught only a few times before, a glimpse of vulnerability.
Softly she answered, "I suppose you have to make a home wherever you can find it." She was gazing a little longer than she intended, and he was leaning close.
She cleared her throat, stepped back. "So, thanks," she said briskly.
"For what?" He was closed off again, annoyed.
"For staying. The Rebellion needs men like you."
If there was anything else she needed to say, she wasn't ready to say it then.
But she thought about his words for a long time afterward. She, like he, would need to start making a home wherever she found it, bringing along whatever was left of Alderaan inside of her. And she would have to find time for her sorrows whenever they demanded it.
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no subject
Date: 2015-12-18 04:24 am (UTC)Are you seeing the new movie soon? I got tickets for the 23rd and am getting increasingly nervous around certain portions of the internet. I mean, I'm not going to wither and die if a spoiler or two comes my way but I'd like there to be *some* surprises!
no subject
Date: 2015-12-18 01:37 pm (UTC)As far as the movie....I'm really gritting my teeth about it, because Every. Single. Review. is full of glowing praise in the form of prequel jabs. No Jar Jar! No bloated CGI! No pesky interference from that hack Lucas! Grrr.
I've seen very mild spoilers, and my impression is that it's a shiny, slick, cool-looking film with very little newness in the story tropes. The execution of the prequels might have been uneven, sure, but the stories were bold, breaking formulas and exploring new territory. This just feels so...safe. And the original trilogy was anything but safe when it came out. Worse, it seems like in order to re-hash the originals, they've undermined every victory from Episode VI. Honestly, if I want to watch a movie about a scrappy team of rebels fighting tyrannical galactic forces, I'll just watch Episode IV again. I wouldn't even mind if they had an entire new six movies set 1000 years in the future, but this...this feels cheap.
Yeah, I know, don't knock it until I've seen it....and I'll have to see it eventually, probably sooner rather than later, as my husband wants to give it a chance. As it happens we wouldn't have to option of seeing it opening night even if we wanted to, because his drama club's play performance was yesterday and today. Meanwhile, after school the kids and I have been marathoning the original and prequel trilogies together. That, at least, keeps from me getting too grumpy about the whole thing.
no subject
Date: 2015-12-18 09:06 pm (UTC)I haven't read the reviews because that way lies reading too much and eventually bumping into serious plot twists :). I'm not entirely sure I'd agree about the prequels breaking new ground story-wise, though I think the story they were telling/trying to tell was EXCELLENT. "Noble man succumbs to fatal flaw and his fall destroys all he holds dear and was trying to protect" isn't really a new storyline but it's held on for centuries because it's good. I mean, I could see John Webster or John Ford (not the Quiet Man guy, the 'Tis Pity She's A Whore guy) writing it. Unfortunately, for me at least, the execution wasn't enough to pull it off. But it's my understanding that the prequels are remaining canon and that's no small thing.
(One thing I think we can agree on wholeheartedly is that the Alvin & The Chipmunks movie looks DIRE. As in, I was seeing ads for it on Youtube and thinking "Really, guys, you're releasing this now? The really crazy thing is that it was originally supposed to be released on Christmas and a few months ago they actually moved it BACK to be come out on the same day as the new Star Wars. I can't decide if they were hoping for the overflow of people who weren't able to make it into sold-out shows, or if they decided to have a remade excuse for their investors about why it flopped. That's got to be one of the weirdest box-office related decisions of the year, if not the decade).
no subject
Date: 2015-12-19 03:21 am (UTC)Heh, well, to be fair there's not really any new storylines; everything is a variation on some established series of tropes. It's more that the original Star Wars took the classic hero's journey and made it surprising and inventive and new. The prequels, I feel, similarly do a lot of interesting things with the classic tragedy storyline, as well as offering a reflection of Luke's journey with the stark differences that lead to Anakin's downfall. Yeah, it was off-putting for a lot of people, but it worked for me.
(And I'm almost 100% sure someone was setting up that Chipmunks movie for failure. I mean, really.)