#let me know if it was your own prompt to fill
Grief is a deeply lonely thing. The world continues around you. People give you space when you just desperately want to be held and talked to. You try to move on and heal but the quiet screams.
I want to write something about Rey having to come to terms with her parents’ deaths. Surrounded by friends but with no one to lean on. Keeping a brave face for the morale of the Resistance but wishing she could break. Feeling the agony of it but knowing she’s alone in her pain. This time, she really is alone.
And maybe she thinks about how she wishes Ben were there this time. That maybe he would have understood.
But he’s not there. The bond is closed. So she keeps going on her own. It’s what she’s best at.
“They were filthy junk traders. Sold you off for drinking money. They’re dead in a pauper’s grave in the Jakku desert.“
They’re dead in a pauper’s grave in the Jakku desert.
dead in a pauper’s grave.
dead
dead
dead.
Rey bursts through the door into the captain’s quarters of the Falcon and lets it shut automatically behind her, before bracing her hands on her knees and folding her body near in half, head almost between her legs. Her breath is coming out in frenetic wheezes and choked gasps and she can feel the corners of her vision darkening.
It’s happening again.
For the third time in as many days, she has found herself gripped by a feeling that manifests in cold dread, icy sweat prickling her forehead and back, gathering at her upper lip and under her arms. Once she starts feeling this way, she knows now that she needs to get somewhere private, quickly, before the other symptoms begin and anyone sees her.
Oh, she knows Finn would be worried. Rose and Leia troubled and sympathetic, respectively. Poe would be outwardly, demonstratively concerned, with an underlying thread of This is our spark? Our last hope? that he would believe stayed hidden in the depths of his mind (little does he know).
The problem is, none of them would understand.
Regardless, she can’t burden them. Poe is right: she is the spark. The hope. The last Jedi. The one who is meant to lead them to victory. It wouldn’t do for any of them, not a single one, to see her in her current state.
The feeling of dread escalates now to a catastrophic scale. Bile rises in her throat as her arms go numb, hands tightening until they involuntarily curl into fists and she can do nothing to unfurl them. So this is what it feels like to die, she thinks, also for the third time in as many days. Her practical mind can understand that this is not death, this is simply her body rebelling against the shocks it has undergone in so little time. However, where is her practical mind now? Would practicality not dictate that her breath come out smooth and steady, rather than in these short, panicked, retching gasps? Would practicality not deem the use of her legs as important, as opposed to having them collapse underneath her, knees hitting the ground with jarring force?
Practical mind, indeed.
She feels herself shifting out of consciousness and it reminds her of the Force Bond. Of Ben.
I wish, she thinks, as her chest continues to tighten and tighten and she knows, with certainty, that this is the end, I wish he were here. He would understand. He would know what to do with this all-encompassing grief, this feeling of loneliness and despair so primordial she is sure it must have been man’s first emotion, perhaps his only emotion, perhaps the only emotion that has ever existed. Happiness is simply less despair. Love is less loneliness. But neither ever fully reach any real sort of euphoria, despite what the holos would have you believe.
Her body hits the ground next and she is wheezing, arms curling inwards, as she protectively tucks her knotted hands into her chest, wondering what it would be like if she had anticipated she would die alone. Would it be easier? To not have held out the hope of someone’s return? Of a life yet to begin? Would it be easier, now, to be by herself as the world goes dark and sound cuts out and her gasping breath echoes across a vast emptiness–
“Rey.”
She feels a vibration on the ground beneath her, can see the shape of a black figure dropping down beside her. Feels a large, warm hand on her back.
She senses an invasion, a pressing of her mind, but is powerless to defend herself against it so she allows it and tries only to hide her overwhelming feeling of relief.
He’s here.
He’s here.
It will be okay now.
Everything will be okay.
sending you my condolences @the-reylo-void. hope this maybe helped, even just a little? many, many hugs to you. please remember you are not alone. xo
