riverviewlogs | to your stations, and may the Force be with us

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to your stations, and may the Force be with us

Who: Amilyn Holdo and YOU.
What: Holdo settles in at Riverview, has some awkward conversations, and generally has to deal with being here after mumble mumble spoiler mumble. Feel free to tag in off a prompt, or roll your own. Also, there will be comments for threads with specific people.
Where: Various locations including but not limited to: housing, government buildings, around town.
When: Over the first week or so that she's here.
Warnings: 'ware spoilers. I won't include any here, but threads will no doubt include them of necessity.

1. Community housing
If you live on the eighth floor, you will probably see Amilyn fairly regularly. She cuts a pretty unmistakable figure, being nearly six feet tall and with that purple hair and all. She's hung up her Republic-style gown for the time being (saving it, maybe, for some suitable occasion), but even with her civilian clothes she still wears her bracelets and rings.

2. Government offices
Amilyn shows up for work pretty much the day after she gets her assignment. So if you work as a community ambassador—congratulations, you have a new coworker. She's diligently setting up her workspace and getting caught up on all the latest news.

3. Entertainment and shopping district
All work and no play and all that stuff. Amilyn goes for walks, taking in the new sights and sounds, maybe stopping for a bite to eat somewhere interesting.

4. Wildcard
Feel free to suggest anything!

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[Continued from here]

It's a little while before Amilyn can pull herself together. She sniffles, wipes her face, then puts her hands on Leia's shoulders and takes a small step back. "Let me look at you. Oh, I'm so glad to see you. I was so worried."

She was so overcome, in fact, that she had forgotten that whole thing about how people from the same world might not have come from the same point in time.

Edited 2018-01-05 20:54 (UTC)

It hasn't yet crossed Leia's mind that they might be from different time periods either. Or of course that her friend might now know certain secrets here that Leia wished that she wouldn't. But she knows how her friend can be and she just smiles up at her while spreading her fingers. It's very much a 'yes, I'm me and I'm here' sort of gesture, because the last Leia knew, she had sent out a message that they were fine after the destruction of Starkiller base.

But she also knew that this was obsessive even for Amilyn, and the smile shifted into a frown before she just asked softly: "What is it?"

A sliver of doubt creeps into Amilyn's mind at that response, but not enough to stop her from saying, "Please—tell me you made it safely to Crait, at least. That you're not here because you're...like me."

Dead. Or about to be dead.

"Crait?" The name rang a bell of course, but she hadn't even thought about it in years not since they were on the run from the Empire. For a second she just frowned, and her hand reached out and touched Amilyn's face. The other woman seemed older than she'd seen her last, and there had never really been this look in her eyes, not even when they were kids and Leia had dragged her accidentally into the Rebellion.

"What's happened, Amilyn?"

"You don't know."

Her hand comes up to cover Leia's, and she presses her cheek to her old friend's palm, something she never thought she'd do again.

"Have you—what was the last thing you did? Before you came here?"

This is going to be another Poe Dameron thing, isn't it? Only it feels infinitely worse.

Leia was, to quote her husband, having a bad feeling about this, and she frowned as she watched her oldest friend. There was sadness there in waves, and Leia could feel it merging with her own, stoking it almost. Answering the question was something that Leia knew was only going to lead to heartbreak, but she also knew that she needed to do it anyway.

"I was on D'Qar after the Starkiller base had been destroyed. I had just sent Rey to find Luke with the map that had been recovered." Leia paused, and she sighed because she hadn't considered that they might be here from different times either. "You're from later on, aren't you?"

Amilyn nods slowly. "So you're the same as Dameron, then," she says. She sighs, passes a hand over her face. "Yes, I'm from ... a bit later."

She'd refused to tell Poe anything about his future, but that's Poe—someone she's got an extremely troubled recent history with, even though he hasn't had it yet (why does this have to be so kriffing complicated). This is one of her oldest friends. (And, let's face it, an older and wiser person.) She's not sure if she could hold back, if directly asked.

Amilyn doesn't need to tell Leia about the future. It's all there in her friend's face and in the way that she had been greeted. Something happens. Something terrible and her friend dies. Died. Died to get herself and no doubt as many people from the Resistance out of the battle as possible. The victory that they'd faced had felt hollow already, with Han's death but now it just felt all the worse because whatever had happened following it was all the more terrible.

Without thinking about it, Leia just wrapped her arms tightly around her friend and held onto her like she hadn't in a long time. When Leia speaks, her voice is soft. "We're going to fix it, Amilyn. What ever happened to you then, we're going to fix it. Ben is here and we're going to stop whatever comes next."

And of course, that meant that she was going to need to explain Ben, but for now, Leia just held her tightly.

Amilyn thought of all the times she and Leia had held one another like this—from that first loss of Kier when they were girls all the way up to the death of Han.

I can't take another loss.

Sure you can. You taught me how.

She didn't actually believe that this situation can be fixed. She didn't believe her death can be undone. But she wasn't going to say that, not now. Besides, there was suddenly something much more pressing to be said—

"I know. About Ben. Being here."

Leia had hoped that somehow her friend wouldn't have gotten the story from someone else, or wouldn't have gotten it from Ben himself. She remembers how betrayed Poe was when he'd found out, and she remembered how betrayed the world had been when they'd found out about Vader. Funny, Leia had never expected that she would have ever learn from what Obi Wan had said about Vader to deal with the tragedies in her own life.

But this isn't a conversation to have on the street, not where Leia can be seen being weak or sad, not when someone who didn't know her might learn tis.

So, she took their combined hands and drew Amilyn into the room she had been assigned, and then she kept her voice soft but calm, trying to wring the pain from it. "Have you spoken to him?"

Amilyn allows herself to be led, and before she can answer, she has to sit down.

"I have. He—" She's still processing that conversation, still unsure what she has taken away from it, and not at all certain of what she wants to tell Leia about it. "Leia...I thought—thought he'd been dead, all those years."

It's not why didn't you tell me, because Amilyn doesn't want to be accusatory. But the question is implicit.

When Amilyn sat down, Leia found herself doing it as well, and the pain of the world knowing about Vader came again, and for a long moment it was all Leia could do was breathe through the pain and the accusation that wasn't one. For Leia it should have been. They had lied to everyone they had loved, and the lies had torn them all apart just as much and as easily as what Ben had done.

She's silent for a moment, and then she takes a deep breath. "After Ben had destroyed the new jedi temple and took some of the students with him, I knew that it would be a Vader situation all over again. Only this time people wouldn't just distrust me, they'd distrust Luke too. The universe needed Luke Skywalker. And we didn't know what Ben would do then. Luke... he told me and then he disappeared. He cut himself off from me with the Force even. So, we thought if we told people Ben died then it would be easier."

Leia just sighed softly. "It wasn't. It isn't. It never got any easier."

So that's what really happened. The story as she knew it is reframed in an instant: Ben was the destroyer of Luke's work. That Leia should have hidden this truth made sense, of course—the revelations around Vader had rocked the New Republic and Amilyn knew well how much pain that had caused Leia. It stung to realize she'd been lied to, but— "I understand," Amilyn said, her voice soft. Force, how much should one woman endure? Amilyn's heart broke once again for her friend, even as she felt the deepest awe for Leia's sheer goodness in the face of trials that would have destroyed anyone else.

"I'm so sorry. It's—that's such an inadequate thing to say, Leia, but I am."

Edited 2018-01-18 20:18 (UTC)

If it was anyone else, Leia would have thought that things like "understand" and "so sorry" were platitudes and nothing more than that. But with Amilyn, she knew that the other woman did and had and hopefully always would. For as long as there was them, before the other woman was lost to her.

Leia didn't think she could take any more losses.

Holding onto her best friend's hand she just looked down at it for a long time before she sighed softly. "I hated to lie to you, Amilyn. I hated to lie about this and Ben... But I thought that it would be safer for everyone, including him, if I did it this way."

Amilyn had always wondered at Han's leaving. Knowing all this, now, she wonders if the secrets, on top of the grief, was part of what made him run.

"He ... told me to ask you the whole story, when I saw you," she says. "Now I realize what he meant—what he did to Luke, and—he went over to the First Order, didn't he? Leia—you've told me enough—you don't need to tell me more until you're ready. You did what you thought was best. I can't fault you for that."

She didn't know it, but she still only had part of the truth. Leia's confession and Ben's demeanour—clearly he was First Order now. But she hadn't yet connected Ben Solo and Kylo Ren.

Edited (sweet sweet retcons) 2018-01-25 17:30 (UTC)

For a moment, Leia wants to stay silent on this, the secret that is the closest and the one that is most painful to her heart. But she can't. Instead all she can do is just swallow, and look at Amilyn with haunted dark eyes. Her voice is soft, and the pain in it is well pronounced and it's only because Amilyn has known her for so long that she even lets anyone see this part of her. "Yes, Ben's in the First Order."

That part is easier to admit than this is, that's for sure. "Ben is Kylo Ren." She can't meet her friend's eyes as she said it, she doesn't want to see the realization that Ben was the one who killed Han, and killed potentially millions of other people because Leia had screwed up and sent her son away rather than attempting to understand and train him herself.

"Oh."

It's not a word; it's an exhalation. The news is a shock, but somehow, surreally, not a surprise. Amilyn had always felt that young Ben had the seeds of something extraordinary in him, just—the thought is horribly, bleakly funny—not like this.

There's nothing to say. All she can do is get up from her chair and kneel next to Leia's, and fold her friend into her arms.

Leia doesn't want to cry, and she's trying quite hard not too, but when she's folded into her friend's arms, the General lets out a shaky exhale, one that goes back to the time when the two of them were teenagers, and the first time that Amilyn had needed to hold Leia like this because she had lost a loved one. Then, like now, she had lost him to the dark side of his own choice, and Ben had done the same.

But she knows that unless the full truth is out, she'll never be able to look her friend in the eye again, so she just breathes softly: "he killed Han and it's all my fault. I never should have had Luke take him. I should have listened to what he wanted."

"Leia."

She leans back a little, cupping Leia's face between her hands. Not forcing her to look, but trying to keep her from shrinking, curling in on herself. "Leia. Don't blame yourself. You made the decisions you thought were best at the time, with what you knew. I know it all seems perfectly clear now, but—Leia, dear heart, your choices didn't force his. He chose his path. He made himself who he is now. He chose to listen to the Dark instead of the Light. If he'd stayed with you? He might have found another way to fight you and Han. Or not. We don't know, we can't know. But it's not your fault."

These are things that she's tried to tell herself over and over. That Han had told her. It wasn't only the need to keep secrets from everyone that had broken them up, but the guilt that they both were feeling and that the two of them kept trying to tell the other wasn't their fault. But they both took heavy blame, even as they tried not to blame their spouse. People had told her over and over by means of consolation, that it happened with a lot of married couples, but no one had understood then.

And Leia didn't know how to make Amilyn understand now. Those there's sadness in her eyes, it's firm but insistent, when she speaks. "I should have put him first and I didn't. I put the galaxy ahead of him. He hates me for that, and he's right too."

Sometimes Amilyn doesn't quite read people correctly, but she's known Leia for so long that she can see where her friend is, and that trying to argue her out of it will only add to her misery. So she only says, "I'm so sorry." And draws Leia into her arms. It's all the comfort she has to give.

Leia just lets Amilyn hold her for a long moment, burying her face in her friend's shoulder. She doesn't cry, but it's the closest to it that she ever allows herself to get. Her father had told her that she could survive anything, and she could survive this. Taking a deep breath, she just pulled back and touched her friend's purple hair. "No matter what the circumstances, I am very glad that you are here with me."

"I'm glad I can be here for you," Amilyn says. She can't quite say I'm glad you're here too, because so much is riding on Leia's fate back home ... but quietly, selfishly, she is very glad to have one of her oldest friends by her side again.

"Hey." A little smile, a glimmer of her youthful mischief. "Let's go get something to drink. And eat. If you're up for it, that is."

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to your stations, and may the Force be with us

closed thread - Leia Organa

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