riverviewlogs | 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!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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."

to your stations, and may the Force be with us

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject