meant to make a thing or two (star wars | amilyn/jyn/leia)

[fiachairecht]

meant to make a thing or two. star wars (rogue one + original trilogy + sequels), amilyn/jyn/leia. six years after her brother took command of the imperial remnant, leia prepares to bring him home. 1.5k words, rated t. for prinzenhasserin in auexchange 2018.

"Breathe."

Amilyn's voice echoes through the vast sea of black and lilac, bounces from sphere of light to sphere of light until it finally reaches Leia's ears. The sea's distortion stretches it out thin as a silk thread and just as strong when Leia reaches out for it.

"Breathe, Leia. Feel for him. Listen."

She is listening. Apart from her sight it's the only one of her senses that still seems to function when the waves of the Force are so high overhead.

Which is the problem. Luke has long since passed out of range of her ears, physical or not. No matter how much Amilyn talks of a sixth sense — or, really, for you, a first, isn't it? You existed in the Force before you knew anything else existed, she'd said months ago, when rumours of Luke's reappearance first started to swirl and Leia began her newly concentrated efforts to reach out to him — Leia still feels frustratingly limited.

Too bound to the world, maybe, too much of her chosen parents' blood, and her brother is lost. She doesn't even know why she's the one searching, when Amilyn was the one who grew up with stories and power, who had Jedi books and hardly seemed to need scarves to fly through the air when they skyfare with Jyn.

But Amilyn's the one teaching her, has been, perhaps, ever since they met, even if the formal lessons in history and the Force only began when the shape of Luke's loss solidified in all of their hearts.

"You're drifting again," Amilyn says, and though her tone is still maddeningly even, Leia thinks there's a note of disappointment buried somewhere in the words. "Focus on the mission. Focus on Luke. I know you can."

Amilyn's belief has been a fact of Leia's life for years, but for the first time now she feels it ... differently. The words are somewhere in the sea with her, the words are light, the words are circling, and Amilyn isn't here but her stars are, a constellation not quite familiar but something within them is. Leia pushes towards it, no longer directionless in the current yet it is not quite able to resist her, not now that she's swimming rather than floating, not now that she's —

Somewhere a door slams open, and Leia could scream with frustration as the sea parts above her head, the visualisation of the Force she'd so painstakingly built vanishing in ripples of blue. "Kriff," she groans, flinging an arm over her eyes. "Jyn, what in all the hells?"

Informally trained in the Force Leia might be, but Jyn is unmistakable always, even if she wasn't at what sounded like the end of a very long rant directed at someone on the other end of a comm. Leia would almost sympathise, having been on the wrong end of Jyn's anger before, but she also knows by now that Jyn only yells for good reasons.

Well. Good reasons in Jyn's own mind, but that's enough for Leia, now.

Amilyn, though, is even less willing to tolerate interruptions. "Jyn," she says reproachfully, and as Leia comes back to herself, she can feel Amilyn's hands in her hair, easing her transition back to the physical world. "Your timing is terrible, she was finally getting close."

"Yeah, well, so am I," Jyn says sharply. Despite her time with Chirrut and Baze, she still distrusts the Force, preferring instead to put what faith she had grown comfortable with in the machinations of the New Republic's slowly growing intelligence machine. Too quickly growing, Leia often thought, but then she remembered who was leading the fight against them, and wondered if it would ever be enough.

"Solid intelligence," Jyn continues, and Leia opens her eyes to see Jyn's cheeks flushed and her eyes bright and reminds herself that they absolutely have everything they need to win this new stage of the fight against the Imperial Remnant. Her combat boots are caked with mud, as always, and her tac vest is hanging off of one shoulder. She's beautifully, inarguably real, and she's theirs, to love and fight alongside. "He's on Ilum, Leia. For real this time."

"Ilum," Amilyn whispers. "The crystals. Leia, do you think that's why ..." She trails off, one hand coming up to brush the small shard of kyber dangling from her ear. Above them, Jyn touches her necklace absently.

Leia looks at her lightsaber, dead and cold on the other side of the room. Almost mocking. "He could probably hide there," she admits reluctantly. "The whole planet is overwhelming in the Force. Like ... like staring too long at a neutron star." Even as she speaks she can feel this new knowledge tugging at something deep inside her, starting to illuminate the path through the sea that had begun to appear before her. Ocean the Force might be, but there were fewer places black and deep enough to drown in than Leia had thought years ago.

And Ilum was one of those places. Leia shivers involuntarily at the thought of what could have happened had she tried searching for Luke without Amilyn's anchor. 

"We have to go," she says. The certainty settles somewhere in her throat, knots deep in her chest where it neither fills the absence Luke left with his disappearance years ago nor soothes the gash left by his reappearance as something old and twisted that only knew her long enough to shut her out. "Don't we?"

"It might not be safe," Jyn warns, but it's not a discouragement, not truly. Leia can't see the silent conversation she and Amilyn are having above her head, but she can guess at the content anyway. They're going, all three of them, and the details can be blown up — or, less likely, sorted out — later.

It's been that way for six years, and Leia's slowly starting to forget she had relied on any other support system. Six years ago Luke Skywalker had turned away from an Endor campfire to bring a new form of order to his father's abandoned troopers; six years ago Leia had lost a brother, though she never stopped being a twin. Six years ago she had kissed Jyn for the first time, both of them tired and angry and smeared with other people's blood; six years ago neither of them had protested when Amilyn had taken their hands in hers and led them to a secluded pool far out of reach of ewoks and rebels alike.

She's never looked back. She's never been able to afford to.

"We can start carefully," she says as she stands. "Subtly." The silence that greets her is profound.

"I can do subtle," Leia protests, as Jyn snorts in fond disbelief.

Amilyn presses a kiss to the top of Leia's head, amusement radiating all around her. "You absolutely cannot," she says.

"Subtle as a tauntaun at a shimmersilk loom, maybe," Jyn clarifies, and when Leia opens her mouth to argue, Amilyn quiets her with a gentle hand.

"It might be what we need today, love," she says softly, and Leia takes a moment to roll the word around through the Force. It seems almost out of place on the brink of something so momentus, but then, Luke had loved her. Loved her still, because such wanting could hardly exist without love. The Rebellion had loved her, in its own chaotic, disjointed, desperate way.

But Amilyn and Jyn love her — love Leia, in addition to the glimmering beacon of hope in her heart that the galaxy decreed she would never be allowed to put down for a moment's rest, and that counts for almost more than either of them know.

And in opening herself to the Force, she'd chosen to feel all of that.

Leia reaches out, summons her saber with a thought and feels rather than sees it slot into place at her hip. It's a comforting weight now, a familiar one, just like the heavy fall of her hair down her back, the press of Amilyn's head resting on her stomach while she slept or the firm grip of Jyn's hand on her shoulder.

"I have a ship," Jyn says, and Leia can feel her gaze flicker over her and Amilyn, a last silent check that they all do half-unconciously now after so many years of war. Keep your weapons close, your friends and lovers closer still.

Neither of them ask if she's ready for what they'll find on Ilum, and she's grateful. Instead they kiss her, each one soft and lingering, and then she watches with a smile as Amilyn pulls Jyn to her for their own kiss, the two of them beautiful and unbearably alive in their respective green and black.

It's routine now, one they've perfected beyond words, something that recognises how inextricably bound they'll always be.

Leia grips the hilt of her saber, feels the kyber resonance in her bones — in all of their bones. "Thank you," she says, and knows that whatever her brother has become, she still has the strength to bring him home.