Beyond - Legends To My Love(Mystery/adventure/slight romance)(all OC) (Possible A/U,Beyond/saga) First post 10/07

Just a heads-up- the name of the story may change.

This is once more a repost of a story I had started writing many many years ago, and am once again determined to finish. All OC and this is possibly A/U but doesn't touch on many major events, so it shouldn't be too bad. Its major story line is in the Beyond era, but it has many flashbacks to Saga era.

*insert Disclaimer here*

Disclaimer: Hire me Disney, I wanna be an imagineer!! Until then, it's all yours, and I'm just sitting in the corner of the sandbox with my own makeshift toys.

I am very open to concrit. Just be nice, please.

Alright, here.. we... go!

***

Planet: Roon Date: 49 ABY


My grandfather passed away a few months back. I know that happens a lot, but knowing that doesn’t make it feel much better. It had been a rather short but vicious battle with cancer that had finally taken him, despite the years he had fought to stay alive, through so many wars.

For the first week, none of us went near the house. It was so different from when Grandma had died; we had all piled into that tiny place, every member of the family. We rallied by Grandpa, supporting him. He was so heartbroken that we had been worried about his own health. Wrongly, though; he had always been a fighter, and that battle was no different to him.

He lived on another three years, on to see all but the youngest grandkid (that would be me) married. Linta, the oldest, had his first great-grandchild. Marisa was born a year after Grandma passed. He seemed as vibrant as he had been all of his life. In a lot of ways, I’m glad I knew him best then, because what happened next was so devastating. Over the three years after Grandma’s death, Gramps and I only drew closer. He had no one and I had no one to speak of, so the two of us made a pair. Over those weeks and months, he told me stories no one else had heard, things he had seen and been a part of. So when the news came that he was terminally ill with cancer, I was devastated. I spent the short three months left of his life at his bedside, whether in the local hospital, a hospice care facility, or as he finally ended his time, in his own bed.

I was surprised to find him rather accepting of his course- not defying the fates as I would have expected him to. I told him that once, and a smile lit up his face, and he told me,

“Santora, when you reach my age, and have seen all the things I have seen, some rest is actually a very desirous thing,” his rasping laugh filled the room, “I am content with what I have done with my life.”

And he was. There was no sense of discontent, no unfinished thing. Well, except for seeing me married and with kids. That he understood and never pressed too hard. After that day, I never brought it up again, and neither did he.

So when Gramps finally passed on, I couldn’t bring myself to go back there. Not until now. Everyone else had gone in, and received the items Gramps had set aside for them, and now it was time to receive mine—everything else. Gramps left me the house, and all the things no one else had wanted, and I had helped put aside the items for the rest of the family. But everything in that house felt like it had meaning to me.

That night, I had packed up the last of my stuff from my apartment, and stuffed them in the speeder. There wasn’t a whole bunch—most of it had been in Gramps’ house anyway. I turned in my keycard to the apartment, and got back in the speeder. It took a few moments to start it up and get on the way. I’d been in his house for about three hours, and I still couldn’t bring myself to start anywhere. I couldn’t go into their old room. I couldn’t clean out the kitchen, couldn’t change the holos, rearrange the shelves. Nothing.

I was scared and melancholy all at once. To even touch anything felt like sacrilege, and I moved around the house like it was some sort of museum—to be seen, not touched. Finally, I took a shower in the guest bath, and changed into more comfortable clothes. Slowly, I sank into the overstuffed couch – that was his favorite piece of furniture in the house. I turned on the Holonet, changing the channel to the late night news.

After a half-hour of doing nothing, I decided that it was ridiculous, and steeled myself to do something about anything in the house. I took a look around, but I honestly felt my stomach turn with the idea. Something drew my eyes up, and inspiration struck me. The attic. I had never been up there, so to disturb it might not be so distasteful to me.

It took a good half hour to find which keycard out of the large stack left for me was the one to unlock the door to said attic. Once I got inside and found the light, I took a good look around. Boxes and large pieces of furniture filled the room. While there was clutter, it was set up in an organized manner, and I could see that there was some sort of method. I’m pretty sure this was Grandma’s work, ‘cause Gramps never took more than a few moments to organize anything. I smiled. Yeah, I can do this, I remember thinking to myself.

I look back now, as I write this down, on the night that all of this happened, there was some sort of force that moved me in the directions that I did. That something, somewhere, wanted this secret in the open, from the point of drawing me into the attic, to my eye getting drawn to a small pile set back in the stack. At the time, it was just logic to me. I figured that I didn’t want to be up late, well, as my eye was drawn to the clock on the brace, too late.

Maybe that’s still what it was. But I’ve always felt that secrets can’t stay hidden forever. The very nature of a secret is that it begs to be found out. Maybe that’s all it was. I don’t really know, and I don’t think I ever will. All I do know is that what I found there changed how I viewed a lot of things, including my Gramps. But maybe that’s why Gramps left me the house—maybe he knew that I needed an adventure, a mystery to figure out. Now I know that’s what he needed too.

Now all this is very much a bunch of supposition, and I can be stating a lot of things as intentional that is just chance, but that’s ok. And if it was Gramps, and he was the one to arrange this, on his death bed (I wouldn’t put it past him), thanks Gramps. I mean that.

Bet you’re dying to know what was in that box. At the first glance, inside there was a pile of letters. I pulled out the first one—it was one from Gramps to Grandma. The wording was sweet, but clunky, a young man’s inarticulate way of expressing feelings that even he was unsure of. As I dug through the box of flimsies, the letters progressively became more mature, fuller in their meaning and prose. Even in the years that I knew Gramps well, he was never an articulate speaker, let alone writer. There were parts of the letters, despite the evident age of the writer that sounded childish. Often, they would bring smiles to my face.

Occasionally, there would be the rare holodisc, where a young Grandma, with her sweet-as-honey voice, telling Gramps in elegant prose her love for him, and he would return the favor. This seemed near the end of their courtship, when he was still in the war, and she was at home on Coruscant.

However, with an almost abrupt drop off, both of their letters stopped appearing in the box. At the very end, there were only two other holodiscs left. One looked completely unused. Despite its pristine condition, there was mud caked on one side of it, and its auxiliary power looked low, barely glowing. The other was rather worn, like it had been carried in someone’s pocket for too long. Intrigued, I took both downstairs and cleaned up what I could, and stuck them on a charger. They were definitely old—I had to go in search of a charger that would fit them—but I would put the age somewhere around the time Gramps was courting Grandma.

I fiddled my thumbs until it was ready, trying to do anything but get excited, but cleaning up the dishes from the takeout wasn’t working too well. Still, it was better than doing nothing. By the time the chime went off, signaling that the first charge was complete, I had lost all track of time. Hurriedly, I grabbed it and placed it on the projector. Sitting back down on the couch, I wasn’t sure why I was so excited about this particular holodisc, versus the others that were still back up in the attic, back in the box. I quickly shrugged off that feeling when the feed came through. I had put the worn one on first, allowing the intrigue of wear to flavor my choice.

On the screen, a young brunette appeared. This startled me in and of itself. Grandma was blonde, and neither she nor Gramps had siblings. Who was this girl?

Love, she started. Who was she talking to? Couldn’t have been Gramps. Could it? Love, I’m so sorry. I know I’m going to have to leave you for a while, and hopefully it will just be for a little while. But in my line of work, I never know. I’m not leaving this for you just to say goodbye. No, the only way you’ll see this if I don’t come back. And watching you tonight as you slept, I realized I couldn’t leave you hanging. If I disappeared, you would eat yourself up trying to find me. But if I do disappear, I won’t be able to get back. It’s as simple as that.

And I’m a coward. See, if I was as brave as I even pretended to be, I would tell you all this to your face. As it is, the only way you’ll even know about this is if I’m gone. Which probably means I’m dead. Oh, Gods, she buried her face in her hands, her tears that had been brimming in her eyes falling unbidden down her face and into her hands. I found myself hating her for them. Hating that she would shed tears over my Gramps. Who was she, to have feelings for him?! I had already spotted the date and time stamp, mentally calculating. This woman was talking to my grandfather about loving him, about watching him sleep.

Disgusted, I slammed the power button on the projector, and angrily stormed into the guest room where I spent the whole night tossing and turning and staring at the ceiling. I had dismissed the rest of the message along with the other holodisc. In many ways, I wished the night had ended many hours back.

 

Roon is in this? I'm in, I'm in, I'm in! Love the planet of dark and light. *reads*

Also, since you're open to concrit: its main storyline and heads-up.

 

Yay. Happy to see this, too. Love the air of mystery already.

 

Finally returning to post a proper comment. I've been thinking of this story on a couple of occasions on the course of past months and I'm definitely interested in seeing more of it - not to mention that I've been wondering what precisely is AU in it. Not to mention that I'm hoping it will be one of those "sleeper hits" here on the board. And you'd make a great imagineer - heck, anybody who takes the planet with a precise point where light and dark meet and writes a captivating story like this is a natural-born imagineer!

From the very beginning, the story slightly reminds me of Va' dove ti porta il cuore - where a woman named Marta comes home to attend a funeral and she discovers a bunch of notes that totally change her perception of the past. That's a compliment, of course.

Just like granny Olga in the said novel/movie, Santora's grandfather is a fascinating character. From his acceptance of death, to his careful planning of what goes to whom once he's gone - he's got it all sorted out. His calmness is intriguing, but what's even more intriguing is how he told Santora the stories he told nobody else and the fact that he shared them with her after his wife had passed away. Hmmm... It seems that there was a reason he didn't trust his wife and that she sort of kept Santora away from him, too; given that Santora says they grew close only after grandma died.

Santora's respect towards almost everything in the house is tremendous, making me think of yet another thing I like a lot - 10 000 Maniacs' song Tension Makes a Tangle. Funny enough, once she eventually finds the letters, what they're held in does resemble the curio cabinet from the said song.

The sudden shift from the nostalgia of Gramps' letters - the bit about him lacking proper writing talent were cute - to what appears to be Grandma's adultery caught me by surprise. And now that the poodoo hit the fan, I can see that Santora may take a while to recover from this shock.

Please, give us more sometime soon. In the meantime, I will teach myself out of imagining Santora as an Auren Yomm lookalike. Sure there are so many different looking young women on Roon.

P.S. I see the note you left for me and since the rules changed *again* in the meantime, if you want me to go proofread in private next time (as much as I can, being a non-native speaker who only catches common typos ), I'll be happy to.