[blockquote][/blockquote]
?embers, lie sleeping?

Genre: Romance, Angst
Rating: PG
Time Frame: LoTJ
Characters: Luke/Mara, Ben

Summary: There are moments, odd moments, where he thinks that he may be haunted . . . and he encourages it.


Notes: Written for the [link=http://boards.theforce.net/fan_fiction_resource/b10304/31237362/p1/]Victorian Quote Roulette[/link]. My quote number fourty-five landed me with a deliciously Gothic quote in nature, and what better way to pay tribute to that than a ghostly sort of haunting?

To pull off that, please take into consideration that I have not actually read FoTJ (out of principle), and I am going just on gleaned facts on the plot.

That aside, enjoy the read!


Disclaimer: Nothing is mine, but for the words.





[blockquote][i]"I am all in a sea of wonders. I doubt; I fear; I think strange things, which I dare not confess to my own soul."
~ Bram Stoker, ?Dracula?[/i][/blockquote]




You wait.

It is a waiting that redefines patience; that makes time pass as though through immense walls of water, rolling over your skin with its cool presence, but so far away from any tangible sensation that you yearn to surface just to feel the burn of the sun, sharp against your skin.

Months have passed, long months in which the world around you has spun on its axis. It is not a world that you recognize, and in the years to come, you know there will be little you recognize even still. This is not the life you had built ? [i]built with her[/i] ? this was an echoing and intimidating thing of a galaxy that you had bleed for ? fought tooth and nail for. This new entity was something belonging to those who would come after you in its entirety.

And you are weary of it.

While you perform your mission, your exile, for the good of the many; a part of you travels just for yourself. You feel your age in your journey; something ancient amongst a sea of fledgling lights that strove to be stars. Amongst the small parts of the galaxy, with just your son at your side (beautiful and full and so, so [i]her[/i] at times that it made you ache) you feel as close to the true rest you long for as you could be. It is silent out here, so many simple lives intertwining with a mysticism that ignored the foolish turnings of the rest of the galaxy.

You could easily of become lost out here ? a part of you thinks you know how the one whose steps you are tracing erred so grievously before.

You are on the planet of Rostla Vi with Ben, sleeping out under the stars on route to a temple or some monastery that Jacen had stopped at before. You tried to reach out, wondering if you could feel your nephew's presence lingering on the rock, but it was hard to touch the dark of night while you were pointing above and showing the light of the stars to your son.

The names of the constellations rolled easily off of your tongue, and the stories and the mythologies behind them even easier still. Mara had loved to do this with you, you remember, challenging your knowledge even as she lost herself in the fantasies of the names. For everything hard about her, there was a part equally soft, and you had cherished those moments that let you see both parts of her whole and tarnished - a work of art that only you had fully appreciated.

You become silent often, lately. Mid-sentence you break off, your thoughts lost themselves as your tongue tripped on your words. Your mind was heavy with memories in those moments, and you thank the Force and everything else you can think of that your son is so understanding. Ben was all your patience with Mara's insight, and his presence was already a soothing one in the Force ? one that you hoped was strong enough to withstand the darkness of the years to come.

Thoughts of the future were harder to entertain than memories, and so you turned your mind away from them. The future was not yours ? could never be hers ? and so you find yourself so often in the >