Saga Enough - a TESB one-shot vignette [More meta word-vomit 3/7]

As someone else once said, he's the Woobie who launched a thousand h/c fics. It's true, I'm afraid, lol.

 

What a beautiful vignette. Thanks for sharing this story with us.

 

And thanks for enjoying it.

 

This is why we need the Prolific Writer's thread. I was scanning the titles and came across this and though, hey, this looks interesting; seems short enough to read on my 20 minutes of lunch break, and then...

And then...

Oh my. This is so layered, so insightful. It's an amazing piece, not just in terms of your handling of the subject but also the construction of the work itself. Luke has suddenly, violently discovered that what he presumed to be a straight path in his life is actually a Möbius strip. I will be re-reading this.

Fantastic work.

 

Thread Necromancy +1

That was some lunch, huh?

Yeah, and this was me basically trying to rip off Stover. [/shameless] I do heart this little ficlet, though. I loved the idea of Luke getting his strength from Leia.

And I'll just be quiet now because this sounds cooler than anything else I could add...

 

Ooh, this is great! I love how you get into Luke's mindset at the end of the movie, and the strength of his bond with Leia really shines through here.

 

Even though the L/L sibling twist wasn't cemented (or even established) behind-the-scenes while TESB was filmed, that moment when he calls out to her through the Force and she hears him was just...ugh. Ridonkulously beautiful and perfect. Their bond in a nutshell. Going all the way back to ANH where Leia is the one comforting Luke after Ben is struck down, despite the fact that she's lost her entire world and family and he's only lost one person (at that particular time, at least), and then forward to Luke wordlessly reassuring Leia as they watch the Falcon fly away to go search for Han...they're instinctively reaching out to each other in these bleak moments. Each is the other's rock. *drowns in a puddle of L/L twin feels*

This is a far, far less depressing take (since it's sticking with canon) on this point within the film than an equally short AU I wrote years ago where the Falcon is successfully captured by the Executor's tractor beam, so...

Spoiler

...after a poignant goodbye to Leia, Luke goes back to his bunk and commits suicide to keep Vader from claiming him. I haven't reposted that one because, although not graphic, it's so friggin' dark.

 

Wow! This is a ThreadFic I somehow managed to miss, and I'm really glad it was nominated for the awards because it gave me an opportunity to read it. I just can't believe it's your first completed fic -- there's a maturity in the writing that makes it very special. But then there's your trademark themes of love, pain, strength and guilt that are inextricably entwined together, so I guess it was a fitting start to your writing here

Congrats on the nominationS! They were both well-deserved.

 

It's...technically not my first fic, just maybe one of the first that doesn't suck. I was ficcing here on the old boards back in the mid-2000s but my old material is SO hilariously melodramatic, bwah.

This Tumblr post was particularly apt the other day:





But thanks!

 

I dip in and out of these boards (thanks, Darth Real Life!) so somehow I missed this when it was first posted.

But....wow. Just wow. Really beautiful prose, and oh so moving.

Headcannon achieved!

 

I like creating headcanons! VICTORY!!!

The, uh, more depressing side of this story is that the nightmare Luke has here becomes a recurring one. It goes away, though, once he redeems his father, because he comes to understand the significance of his vision in the cave on Dagobah and makes his peace with it when he chooses to renounce the Dark Side (an action that really has to be done on a day-by-day basis, but this is one of the major milestones and triumphs of his life). He'll have plenty of other ones haunting him for the rest of his life, but this one will fade.

 

YOOOOOOOOOOOO.

That's the whole tragedy and irony of the situation - even as Vader is this monolith of destruction and evil, he's the only one out of all of Luke's parental and mentor figures who tells him the truth. It's cold and hard, but it's the truth, all right. (That doesn't necessarily make any of Obi-Wan's or Yoda's or the Larses' decisions flat out wrong; it was understandable and they were trying to protect Luke, but all that "certain point of view" hoohah aside, they were all part of a conspiracy of lies. Loving, well-meaning lies, but lies all the same. And after the shock begins to wear off, it could be said that processing this realization hurts and rankles even worse than hearing the revelation itself.) Vader, of all people, is the one to strip that veil away and lay bare the truth that sets Luke upon the path that ultimately leads to him making the choice to inspire his father to fulfill his destiny. Yes, it could have ended in disaster, but...it didn't, thankfully. [BECAUSE HAPPY ENDINGS, SORT OF, SQUEE. The not-happy endings are for AU-paloozas, LOL.] And this is the very crisis that Luke needed in order to understand what it really meant to be a hero - not a warrior {"Wars not make one great!"), but one who sacrifices selflessly out of love. UGH, THESE TWO, THEY SAVED EACH OTHER, JOIN ME IN MY PUDDLE OF FEELS.

I honestly don't believe Leia could ever hate Luke no matter what - ROTJ obviously shows how gracefully Leia took the bombshell. To say she's intelligent enough not to judge Luke by his genes is, like, the most Captain Obvious statement of the century. It's a horribly complicated issue for her, something they would certainly butt heads over from time to time, but not a dealbreaker. Even before finding out they're twins, Leia not only felt drawn to Luke, but she could see his character and his heart over the years. I'm sure - and this is kinda-headcanon territory for me - the wheels in her head would turn when she would think about how Anakin Skywalker, The Hero With No Fear of the Clone Wars, became Darth Vader, and the thought of, "If a supposedly 'good' man turned into that, what would stop Luke...?" There's a bit of a leap of faith involved there. But she firmly believes that every man and woman is responsible for his or her own deeds and choices, so slamming those prejudices on Luke would be ridiculous.

The thing is, though, at this point in time, with his mind nearly broken, Luke is not thinking rationally. He's drowning in doubt and panic, and he's seen how furious Leia can be, how wounded and iron-willed she is, and thus his private terror of facing rejection from her in light of this news takes over. Also, the last thing he'd want to do is hurt her even more, and he figures that knowing this about him would only deepen her pain; he'd be a constant walking reminder of everything Vader has done to her or taken from her.

SOMEBODY GIVE THESE POOR BABIES A HUG AND GALLONS OF HOT CHOCOLATE, STAT.