Saga - ST Hypothermia in Zero Gravity (A Oneshot Starring Leia Organa for the Hurt/Comfort Roulette Challenge)

Title: Hypothermia in Zero Gravity

Author: devilinthedetails

Characters: Leia; Kylo Ren/Ben Solo; Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker; Poe; Connix.

Genre: Angst; Drama; Hurt with a little Comfort; Family.

Timeline: Saga-ST. Set during the Last Jedi when Kylo fires on his mother’s ship and she floats in space.

Summary: An intergenerational exploration of the moment Leia flies through space in TLJ.

Author’s Note: Written for the Hurt/Comfort Roulette Challenge in the Angstmongers Annymous thread. The challenge requirements were that I write a story of at least 500 words featuring my chosen relationship type (parent and child relationship) and assigned angsty story element: hypothermia. I also chose to fulfill the bonus challenge of including the extremely angsty line: “I’ve never once held you.”

I am also experimenting with the immediacy of present tense entirely of my own volition so we will see how that works out for me. It just felt right for this story.

I’ve always felt that there was meant to be a peace and spirituality to the scene in TLJ that inspired this story so hopefully some of that peace and spirituality is reflected here along with the heavy doses of angst.

Hypothermia in Zero Gravity

Leia stands on the white-lit bridge of her battleship. Gazing out the viewport–the thin layer of transparisteel that is all that separates her from the cold vacuum and void she observes and can almost feel in her old, aching bones–at the darkness of space. Brightened and almost made beautiful by flaming red flares of destruction. Alive with the pulse of death.

Reaching into the Force to connect with the one presence she can link to more intimately than any other. The bond between a mother and the child she bore in her womb for nine months is unbreakable even though she has sometimes wished it were otherwise. A mother rejecting her own offspring as heinous. An evil abomination. A blight on the galaxy she is determined to serve until her last breath is ripped from her lungs.

The son who was once her greatest joy and is now her most profound sorrow. A living grief that she can never describe in words. A weight hung on her heart. The son who is now shrouded in the blackness she first sensed as tendrils swirling around him when he was growing like a seed inside her.

The son who has always reminded her so much of the biological father she had despised and disowned as not her true father. Not a part of her when she had been adopted and raised by Bail Organa as his true daughter. Not when acknowledging Vader as any father felt like a disavowal of everything Bail Organa had taught her. Had represented to her.

She can feel the dark turmoil raging inside her son. The tornado whirling within him. The chaos of his grief and anger. Anger at her for first seeing in him a monster. Calling him a monster like Vader in hushed whispers to Han. Whispers she had thought he couldn’t hear with his small child’s ears. Sending him to train with Luke instead of keeping him close to her. Holding him tightly in her arms. Protecting and shielding him as only a mother could from any black influences that sought to dominate his destiny.

The grief of everything they should have been to each other and were not. The grief of everything they will never be to one another. The grief that they will never hold each other so close that their hearts will beat as one. The grief not for what he has done but for what he is about to do. To her and to them.

She can feel him looking as if through the shards of a broken mirror at her standing on the bridge. Can feel his targeting computer locking on her. On the bridge she commands.

She feels his black-gloved thumbs hover on the controls that will hurl death and destruction at her ship. She tries to touch him. To hold him in her arms. To cradle him against her chest as if he were an infant once more. To prevent this mad violence from overcoming him. Overcoming them all. Swallowing them in the cold of space. A cold only a chilling fraction above absolute zero.

He hesitates. His lower lip retreating beneath his upper as it had when he was a young boy scolded by her for some childish naughtiness. He swallows, and she can feel it in her own throat. She blinks. He does not. His fingers drop away from the weapons.

He is not going to fire on her. He cannot bear to kill her as he did his own father with a lightsaber to the heart. A lightsaber to the heart Leia can still feel spearing her. Will always feel lancing into her. Along with the knowledge that it was her own son who had slain the man who had been her husband. The man who could make her smile and laugh more than any other. The man whose banter and bravado had always stirred something deep and primal in her own soul that called out to him alone of everyone in the universe.

All she has left of that man now is her memories–both bitter and sweet–and the son they created together at the end of the war with the Empire. The son who was supposed to be the breathing embodiment of their hope for the future of the galaxy. The shared sun which their bodies orbited in a dark universe.

That son does not have time to call off his companions. To inform them that he has changed his mind. His heart. To change the parameters of their mission. From behind him, lasers launch at the bridge. Intent on killing her and everyone on the bridge with her.

Yet, he has not fired on her. He has felt remorse and repentance. Acted on it for the first time in more years than Leia wants to think about. That knowledge is somehow a comfort to her as fire engulfs her environs. As transparisteel shatters around her. As the concussive force of the lasers hitting the bridge and sending it up in blazes propels her into the black vacuum of space.

She has no protection from the void. She can feel the cold sweep over her because she is not dressed in any suit that would shield her from it. Hypothermia sets in less than a second after exposure. Burrowing beneath her skin.

She can recognize the symptoms. Check off the list of them like a medic as they overtake her. She can remember her mother, the Queen of Alderaan, teaching them to her. Describing them to her as she explained the perils that could kill those who climbed the starkly beautiful Appenza Peak as the heirs to the throne traditionally did in fulfillment of the Challenge of the Body. Appenza Peak that was destroyed along with the rest of Alderaan so many years ago. Reduced to an asteroid belt. Unable to witness the defeat of the Empire.

She feels exhausted. Confused. Disoriented. As if no star map could tell her where she is in space. As if she doesn’t know who she is. Couldn’t identify herself from ten strangers in a security lineup. And maybe that ignorance is a respite. A mercy from her unabating grief. A final peace as the oblivion of death claims her.

She is what she has always hated to be. Alone and vulnerable. Helpless to save herself or aid anyone else. She floats. Suspended in space because there is nothing else to do in zero gravity. One doesn’t fall. Not in space. One floats forever. Flies for eternity.

Then, somehow, through the mystery of the Force she will never understand, she is no longer alone. The father she has rejected ever since Luke told her on the forested moon of Endor that they were related is with her. Surrounding her. Warming her. He is with her, and so is the Force because he is one with the Force. One with her.

He is inside of her and also outside her. He is speaking to her. Her own name, “Leia.” Whispered in her ear like a breath of wind when she had forgotten it. Been lost to who and what she was.

Reaching out to her across time and space–because neither time nor space mattered to one united with the timeless infinity of the Force–to connect with her as she had connected with her own son. To save her as she longed to save her own son who reminded her so much of the father she couldn’t accept. Couldn’t love or forgive.

“You were my daughter,” he says. The voice of Darth Vader and of Anakin Skywalker. The dark duality of him reflected in the soft, wistful sorrow that creeps into his tone as he continues to address her in an almost musing manner, “Yet, I’ve never once held you.”

“That’s not true,” she reminds him. Speaking to him through her mind and heart. Not through her mouth. Knowing that he will hear her through the Force that binds them together. That her words will be all the more painful for that. That they will cut more deeply into his heart because they came straight from hers with no tongue in between as intermediary to garble the direct translation of the unrelenting, unremitting resentment. The resentment Leia will never release into the Force like a long exhale. “You held me captive when you tortured me on the Death Star. You held me when you yanked me back–preventing me from doing anything–as my homeworld was destroyed by that Death Star.”

“I never once held you as a father should his daughter,” he corrects–whether himself or her, she can’t be certain–gently. “Keeping you safe. Comforting you. Will you let me rectify that now?”

She doesn’t say yes. That would be relenting too much. But she doesn’t refuse his offer either, and that is enough for him to lift her hand. To stretch out her fingers that would have fumbled if left to their own shivering, shriveling strength. To feel the warmth of Poe and Connix shining like Tatooine’s twin suns in the black cold of space.

Poe, who has been a loyal son to her ever since her own fell to the Dark Side. Surrendered to the temptations of Snoke. And Connix whom she has loved like the daughter she has never had. Connix, who wears her hair in two buns. An imitation of the fashion Leia had popularized when she was young. A homage to her.

Through the Force, she can feel the tethers binding her to Connix and Poe. Tying her to them and to the life she is not yet ready to leave. The principles she cannot abandon. She lets herself be pulled up to them along that line. It doesn’t take much of a push to propel a light object such as herself through zero gravity, after all, and the push that powers her to Connix and Poe is strong. It is her own desire to live, and her father’s love for her. Finally expressed after years of suppression. An overflowing dam breaking free.

She flies to them through a space that suddenly doesn’t matter because the Force is singing within her more than it ever had because she is singing in concert with her father. With Poe and with Connix who are the tethers binding her to this life.

She presses her palm against the airlock. They race down the hallway to her. She can feel their footsteps echoing in her eardrums through the space and time that seeks to separate them. The airlock lifts. Letting her into the crowded corridor that is salvation to her.

A breath mask is sealed over her face. Ironically making it hard to breathe. She feels as if she is suffocating. Trapped beneath the apparatus that is meant to sustain her.

Wonders if this is how Anakin Skywalker felt. Trapped for years behind his dark mask. A slave to the machine that made him breathe. That kept him alive and dead at the same time.

He has not forsaken her. Still is inside her. Asking, “Do you forgive me?”

“No,” she answers in her mind and heart. Because forgiveness is a higher power outside her. Beyond her. Something of which only Luke is capable. “I don’t forgive you. I can’t.”

She can’t forgive her son either. Doesn’t think it is her place to forgive her father or her son. Not when the crimes they have committed are not only against her but against the entire galaxy. She might have been a politician, but she would never presume to speak or to forgive on behalf of the entire galaxy.

“I love you,” her father replies. All a father can say to a daughter who cannot forgive him. Absolve him of his long list of sins.

“I love you too,” she whispers back to him through the Force that created them both. That bound them together in moments of transcendent beauty and unfathomable horror. “As I love my son.”

That was a love not even her staunch principles could deny her. That not even the zero gravity and the almost absolute zero of space could steal from her. There is a comfort to that as she struggles to breathe beneath the mask that sustains her. A feeling she is certain her father understands through the space and time that separates them. Through the Force that links them together through the generations.

 

@WarmNyota_SweetAyesha As always, thank you so much for reading and reviewing my Star Wars fics!I'm so glad that you loved the introspection of this piece, because the scene of Leia floating in space and trying to reach out to her lost, fallen son did strike me as just the perfect setting and context for an introspection based story as you say. I really enjoyed experimenting with present tense in this piece since I so often write in past tense, and I'm so flattered that you felt it added an extra element of immediacy to the events, thoughts, and feelings depicted in the story. Leia will always be one of my absolute favorite Star Wars characters ever, and it is awesome to hear that you felt I was able to provide such a tremendous insight into her crazily complicated and complex feelings for both her son and her biological father because I really wanted to do her justice in this story where so much of the focus was on what was going on in her mind and heart

@earlybird-obi-wan Thank you so much for reading and reviewing! This piece was very much about how love transcends all--even death and falls to the Dark Side--as you say, and in the end love is all that matters as you point out. This story was all about love, especially love between parents and children, and the angst that can sometimes accompany that love, so there is both heartbreak and hope

 

I am so sorry I missed this when you first posted it! What an amazing and thoughtful take on that strange and striking scene in TLJ. You really packed a punch with the introspection on many levels, especially Leia’s ruminations about her son, how he started up and where he ended up. I’m a mom of a son myself, and while he’s thankfully not going down anything near the kind of dark path Kylo Ren was, reading of those sort of feeling definitely strikes a very certain chord, and I give you much kudos for exploring that mother-son bond much deeper than the film did (it had the chance to and then didn’t, but I know part of that was due to Carrie Fisher’s death, too). When the feeling of the cold and hypothermia set in, I love how you had that remind Leia of safety precautions she had learned in the snowy mountains of her old, lost homeworld of Alderaan; that was quite a clever touch! And of course it showsus how those memories are still with her after all these years, which I think certainly would be the case even if, again, the movie never bothered to go there. Of course memories of Alderaan link directly to thoughts about the biological father who destroyed that homeworld, whom she very understandably cannot forgive—also an angle not sufficiently explored in the films, but which you’ve here linked to the rest of Leia’s introspection in a way that makes total sense. The “mental dialogues” you created between Leia and Anakin really sums it up: no, she can’t forgive him, but she still loves him—in the very, very “tough love” way she loves her son. (Hey, Kylo wanted to be like his grandfather—and oh yes, this shows us he got what he wanted, in all the ways he didn’t expect!) Thank you so much for using this challenging combination of prompts to give Sequels!Leia the exploration and introspection she so deserved.

 

@Findswoman Thank you so much for reading and commenting! I'm so flattered that you found this an amazing and thoughtful take on that strange and striking scene in TLJ.

So much of the "drama" of this story was in the introspection of Leia on her son and on her biological father, and I am so glad that as a mother you felt you could connect with Leia's ruminations about where her son started and where he ended up, though it is also awesome to know that your own son is nowhere near going down the same sort of dark path Kylo Ren was.

I too wish the ST had explored the mother-and-son bond (which was hinted at in things like Kylo not firing on his mother in this scene) than it did.

I am so happy you appreciated the details of Leia being reminded of safety precautions regarding cold and hypothermia she had once learned in the snowy mountains of lost Alderaan when she is thrown into the cold vacuum of space.

I am like you in that I think Leia would have carried those memories of Alderaan with her until she herself died, even if the ST again did not explore that at all. Despite the destruction of Hosnian Prime mimicking that of Alderaan so that could have been a time to bring up how she still remembers Alderaan all these years later. How she will never forget.

And, of course, I had to make that connection of her memories of Alderaan being linked to her biological father, who was such a part of that world's tragic destruction, and the biggest reason that she is unable to forgive that biological father for his crimes against her and the galaxy as a whole.

I wish the ST had done more to explore the how's and why's behind Leia's refusal to forgive her father because some of the books of the New Canon do a better job exploring that theme.

And I am so pleased that the "mental dialogues" I created between Leia and Anakin resonated with you and really summed up that idea that she couldn't forgive her biological father, but she could love him in a typical Leia tough love sort of way. A tough love sort of way that mirrors how she feels about the son who chose to emulate and idealize Vader just as you note!

Thank you again for the kind words, and I am so glad that you enjoyed this introspective take on Leia in this scene and moment