Moonlight Kisses

A glade on Hapes

I don’t often get to come out here, away from the fighting, away from the pressures, just to have a chance and sit here. Sit where my dreams, and hopes, and future and love went up in smoke and little glittering sparks of quickly fading embers.

I close my eyes, and can still see the funeral pyre as the flames lick and caress his face, the way I wanted to be doing, and have done to me. Even though we were both so young, we had already been through so much. Even before the Yuuzhan Vong came and destroyed our worlds, ultimately shattering mine into billions of pieces and once I had those pieces picked back up, once I almost had those pieces reassembled into something recognizable as myself, they went and shattered it again. I wonder how many times I can be broken before I am unable to put myself back together again.

I look up at the moons, Hapes has lots of moons, and two of them are currently full and shining, lending everything a blue glow. It appears so soft and gentle, causing the sand mound which is all that remains of his pyre to be the same color blue as his eyes. I find myself shivering even though it is a warm summer night. I pull my cloak tighter around me, hoping to fight the chill of my own thoughts with the warmth the robe provides.

I reached down, and pick up some of that blue-tinged sand, allowing it to slide through my fingers. It speeds out of my hands, which reminds me so very much, just how quickly he entered and then left my life. I knew him only six years, but it felt like forever, it changed me forever.

We never even got a chance to kiss in the moonlight.

As that last thought ricochets in my brain, I can feel a tear start to travel down my face. Every time I come out here, there are fewer and fewer tears, less and less which is able to stab to my innermost heart, breaking open the wound which is his memory.

People call it healing; I have to wonder if it’s really just me dying.

I pick at that emotional scab, dredging up all those memories I have of him, everything from when I first saw him sitting at a table when he was eleven, to his appearing in the damutek to save me. I let them all flow over me, wash over me, reminding me of everything about him.

I wish I could hold him once again, just once. Or even smell him. I sigh at that thought. All his clothes and possessions that I kept have long since stopped smelling like him. When that finally happened, it almost felt like he had died all over again.

Yet though sadness colors all my memories of him, all my emotions, they do not hurt anymore. I try to smile and frown at the same time. The Yuuzhan Vong part of me will miss the pain associated with those memories, but I must remember that I am human as well. I search my emotions, trying to find exactly the right one that I now associate with my memories of Anakin. Then it comes to me: bittersweet. They hurt like an old wound, yet they are comforting and comfortable and good like a well worn robe.

I close my eyes, and use the Force to pull a memory out, and revel in the sensations that I remember of our first kiss. I almost laugh at how fumbling it was, at how accidental it seemed. We were stuck in that locker, thinking that death was ready to take us.

A sharp pain lances through my heart at that thought, at the memory of the kiss that I denied him the day that death did take him.

I smile, somewhat glad to know that there are still things which can cause my heart to break when I think of Anakin, I was almost afraid that I had lost that ability. I wished that the Yuuzhan Vong had never come, that I had the time to kiss him in all the places that I have visited since his death, that I had the chance to kiss him just once, in the romantic blue glow of moonlight.

Unfortunately all the memories of kisses are either under the fluorescent glare of ship-board lighting, or the orange organic glow of Yuuzhan Vong biot lights. I can feel a whisper of movement, and I look around the glade, scanning the trees for any sign of anyone.

Tenel Ka, the Queen Mother, told me that no one comes out here anymore. That since the end of the war, since Jacen’s disappearance, no one has bothered this place. That makes me sad, that the place where someone as great, as wonderful as Anakin was laid to rest is just another forgotten empty glade.

I search through the Force, trying to find something appropriate, and with a smile, discover something that will work perfectly. Hiking a short way into the woods that surround the glade, I come across the large stone, that is almost as tall as myself, and twice again as wide. I probe it with the Force, tracing how it interacts with the ground and the life in the ground, and smile, happy at the height of it. I ignite my saber, and slice a small chunk off, happy at the sight of smooth Hapan marble. I put my saber away, and reach out with the Force, dragging the stone from the ground, I worry it a bit at first, loosening it from the grip of the soil. Then I yank with all my might, dragging the stone from the ground. I lay it down, and once more ignite my saber, slicing long chunks off of it, until I am left with a long spike, a stone pedestal adorned on top by a representation of Anakin’s lightsaber hilt.

I pick the stone up with the Force once more and walk back to the glade. Then I lift the stone as high as I can, and use the Force to drive it deep into the solid earth beneath me. I smile as the shock of it falling, almost knocks me off my feet, I am certain that it was probably felt at the capital. Releasing the Force I look at my handiwork and break out into a large grin. Working quickly I use my saber to put a short poem onto the blank spot of the pedestal.

Stepping back, I read it once more:

Heart, we will forget him,
You and I, tonight!
You must forget the warmth he gave,
I will forget the light.

When you have done pray tell me,
Then I, my thoughts, will dim.
Haste! ‘lest while you’re lagging
I may remember him!

The effort, the marking of this spot, just letting it be known that this is where I left him, I feel warm and happy. As I watch my monument, a single, last tear slides down my face, and in the still of the night I can feel a whisper brush of wind against my cheek, almost as if the moonlight had kissed me.

I press my hand on my cheek, and speak for the first time in hours. “I will always love you Anakin.”

Turning, I walk back to the skimmer, and begin the trip to the Hapan space port, on the way there, on the way back to my life and the Jedi, I decide that yes, I will take Valin up on his offer of a date.

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The poem is Heart We Will Forget Him by Emily Dickinson