Introduction

Loving in truth, and fain that love in verse to show

That she, dear she might take some pleasure of my pain.

Pleasure might cause her read, reading make her know,

Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain.

I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe

Studying inventions fine, her wits to entertain.

Oft turning other's leaves that thence might flow

Some fresh and fruitful showers upon my sunburned brain.

But words came halting forth, wanting invention's stay

Invention, nature's child, fled step-dame study's blows

And all others seemed but strangers in my way.

Thus, great with child to speak and helpless in my throes,

Biting my traunt pen, beating myself for spite,

"Fool," said my muse to me, "Look into they heart and write."

--Philip Sydney

I was nineteen when I wrote The Shadows Suit Me. Now I am twenty-four. I have tried to write sequels, and to write other, separate novels. To write this other novel that is kinda a synthesis of Shadows and something else I've been working on for years. To clean up Shadows and turn it into a final draft.

I'm now in graduate school. I have finals. I've been accused of being a terrible writer by my history professor. I should be working on the paper for her class, but my tormented soul, screaming for artistic expression, is insisting to me that if I write a sequel for Shadows at long last, if I "Look into my heart and write," then my finals will be better written for the practice. And, more importantly, I've realized that every time I've tried to write a sequel, it's been…what I thought I should write. Not what I needed to write. Not what was in my heart.

I'm not too different from my Luke. At all. I don't have a crippling spice addiction (though you might be concerned by my level of alcohol consumption), I don't have children with my sister, I don't have a paranoid theory that my whole life I've just been used, and I don't even have a relationship that I'm confused about. But the scattered thoughts and emotions are mine. I get anxiety attacks and I have trouble, to put it gently, seeing past my own shortcomings. Maybe, at this point in my life, it's time to let some of that out again.

The sequel I started writing to Shadows a few years ago--ignore it. It had some merits, and there were things I liked about it, but it wasn't right.

I know, as I've said, that not too many were thrilled with the end of Shadows. It was supposed to give you an uneasy feeling, to make you say, "That's not going to work." My boyfriend at the time, upon reading the ending, told me, "I don't know if you're a great writer or a terrible one. Do you mean to pay with our emotions like that?" Yes, yes I do.

I love you all for reading this. Thank you for your support.

--The Author

PS: I know that "death sticks" are a tube of liquid. Anyone else think it's weird that those Legacy comics came out not too long ofter I finished Shadows? In which a hardened, Luke-like character uses death sticks to avoid feeling the Force? I sense plagiarism here. Anyway, in my cannon they're staying what they always were, a harmful narcotic (that acts like heroin once it's in the system) that one smokes.

Burning Bright

Prologue

"You'll always be an addict."

I've heard that a million times. I know it. I know it with every aching cell in my body, every desperate thought in my mind. I know it every time I look at my children, at Leia, at the more-or-less harmless spice sticks I still smoke, the kind with all of the active chemical stripped out of them, leaving something that tastes like spice, and has a mild, caffeine-like kick, but is as much spice as a dead body is a person. I know it every time I wake up in the middle of the night and wish Leia were beside me. I know it when Anakin catches things that people drop before they can hit the ground. Too fast. And those big blue eyes. I don't answer, don't react at all. Don't look at her.

"No matter how long it's been since the last time you smoked a death stick."

I recoil a little at her use of the archaic term. How could she know anything about spice if she doesn't know that no one calls it that anymore? What is this, thirty years ago? I stubbornly don't answer, just stare grimly at the spring rain falling on the window.

"Luke, are you listening?"

"Yeah," I grumble.

"You know, these sessions would be a lot more helpful if you'd contribute."

"I don't have anything to say."

I'm in my therapist's office, sitting on the couch that one traditionally, stereotypically lies on, if one buys into the cliche. The middle-aged human female across from me is paid, by Leia, and assigned, by the clinic where I completed rehab almost a year ago, to make my troubles her own. I can't wait to get out of here. Every one of our biweekly sessions is the same.

"What have you been up to since we last spoke?" she asks.

I sigh. Nothing this woman and I ever say to each other could possibly help me. "Nothing."

"You must have done something."

"I spent time with my kids. That's about it."

"Your sons?"

I nod.

"And how old are they?"

I don't know how many times I've told her, and I can tell by her emphasis on the word "how" that she's aware she has been told. "Ben's eleven and Anakin is eight."

"And how do you feel when you spend time with them?"

This is all rehearsed bantha shit. She is trained to ask certain questions, and she seems to ask them in the same order, and not to listen very carefully to the answers. "Um…I dunno," I shift my feet in my black leather boots, suddenly feeling a bit awkward. "I'm happy to be with them, I guess."

"You guess?"

"I mean…they're the most important thing in my life."

"That's good. I think they're a very positive influence on you. Did they play a hand in your decision to go to rehabilitation?"

I nod. I would never have wanted to put myself through that if it weren't for their innocence. But as it was, I couldn't let them down.

"You were out of their lives for seven years. Do you think that effects your relationship with them now?"

What? In her repetition of her rehearsed steps, she's asked me a very obvious and idiotic question. "Um…yeah. Of course it does."

"How so?"

I guess that's less obvious. "Ben…I think he doesn't really trust me. He used to, when I first came back, but…." I shake my head helplessly.

"Why do you think he doesn't trust you?"

I laugh helplessly, wishing I could smoke in here. "He's too fucking smart. Like his mom."

"What do you mean?"

"I think he knows that there were some very serious reasons I left. Beyond a simple break-up or whatever."

"Have you ever thought about telling Ben you're not his biological father?"

Without missing a beat, I shake my head insistently. "No."

"Why's that?"

"I…I promised Leia," I say, my voice a little edgier than I'd meant for it to be.

"And you feel obligated to keep that promise, even though you two aren't getting along?"

"Yeah."

"Is that the only thing keeping you from telling him?"

I look back out the window at the grey Coruscant sky. Full of traffic. "No…."

"Why else?"

"Well…Vader's my father, too."

"And how does that change the situation for you?"

"I guess I don't want Ben to turn out…you know. Like me."

"But Vader was Leia's father, too. Is she like you?"

I shrug. "In some ways."

"Not all."

"She's not a drug addict."

"You weren't always."

Why point that out? Does that help me, somehow? "No, I was alright. Before."

"So what do you think changed, inside of you, that made you not alright anymore?"

Isn't that your job? To figure that out? To make me better? "I guess it was when I realized how much of my life was…."

I pause too long, and she coaxes me. "What?"

"Part of the Jedi's plans for taking down my father. It was my whole life. I started feeling like every single thing I did was planned out by them when I was born. I was just being used. It was my whole reason for existing. But they didn't have the same expectation of Leia--she was too high profile, being adopted into House Organa, and she was useful in her role as a politician. I was really only worth anything as a lure for Vader." I stop. I've never talked that much in here before. I decide it's because I'm just venting. I guess that's one use for a therapist.

"But, Luke--you did so much for the Alliance. Surely, not everything you did in that role can have been part of their plans."

I shrug in frustration. "Can I smoke in here?" I ask.

"You know you can't."

I sigh. "I…I don't know," I try to answer her question. "Probably not. I guess they can't have known about the Death Star when I was born." Or could they have? I suppress a shudder.

"So that's something you achieved because you chose to."

"I didn't choose it."

She furrows her brow at me.

"I had to do it. I didn't have a choice."

"You did have a choice."

I shake my head. The boy hero in me wants to say something noble about how I couldn't allow the Death Star to exist, to let other planets be lost the way Alderaan was, to let the Empire continue to tighten its grip on the Galaxy. But I just repeat stubbornly, "I didn't."

"Why?"

"Because they were going to destroy Yavin IV."

"And the Alliance?"

"And…Leia. She was on Yavin."

"You did it for Leia? To save her life?"

I sigh again, sitting back on the couch. I feel Leia's presence burning brightly less than a kilometer away, sitting in her office, doing whatever she does. I don't reach for her, but I don't have to. She's always there. Always. I can't block her out anymore. I'm too obnoxiously, painfully sober all the time.

I think of an eighteen-year-old princess with eyes like black fire.

"Everything I did was for Leia."