dawn ✧ kylo ren (3)

chapter one ✧ grown apart

Lyra

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"We're not there yet, Lyra. I think it's time we turn in for the night," Marco suggests, after hours of near-silent searching through countless New Republic records on all known intel on the Empire-era crime syndicates. I blink slowly, my eyes now at the point of strain from the intense focus I'd placed on learning everything I could to aid me in my search.

The search for my mother.

"You're right," I sigh, switching the holo-screen off. My dinner plate rests barely touched near my hand, and my muscles groan as I rise from my chair. Rey grunts beside me, her muscles likely aching just as much as my own. The three of us leave the command center together, making our way toward the barracks.

Since the Battle of Crait a little over two years ago, Marco and I had taken on the rigorous task of training Rey to become a fully realized Jedi. Give or take nearly a year on my part, of course, as I'd needed time to myself when I'd become more heavily pregnant, and then a new mother. But in the short time that we've trained her, Rey has become truly extraordinary.

I'd only seen such strength in the Force in two others in my lifetime. One dead, after sacrificing himself to save us all. The other technically alive, but dead to me in all other ways than the breath flowing through his lungs and heart beating in his chest.

Only in the last few months have we been able to begin the rigorous search for my mother, which proved itself to be a much harder task than it had originally appeared at face value.

"Her name is Qi'ra. She grew up on Corellia with Han, actually. She was his first love," Leia smiled at her late husband's memory, and I felt my heart skip a beat. She rubbed a thumb over my hand that was clutched in hers, and I smiled back at her blearily. The newborn baby made adorable sounds as she had her very first nap at my bedside.

Apparently my mother had a type- my dad was every bit the smuggler that Han was.

"She ran a crime syndicate, Crimson Dawn, during the rule of the Empire. She betrayed Han for it, once. But he still spoke so highly of her," she finished, cupping my cheek. My exhausted head lolled back onto my pillow, but my heart still managed to flutter at the thought of the mother I had always dreamed of knowing.

Even remembering that moment now, when I had learned more about the nameless, faceless woman who had given me life than I had ever known before, my heart still flutters.

And when I'd first seen her face, though it was below the word Wanted in Galactic Basic, it was unlike anything I had ever felt before. She looked just like me. I am her spitting image.

In fact, my life hasn't felt as right as it does now since I was a happy, teenaged padawan at the temple in Coruscant, so brutally unaware of the rocky path laid out before her. I've become the Jedi I've trained and toiled my whole life to be. I openly and freely fight for the Resistance and for peace in the galaxy, and I'm doing it alongside and for everyone I love most.