𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐑𝐓𝐘 𝐅𝐎𝐔𝐑

'𝐞𝐜𝐡𝐨'

━━ -ˋˏ★ˎˊ- ━━

...TAKODANA, WESTERN REACHES

THE TASTE OF JAKKU sand still lingered on her tongue, but as soon as Lyra took a bite of a sweet pear, it all went away. Maz had sat them down at a table off to the side with a wide spread of food at the center, and Lyra wasn't shy about digging in. Rey followed her lead, smiling as she took a piece of a bright yellow kiwano off of the platter. Finn, still stewing, looked at them like they were crazy.

"It's good," Lyra nodded at him between bites. "You should eat something, it might put you in a better mood."

Finn, maybe just to spite her, took a sip of water and nothing else.

"So, what is so important about this droid?" Maz asked once they all settled.

Bee was more than happy to explain, proud of himself for carrying such an important artifact around. He chirped out a shortened version of the story.

"A map to Skywalker himself?" Maz clicked her tongue at Han and gave him a side-long glance. "You're right back into the mess!"

"Yeah, well," he said gruffly, turning his head to look directly at Lyra. "She has a special gift for dragging me back to the Resistance against my will."

"It's not my fault you can't keep track of your ship. Coincidence, both times," Lyra told him wryly, taking another bite of the fruit in her hand.

"I would say it was a little more than luck, hm?" Maz adjusted herself in the seat.

Mid-bite, Lyra just stared at the woman. What did she know about this?

Slowly, Lyra set the pear down on the plate in front of her, not breaking her stare with Maz. Centuries of secrets hiding just behind her larger-than-life eyes. They were here to get a droid back to the Resistance, not to confront the swirling whirlpool of Lyra's confusion. Still, Maz looked at her with grim satisfaction. She had just confirmed something with herself, and Lyra was afraid to know what she was thinking.

Han looked between them, anxious to get the conversation back on track. "Maz, she needs help getting this droid back to Leia."

"Hmm," Maz considered, finally pulling her gaze away from Lyra. She squinted at Han. "No. You've been running away from this fight for too long," she decided. "Han, nyakee nago wadda. Go home!"

The clean-ship excuse was a ruse. A way to keep himself from ever setting foot on D'Qar again. If Lyra weren't so concerned about Maz's blatant refusal to help, she would have felt bad for the dejected expression on Han's face.

"Leia doesn't wanna see me," Han told Maz with a small shake of his head.

That was so far from the truth. Given the state of things, she would bet all her credits Leia would be more than glad to see her husband again. But Han was convinced, and Maz wasn't budging.

Finn leaned forward, growing tired of their back and forth. "Please, we came here for your help."

But Maz didn't answer. She was in the middle of playing a careful game with the four of them to see who would snap first, and she was a hair's breadth from winning.

"What fight?" Rey asked, searching for a better context. The piece of fruit was held in her hand so tightly, it was a miracle it was still in one piece.

"The only fight: against the dark side. Through the ages, I've seen evil take many forms. The Sith. The Empire. Today, it is the First Order. Their shadow is spreading across the galaxy. We must face them, fight them. All of us."

Finn leaned forward with his shoulders square. "There is no fight against the First Order. Not one we can win."

Han gave a low-pitched whistle. "Shoulda got something stronger than water for this conversation."

Maz was talking about the fight like it was so clear, good and bad and no gray area in between. After a lifetime of being caught in an ebb and flow, Lyra knew the delicate complexities deeper than the crystal-cut surface Maz was speaking of. There were planets that wouldn't fight. Some pretended there was no war. Others that funded the First Order, the Resistance, sometimes both sides if it would get them more revenue in their shipyards. Maybe in the Force there was more clarity, but the real galaxy was too muddled to be more than knotted rope and hard-won victory.  

Finn was undeterred. "Look around. There's no chance we haven't been recognized already. I bet you the First Order is on their way right-—"

The clicking of gears interrupted him. Maz leaned toward Finn and adjusted her goggles, making her eyes grow even bigger.

Aghast, Finn asked, "What's this? What are you doing?"

Then, to everyone's surprise, Maz crawled up onto the table. Plates and glasses clinked and clattered together as her weight shifted over the surface. A cup fell off the edge, and Lyra caught it just before it hit Bee on the head. Rey almost fell out of her seat trying to scoot back so fast. 

Maz examined Finn with the utmost scrutiny.  "Solo?" Finn tried again, "What's she doing?"

"I don't know," Han replied lazily over the rim of his cup. "But it ain't good."

"If you live long enough you see the same eyes in different people," Maz hummed. "I'm looking at the eyes of a man who wants to run."

This struck a chord with Finn. He leveled his gaze, no longer afraid. "You don't know a thing about me, where I'm from, what I've seen. You don't know the First Order like I do. They'll slaughter us," he glanced around the table. "We all need to run."

Incredibly hurt, Rey flinched at his words. Lyra, however, wasn't surprised.

"You see those two?" Maz pointed at a group of pirates in the corner. "They'll trade work for transportation to the Outer Rim. There, you can disappear."

Finn was open to it. He could stay with them, head back to a base filled with people who might not trust him. Rey would be there; Lyra could tell it was holding him back to think of leaving the girl. But to disappear like he had never existed would be a beautiful kind of solace. If he had been audacious enough to steal a TIE fighter, he understood the risks. In a way, Lyra was running from the First Order, too. With time, she had learned to bear it. It was raw and new to him, the shock of being hunted. To break the mold you have to first be seen, and being seen was the most dangerous proposition.

"Finn!" Rey hissed, not ready or willing to lose him on such a whim.

"Come with me," Finn said to her, reaching out to grab her arm

Rey recoiled, glancing first at Lyra and then at Bee. "What about the map? We're not done yet, we have to get him back to your base."

Han and Lyra both shared the same look. They had made a silent pact to not say anything about it until Finn did, but it seemed that the former stormtrooper didn't want to explain himself.

"I can't," Finn told her.

Their group was fractured and divided with those two words. Han wouldn't face Leia, Finn wouldn't stop running, and Rey wouldn't go anywhere but Jakku. It was clear that their paths were going to diverge if there was nothing to pull them back together.

Finn tried to hand the gun back to Han as he left the table, but the smuggler just shook his head solemnly. "Keep it, kid."

Rey looked to Lyra, eyes wide. They couldn't lose Finn, Lyra realized. Even if he didn't care for Lyra, there was a life for him with the Resistance. One where he wouldn't have to hide. Lyra cocked her head to the side, motioning for Rey to go after him. If anyone was able to talk Finn down, it would be her.

Lyra would only make the situation worse.

She took another long sip of her water, watching as Rey chased after Finn. Her head of three neat buns bobbed through the crowd until it disappeared behind a column and out of sight.

"Who's the girl?" Maz asked, vaguely amused by the situation.

"Still trying to figure that one out," Han grunted, looking to Lyra for an explanation. Her previous one was no longer adequate.

"She's a scavenger. An amazing pilot, but she's never left Jakku until today," Lyra explained. A chunk of hair fell into her eyes, and she brushed it back behind her ear. "Beyond that, I don't know. She claims that she needs to stay on Jakku to wait for her family to return," she explained soberly. "She's been waiting all her life."

"She knew the inner workings of the Falcon like nothin' I've ever seen," Han remarked. "Might even be a better pilot than you, kid."

Lyra tipped her head back with a melancholy smile, trying desperately hard to keep herself in the present. She didn't have the luxury of time to dwell on the past. "I've never claimed to be anything close to the best pilot in the Resistance. Rey might have me beat in the flying department, and I owe her for saving our asses back on Jakku. She's already helped the Resistance more than she could ever know."

"So this is your mission?" Maz asked her, fingers pressed to her chin.

Lyra nodded, skillfully avoiding any mention of the second pilot. "It's been a long road to find the map. Now that we've got it, I need to get it back before anything else happens."

"Anything else?" Maz pried further. Her small smile was unsettling, filled with pity for something she shouldn't even know about.

"We got derailed after Jakku," she motioned toward Bee with a half-hearted smile on her face.

But Maz shook her head solemnly. She could see straight through Lyra's words. Leaning forward, she said, "Grief does not do well when left to fester in the heart, Lyra. You've lost a great deal, haven't you?"

Lyra realized why Finn was so defensive. With Maz's cryptic gaze on her, she felt like an exposed nerve. There was no escaping this confrontation. She didn't want to talk about it again, but she was without a choice.

Han leaned forward, also waiting for an explanation.

"I wasn't the only pilot assigned to this mission," she began.  "The other was taken prisoner by the First Order after our ships were destroyed. He stayed behind so I could make it out, and they must have taken him back to their Star Destroyer. Finn helped him escape, but their TIE crashed in the desert. Finn was the only one to make it out alive." The words tasted bitter on her tongue.

She looked up to see two sorry-looking faces staring back at her. Her heart was pounding in her chest, and the walls of the room were closer than they were a second ago. Things were closing in quickly, pinching at the edge of her perception and guiding her back to the languid ease of sorrow. Lyra was trying her best to hold it all back, but it was no use.

"Who was it?" Han asked gently.

He would know the name. As soon as Lyra said it, there would be no taking it back. He would know the name and it would make it all the more real that the pilot would not be coming back. Everyone knew the name.

"Poe," Lyra answered, eyes glazed over as she stared blankly at the fruit in front of her. "Poe Dameron."

"Shara and Kes's youngest?"

"Yeah." Eleni's brother. She'll be devastated by this.

Han leaned back in his chair. "I hate to ask this, but are you sure he's gone? There's no way he could've made it out? You wanna talk about good pilots, he's one of the finest your Resistance has. It doesn't sound realistic that he just crashed. You can't, I dunno, feel his life Force out there somewhere?"

Panicked, Lyra turned her head toward him so fast, the end of her long ponytail whipped her in the eye. She blinked quickly. "What are you talking about?"

Han looked at Maz, like he might have gotten something wrong. "The Force," he said, motioning vaguely.

"I don't know anything about the Force," Lyra answered coldly.

"Oh-kay," Han said, leaning forward and keeping his voice quiet. He waved his hand in front of him. "I know about all of that. I know that you can use the Force. It's no coincidence your General sent you to find Skywalker."

Lyra just blinked. Her mouth was open like a fish gasping for air. "What?"

Maz didn't seem all too surprised, either. "Yes. The Force, I see the way it moves around you."

Lyra narrowed her eyes. "It moves around me like it moves around everyone else."

Unhelpful as ever, Han said, "It's not moving around me."

And then, to Lyra's horror, Maz rounded on her. Much like she had done to Finn, she stared directly into her eyes, calculating and evaluating her for all she was worth.

"Hmm," she said, sitting back again. "There's something in you that is very familiar."

"Maz," Han warned, giving what he thought was a discreet shake of his head. All of his bravado was gone, the teasing glint in his eyes replaced by one of a dire warning.

Lyra looked between them, keeping her arms square on the table in front of her. She felt like a child in trouble, waiting to receive her penalty. "What is it?"

"There are things you don't know," Maz explained, cryptic as ever. "You and Rey have a great deal in common. In both of you, I see the same longing. For family."

Han cleared his throat loudly, trying to get Maz off the topic of conversation. He was sitting up straighter than before. Even when Maz had mentioned Leia, he hadn't looked jolted and uncomfortable.

More than coincidence.

"What are you not telling me?" Her voice was low and hoarse.

He laughed uncomfortably, shaking his head like she was crazy for suggesting such a thing.

"No," she insisted, going out on a limb. She was balancing precariously on a guess. "I had a feeling, back on the Falcon. You and Leia look at me the same way, like there's something you know that I don't. I've been ignoring it for too long," Lyra told him, and she knew right away that she wasn't wrong.

Han shifted in his chair, but he kept his mouth shut.

"It is not wise to keep the truth from the curious," Maz sang, looking at Lyra with fascination.

"So what is the truth?" Lyra asked, trying to gauge from Han's expression what he wouldn't tell her with his words.

It was like getting electrified all over again. How impossibly perfect this all was. Han's sudden appearance on Kaddak, a world where every creature and human wanted his blood. Leia's lack of hesitation when she met Lyra, the way she treated her like a daughter when she should have treated her like a fighter. The way both of them seemed to understand her so fully, it was uncanny.

"You weren't on Kaddak by coincidence, were you?" Lyra breathed. Her throat tightened with choking emotion. "Leia knew where to look, she sent you to come find me. None of it was by chance, you took me to the Resistance because it was a planned rescue."

Han, wide-eyed, just looked at her. He was cornered.

"You know who I was," she repeated. "You knew me before the First Order."

"Listen, kid," Han tried to play it off. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Yes, you do," Lyra continued, standing up from her chair. Her sudden movement drew the attention of several of the patrons around them. Bee chirped softly, scooting out of the way. "Pretend all you want, I've heard enough lies to know when they're being told to my face."

"She's a clever one, Han," Maz whistled, but Lyra was already stalking away.

Lyra didn't know where she was going. Her first thought was to find Rey, or maybe Finn. She found herself turning down a staircase that led deep beneath Maz's palace. It smelled stale and old, the air fouled by antiquated history. The stone walls reminded her of D'Qar, and something indescribable made her feel like she was home.

At the end of the hall, she saw Rey staring at something in a box and breathing heavily.

"Rey—?" Lyra asked. "Are you alright? Where's Finn?"

Startled, Rey turned around to face her. Her eyes were shining with tears.

"Hey, what's going on?" Lyra tried again, keeping her voice soft.

Rey just shook her head. "That thing, that lightsaber," she sputtered. "I shouldn't have gone in there."

"Lightsaber?" Lyra wrinkled her nose. Never in her life had she actually seen one. "How the hell would Maz have gotten her hands on an actual saber?"

Rey, calming a little, said, "I dunno, see for yourself."

And so Lyra stepped forward, closer to the artifacts and closer to the magnetic pull she had felt on the staircase. The little room was dark, but there was a light that seemed to reflect with blinding intensity off of a little box.

"No way," Lyra breathed, instinctively reaching out her hand to touch it.

"No!" Rey shouted, rushing forward to stop her. "Don't touch that thing!"

"Okay, okay!" Lyra took a step back.  She turned to see that Maz was at the end of the lamp lit hall, and Bee rolled down the final step to join them. 

 Rey swiped furtively at her eyes, but it was in vain.  "What was that?" She demanded of Maz.

Breathlessly, she said, "That lightsaber was Luke's, and his father's before him. And now, it calls to you!"

Rey didn't share Maz's excitement. "I have to get back to Jakku."

Maz gave a nod of understanding, glancing once at Lyra as she removed her goggles. "Your friends told me." She held out a hand, and Rey kneeled to take it. "Dear child, I see your eyes. You already know the truth. Whomever you're waiting for on Jakku—they're never coming back."

A silent tear slipped down Rey's cheek.

"But," Max continued. "There's someone who still could."

"Luke?" Rey whispered.

"The belonging you seek is not behind you. It is ahead. I am no Jedi, but I know the Force. The light, it has always been there. It will guide you."

Abruptly, Rey stood.  Face screwed up in anguish, she said,  "I'm never touching that thing again. I don't want any part of this."

"Rey—" Lyra tried, reaching out a comforting hand.

But she was already gone and jogging towards the staircase. Bee gave a dejected moan as he watched her go.  Lyra had to wonder what the Force had done, what it had shown Rey to make her so vehemently against going anywhere but Jakku.

Lyra gathered her remaining courage. "What did you see, when you looked at my eyes?"

Maz hesitated, choosing her words carefully. "The truth comes at a high price, Lyra. Han fears for you, he does not keep the truth from you out of malice."

"I know he doesn't," Lyra relented with a shake of her head. "But why? What can there possibly be that's worse than what I already think?  I'm so close, I keep remembering things. Seeing things. Faces without names, places that don't connect to anything I can remember."

"Do you understand what you are asking?" Maz asked.  It was a confirmation of liability, to know that the choice was made with finality. "To know the past is to know pain."

"I have to know," Lyra said fervently. "I need to understand who I am."

Without answering Maz moved into the small room and lifted the saber out of it's cloth. It shone like diamonds in the lamp light. With an extended hand, she held it out. "Take it."

As soon as Lyra's hand met the smooth body of the lightsaber, the world went black.

"This is a new beginning, Lyra."

Evening has gone and a full, star-clustered night has swept over the city.

The woman in the center of the well-furnished room turns as if on cue, and Lyra is face to face with herself.

It is like looking in a skewed mirror. This other person has hair dark as walnut wood, and her hazel eyes glint with reflections from the fireplace. Rosy cheeked and determined. Her hand drifts to her collarbone where the singular charm of a golden necklace hangs like a noose.

The necklace. Her necklace.

The world spins and Lyra is face to face with a white-haired Jedi, a face she has seen in dreams. A sentinel of a by-gone era. She stands tall, staring straight forward like a statue. Her expression is emotionless, and the only noise is the echoic click of time passing in the shadows. Like a clock ticking on, and an hourglass reaching its final grain.

The Jedi's hand closes around the hilt of an ornate knife and she lifts it from the vanity. In a motion that is all serenity, no violence, the woman grabs a fist of her long white hair and cuts just below her chin. It falls to the floor in one swift movement.

A single tear draws a line down her cheek. Her silver eyes flicker up and her lips part with heartbroken, accented words. "This is a new beginning, Lyra. Can you feel it?"

Sunlight saturates the new scene in front of her, and Lyra squints from the sudden change. Her heart races as recognition electrifies her veins. This is Naboo, the clear-watered and golden-skied city of Theed. She is on a balcony, a beautiful intricately carved one made of stone.

"Where are your shoes?" A woman asks patiently. She looks down at a young girl. The cream-hued fabric of her dress glints in the summer sun, and intricate beadwork lines the bodice without a thread out of place. Her voice sounds like the most familiar thing.

The girl in question is small, and the hem of her pants is soaked with fresh mud. Her honey gold hair is swept back into what was once a neat braid. Now, it's a mess of knotted locks. A young boy stands nearby, watching. Curly-haired and tan, he's at least a foot taller than her.

The girl opens her mouth to speak, and the scene dissolves with a peal of laughter.

A different day. Sunrise on the shore, and the waves are glittering with a warning. Night sweeps its hand down, but the inside of the Senator's Villa is warm with the light of a home. The same little girl lays on the couch, eyes closed and half asleep as she looks out the door to the balcony.

"LJ?" the same man from before asks with a chuckle. His sandy-blond hair is starting to show streaks of gray from stress and sleepless nights, but when he smiles he looks young again. "Are you asleep?"

Quietly, she says, "No, I'm not." But her eyes are closed and her small limbs are folded up into her chest while her head lays on the pillow. She wants to stay downstairs with her parents, and she knows that if she falls asleep, she will have to go to bed.

But still, he gently picks her up off the couch without much protestation. Before they get to the stairs, they make a stop at where the woman from before is standing.

"Goodnight, love," she says, and she presses a kiss to the girl's head. Her silver dress looks like shimmering starlight. A beacon in the darkness, always constant and unchanging.

"'Night, mom," the girl says softly, nestling further into her dad's chest.

Lyra could see their faces clearly. The warm brown eyes of her mother, and the sparkling blue of her father. And she remembered.

Her parents.

The memories, lost, stolen, altered, burned in a fire, all of them. The inklings of truth that had begun to return, sundrenched summers on the shoreline with a boy. An entire timeline of a life that she didn't know was hers fell back into place like an ever-present ocean tide that had never really left. It was a flood, a crashing wave washing over her and reminding her of everything she used to have.

And of everything she had lost.

The Senator's Villa, aged with history and now steeped in scarlett and tangerine flames. It licks at the walls and peeled the floorboards away, eating the wallpaper and curtains and the sound of a life well lived. There is no honorable death, and the story of what happened that night would die here and now. She feels her mother's final embrace as the walls crumble, the solid weight of knowing it's the end of them. The end of her childhood, and the beginning of the rest of her life.

She is too young for this.

Rough hands tear her from the wreckage, the faceless voices of Security Bureau soldiers there to take her away from her past. They think she's an orphan, a child abandoned to the streets and fallen asleep in a patch of grass. Lyra gasps and coughs out smoke, screaming for her life and calling out every single name she knows.  No one comes to save her.

"Remember, a Jedi's strength flows from the Force," a voice echoes.

She is strapped to an examination table, cold metal beneath her small body. The electricity is like a pain she's never felt before, but one she will feel again. It washes away everything she remembers of her childhood, leaving nothing scraps of her identity. She is no longer Lyra Jai, LJ, the daughter loved more than she even understood.

She is given a set of six letters and numbers and made new.

ND11-EN.

A blank canvas of unlimited potential for their program. The perfect candidate to become a leader in the growing First Order. Ruthless, heartless, a strength for the ages. Power, raw and unrestrained, grows within her until she becomes a weapon.  Vengeance corrodes her until she is nothing more.

Then, a memory that isn't hers. Lightsabers, blue and red, locked in a battle. Blaster fire from an unknown gun, screaming and crying. Scenes that tumble and meld together until they are nothing and everything.

"This is a new day, a new beginning," another voice says, this time feminine and strong.

Rain hammers on an island without light, a place she has never seen in all her life. She sees the auburn-haired Jedi from her vision before, standing close to another cloaked figure. The darkness splits as twin green sabers ignite. They remove the cloak, revealing the same shock of short white hair and striking silver eyes from before. Bathed in the green light, she turns to face Lyra, speaking through space and time and looking right into her very soul.

"This is a new beginning."

The lightsaber clattered to the stone ground as it fell out of her hands. Lyra dropped to her knees with no breath left in her chest. The memories that should have been there all along were replaced. It was one last piece of the puzzle, and it hurt.

Everything was real.

Maz still stood in front of her. "Careful, careful."

"I saw everything," Lyra told her, not even bothering to stop her tears from falling. Her explanation was horrible, but her voice was too choked to say anything else. "Every single thing that I forgot."

She clutched the necklace at her chest. Her heart wouldn't stop pounding, not wanting to accept the realization she had just made. Nothing made sense anymore, no explanation was adding up. It was tantalizing. It taunted her mercilessly, look what you didn't know, doesn't it hurt to know what you had once forgotten?  You asked for this.

Her head split with a new headache. This is a new beginning.

She felt like the weight of the galaxy was on her shoulders now, and she didn't doubt why Leia, who knew the truth, had kept it from her. It had been an attempt to save her from the grief of this responsibility.  How many people had known?  How much had it taken to make sure the lie was sealed?

Lyra felt a hand on her shoulder, and she turned around and stood to face Maz.

"It is as the Force wills it. The saber is a catalyst of memory, igniting what was already there," she explained.

"I can't face this."  Her breathing was ragged. "I thought I could, that when I found out the truth everything else would fall into place."

Maz shook her head. "Rey wants no place in this fight. She is running from the truth, even now. You, however, have been in this fight for your whole life. I am sorry that you were never granted such a choice."

Lyra realized that no one had ever voiced that to her before.

"I'm a killer," Lyra said bitterly. "That child, the one my parents loved, she's not here anymore."

Maz considered this. "You asked what I saw when I looked into your eyes. I saw loyalty and love, and above all else, a selfless desire to do what is right. I do not claim to understand the Force, but I see how it moves. You are a balancing point, a fulcrum. If, and only if, you allow yourself to accept it."

Lyra scoffed. But then she thought of the Jedi that had spoken to her on the brink of death, and her voice came out very soft. "That's impossible."

Maz shook her head. "Your friend, she too has an important role to play in this. It is not the same as yours, but both are equally important. Do not underestimate your influence, Lyra."

Lyra bit her lip, trying to keep her tears at bay. "Did you know my mother?"

Maz smiled, beckoning her forward. "Your mother was the most unconventional Senator I have ever seen. A wonderful spy, too. She never stopped seeing the good."

And finally, Lyra smiled. She ran her finger over the necklace on her neck, finally remembering her mother's face, the way she smiled, the way she laughed. Cora Grené.

"The saber," Maz said, troubled. "Its legacy has changed hands several times, and I sense it calls now to Rey. It does not call for you. No, there is something else calling your name. A new legacy paved by the Force itself."

A new legacy, Lyra thought. This is a new beginning.

"I need to go find her," Lyra said suddenly, and Maz only nodded.

"Go. And Lyra?"

She turned around one more time. "Yes?"

"May the Force be with you."

━━ -ˋˏ★ˎˊ- ━━

a/n hands down my favorite chapter to write oh my god. the big reveal!!!

so yes, if you haven't put it together by now, the scene from the prologue is indeed small!Lyra and small!Poe along with miss Cora Grené (who does indeed have her own fic if you're interested).  Lyra Jai Grené is just so personal to me. 🤭

would LOVE to hear your thoughts!!! xx

-nat