Carmilla had never understood what being a Jedi meant. To Laura, it had meant everything and nothing. A place to sleep. People to die for. Something to be. Something to never, ever be.
She knew that she had always been Laura's thing to live for.
The war was long. Numbers in the Senate dropped, until the pods around Carmilla's numbered fewer than a hundred. The Separatists were taking some, folding systems into their alliance, destroying the rest. Others simply dropped into oblivion.
Every time Laura came home, less of her came with it. Time stretched in boundless months between her visits, always unannounced. Laura would appear in the doors of Carmilla's apartment, or curled up in the sofa, smaller than ever. Carmilla would curl in beside her, until Laura unwound and hugged her back, her ribs plain beneath Carmilla's warm hands. The stories would fall from her lips, bit by bit, until Carmilla held handfuls of death and sorrow and bitter hopelessness.
The Senate thought the war was something distant, something to be diplomatic about and throw troops at. Carmilla saw the people in the numbers, the stories of the clones Laura brought home, her captain Kirsch, and the others that never seemed to make it past one story. Every time the Senate glossed over a causality statistic, Jedi or clone, Carmilla would see the fallen in Laura's haunted eyes.
When Laura was home, Carmilla was her home. She would coax Laura out of the place she'd fallen during her deployment, let her unfurl back into her real self, bolstered on mugs of hot chocolate and an endless supply of cookies. They didn't have anything sweet on the front, which Laura always joked was the hardest part about being deployed. There were endless droids, endless fighting, but not a single chocolate chip cookie to be found.
Carmilla was always glad to have LA-F and PER-E back as well as Laura, of course. The droids had gone off to war with Laura, even though Laura had gifted them to Carmilla as a wedding present. LA-F was the best piloting droid a Jedi could hope for, and PER-E was good for having anxiety and translating and trying to turn Laura's rations into meals with her clumsy metal fingers. Laura always laughed at the results back home, but Carmilla didn't miss the tears in her eyes.
Carmilla wasn't much better at making them meals, but Laura always loved it when she did. She would listen to Carmilla curse at the kitchen all afternoon, a book half-read on her lap. Sometimes, Laura would be distracting and their meals would burn, but Carmilla liked that best of all.
In their nights, Laura didn't cling to Carmilla anymore. She slept like a soldier now, on her back, motionless. Every night, Carmilla would entwine their hands, and on the good days, she'd wake up with Laura still clutching it tight.
On the bad days, Carmilla would wake to an empty bed in the early hours of the morning, and Laura would be in dark hallway, her lightsaber hissing as she turned it over and over again, until it was a blur and Laura wore a line of footsteps into her carpet. When she was alone, Carmilla would mimic them, following in her wife's footsteps, trying to let the Force settle down around her and let her look into Laura's mind.
One day, the day after Laura had been deployed to Odryn, it had worked. Carmilla had missed her Senate session, curled up on the floor, her hand fitted into the outline of Laura's boot, her mind roaring with her (Laura's) troops dropping back and a scream building in her (Laura's) throat and a blaster burn screaming on her (Laura's) side and the desperation that not even Danny's lightsaber flashing at her (Laura's) side could quell. She (Laura) wanted to go home and wanted the war to be over so she (Laura) could breathe without darkness weaving itself behind her eyes.
Carmilla had found her old training lightsaber that day, from the boxes of her old life, and stepped in Laura's footsteps not for her memories, but for her experience. Every day, she came home from running herself ragged in a useless race and took a deep breath and sank into a war. Every morning, Carmilla's body ached alone in her empty bed. Every night, the lightsaber moved a little faster. She didn't labour under the impression that it would ever be enough, that she could ever help the war, but even Carmilla, with her vestigial Force abilities, knew something was coming.
Laura had run her through the most basic of the lightsaber forms, back when they had still been lying to themselves about being friends. She'd seem surprised at how quickly Carmilla had picked them up, spinning the fire poker around her hand with ease. Laura hadn't known until then that Carmilla could feel the Force, too. They'd tried to latch their minds together in excitement, but Laura's was too vast and Carmilla's too closed up.
They hadn't tried again. The war had happened, and Laura had stopped pretending that her mind was ever a sound place to reside.
Carmilla knew the Senate thought she was pregnant. Her clothes grew heavier and more concealing by the day, to hide her new strength and weapons. Carmilla had to leave the meetings to run to the refreshers and vomit, her arms braced and trembling. The Force curled around her shoulders, heavy and cold and almost threatening.
She couldn't shake the images of war. What Laura had seen, and what Carmilla had seen, back on Naboo during the occupation and beyond, when missions drifted too far into Separatist territory.
The Senate voted but it never mattered. They didn't end it. They never ended it. The war would never end. Lilita stood in the centre podium, never sparing an eye for her erstwhile daughter, sending the Senate into a frenzy. More troops. More war. More slaughter. More suffering. More casualties, Jedi and clone alike.
And maybe Carmilla was the most selfish person to live, but she wanted a happy life with Laura, someday, when the war no longer haunted her worn steps in the hallways. She wanted the little house, back on Naboo. She wanted the quiet days, when Laura would be a limpet stuck to Carmilla's side in her sleep. Carmilla wanted to be her wife, not her painful, forever secret.
She wished Laura hadn't been a Jedi, that she had come in just under the line, like Carmilla. But Laura was a Jedi, come noon or night or worldfall, and there was nothing Carmilla could do to change that but wait until Jedi no longer meant missing and lonely and soldier and went back to meaning peace and love.
Laura loved enough to fill a universe, but their universe was shrinking by the day. Vordenburg pressed the Republic's every defence and routing their every attack. Every day, Carmilla's mother gained more power, everyone but Carmilla conceding their rights to power, to their positions, to their lives. Carmilla raged, uselessly.
Nobody listened to Naboo, not anymore. Naboo was a planet meant for peace, and there was no place for peace in Lilita Morgan's never-ending war.
When Carmilla returned home, her apartments looked the same as they ever did. Carmilla could see the sprawling urban expanse of Coruscant glimmering out the windows, could see the tiny burned slash in the left curtain where Laura had slipped during a lightsaber drill, laughing hard enough that even her skills had crumbled. Laura was everywhere she could see — cookie crumbs on the table, unknown parts of mechanical origin everywhere. Carmilla could never bear to remove the signs of her wife, even months after she'd left.
And her lightsaber, sticking out of the untouched fruit bowl.
For a moment, Carmilla just stood in the entryway. Was Laura home? She'd heard that the 501st was returning, but were they back already? She stretched out her mind, seeking Laura's warm presence, but her apartments were cold and empty.
Carmilla made sure the doors were closed securely behind her before she snatched the lightsaber up. The second her fingers touched the grip, her knees went out from underneath her.
All she could feel through the lightsaber was despair. An endless black hole of self hatred and burned away hope and ashes of love. It wasn't an echo of Laura's presence, like she had hoped — it was an echo of a fall. Of an ending.
Carmilla held the lightsaber to her chest and she cried.
Carmilla could feel the Force, she knew that, but it was never in the rich, velvet tapestry that Laura so often described. To Laura, the force was alive, enfolded into everything in the universe in a kaleidoscope of dazzling colours. To Carmilla, the world sang, a long forgotten lullaby echoing down the years. She spoke in the Senate, and they listened. Lilita watched her from the centre, impassive and awful all at once.
Carmilla pushed her senate pod into speaking position, hovering above the rest of the people. "What happened to peace talks? What happened to wanting to end this war? Are we here to end the war or drag ourselves into it's bloody midst?" Voices buzzed below her, but she ignored them. "Throwing more clones at the problem won't do a damned thing. Our Jedi, our generals are dying. How much longer can we run ourselves ragged before we fall?"
A senate droid hovered up beside her, prodding gently at one of Carmilla's elbows. "You're out of line, Senator Karnstein. Please take a seat."
Carmilla batted the droid aside, Laura's lightsaber hanging heavy beneath her robes. "This Senate is out of line! What happened to democracy? Is this how it dies? You all applaud and live your mindless lives, handing over power after power to the Supreme Chancellor. She's not going to save you! Can't you fools see a thing she's doing? She's dooming you!"
This time, it was her mother that spoke, over the sound of the senate droid crunching against the bottom floor of the Senate. It was a long, long way to fall. "That is enough, Senator."
Carmilla laughed, ragged. The sound echoed through the empty Senate chamber, reverberating off places where liberty used to lie. "Alright, Mother. Quiet me down like I'm just a child. Lead me to the wolves, good shepard. I'll just sail off a cliff without regard for the jagged stones at the bottom."
Carmilla could feel the force of her mother's disappointment and fury, even from across the Senate. It was all she needed. She knew that sticky, starless feeling — the same thing that had been clinging to the edges of Laura's soul since the war. She knew who was running this farce of a war. There was no Republic versus Separatists — only her mother's pawns, playing out a costly game.
Even though Carmilla's microphone was cut, she didn't stop. Mother had taught her how to project, how to not rely on the electronics that Laura had- that Laura loved so dearly. "My fellow Senators, I urge you to review your policies. I will be on a leave of absence. Someone needs to tend to this war."
And she floated her pod away, disembarking without a glance at the gawking underlings in the hallways. It had gone on long enough. She was going to look for Laura, rules be damned, sense be damned. The galaxy deserved better than this endless war. Hell, even Carmilla deserved better. This wasn't a life, living under her mother's thumb.
She was going to find Laura, no matter what she found.
Lilita had thrown a rage when three year old Carmilla had come in just under the required amount of midichlorians on her final test. The old Jedi had waved them away, smiling at the next baby in line. He seemed to think Lilita was lucky, for being able to keep her daughter. He didn't know her. Even if Carmilla had been a Jedi, her mother would have ruled her anyway.
Carmilla could still feel a part of her soul trembling, the darkness pressing down around her. Her mother's rage had been a living, biting, raging thing. Carmilla didn't remember much of her young life — just that. The fear. Trembling in a dark corner, wishing for her mother to stay away. I'm just scared, she'd whisper, when her mother grew close. I'm alright, Mother. Just scared. Just scared. I'll be alright. I'm just scared.
Just was never enough. Being scared wasn't fitting for a Karnstein.
Carmilla could never shake the feeling that being scared was the wrong thing to do, that being helpless was being weak. She couldn't imagine how Laura had to feel, growing up in the Jedi temple, always told she was the Chosen One, the most powerful, the one to save them all. It was a different kind of pressure, but an awful one nonetheless. Carmilla knew more than she ever wanted to, her mind full of shattered pieces of their happy lives.
It took weeks, but Carmilla tracked Laura to Mustafar. It was an ugly planet, an abandoned mining outpost in the Outer Rim. It was made of lava and not much else. Even from orbit, Carmilla could feel something off about it. Something was on the surface that never, ever, should have been made.
She landed on the largest solid mass, right next to the largest of the structures. Carmilla left the droids on the ship and walked down the plank alone, leaving the ship sealed up behind her. The stifling air of the planet hit her like a blow, dry and blazing. Molten rock glowed from all around her, geysers of fire blasting up from them and sucking the oxygen from Carmilla's lungs. She could taste iron and smoke and her own stifling fear.
In the distance, she could see a figure, draped in black.
Once upon a time, Laura and Carmilla had duelled with chair legs broken from an… escapade, and Laura had won, easily. They'd kissed over the shattered pieces of wood and made peace, once upon a time. But it was the end of their story, and only fairy tales had happy endings.
Laura had once called Carmilla her fairy tale, her happy ending, her everything. Carmilla called Laura her starlight, her home, her heart. And then they had to live in the dark, empty space between the stars, heartless and alone.
In the distance, someone who used to be Laura waited.
Laura turned to face Carmilla when she was still a good distance away, too far away to strike. Her black cowl was up around her face, shadowing it. Even so, Carmilla would have been able to recognize Laura anywhere.
She was alive.
"Cupcake," Carmilla breathed, and she could feel tension leak from her body into the dry air. Tension hummed higher than a lightsaber. "I've been looking for you."
"I know." Laura's voice was flat, oddly inflected. She sounded like anything but herself. Magma burned behind her.
Carmilla couldn't help but huff at that. "Then why didn't you let me find you? Lau-"
"I'm not her."
Something in Carmilla chilled, even in the pressing heat. She watched Laura, carefully. "What is it, then?"
"I am Ereshkigal and I am an end to this war," Laura told her, and her eyes burned like she believed it. The air rippled with her power, like it used to when Laura got angry. Laura never used to be angry and now… All Carmilla could feel was simmering fury.
Even still, Carmilla couldn't stop her snort. Laura still couldn't see the carefully laid battle lines, the carved out sections of the galaxy already succumbing. "Cutie, nothing can end this war."
Laura pulled back her hood, revealing her achingly familiar face, set in an emotion Carmilla had never seen before. The air pulsed, a headache pulling at the edges of Carmilla's mind. "You underestimate me, just like everyone else."
Carmilla shook her head, wordless, and ignited Laura's old lightsaber, the shining blue blade barely wavering in her hand. It still felt unnatural to be so close to the burning heat — this was Laura's, it was built for her right down to the worn out grip that didn't fit Carmilla's hand just right.
Laura's eyes, somehow no longer quite their old chocolate brown, darkened. She pulled a new lightsaber off her hip, this one new and glittering brightly in the sparking light from the lava. It ignited in awful, burning red. Laura's face looked carved and hollow in its light.
Carmilla cleared her mind of the heavy layer of emotion in the air, cleared it of what she saw in her wife in front of her. "Don't do this."
Laura raised her lightsaber too, mirroring Carmilla's stance. It looked easy on her in a way it didn't on Carmilla. "Don't make me stop you, Carmilla. You know I can."
Carmilla spun the blade in her hand, her old flourish, and settled into stance. Her heart ached even more than the rest of her. The silent days on her ship tugged at her, alone with LA-F and PER-E, balancing the handle and weightless blade, remembering long forgotten lessons.
Jedi were born, not made, but Lilita had tried.
Laura's unfamiliar eyes narrowed on Carmilla, and the hate alone was enough to make her raise her- Laura's lightsaber, like that would ward it off. Carmilla could feel the core of the planet burning beneath her, the rushing lava, the folds of the molten rock barely cooled beneath her feet, and Laura, burning with the heart of a black hole.
"Come home," Carmilla said. It wasn't a plea, or a bargain, or a command. It wasn't anything she would have been able to stop herself from saying. "Laura."
Laura just laughed, crackling and defeated. "There's no home in this galaxy, Senator. Our planets are burning. Our people are in cinders. I can stop this. I can defeat Vordenburg and end this."
Laura's lightsaber hummed in Carmilla's hands, the only light thing within sight. Everything on Mustafar was hungry for goodness, but Carmilla had never been a good thing. "The only thing you'd be ending is this charade. Lilita had been running both sides of this war from the start. You're her pawn."
Laura snarled, her chapped lips curling, one of her eyeteeth missing. Fire crackled against Carmilla's back, a spray from the shifting rock. She could feel the sparks in her hair, not quite enough to catch. "I am nobody's pawn. You've tried to make me yours, Carmilla. I've heard what you used me to do in the Senate."
Carmilla's heart broke a little more, which she hadn't thought possible. Her impassioned speech about ending the war, sparing the Jedi — had her mother twisted that? "You think I've lied to you?"
The red lightsaber wavered, but Laura steadied it before taking her first step, trying to get an angle on Carmilla. Carmilla sidestepped too, and soon they were circling each other, Carmilla's senses stretched to their limits to make sure her next footstep wouldn't land her in magma. Laura seemed to float, her power undulating through the Force, the darkness catching at Carmilla's shields.
"You've always been lying to me." Her face twisted up, the scar on her cheek pulling tight and gleaming in the lava light. Her voice turned mocking. "Come home, cupcake. Let me help you, creampuff. How can I use you today, cutie? What can I do that will make you fight a war for me, safe and sound in the safest place in the galaxy?"
"You were never fighting a war for me."
"You didn't see it? It was always for you, Carmilla. Every drop of blood, every wound, every death I laid down was for you."
"I was-"
Laura's voice was saccharine and jeering and hateful. "I love you, sweetheart. Come home to me safe."
"Laura."
"Without you, I never would have come home! Don't you understand? You twisted me into something that would stay alive. I should be dead, like the rest of them. I'll be doing them a favour when I get back to Coruscant. Letting it end. Nothing is worth fighting this never-ending war."
Carmilla stopped moving, lowering the point of Laura's lightsaber, and managed to look her wife in the eyes. Laura was ravaged, her clothes pitted with burns, the back of her metal hand warped from some unknown battle. "You're worth it. I would fight this war from now to when the stars burned down if it meant you would come home alive."
Laura froze, long enough for Carmilla to hope, and then she lunged. Carmilla barely got her lightsaber up in time. Laura was wild in the gap between the lightsabers, pushing, burning. The grit of the two sabers was nothing like Carmilla had imagined — it was alive and fighting as much as the wielders were.
And then Laura was spinning and striking again. Carmilla blocked, and blocked, and ducked under a vicious swing that would have ripped in her half. Laura screamed, inchoate with rage, and thrust a hand out. Carmilla went flying, the dark Force slamming her away like a speeder. She landed, hard, at the edge of the lava. Her forearm bubbled, blisters popping up all down the edge, but she couldn't bear to feel it.
Carmilla was on her feet and stalking back towards her wife before Laura had lowered her hand. She raised her own, pushing back with all her puny might. Their minds interlocked (like their fingers, a night in bed bereft of nightmares) and Laura was more than Carmilla had ever imagined. Her fingers strained against the empty air, Laura's unimaginable power, and gave. Carmilla was thrown down again, and this time she stayed, Laura looming above her, the Force pinning her to the ground.
Laura stepped over her, her hand still outstretched. Laura's old lightsaber went flying, clattering somewhere out of sight. Laura tilted her head, wisps of her hair flying free in the drifts of heat. Carmilla struggled, uselessly.
"It's over."
Carmilla reached one last time, for her lightsaber, to twitch an arm, for anything. But Laura was everywhere, darkness and despair and emptiness. Her eyes blank and dark, she raised her red lightsaber, and Carmilla closed her eyes.
The only thing left to reach for was Laura.
So she reached. Carmilla reached with everything she had — not just the light, but the dark and the greys, too. She reached with the memories of their first kiss, breathless and giddy. She reached with the memories of the broken chair, the fights and the resolutions and the life. Carmilla reached for Laura with all the love she had and if it wasn't enough for a galaxy, well, it was enough to light a star.
And even through her closed eyelids, Carmilla could see the burning red of Laura's lightsaber descend.
Carmilla opened her eyes. Laura still stood over her, braced on the rock against the blazing winds, but the pressure had disappeared from Carmilla's limbs. Laura's red lightsaber lay beside her, shut off on the ground.
And Laura's eyes glittered with tears.
Carmilla didn't dare move. Her breath pulled from her chest, ragged, and she could smell her own singed hair. Laura's black cloak tickled over her legs in the gusts from the planet's heat.
"Carm?"
"Laura," Carmilla breathed, and then her wife was on her knees beside her, sobbing. Laura sobbed into her hands, shaking. Carmilla scrambled upright, reaching. "Oh, Laura."
Laura felt like a doll beneath her hands, the unfamiliar rough fabric of her cloak not enough to block out the obvious bones beneath the layer of muscle. "I just- I wanted- my troops- my- our- I only wanted-"
Carmilla brushed Laura's hair back from her hair, as gently as she could. Laura trembled, leaning into her, burning hotter than the planet. Carmilla gathered Laura into her arms and held her, unaware of the planet roiling around them.
"I've only ever wanted you," Laura whispered, and Carmilla broke down in tears. "I'm so sorry. She said- and it just-" and Laura gasped for air, her hands fisted tight in Carmilla's robes. "I wanted it to be over."
"I know, sweetheart."
They made plans on the way back, LA-F piloting their ship back to Coruscant, and PER-E coming in to fuss over them every couple minutes until Carmilla threatened to deactivate her.
Laura didn't let go of her, no matter where they went. She kept Carmilla's hand clasped tight in hers until Carmilla's hand ached, but it was a good ache, not like the emptiness of the past month. God, Laura had been gone for a month. What had her mother done to her?
So they sat, curled up in each other, and they planned, and they cried, and slowly, they fell asleep. And somewhere in the universe, a star was born.