disclaimer: not mine :(
rating/warnings: T / referenced child abuse
notes: I was asked by numerous people in (one of) the Discord server(s) I'm in to write this story. I hope it doesn't disappoint!
i am here, oh child
From the moment he is conceived, I know him.
He is tiny, no more than a single cell. Yet, before him—before me—his life opens like a blossom blooming before the sun, wide and brilliant and bright, illuminating every inch and corner of his future. I see him, and I know him—and I love him.
He grows, from single cell to a baby in his mother's womb. He sucks his thumb, and listens to her voice—and to my voice, whispered gently to him through the rush of blood in his growing veins, in the warm darkness surrounding him, in the flood of life from his mother.
I'm here, oh little one, I murmur in his growing thoughts. I'm here…
He is born, and his squalls his lungs out in defiance of the cold, bright world. I laugh, and coil around him, soothing him with the already half-forgotten melody I sang to him in the womb. I'm here, I croon, and his squalls abate into a steady, healthy cry.
He grows, from infant to baby to toddler. His mother abandons him in an alleyway, already starving and dehydrated, crying and confused. He scrounges for food in piles of refuse, eating garbage and half-rotten food tossed out by diners and tapcafes.
I'm here, I soothe, in the darkest parts of the darkest nights, curling around him where he sleeps in back alleys and gutters, warming him and sending him into deep and dreamless sleep, protecting him from the rats and the dogs and those who would do him ill, driving them off with malevolent thoughts and fears unfounded.
He grows, from toddler to boy. He is found by a smuggler and taken on as a crewmember—or, more appropriately, as a slave. The boy learns to steal, learns to lie, learns to talk faster than a silver-tongued eel. He breaks bones—and has bones broken—and scrapes his knees, and learns that the world is a cruel and heartless place, filled only with pain and greed.
Still I am with him. In the thickest of moments I am with him, guiding his sight and blinding those who would hurt him, directing his blaster and confounding those who would shoot him. On the nights after Shrike was drunkest, when he would hit him and break his bones, leave him with hand-shaped bruises on his wrists and throat, I would drape over him, a warm and weighted blanket that did not press bruise or bone. I'm here, I would whisper. I'm here, my child...
He grows, from boy to young man. He escapes Shrike with the help of the Wookiee Dewlanna—escapes and runs free, only to sell himself in servitude to the Empire. He serves faithfully for a few years—and in those years I sharpen his mind and heart; he excels at all he does, and he rises through the ranks quickly—until he snaps, unable to continue living a lie against his own morals. He saves the Wookiee Chewbacca, and then drowns himself in liquor and self-loathing.
I am here, I say, when he is blackout drunk and will not remember anything once he comes down from his high. I am here, and your destiny does not end in tragedy. It ends in joy, in hope, in prosperity. You will be a hero, Han Solo, in every sense of the world.
You will be happy.
He forgets he heard me, but for a moment—just a moment—he has hope.
He smuggles, and trades, and barters. He works for the Hutts and for himself, Chewbacca tagging along as much to make sure he does not kill himself by accident as because of a life debt. There are many more tight scrapes, and many more times Han nearly dies.
No, I say each time he draws close to Death's scythe. I am not done with you yet, my child. I am here, and I am never letting you go.
Then there is a boy with hair and eyes born of the desert, and an old man who is a relic of a time I mourn. Yes, I sigh, exulting and triumphant. Yes, at last.
He takes the boy and the man, and they fly to a world I weep for. There is no planet, but there is a princess, and the black carapace of my Chosen One. They run, and they fight, and the escape, hand-in-hand-in-hand, and they are, for the first time, together.
I am here, I say to Han one last time, as they flee the dreaded Death Star. I am here—and now so are they.
end notes: What did you think? Comment and let me know!