This is the first year I will experience true cold, literally and figuratively. A true winter, you could say. Hoth was freezing, constantly bright and crystallized. Even when I was numb, frozen, near death in the snow, I was struck by the beauty of it. It seemed a natural place to see an apparition of Ben Kenobi, surrounded by such wonder. And Tatooine—well, of course I didn't experience winter there. When I think of the nights I spent outside in my childhood thinking I was cold, I'm amazed at how much colder it can really be. And how much darker. When you live on a planet with two suns, even the hours just before dawn aren't all that dark.
I'm in space now, on the Alliance medical frigate. They say that space is cold, and I suppose it is. It's cold and it's empty. Like me. Last year, when I looked out the window, I saw stars. And stars, to me, signified adventure and possibility. Now, I don't see the stars. I see the space between them. The emptiness. The nothing. And I realize that life is terribly finite, and I am terribly small, and terribly alone.
Leia is distant. She misses Han. And I understand. I miss him too. No one ever understood me like he did. And to think, the one person that I think would understand me now is the one person I can't go to. He's the person that caused this cold and darkness. He's my father. I'd like to think that this changes nothing, that I'm still my own person. I know that's not true. Everything is different. I'm not Luke Skywalker anymore, but I can't be Luke Vader.
If I close my eyes, I can see a flame in the darkness. It's distant and small, but it burns bright, promising warmth in its glow. I think...I think it's my father. I tell myself the heat is false, that the expected fire will be cold and stark, but I don't believe it. Besides, could it possibly be worse than the cold I feel here, enveloped by darkness, totally alone?
It's going to be a long winter.