He dreams of Spring.
Force, to inhale the sunlight, once again, to feel the light he can no longer touch, to return to the embrace of Spring. The warmth of asylum, the promise of beginnings, the taste of life ...
Spring is about that, about life -- about birth and planting and growing things and blooming flowers. About love, perhaps, most of all -- not about a Jedi and a senator, caught by love and bound together with hearts denied by oaths and laws and commitments ... it's about the joining of a man and a woman, a woman and a man. Two human beings -- people, at the heart of everything else, before anything else.
Because Spring takes his wife's form -- she to whom he gave his heart and she who keeps it, even now. Spring comes to him as he remembers her, dark hair and dark eyes and a face he knows better than his own, even after all these years. A face full of tears when last he saw it -- bitter tears and angry shouts, a house left empty and two hearts denied.
Somehow, it's these dreams and these memories that hurt the most, even after so long. Because, though the other seasons were torn from him by circumstance or death or the will of the Force ... he gave up Spring of his own free will, to pursue a mistress of a far different sort.
But when he dreams of Spring, it's not that last scene that he remembers -- bitter rain, each drop salty and hot, the very essence of sorrow, a wellspring of life and the loss that accompanies it. He remembers the other things, the other times, when they were happy in their marriage, peaceful and content and joyous in their celebration.
He dreams of Spring -- him and her, her and him, and does anything else matter? -- together in their bed. Was that the first night? Does it matter? First, last, or somewhere in the middle ... his dream-self doesn't care and, consequently, neither does his real-self -- it doesn't matter, nothing matters, as long as he is caught up in the passionate embrace of Spring. The love that is somehow always the same, yet never old, never tiring ... a decade and more since he felt her kiss, but he doesn't have to remember that, in the dream.
His love.
His angel.
His dream-self thinks about life, hopes that something of this union will bear fruit. To create something. The promise of life springing from her womb and his seed ... Force, his dream-self wouldn't object to being a father -- children, a child, a boy or a girl. Or even both -- now wouldn't that be grand?
But those are stupid thoughts -- in daylight, he knows that. Their union never gleaned anything but endings, which go on and on. Nothing but bitter tears and empty dreams.
The soil of the grave does not suffer to yield the fruit of the vine.
Because he is dead -- he's been dead ever since he abandoned Spring, since he left her warm embrace for a far colder mistress. His heart beats on, his limbs still move, his body still functions ... but, in truth, he is as dead as the metal prison he lives in, kept apart from the living and the memory of Spring's embrace.
In the dreams, though -- Force, the dreams. That night, surrendering to skin the color of honey and milk, the texture of flower petals and soft sheets. Abandoning the world for her embrace, for the call of love over logic ... arms, lithe and strong, a tumble of eager vines around his neck. Kisses tasting of flowers and of heaven.
Because his dream-self loves her. Hells, his real-self loves her, with a passion that will never die, no matter what happens between then and now -- he opens his mouth to tell her that, to tell her how much she means to him, how much she will always mean to him, how nothing in the world or the galaxy or the universe can ever change that --
And he finds that he doesn't have those words. His dream-self settles for a simple "I love you."
Spring looks at him, her dark eyes glistening with something he can't recognize. She plants a small kiss upon his cheek, but he can hear her whisper nonetheless. "No. You don't."
So his dream-self opens his mouth to ask her what she means -- of course he loves her, how can he possibly not love her? -- and finds, instead, that Springs is fading. Fading from his arms, becoming less corporeal, less real, less tangible ... he tries to grab her, to keep her with him, but she's fading with each passing second until he opens his mouth and screams himself awake.
In daylight, he knows better than to think of Spring, as difficult as it is to expunge her from his heart. Spring's embrace is long lost to him, and the innocence of those bygone days are lost from this galaxy, perhaps forever.
And even if he found her again, found his Spring ... what then? He'd be a fool to think she'd welcome him with open arms, the armor and the dark and the demons along with the man she once called husband.
But Force, to taste, once again, the flavors of virgin innocence and new life, things he hasn't believed in for far too long -- to surrender once more to the embrace of Spring. The hitch in her breath, the shudder of her shoulders, the upturn of her chin ... untended gardens wither and die; what would he find now in that that coveted patch of earth he last visited in another skin?
Would it still be familiar? Would it still even be home?
And maybe that's another part of this hell that is his existence -- to know you can never go home.
Though the dreams, the dreams ... when he dreams of Spring, he can't help but remember that unquestioning trust, that endless love, those things he hasn't tasted in a decade and more ... and when he wakes, it is never quite enough.