Week Five Challenge: Write a set of 3 double drabbles, choosing from among the following prompts: ephemeral, journey, labyrinth, flower, barrier, soul, doppelgänger, emblem, killer

Author's Note: I decided to write all of them :P Thank you to Mira-Jade for the title, which comes from the song Venus by Sleeping At Last :)

Astronomy In Reverse (Nico Jade; approximately 10 BBY - 25 ABY)

Ephemeral

Nico Jade's first memory is of the walls of his home.

He can't pinpoint which home, later on when he tries. There have been so many, and he can no longer keep track. But he remembers those walls, the rough texture that fascinated him, and which dragged so enticingly against the tips of the pencils he used to draw on them—a forest, he thinks now; it was a forest that he drew, with a collection of wild animals among the trunks of the trees. Only scribbles, at that age, but bright and vivid in his mind's eye.

What he remembers most clearly, though, is his mother's panic when she saw.

She tried to hide it, he realizes later. She tried so hard for so long to hide the reality of their lives from him and Corissa, and often succeeded. But that day, young as he was, he could see her alarm.

"No, darling," she said when he cried. He still remembers her hand on the back of his head, holding him close. "It's a beautiful picture. It's just that the apartment isn't ours, Nico. It belongs to someone else."

He realizes in the moment that home is a transitory thing.

Doppelgänger

Nico is twelve when the pieces fall into place.

He has always known of his missing sister; his parents love and search for her still and always make sure that he and Corissa know of her. But now when he looks at Corissa, the similarities are striking: although no holos of Mara exist past age three, it's still beyond obvious that they are sisters. They have almost the same hair, the same straight eyebrows and high cheekbones.

He spends an hour examining the family holo album by glow rod one night after the others are asleep, and everything he sees only adds to the sinking feeling in his gut as he does the math. He was born less than a year after Mara was taken. Had he been intended as a replacement for the child whose loss had almost broken his parents?

If so, he cannot help but think, he is a failure in the role. Not like Corissa, another red-haired daughter who every day demonstrates what Mara would be like if she was here.

His parents love him, he is sure—isn't he? Yes, of course, don't be silly—but after this day he always wonders if he was a disappointment.

Labyrinth

Long before he has the words to describe the feeling, Nico knows that everything in life is temporary. Mom and Dad, Corissa, the ghost of Mara, that's all that lasts. Everything else is a twisting and ever-changing maze to be navigated—more than that, it has a tendency to change just when he starts getting comfortable.

So he stops.

He stops relaxing; he stops ever believing that anything will last. He doesn't bother to decorate his never-ending series of bedrooms the way that Corissa still does. He doesn't sign up for any activities at his schools. He holds himself at a distance from his classmates and neighbors, never allowing himself to become close to anyone.

There's no point; it'll all be lost sooner or later.

Probably sooner.

Until they buy the house. He doesn't believe it at first; still doesn't, really, until they've been there a couple of years. It's the longest he's ever lived anywhere.

Nico begins to add little touches to his room. He paints pictures that Mom hangs throughout the house. He dares to sign up for an engineering club. When a classmate invites him over after school, Nico goes, and lets himself relax.

This might be home.

Killer

This, Nico thinks later that night as he climbs into a strange bed in a strange building on a strange world, this is the Mara around whom his family's entire life has revolved since before he was born? This silent and wary woman with unyielding eyes who pulls away at every turn? Her boyfriend and his family are far friendlier than she is, and he wonders why such warm people have embraced someone like his sister.

His sister, who has apparently never lacked for anything. His sister, who grew up in a palace and never thought about the family she started from, who were struggling and scraping all that time. His sister, for whom his parents have spent decades yearning, who were so utterly overcome by her discovery, who wept and forgot to eat as they desperately searched for every publicly available detail of her life, who put their lives on hold to rush to her, whose pain he could feel like it was his own as that lost and beloved daughter insulted and walked away from them; his sister, who couldn't even deny that she had killed.

How was it even possible that she could be his parents' daughter?

Barrier

He realizes soon enough how wrong he has been.

After that initial outburst, Dad doesn't raise his voice, not even after Mara has left and Nico can see the agony in his eyes.

Nico wishes that Dad would yell at him. It would be less painful than the gentle way that his parents explain what should have been obvious. Whatever her flaws, Mara is as uncertain as the rest of them about this reunion. Mom and Dad look at her and see the baby they lost and still loved; Mara sees strangers, people she doesn't remember and has never known, claiming the rights and place of family.

"She's scared, Nico," Corissa puts in, and he burns with shame that even she, at only eighteen, has seen and understood what he didn't. He thinks that he has destroyed everything, all that his parents have wanted for so long, all that was taken from Mara without her consent, and he has never felt more sick.

His relief when Mara shows up for their departure is almost as overwhelming as his guilt, but even when she hugs him farewell, he doubts.

Even if she loves the others, how can she ever forgive him?

Flower

Their connection blooms slowly, awkwardly, hesitantly. Nico finds Mara harder to read than the rest of the family does, and he thinks the feeling is mutual. But he tries (he draws the skyline of Coruscant's Palace District and sends it to Mara) and she tries (he receives an absurdly large package of paper not long after that). She brings him a gift on her first visit; a couple of days later he presents her with a box of local candy. The barrier between them weakens.

And once they start talking—for the first time, really talking—they find it hard to stop.

Although Corissa is the one who looks like Mara, Nico now discovers that he thinks like her. He initially thought her unfeeling; now he sees that she merely hesitates to allow others close enough to see those feelings, and wonders how he missed recognizing his own traits in her. Her dry sense of humor matches his, and they find themselves laughing at each other with their eyes over something no one else notices.

The shadowy ghost of his childhood and the hostile stranger on Coruscant both fade, and in their place he gains not only a sister but a friend.

Journey

Nico has never thought of himself as romantic. He is used to his peers endlessly discussing crushes and dates while he remains silent, shrugging when someone asks who he wants to go out with. It's not that he dislikes the idea. It sounds pretty great, actually—if you find the right person. That's the tricky part.

He doesn't understand how that works, really. He's never felt that sort of connection with anyone, and after a while he begins to accept the thought that it simply won't happen to him.

Until Rielle.

She's beautiful, yes, but so much more than that: kind, insightful, and observant, with a gentle nature that belies an inner core of strength and a sparkling sense of humor. They talk and laugh together for hours on end, never tiring of each other's company, and their mutual joy grows with the realization that she is his person and he is hers.

If she asked for the moon, he'd find a way to give it to her; she doesn't, so instead he finds flowers the same soft blue shade as her eyes just to see her smile.

He has never thought of himself as romantic, but that was before her.

Emblem

They have been married for two months when Nakari is born.

There had been part of him, until this moment, that had felt that Rielle and their marriage was a destination: the transience of his childhood behind him with the discovery of someone he loved and who loved him, a home they were building together, security and permanence at last. A goal reached, stability achieved.

As he holds his niece, he realizes how wrong he has been. The smallest fingers he has ever seen curl tightly around one of his own and blue eyes blink at him and he realizes that this is another beginning—that this is what life is, an endless series of beginnings, and he is just one more link in a long, long chain. Mom and Dad once held him this way, as he will eventually hold his own child, as that child will eventually hold theirs. He realizes that he wouldn't have it any other way.

This tiny life, so symbolic of the ongoing change that encompasses them all, will be part of his own forevermore—he is Uncle Nico now—and he silently promises his little niece that he will do his very best for her, always.

Soul

Nico watches fondly as Nakari takes her usual place as leader amid siblings and cousins, corralling the others toward the chosen spot beneath a flowering tree. Corissa settles cross-legged into the grass to supervise, and Anakin, with little Ben on his hip, coaxes Alaine to join them. Kaela is already digging and Valeria is gathering stones to offer up for inspection, while Rylan dumps out his pencils, ready to draw on whichever is selected.

He lifts his gaze to observe the rest of the family: Mara pausing as she helps Leia and Jacen spread lunch out along the tables to lift her eyebrows and murmur something to Mom, who laughs in response; Han gesturing expansively as he tells Dad and Jaina a dramatic story; Rielle's lovely eyes alight as she lifts a hand to tuck a strand of dark hair behind her ear, leaning forward to reply in her conversation with Luke.

Beside him, Julian affectionately smiles as he watches Corissa hand Nakari a tiny box. "A bee funeral, you say?"

"It's a family tradition," Nico tells him, smiling himself as the memories blend with the present, as the present will with the future, content right down to his soul.