Fic: SW: "you haven't met me (i am the only son)" (Always!AU; Miko, Kyp; PG)
you haven’t met me (I am the only son)
by moonlightrick
Disclaimer: George Lucas owns the universe and its concepts, Kyp Durron and his crazy, and Miko Reglia. Lyrics are by Mumford and Sons. I am making no profit off of this.
Summary: He watches them, and the people avoid others’ eyes while they wish violence, while they cheat and lie and seethe and betray, and they’re just people. Maybe it’s too much for a child to hear, but Miko’s parents are too long gone to cover his ears, and now it’s in his head.
Rating: PG.
Word count: 1,775
Characters: Miko Reglia, Kyp Durron, Shanya Rym
Story Note: A deviation from the Always ‘verse, because actually Miko has an awesome family, and probably grew up in the Gallinore suburbs, and still got his ass handed to him by his principles.
Author's Note: I'm not 100% sure about all of this (parts I love, parts not so much). I plead prolongued crazy writer's block. Let me know if something really sticks out to you! Also, at this rate, there probably will be a sequel, because Krista is awesome.
Well you are my accuser, now look in my face
Your oppression reeks of your greed and disgrace
So one man has and another has not
How can you love what it is you have got
When you took it all from the weak hands of the poor?
Liars and thieves you know not what is in store
There will come a time I will look in your eye
You will pray to the God that you always denied
Then I'll go out back and I'll get my gun
I'll say, "You haven't met me, I am the only son"
-"Dust Bowl Dance" by Mumford and Sons
He sees more than they think, certainly more than they do; always has. He’s nothing, not blind-he can see the police officers who pocket bribes in one part of the city but refuse them in the other, the politicians who talk equality and drag their mates along on a leash. They call Gallinore the gem city, jungle and light and glass and art, but the “factory” district’s streets are still dirty, the summers far too hot while abandoned buildings crowd in around you.
The truth is, Gallinore is just a city; the truth is, people are just people, and they bustle through every day as they try to balance decisions in their favour. Even at seven years old, Miko knows the lie is going to collapse; it’s just a question of how, if it will tear apart the liars, how long it will take to put the world back together as it should have been.
(If a better world is actually possible.)
He watches them, and the people avoid others’ eyes while they wish violence, while they cheat and lie and seethe and betray, and they’re just people. Maybe it’s too much for a child to hear, but Miko’s parents are too long gone to cover his ears, and now it’s in his head.
***
He’s thirteen when someone finds him as more than one of the lost kids, as Miko; the Jedi stops in front of him like she’s been struck with a plank of lumber.
There’s something familiar about her, just a little, warmth and a shadow of the future; it makes him seize up and then back up but she says, “I’m Shanya,” smiling a little. “You-” She tilts her head. “You’re not supposed to be here.”
He runs, because there are rules he’s seen and she has broken them by being kind and looking at him, it is outside what he has seen and understood of the galaxy, and now things might be even worse.
***
She finds him again, and this time he doesn’t run. She’s with an alien, this time, one with tentacles and blue skin. “Hello, little one,” the alien says with many voices. “How would you like to help change things?”
He isn’t supposed to be noticed; but if he is, then maybe people are wrong.
***
The Jedi bathe him, clothe him, feed him, give him a bed and a home almost right; they teach him, too, reading and sciences, Light from Dark, how to alter minds and lift rocks, to fight with honour, to put honour in action and work for a better world, but they can’t teach him to quiet the people, even the Jedi who think they shield.
They know, they whisper about street rats when the Masters’ backs are turned, they flush with shame and they reprimand the whisperers, they fail, they pretend, and they betray, and he can’t block it out. The Jedi are just people, and they teach him that the Jedi should be better, the galaxy should be better; the world collapses in on itself, and he sees too much.
The problem, maybe, is that he reads too well the secrets from which they hide, can see the currents better than they would let him. They try to show him how to shy away-too young the Masters always think-but he can’t, there’s too many of them and there’s only one of him.
***
Miko has difficulty missing people, but he likes to think that even non-Force sensitives have an inkling about Kyp Durron, who roils and fights against everyone, especially himself, especially as he tries to fix his own too young’s and too far’s. The Jedi Knight walks past Miko and the other apprentices like a tamed lion just let off the leash.
Miko watches him go, and feels relief like a vacuum; no lies, he thinks, just a defiant trek onward. When Knight Durron begins watching the apprentices’ sparring matches, Miko knows it’s only a matter of time, knows he has been waiting (and hopes this will be what he needs).
***
The truth is, Kyp Durron is just a person; if he does not lie, he manipulates in the name of the ends, he rages, and he is honest except sometimes with others, because he is still angry, unleashed but struggling nonetheless, and he refuses to live up to their expectations.
They are eating at the ship’s table, a month into Miko’s apprenticeship, when Kyp looks up to see Miko watching him. Kyp pauses, swallows, then scratches his jaw. “The Academy Masters said you’re an empath. A strong one.”
Miko makes a face. It’s an inelegant attempt to define what he sees-people, situations, pieces of the future but differently from a seer. It isn’t right; but it’s how the Masters classified him, and he feels small to argue semantics. “Sort of.”
Kyp’s fingers drum on the table. He’s always moving. “So you can read me?”
Miko smirks a little, unable to help himself. “You’re pretty hard to miss.”
“Okay.” Kyp snorts. “Well, we’ll have to work on both our shielding, then, if you want to manage going through life without losing your mind. I know a thing or two about mental Force use.”
It’s hope in his chest, and still relief, that someone is not lying and being hypocritical as often as possible, and that maybe Kyp will be able to teach him the strength that the Jedi Knight emits: Miko can still do this.
***
Miko had a sister once; she said she’d be back. He remembers only red hair, smeared lips, and that she never came back.
Shanya worried and regretted, tentatively drew him close and avoided the eyes of the other street people. (She tried to talk to the kids, but they spat or cursed or ran. She was awkward, uncomfortable; she had never done it before Miko.)
“Beautiful day,” people say while they really complain about the heat; “it’ll be okay,” they say while the injured bleed out.
“We try not to interfere any more than necessary,” one of the masters had said, looking him straight in the eye. “We have to be careful about what duties we assume.”
People are people are people are people, and even if shielding helps make them a little quieter, they are still in his head, barely hiding the truth.
The truth is, Miko’s beginning to think people are just selfish, and only an extreme will change them (if anything can).
***
You don’t need to be a reader to see the war coming, though people lie about that, too. (What don’t they lie about?) Miko isn’t blind; unfortunately, he isn’t deaf, either, so he can hear the galaxy getting angrier, more frightened even through space. Kyp has focused on mental shielding more than any other part of the “not dying” Jedi lessons, and still Miko can always seehearfeel the people. The truth is, nothing yet tried has worked.
***
Whoever or whatever else surrounds Miko through the day, it is always a relief to end it on the ship with Kyp, the loudest voice and honest if not open, intending with every breath to follow through with what he believes is right. It’s why Miko wanted Kyp as his master, why Miko believes that he might someday be able to walk through a crowd and not understand their faults too well. Miko is sure it’s why, when he saw Kyp Durron for the first time two years ago, he knew that it was always supposed to be-a promise kept to the future. He (wants to) believes.
***
The offer, too, is supposed to happen. (Someday, Miko would like to feel complete surprise, if only to satisfy his curiosity.) He didn’t expect the Imperial’s calm confrontation of what is so very wrong with the galaxy, true, but he should have, should have found the inevitability on the tip of his tongue.
Suppose, says the Imperial: People are just people, just act like people, just act in their own interests and act as little as possible.
Interpretation one, says Miko: Nothing will change this.
Interpretation two, says the Imperial: The solution just hasn’t been found and used yet.
To change, the Imperial says because Miko won’t, people need an extreme. They need a leader willing to act; a better galaxy requires enforcement, a deep line in the sand.
The truth is, Miko didn’t quite expect to hear evil open its mouth and agree with him on so many points. Maybe the twist of his gut, the ensuing vacuum in his thoughts, is something like real surprise after all.
***
Miko is still young, really, for all the ways that he is old. The problem is, he’s seen too much before he was meant to, he can’t remember his parents, the closest authority figure he’s had to replace them is Kyp, and Miko placed too much faith in his master without understanding how tremendously it is going to backfire.
Some day, he will bitterly wish that Shanya had let him stay with her, that someone had just given him a pet ysalamiri, that they had not shown him that people are hypocrites and weak and not just people. If they didn’t really want the galaxy to change, he will think, they should have left him on Gallinore’s crumbling walkways.
Miko would have preferred that to working up his courage and asking Kyp, “Do you think they’re right? Do you think anything we’ve been trying to do will change them? Do you think the extreme could work?”
He would have rather kept running from Shanya, to have stayed forgotten, than see Kyp tense, shift his eyes, and say, “I think- It isn’t ethical. The end doesn’t justify the means,” which is a lie big enough to swallow Kyp Durron whole; big enough to make Miko’s master shudder, because he is being so far from honest that they both know Miko’s respite has been crushed under its weight.
And Miko isn’t surprised at all.
***
The truth is, some day Miko will have to face the truth, and he won’t be able to blame anyone else, only feel shame that he raged at Shanya, fought his master, slew heroes that failed by still being people, and betrayed his best expectations.
Until then, he will only see to confirm his beliefs.
(At least, he will tell himself when he comes too close to doubt, at least he is not being one of them. At least he is acting, fighting; at least he is being godsdamned honest, when people would rather that no one see at all.)
Please R&R :)
by moonlightrick
Disclaimer: George Lucas owns the universe and its concepts, Kyp Durron and his crazy, and Miko Reglia. Lyrics are by Mumford and Sons. I am making no profit off of this.
Summary: He watches them, and the people avoid others’ eyes while they wish violence, while they cheat and lie and seethe and betray, and they’re just people. Maybe it’s too much for a child to hear, but Miko’s parents are too long gone to cover his ears, and now it’s in his head.
Rating: PG.
Word count: 1,775
Characters: Miko Reglia, Kyp Durron, Shanya Rym
Story Note: A deviation from the Always ‘verse, because actually Miko has an awesome family, and probably grew up in the Gallinore suburbs, and still got his ass handed to him by his principles.
Author's Note: I'm not 100% sure about all of this (parts I love, parts not so much). I plead prolongued crazy writer's block. Let me know if something really sticks out to you! Also, at this rate, there probably will be a sequel, because Krista is awesome.
Well you are my accuser, now look in my face
Your oppression reeks of your greed and disgrace
So one man has and another has not
How can you love what it is you have got
When you took it all from the weak hands of the poor?
Liars and thieves you know not what is in store
There will come a time I will look in your eye
You will pray to the God that you always denied
Then I'll go out back and I'll get my gun
I'll say, "You haven't met me, I am the only son"
-"Dust Bowl Dance" by Mumford and Sons
He sees more than they think, certainly more than they do; always has. He’s nothing, not blind-he can see the police officers who pocket bribes in one part of the city but refuse them in the other, the politicians who talk equality and drag their mates along on a leash. They call Gallinore the gem city, jungle and light and glass and art, but the “factory” district’s streets are still dirty, the summers far too hot while abandoned buildings crowd in around you.
The truth is, Gallinore is just a city; the truth is, people are just people, and they bustle through every day as they try to balance decisions in their favour. Even at seven years old, Miko knows the lie is going to collapse; it’s just a question of how, if it will tear apart the liars, how long it will take to put the world back together as it should have been.
(If a better world is actually possible.)
He watches them, and the people avoid others’ eyes while they wish violence, while they cheat and lie and seethe and betray, and they’re just people. Maybe it’s too much for a child to hear, but Miko’s parents are too long gone to cover his ears, and now it’s in his head.
***
He’s thirteen when someone finds him as more than one of the lost kids, as Miko; the Jedi stops in front of him like she’s been struck with a plank of lumber.
There’s something familiar about her, just a little, warmth and a shadow of the future; it makes him seize up and then back up but she says, “I’m Shanya,” smiling a little. “You-” She tilts her head. “You’re not supposed to be here.”
He runs, because there are rules he’s seen and she has broken them by being kind and looking at him, it is outside what he has seen and understood of the galaxy, and now things might be even worse.
***
She finds him again, and this time he doesn’t run. She’s with an alien, this time, one with tentacles and blue skin. “Hello, little one,” the alien says with many voices. “How would you like to help change things?”
He isn’t supposed to be noticed; but if he is, then maybe people are wrong.
***
The Jedi bathe him, clothe him, feed him, give him a bed and a home almost right; they teach him, too, reading and sciences, Light from Dark, how to alter minds and lift rocks, to fight with honour, to put honour in action and work for a better world, but they can’t teach him to quiet the people, even the Jedi who think they shield.
They know, they whisper about street rats when the Masters’ backs are turned, they flush with shame and they reprimand the whisperers, they fail, they pretend, and they betray, and he can’t block it out. The Jedi are just people, and they teach him that the Jedi should be better, the galaxy should be better; the world collapses in on itself, and he sees too much.
The problem, maybe, is that he reads too well the secrets from which they hide, can see the currents better than they would let him. They try to show him how to shy away-too young the Masters always think-but he can’t, there’s too many of them and there’s only one of him.
***
Miko has difficulty missing people, but he likes to think that even non-Force sensitives have an inkling about Kyp Durron, who roils and fights against everyone, especially himself, especially as he tries to fix his own too young’s and too far’s. The Jedi Knight walks past Miko and the other apprentices like a tamed lion just let off the leash.
Miko watches him go, and feels relief like a vacuum; no lies, he thinks, just a defiant trek onward. When Knight Durron begins watching the apprentices’ sparring matches, Miko knows it’s only a matter of time, knows he has been waiting (and hopes this will be what he needs).
***
The truth is, Kyp Durron is just a person; if he does not lie, he manipulates in the name of the ends, he rages, and he is honest except sometimes with others, because he is still angry, unleashed but struggling nonetheless, and he refuses to live up to their expectations.
They are eating at the ship’s table, a month into Miko’s apprenticeship, when Kyp looks up to see Miko watching him. Kyp pauses, swallows, then scratches his jaw. “The Academy Masters said you’re an empath. A strong one.”
Miko makes a face. It’s an inelegant attempt to define what he sees-people, situations, pieces of the future but differently from a seer. It isn’t right; but it’s how the Masters classified him, and he feels small to argue semantics. “Sort of.”
Kyp’s fingers drum on the table. He’s always moving. “So you can read me?”
Miko smirks a little, unable to help himself. “You’re pretty hard to miss.”
“Okay.” Kyp snorts. “Well, we’ll have to work on both our shielding, then, if you want to manage going through life without losing your mind. I know a thing or two about mental Force use.”
It’s hope in his chest, and still relief, that someone is not lying and being hypocritical as often as possible, and that maybe Kyp will be able to teach him the strength that the Jedi Knight emits: Miko can still do this.
***
Miko had a sister once; she said she’d be back. He remembers only red hair, smeared lips, and that she never came back.
Shanya worried and regretted, tentatively drew him close and avoided the eyes of the other street people. (She tried to talk to the kids, but they spat or cursed or ran. She was awkward, uncomfortable; she had never done it before Miko.)
“Beautiful day,” people say while they really complain about the heat; “it’ll be okay,” they say while the injured bleed out.
“We try not to interfere any more than necessary,” one of the masters had said, looking him straight in the eye. “We have to be careful about what duties we assume.”
People are people are people are people, and even if shielding helps make them a little quieter, they are still in his head, barely hiding the truth.
The truth is, Miko’s beginning to think people are just selfish, and only an extreme will change them (if anything can).
***
You don’t need to be a reader to see the war coming, though people lie about that, too. (What don’t they lie about?) Miko isn’t blind; unfortunately, he isn’t deaf, either, so he can hear the galaxy getting angrier, more frightened even through space. Kyp has focused on mental shielding more than any other part of the “not dying” Jedi lessons, and still Miko can always seehearfeel the people. The truth is, nothing yet tried has worked.
***
Whoever or whatever else surrounds Miko through the day, it is always a relief to end it on the ship with Kyp, the loudest voice and honest if not open, intending with every breath to follow through with what he believes is right. It’s why Miko wanted Kyp as his master, why Miko believes that he might someday be able to walk through a crowd and not understand their faults too well. Miko is sure it’s why, when he saw Kyp Durron for the first time two years ago, he knew that it was always supposed to be-a promise kept to the future. He (wants to) believes.
***
The offer, too, is supposed to happen. (Someday, Miko would like to feel complete surprise, if only to satisfy his curiosity.) He didn’t expect the Imperial’s calm confrontation of what is so very wrong with the galaxy, true, but he should have, should have found the inevitability on the tip of his tongue.
Suppose, says the Imperial: People are just people, just act like people, just act in their own interests and act as little as possible.
Interpretation one, says Miko: Nothing will change this.
Interpretation two, says the Imperial: The solution just hasn’t been found and used yet.
To change, the Imperial says because Miko won’t, people need an extreme. They need a leader willing to act; a better galaxy requires enforcement, a deep line in the sand.
The truth is, Miko didn’t quite expect to hear evil open its mouth and agree with him on so many points. Maybe the twist of his gut, the ensuing vacuum in his thoughts, is something like real surprise after all.
***
Miko is still young, really, for all the ways that he is old. The problem is, he’s seen too much before he was meant to, he can’t remember his parents, the closest authority figure he’s had to replace them is Kyp, and Miko placed too much faith in his master without understanding how tremendously it is going to backfire.
Some day, he will bitterly wish that Shanya had let him stay with her, that someone had just given him a pet ysalamiri, that they had not shown him that people are hypocrites and weak and not just people. If they didn’t really want the galaxy to change, he will think, they should have left him on Gallinore’s crumbling walkways.
Miko would have preferred that to working up his courage and asking Kyp, “Do you think they’re right? Do you think anything we’ve been trying to do will change them? Do you think the extreme could work?”
He would have rather kept running from Shanya, to have stayed forgotten, than see Kyp tense, shift his eyes, and say, “I think- It isn’t ethical. The end doesn’t justify the means,” which is a lie big enough to swallow Kyp Durron whole; big enough to make Miko’s master shudder, because he is being so far from honest that they both know Miko’s respite has been crushed under its weight.
And Miko isn’t surprised at all.
***
The truth is, some day Miko will have to face the truth, and he won’t be able to blame anyone else, only feel shame that he raged at Shanya, fought his master, slew heroes that failed by still being people, and betrayed his best expectations.
Until then, he will only see to confirm his beliefs.
(At least, he will tell himself when he comes too close to doubt, at least he is not being one of them. At least he is acting, fighting; at least he is being godsdamned honest, when people would rather that no one see at all.)
Please R&R :)