he was always told how lucky he was to have parents like those. heroes and leaders in the war, actual royalty for that matter.

and he was a skywalker, too. they wouldn't let him forget that.

that was what he had always been told. if that was his family, certainly he was destined for something legendary too. except he hadn't done anything yet. there was nothing he could do, not as far as he could see. but he kept hearing that time and time again. it was just a comment but it seemed like a warning - you *must* become something great or you will be forgotten or worse.

he was supposed to be great like his parents. fair enough. except he felt like he didn't see enough of them to understand what made them so great. not since he was little, and even then.

neglect was the wrong word. neglect implied that it was intentional, that they didn't care. they did care. they just weren't around to show it.

he tried not to blame them. he had tried not to blame them since he was old enough to think about blaming anyone. but every time he found himself alone again those feelings of fear and abandonment bubbled up again.

surely he was doing something wrong. he needed to find an answer, a way for him to be the most important thing in his parents' lives because it just didn't feel like that. so he was doing something wrong, and they didn't stay around enough for him to fix it. to him, it was an unspoken lesson. they weren't trying to tell him of his inadequacy, but they didn't need to. it was clear.

something needed to change. that had been whispered under everyone's breath since he was old enough to walk. no one ever said such a thing to his face or loudly, but he heard it all the same. he whispered it under his own breath, too. part of him thought there was always someone listening. not his parents. someone else.

something needed to change to solve the problem of him. the way he felt made him feel more, and when he didn't know what to do with himself he lashed out. usually when his parents were there. usually, because when they weren't he just felt too empty to do much of anything.

nevertheless, it was a problem. all of it.

the one solution, decided for him, was to go train to be a jedi with the famed luke skywalker, a member of the family and a jedi knight.

he had demonstrated a connection to the force. his mother, leia, had always felt it. and sometimes in the smaller things, it became clear that he had both power and potential. it just needed refinement. he couldn't do that on his own, surely he couldn't. and he was always on his own. no more of that.

that would be it.

he wasn't happy to leave his parents, but that was mostly because it didn't feel different. they would be separated, yes, and so much would change. but, even before this shift, his parents were rarely there, always caught up in their own lives and jobs and reputations as of course they would be. the only difference was that he was going somewhere entirely different. that was all.

he struggled to admit to himself that, more than anything else, he was scared to go. even if he was unhappy with what he knew, it was familiar. he was used to it. training to be a jedi was something new entirely, something that neither of his parents had experienced and neither of them could begin to explain.

but it was nice to think he wouldn't be so alone. other people training, from all over the galaxy, eager and strong and maybe even friendly.

or perhaps all he would be was luke skywalker's nephew. leia organa's and han solo's son. that was all he had ever been. he feared few things more than other people's names overtaking his own. but he also didn't have the faintest idea of how to make a name for himself.

no. no more thinking of that. he wanted to think of not being alone. because he had been alone for so long. near alone.

for the longest time, he thought his only constant companion was a voice. since he liked to consider himself not a child anymore, he tried to convince himself that he had made up the voice himself to help him feel better. but it seemed like it came from something out of his reach, something separate, no matter how much he tried to convince himself otherwise.

he was told he had more power than he realized. he was told he could be a leader in ways that would far surpass anything he knew. he was told he was perfect. he was told his parents couldn't understand this, maybe even envied him for this, and could not treat him fairly and well because of this.

they were enticing, those words. it was a good explanation for why his parents weren't there, one that made him more important than the jobs that had always been the excuse. it made sense, and when he felt the most confused and upset about a lack of attention he reminded himself of those words as if they were fact. a greater destiny was comforting.

now if only he could understand how to reach it.

he figured that, even though it hadn't really been his decision, going to train to be a jedi was his first step. it seemed to match in with the voice, the words.

he knew this voice had nothing to do with the jedi. it felt like standing in shadows and looking up into the sky and feeling so far because the darkness stretched out forever. that wasn't the jedi.

but if he didn't go to train, surely the voice would just fade away. he couldn't be destined to be so powerful if he simply stayed stagnant.

he tried to reconcile the words with the unspoken message of his parents. it was nearly impossible to do such a thing.

were they trying to fix him? what exactly about him was so broken? the worst thing he could think of - which was what he thought about a lot - was that maybe nothing was broken. but even as his full, complete self, he wasn't enough.

it was no wonder he would much rather listen to the voice.

leaving was the final strike. what ever he had with his parents would vanish as soon as he went away. no one would say it but everyone would know it.

he left to lose them, and lose them he did.