Title: Redux
Author:![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
jordannamorgan
Fandom: Prospect (2018); The Mandalorian (referenced)
Characters: Ezra and Cee.
Setting: After the movie.
Rating: Mild PG.
Length: 745 words.
Summary: Ezra dreams about another life that has some things surprisingly in common.
Ezra started up in the dark with a gasp, sucking cool night air a smidge too deep into dust-scarred lungs—which promptly doubled him over in a coughing fit.
Between his coarse hackings, he managed to hear movement from the other side of the curtain that divided the cabin’s small bedroom. Cee waited for his coughs to subside before speaking out softly—in a tone that just might have pretended to be a bit less concerned than she was. “What’s wrong?”
“Ehh, nothin’ to speak of, Birdie.” Ezra cleared his throat and rubbed his jaw absently. “Just… kind of a weird dream again, is all.”
He could practically hear the roll of the girl’s eyes. “You’ve been having a lot of weird dreams lately.”
And for a brief moment, he was so tempted to tell her all about them.
The latest had been the worst of them. He was at the top of a mountain somewhere; not a planet he recognized from all his wanders. Black metal monsters were falling out of the sky, come to tear away his very heart, and he wasn’t fast enough, he couldn’t reach…
It fit the pattern that had repeated for a while now. The threats and the setting changed: mercs in a desert, giant spiders in tunnels of ice, soldiers wearing white armor in some ash-dusted city. He blasted away at them all with guns that made a thrower look like a mere toy, his face hidden behind a helmet even more claustrophobic than the one that had protected him from the dust of the Green. Yet the single truest constant was the equal parts love and panic and utter savagery flowing through his veins, the violent desperation to protect…
Not Cee, strangely enough. Not the one being in all his life who he’d ever felt such things about when he was awake.
Instead, the life he held so precious in these visions was a little green critter no bigger than a channel rat, with deep brown eyes that seemed to look through the helmet and straight into his soul.
And there it was, the confounded oddity that made him falter every time in his urge to explain the dreams to Cee. Although he wasn’t sure she would even put together the parallel, he had a rather comical feeling that he didn’t want to insult her by the comparison to that… well, whatever it was his unconscious mind kept conjuring up.
“…Never you mind, little bird. Go on back to sleep.”
Cee made a mildly dubious noise, but presently he could hear her settle down. Then he laid back as well and draped his arm across his eyes, pondering yet again what the dreams meant.
What haunted him most was that they didn’t feel quite like the hazy phantasms of ordinary dreams. The sensations were too sharp, the emotions too vivid when he woke with them balled up tight in his chest. They felt somehow like more tangible splinters of experiences, albeit from long ago and very far away.
Maybe it was some kind of past-life thing. In the midst of a rather excruciating palaver over trade back in the Green, he once endured a Sater’s ramblings on the subject. They believed anyone who didn’t fall in with their mad faith was destined to keep reliving the same path over again forever, rather than achieving ascendance. Maybe that much was the truth, and Ezra was fated to an eternity of safeguarding orphan creatures who dragged his hard soul unwillingly up from the depths. …The whole idea of that kind of poetic justice made him chuckle blackly, even though it really wasn’t all that funny.
He just hoped that other fella who might or might not have been him a million years ago had succeeded in keeping his kid safe too.
Otherwise, he didn’t like to think what dreams might still be in store for him.
Still, there was one good thing about them. Every time Ezra woke up with his heart pounding from the struggle to protect a precious burden, it was followed swiftly by relief and gratitude when he found Cee there safe with him—and it made new all over again his resolve that he would keep her that way.
If this really was how he would go on into infinity, his soul broken and bound again each time by a love so pure it hurt…
Well, maybe that wasn’t such an unfortunate fate after all.
2022 Jordanna Morgan
Author:
jordannamorganFandom: Prospect (2018); The Mandalorian (referenced)
Characters: Ezra and Cee.
Setting: After the movie.
Rating: Mild PG.
Length: 745 words.
Summary: Ezra dreams about another life that has some things surprisingly in common.
Ezra started up in the dark with a gasp, sucking cool night air a smidge too deep into dust-scarred lungs—which promptly doubled him over in a coughing fit.
Between his coarse hackings, he managed to hear movement from the other side of the curtain that divided the cabin’s small bedroom. Cee waited for his coughs to subside before speaking out softly—in a tone that just might have pretended to be a bit less concerned than she was. “What’s wrong?”
“Ehh, nothin’ to speak of, Birdie.” Ezra cleared his throat and rubbed his jaw absently. “Just… kind of a weird dream again, is all.”
He could practically hear the roll of the girl’s eyes. “You’ve been having a lot of weird dreams lately.”
And for a brief moment, he was so tempted to tell her all about them.
The latest had been the worst of them. He was at the top of a mountain somewhere; not a planet he recognized from all his wanders. Black metal monsters were falling out of the sky, come to tear away his very heart, and he wasn’t fast enough, he couldn’t reach…
It fit the pattern that had repeated for a while now. The threats and the setting changed: mercs in a desert, giant spiders in tunnels of ice, soldiers wearing white armor in some ash-dusted city. He blasted away at them all with guns that made a thrower look like a mere toy, his face hidden behind a helmet even more claustrophobic than the one that had protected him from the dust of the Green. Yet the single truest constant was the equal parts love and panic and utter savagery flowing through his veins, the violent desperation to protect…
Not Cee, strangely enough. Not the one being in all his life who he’d ever felt such things about when he was awake.
Instead, the life he held so precious in these visions was a little green critter no bigger than a channel rat, with deep brown eyes that seemed to look through the helmet and straight into his soul.
And there it was, the confounded oddity that made him falter every time in his urge to explain the dreams to Cee. Although he wasn’t sure she would even put together the parallel, he had a rather comical feeling that he didn’t want to insult her by the comparison to that… well, whatever it was his unconscious mind kept conjuring up.
“…Never you mind, little bird. Go on back to sleep.”
Cee made a mildly dubious noise, but presently he could hear her settle down. Then he laid back as well and draped his arm across his eyes, pondering yet again what the dreams meant.
What haunted him most was that they didn’t feel quite like the hazy phantasms of ordinary dreams. The sensations were too sharp, the emotions too vivid when he woke with them balled up tight in his chest. They felt somehow like more tangible splinters of experiences, albeit from long ago and very far away.
Maybe it was some kind of past-life thing. In the midst of a rather excruciating palaver over trade back in the Green, he once endured a Sater’s ramblings on the subject. They believed anyone who didn’t fall in with their mad faith was destined to keep reliving the same path over again forever, rather than achieving ascendance. Maybe that much was the truth, and Ezra was fated to an eternity of safeguarding orphan creatures who dragged his hard soul unwillingly up from the depths. …The whole idea of that kind of poetic justice made him chuckle blackly, even though it really wasn’t all that funny.
He just hoped that other fella who might or might not have been him a million years ago had succeeded in keeping his kid safe too.
Otherwise, he didn’t like to think what dreams might still be in store for him.
Still, there was one good thing about them. Every time Ezra woke up with his heart pounding from the struggle to protect a precious burden, it was followed swiftly by relief and gratitude when he found Cee there safe with him—and it made new all over again his resolve that he would keep her that way.
If this really was how he would go on into infinity, his soul broken and bound again each time by a love so pure it hurt…
Well, maybe that wasn’t such an unfortunate fate after all.
2022 Jordanna Morgan
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