Chapter Text
H I R A E T H
~ Love Letter for a Monster ~
Hiraeth (Welsh) – a homesickness for a home to which you cannot return, a home which maybe never was; the nostalgia, the yearning, the grief for lost places of your past.
Prologue: Lost in Translation
Toronto, October 2009
They cut off his hair.
True, he looks different in other ways too. Older. Paler. All suited up. She’s never seen him in a tie before. He’s lost weight—no more bulk and muscle, he's all skin and bones, and for a moment she catches herself worrying about his health. It startles her. She didn’t think she’d still be capable of it—not anymore, not after all these years—but here she is, chewing on her lip, wondering if he might be sick. She’s forgotten what it felt like, worrying for him.
She wants it to stop.
Despite all these changes, it’s his hair that makes the biggest difference. He's always had it reaching his shoulders. With his head shorn like this, his face looks too long, his nose too big, his lips too thick, the angles of his cheekbones too sharp. His ears are sticking out. He’s ugly, she realizes for the first time. He’s all crooked lines and mismatched parts, he is ugly, he looks grotesque.
Like a monster.
He opens his mouth to speak, but it’s not his voice that she hears. An interpreter speaks over him instead: a woman, her tone flat and professional. The interpreter chooses her words carefully. She sounds impersonal—too measured, too calm, her sentences reasonable and too well-formed.
He never spoke like that.
Rey takes the remote and shuts down the television.
“Hey,” Poe protests, “I was watching that!”
She wants to tell him to fuck off. She wants to crack a joke—it’s a perfect opportunity for a witty one-liner. That’s what a movie character would do, and all her life she’s been feeling like she were trapped in a godawful Oscar-bait drama. But there’s a lump in her throat, and she realizes that if she speaks back, she’ll begin to cry.
No tears, she tells herself. It’s been too much time. It won’t do anyone any good. Calm down. Breathe.
“Hey,” Poe says, his voice much gentler. “You okay?”
She sits on the couch clutching the remote, and it takes her a moment to focus. Something akin to anger rises in her chest. It’s not supposed to be like this. She never thought she’d need so much willpower to remind herself of the simplest things: her life is normal now. Normal. She is in her own home, far and away. She's no longer a teenager.
She is no longer in love.
Not like that.
And even if she were, that man she’s just seen on TV looks nothing like the ghost she can't get rid of.
Poe slides closer to her on the couch, careful, unsure if he’s supposed to give her space or offer comfort. He clears his throat.
“You okay?” he repeats.
“No.” It is a relief to say it out loud. “No, I’m not.”
Poe slowly nods.
“I understand,” he agrees solemnly, his eyes a tad too kind, and all of a sudden, Rey's stomach sinks—he knows.
But as he continues to speak, he reveals his own demons.
“I understand. All that fighting and sacrifice and shit, and in the end, we end up here.” He gestures vaguely at their garden, where the Canadian fall is coloring the trees in a deep shade of red they never saw back in their home country. “I can't even turn off the fucking translation on TV.”
Poe pauses, bites his lip, hesitates. Whatever he’s about to say next, it’s been tormenting him for a while.
“We’ve, uh... we’ve won, Rey. But it feels like defeat.”
Unexpectedly, she smiles.
That’s the word she’s been looking for—defeat. She should feel triumphant, she knows. They did win. Yet seeing just a glimpse of that fucking trial, seeing him aged and withered and with his hair cut so short, leaves an aftertaste so bitter she could vomit.
Uninvited images invade her mind. The mole above his eyebrow. The thickness of his hair, the smell of it unwashed. The feeling of his large fingers caressing her back. His bite marks on her skin. How he'd blush like a schoolboy whenever he’d make her happy. How he used to smile—clumsy and shy, yet so sweet, nothing like the villain the press made him out to be.
Only he was a villain. He is. There’s no other way of putting it.
“You're correct: this is defeat,” Rey tells her husband as she begins to sob.
She can't remember the last time she cried. It’s not a pretty sight: snot runs from her nose, bubbling down her chin, and she makes foul hiccupping noises she can't control.
Fuck.
Rey lets out a long sigh that almost sounds like a shriek, and finally gathers the courage to articulate a truth she didn't want to face.
“There’ll never be justice.”