Chapter Text
I hadn’t thought about what to expect after that. But I certainly didn’t expect to wake up.
I’m still flat on my back, but nothing else is the same. I’m submerged in healing bacta, breathing through an oxygen tube. I feel warm and safe and free from pain. I’m pinned down perfectly still by a dozen braces, keeping all of my bones aligned while they knit back together. I peer through the liquid and the transparisteel and recognize the interior of the Millennium Falcon.
I don’t know how Han and Chewie managed to find us in such a deep canyon. I don’t know where the Alliance medics found a tank small enough to squeeze onto the Falcon. I don’t know how I’m ever going to get the stink of bacta out of my hair. (Why do I have to hate the smell of bacta so much? Nobody else seems to have this problem.)
I do know that I’m grateful to be alive. I look to one side… and there’s Luke. He looks like he could use some time in here. But at least the medics have him braced and bandaged. I don’t think he’s left my side this whole time. Looks like he’s fallen asleep in that chair.
I tap the side of the tank, and he sits up. He leans down close, placing his hand on the tank beside mine. I place my fingertips alongside his and smile as well as I’m able to with a tube in my mouth.
I’m alright. I’ll be able to tell him soon, I know… but I can’t help trying to make him hear me now. Maybe he senses it through the Force, or maybe it’s just because he’s seen me wake up at last, but he seems to understand. He presses a button on the side of the tank, and his voice is carried through the fluid to my ears.
“We’re almost home. 2-1B says it will take a few days for you to heal, but you should make a complete recovery. Just try to rest.”
I give him a look and point at him through the transparisteel. You need to rest, too.
He gives me a rueful half-smile. “Alright. I’ll be back when this session is done.”
I can’t nod with my neck braced, so I blink at him.
Luke hesitates, resting his hand on the tank over me. He doesn’t seem ready to leave. I understand. He must have felt so helpless. They way I felt watching him fall three years ago.
But he needs rest, so I glare until he chuckles and goes somewhere to lie down. Satisfied, I close my eyes and let the next dose of sedatives lead me back to sleep.
---
I am a sore, aching mess. I’ve just come out of my first bacta session (and of course I smell awful), and 2-1B is reciting a list of things I’m not allowed to do while I wait for the next one. Frankly, it is a ridiculous precaution; if I do anything but lie down and drink fluids for the next twelve hours, it’ll be at blaster-point.
I’m on board the Alliance medical frigate, Redemption. My tank was deposited on the trauma deck while I slept. I get my own room, as we are currently lacking any other Rebels who recently fell far enough to crack like a marlello egg. It’s got a bed that sits up, a couple seats for visitors, and a nice view of hyperspace. There’s also the smelly bacta tank off to the side, but nothing’s perfect.
Unfortunately, painkillers are in short supply right now. And since I get sedated in the bacta tank, I don’t technically need them to get any sleep. So mine have been heavily rationed. Which is why I’m in agony, and I can’t even complain about it without feeling like a jerk.
Luke is in a chair beside me, leaning forward on my bed, staring at me anxiously. In short, he’s hovering. It’d be cute if I wasn’t in so much pain.
“Would you please relax?” I ask tersely after 1B leaves. “They said I’m going to be fine.”
I swear I wasn’t this bad after his fall. Though, in Luke’s defense, it wasn’t like he actually got hurt back then.
“How’s your knee?” I ask.
“Almost fully healed,” he replies. “I’ll be back on active duty tomorrow.”
Ah, that’s why he won’t leave. He doesn’t want to leave me all alone until he has no choice. “Great! Then you can bring me all the hot Red Squadron gossip.”
Luke smirks. Good, he’s starting to relax a little. I remember what it was like, the first few days after the accident. How every time I looked at him, I couldn’t help thinking about how close I’d come to losing him forever. That’s where he’s at right now, with me. I’m trying to remember how he helped me feel right again.
We’d pretended everything was normal, until I couldn’t anymore. And then we sat down and had the most serious talk we’d had to date.
Maybe we should skip the pretending this time.
“How are you feeling, really?” I ask.
Luke’s smile falls, and his bright eyes fill with anguish. “Like I almost lost the best friend I’ve ever had.”
I don’t really have an excuse for that, but… “I couldn’t let you fall. Not again.”
“I know,” he says softly. “I knew nothing I said was going to make it any better. But I never expected you to let go too.”
He lifts his eyes up over my bed, looking out the porthole that shows the galaxy passing faster than light.
“Uncle Owen said that I was brave that day,” he mutters.
I start in surprise. So, that wasn’t a dream? Luke doesn’t notice.
“I was stunned. I thought he’d be angry. And I guess part of him was. But he also said he was proud of me. I’ve never been sure how to feel about that. I didn’t feel brave. I was terrified. I just… knew it was better than dragging you down with me.”
After a beat of silence, I place a hand on Luke’s arm. “For what it’s worth, I didn’t feel brave either. I just knew I couldn’t let you die.”
“You sure didn’t seem afraid,” he observes. “When we were falling… I’ve never seen anyone look that determined.”
I squirm a little, embarrassed. “Well, I was. It’s just… I was more afraid of having to lose you. When you started slipping through my fingers again…”
I sink against the bed, exhausted. Luke takes the hint sits in silence beside me. So many things are tangled up in my mind right now, and I have to leave them all unspoken. There just aren’t any words. Luke doesn’t butt in, for once. He just waits patiently while I figure things out.
At fifteen, I watched my best friend save my life, believing that it would cost him his own. And it tore me apart, changed me forever, in ways that I hadn’t even fully understood until now.
At eighteen, faced with the same situation, I let myself fall to save Luke. I made him watch as I struck the ground, as I suffered injuries that should have been fatal, all to protect him. How has he been changed? How long will it take him to feel everything this experience has done to him?
Both of us narrowly avoided having to mourn the other’s death. But we came close enough that we can easily see what that grief would have felt like. Like a rancor that sees you helpless, that prowls right up to you and pauses before its attack, so that you have time to examine every claw and tooth and imagine it tearing into your flesh… and then decides to walk away and hunt for something else. It didn’t technically hurt you. But everything it could have done is now calcified in your imagination.
The grief of the one left behind. That’s something you don’t have to think about when you’re the one making the sacrifice. I may have saved Luke’s life, but I almost made it inextricably darker in the process. I can’t just take that lightly. And yet… if I were ever to face that choice again, that choice of his life or mine… I have to admit I would do the same. I don’t know how to reconcile that yet.
I’m not sure I ever will.
There’s a feeling inside me, like something profound has taken place. Though Luke has been my closest friend for as long as I’ve had friends at all, I feel that today we’ve reached a deeper understanding. He knows now what he put me through on that day, the heart-shattering experience of having to watch someone you love surrender their own life for you. Just as I now know what drove him to let go in the first place. If he had been the one to grab hold of the Y-Wing, if I had been faced with the choice of dragging him down or facing my death alone… I absolutely would have let go.
“It didn’t feel like I had the luxury of being afraid,” I hear myself murmur, finding the truth even as I say it out loud. “Not until we’d already hit the ground. Then I was scared to die. But not while you were in danger. I don’t really know what that means.”
Luke takes my hand and gives it an affectionate squeeze. “My uncle would probably say it means that you have a good heart.”
I look up at him, gripping his hand tightly. “Was it selfish of me?” I ask. I genuinely don’t know, and I need to.
But all he can do is shrug. “I don’t know. I know I never want to see you do something like that again. But I don’t think I can judge you for it. I understand why… because I’d have done the same.”
“Yeah.”
I thought that might be his answer. I kind of hate it. But maybe it’s just part of being close to someone. Having to let them love you enough to do something stupid. I really do love Luke that much. I was scared to die, but I was also happy. Well, satisfied, anyway. Knowing he was going to survive… that made it all right.
I’m too tired to figure this out. Maybe I never will. But I’m alive. That can be enough for today. And Luke’s alive. Which is very much enough.
We made it.