Chapter Text
Luke, all things considered, was lucky in at least one respect.
There wasn't a huge population of organics on Tatooine, but everyone knew someone who was missing a hand or a limb from an accident, or had to fashion a prosthetic out of debris that did nothing but lengthen a stump to meet the ground, or give someone an immobile rake of a hand. Tatooine was an unforgiving place, and there were never enough resources for genuinely adequate medical care.
Luke fell, down and down and down the shaft, and he didn't think much about his hand, or even that he would probably splat to the bottom and die; before Vader had even said he was Luke’s father, before he fell, he already found himself settling into the resignation that losing a body part meant not getting it back. That wasn’t big enough to concern himself with right then.
He didn't die, though. Leia and Lando and Chewie came back for him. Leia gave him a shot of something that left the injection site feeling cold and sore, before quickly dulling the explosive, burning pain in his arm that he could finally feel without the adrenaline rushing to keep him up and alive. His head felt fuzzy.
His wrist was wrapped and shut into some sort of metal casing, which Lando explained; the words rolled right off him, but Luke still found himself thankful for the warm, honey-smooth voice to at least break the silence, hanging heavy and thick on all of their shoulders.
Luke could feel the ache in all of their chests just as strongly as his own, and the stiff, almost uncomfortable feeling coming from Lando, in borrowed clothes and a pilot’s chair that didn't feel like his own anymore.
Luke pulled his legs up to his chest, resting his chin on his knees, and he felt out for Han.
There was nothing there.
It wasn’t the same kind of nothing he felt, before he realized what he was feeling, when he came across Owen and Beru’s scorched bodies, or when Obi-Wan died, or when he managed to destroy the Death Star and the buzz of thousands of bodies went so still and quiet he could feel it through the explosion. Those were like a light switch being turned off, but the lightbulb was still where it was supposed to be, even in the dark. This was like the lightbulb was gone. This felt like a black hole.
The ache in his chest turned into a prodding, anxious stab. The certainty that he was doing the right thing by leaving Dagobah was gone, replaced with a feeling of deep failure.
Maybe if he had gone earlier, or faster, or.
No. It didn't matter, Luke told himself. It was done. There was no redo. He had to plan better. He had to go back to Dagobah.
Luke looked down at where his right hand would be, and then he looked at his left. He thought about breaking his arm when he was twelve, and having to get used to using his left hand almost exclusively. Writing was sloppy, brushing his teeth took a little getting used to, but he had figured out how to manage, how to do his work and get around while his right arm was pinned to his torso in a cast and a sling. He could do it again.
“Leia.” Luke could see her eyes flick up to meet his in the reflection of the glass in front of them. “I have to go back.”
He caught the flash of something in her eyes, raw and angry and scared, before she spun around to face him. “What are you talking about?”
“I need.” He stopped, took a deep breath, willed away the thick feeling in his head from the anesthetic. “I need to go back to Dagobah.”
Chewie rumbled out something Luke couldn't make out, and Leia and Lando exchanged confused, concerned glances before Leia looked at him again.
“We need to deal with your hand before you go anywhere, Luke.”
“I have to go back. I need to go back.” Luke was having trouble getting the words out clearly. His whole body felt far away. “Leia, take me back, please , I need to get to Yoda--”
“No.” Leia’s lips pressed together in a thin line, with sad eyes and a sigh that left her looking deflated. “It's a wonder you're not dead. You're not going anywhere like this.”
“I have to train--”
“With one hand ?”
“What else am I going to do?!”
Leia and Lando locked eyes again.
“Luke,” said Lando, flipping some switches Luke couldn't see and turning around to face him. “You don't have to do anything with one hand. We’re getting you to a real medic and they'll fit you right up with another one. Good as new. You’ll barely be able to tell the difference.”
Luke looked down at his left hand, and the metal casing at his right wrist. Through the fog in his head he remembered Hoth, and the medical equipment he had never seen before, and he nodded.
Luke was strapped into a stretcher and wheeled out of the Falcon as soon as they landed--Luke wasn't quite sure where--but he had to squeeze his eyes shut against the glaring lights and sterile-white walls, the smell of disinfectant stinging in his nose.
The stretcher lurched over a bump, and Luke bit back a groan at the way it jostled his arm.
“Where's…” Luke had to take a deep breath. “Where are--”
“Your friends are just outside,” a nurse said above him, and Luke bit the inside of his cheek.
His left hand was roughly unstrapped, and then a mask was put over his mouth and his nose, and everything went dark before he heard someone finish saying, “Count back from ten.”
Luke had never woken up like this before.
It was different than coming out of the bacta tank on Hoth--that had been more like waking up after sleeping in too late, groggy and a little disorienting, but this.
It felt like being pulled into consciousness through a thick jelly that didn’t want to let go, a heavy haze through his whole body that stuck to him like tar.
It was slow, and then it was very fast, the lights glaring above him washing out his whole field of vision; the sensation coming back to his arm hit him like a wall, every cut and bruise suddenly making itself known with a vengeance, and he could feel something cold and sticky on his left hand.
Luke grit his teeth and turned his head away from the lights, sucking in a deep breath. His throat felt raw.
He jerked at the feeling of a hand on his left arm before he heard Leia’s voice cut through the ringing in his ears.
“Luke.”
He stiffly turned his head to face her. “Is it…?”
His voice was so scratchy and thin he could barely hear himself, but Leia nodded.
“Everything went fine. You just need to calibrate the prosthetic once you're feeling up to it. They could have done this without putting you under, but.” She paused, and Luke saw her eyes flick towards his other side; he couldn’t bring himself to look at it yet. “With the way the wound cauterized, they had to amputate further up your arm, to connect the nerves.”
Luke had never been squeamish, but that didn’t keep down the wave of nausea from the thought of it, the memory of the smell of burning skin overpowering the soapy, sterile smell throughout the room.
“What's that stuff,” he croaked, clearing his throat, but it only made it hurt more. “On my hand?”
“Oh.” Leia pulled her hand back from Luke's arm. “It was for scanning your hand, so the prosthetic would be a match. Same skin, same muscle tone…” She trailed off, chewing her lip. “It looks good as new. Or old, I guess.”
Luke finally looked down to his right; he wasn't sure what he was expecting, but it wasn't a perfect replica of his left hand, poreless and unbandaged like nothing had happened. The only visible evidence that anything had happened was a tiny, hair-thin line a few inches above his wrist, and he might not have even noticed if he wasn't looking for it.
His chest felt funny.
There was something almost unsettling about it, and he couldn't help feeling a little guilty for thinking so, when almost all the amputees he'd met on Tatooine were left to figure it out themselves, making do with whatever they could put together unless they had the money and the time to afford going off-planet.
Luke twitched the fingers of his left hand, and his right stayed motionless.
A sense of urgency suddenly punched through the daze from the anesthesia, and he would have jerked upright if his whole body didn't feel so heavy.
“When can I leave?”
Leia frowned. “Don't hold your breath. Your hand isn't even fully hooked up yet.”
Luke grit his teeth and breathed out slowly. “And that?”
Leia caught the attention of one of the med droids, wheeling over so fast it almost tipped over when it stopped at the side of his bed.
“How is the patient?” it chirped, relentlessly cheery in the way only a droid could be. Luke wondered what the programming was like for a good bedside manner.
“Um.”
“Luke would like to know when his hand can be calibrated,” Leia cut in.
The droid looked up at something above Luke's bed, and then, “Once the patient is able to urinate and walk unassisted. Would you like a bedpan?”
Luke's cheeks felt hot, and he shook his head. “Can I get up?”
The droid pinged for a nurse, and Luke’s bed was wheeled into another room, Leia following right behind. The droid zipped out as soon as Luke had been pushed into place, leaving him with the nurse and Leia standing at the end of the bed, lumpy plastic bag in hand.
“Can I get up now?” Luke asked again, antsy from being stuck like this when there was so much for him to do, and why didn't anyone else understand the hurry?
The nurse pinched his wrist, looking at their watch for a few seconds before collapsing one of the side-guards on the bed, hitting a button that pushed the top half of the mattress upright. “Don't rush yourself.”
Leia rolled her eyes, the corner of her mouth twitching like she was trying not to smile, and Luke felt a little of the weight lift off his chest.
Luke pushed himself up, sliding his legs over the edge of the bed and scooting forward until his feet hit the floor. He took a deep breath before pushing off the edge of the bed; Leia came over to hold an arm out to help him up, but he waved her away and took a couple shaky steps forward, his whole body stiffening up against the way the room spun.
His arms felt tingly, and his hand ached where there was only metal and synthetic skin. He held his right arm close to his chest, his hand flopping at the wrist.
“Is there a--?”
The nurse pointed to a second door in the corner, and the grippy stuff on the bottom of the socks they'd given him squeaked as he slowly shuffled over.
He reached out with his right hand to open the door before pulling it back like he'd been burned, biting his lip for a second before opening it with his left.
Luke's cheeks felt hot again when he realized he was wearing nothing but the socks and a hospital gown, the hair on his legs bristling with the chill. The toilet paper was on the wrong side for his good hand, and Luke shook his head with a huff, awkwardly reaching over with his left.
The smell of the hand soap made him think of cough medicine.
Luke frowned at the glob of soap in his hand, smearing it around his palm with his fingertips. He had to use his right forearm to get as much of the slick stuff off his other hand as he could, frowning at the cold, tacky residue it left behind.
Luke froze up for a second when he caught himself in the mirror above the sink, his hand going still under the faucet. He looked almost as clammy and pale as when he'd gotten hit with a nasty virus years back, laying him up for weeks, his eyes ringed in soft purple, hair all clumped and messy.
Luke grit his teeth and looked away, wiping his hand off on the hospital gown.
He remembered to use his left hand to open the door this time, keeping his arms tight at his sides to try to keep the gown from opening at the back, and Leia smiled reassuringly from one of the chairs by the bed.
“The nurse went to get you a wheelchair, to take you to get your hand hooked up.”
Luke rubbed at the seam on his right wrist. “Can’t I just walk?”
Leia shook her head. “It's protocol after general anesthesia, apparently.”
Luke heard wheels squeaking before the nurse came back in, and the state of the wheelchair seemed incongruous with how high-tech everything else was, rickety and over-worn.
Luke dropped his arms at his sides, fidgeting with the hem of the hospital gown. “Can I have my clothes back?”
“Oh.”
Luke had almost forgotten about the bag, and Leia picked it up from the corner to bring it over to him.
“Your clothes were--we couldn't keep them, but Lando and I managed to find something.”
Luke nodded, numbly taking the bag from her and shuffling back towards the bathroom.
“Pull the cord by the toilet if you need help,” the nurse said.
Luke nodded again as he pulled the door shut, the bag crammed under his arm.
He didn't want to need help.
In the bag was a plain pair of pants and a shirt not unlike what he was given on Hoth, off-white and a little starchy; at least there weren't any closures, he thought, fighting with the right sleeve when he couldn't straighten his wrist.
The hospital gown had come off easily, sliding off his shoulders the second he pulled open the knots at the back of his neck and his waist, but he'd forgotten how much of a hassle it could be getting pants on one-handed.
Luke had to shuffle to keep from tripping on the hems on his way out of the bathroom, folding the hospital gown over his arm.
“Ready to go?” Leia asked.
Luke nodded stiffly, handing the hospital gown to the nurse. He couldn't help feeling a bit babied, wondering why she felt the need to ask when all he could think about was getting out of there.
The nurse had to hold the handles to keep the wheelchair from tipping when Luke could only use his left hand to lower himself into it. The foot rests left his ankles at an awkward angle, and he cradled his right arm against his stomach, shifting uncomfortably against the backrest that wouldn't lie flat.
Having to be pushed only exacerbated the feeling that he was wasting time, dragging the seconds out impossibly slower. He barely registered what Leia was saying as she walked next to him, nodding whenever she paused, and he couldn't tell why his heart raced the further they went, around indistinguishable corners and identical halls.
The wheels screeched when the nurse made a sharp turn into one of the rooms, snapping him out of the loop of I have to go I have to go I have to go. This room was smaller, but with windows that kept it from feeling like he was boxed in, mostly empty aside from a reclining examination chair with long armrests folded out at the sides.
Luke pushed himself up as soon as he was within a couple steps of it, flopping gracelessly into the examination chair before the nurse even finished telling him he could get up.
They pushed the left armrest in, leaving the right extended.
“A 2-1B should be with you in a few minutes,” they said, nodding at Leia on their way out.
“Thank you,” Leia called out after them.
Luke fidgeted with the hem of his sleeve. He'd seen a few 2-1Bs on Tatooine, mostly modified for other jobs, or disassembled for parts, but he knew of one or two that were still fitted for various medical duties for the lucky few who could pay.
He never had been able to figure out a good reason for seeing a droid to be so expensive.
He wasn't sure what to expect from a 2-1B still used for its original purpose, but he was startled by the attachment on one arm, long and sharp and intimidating.
“Verify patient name, please,” it said, mechanical and without the same cheeriness of the first droid.
“Luke Skywalker.”
The 2-1B came over to his right, and Luke took a deep breath, unable to look away from the attachment in place of its hand.
“Arm up, please.”
Luke lay his arm out on the armrest, his hand flopping limply over the edge of it. He glanced over at Leia, and she shot him another reassuring smile, and Luke looked back down at his hand.
Luke's arm stiffened up with the impulse to pull away when the droid pressed the attachment against his wrist; he didn’t feel it, but his left hand gripped the other armrest so tight his fingers hurt when a hatch popped open to reveal a lattice of wires and metal.
He had known, consciously, that there would have to be something like that for the prosthetic to work, but it didn't make it any less unsettling to see his wrist popped open like that.
Watching the 2-1B work on his arm felt like the first time he had to get blood drawn, eyes glued to the syringe slowly filling with red, transfixed and a little grossed out at the same time. A wire clicked into place, and his fingers clenched up, relaxing again with the next wire.
It was another two wires and a screw before Luke was almost sure there was some feeling in his palm.
Luke felt a shock go all the way up his arm with the last wire, and then it felt like his arm had fallen asleep, numb and tingly down to his fingertips.
“Make a fist if you are able,” the 2-1B said, lifting the attachment a few inches away.
Luke stiffly curled his fingers into a fist.
He could feel the pressure of his fingertips on his palm, but the sensation still felt off.
“How does that feel?”
Luke swallowed thickly and glanced over at Leia before looking back down at his hand. “Okay. Kind of numb.”
He had to squeeze his eyes shut for a second when the droid started tinkering with his wrist again; he could feel it this time, and it didn’t exactly hurt, but the inside of his arm wasn't something he had ever wanted to feel.
There was another shock, down to his fingers this time, and the numbness crept away with it until he could feel the synthetic skin on his palm.
“How does that feel?” the droid repeated.
“Better.” Luke wiggled his fingers, and seeing it sent a shiver up his spine.
It was exciting, and it was strange, and that twinge of guilt came back from the thought of everyone back on Tatooine, with stumps and scrap metal when he had a new, working hand the same day he lost his own.
Suddenly that guilt started to feel a little more like anger, overshadowing the feeling that he had to leave, and he knew he should stamp it out, but he couldn't quite bring himself to want to.
The resources were there--not in abundance on Tatooine, unless you had the money for it; but if parts could be shipped in every so often, so could medical droids, and supplies, and better medicine. It didn’t need to cost as much as it did.
It wasn't fair.
It wasn't right.
Luke was pulled out of his train of thought by the 2-1B poking each of his fingertips, twitching in response just like the fingers on his natural hand would.
Something about it still felt off, somehow, in a way he couldn't place, but he wasn't about to complain.
“A tech will be with you shortly,” the 2-1B said, and Luke's shoulders sagged.
“A--what?”
“A tech will be with you shortly,” the droid repeated, with the exact same inflection as the first time.
It was on its way out before Luke could ask what it had meant.
“I thought you said they just needed to hook the hand up.”
“That's what I thought.” Leia came over to the chair, looking down at the hatch still open on his wrist. “Maybe it needs more work because of the way it cauterized?”
Luke took a deep breath and tried not to think about that.
“How does it feel?”
Luke shrugged and wiggled his fingers. “Good, I guess.” He trailed the fingers of his left hand over his palm; it was almost completely smooth, and he couldn't see any fingerprints.
He couldn’t quite manage to keep down the impulse to poke the rectangle of synthetic skin propped up where the hatch was still open on his wrist.
“Oh! Ew! Oh, that’s, that's weird.” Luke shuddered, laughing uncomfortably. He slowly poked at the inside of the hatch cover, squirming in his seat. “Hey, Leia--”
“I’m not touching it.”
“Come on, it’s cool.”
Leia rolled her eyes, but the corner of her mouth was twitching like she was trying not to smile again. “How old are you?”
“You're just grossed out.” Luke pinched the hatch cover and tilted it to look at the outside of it, scrunching his face up in exaggerated disgust at the feeling of the synthetic skin shifting. “One little poke.”
Leia leaned in to get a better look. “No, thanks.”
“I dare you.”
“Luke, I swear to--”
She was cut off by a few quick knocks on the doorframe, and Luke dropped his left hand in his lap.
“Skywalker?”
He nodded.
The tech was tall and gangly and a pale yellow that would make a human look ill, with facial features that made Luke think of the little sand lizards basking on the rocks back on Tatooine, sleek and scaly in the harsh lighting.
“Sounds familiar…” they mumbled, swiping through a thin holopad. “I’m just here to check that everything is working properly. Your procedure was a bit different than what we normally do.”
Luke nodded again, glancing down at his prosthetic; his wrist ached at the thought of burning flesh, those extra few inches of synthetic skin where they'd had to amputate further up because of it.
“Your nerve responses looked good so far.” They peered over at the hatch opening, tapping and swiping another couple times at the holopad. “Haven’t tested grip strength yet, or response to temperature…” They fumbled through the pocket of their lab coat, pulling out two thin, metallic cylinders about the length of his palm. “One in each hand.”
Luke kept his right arm as still as he could when he took them, the hatch tugging uncomfortably on his skin with every movement.
The tech clicked the top of the cylinders, and Luke could feel a faint buzz, dulled slightly in his right hand.
“Give those a squeeze, same pressure on both of them.”
Luke held them tight enough the knuckles on his left hand went pale; the prosthetic stayed the same.
“And relax.” They tapped another few times on the holopad, glancing up at Luke's hands. “And again, lightly this time.”
Luke let out a slow breath and did as he was told; that shaky, anxious feeling was making itself hard to ignore, and all he could think about was when he could go.
Luke focused as much as he could on his breathing, and the feeling of his heart thudding in his chest, only listening enough to follow the instructions from the tech.
He wasn't sure how long they went on testing grip strength, zapping his palm and his fingertips with something that looked like a pen, but sent shocks of heat or icy chill and asking him which was which; he could see Leia getting fidgety the longer it went on.
Luke let out a deep breath he hadn't realized he was holding when the tech finally put everything in their pockets from poking and prodding at his hand, carefully flipping the hatch shut with a soft click that he felt more than heard.
His whole body felt tense, ready to bolt as soon as he was allowed to leave.
“We need to keep you here for monitoring--” the tech said, swiping through the holopad again, and Luke felt his heart drop.
“What?”
The tech looked startled, bead-black eyes widening for a second. “Your procedure was not our standard.”
Luke felt like his whole body was buzzing.
“How long?” Leia asked, and it would have been easy to miss the frustrated set of her jaw, a hint of a frown coming through the practiced poise.
“You have an appointment with the neurologist in...two hours, and a physical therapist after that,” the tech said, turning towards Leia. “We can gauge that better once we have heard back from them.”
Luke's jaw started to ache from the way he was clenching it.
He barely heard the tech asking if he had any questions, or Leia cutting in to say they would find someone if they did, and Leia shot him a look while the tech turned to leave.
“Thank you,” Luke said, looking off to the side; he knew it wasn't anyone's fault that he was stuck there, but that didn't do anything for the anxiety around getting out, or all the work he had ahead of him, or that stabbing haze between his eyes from the lights and the smell.
The room was silent for a minute, and then Leia and Luke looked at each other, glancing towards the door before talking over each other with, “Were we supposed to--?” “Do we stay here?”
Leia huffed and shook her head almost imperceptibly. “I’ll find a nurse.”
“Leia,” Luke said, turning towards her and leaning on the armrest that was still folded in. “Why do I have to be here for so long?”
Leia’s shoulders looked stiff, and she didn't say anything for a minute. “Do you know how far you had to fall before we found you?”
Luke's eyebrows furrowed. “What?”
Leia took a deep breath and came over to the chair with another quick glance towards the door. “You almost died.”
“I know--”
“No, you don't,” she snapped, quiet and piercing. “You would probably be dead right now if your arm wasn't cauterized while it was still being cut off. You should still be dead from that fall. Maybe on that backwater…” Leia cut herself off with a sigh and pinched her fingertips to her temples for a second. “You don't get to refuse medical care that you need just because you don't know how to wait.”
“I don't have time to wait,” Luke insisted, but it came out too weakly to pack any real punch.
He hadn’t really had it in him to think about that fall with everything else going on for his hand, or what had happened just before, and he didn't really want to.
“Well, make time,” Leia said, turning on her heel. “I’m getting a nurse.”
Luke didn't get the chance to say anything else before she was out the door.
The room was so quiet without her he could hear his heartbeat rushing in his ears, his anxiety around getting back to Dagobah tinged with unsettled guilt.
Luke took a slow breath and brought his right hand close to his face, tracing around the line on his wrist. He held both hands up next to each other, comparing his left to the smooth, lineless palm of his right, the back of his hand poreless and hairless like a doll’s, sending a shudder up his spine.
He’d heard a term for that before, a long time ago, for something that looks so close to right that it’s even more disconcerting than something entirely inhuman. There had been talk around Tosche once, overheard in snippets in the few moments of spare time he had, of droids that looked like people but not quite, their skin and their movements and the programmed monotony of their voices the only real giveaways to the fact that they weren't organics.
He had never seen one, and looking down at his hand, he wasn't sure he would want to.
He liked droids, and there was something uncomfortable he couldn’t quite place about a need to make them indistinguishable from the people who owned them.
Luke dropped his hands to his lap at the sound of footsteps in the hall, but Leia came in alone.
“Where's the nurse?”
“Busy.” She headed towards the wheelchair, but Luke pushed himself up from the examination chair before she could get to it. “You just need to wait in one of the patient lounges.”
Luke bristled, trying to ignore the pang in his head at the thought of having to stay under all those lights. “Can't I wait outside?”
“No.”
“What about--?”
“I asked, I'm sorry,” Leia said, pushing the wheelchair out of the way by the door. “You have to be discharged first.”
Luke rubbed the heels of his palms over his eyes. “This is…”
“You have a concussion,” Leia cut in. “They had to set five breaks in three different bones while you were under. I don't think you'd get much out of training with a bruised brain and pins holding you together.”
Luke stopped. There hadn't been any casts. “How?”
“This isn't Tatooine,” Leia said simply.
Luke was in a daze while he followed Leia through the hallways, passing directional signs that flashed between Basic and alphabets he didn't always recognize. He hadn’t realized the place was so big until that heavy, tired feeling still lingering from the anesthesia made him almost wish he’d used the wheelchair, each step a little harder to take than the last.
Leia slowed down, but she didn't say anything, and Luke was at least thankful for that.
Of course she was right about not being able to leave yet.
They stopped at a doorway just like all the others they’d passed on the way, and Leia didn't wait for the sign to flash back to Basic before she pressed the switch for the door to slide open.
The glaring fluorescent lights weren't any better in the large, sparsely furnished room, frayed old chairs lining the walls with pamphlet displays every few feet. The room was mostly empty, just a handful of organics and a family member or two sitting in clusters, actively ignoring each other, for the most part, and Luke was starting to wish he had just stayed in that last room.
Leia led him over to a couple chairs in an empty corner, nudging him to sit down; she stayed standing, wringing her hands behind her back like he wouldn't notice and glancing at the door.
“What is it?” Luke asked.
“What?”
Luke frowned. “You look…”
Leia dropped her hands at her sides and let out a slow breath. “It's nothing.”
“Leia,” Luke pressed, but she didn't say anything, and Luke lightly kicked at her ankle. “Hey--”
Leia huffed and dropped down to the seat next to him. “I don't want to have to leave you here, but.”
Luke felt deflated. “If you have to go…”
“I’ll get Lando.” Leia whipped a tiny holopad from her pocket and began typing so fast he could barely see her fingers. “I don't have to leave, just. I have to make a call. From the Falcon. I’ll be back.”
Luke chewed at the inside of his cheek. “Okay.”
Leia slipped the holopad back into her pocket, rubbing reassuringly at Luke's arm before standing up again. “He’s on his way. He knows the room number.”
She only made it halfway to the door before turning to face him again. “You know the channel code for the Falcon if you need--?”
“I know it, it’s fine.”
Leia nodded to herself, and walked out as fast as she could without breaking into a run.
Luke looked down at his hands in his lap, gritting his teeth against the ache behind his eyes from the lights. He was pretty sure he could hear them buzzing.
Every second felt like it was dragging on even longer than before, but his anxious rush to get back to Dagobah was replaced with a heavy, lonely helplessness.
On Hoth, at least, the medbay hadn’t been so crushingly huge and impersonal, and most of the time he’d spent there conscious was with someone else, someone he knew, and Han…
He couldn’t breathe for a couple seconds around the tightness in his chest.
Luke bit the inside of his cheek until he tasted copper, but his heart pounding against his ribcage refused to slow down, that tight feeling in his chest making it impossible to keep from hyperventilating. His whole body felt like it was shaking apart, and he dropped his head in his hands, curling in on himself and squeezing the heels of his palms over his ears to try to block out the buzzing from the lights.
He was starting to feel dizzy when he heard footsteps heading towards him, muffled through his hands over his ears, and he wished he could just disappear--
“Hey, Luke.”
He froze up for a second, stiffly sitting up again, and he had to wedge his hands under his thighs to keep them from shaking.
His vision was a little fuzzy, haloes around all the lights, but it still didn't put a damper on the relief of seeing a familiar face, even if he'd only seen it once.
“Hey,” he said quietly, squinting against the lights.
“Leia filled me in.” Lando sat down in the chair next to him, crossing one leg over the other to lean in a little closer. “You aren't looking too good.”
Luke shrugged and looked away, pulling his hand free to rub at his forehead. He flinched and dropped it back to his lap at the feeling of too-smooth synthetic against his skin.
Lando was quiet for a minute, but Luke could still feel him looking.
“You want to go somewhere else?”
“Yes,” Luke said a little too quickly, frowning to himself at the desperation in his voice. “But Leia said--”
“You hold tight,” Lando said, reaching towards Luke's arm, but he pulled his hand back and stood up. “I’ll be right back.” He must have seen the expression on Luke's face, however hard he tried to hide it, because he added, “There’s a help desk two doors over. Don't go anywhere.”
“I don't even know where anywhere is, in here.”
Lando shot him a smile on his way out, and the tightness in Luke's chest felt a little less suffocating.
He looked around the room, glancing between the small groups of patients and families, and Luke suddenly felt very small.
Luke's legs started to bounce after the first minute or two, the anxiety creeping back in not long after, and Luke was about to get up to look for that help desk when Lando came rushing back in.
“Found you somewhere quiet,” he said, holding a hand out to help Luke up.
Luke reached out with his left. “I have an appointment later, won’t they--?”
“They know where to find you, don't worry about that.” Lando gave his hand a quick squeeze once he was standing before letting go and nodding towards the door. “Looks like you've got enough.”
Lando lead him down the hall, pausing at the end where it split into two before heading to the right.
“There's an empty exam room you can crash in until that appointment,” Lando said, slowing down to look at the room numbers. “And here we go.”
Lando propped the door open and waved him inside, and Luke felt like a vice had been loosened from his head when Lando hit a switch by the door to turn the lights off.
“Thank you,” Luke said, sitting on the edge of the lowered-flat examination chair. “Really--”
“Don’t mention it.” Lando waved him off with another one of those bright smiles. “Last thing you need is a couple hours in a glorified waiting room.”
Luke couldn’t help smiling back at him. “How did you get us in here? Leia…”
“Oh.” Lando shook his head to himself and pulled out a small holopad like Leia's. “Let me just…” He looked back up at Luke and shrugged. “Luck and a little charm?”
Luke huffed a laugh and rubbed at the slowly fading ache in his forehead.
Lando pocketed the holopad and walked back to the door, closing it enough that just a streak of light from the hallway made it in. “You’ve just got to know how to ask.”
Luke nodded and looked down at his hands. He couldn't figure out a middle ground between being grateful and feeling helplessly burdensome.
He thought of Leia, and that call she had to make, and everything else she must have going on after Cloud City, and he barely knew Lando at all--
“You don't have to stay here,” Luke found himself saying before he could really think it. “Sure you’ve to better things to do than babysit me for Leia.”
Luke almost missed the slight tilt of his head, his face just hinting at a frown.
“I wouldn't call it babysitting.” Lando came over and gestured towards a spot next to Luke, waiting for him to nod before sitting down. “You should have someone here.” He paused, and then he bumped his shoulder against Luke’s, and Luke could hear the smile in his voice when he added, “And I think you seem like more fun than a baby.”
Luke laughed, and he had to hold back the impulse to lean against Lando’s side, just a little, just for some touch that didn't hurt. “Probably not now.”
“I’d say that’s reasonable,” Lando said, with such certainty Luke could almost believe it. “Leia’s told me a lot.”
Luke took a deep, slow breath and rubbed his thumb over his right palm like a worry stone. “What’s a lot?”
“Ah. Okay.” Lando put his hands out behind him on the exam table to lean back a bit. “She told me about the Death Star, and Hoth. And Alderaan. Quite a rescue you put together, there.”
Luke let out a puff of breath that was somewhere close to a laugh. That felt so long ago.
“She told me why you were on Dagobah, too.”
Luke swallowed thickly around the pit in his throat and nodded.
Lando was quiet for a minute, and then, “What made you decide to leave?”
Luke took a deep breath to try to shake off the ache that brought to his chest. “I don't know how to explain.”
“Try me.”
Luke finally looked up from his hands; Lando was looking at him almost expectantly, his expression open and warm.
“I saw what was going to happen.” Luke laced his fingers together and squeezed until the knuckles of his left hand felt sore. “What could have happened. I couldn't just stay there.” He paused, squeezing his hands harder together to keep them from shaking. “It was so clear.”
He could practically feel Lando’s hesitation in the air between them before he reached out to put a hand on Luke’s arm. “I’m sorry.”
Luke wasn't sure why that more than anything else opened the floodgates, but suddenly he couldn't stop. “I saw them die, it was like, it was like I was right there, and I couldn't do anything, and then I still couldn't--”
“Luke,” Lando said insistently, gently prying Luke’s hands apart to hold Luke’s left tight between both of his. “You did what you could, and you did good. Leia’s fine.”
Luke tried not to think about the empty, heavy space where and Han should have been, but it didn't feel like he was the only one who was unsuccessful.
“We’re going to fix this.”
Luke wanted, desperately, more than anything, to be able to believe that was the case, but all he could feel when he tried to look forward was a melancholy uncertainty.
Thinking of Han felt like shouting into a cave with no echo.
“You know Han,” Luke said, determined in the present tense. “That's why they were there.”
He would have missed the way Lando's shoulders went stiff, his expression falling flat, if he hadn't already been looking carefully.
“I don't know what you know about that, but I promise you--”
“No, I mean.” Luke frowned and shook his head. He wasn't quite sure what he was trying to say, let alone how to say it, but there was something comforting about the fact that it wasn't the blindly optimistic platitudes of a stranger.
Lando had a stake in this, too; he’d almost forgotten the ride from Cloud City, his memories fuzzy and disjointed from the pain and the shot in his arm and what he realized now was the concussion, but he couldn't forget that heavy sadness, or that out-of-place feeling radiating from Lando in the pilot’s seat.
He remembered that, and he remembered how Lando piloted the Falcon with the love and care of someone who knew it already, and it clicked into place.
“You know Han.”
Lando seemed confused at first, before his expression slipped to one of understanding, and he nodded. “You too, huh?”
Luke looked down at his hand in Lando’s, his face hot. “Yeah.”
“I figured.” Lando bumped his shoulder against Luke's, that hint of a smile back in his voice when he added, “Leia did tell me about Hoth.”
“Oh.”
“That’s him all over,” Lando continued. “He tries to play it slick, but he can care to a fault.”
Luke bit the inside of his cheek to try to hide the way his bottom lip twitched, and it was hard to wrench his mind away from Han crashing into him after the Death Star, the smell of the dead Taun Taun and Han’s hands shaking from more than the cold when he dragged Luke into the popup shelter, his voice cracking when he tried to joke about the stench with Luke held tight against his chest.
“What happened back there?” he asked, and he could feel Lando tense up, his hands going stiff and still.
Lando pulled his hands back to his lap, and Luke couldn't help wishing he hadn't.
Lando took a deep breath, facing Luke but still not making eye contact. “It was a trap. From the start. He…” Lando stopped, his jaw clenching; when he looked back up at Luke, he could see the same look of determined, focused anger he’d come to recognize in Leia, covered on the surface by that same practiced calm. “It was never supposed to go this way. Please believe that. Vader got there first, and it was them or the city, and he said --bastard--he said Han and Leia were to stay in my care.”
Luke's chest felt tight.
“I tried to get them to turn around, but Han didn't take the bait, and.” Lando looked away and shook his head. “This happened because I trusted a monster to keep his word.”
“You did what you could,” Luke said quietly, and he didn't realize he was parroting Lando’s words back to him until Lando looked back up with a flash of surprise. “No one asks to be put in a position like that.”
They were both quiet for a minute; Lando put his hand softly over Luke's, smile lines crinkling around his eyes that didn't quite fit with the rest of his expression, and it looked like he was about to say something else when the door burst open, flooding the room with more light than Luke was prepared for.
“There you are,” Leia said, before Luke's eyes had adjusted enough to see her. She sounded out of breath. “You know they have two hallways with this same room number? I almost walked in on someone's sonogram.”
Lando pulled his hand back from Luke's and motioned for her to close the door again. “That’s just bad planning.”
Leia huffed and nodded in agreement, flopping down into an empty chair against the wall. “How are you doing?”
Luke shrugged and glanced at his prosthetic. “Okay.”
Leia’s eyes narrowed just slightly, but she didn't push it. “I grabbed something for you to eat, you must be starving.”
Luke wouldn't have thought of it if she hadn't said anything; his whole body felt a little wobbly, but he had chalked it up to the anesthesia. “Not really.”
Leia frowned and stood up, digging out a packet of something and what looked like a hip flask from her pockets. “It’s just water. You need to eat something. I'm not taking a no.”
Luke begrudgingly took the flask and the packet from her, eyebrows crinkling at the label. “What is this?”
“Some nutrition bar, or something, there wasn't much on board. It was that or hospital food.”
Luke tore the packet open to nibble at the corner just enough Leia would be satisfied. The thought of eating anything made his stomach flip.
“Heard anything about the neurologist?”
Luke shrugged and Lando shook his head.
Leia’s lips pursed into a flat line, shoving her hands in her pockets. “You would think they'd be able fit you in earlier.”
“No one wants to be the first appointment,” Lando pointed out, leaning in to murmur conspiratorially, “That’s when you know you're really in a bind.”
Luke hummed and took a quick drink from the flask. “Guess I wouldn't want to be that guy,” he mumbled.
“You would not want to be that guy,” Lando agreed, looking back over at Leia. “Any news?”
Leia’s face fell, shooting a quick glance towards Luke before back to Lando. “No such luck.” She paused and glanced at the door. “I actually--I wanted to check in on you, but I still…”
“Do what you need to do,” Lando said, nudging his elbow against Luke’s side. “Plenty of fun to be had here.”
“And you're alright staying…?”
“Of course.”
Leia nodded and glanced towards the door again. “Let me know what the neuro says if I'm not back yet.”
“You'll be the first to know,” Lando said. “Go do what you have to do.”
Leia nodded again before looking back to Luke. “I don't care if you have a concussion, there will be hell to pay if you haven't eaten that by the time I get back.”
Luke couldn't help smiling at that, choking down a full bite when Leia stared pointedly at the bar.
“Let me know if they move you again,” Leia said on her way out.
Luke washed down the bar with a grimace and set the rest of it down next to him. Neither of them said anything for a minute, Luke absently picking at the torn side of the wrapper before blurting out, “What news?”
“What?”
“You asked Leia if there was any news,” Luke explained. “News on what?”
Lando let out a slow breath. Those few seconds of silence felt heavier than just before. “Han.”
“Oh.”
“They're not making it easy to track him.” Lando paused. “We could use your help.”
Luke looked at him with an expression not unlike a startled bird. “How?”
Lando’s eyebrow quirked up. “You’ve got one hell of a skill set that we just don't otherwise. They kind of do.”
Luke’s skin crawled. “I can’t do what you think.”
“Why not?”
Luke stared at him, and Lando stared expectantly back.
“Why not?” he repeated.
Luke looked away with a slow sigh. “I need to get back to Dagobah.”
“For your training.”
Luke nodded.
Lando hummed, and then he was quiet for a minute, and then, “What would you have been able to do differently? On Cloud City.”
Luke looked back up at him, confusion plain on his face. “What do you mean?”
“With more training. What would you have been able to do differently that would have had any other outcome?”
Luke snorted and held up his right hand before dropping it back to his lap.
“Alright, fair, but you came for Leia and Han,” Lando pointed out. “If swordsmanship pointers are what you're looking for, you can get those plenty of places.”
Luke frowned and rubbed at the line circling his wrist. “Yoda said I was making a mistake.”
“Your Jedi on Dagobah.”
Luke nodded.
“Mm.” Lando was quiet for a minute, and then, “You said you saw Han and Leia die.”
Luke bit the inside of his cheek and looked away. “Yeah.”
“And he said you were making a mistake, and you needed to stay.”
“Yes,” Luke said, frustration cracking through the tone of his voice. “So--?”
“Do you think you did the right thing?”
Luke was silent.
“If it was between--if you could go back, and it was between leaving them to...fend for themselves, after seeing what you saw, or staying there, would you do it again?”
“I don't know,” Luke said quietly.
Lando nodded. “How do those visions work?”
“What?”
“How set in stone are they?”
Luke opened his mouth to answer before snapping it shut again when he realized he couldn’t find one. “I don't…”
“Far as I can tell,” Lando said, “you saw them die before you left, and you left, and they didn't. If that was the future you saw, and you were meant to stay on Dagobah, wouldn't it make sense that you leaving still saved them?”
Luke felt like the whole world stopped for a second.
“So it wasn't a perfect outcome,” Lando continued, “it’s still a hell of a lot better than if they died.”
Luke had to remind himself to breathe.
“I don't think you made a mistake,” Lando said. “You went with your gut, and now Leia’s alive, and.” He paused, voice tight. “And we’re going to get Han back. You did that.”
It took a minute before Luke could say anything, struggling to make sense of the whirlwind in his head--he had changed what he saw, and however right Yoda had been about his failure with Vader, he couldn’t find the regret he felt he was supposed to have.
Leia was alive; Han still had a chance, however slim it might be; if he went back to Dagobah, when he could be helping to find Han, when he and Leia were why he left in the first place--
“I’ll do whatever you need me to do.”
For two hours of waiting, Luke almost wished the neurologist had had more to say than to not look at screens for a few days, and call a medic if he had trouble with his vision or memory, and you really are lucky, with a fall like that, this could have been much worse.
Luke had to bite back a laugh at the way Lando cringed at that, silently shaking his head with his hand clapped over his mouth behind the neurologist.
Lucky.
Luke had finished the bar Leia left him by the time the physical therapist came in a while later, bored halfway to sleep on the exam table. Lando was flipping through the pamphlets left in holders on the wall for the second time when Luke jerked upright at the sound of the door opening again.
“Skywalker,” he croaked, squat and toadish with dull little claws clacking on the back of his holopad. “Correct?”
Luke sat up straight and nodded.
“Your fractures fixed up nicely, all the breaks were clean…” He swiped through the holopad, nails scraping gratingly whenever he touched the screen. “How’s your leg?”
Luke looked over at Lando, but Lando just shrugged, and Luke looked back to the physical therapist. “Fine, I guess.”
“Elbow?”
“Um.” Luke hadn't noticed anything out of the ordinary when he’d changed his clothes after surgery. “Fine?”
The physical therapist looked annoyed when he shot Luke a glance over the holopad. “Left elbow. They had to pin it.”
“Oh.” Luke moved his arm back and forth. “It’s okay.”
The physical therapist nodded and scrolled through the holopad again. “Results from the tech look promising, especially considering the…cauterization…” He hummed, scratching his chin. “Who did that?”
“What?”
“Who cauterized the wound?”
Luke grit his teeth, willing away the tight, achy feeling gripping his chest. “Um. No one.”
The physical therapist rolled his eyes and huffed, and Luke didn't miss the glare Lando shot at the back of his head.
“Just cauterized itself, huh?”
“Essentially, yes,” Lando cut in.
The physical therapist didn't respond; Lando shook his head to himself, going back to a pamphlet on cross-contamination during interplanetary travel.
“Then how did this occur?”
“It was--” Luke started, but he stopped dead, breath caught in his throat.
The moments before the fall flashed through his head, stuck on the second he lost his hand, and his--
“Lando,” Luke said, his throat tigh. “What happened to my lightsaber?”
Lando’s eyes went fractionally wider, his expression a trained sort of blank. “Let’s just deal with--”
“What happened?”
Lando took a slow breath, glancing between Luke and the increasingly agitated physical therapist, pointedly tapping louder against the holopad.
“We don’t know.”
It felt like the floor had dropped out from under him.
“Luke.”
“I have to…” His hands were shaking when he pushed himself up off the exam table, but he didn't get far before Lando came to push him back down, hands firm on Luke’s shoulders. “I have to go--”
“That’s not what we need to deal with right now,” Lando said, jerking his head towards the physical therapist before leaning in to whisper, “You’ll get out of here faster if we get this done so they can discharge you, alright?”
Luke sucked in a shaky breath and forced himself to nod, but every cell in his body was telling him to run.
The only other time he could think of feeling so crushingly helpless was hanging over an abyss with one hand, a statement ringing in his ears that he still couldn’t get his head around.
The physical therapist cleared his throat, and Lando reassuringly rubbed at Luke’s shoulder and stepped back.
“You cauterized it with a lightsaber,” the physical therapist said disbelievingly, with a muttered, “Haven't seen that in a while.”
“I didn't…” Luke started, but Lando shook his head, and he dropped it.
Luke was in a daze while the physical therapist ran him through some exercises, running the same tests the tech had earlier--what was the point of that?--with instructions on what to do and who to go to if he had any problems.
“Not that they'd for sure know what to do with you, with all that, but,” the physical therapist said with a shrug.
Luke felt at least a little better with the look Lando shot towards the physical therapist.
He managed a thank you on the physical therapist’s way out, still too unsettled to put much of a sentence together.
Lando waited until the PT’s footsteps went too far down the hall to be able to hear when he muttered, “What an ass.”
Luke felt too deflated to respond.
Lando came back over to sit next to Luke on the exam table. “I’m sorry we didn't tell you earlier,” he said. “You had enough to worry about in here, Leia thought it was best that we wait until you were discharged.”
Luke nodded stiffly. “Can we go now?”
“Leia’s checking at the front desk. Thought it’d be faster than waiting for the--”
Luke hopped off the exam table before Lando could finish, grabbing the flask and tossing the food wrapper in a bin by the door. “Let’s go.”
“Leia said she would tell me as soon as she knows.”
Luke shrugged and poked his head out the door, squinting a little against the lights. “We can find her there,” Luke said, trying to cover the frantic tone in his voice. “Save her the trouble.”
Lando sighed and followed Luke to the door. “They might not have discharged you yet.”
“Yeah, well, until they haven't…” Luke looked down both ends of the hallway with a frustrated huff. “Which way is it?”
Lando pointed to the left and had to speed up when Luke took off down the hall.
It felt like a maze until the hallways opened up to a wide, bright lobby that Luke didn't recognize, and he was thrown off by the noise of so many people talking and rushing around before he spotted Leia leaning over a desk set into the far wall.
Luke almost tripped over himself in his rush to get over to her, rocking anxiously on his heels a couple feet away while she talked to the secretary.
He hurried over when he saw her pull out the pocket-size holopad. “Hey--”
Leia jumped and swore under her breath. “Some warning would be nice.” She turned back to the secretary and gestured towards Luke. “Here he is.” She took a step to the side, tugging Luke over by his sleeve and pointing to a sheet of paper on the desk. “Sign there.”
“I can go?”
Leia nodded and pointed at two lines at the bottom of the page.
Luke’s signature was wobbly and uneven, and he could see the indent left in the paper from how tight he had to hold the pen.
“Don't they usually--?”
“You're not supposed to look at screens yet,” Leia reminded him, and Luke wondered when Lando had told her about that.
Luke couldn’t shake the feeling that he was still missing a part of himself without his lightsaber, the absence of its weight at his hip a thousand times heavier than the lightsaber itself. He couldn't help scratching at his waist a few times on the walk back to the Falcon to try to get rid of that phantom itch, every step feeling off without the tap-tap-tap of it bouncing against his hip.
He firmly ignored the glances he saw between Leia and Lando each time he did it.
They had had to move the ship while Luke was in surgery, and it felt like his legs could barely hold him by the time Lando lowered the loading ramp.
He had to take a deep breath to will up the energy to walk up the incline, and he almost toppled over when he was pulled into a warm, bone-crushingly tight hug, his face smothered in rough fur.
“Don't suffocate him, now, we just got him back,” Lando teased on his way past Luke and Chewie, but Chewie just grumbled and ruffled Luke’s hair.
Luke had to squeeze his eyes shut against the way they started to sting, looping his arms around Chewie’s back, his hands barely reaching together. He didn't let go until he could hear Leia and Lando’s footsteps disappear into the cockpit, and Chewie gave him another squeeze that nearly knocked the breath out of him before letting go completely.
Luke looked away and rubbed at his eyes with the back of his hand; Chewie waited for him to start down the hall before following.
He had been able to feel it before--that feeling that all of them were out of place somehow, Lando’s hesitance before settling into the pilot’s seat--but he had felt it through an explosive pain in his arm and a ringing in his ears and a concussion; the clarity of it then, without much else to bring his attention away from it, made him feel sick.
He wound his arms tight around his torso in the seat behind Lando, staring insistently at the back of his chair to avoid looking at anything else. He couldn't stop thinking about Han there, the way his hands flew over the dashboard like it was as natural as breathing, that time that felt so long ago--
Luke forced himself to stop.
He looked up at Leia, eyes narrowing a little when he realized she was already looking at him. “What do we do now?”
Leia took a deep breath and looked over at the dashboard. “We regroup.”
The silence felt thick enough to touch.
The only sound for a minute was the whirring of the engines starting up, switches and levers being pushed before Luke said, “I need a lightsaber.”
“What we need is to lay low right now,” Leia said. “We shouldn't have even used your real name back there. How would you even--?”
“I have to make it.”
Leia turned to face him, gripping the armrest when the ship lurched on a bumpy takeoff. “And you know how?”
Luke nodded. He knew the mechanics, at least, from those hours of disassembling and reassembling his own on Dagobah until he could almost do it in his sleep. He needed to know his lightsaber as well as he knew himself, Yoda had said; it would be irresponsible not to, to rely on a piece of equipment he didn't fully understand.
It had been tedious and annoying, his hands tired and chapped from endlessly picking apart metal and crystal, but he understood now what Yoda had meant about upkeep and repairs being just as important as swordsmanship.
The absence of its weight against his hip suddenly felt even heavier than before.
“That’s going to have to wait,” Leia said. “They'll be expecting you to look for it.”
The thought made Luke’s skin crawl. “Leia, I need--”
Leia opened her mouth to say something, but Lando beat her to it.
“What you need right now,” he said, flipping one last switch before turning around to face Luke, “is to get good with a blaster. And maybe some sleep.”
Luke’s shoulders slumped, slouching against the back of the chair. He knew, consciously, that both of them were right, but he didn’t want them to be. “I’m not tired.”
“You do kind of look like shit,” Leia pointed out. “When was the last time you got some rest?”
“When did I get out of surgery?”
Leia rolled her eyes and faced forward again. “General anesthesia isn't sleep.”
However much Luke didn't want that to be true--there was something so uncomfortable about the thought of being alone, not knowing what was going on with the three of them--he couldn’t ignore the bone-deep exhaustion weighing him down, his eyelids feeling heavier with all the lights on the dashboard contrasting with the dimness of the rest of the room.
“Let’s go,” Leia said as she stood up, holding a hand out for Luke. “Being so exhausted never helped anyone.”
Luke reluctantly took her hand to pull him up, but Chewie growled at them to wait, standing up and motioning for Leia to sit.
Chewie led him down the hall to Han’s bunk; his chest felt tight at the familiarity of it, unsettling without that one missing piece. Luke thought of the strangeness of a hand that looked so natural but wasn't, and the strangeness of those droids made to look human that never quite hit the mark, and how it was almost the same not-quite-right feeling as walking through the Millennium Falcon without Han anywhere onboard.
Chewie stopped him before they made it to Han's bunk, hitting an inconspicuous panel on the wall that popped open to reveal piles of yarn and knitwear and needles thicker than Luke's fingers, crammed in so tight it looked like it could come tumbling out any second.
“Is that all yours?”
Chewie nodded, digging around the hidden compartment until he found what he was looking for. Luke’s arms were full with balls of yarn the size of his head by the time Chewie got to it, handed off to him to keep the rest of the precariously packed in yarn from all falling out.
Chewie tossed a huge, heavy looking blanket over his shoulder before taking the yarn back from Luke to put back in the compartment; Luke was still surprised by the weight of it when Chewie handed it over to him, densely-knit and thick.
Luke hugged it close to his chest, squishing the soft knots between his fingers.
“Thank you.”
Chewie nodded and pushed the hatch shut, ruffling Luke’s hair before leading him the rest of the way down the hall.
Luke froze up when they got to the opened door to Han’s bunk.
The bed wasn't made, sheets kicked to the bottom, and the fact that it looked like Han could come back any second--that it looked like he left thinking he would--made Luke’s chest ache.
Chewie gave his shoulder a comforting squeeze, and Luke had to take a deep breath before he could will himself to take a step inside.
The air in the room felt uncomfortably heavy, but the thought of trying to go somewhere else seemed even worse, the memory of the last time he left Han for Dagobah rushing over him like a riptide.
Luke was gripping the blanket so tight the knuckles of his left hand went pale.
He forced himself to step forward, hesitating by the side of the bed before stiffly sitting down. He held the blanket close to his face, covering his nose until the musty smell of it covered the way the room still smelled like Han.
Luke hadn't really considered him having a smell before.
Chewie shifted his weight from one leg to the other before growling, quiet and questioning.
Luke opened his mouth to say yes--he wasn't really used to giving any other answer, when asked--but it felt like a lie, and it dawned on him it would be.
He looked away and shrugged, and then he shook his head, biting his lip against the way it wanted to quiver.
Chewie sat down next to him on the bed, pulling Luke tight against his side in another crushing hug. Luke didn't mind that he couldn't get a full breath until Chewie let go.
He stayed there for a minute, and Luke was thankful for the silent, warm presence at his side, no more questions or expectations like he had any idea what he was doing.
Chewie patted his shoulder roughly enough to jostle him before standing up; it looked like he was going to say something, but his shoulders lifted with a deep breath, and he gave Luke a quick nod, and then Luke was alone.
Luke felt frozen in place, taking in the room that felt so familiar but still so foreign without its owner. He forgot to breathe for a few seconds, pulling in a sharp inhale when his head started to feel fuzzy, and he had to close his eyes against the smell of the room no longer covered by the blanket.
It wasn't just Han, he realized, but the air and the Falcon and the dust Han never got around to cleaning up, long-lingering smoke tinting the walls, but that didn't make it any easier.
He stiffly lay down and pulled the sheet up to his chest, tossing the thick blanket over himself and cocooning himself in as tightly as he could. The bed smelled like Han--just Han this time, his soap and his hair and that smell he could only categorize as warm--and he didn't realize he was crying until his face felt wet.