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Luke doesn’t really recall how he got here.
The grand scheme of things is clear to him, but there are details he’s not quite clear on, that he’ll probably be clear on once he’s sober again and can analyse the events step by step. All he knows right now is that Wedge is half undressed, pressing him against a wall, and kissing him like his life depends on it. And Luke is kissing back.
In the grand scheme of things, they should be on their way to the freshers, both of them, the battle was a few hours ago and they’re both still filthy, but somehow they’re actually halfway between the rec room and someone’s quarters, and Luke has his fingers hooked in the belt loops of Wedge’s open flight suit, which is probably all that is still keeping the thing up.
He’s feeling the pleasant buzz of alcohol and arousal, all mixed together while riding on an adrenaline high. He feels like he’s still flying.
“Damnit,” Wedge mutters, “You are really something, kid.”
And that’s another thing, Wedge has to stop calling him kid, so Luke kisses him again, sharper, bites Wedge’s lower lip and Wedge chuckles.
“Don’t like that nickname, huh, do you?”
“Shut up and make out with me,” Luke mutters, and he hates himself a little bit for blushing, but Wedge is confident and cocky and pressing Luke against a wall in an empty hallway on Yavin base when Luke is feeling lonely and like he might shake apart if Wedge doesn’t, so he doesn’t really care. This is just what he does now, what he needs now.
And Wedge does, he kisses Luke until Luke’s eyes slide shut and he can see the stars again, and there’s no Death Star in the background anymore.
-*-
There’s a service for the fallen pilots, even though there are no bodies to bury.
Luke is there, in another borrowed outfit that doesn’t fit, this time not in the orange of the flight suits but in a dark, sombre colour. He keeps to the fringes of the group of attendees. Almost all of the base is here to pay their respects. Many lost friends, all are still shaken from the horror of losing Alderaan.
For some reason Luke can’t conceive, they make Leia lead the ceremony. As she gets onstage to read an ancient Alderaanian poem, Han appears next to Luke.
“Well, this is definitely not my kind of party,” he mutters, hands buried deep in his pockets. Luke spots Chewie at the entrance to the flight hall.
Luke shrugs. “They need closure, I suppose.”
Han scoffs. “They need to pack up and move on, is what they need to do. The Empire is not going to stay off their tail forever.”
Luke doesn’t know what to say, because he’s been dancing around a name for the past week now and he’s afraid that speaking it will open the floodgates he’s been pressing shut with all the strength he can muster. And Han wouldn’t understand, Luke is sure. Attachment, to him, is a liability.
He came back, though, a voice in his head whispers, he came back for you.
“Why did you come back?” Luke asks, his voice barely more than a whisper because at the head of the hall, Leia is now reading the names of the fallen pilots.
Han stiffens for a moment. Luke guesses he’s hit a nerve with that question, something that the happy-go-lucky smuggler doesn’t want to admit to himself just yet, but then Han draws his shoulders back and relaxes his stance again.
“Aren’t you glad I did.”
Luke shakes his head, but he does have to smile a little bit. Han knows he’s not fooling anybody with his couldn’t-care-less attitude. Still, he maintains it.
Luke turns his attention back to the ceremony. Wedge is at the front of the hall, with the other remaining pilots. Luke saw him when they came in, uniforms pressed and caps tucked under their arms. Wedge has dark shadows under his eyes, proof of a series of sleepless nights.
He hasn’t spoken to Wedge since the night of the battle.
Up on stage, Leia has reached the attack squadrons now.
“Tiree… Jon Vander…”
Out of the corner of his eye, Luke catches Han throwing him a glance of something like worry, maybe, if that were something that Han dealt in. Luke is still not sure of that, and he’s determined to ignore it, anyway. He turns his attention to Leia, who, instead of the white outfit he got to know her in, is wearing a dark dress with intricate decorations. Her hair is woven into a single long braid held together by a plain dark satin band. If Luke knew a little more about fashion than a farmboy from the Outer Rim, he would have identified the dress as traditional for Alderaanian mourning. Leia speaks calmly, her eyes alternating between the datapad in front of her and the crowd in the large hangar bay.
“Garven Dreis…”
Most of the names are unfamiliar to Luke. He knew their call signs, but he doesn’t know their names. In the front of the hall, Wedge bows his head, and Luke wonders if he’s thinking about how close he came to death himself that day. Luke knows he thinks about it every night.
At his side, Han shakes his head. “A damn shame. They were good pilots. Would have made stellar smugglers, too.”
He gives Luke a crooked grin. Luke grins back and shakes his head. And then –
“Biggs Darklighter…”
He knew that the name would come, but still, it’s a punch to the gut that knocks the breath out of him and the smile from his face. The way Leia pronounces the name, with none of the familiarity that Luke had with it, another faceless pilot, another casualty, make Luke’s throat tighten. How can his… friend, a no-good farmboy with dreams too big for him end up on a list of dead rebel pilots?
Suddenly, Luke sees Wedge turn. Wedge searches his gaze, holds it for a moment, and that does it for Luke. He turns, and flees the hangar bay.
Back in his quarters, he cries until his eyes feel raw and he can’t see anymore.
-*-
Luke’s in the hangar taking in the damage on his borrowed X-Wing. He’s come to realise that this is probably just his X-Wing now, whoever might have laid claim to it is most likely dead. That’s how things are passed on in the Alliance.
The hangar is empty, at least as empty as it will ever be. A couple of pilots are milling around the back, doing inventory or maintenance work. The cleaning crew was here a couple of minutes ago, the floor is still damp. The lights are as bright as ever, but somehow it feels darker with the knowledge that it’s night outside.
“Can’t sleep?”
Luke has his back turned on the entrance of the hangar and his hunched over the engine compartment of his X-Wing. The voice makes him flinch, but at least he doesn’t drop the hydrospanner he is holding.
“Hey, Wedge.”
He turns slowly, wiping his hands on his coverall pants, even though the palms are not particularly grease-stained. Wedge is wearing his flight suit, which is telling.
Luke climbs down from his X-Wing to stand in front of the other pilot. He’s feeling a lot of things, not all of them good, some of them a reminder as to why he followed Wedge to his quarters the other night.
“I’m sorry about Biggs,” Wedge says, which is exactly the right and absolutely the wrong thing to say. Luke doesn’t respond. “I take it you two were… close?”
Luke wants to scoff because no, that doesn’t cover it, but he also wants to blush and deny it all because Biggs was his best friend and he loved him with all of his heart.
“I’ve known him since I was a little boy on Tattooine,” Luke says, “We were going to go to the Imperial Academy together. It was our way off that desert rock. I had no idea he was planning to defect to the Alliance.”
Luke stops there because he can feel the tears welling up again. Maybe in a few weeks he’ll be able to talk about Biggs, maybe he’ll even smile and say it wasn’t all that bad, that everybody loses someone out here, but right now he can’t even think the words Biggs is dead.
“Hey,” Wedge says, “Even if he hadn’t, there’s no way of knowing if he’d still be alive. And you’d still be here, right? Would you rather he was on the wrong end of one of your canons?”
That’s cynical, Luke thinks, even though the rational part of his brain agrees. He puts down the hydrospanner and pretends to busy himself with the other tools, because he doesn’t know what else to say to Wedge. It feels like Wedge is already too close, even though they’ve barely talked, and Luke regrets. What exactly he regrets, he can’t say.
“Hey, so, about the other night…” Wedge begins, and this time Luke does drop the tool he’s holding.
“Wedge, I…” Luke turns around and hopes some of the conflict shows on his face, because he sees a beautiful man, a great pilot, someone who cares a lot and who deserves so much better than Luke can give right now.
“I just wanted to say, forget about it. Don’t worry. We both needed the distraction.”
Even though Wedge’s words sound like he’s done this before, like he’s mature and can deal with this, he is blushing. The least Luke can do is pretend he doesn’t see it.
“Yeah,” he says hoarsely.
-*-
Luke is there when Leia and Alliance Command announce the creation of the Rogue squadron and make Wedge commander. In the same breath, Leia asks Luke if he would like to join the squadron, and Luke, after a moment’s hesitation, does.
He was going to become a Jedi, he thinks, but he doesn’t have much to show for it besides his dead father’s lightsaber and unwavering faith, less in the Force and more in what Ben told him. But that doesn’t make him a Jedi. The Jedi, Luke thinks, really are dead now.
So he joins Wedge’s squadron, and if he’s the best pilot by far after Wedge, well, he’s always had good reflexes.
Sometimes Han gives Luke looks when they’re both in the hangar after Luke comes back from a training mission, and then Han calls him crazy kid and shakes his head. Leia once caught Luke in an empty room, deflecting blasts from a training drone with his lightsaber, eyes closed, but so far she hasn’t said anything about it.
Wedge just accepts that Luke seems to be a natural.
They move away from Yavin, spend more time in space than planetside, which means Luke gets to fly even more missions. He begins to live and breathe in the confined space of the cockpit and with the voices of the other pilots in his ears. After missions, they check each others’ fighters and joke together. Luke can feel his new family growing, but he doesn’t quite feel at home. Not yet.
-*-
“That was some good flying there, Ley. You stay on our backs the next mission and we won’t have to worry about anyone sneaking up from behind. Keep that up!”
Wedge pats the Twi’lek on the back as he moves between the fighters and the pilots. Luke’s suit is soaked through with sweat, adrenaline making him breathe hard even though he didn’t really move in the cockpit.
“Bes, you should get your power coupling checked out. I think there might be something loose that’s been giving your steering trouble.”
Bes nods and climbs up on the X-Wing. Wedge climbs up behind him, and Luke takes a moment to pause in his own examination of his fighter to watch Wedge move before he catches himself and continues in his work. He can hear Bes and Wedge chat quietly over the open wiring, and boots clicking on the steps as someone climbs down the ladder to fetch one tool or another. The mood is subdued today, the pilots are quiet, the training mission has taken more out of them than usual. They’re sharply aware of the fact that they’re becoming the Alliance’s prime attack squad, and the best one, too. Wedge feels the pressure more than them, and his drills have gotten more fast-paced as a result.
“Hey, Luke.”
Wedge is standing at the bottom of Luke’s fighter. R2 chirps a greeting that makes Wedge smile, even though he doesn’t have the X-Wing to translate the binary for him.
“Hey, Wedge.”
Luke climbs down the ladder and Wedge gives him an encouraging pat on the back. “Good flying. Solid shooting. You might even surpass me one day like that.”
Luke snorts. “I’m already the better pilot,” he says, and tries to pretend that his shoulder doesn’t burn where Wedge touched it.
“In your dreams, maybe, Skywalker.”
Luke laughs and turns. “Hey, can you have a look at the astromech slot? R2 was complaining that the fit was too tight, but I think there might be a lose wire or two in there.”
“Sure.”
Wedge climbs up the X-Wing and sticks his head into the slot.
“Nothing I can see here. Maybe try rebooting the system, your astromech is really old, and might have compatibility problems.”
R2 chirps something that is clearly meant to convey offense at the mention of his age. Luke grins.
“I’ll try that, thanks.”
Wedge climbs down the ladder. “I’ll see you for drinks later, yes?”
Luke watches him as he makes his way to the next X-Wing, telling Rheena she needs to watch her flank more if she wants to avoid a certain type of Imperial manoeuvre, before he turns his attention back to his X-Wing and reboots the astromech interface. Naturally, it works like a charm, and R2 asks him to convey his personal thanks to Wedge.
-*-
Luke is doubling over on the stone floor in the empty cavern, and the only thing he can think is that he doesn’t deserve this. He doesn’t deserve this bullshit.
His stomach is constricting, and it feels like something is sucking the air right out of his lungs. He can’t breathe, he wants to throw up, and he’s having an altogether unpleasant experience.
The second wave hits him, like an echo of the first, an onslaught of pain and wailing through the Force that has him shaking and retching even though his last meal was half a day ago. The stone floor is cold under his hands, there is grass growing through the cracks and he can feel gravel digging into his palms, cutting them open as he tries to breathe. He’s going to pass out any minute now, he thinks, but then he doesn’t and a third wave doesn’t come.
Still, he can’t get up. It’s like he’s paralysed with the remnants of fear in this place.
It was supposed to be a simple scouting mission. It turned out anything but simple, because Luke apparently doesn’t know when to leave something the fuck alone – like a strange cavern under a stone formation that’s calling to him.
It’s a bad idea to listen to the talking stones.
He wasn’t trained for this, he reminisces, but Ben opened his eyes and mind and now Luke is expected to deal with this shit, anyway. Han could have probably walked in here just fine and felt nothing of the suffering, but Luke is more than aware of it and can’t get up. He figures that this must be one of the sites of the purge, even though there are no bodies, not even skeletons or bones lying around. Just an echo of suffering and panic through the Force, stronger than anything that Luke has ever felt before.
He tries to move a finger, a muscle in his right arm, anything. Instead, it collapses from under him and Luke careens sideways onto the floor. There he lies, his face pressed into the gravel, not knowing what the fuck to do.
Ben, he thinks, now would be the time for some ghostly advice.
But Ben remains stoically silent, as he has done the last months since the destruction of the death star. Maybe he’s gone for good. How should Luke know?
“Luke!”
That was a voice. Luke is thirty percent sure that was an actual person calling out to him.
“Luke – oh shit.”
Luke is forty percent sure that malicious Force ghosts don’t curse. He draws on all of his energy to call out, but only manages a croak. But Wedge is already next to him.
“I told you not to go off alone! What the hell happened?”
That is a question that Luke would like an answer to himself. As things are he can only croak sadly one more time and hope that Wedge understands.
“Are you hurt?” Wedge asks, and that’s another difficult question because physically? No. Spiritually? He really isn’t sure.
He shakes his head.
“Okay, Luke, we’re going to get you out of here.”
Wedge heaves Luke onto his back, stands up like it’s nothing and begins to make his way out of the cavern. Some part of Luke wants to ask him not to leave, to turn around and go deeper into the cavern, but he knows it’s a bad idea. He just wants to know what secrets might be hiding there – maybe some of it could be useful, the next time something like that happens to him.
But he can’t talk right now, and so Wedge carries him outside, where there’s sunlight and grass and their X-Wing fighters at the rendezvous point, and he’s really so damn lucky that Wedge found him.
“You know that I can walk, right?” Luke says hoarsely as they get further away from the cavern. Wedge stops dead in his tracks.
“You sound like shit, Skywalker.”
Luke manages a laugh that’s closer to a cough, and Wedge puts him down. Luke sits up slowly, but his body doesn’t betray him again. His legs carry him. He’s just fine now.
Wedge eyes him critically.
“What happened in there?”
“It must have been something in the Force. That place was special, I think, once upon a time, but something happened there and now it feels like it’s haunted.”
Luke feels stupid as he says it, but he also remembers how scarily true it felt in that moment. He almost wishes Han was here to mock him, but it’s only Wedge, and Wedge doesn’t do that kind of thing, not right now.
“That happen to you before?”
Luke shakes his head. “Never.”
He purses is lips. “I saw it happen to a friend of mine, though, I think. When Alderaan was destroyed.”
Wedge gives him one last look. “You let me know the next time you’re going to go off on your own, Skywalker, is that clear? We can’t risk losing our only Jedi.”
-*-
Luke feels so incredibly blessed that the command doesn’t belong to him. As things are right now, he can stand perfectly still with an emotionless expression as Wedge gets chewed out for something that isn’t even technically his fault. Luke can stand safely in the background and dream about food and a shower, in that order.
“Sir, with all due respect, the position of the fleet was not compromised.”
“That’s a technicality,” the Admiral responds, and he’s clearly not happy and wow, Luke is sensing some frustrated vibes coming from that guy. That might not be his Force senses, though. He’s pretty sure everyone in this room can feel it. “What matters is that the Imperials could have followed your trajectory easily, and the entirety of the Alliance would have been in danger. How can you justify that?”
Wedge grits his teeth. Luke can tell that from where he is standing that Wedge wants nothing more than to just walk away before he says something stupid. Wedge’s incredible patience can only take him so far, and he’s still high on battle adrenaline.
Luke bites his tongue, and so does Wedge.
“I realise the Rogue squadron thinks they can do anything. The truth is, we need you and your men desperately. But that doesn’t mean I will tolerate foolish carelessness!”
“Understood, Sir.”
Wedge’s face is pale, but the Admiral seems content. He steps back, and gives Wedge one last stern look.
“I trust you will be more careful the next time.”
“Yes, Sir,” Wedge says, and the Admiral finally turns to leave.
“Next time, I will just tell Rogue five and six sorry, but we’re going to throw you to the Imperials. Yes, you’re good pilots, but the Admiral assured me it’s necessary. Otherwise we might compromise our position.”
The entire Rogue squadron freezes, and so does the Admiral. Wedge is breathing heavily, and Luke can feel the tension in the Force like a knot pulled too tight.
“Captain Antilles, you are suspended until further notice. Please return to your quarters.”
The Admiral turns on his heel and leaves.
-*-
Luke makes a second trip to the mess after his shower so he can swing by Wedge’s room with some food. Wedge has made a request to be left alone to the rest of the squad, but Luke is just going to assume that doesn’t apply to him.
When he knocks, Wedge doesn’t respond at first. So Luke just knocks louder.
“Come on, Wedge. I have food. Open the door so you can at least eat something.”
“They’re going to bring me something later,” Wedge responds through the closed door. His voice is muted; sounds shaky and resigned. Luke knocks again.
“Let me in, Wedge.”
“Alright.”
The door slides aside and Luke is facing Wedge, shoulders hunched and dark circles under his eyes. “I thought the suspension would at least mean you guys stop bothering me.”
Wedge winces as he realises how that probably came out – harsher than intended, bitter, and why does he still think that he has to shield Luke from the things he is feeling?
“Let’s talk about this inside, okay?”
Luke angles the tray past Wedge and steps into the quarters. Wedge sighs and closes the door behind them, and then it’s just Luke and Wedge, and the events of earlier today.
“Eat,” Luke says, and it feels a little uncomfortable in his mouth because he’s not used to giving Wedge orders, but he will do just that if Wedge insists on feeling sorry for himself. They’ve all been stretched thin the past few weeks, and when one of them was in danger of snapping, Wedge was always there for his pilots, so now that it’s Wedge’s turn, Luke will be there for him.
Wedge gives Luke a look, but he does sit down and start eating. Luke gives him a couple of minutes of silence, so that Wedge can get accustomed to his presence. It’s like he’s approaching a scared animal.
“You did nothing wrong today,” Luke says finally.
Wedge scoffs at that. “You mean besides shouting at a superior officer? I disobeyed orders, I disrespected my superior, and I endangered the base.”
“You did nothing wrong, and the Princess will know that. We’ll bring your case to her. She’ll lift your suspension.”
When Wedge opens his mouth to reply, Luke stares him down defiantly. He wants Wedge to realise that Luke is right, and Wedge is just feeling sorry for himself.
He hates seeing Wedge like this.
“You did what was right for your pilots, Wedge. You took a risk, but that was a calculated risk.”
He puts a hand on Wedge’s arm, and even though it feels too familiar, he thinks it’s what he has to do right now.
“You saved my life, too.”
Wedge frowns, looking down at his meal. At first, Luke doesn’t realise what this is – Wedge trying to be humble? Luke is just stating a fact, expressing his gratitude for the fact that he’s not space dust right now. Then he realises it’s guilt.
“I don’t know how to be a good leader,” Wedge says eventually, “I don’t think I’ve ever known. I care too much about my pilots, and I couldn’t bear to lose you.”
Luke knows Wedge means all the pilots when he says you, but that doesn’t change the fact that he’s looking straight at Luke when he says it. Luke swallows. He’s not sure he’s brave enough for this conversation – nor Wedge’s tacit admission that he did intentionally compromise today’s mission. For Luke.
Luke lets the moment pass. He can be brave tonight, but not that brave. He’s only just outgrown Tatooine. It’ll be a while before he can leave it behind for good.
“I know how it feels,” Luke says after a long silence, “When you found me in that cavern on our scouting mission, I was so scared. I didn’t know what I was doing, but I was the only one able to do anything about it.”
Wedge chews his food and swallows, and then looks at Luke. “You’re our only Jedi.”
“You said that back then, too,” Luke replies, “But I’m not a Jedi. I barely know how to use my lightsaber. I don’t know where its power comes from, or how to take it apart, I can sometimes move things with my mind but never when it’s useful, and sometimes I have crappy dreams that I’m afraid are actual visions, but never the helpful kind.”
Luke is breathing heavily. He didn’t mean to say all that. He’s been feeling it, but he didn’t mean to say it.
When Luke manages to look back up at Wedge, he sees surprise in his eyes. Maybe recognition.
“I didn’t know you felt that way, Luke,” Wedge says quietly, and suddenly Luke feels the hand on his shoulder returned. He’s grateful for the small gesture of comfort, leans into it for just a moment.
“I don’t think anyone on base does. The Jedi have been gone for so long, nobody even remembers what one’s supposed to look like. Anyway--” He makes a sweeping motion with his hand, gets up. “Eat up, and tomorrow we’ll figure out how to get you un-suspended. You’ll be back to pushing us all around in no time, don’t worry.”
Something in Wedge’s posture changes. Luke only notices because he’s still hyper-attuned to all of Wedge’s movements, still tingling from where Wedge’s hand touched his shoulder.
Luke stops leaving. “What’s up?”
Wedge shoots him a brief glance, then looks down at his tray.
“Would you stay here tonight? I don’t think I would like to be alone right now.”
Luke hesitates for a second, until Wedge looks back up and Luke catches his eye. He knows loneliness when he sees it. And hell, maybe he’s not ready for whatever it was they were on the fast track to having, but he’ll be damned if he leaves Wedge like this. Wedge means too much to him.
He nods, and sits back down, and Wedge looks eternally grateful under his layers of Corellian control.
The next morning, they bring his case to the Princess, and Leia takes one look at it and lifts the suspension. Luke and Wedge don’t talk about that night again.
-*-
Luke doesn’t need to check his screen for the readings of his sensors, but he does it anyway.
Luke doesn’t need to check his screen to know where Wedge is, because they’ve flown like this so often now, he feels like he can sense Wedge. Maybe it’s the Force. Maybe it’s experience. Luke doesn’t care.
“Have you got a lock on our target, Wedge?”
“He’s up ahead, but I can’t get a fix on him yet. Stand by.”
Luke takes comfort in the fact that he’s flying this mission with Wedge. Not that he distrusts any of the other pilots, but Wedge is the only one who can match Luke’s Force-crazy manoeuvres. And Wedge still has a slight edge on him, even though Luke won’t admit it.
Ahead of them, where they can’t distinguish anything against the backdrop of darkness littered with stars, is an Imperial spy-class ship. One of the Bothan spies was tipped off a week ago that one would fly by relatively close to the rebel fleet. Instead of running from the Empire like scared nunas, Wedge convinced Alliance command to take a chance and send Rogue squadron out to capture it. It was probably going to be the only time their short-range fighters could pull off something like this and still haul the thing back to base before running out of fuel or air or both. And Wedge and Luke are now the ones to bring the ship home.
There’s a blip on Luke’s sensor. By the sharp intake of breath Luke can hear from Wedge over the radio, he figures Wedge saw it, too.
“There he is,” Wedge says, and Luke can hear he is gritting his teeth now: his voice sounds pressed, and Luke has heard that tone many times. Wedge grinds his teeth when he sleeps, too – probably a sign of the immense stress he’s under. Luke prefers not to think about how he knows that, especially now.
They adjust their course as R2 does the calculations for where the Imperial ship is headed most likely. They’re still flying blind, the ship has excellent stealth tech to conceal it, but it has lost the element of surprise to a bunch of Bothan spies weeks ago, and now Luke and Wedge are just a few hundred miles away from catching it.
Princess Leia is from Alderaan, a world that contains more water than Luke has ever seen in his life. One time, she told Luke the story of a type of electric fish that prowl the waters of one of the larger lakes. They use the distortions in the electric field they create around themselves to catch their prey. They hunt in packs.
Wedge and Luke are kind of like these fish now.
R2 sends the course calculation to Luke’s overhead screen.
“Two minutes out,” Luke relays to Wedge, even though their astromechs are in constant communication. “Let’s hope he hasn’t spotted us yet.”
Their best defence is the fact that the Imperial ship will not suspect them here. It’s half suicidal.
One hundred and twenty seconds go by awfully slowly when you still can’t see your target. Luke catches himself holding his breath, releases it in a huff.
Wedge chuckles. “Yeah, same.”
Then, out of the blackness ahead, a shape emerges. Luke’s hands stiffen around the controls involuntarily. They’re approaching from slightly above the ship, coming up on its rear end. Now, at the very latest, they should be visible on the ship’s scanners, unless someone is very negligent. And that is not something Imperial spies are known to be.
“Luke, scramble the scanners and warm up your cannons. All energy to frontal shields.”
They’re a team, but Wedge is still the commander. Luke enters the necessary commands, then braces himself as the Imperial ship suddenly speeds up, or at least tries to. Luke can see the burst of energy, can almost feel it, but the tractor net that he and Wedge have readied has already taken hold. The kick lurches through Luke’s X-Wing as well, but their engines hold up.
“EMP pulse now!” Wedge orders, shouts, and Luke triggers the pulse that will disable the enemy ship’s electronics. It’s a delicate weapon, wide in range, and when deployed might very well hit a friendly ship as well. Also, it’s been known to fry the life support systems of ships as well, even though they’re wired to backup power in most modern ships. Luke had objected to the use of the electromagnetic cannon at first, but Wedge and Leia had won him over. Still, he finds himself hoping for those Imperial pilots. They could be useful intel after all – but that’s not it. He just hates the thought of them freezing to death slowly as Luke and Wedge haul them back to base. It seems unnecessarily cruel.
Like something the Empire would do.
“Oh shit.”
Wedge’s voice pulls Luke out of his thoughts and right back into the fight they were supposed to have one.
“They had an escort.”
Luke can’t see it on his scanners, but he can see it with his naked eye: two TIE-class fighters, approaching them head-on.
“Evasive manoeuvres,” Luke says instinctively, before remembering that his X-Wing is currently tethered to an Imperial ship and not able to manoeuvre anywhere.
“Shoot them!” Wedge shouts, “There’s just two, goddamnit, we need to shoot them!”
He releases a string of curses, one more colourful than the other and even Luke, who grew up with Hutteese as his second language, is impressed.
“They don’t show up on the scanner!” he protests.
“I know,” Wedge replies from behind gritted teeth, “You’re the wizard, Luke.”
Wedge is right, of course.
Luke flinches in his seat as the TIE fighters fly their first approach, but their front shields hold. They’re going to turn around and attack from the rear, Luke knows that from experience.
“We need to turn. Nothing fancy, no evasion, just a position to fire from. R2, calculate the best course, Wedge, get your cannons ready.”
Luke might not be an electric fish, but the weapon he has at his disposal is very similar. Theoretically, if he wants to, he can sink into the very fabric that makes this universe. He can feel how things relate to each other, and then it’s a mere question of drawing a straight line between two points.
He takes two deep breaths. He clears his mind, tries to forget that Wedge might die if he doesn’t, that he might die if he doesn’t, and maybe he could have succeeded, too, but the first thing the Force throws at him when he reaches for it is the sensory memory of Bigg’s fighter exploding as Luke dives down into the trench of the death star.
The TIEs fly their second attack, and this time it blows one of Luke’s fuses, disabling his scanners. He almost laughs at the irony.
“I know, Ben.”
His heart is beating painfully fast now, but he tries again, dives past the trench and the memory of Biggs and the universe appears to him in beautiful clarity. Wedge is still alive. Luke can’t help the ghosts that haunt him, but he can help Wedge.
There are two X-Wings, and Imperial spy-ship, and two TIE-fighters.
It’s really very simple.
Wedge releases a breath as the first TIE goes up in a ball of flames, and then whoops as the second one follows shortly thereafter. Luke just closes his eyes and lets his head fall back against the headrest. All the muscles in his neck are so tense.
“My scanners are dead,” he tells Wedge, “I’m going to need you to guide me back.”
“No problem, Luke,” Wedge says.
And then, more quietly. “Thank you.”
In the Force, Wedge feels bright and colourful and alive.
-*-
Luke is the first one out of the X-Wing, but Wedge is faster once he’s on the ground. He meets Luke halfway between their fighters.
“That was amazing!” Luke breathes.
“We did it!” Wedge exclaims, and he sounds incredulous and relieved and high on adrenaline. Before Luke knows what’s happening, Wedge has him gathered up in his arms, hugging him so tight Luke almost can’t breathe: a full body-press hug, Wedge’s face buried in his shoulder. Luke huffs and laughs, but Wedge doesn’t let go for a solid minute. Under their flight suits, Luke can feel Wedge’s heart beating – he’s been hyperaware of everything around him since he blew up the two TIE-fighters, and it’s beginning to give him a headache, but feeling Wedge grounds him.
Neither of them seems inclined to let go.
There’s a hiss as the hangar doors open, and Rogue squadron pours into the hangar. Bes leads the pilots in some kind of victory song that loses its melody before it even really begins, but it doesn’t matter, because this time, they all made it back alive.
Wedge lets go of Luke. The two of them look at each other, locking eyes, and for a moment, it seems to Luke like there’s something he wants to say, something he really should say before they don’t make it home the next time. He’s already held back far too long. But then Wedge turns away to shake Bes’ hand, and Bes is having none of that and pulls Wedge into a bear hug, and Luke finds himself embracing Ley. The moment passes.
“Force, that was nerve-wracking,” Ley mutters, and Luke is shaking with nervous laughter.
“I’m not made to be a spy. Give me a proper Imperial attack any day.”
After Ley comes Ralon, who presses for details of how the fuck Luke took out two cloaked TIE-fighters with his naked eye. Then Bes alternates between shaking Luke’s hand and shaking his head in disbelief. Then Ley hugs him again.
Suddenly, Luke feels a hand on his shoulder. He turns around to see Wedge. “They want us for a debrief in ten minutes.”
He sounds all business now, and Luke nods. Right.
-*-
It might have been two hours since Luke and Wedge returned back to the rebel base with the Imperial ship, or it might have been ten. Luke can’t tell.
They’ve been standing in the command centre for an undetermined amount of time, going over the details, because rebel command wants to make sure that their position didn’t leak to the Empire. By now, Luke is sure he could recite the sequence of events in his sleep. He thinks Wedge might be doing exactly that – he once heard Bes say that Wedge could sleep with his eyes open, and didn’t believe it, but now he’s starting to.
Luke is about to open his mouth and protest another repetition of the debrief when the door opens and the Princess struts in. Leia is wearing dark pants and a flight vest, and her hair is braided back around her head, a sure sign that she was out in the hangar herself. She’s a passable pilot, Luke has heard that, even though she doesn’t often get a chance to fly.
She nods at the commander, then addresses Wedge and Luke directly.
“Good work today, you two.”
Wedge acknowledges the compliment with a brief nod, Luke mutters a thank you. They’re both tired, and would very much like to continue their debrief and parade in front of Alliance command at a later date.
“I’m sorry I’m late. I needed to make a call with the Admiral and Mon Mothma.”
It sounds urgent, and Luke wonders why she’s mentioning it because technically, she doesn’t have to justify anything she does to either Wedge or Luke. Yes, Luke might have helped rescue her from an Imperial prison, but at the end of the day, he’s just a starfigher pilot and she’s a space princess and rebel leader. And there’s such a thing as a chain of command.
“I’ve wanted to talk to them before I made any kind of decision, but they absolutely agreed with me.”
Leia fixes both Wedge and Luke with a determined glare.
“We felt like it might be time to update the command structure of Rogue squadron to serve the current reality better.”
That sounds cryptic, and Wedge and Luke exchange a glance.
“You’re both capable pilots. You’re capable leaders, and you work well together. Wedge, if you agree, we’d like to give Luke the position of your second in command.”
Luke is taken aback. He can’t even look at Wedge right now, because it just seems so much. Some of the pilots here have been training to be fighters since they were teenagers. Luke was a farmer a little less than a year ago.
“We’re not a large organisation. Knowledge is precious. Should something happen to Wedge, we need someone with his knowledge who can take over the position. You seemed like the most logical choice” Leia says, and when Luke looks up, he realises both she and Wedge are looking at her.
“I…” There’s nothing he can say, really, besides: “I would be honoured to accept the position.”
“I would be happy to work with Skywalker as my second in command,” Wedge says. He doesn’t look at Luke again.
“Good,” Leia says, “That’s settled, then. Now, would you mind walking me through your mission?”
-*-
Luke is in a bind.
He’s also in the freshers, using up all the hot water, but he tells himself he needs it to relieve the cramp in his neck from sitting in the cockpit for too long. But what he really needs is the time alone.
Wedge had patted him on the shoulder and walked away earlier, leaving Luke with a promotion and the realisation of two things. One: at some point in the last months, he had, somehow, against his better judgement, fallen in love with Wedge Antilles. And two: now that Alliance command had given him a promotion, his chance of acting on that had basically plummeted to zero, whereas before they had been a hopeful next to nothing.
Why did he have to accept the position? Why did he have to join Rogue squadron?
The water sputters, and a rush of cold pours over Luke’s head. He curses and shuts off the flow of water, reaching for his towel. As he dries his hair, the image of Wedge after their mission appears before his eyes: smiling brightly, his eyes full of relief, his hair tousled from the helmet. And, from the back of his mind, memories from right after the battle of Yavin, as they’re calling it now, and the empty hallway he and Wedge had found themselves in.
Yavin is far away now, but Luke remembers the feeling. Remembers it well.
In hindsight, it feels easy to blame himself. He shouldn’t have pushed Wedge away when they clearly both wanted – but even though the pain has eased with the months, Luke still remembers the dark shadow of losing Biggs over everything. Even today, reaching into the Force opened up a pain inside him that he thought had scabbed over well. But that makes it even harder to let Wedge go, now that Luke sees so clearly what he wants.
He let Biggs go, once. Can he do the same for Wedge, and risk losing him?
This kind of thinking is ridiculous of course. Luke shakes his head at himself as he put his clothes on. He let a grown man make a decision that didn’t ended well for him. If something happens to Wedge, that wouldn’t be because Luke didn’t hold him back, either. In the end, out there in space, it comes down to just pure dumb luck, which is coincidentally also what Han calls Luke’s Force sensitivity. Or at least until the third round of Sabbac. Then he starts calling it cheating.
Luke’s communicator beeps as he brushes his teeth. It’s Bes, letting him know they’ll be in the mess for celebratory drinks, and if he wants to join them he can meet them there at 1900, or later in Ley’s quarters.
Luke looks at the image of himself in the mirror. Then, resigned, he shakes his head.
He’s going to live with this, he resolves. He’s going to live with his crush like an adult, and he’s going to deal with it, and it will go away and then everybody will get on with their lives.
-*-
Wedge has a bottle of Corellian whiskey in his hand, one arm slung loosely around Ley’s shoulder, and he’s lecturing her on the difference between the drink in his hand and the shit they will sell you in space bars for Corellian whiskey, I swear it’s a disgrace. Luke is watching the scene, more than slightly drunk and infinitely amused.
Wedge normally doesn’t allow himself to get drunk anymore these days. It’s the command, like so much about him now, that makes him think he has to keep it together at all times, Luke muses.
Ley shoves Wedge, playfully, to get him to shut up, and Wedge laughs.
“You’re a mess, you know that, Antilles?” she asks.
“Excuse me, I’m Corellian!” Wedge responds.
Bes comes to Ley’s defence. “You can keep that machine oil you call a whiskey for yourself, Antilles. Where would you even get real Corellian whiskey here?”
Wedge huffs indignantly. “I have my sources.”
It’s funny – his Corellian heritage is the only point of pride about him, save for his piloting skills, maybe. Luke hasn’t heard him talk about any people there, however. He imagines it’s a sore topic for Wedge, a leading member of the Alliance. To this day, Corellia is still with the Empire.
“Will you save us from his waxing, Skywalker?” Ley turns to Luke, and points at Wedge. “I think it’s his bedtime.”
Luke is drunk, but not too drunk not to take a hint.
“I’ll get him off your hands,” he says with a slight smile.
He hauls himself up from where he was sitting slumped against a wall. “Come on, Wedge.”
He offers Wedge a hand and pulls him off the floor. Wedge goes willingly, a little less unsteady than Luke expected.
“Thanks so much for the drinks, Ley,” Luke says.
“Hey, I’m just glad you two got back safely,” Ley responds.
“Believe me, us too,” Wedge says.
They stumble out into the hallway, and suddenly Luke is back on the base on Yavin IV. He looks over at Wedge, who took a shower since they got out of the cockpit but whose hair is a mess from running his hands through it, and he is so terribly in love.
They walk next to each other for a while.
Luke wonders if he should say something. Wedge must remember Yavin IV, too.
The walk to Wedge’s quarters seems to far, even though they’re just down the hall. Wedge says nothing as Luke passes his own door without going in.
“You know,” Luke says, and then chickens out.
Wedge turns. “What?”
“You know, you got pretty drunk tonight.”
Wedge laughs. “Needed to loosen up, I guess.”
They fall silent again. Luke thinks he can see Wedge staring at him, but doesn’t dare to look. They’re almost at the door to Wedge’s quarters now.
Luke takes a breath.
“You know I’m still in love with you.”
It sounds wrong, because he’s never told Wedge this before, but it doesn’t matter, the words are out now and he can breathe again, but he still can’t look at Wedge. He stops, and so does Wedge.
“I’m not that drunk,” Wedge says, and he sounds – angry?
Luke looks up, and there it is: Wedge is frowning, angry, upset. Oh shit.
“I…” Oh this was a mistake, he knew it. “I mean…”
“Don’t, Luke.” Wedge laughs bitterly, runs a hand over his eyes. “By the Force, really. Now?”
“I’m sorry, Wedge, can I…?”
“Goodnight, Luke,” Wedge says, and he turns on his heel and walks determinedly towards his quarters. Only when he reaches his door does he stop and turn a little bit. “Sleep it off, Luke. Please.”
-*-
Command doesn’t give Luke the small mercy of avoiding Wedge.
He wakes up the next morning and wishes he could be literally any one of the other pilots, but he gets up and gets dressed and is still just himself.
He made the wrong call. He knows that. He should apologise. He should apologise for putting Wedge in this situation – it’s not like them making out wasn’t questionable before, but Luke wasn’t under Wedge’s command then, and now they’re running a squad together. They’re the last people who should be fraternising.
It seems impossible that the routine on base still functions. Luke’s whole world feels like it’s tilted sideways – things that were as the should be before last night are now in precarious positions, and one wrong step on Luke’s part might set the whole thing off. But people still rise for the beginning of their shifts as others retire to their quarters, the mess still serves breakfast and the caf they give Luke is still too strong for him, a farmboy who never tasted real caf until a few months ago. This morning, however, he drinks it all, and wishes he could make breakfast last longer. At the end of it, Wedge is waiting for him.
Luke’s stomach is tied up in a knot as he enters the hangar. He finds it mostly empty, and isn’t sure whether to be relieved or more nervous. Better to get it over with quickly, he thinks.
He pauses at his X-Wing, stops to examine the damage from yesterday’s blast that killed his scanners. It seems that the Imperial didn’t catch the sensitive electronics but just the power connection, a simple fix, and Luke itches to get some tools and just get to work, but he has a mission briefing scheduled.
As Wedge’s second in command.
Screw this, Luke thinks. Wedge isn’t here yet.
“R2,” he calls, and the astromech appears from behind a couple of boxes.
“I need you to run the diagnostics. I’m going to see if I can find a replacement power cell.”
R2 chirps and rolls off to plug himself into the X-Wing. Luke makes for the tool box.
It’s easy to lose himself in this – the tinkering, the mechanics of the ship – just like he used to do back on Tatooine. He spent hours in his workshop not thinking about the world outside, just him bent over the engine of his precious T-16. Thinking back to it now, those times seem so endless, and so far away already. He misses it, but he also remembers that there’s nothing to miss. It all burnt down in Imperial fire, almost his whole life. There’s nothing to go back to.
“Is she in a bad shape?”
Because Luke spent so much time preparing himself this morning, he doesn’t flinch. He turns around like he meant to, no hesitation, and looks Wedge straight in the eye.
The man’s face betrays nothing.
“I think it’s the power cell, or one of the power lines,” Luke says, “I’m having R2 run additional diagnostics just to be safe, but I’ve just about got this one replaced. Can you wait for a minute until I’ve finished this up?”
Wedge’s expression is unreadable as he looks first at Wedge, and then at the X-Wing.
“No.”
And he walks of to the briefing room to switch on the lights. Luke stares after him and now knows, with heart-shattering certainty, that he really fucked up.
-*-
Luke sits in his quarters when Leia comes by.
When the door slides open, he shoots up to pretend like he was doing something, like he hadn’t been staring at a wall for the past two hours, but it’s just Leia in her flight gear and he relaxes and leans back against the wall again. A lot has changed since Yavin, since last year, when Leia was on her way to an execution and Luke stuck on a backwater farm in the Outer Rim.
“Hey,” Leia says quietly. She’s using her indoor voice, the one that doesn’t have the sharp bark of command to it. Luke only heard it a couple of times before – at the service for the pilots, and whenever she speaks of her father, Bail Organa. She carries her loss with dignity, Luke thinks. Like a princess.
“Hey,” Luke replies, and manages a weak smile. They haven’t really talked like this, but anybody with two eyes can figure out that Luke was off his game the last days.
“Can I sit?”
Luke nods, and Leia pulls up a chair. There she sits, and considers him for a while.
“I want to apologise,” she says, “for springing the command on you like that.”
Luke can’t help it, he scoffs. Leia, in turn, frowns. Luke can’t blame her; she doesn’t know why he’s so miserable – at least he hopes she doesn’t know. Maybe she came here to give him a lesson in propriety.
“I know you wanted to become a Jedi. It’s what Ben asked you to do. But you are one of our most promising pilots, and the Jedi, they’re, well–”
“Extinct?” Luke suggests.
Leia ignores the bitterness in his voice. She never has time for self-pity.
“Not what we need in this fight. One Jedi can’t win the day. A well-trained squad of pilots can.” She leans forward in her chair, and fixes Luke with a glare. “I need to know if I can count on you, Skywalker. Because I need you to give this fight your all, or to step back and let somebody else take over.”
And this is her being kind, Luke realises, she came here to give him an easy way out if that was what he wanted.
“It’s not about the command,” Luke says, “It’s not about my Jedi training, if you can call it that.”
Leia’s gaze softens. She has incredibly warm eyes, Luke realises, and he can’t help but think that there’s something familiar about them. They remind him of home, somehow. Maybe that was why people seemed to follow Leia so readily. She reminded them of the things they were fighting for.
“Then what is it, Luke?”
He can’t tell her everything, he knows, but he wants to tell her something.
“I had a falling out with Wedge,” Luke says.
“Over what?”
Leia seems puzzled, and Luke can’t fault her. Him and Wedge always seemed inseparable. At least this means that Wedge hasn’t reported him yet.
“It doesn’t matter. We’ll figure it out. Things are just tense right now. I don’t think he wants to see me.”
He regrets saying anything. Leia will take this to command, and they’ll ask Wedge about it, and then Wedge will tell them about Luke’s unprofessional behaviour and command will transfer Luke away from here. Away from this strange new family of pilots he’s made for himself, and away from the last people that somehow tie him to Tatooine and Ben.
To Luke’s surprise, Leia doesn’t get up and report it straight away. She stays seated, in her grease-stained pants and flight vest, head cocked, looking at Luke.
“It’s personal,” Luke elaborates, rather poorly. And then adds, belatedly, “It won’t interfere with my performance, I promise.”
Leia watches him still. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Luke laughs weakly. “I really, really can’t.”
For a moment longer, she keeps her eyes fixed on him, and Luke is sure she’ll tell him to go pack right now. Then she gets up.
“Whatever it is, I hope you can figure it out.”
-*-
The next days drag on, and the regret turns stale on Luke, but sadly, this doesn’t change the way he feels about Wedge. The next week goes pretty much the same way.
Luckily, he is able to take his mind of it during his downtime, but in the cockpit, Wedge is always there, and the work of not letting the tension between them show is eating at Luke just as his ill-timed confession is.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have put you in this situation.”
Apparently, he’s rehearsing his apologies in the freshers, now, even though he knows apologies won’t make anything better.
“I should have known better. I should have been mature enough to deal with my feelings. You won’t have to worry about it anymore. I realise it was inappropriate.”
Half of it is taken from the Alliance handbook on sexual misconduct, which is a thing Luke didn’t even realise the Alliance had before he typed how to deal with a crush on your superior officer into his datapad one too many times.
“Talking to me?”
The voice scares Luke half to death. It’s Wedge, who must’ve entered the communal showers while Luke had his head under the water. Luke doesn’t dare look around the curtain and look him in the eye.
“I’m sorry you keep having to hear me inappropriately confess things to you.”
This apology, at least, is heartfelt, and surprises Luke himself with how easily it comes out. Maybe he’s been beating himself up over this a little too much lately.
Wedge doesn’t say anything for a while, which lets Luke hope that maybe he’s gone away, but when he finally musters up the courage to switch off the water, he hears the little clattering noises that tell him Wedge is probably preparing to shave.
Luke dries himself off, then waits. Tries to breathe quietly so as not to be conspicuous.
“You can come out of there, you know.”
Wedge sounds exasperated, but not angry. Luke carefully releases a breath.
“I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable,” Luke says as he draws back the curtain, stepping out of the fresher carefully.
Wedge, who has his toiletries laid out in front of him, casts a look over his shoulder that Luke just cannot read. “Been reading the Alliance handbook on sexual misconduct, huh?”
He turns back to the mirror, and Luke is momentarily too stunned to respond. Maybe Wedge has been supervising his browsing activity. That opens up a whole new world of nightmares, even though he’s pretty sure the worst thing he’s looked up on his pad in the past week is the Tatooine fall fashion collection.
Wedge proceeds to shave in silence, apparently applying all his attention to the task at hand, so Luke goes to find his clothes and quietly puts them on. Just as he prepares to leave, he hears Wedge put down the razor with a soft click.
“I accept your apology, okay?”
Luke turns to look back at him, but the handbook didn’t go any further than that. He feels like the most appropriate thing is to leave Wedge alone.
-*-
They’re out one night, some weeks after the whole disaster. The entire squad is there, another win over the Empire giving them another reason to celebrate, though they are far and few enough in between. They’re given leave for it, too, which is a true rarity. It feels almost too good to believe.
Ley and Luke had been out all day, scavenging for interesting trinkets in the war-torn city, anything that might count as a souvenir to bring home, but recently liberated planets have very little to offer in terms of tourist traps, and so they all wind up at the local pub before sundown (though sundown might not be for another month here, Luke has not bothered to check the solar rotations of this planet). They serve a vile, thick ale – homebrew, no doubt – which is too strong for Luke’s tastes even. And that’s saying something, considering his homeworld. Hutts prefer some truly vile liquor.
The Alliance is considering moving its base again, and Luke feels bone-deep weariness at the thought of that, but Bes won’t stop speculating in a hushed tone about where fate will put them next. They’re huddled around a small table, the three of them – Bes, Ley, and Luke – on wooden benches that seem old enough to have seen the fall of the Republic. The room is lit dimly, and it smells like burnt meat and wood smoke.
“I bet it’s Nar Shadaa. I heard the Princess has made a deal with the Hutt clan there. Even the Empire hasn’t been able to fully get the place under control.”
“It doesn’t have space for a fully fledged military base to our needs, idiot,” Ley replies, smacking Bes’ arm lightly.
“Besides, the fact that the Empire has not been able to fully conquer it is a good reason not to put a base there,” Luke says, “I know Hutts. You can’t trust them as far as you can throw them, and Hutts are very heavy. You can’t throw them very far.”
Bes lets out a good laugh. “Spoken like a true farmboy from the Outer Rim, Luke!”
“You’re never going to let me forget that, are you?” Luke asks with a self-depreciating smile.
“I’m not going to start calling you Master Jedi anytime soon. Not before I actually see you move some things with the power of your mind. Or you use your powers of foresight and tell me where they’re going to transfer us next.”
Luke winks at him and begins to raise his hand when he feels a hand on his shoulder, and Wedge plops down on the bench next to him. “Alright, that’s enough of you young fellas and ladies giving out intel to the local populace. How about another round?”
He gives them an inquiring look. “On me.”
“Hear hear,” Bes says, and Ley knocks on the table approvingly. Luke doesn’t dare move. They haven’t been together in a casual situation since their meeting in the freshers, which has to mean something, because they used to spend every free minute together planning things. It has to mean Wedge wants space, but now Luke is stuck between him and Bes, and can’t very well move.
The next round materialises, but Luke doesn’t touch his mug. He notices that Wedge doesn’t really, either, except for the odd sip in between sentences. It seems they both have their reasons to stay sober tonight.
“Can you tell us where they’ll send us next, Luke?”
Luke gives him a look, trying to figure out why on earth Wedge is bringing this up now. He knows better than most that Luke’s command of the Force is shaky at best, he’s the one who found him dry heaving on a cave floor after all.
“I haven’t… ever since Ben…”
He doesn’t know where to start, so he starts over. “It’s not really something I can control.”
“What do you know about the Jedi?” Ley asks. She’s always curious about the history of the Alliance.
“Not much,” Luke says, “I know they fought the Clone Wars. I thought they betrayed the Republic. I hadn’t even heard of the Purge before I met Ben.”
“Kenobi was a General in the Clone Wars, wasn’t he?” Bes asks.
“Yeah, Wedge says, “My father met him once or twice. It was all so long ago. Leia had only just been born. Senator Organa was so happy, my father told me. That’s the last time he ever heard anything from Kenobi, but I guess Organa must have stayed in contact. How else would the Princess have known how to contact him?”
“I have a feeling he never really left the fight, though Force knows Tatooine is as far as you can get from the Empire. He never told me why he retired there, exactly. He knew my father, but I don’t think he knew about me, at least until he came across me almost getting killed by Tusken Raiders.”
“By what now?” Ley interjects.
“Sand people. They live out in Tatooine’s deserts. They’re nomads, often come into conflict with the farmers. Otherwise, not much is known about them. We don’t even know if they’re native to Tatooine, because no anthropologist has ever gotten close enough to study them and come back.”
Luke feels a pang of homesickness at that, even though it’s the strangest anecdote to be homesick about. He remembers Biggs telling him that joke in the shop one day, when they were working on their T-16, and then he just remembers Biggs, period, and even though he thought he was over this, right now he isn’t.
“I need some fresh air,” he says, and gets up, mug of ale in hand. Ley and Bes look at him, startled. Wedge – maybe not so much. Luke doesn’t stop to figure out what the expression on Wedge’s face means.
-*-
The sun has set when Luke gets outside, and the air has cooled. It’s not as bad as it used to be on Tatooine, where the nights were like a mirror image of the heat of the day – cold, sometimes below freezing, when the condensed water on the water collection towers would frost over, only to melt come morning. Still, Luke shivers in the mild evening.
The ale is still bitter on his tongue, but he drinks it and tries not to think of Biggs or Ben or Wedge. He fails on all three accounts. It mixes together somehow, the alcohol, the questions about Ben, the painful memory of his former home and his former friend. He desperately wishes for some guidance, but the Force doesn’t tell him much, and the one trusted friend he has been making doesn’t want to talk to him since he confessed his inappropriate crush.
He jumps when he feels a hand on his shoulder. He turns – it’s only Wedge, which is bad enough.
“You okay, Luke?”
There’s honest concern in his voice. Luke looks over Wedge’s face, the worry lines on his forehead and the shadows under his eyes. The last weeks haven’t been easy on either of them, but beneath the worry, Wedge is still Wedge, with beautiful dark hair and a face that is so familiar to Luke.
“Yeah, I just…” Luke runs a hand through his hair. “It’s hot in there, you know?”
“Sure…” Wedge can smell the bullshit from a mile away, and he lets Luke know with a raised eyebrow. “What’s really on your mind?”
“Tatooine,” Luke admits, “I haven’t really talked about it since… well, at all, actually.”
Wedge nods, and motions for them to sit on a nearby low wall that is separating the speeder parking of the bar from the property next door. Something resembling a cat, or its variant in the local fauna, scoots away as they move to sit. Luke follows it with its gaze, as it races down a narrow alley, then up some stairs on the side of a house, before it gets lost in the dark.
“I miss Corellia, too,” Wedge admits.
Luke says nothing, because the alternative is telling Wedge that he’s not just missing a place that’s out there somewhere, he’s missing a place that has disappeared from this world entirely. His aunt and uncle are gone. Ben is gone. Biggs is gone. Tatooine is still out there, somewhere, spinning through space around a sun that is just a little too close for comfort, but as far as Luke is concerned, it might as well have been blown up by the Death Star. He doesn’t think he’ll ever return there. Not voluntarily, that much he knows.
“I’m sorry about Kenobi,” Wedge says. Luke turns to look at him, and suddenly realises how close they’re sitting. He wants to scoot away, but he also doesn’t want to draw attention to it. From up close, Wedge looks even wearier. Luke wants to cup the side of his face with one hand and smooth away the worry lines.
“It’s not that,” Luke assures him.
“Then what is it?”
It’s that I am lonely and I want to kiss you and my mentor is dead, Luke thinks.
“Just overworked, I guess,” he says.
They sit in silence. Luke shivers once or twice as the cold gets to him more. Wedge stares at the street in front of them as if he’s trying to decipher messages in the flickering of the street lamps. Nobody comes outside to look for them. It would be so easy to just reach out and –
Luke almost flinches when he feels fingertips brushing across the top of his hand. His head jerks up, he looks over at Wedge, who gives him a half smile. Luke turns his hand, and Wedge fits his fingers between Luke’s. Luke doesn’t understand what is happening.
“You’re not the only one with a misplaced crush, Luke,” Wedge says.
Luke swallows. All that anger at himself, the hopelessness he felt when he saw Wedge –
“Why?” Luke says, as if that can encompass all that he feels, all he wants to know.
“Why I have a crush on you? Do you even remember the night after Yavin? Have you seen how you fly? Have you ever looked at yourself in the mirror, seen the way you smile?”
“No.” Luke shakes his head. “Why didn’t you say something?”
The slight smile on Wedge’s face looks pained. Luke’s heart is beating twice as fast, he’s sweating despite the cold.
“I wanted to set a good example. I wanted to do right by the command we were entrusted with. I was scared. Take your pick.”
Luke looks at Wedge. His hair is slightly mussed from running his hands through it. Luke knows it’s a habit Wedge picks up when he gets tipsy. In the light of the streetlamps, Wedge looks pale, but his cheeks are red, either from the drink or the cold. Luke wants to kiss him, but he feels like that isn’t the thing to do right now.
Wedge studies Luke’s face for a moment, then pulls his hand away with a bitter smile. “Yeah.”
Luke swallows. “Yeah.”
Here they are – hopelessly in love, but unable to do anything about it.
-*-
Luke is dreaming.
In front of him is a desert, but not the one of his childhood – this one is an arctic desert, white as far as the eye can see. In the dream, he can’t feel the cold, but he knows instinctively that he’d freeze to death within minutes here. There’s a figure in the distance.
“Ben,” Luke says, because in dreams you know these things. He wants to reach out, but Ben is a couple hundred metres away. Too far for even calling his name across the wind.
Luke’s vision swims – he realises he’s crying – as Ben walks farther away from him.
“BEN!” he shouts, but it yields nothing. All it does is make him hoarse, and soon he can’t even tell the figure apart from the shadows the falling snow produces. He screams.
-*-
“Luke.”
The voice sounds far away. Luke’s eyes blink open and he sees Wedge’s face close to his.
“Luke.”
He sits up straight.
“Ben!”
“You were screaming,” Wedge says, “Is everything alright?”
Luke’s quarters come into focus. There’s no snow anywhere in sight. It’s been a while since he’s had a vision, he’s not even sure this counts as one. Still, his heart is heavy with something the Force tells him is premonition.
“I’m fine,” Luke says, “Just a nightmare.”
“Some nightmare that must’ve been,” Wedge mumbles, but he keeps a steady hand on Luke’s shoulder until Luke’s breathing evens out again.
“What are you doing in my quarters?” Luke says as soon as he can think clearly again.
“Emergency wake-up call,” Wedge says, “We’ve been called up early to get the X-Wings ready. The Alliance is moving out. We have to secure the transporters.”
Wedge gives Luke’s shoulder a last squeeze before getting up again. The feeling of warmth from the touch lingers. Luke’s gaze follows Wedge as he moves through his quarters to the door. Ever since their conversation, things have eased up a little bit. They can touch each other again, even though every touch is bittersweet.
“Where are we going?” Luke asks as he gets up to find his flight suit. He notices Wedge staring at his bare chest, and feels a little pride. He stretches a bit, and Wedge rolls his eyes.
“Some nowhere planet. We’re going to have to set up everything ourselves.”
He turns to go.
“Hoth, I think, it’s called.”