Chapter Text
Wedge is in hyperspace when the Republic dies, wiped out between one jump and the next on his way back to base from the Mol Cal shipyard. The Resistance headquarters are in a scramble when he arrives. It's unsettling, maybe more so than any close calls he's had previously. Facing the threat in a fighter, with only himself and his squadron to rely on, it never shook him like this.
When Leia sends for him he's already heard a disjointed account of the last few days and he pauses outside her door, trying to temper his unease. They've been here before, the two of them, left behind and feeling they should comfort each other. Somehow, their unspoken agreement that neither is particularly good at comforting has actually proved helpful.
Leia looks hollow, almost broken, in a way he's only seen once before. He nearly forgets himself and tells her he's sorry, but catches himself in time. He learned that one early on.
He's not upset when Leia tells him they found the map Luke hid, about the girl who went in search of him. (Her name is Rey, Leia says, like it should mean something to him, and his mind shies away from the thought with practiced ease.) She's been in touch again, Leia says carefully, just this morning. Wedge doesn't feel anything, really. He's been expecting this a long time, that they'd find out where Luke had gone, and that he died there. It doesn't really hurt anymore, thinking about it.
"And he's coming back," Leia says and Wedge stares at her, bewildered, seeing her smile turn small and sad when he doesn't answer it. It's been so long since he let himself hope that Luke might come back, but he remembers thinking it would make him happy. Now there's only dread, like a transparisteel shard tearing into his chest.
--
He's seen the Falcon land many times, but the sight never made him feel sad before. Leia gives his shoulder a squeeze before going to stand by the gangway. There's Chewie, sweeping Leia up in a hug, and R2, and a young girl, the one Leia's been telling him about. She's dark-haired and smallish, and wears her hair gathered in three little buns at the back of her head. She doesn't look like anyone, really, and anyway he can't get a good look at her before she rushes to hug someone in the small crowd, a kid wearing Med Bay clothing. Then Luke steps out. Wedge sees him and feels nothing.
Luke is just a little old man now, tired and broken in his shabby robes. Even so, there's a sense of excitement at the sight of him among the few gathered by the landing pad, though everyone speaks in hushed voices. When Leia goes to meet Luke he runs his knuckles over her temple before drawing her into a hug. She melts into it, and Wedge sees some of the others exchanging smiles. Maybe it's a happy ending of sorts, for them, being close again.
When he draws back, Luke's eyes are shining. He looks over the small crowd, and Wedge sees his face setting into an expression that always made him squirm inside. Patient and a little distant, it's a look for a Jedi, one who won't give in to rage or heartbreak, who knows the dangers of attachment. Wedge turns sharply and leaves before he can find that look directed at himself. He'd been standing at the back anyway, Luke probably didn't even know he was there.
--
Wedge's luck lasts a week. A Corellian week, anyway. Then he's crossing the hangar one morning, only to come face to face with Luke, who's standing by an x-wing, reaching to touch the belly of the ship, serene and thoughtful like he's talking to it. Maybe he is, Wedge is a little behind the times on Jedi skills.
He thinks about running away before Luke sees him, but there are limits, and Luke's probably felt him coming, or something. Better to face him here and now, get it over with.
Luke turns to him, smiling as if this is a pleasant surprise. Wedge stops a few metres away, which is probably childish, but he doesn't really care for making things easy on Luke.
"Hey, Wedge" Luke says, taking half a step towards him, then stopping. It must be because he senses something, Wedge thinks, because he can't be reading anything from his face, not the way he's he's using all this strength to keep his expression neutral. "I thought I'd see you here."
"I was just passing," Wedge says, his mind mapping out escape routes that don't bring him closer to Luke.
"You fly anything, these days?" Luke says, like he's met an acquaintance at a party and has to find a topic of conversation.
"Not for five years," Wedge says. He does fly, of course, freighters, shuttles for Leia and the others in Command, whatever they need him to. But not x-wings, which is what Luke's thinking of. "Eyes," he says by way of explanation, bristling at Luke's crestfallen expression. Did he think they'd go flying together, or something? Like back in the good old days.
Wedge's anger evaporates almost as soon as he's felt it. He knows the sort of loss that sneaks up on you, the little bargains you strike with yourself to feel you're in control. In those first years he'd tortured himself with long lists of things he'd do, if only Luke came back. Go with him to search for Jedi artifacts in any inhospitable place he could think of. Or listen, if Luke wanted to talk about little Beru, how much he missed her. Maybe Luke's kept promising himself he'd go back so they could fly together, letting himself forget the limitations of non-Force sensitive pilots, so it would never be too late.
"Listen, Wedge, I," Luke says.
"What happened to your hand?" he blurts out without thinking, but it does makes Luke stop in his tracks.
"It. I," Luke says, looking at his hand, like he hasn't noticed anything wrong with it. He tugs the sleeve of his robe down to cover it, and there's something brittle about his smile. "Oh, you know, just wear and tear."
"Wear and tear", Wedge says, realising as he speaks he's making it sound like an accusation. "Right." He looks at Luke's hand again, even as he tries to hide it. Only the bare metal parts remain, skeleton-like.
Once, years ago, Luke took a hit in a fight with Imperial remnants, the canopy heating up as he forced his X-wing back into the hangar. He'd burned all the synthskin off the back of his hand getting out, and when the shock wore off he'd been pale and sweating, cradling his hand and grimacing in pain as the neural circuits fired wildly. He'd been by Luke's side in the Med Bay, because that's what they were to each other then, remembers his shallow breaths before the painkillers kicked in, remembers how he'd stroked Luke's hair and felt generally useless.
"I was going to," he says abruptly, not even trying to make it sound like he has a plausible excuse for leaving.
He stops and turns as he's leaving the hangar, but Luke's not looking at him, just standing under the X-wing, shoulders slumped.
--
True to form, it doesn't take long before Luke gets himself into some kind of jam with the First Order. Wedge is a little hazy on the exact details of it, but hearing Leia, pale and tired, tell him Luke's injured is enough to send him into a near-rage.
"You kriffing sithspawn," he says as he runs into the Med Bay, then stops just inside the door, wincing internally as he notices that Luke is, in fact, not alone, but being examined by doctor Kalonia, who gives him an extremely unimpressed look."You had Leia worried," he finishes lamely.
Luke pushes himself up on his elbows as if sitting up proves to be a great effort. He has a spectacular bruise around his right eye. "Wedge?" he says in a shaky voice, like he can't work out if Wedge is really there or not.
"Do sit down, Admiral," Kalonia tells Wedge, who knows an order when he hears one. She pushes gently on Luke's shoulder to make him lie down again and finishes smearing bacta gel on Luke's injuries, before leaving them. Luke's looking straight at him, blue eyes a little unfocused, and it's like so many times before, one of them injured and the other by the bedside, but at the same time nothing like it, only distance and broken promises between them now. He looks down at his hands and tries to count his breaths.
"I'm sorry," Luke says, just as Wedge's sure he'd gone to sleep.
"Not your fault you had to go in with shoddy intelligence," Wedge says, embarrassed to have shown his anger, before. "Was just thinking of your sister, it's been hard on her."
"No, I meant for going away," Luke says. "You're never around long enough for me to say it." His eyes are very tired and it takes a while for Wedge to think of looking away.
"I missed you," he says instead, voice tight for some reason, and it's only after he's said it he realises that while he meant 'I missed you, but I got over it', Luke probably heard 'I missed you, so it's good that you came back'. There's no use trying to explain now, though, he just wants to get out of here.
"Rained a lot," Luke says, half asleep again. He must be talking about that island. Wedge doesn't really care, but Luke's concussed, and it probably seems an entirely reasonable topic to him right now.
"Really?" he says. The blanket's all messed up and looks like it might end up on the floor any minute, so he straightens it. Droids don't notice that sort of thing and the Med Bay's always kind of cold.
"Yeah," Luke says, exhaustion making his words slurred. "You should've seen."
Luke never got over his fascination with rain, eternal desert kid, wide-eyed at seeing other worlds. Wedge is about to leave when it strikes him that he should probably wait until he's sure Luke's asleep, which looks about to be very soon. He leans back in the hard bedside chair. It digs into his back, but he won't be here long.
--
He wakes up as a Med droid tries to get between his chair and the sickbed, courteous beeps nevertheless making it clear he's very much in the way. It's light outside, telling him he must have slept for hours. He tries to get his bearings and ignore the crick in his neck.
Luke's still sleeping, his face smoothed out in rest, making him look a little more like himself. Like he's about to turn on his side, and take the blankets with him.
Doctor Kalonia is on the other side of the bed, discussing something quietly with the droid.
"Everything's stable," she tells him as it floats away. "I was mostly worried since he ran a fever, in case his lungs were playing up again. But if everything checks out today, he won't need to stay here."
He must still be on file as Luke's next of kin, or something, Wedge realises with a sinking feeling. It's not that strange, and shouldn't make him so uncomfortable. He never told anyone to remove it, and falling asleep in here, by Luke's bedside, he can't blame Kalonia for thinking it was out of worry, not because he was too tired to get up.
"That's, uh, that's good," he says, standing up and hoping he doesn't look like he's on the brink of bolting. The he processes the last part of what she said. "What about his lungs? I thought he took a blow to the head?"
"It's from his earlier infections," Kalonia says. "In the past few years. Force-healing takes care of the worst but it only goes so far and there's a bit of scarring."
Wedge sees Luke, on that island, alone and shaking with fever, thinking he deserved it, or something and he's sickened and furious all over again. It's the utter stupidity if it, the waste.
"Right," he says. "Well, I have to," he gestures towards the door, though something about the way the doctor looks at him tells him she knows he doesn't actually have to be anywhere else. It's still better than staying, because he's pretty sure he might yell at Luke when he wakes up.
--
Training sims with the new recruits take it out of him, these days. It's seeing all the kids, so determined to fight the First Order, thinking their lives matter so little. There's still the joy of seeing their sheer exhilaration after the first real run out of atmosphere, but he can never forget that most of them won't make it through the war, some won't even make it back from their first run. He knows he's a little too strict with them, thinking that if he can only prepare them well enough, they'll somehow cheat the odds.
He's standoffish with them, too, partly from natural inclination, partly for protection, but there's a few who dig their way through his defences.
"I'm sorry I didn't do so great today," Finn tells him. He's lingered behind after Wedge sent them off for the day, the rest rushing for the mess hall. "I'll work more on the re-entry, and the."
It's the kid who defected, Wedge remembers. He seems a friendly guy, and gets on well with everyone, as far as Wedge's seen, but it's not hard to imagine he's worried about his place in the Resistance. He's never actually done poorly in training, but is rather ahead of the curve. He doesn't really want to think about what the First Order did to kids who didn't do well enough.
"Wasn't so bad," Wedge says, feeling spectacularly awkward. "Don't worry about it." A droid would do better at comforting, he thinks, but Finn gives him a shy smile and actually seems calmer.
He wants nothing more than to get out of his clothes and fall face first into bed, when he sees Leia waiting in the corridor outside his quarters,
"It's Rey," Leia says without greeting him.
"Rey?" he says and only then notices that she looks worried and it hits him all over again. Things were so much easier when he thought he couldn't lose more.