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Night fell on Coruscant, and the neon pulses of speeding hovercrafts and distant cloudcutters spilled through the medcenter window as Luke stepped into the darkened room on the ninety-eighth floor. Once green and blinking with the rise and fall of breath, the ICU monitors lay quiet and still like figure on the bed, their services no longer needed now that the crisis had passed.
Nichos Marr no longer slept, but his eyes were closed in a mechanical approximation of rest--though it was highly unlikely he dreamed. Cray perched on the edge of the uncomfortable duraplast chair beside him, sporting bright red heels the same shade as her impeccably applied lipstick. A high-collared green gown and a complex necklace composed of finely woven golden strands completed the ensemble, better suited for a night at the opera than a bedside vigil. She glanced up from the glowing datapad in her lap, startled, only to relax when she saw who it was.
"I brought you some hot chocolate," Luke said, setting his tray on the low table by the bed and offering her a mug. There were only two--Nichos wouldn't drink any, even if he were awake.
She waved it aside, her attention returned to the datapad in front of her. "I have work to do."
"Cray--" Luke began. "Please. I need to talk to you."
Something in his tone penetrated through the fog of her single-mindedness, as Cray (correctly) sensed he would not be put off. She sighed, balanced the datapad on the arm of her chair, and wearily accepted the proffered mug. She took a hesitant sip, followed by several more in quick succession. When she set the mug down next to the datapad, there was a red smear of lipstick along the rim.
"What do you want, Luke?"
Luke hesitated, unable to plunge so abruptly to the point of no return, and hedged by falling back into small talk. "How's Nichos?"
"He's fine," Cray said, quickly--too quickly.
"Can he touch the Force?"
"Not yet." She spoke in clipped, short bursts, nothing breaking through the grim wall of her determination. "It's not essential right now; we can fix it in future upgrades. Right now, he's alive, and that's all that matters."
"How does he feel about that?" The old Nichos had loved the Force, had dedicated his life to being its servant. For the new Nichos to have no emotions about such a loss was... unsettling. Eerie.
Cray glared at him. "Nichos says it doesn't bother him."
"Does it bother you?"
She shook her head, and reached for her mug to take another sip of hot chocolate. "Leave it alone, Luke," she said when she set the mug down again. "I know you mean well, but it's not necessary to be concerned. He's fine. We're fine."
"No, you're not, Cray." He held up a hand to ward off her protests. "You've slept three hours in as many days. You haven't left this room in a week. You need to rest. Sleep. Eat. You won't do Nichos any good if you exhaust yourself."
"You're not my mother," Cray snapped.
"No, I'm not," Luke agreed. "I'm not your father, either. I'm your teacher, and I care about you, if you don't like it, you should have stayed at the Magrody Institute instead of coming out to the Academy to be my student."
Her eyes flashed. "Fine, I quit."
She wasn't getting away from him so easily. "Too late. You're walking a line here, Cray, one that goes to dark places, and I can't stand by and watch you do that to yourself. If you don't want to train with me anymore, that's fine--but you can't keep doing this to yourself. You need help."
"I'm fine," she repeated.
Fear. Anger. Hatred, Master Yoda had told him. The Dark Side of the Force are they. Luke would have to remember to add 'obsession' to the list in the future.
You can't fix everything," he said aloud. "I know you want to, but you can't."
"You don't know what you're talking about," she snapped. "There's nothing wrong with Nichos that can't be fixed. I just need more--"
"More what, Cray? Listen to yourself," Luke said quietly. "The transfer didn't work."
She glared at him. "What do you mean? Of course it worked."
"This..."--he indicated the figure on the bed--"isn't Nichos."
"What do you mean, this isn't Nichos?" Cray snapped. "Of course it's Nichos! He has all of Nichos's memories--the body as perfect a replica as I could manage--"
"Nichos could touch the Force."
Cray wasn't going to let him have that last word. "So he lost some of his senses in the transfer. They'll come back. I just have to figure out the right pathways and update the program parameters accordingly. And even if a few things were lost, I still love him, and he loves me. He doesn't need the Force to be happy. I'll take care of him."
"Cray," Luke said, and paused. This was not going according to plan. He should have asked Leia for help, she was better with people than he was and she liked Cray. But Leia was busy, and it would have been cowardice on Luke's part to ask her to intervene. Cray was his student, and his responsibility.
Cray pursed her lips, waiting for him to continue.
"I know how hard you've worked these last few weeks," he said at last. "You've created a marvel of engineering--pushed the envelope beyond anything I ever dreamed was possible. But the transfer failed. This isn't the Nichos we knew."
"Of course he is, Luke--" Cray protested.
"Droids can't use the Force," he said softly.
Denial flared to rage in an instant, like pulling the throttle on a souped-up speeder. "You have no idea what you're talking about, Luke! You act like you know everything when you're making it up as you go along, just like the rest of us. You couldn't save him! None of your techniques worked! I had to--and I'll be damned to seven hells and back again before I let you take him away from me!"
"Cray," Luke said gently, "Nichos is dead. This Nichos--" He gestured to the still figure on the bed beside her. "--is a droid." He met her gaze squarely. "Nothing you or I do will change that."
"No!"
Her cry was high and piercing, as if he'd drawn his lightsaber and run her through. She gasped for breath, her chest heaving.
"He's a droid," Luke repeated. "A clever droid, a marvelous droid, a wonderful droid. A droid programmed to love you and follow you everywhere. A droid with all of Nichos's memories that he will never, ever forget. But you have to accept what he is Cray, and not try to make him into something he's not, and can never be. He's not human. Not like Nichos was human."
"You're wrong," Cray whispered. She was calm again, which was worse than the rage. This anger was channeled, directed, focused on him with laser-sharp precision.
"Fine," he said. "You're a scientist. Let's try an experiment." He took a restraining bolt out of his pocket and held it out to her. "Put this on his chest and see what happens."
He kept his hand and gaze steady as she processed his challenge all the way to the inevitable end. Her lower lip trembled. Energy crackled around them, vibrating with an intensity that made Luke's hair stand on end.
She already knew the answer.
The attack, when it came, was not a surprise. Cray launched herself at him with a snarl, knocking the bolt out of his hand and clawing at his face with her manicured pink nails. He winced as the sharp edges of her nails cut into his cheek, and the trail of blood pooled down his neck, but he still didn't raise his hand.
She barrelled into him, knocking them both into the bedside table, and then to the ground as hot chocolate sprayed everywhere. She pounded him with her fists, screaming epithets in a language he didn't know but required no translation as to her opinions on his health, sanity, and sexual prowess. Luke didn't even try to defend himself, offering no resistance as he went limp like a flopworm and consciously relaxed every muscle in his body to soften the blows.
Eventually, Cray's fury ebbed, the rage replaced with deep despair. She pulled away from him, and crawled back into her chair, collapsing into a ball as she sobbed.
Luke wiped the blood off his face, and gathered himself as best he could. After a moment, he lurched to his feet, wincing when it hurt more than he'd expected. He came over to Cray and placed his hand gently on her shoulder.
"No," Cray whispered, but she didn't pull away from him and he didn't, either. She sobbed harder into her hands.
"I'm sorry," he said, aching with the echo of her pain and grief. The words were clumsy and thick on his tongue, not good enough to ease her suffering, but they were all he had. "I miss him, too, Cray. I'm sorry."
It wasn't his place to intrude on her grief, but as her teacher--as a friend--he couldn't let her deceive herself. Her denial to accept Nichos's fate was holding her back--as a Jedi, as a person. He owed it to her to tell the truth.
Cray sat up. "I'm sorry, too." Her makeup had dissolved into a distorted mess, the black of her eyeliner trickling down her cheeks to mingle with the smeared red lipstick as if she, too, were bleeding.
Luke handed her a tissue and the forgotten mug of hot chocolate still steaming on arm of the chair beside her. The tray with the other mug had been knocked over in the scuffle, the dark liquid pooling on the tile floor at their feet.
"This is good," Cray said in surprise, as if tasting it for the first time. This time, she drained her mug without any hesitation.
"I thought you'd like it," Luke said. "I used to drink it all the time when I couldn't sleep. Still do, from time to time..."
They sat together in silence for what felt like hours. Luke tried to focus on the rise and fall of his breath, but kept getting distracted by the movement of hovercrafts outside the window. The shimmer of city lights spilled into the darkened room, bathing everything in a ghostly glow.
"Luke..." Cray said dreamily, and stopped.
"Yes?"
"Thank you... for everything. I..." Her voice trailed off in puzzled wonder and she closed her eyes, sagging back into her seat.
The hot chocolate had been drugged. He wasn't proud of the deception, but hadn't known any other way to get her to sleep.
"Luke..."
This time, it wasn't Cray. Nichos hadn't moved from his position on the bed, but his eyes--blue glass in his eerily human face--were open, staring directly at him.
All the blood drained from Luke's face in an instant. "How much did you hear?" he said, knowing the answer and dreading it.
"All of it."
Luke closed his eyes, and forced himself to breath, counting to ten in his head. "I'm sorry," he said, when he could speak again.
"Don't be," Nichos said. His chest remained still, and he didn't blink. There was no need.
"She programmed you to be Nichos, but you don't... have to let it limit you," Luke managed. "You are who you are. You are the being, the consciousness, that you are at this moment. That much, I know."
"A droid cannot go against his basic programming, or restraints placed upon his programming if they do not conflict with the deepest level of motivational limiters," Nichos said. "I love her. No matter what she does, no matter what she does to me--I love her. And I always will."
Silence. The ICU monitor reflected the endless, flickering dance of the city lights outside the window. Cray twitched in her chair, but did not wake.
"She loves you, too," Luke said at last. "So much she didn't want to live without you."
"But I'm not Nichos. Not human. Not the way he was. You said so yourself."
"I know." Why had he started this? What could he possibly say that would be helpful? "I just... wanted her to know that. I didn't want her to take it out on herself, or on you, because she couldn't make you be something you're not. You're not the Nichos we knew... but you are a Nichos. You're not him, but you're not... limited by what he was, either."
"She loved him," Nichos said, with a droid's perfect logic. "She doesn't love me."
"She could. She might. That's between the two of you," Luke said.
"What if she doesn't want to see me when she wakes up?" Was it Luke's imagination or was there the faintest hint of uncertainty beneath the smooth, measured tenor?
"I don't think that will happen," Luke said. "But if it does-- I don't care what the law says--you have just as much right to exist as anybody else. You're not her property. And there will always be a place at the Academy for you."
"Even though I'm no longer a Jedi?"
"You may not be a Jedi anymore, Nic," Luke said. "You may not be the person you were. But you're still you. And you're still my friend."
For the first time since his awakening, Nichos smiled.
"Cray did what she could to take care of me during my illness," he said. "Now it's my turn to take care of her. That's what I want, more than anything else in the world--even if that's how she programmed me to be, and I have no choice at all. To stay by her side, for as long as she wants me. I think--I don't know--that's what love is."
"Thank you," Luke said.
Nichos sat up, turning his head to consider Cray's prone figure. "How long will she sleep?"
"Probably not long enough," Luke said, gathering up the mugs. "But it's a start."