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The full moon rises, red and huge on the horizon as Luke pulls off the highway onto the back roads, heading south from Roanoke. It isn't the most direct route home to Yavin, not even if he pushes his Toyota X-wing to the limits, but he craves curves and speed and the rush of adrenaline as he swings the vehicle gracefully around the twists and turns of the mountains that a simple straight shot down the highway can't provide.
He can't lose himself here the way he lost himself growing up in the vast emptiness of the open desert, but it will have to do. He needs the extra time alone to clear his thoughts.
He hasn't been up this way in years, not since he graduated from JEDI, but he still knows every bend in the road like the back of his hand. In his early post-graduate years, giddy with newfound freedom, he'd driven up and down the spine of the Appalachians a dozen times over, the X-wing's windows rolled down and his hair streaming behind him in the wind. Sometimes he'd be alone, but more often than not Callista would be in the passenger seat beside him, her eyes alight as they crested a ridge as she took in the incredible view beyond, her laughter echoing in his ears--
Callista--
Seeing her today at the reunion brings all the memories rushing back, as if it was only yesterday.
Luke grimaces and revs the X-wing's engine. In his heart, he knows it's futile, but it's easy to pretend he can outrun his memories if he can push the car just a little bit faster.
***
Luke doesn't usually drink, but he's nervous enough to accept a proffered wine glass from one of the servers milling about the quad with only a moment's hesitation. This is his first time back at the Juvenile Education Development Institute--JEDI for short--since graduation ten years ago and he needs the alcohol to steady his nerves.
Unlike most of the other alums gathered here, Luke never spent much time on campus, even before the fire burned the place to the ground. Most of his coursework was independent study--first with Ben in a correspondence course out in New Mexico, and then with Dr. Yoda when Luke had finally transferred. Not the most orthodox route-- especially not with that unexpected gap year after he'd lost his hand--but he'd managed to scrape through a degree after Yoda's death despite everything.
Ironically, Luke met Callista two years later at a completely unrelated party, only to discover their mutual connection to JEDI. It was a surprise to both of them--JEDI was a small college with a less than a hundred students a year. Outside of reunions like this one, you didn't often meet graduates you didn't already know, especially after the fire had disrupted everything.
Luke sweats underneath his jacket and his collar itches, but he resists the temptation to scratch it. Even as chief administrator of the Yavin Academy, he doesn't often dress the part except for formal fundraising events. He'd rather muck out the stalls in the horse barn or help the kitchen staff in worn jeans and flannel than sit around in a fancy dress shirt. Any lingering mud and dust has long since been washed away, but he feels every inch the naive farmboy surrounded by the hum and buzz of this successful, cosmopolitan crowd.
Luke sips his wine, lets the alcohol buzz through him to genial lightheadedness. He's not much of a drinker--Han's always teasing him about it--but none of his family could make it here to join him, and he isn't sure he can handle this fully sober.
Han and Leia live in New York City these days--Leia's a rising star at the UN and Han's stay-at-home husband raising three kids under Chewbacca's watchful canine gaze. Neither one could get away to join him on such short notice.
Mara would have come, but her dance performance in DC got re-scheduled at the last minute, and she'd had to cancel. Luke doesn't begrudge for it--she's worked hard, and this is her opportunity to shine, and she deserves every second of acclaim. But it would have been easier on his nerves if she were here with him now.
He imagines Mara standing beside him in a elegant black dress, sipping her wine with her usual poise, and mingling with ease with the good old boys, despite never attending JEDI herself. What are you afraid of, farmboy? she teases him, gesturing to the assembly, none of whom are paying the slightest attention to Luke as he hovers on the edge of the crowd with his drink.
As if in answer to her question, a familiar laugh rings out across the quad like a bell. He glimpses a brown cascade of curls slung back in a casual ponytail and his heart lurches in his chest and drops down into his stomach with a sick thud. The woman in question is deep in conversation in a huddled circle of people he doesn't recognize--too old to be her classmates, he guesses, but not by much.
Everything about her--the curve of her neck, the tilt of her head, her fluid posture--is the same as it ever was. Like a ghost from the past, she stands outside the flow of time. Even if she had changed, he thinks in a daze, he would still know her instantly. All the memories etched into flesh and bone and the agonized nights of her absence flare up, drowning him in a wave of emotion so deep it's all he can manage not to run.
He doesn't make a sound, but somehow she must sense his gaze, even at this distance, because she turns in his direction, seeking him out, and he stands helpless before her clear-eyed gaze. Her sea-gray eyes meet his and for a second, there is nothing in the world but the two of them. Her mouth rides up in a familiar grin, and Luke, too, smiles.
The next thing he knows, she's excusing herself from her conversation and pushing her way through the milling crowd towards him.
"Hello, Luke," she says by way of greeting. "It's been a while." Her voice, too, is just as he remembered--a deep, rich alto, low and throaty. She should have been a voice actor or a radio host or even a lounge singer, instead of--well, whatever it is she does these days.
She's close enough he could reach out and touch her if he dares. He squeezes his shaking hands firmly around the stem of his wineglass to avoid the temptation.
"Hi, Callista," he manages. Questions swirl through his brain, but he's too numb and stupid to get the words out, even if he knew which ones to ask. Why did you leave? Did you find what you were looking for? Are you seeing anyone these days--?
"Callista Ming, now," she corrects lightly. She raises her right hand and a tiny gem on her finger catches the light, winking like Venus hovering on the edge of the sky at twilight.
Any remaining ambiguity vanishes as Callista gestures to a tall, striking woman in a red dress on the other side of the quad her blonde hair tied back in a severe bun. She's balanced on heels so tall and thin Luke is amazed she's managed to stay upright.
"Congratulations," Luke says. He takes another sip of wine to fortify himself.
"I could say the same to you. I hear you have a fiancee now yourself," Callista says cheerfully. Translation: I'm glad you've moved on.
Luke nods. This is the first time they've spoken since she left him--no word, no warning, just a note. He doesn't ask her why now. She doesn't volunteer.
They chat for a few minutes more before she turns away, goes back to a wife and a life that have nothing to do with him anymore. He's alone again in the corner with an empty wine glass.
There's nothing to regret. Regret would imply choices, and Callista gave him none. It was her decision to leave him; he had no say in it. Sure, it hurt when she left, but he got over it, he tells himself firmly. Nothing is wrong now. Nothing at all.
It still hurts, watching her walk away again after all these years. To hear the sound of her laughter, exactly the same as he remembers it, and to no longer share it.
***
"See the red star up there, the bright one?" Luke says, pointing at the dot in question. "Anything that bright is actually a planet. That's Mars up there; Venus never gets that high above the horizon. That bright one up just past Mars, that's either Saturn or Jupiter, but I'm not sure which." Luke pushes the hair out of his forehead, pondering the options.
The sky over the Blue Ridge mountains is clear and cloudless tonight, with a no moon--the perfect night for stargazing, or getting beyond first base. He and Callista sprawl on their backs on a beat-up Pendleton blanket Luke scrounged up to drape over the X-wing's trunk. The wool is scratchy and coarse and hasn't been washed in a decade, but it'll have to do.
Luke sighs and gives up trying to identify the mystery planet. "I used to know this stuff, but as you can see I'm out of practice," he admits.
"I bet you were quite the astronomer," she says with a chuckle.
"You bet I was," Luke says, his confidence returning as he warms to his subject. "Wasn't much to do out on the farm after nightfall and we were too far away to get out to Taos much. Not so much light pollution out there like there is here--you could see the Milky Way and everything, and not just a 'big light blur' as Han calls it.
"I got a telescope for my birthday when I was twelve. I'd stay up all night watching the sky and dreaming of being an astronaut like my father." That was Anakin 'Skywalker' Lars, who had died when Luke was a baby. "I trained so hard, hoping NASA would let me in--but then my aunt and uncle died when I was seventeen, Ben took me in, and I ended up at JEDI instead on a scholarship."
"So that's where you got the nickname 'Skywalker' from. I wondered if there was a connection between you and Anakin Lars," Callista admits.
"Can you blame me? 'Luke Lars' is such a boring name. And it beat the hell out of 'Wormie', which is what the local kids used to call me 'cause I was so skinny."
"Kids are cruel like that," Callista agrees soberly. "Somehow, they always know where it hurts the most."
"You sound like you're talking from experience."
She shifts against him with a shrug. "My parents were captains on a research vessel, so I grew up on the ocean. Going to an actual school on land after that was... quite the shock. Made me think I should learn try studying the human species for a change--that's how I ended up at JEDI in their five-year teacher training program."
"Did you like it?"
"I loved it. Five years wasn't nearly enough."
Luke thinks about all the friends and camaraderie he'd never had in his own idiosyncratic education. "No, I guess not."
"But if I had..." Callista's voice trails off for a second before she gathers herself enough to finish the thought, "I would have died along with my advisor and the rest of my cohort in the fire. So it's really just as well--"
Luke reaches out to squeeze her hand. She squeezes back. They lie there in silence for a long time.
"Afterwards," Callista says, skirting around that dangerous topic. "I went into computers. Just a--hunch, really. I had a feeling it was going to come in handy. The universe has a sense of humor, you know?"
Luke deems that the conversation has moved sufficiently from serious topics that he can risk kissing her now, the way he's been itching to kiss her all night. She laughs, rising to meet his mouth as he leans over her, and pulls him down on top of her.
There's no more talk--at least, nothing coherent--for a long time after that.
***
Luke drives on. The moon hovers just above the treeline in the distance, so big and round, it's like he can drive there if he just keeps going. It's an optical illusion, of course--the moon will shrink in size as it rises, but the only thing that changes is perspective. Still, it's a compelling illusion, even though he's seen it happen hundreds of times before and ought to know better.
The sky tonight makes him feel like a boy again, lost in that dreamy sense of wonder that suffused all his adolescent astronomy sessions. He's been so busy with the academy in the old ruined army base outside Yavin, he hasn't had much time for stargazing recently. Running a boarding school-cum-working farm for troubled youth--based on the JEDI pedagogy, but with a few twists of his own--hasn't been easy.
He pauses at the overlook for a moment to check his phone for messages. No good can come from looking up Cray Ming's biography, especially not with so few bars, but he does it anyway. Her name is vaguely familiar, and he's sure he's heard it before.
His instincts are correct: she got her second doctorate at JEDI, but that's not how Luke knows her. She'd been in the news a few years back when her husband Nichos had died of a rare, incurable disease; the photographers, consciously or not, had focused on the grim expression on her lovely face rather than the twisted wreck of a man lying in bed beside her. Luke flips through the articles, growing more and more numb as the story becomes clear.
Dr. Cray Ming is an artificial intelligence expert, a genius in her field, with a MacArthur grant at the tender age of twenty-eight. No wonder Callista gets on so well with her. They have so much more in common than she and Luke ever did.
He wonders--idly, futilely, foolishly--how they met. Was it at JEDI, after the place was rebuilt following the fire? Maybe there are pictures on social media. Who is he kidding--there are totally pictures. He's tempted to keep searching, but wisely quits before he digs himself an ever deeper hole.
Why does it hurt so much? Luke's happy with Mara, with the life they've built for each other around her dancing and his school. He wouldn't change anything even if he could. He's genuinely glad Callista is doing so well. Why, then, does it hurt so much?
Yes, it was his first serious relationship... but is that really enough to explain the churning morass of emotions inside him?
He thought she'd stay with him forever--turns out, she was just passing through, like a comet. Now she'd come back after a decade, only to zing away again out of his orbit.
At least this parting doesn't hurt as much as the first one. Thank goodness for small mercies.
***
"Luke. Luke." Leia stands over Luke, shaking her finger at him as he slumps on the floor in a daze. "You can't go on like this. I'm worried about you. This"--she gestures to the dirty clothes strewn on the floor, the half-eaten food on the counter, the dirty dishes in the sink--"isn't a healthy coping mechanism. Trust me on this."
Leia knows all about loss. Her adopted family--her entire town--died when the local mining company set off an explosion that triggered an avalanche and buried Alderaan, California in a massive pile of rubble. Leia was en route with an injunction from a judge, too late to stop them. She didn't let her grief interfere with the wrongful death lawsuit she filed and won, which jump-started her nascent political career as the youngest US Senator in history.
"Whatd'ya want me to do?" Luke drawls, squinching his eyes shut as Leia opens the shades. His heart hurts. His chest hurt. Everything hurts. He hasn't felt this terrible since his aunt and uncle died or the day Han dared him to drink an entire bottle of moonshine.
"Road trip," Leia says crisply. "You like driving, don't you? Go out and drive until you're capable of acting like a human being again."
She's right, so he does. That's how he meets Mara Jade in a run-down, honky-tonk bar in the middle of nowhere, dancing to a drunken but appreciative audience. Somehow Luke coaxes her into letting him buy her a drink after her set, and learns she's a mechanic who dances on the side--partially to make money, partially because she dreams of a professional career someday. One thing led to another, and they'd talked the whole night through--and then, eventually, more than talked after a year of careful, patient courtship on Luke's part.
Mara is a traveler. She doesn't like being tied down, and Luke never forces her to choose between him and her dreams. But she likes him, she likes Yavin, she likes having a home to return to. And when Luke asks her to marry him, she says yes without hesitation.
Callista couldn't give Luke what he'd needed, and she'd been honest enough to walk away rather than pretend. He'd been the delusional one to believe it could be otherwise. And yet, if Callista hadn't left him when she did--he and Mara never would have met. Everything would be different now.
As Callista was fond of saying, "The universe has a sense of humor".
"Tell me about it," Luke whispers into the darkness, not sure if he's talking to her memory or to himself.
***
He gets back in the car and sets off down the road again. As the night deepens around him, his confusion eases, the grief and might-have-beens swept away in the growing calm. The X-wing's engines purr as the miles pile up on the speedometer and the hours slip away and he meanders down the mountains to Yavin. It's late enough there are few cars on the road now, and he's the only speck of light for miles. Just him and the stars.
His phone rings on the dashboard, knocking him out of his reverie. At first he thinks it's Leia--she always had a knack for knowing when he needed cheering up--but it's Mara. Her show must have just gotten out, he thinks, looking at the clock.
"Everything go okay at the reunion?" she says when he picks up.
Luke lets out a long breath. "It was fine. Everything went fine. I'm on my way back to Yavin now. How was did your performance go?"
He can hear her grin over the line. "Brought down the house. A standing ovation and two encores. I can't wait to see the critics' reactions. But you're dodging my question. Was everything okay at the reunion?"
"Yes and no," Luke says. "I saw Callista and... she's moved on. I've moved on. It's just... for a second, it was like nothing had ever changed, even though we're different people, with different lives. Did you know she's married now?"
Mara sniffs. "Her loss for passing on you, if you ask me."
"Your gain," Luke agrees with a smile. "You'll be home tomorrow, right?"
"That's right," Mara says. "Love you, farmboy."
"Love you, too," he says, and she hangs up.
Maybe, Luke thinks as he keeps driving, he'll pull his old telescope out of the attic when he gets home. It's dark enough out on the edge of the national forest that he might actually be able to see something interesting for a change, even with so much light pollution compared to New Mexico.
He's missed the stars. They've always been there, he just... hasn't been paying much attention to anything outside the academy lately. It'd be nice to have a hobby again, something to occupy his nights when Mara is on tour and his bed is cold and empty without her.
He hasn't looked at the telescope since Callista left. It's been a long time. Too long, really. And who knows--maybe the students will be interested in having an astronomy club. Maybe they'll feel that same sense of wonder Luke does--that sense of boyish invulnerability, where any and all dreams are possible.
The moon is high overhead by the time he pulls into the winding gravel driveway to the academy. Luke looks up at the clear sky as he brings the X-wing to a halt outside his door and sighs in relief.
It's good to be home.