Chapter Text
Luke is hunched over the table, muttering to himself as Camie saunters into the back room behind the repair shop. From the rising mess of papers spreading out around him in a cloud, she glimpses geometric shapes, curved arcs connecting points in space, lengthy reference tables listing the coordinates of stars, messily scrawled calculations done with a--
"Is that a slide rule?" Camie says, unable to contain her laughter.
Luke snaps the offending device shut with a clatter. His hunch deepens as he retreats inward like a singed sarlacc. "Yes."
"You do know there are droids for that, right? Nobody does it the hard way anymore."
Luke meets her gaze squarely for the first time. "I know. But I need to be able to do it for myself."
"Why?" She doesn't know why she cares, but her curiosity gets the better of her, and the question pops out before she can stop it.
Luke hesitates, sensing a trap.
She gives him what she hopes is a confident, winning smile, the kind that melts hearts and open doors. She's good at it--she's been practicing in the mirror every day since she was twelve. Luke has always been an easy target.
He caves, as he always does under pressure. Doesn't he realize how boring and predictable he is? He needs to grow up, develop more of a backbone if he expects her to be interested.
Quietly, he says, "If I'm going to be a pilot like my father, I have to know this stuff backwards and forwards."
His lower lip trembles slightly, and he flops a tuft of shaggy blond hair out of his eyes, but his voice is steady fervor of a religious convert, like the mad monks who live out in Beggar's Canyon and proselytize for alms. Whether it's true or not, Luke believes it wholeheartedly. His belief is strong enough that for a moment--just a moment--she believes it, too.
"Sure you will," she says, sitting on the table beside him. He doesn't protest that she's blocking his pages, just shifts slightly to give her some space. "'All you need is a fast ship and a star to sail her by.'"
It's a line from the opening of an old holoseries calld Star Dreams that she and Luke watched over and over again as kids, jammed together with the rest of the gang on the creaking couch still tucked away in the back corner of the shop. Then the disc, worn by years of use and the ever-present dust before it got to them, cracked and shattered and they'd never been able to get a replacement.
Luke was crushed by the loss. He'd loved that show--and so had Camie, though she'd done her best to hide her disappointment. Her favorite character was Carmela Vos, the glamorously fashionable Corellian who served as the navigator on the Star Dream space yacht, and the hero's designated love interest.
Maybe it was the similarity of their names or the fact that Carmela's the only girl in the show, but Camie spent countless hours fantasizing herself as Carmela Vos, whom she re-imagined as the heroine with a gleaming Kuat Drive Yards racer of her own, zipping from system to system with her crew at her back. Camie had acted out some of those stories where no one could see her, dreaming of adventure, excitement, a better life than anything this dustball had to offer.
But that was a long time ago. She's grown up now, and knows the harsh truth: real life doesn't work like that. The universe doesn't care what stories you tell yourself. Survival is the only thing that matters, and Camie decided long ago that fantasies could only get in the way.
Luke hasn't learned that lesson. Maybe he never will.
For a moment, she envies his blithe ignorance--followed by rolling waves of anger, disgust and pity in quick succession.
Luke senses her shift, or maybe it shows on her face, because he draws back. "What is it?"
"Nothing," Camie says quickly. Too quickly. She curses herself for a fool. Now he won't leave her alone until he ferrets out an answer.
He opens his mouth to speak, but she beats him to it, says the only thing that will stop him. "Leave it alone, Wormie!"
He shuts up at the nickname, as he always does. He hates it when she calls him that, and it's part of why she does it, to get back at him for that glaring optimism that makes her heart ache. It's too easy to needle him. He's too reactive. Too emotional. Too easy to read.
The sooner he learns to toughen up, the better. If it's not her, it'll be someone else. He can't hide forever from the grinding drain of life here. He can't live in his fantasies forever.
Still, she can't help feeling sorry for him when he pouts. She leans forward. "You really think you're going to do this, don't you?"
"'All I need is a fast ship and a star to sail her by,'" Luke sings back. His voice cracks a bit at the end, but he's got a good voice--better than hers, anyway. "Would you come with me? If you could?"
How dare he ask her this? How dare he assume that she cares? He hasn't learned a damned thing, has he?
"You don't even have a ship," she protests.
"I know. But would you?"
"This is entirely hypothetical. No, no, I won't."
"Okay, I get it," he says, not deterred in the slightest. "Someday I'll have a ship of my own, and things will be a different. Let me know if you change your mind then."
"Sure," she says flippantly, because it's easier than arguing. It'll never happen. His uncle will never let him leave the farm. Luke's so sun-blinded by his own dreams of glory, he's the only one who can't see it.
But enough is enough. She only came inside to get out of the heat for a bit and it's time to go back to work. She stands up, brushing the sand out of her skirt. "Good seeing you, Wormie. Take care."
He waves, and goes back to his calculations, humming the Star Dreams opening to himself as she stalks off with all the dignity she can muster. Still, she can't help thinking about the show all the way back to the shadehouse--that damn song is stuck in her head now, too.
Back at the shadehouse, Camie discovers a water line has burst, and precious liquid is spraying in all directions in a very expensive malfunction. By the time she's gotten it under control, she's soaked to skin, the conversation with Luke forgotten in the chaos.
It's only years later, after the Lars' farm burns to the ground, and rumors swirl of a Skywalker in the Rebellion--the pilot who destroyed the Death Star, no less--that she wonders if he was right to hope for something better, and she was the foolish one of the pair.
And if so--is it too late to make a different choice?