Archive of Our Own ^beta

Dex has been an active observer in a lot of rebellions.

Some of them are local skirmishes, others are galaxy-wide efforts to throw off tyranny. Many of them gain no foothold on Coruscant, but breed survivors that stagger through his door pleading for a place to rest, a bed on which to lay their burdens for an hour, or a week, or a lifetime.

Their eyes are a cocktail of anger-despair-hope-pain-love-fear, except for those who enter with the numb glaze of the living dead, ghosts with a pulse.

Dex knows all about ghosts. He’s acquired a lot of them in his time.

As a Besalisk, his lifespan is several times that of Humans from all worlds. Even in times of galactic peace, he has grown used to loss.

The galaxy hasn’t been at peace for a long time, now. An entire generation and a half has been raised with the Clone Wars and the Galactic Empire. Any Human who can really recall the peace of the Republic is middle-aged by now. And those foolish enough to speak of it longingly are soon added to the ghosts.

But even with the shadows of the past in every booth, in the familiar orders flowing into the kitchen, in the beleaguered faces that he leads to the back room, past the bathroom and accessible only through the walk-in freezer, he is unprepared for this specter.

She strides into his diner and makes her way straight to FLO. She is young, her white dress declaring her a senator from a prominent world, and she moves through Coruscant like she was born to rule it.

She has dark hair and eyes and the air around her vibrates with a righteous stubbornness and an intensity he’d only ever seen in a handful of Jedi…and Padmé Amidala. He nearly calls her name before he remembers reality (she’s dead, he’d watched her funeral seventeen years ago along with three-quarters of the galaxy’s population, dead with her babe unborn) and stills his tongue before he can greet her shade.

By the time FLO points her his way, Dex has recovered himself. She says one of a hundred code phrases he’s memorized and he shows her to the quiet room behind the walk-in freezer where he knows a contact will join her eventually.

He does not ask her name and she does not offer it. He has played this game too long to be foolish, and though the girl is young, she has all the dignity of the woman Dex remembers.

He does not see her when she leaves. But the Alliance for the Restoration of the Republic has a friend in him, and he knows she will be back.

The second time she arrives, she makes a great show of ordering and sitting at a booth. She suspects a tail, and Dex finds himself proud of her aplomb as the would-be-secretive Imperial Security Bureau agent who follows her in uncomfortably hunches in a booth (he’s too far away in the din to listen to a conversation with his ears alone, but that means nothing. The ISB is better equipped than any citizen can hope for), orders a caf and attempts to place himself in a position where he can keep an eye on her.

Dex settles himself at her table, directly blocking the agent’s view.

“Good to see you! I was beginning to think you’d forgotten about me,” he booms, grinning broadly.

“How could I ever forget a family friend?” the young senator replies, her own smile deliberately innocent and disarming as she reaches across the table to squeeze his forearm. The friendly gesture doubles as her own chance to check him for weapons or recording equipment. He lets her, feeling her youth in her inexperienced probe. He keeps his wide grin as she practices her subterfuge and comes up satisfied. “I haven’t seen you since I was eight! Mother always appreciated your Sic-Six cake, said it was the best cake this side of Corellia.”

Her Corellian contact is due at eight and will order the cake. His smile turns into one of fierce approval.

“Tell an old man about your life in the Senate,” he commands jovially, keeping a weather eye on Hermione as she keeps watch on the ISB agent in the midst of her whirlwind activity.

“Well, serving the people of Alderaan is an honor,” she begins, and he catches his own surprise that she’s not representing Naboo (the babe died unborn. Did it? When this child before him looks nothing like Senator Bail Organa and so very much like the woman entombed?). “...and I’m afraid I’m so inexperienced that I haven’t learned the ins and out yet,” she is confiding, every line in her body confessing to her lack of experience.

A few questions in, she casually taps a sequence on her wrist comm, hidden from view by her host’s bulk, and Dex knows that her contact will not be coming tonight. He rises after a handful more sentences and winks at her. “Good to see you, lass. I’ve got to get back to it, but you let Uncle Dex know if you need anything.” He turns and bellows. “FLO! Pot of caf, over here!”

She stays, sipping her caf and to all intents and purposes lost in her datapad of Senate legislation until FLO approaches the ISB agent and testily moves him along. Dex can tell that the man’s irritated by his lack of information and not yet convinced of the girl’s harmlessness, but they’ve done what they can. The senator is smart enough to linger for another hour (cake included. Maybe her mother, whoever she was, had sampled it at one time or another) before insisting on paying her bill in full and shooting him a grin.

His heart twists as another ghost lingers in the wake of her departure, but given who she looks like most of the time, he’s not surprised that this phantom has reared his head.

He has still not asked the girl’s name. But that victorious-mischievous smile is entirely Jedi Knight Skywalker.

The third time he sees her, it’s nearly two in the morning.

Dex’s Diner doesn’t close, but this is the true lull before the early-morning drunks flood the place looking for caf to sober them before going home, followed by the early-shifters looking for caf to wake them up before going to work.

She’s holding her arm at the wrong angle, and blood slashes her brown suit, staining it maroon. She leaves red prints on his floor as she rushes up to him, mute with pain, begging for safety. For the first time she looks neither like a senator nor a princess, but a wounded child in a bloodthirsty game she’s far too young to play.

Dex has met a lot of scarred children. He’s only been able to help some of them. He’s glad that she’s amongst them.

He takes her through to the backroom himself, stomping back out only to mutter to Hermione, “If anyone enters looking for her, have FLO detain them and call me. I’ll take a chunk out of the bastard myself.”

Most of him is surprised by the vehemence of his reaction, but the quieter part of him understands.

Dex has been quietly sympathetic to a lot of rebellions. He’s heard the stories of spies and saboteurs, soldiers and senators, freed slaves and repentant masters.

But his favorite story is a love story. A story impossible and fantastic featuring a senator and a Jedi writ large across the galaxy. A love story defiant of tradition, the odds, and common sense. Triumphant for a brief time and then, like all who set themselves against the jealous Fates, tragic.

As he gently sets the girl’s arm, he tells her this story.

“Dex.” Anakin Skywalker is standing in his doorway holding a massive, radiant bouquet of flowers that cost half the monthly rent of many of Coruscant’s denizens.

The Besalisk smiles his wide grin. “Skywalker. I’m flattered.”

The young man blushes, rolls his eyes. “No, they’re for…someone. She’ll be here later. Can I leave them with you?”

Dex raises his brow as he nods and accepts an armful of flora. A Jedi Padawan buying expensive flowers for a lady friend? No need to ask why the secrecy. The Jedi law of detachment is well-known.

He sets the flowers near the fridge in the kitchen, the cold keeping them fresh as he tries (and fails) not to wonder exactly who is going to pick them, and their attached letter, up.

Several hours later, a figure well-known to all who watch the Senate’s channel on the holonet sweeps in. She is dressed plainly in dark colors, but nothing can hide the striking lines of her face and figure, the incisive intelligence of her eyes.

Dex knows before Amidala opens her mouth that the flowers are for her (Obi-Wan once told him that he must be Force sensitive, and marveled at the fact that he had not been found by the Temple. Dex winked at him and told him he’d happily take a lightsaber any day), and hands her the bouquet before she can ask.

She gasps at the rich blossoms, cheeks flushing as she looks over the riot of color representing a half-dozen worlds. “Oh, Ani,” he hears her breathe, the name a laugh and a prayer. She recalls herself and smiles at him. “Thank you, Dex,” she says, and her voice belongs to a gracious senator, but her eyes sparkle with the genuine gratitude of a woman in love.

He is not surprised to see the young Jedi again less than a fortnight later. Skywalker charms FLO into giving him the best booth (the one seated farthest from the door and sunk three-quarters in shadow). He orders both caf and ardees and sits, fidgeting impatiently with the handle of his mug.

She arrives a half-hour later, and Skywalker’s entire being changes, his broody restlessness transforming instantly into a shining happiness that leaks through the restaurant. Even the two businessmen arguing near the door relax in the backwash of the Jedi’s joy.

She slides into the booth opposite and threads her fingers with his. Their voices are low, but Dex can almost see stress sloughing off both of them as they laugh together. He catches the flash of a small gemstone on her hand (she never wears it anywhere else that he ever sees - and after that day he looks every time she’s one air. Her hand is always strikingly bare for the holocams) as she gestures, and he smiles as he serves the next round of orders.

Married. A Jedi and a senator. That’s unusual.

“Dex, I need to make some tzai. Can I use your kitchen?” It is midnight.

The Besalisk freezes for an instant and slowly, unhurriedly, turns to examine the taut-faced Jedi using their long established code phrase.

“The kitchen is always open for those who make tzai,” he rumbles back.

Skywalker tilts his head and brushes through the kitchen. He does indeed grab a kettle, two mugs, and a mostly-empty jug of selkie’s milk before vanishing through the walk-in freezer.

Dex glances at the clock. He gives it fifteen minutes max before—

—the door opens and she strides in. “Dex, I hear you’re serving tzai,” she says with a smile. He gestures to the back.

“Right through there, Senator.”

She, too, disappears, and he grunts approvingly. Refugees and freed Tatooine slaves have been coming through his storeroom since before either Skywalker or Amidala was born. There are many rituals using tzai, but only one between lovers.

To his surprise, Amidala emerges a bare handful of minutes later and approaches him shyly. “Dex. We need your assistance in the kitchen.”

He is momentarily stunned before he smiles broadly and follows her into the hidden room.

Skywalker kneels on a hand woven rug of tinpur, one of Tatooine’s few native grasses. The tinpur has been dyed before weaving, faded red dunes under pale blue sky. A slave’s pattern. Dex stares down at it, lifts his head to the young man kneeling on it.

“You wove it?”

“My mother,” he whispers, suddenly a boy. His fingers trace the blue without looking. “Skywalker colors.”

Dex knows slave rugs and their patterns. A slave owns only their own Name. Their rugs carry their names, their family woven into the design, a reminder even after the masters sell their parents and take their children. He’s met Twi’leks, Rodians, Humans with scarcely a scrap more than the clothes on their backs clutching their rug with more care than they have for their last credit chip.

The Jedi is not Freeborn. Dex is enormously humbled by Skywalker’s naked honesty. How many in the galaxy know that their new-minted hero-general was born in chains on the Outer Rim?

Skywalker clears his throat. The boy vanishes and a determined young man kneels on the mat. He reaches with a steady hand to place a steaming mug of tzai in Dex’s large fingers. The chef takes it, conscious of the honor he has been given.

Amidala is given the second mug as she kneels across from him on the tinpur mat, and as she wraps her slender hands around the warm ceramic, Skywalker’s larger hands cover hers, fragrant tzai held between them.

“I know we are already married on Naboo, but on Tatooine,” he begins softly, blue eyes never leaving her face, “my people swear marriage in front of only Ar-Amu, our Mother, represented by a single witness. Traditionally, it is a Grandmother, a Keeper of Stories, but, here on Coruscant, Ar-Amu is honored by the presence of a Guardian.”

Dex has never thought of himself that way, but Skywalker’s chosen title resonates in his bones, plucking a comforting melody on his heart strings. Guardian.

The Jedi turns to him and hands Dex three cords of dyed Bantha yarn, draping them carefully over his wrist before returning his hands to his bride and speaking in a solemn, rhythmic voice.

“I, Anakin Skywalker, desert-born son of the suns, do swear before our Mother, Ar-Amu, and her three children, the moons that light our way to freedom, to hold you, Padmé Naberrie, mistress of my heart until the suns shall fade.” He takes the tzai from her hands and drinks deeply. Dex copies him, Ar-Amu accepting his vow as the Besalisk drinks from his mug.

Amidala’s mouth is curved in a smile, dark eyes brilliant with their own light as she replies. “I, Padmé Naberrie, sea-born daughter of Naboo, do swear before our Mother, Ar-Amu, and her three children, the moons that lit your way to me, to hold you, Anakin Skywalker, master of my heart until the seas should dry out.” It is her turn to drink, and Dex raises his mug in unison.

Skywalker (Anakin now, he’s serving as Ar-Amu’s sacred witness at the boy’s wedding, surely Dex can call him Anakin in the safety of his own brain) takes the tzai mug, sets it aside and reaches for the first Bantha hair cord.

He takes her right hand in his. “Under Ghomrassen’s eye, I promise you my protection, that you might never endure Depur’s lash.” As Padmé repeats the vow, Anakin weaves the deep red cord around their wrists.

The second cord. “With Guermessa’s blessing, I offer you the fullness of my labor, that you and our children may never want for anything with me at your side.” Green joins the red fastening them together.

Anakin lifts the last, vibrant blue cord. “In Chenini’s light, I pledge you my love, faithful and eternal, ever-present even when hidden.” As Padmé responds, the blue joins its siblings, binding their wrists together in a triple infinity loop.

The Jedi lifts their half-drunk tzai and takes a swallow. Padmé takes the mug with her free hand and finishes it. Dex drains his, places his hand over their joined hands and speaks his part in the ceremony:

“Ar-Amu welcomes your union, son of the suns and sea-born daughter. May your children laugh free under unfettered skies.”

The bridal couple lean forward, foreheads touching briefly before she tilts her head and Anakin’s mouth lowers to hers.

Dex rises and leaves them to their celebration. There are sacred things that are secret between lovers, even from Ar-Amu.

The clone troopers don’t often visit Dex’s. Of the few he’s met, all belong to either Kenobi’s 212th or Skywalker’s 501st. None of them come for food – a clone always heralds disaster.

So when the diner door flies open to a shaved head of blond roots staggering under the burden of a much taller figure over his shoulder, Dex is surprised and dismayed. When he identifies the unconscious figure dressed entirely in black robes, surprise rapidly becomes pained shock.

“What’s happened?” he asks as he leads the clone and his burden into the back.

“Seppie bomb. A trap. Not sure about the true target, but General Kenobi was tracking the culprit with him. He said there wasn’t enough time to get topside to the Temple and told me to come here.” Dex can see that the clone doesn’t understand why. This is not a clinic that can provide Anakin his much-needed medical care.

Dex tosses the clone a first aid kit that is ridiculously well-stocked for a diner and comms a frequency he’s never used personally.

“Senator Amidala,” comes the crisp reply.

“Senator. You have an appointment you’re missing. Should I tell him to order the tea and cake?” he says, deliberately keeping his voice even.

He hears her breath catch on her end of the line. “That time already? Thank you so much for the reminder. I’ll be there immediately.”

She arrives within twenty minutes, and the clone trooper snaps a salute. Dex can tell he’s completely unsurprised by her presence. “Captain Rex, I’m glad you’re here,” she says warmly as she drops to her knees next to the bed where Anakin lies. He’s clearly breathing. The captain has done a thorough job with the bandages, covering the worst of the damage on the Jedi’s bared torso, but his furrowed brow betrays his pain, even in unconsciousness.

“Ani? I’m here,” she murmurs. He rustles towards her, though he doesn’t wake, and she weaves her fingers through his, pressing a kiss to his forehead.

Dex slides out into the kitchen, the clone captain, Rex, beside him.

“He’ll be safe here,” the Besalisk says softly. “You can join General Kenobi.”

Rex cocks him a Look. “Can’t say that I can. Commander Cody has him well in hand. My mandate is to watch out for General Skywalker.”

“Caf?” Dex asks.

The captain does not slump or otherwise change his stiff stance. But Dex can feel the relief and gratitude pouring off him when he says “Please.”

The senator and the Jedi hurtle through the door and come straight around the counter into the kitchen without stopping. The diner goes silent, his patrons’ heads turn to watch them with the natural curiosity of the galaxy’s sentients when witnessing something more exciting than your average mid-afternoon meal.

Glass shatters in the restaurant. Not ‘I’ve-just-dropped-my-tray’ shattering. More ‘fiery-objects-are-flying-through-the-window’ shattering. Curiosity rapidly morphs into panic, screaming replacing the silence as they stampede for the door, flame licking towards the booths.

Two sisters are trapped as the fire spreads across the door. “Come here!” Padmé calls, gesturing for them to jump over the counter. The sisters glance at them, at the flame blocking their exit, and scramble over. Dex gestures for the senator, Anakin, and the sisters to stay down and hold still. Without taking his eyes from the fire crackling furiously beneath the smashed window, he reaches under a fruit basket and draws out a blaster pistol, handing it to the senator.

“Don’t move,” Dex orders them, his voice so low it’s almost a growl.

Even as the smell of speeder fuel floods his nostrils, he hears the pressure of a fire extinguisher and FLO is busy applying both extinguisher and her own metal roller, white cloud already rising as she smothered the flame.

“It’s safe to leave now.” He smiles at the sisters huddled under the counter, but Anakin throws out an arm.

“Duck!” he snarls, and vaults over the counter to land in the middle of the restaurant, arm outstretched.

Dex freezes to watch something he’s only ever seen on holocam as the Jedi stops the next projectile in mid-air before it can explode through a second window. It hovers, quivering for a moment, before bursting, spitting fire on durasteel walkways, quickly extinguished.

“Take them to the back room,” the Jedi orders, igniting his lightsaber. “If they leave now, they might get shot.”

“Who’d you kriff up with this time?” Dex asks the Jedi, amused.

“Not me. Her,” Anakin cuts his eyes towards his wife, who’s still behind the barricade of the kitchen counter, blaster pistol aimed at the broken window, eyes narrowed against the haze. “Bounty hunters.”

“Before I met you, I thought the life of a politician was boring,” Dex sighs, glancing down at Padmé.

“Bounty hunters? You karking kidding me?” the elder sister barks.

“Sorry about that,” Padmé mutters, wincing.

“And Jedi,” her younger sister spits, glaring at Anakin. Dex and Padmé both glance at her in surprise, but there’s no time to unpack the world of resentment in her tone.

“Hey. Big guy. You got another one of those?” Eldest asks, gesturing to Padmé’s pistol.

“Can you use it?” Dex doesn’t know the sisters, they’re not regulars. In fact, he’s sure he’s never seen them before. But he can peg a pair of orphans trying to tough it out from the next system over.

“‘Course,” she snorts.

“Under the bant-flour,” he jerks his head. “But there’s only one.”

“That’s alright. Trace can’t shoot anyway.”

“Like you’re the galaxy’s best sharpshooter, Rafa,” the younger girl, Trace, rolls her eyes.

“Quiet,” Padmé breathes, somehow both reassurance and command, pistol steady on the door.

Stillness settles over them, even their breathing muffled as the thickness of expectation winds around them. For a long moment, it seems that the Corellian cocktails were the beginning and the end of the show—

—blaster fire sounds, echoing off steel and glass. Anakin blocks six shots in rapid succession. Despite her earlier scorn, Trace’s eyes are wide as not a single shot damages makes it past the lightsaber.

“Who sent them?” Dex mutters out of one side of his mouth.

“Dooku,” Padmé replies coolly. “I seem to have gotten under his skin. Again.” Another barrage of fire, this time longer, swifter. One bolt scores a table top, scorching it all the way across. The senator peels off a shot through his destroyed window. Dex can’t see anything, but Anakin flashes her a grim smile.

“Good eye,” he compliments his wife.

“We don’t all need Jedi powers to hit our targets,” she flirts back.

It’s Dex’s turn to roll his eyes, and Trace giggles at him.

A comm beeps and it’s Anakin who answers. Dex can’t make out the other side of the conversation as the Jedi twists and lunges and parries, deflecting blaster fire. One returned bolt shatters a lamp, and he winces.

“I’m sending the bill for that to the Temple,” Dex rumbles, and all three women shake with silent laughter.

“Yes, now would be a good time, Master!” Anakin is yelling into his comm.

A vicious burst of blaster fire shatters the three remaining windows and Padmé throws herself over the girls, curling them beneath the counter as best she can as Dex begins to fire his blaster in earnest.

The sounds of a second lightsaber swinging, of GAR troops yelling commands, of jetpacks suddenly firing and stifled grunts as blasters find their targets, Dex’s weapon is levelled, but still now, he doesn’t want to hit any of the clones—

—and silence descends so rapidly it’s almost smothering.

“Think that’s the lot of them, sir,” Kenobi’s commander salutes the Jedi as the latter strolls into the diner eyebrows raised, assessing the damage.

“You certainly did make a mess of this place, Anakin,” he says dryly.

“Just defending the senator to the best of my ability, Master,” he deadpans back.

“Indeed.”

“He did well, Master Kenobi,” Padmé smiles, gesturing for the girls to stand with her. The street urchins do, looking deeply uncomfortable. Dex sees that Rafa has rapidly hidden his blaster in the folds of her coat. He’ll need to get it back from her before she takes off. He knows her type and he certainly doesn’t blame her (she and her sister will now always be welcome to a free meal here), but a blaster pistol in untrained hands is a danger to the wielder.

“You got them all?” Anakin is addressing Captain Rex, who throws a sharp salute.

“Every single one, General. Two of them aren’t going to be able to answer to the court, but the other three have trials to look forward to.”

Dex peers around at the mess they’ve made of his diner and heaves a deep sigh. Droids are quick and he's owed plenty of favors by people who own useful ones, but they’ll be out of business for at least the next three days.

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” he tells Captain Rex, “but I really hope I never see you in here again.” He slaps the clone on the back and nearly knocks him over. “Unless you’re ordering dinner!”

Dex stares when he recognizes her. Then he deliberately jerks his gaze away and focuses on the counter, rubbing an already-spotless surface to keep his face down and hide the massive grin threatening to break it in half.

She is clearly hiding it, and her designers and seamstresses are to be commended for their part in keeping the secret. But she is obviously pregnant for one who knows where to look. At least seven months along, by his estimate. She slides into a booth, ignored by the rest of the clientele. She politely declines FLO’s offer of caf and fidgets restlessly, surprisingly anxious for a woman he’s seen fend off blaster fire without breaking a sweat.

When Anakin enters, it’s like a star enters with him. She rises swiftly, and his joy is so immediate, so overwhelming, it is tangible in the air.

Conversations get slightly louder, and peels of laughter break out at several tables, every sentient present buoyed unconsciously by the Jedi’s unvarnished happiness.

They turn as one towards the tiny corridor that will lead them to the walk-in freezer and the little room behind it. Dex gives them a quiet nod as they duck inside.

He can’t hear them (what is the point of a secret room if it isn’t soundproofed, after all?), but Anakin emerges a double handful of minutes later wearing an expression both elated and serious and hands Dex a hastily-scribbled recipe on a piece of actual flimsi.

“This is my mother’s recipe for tzai,” he says softly. “Would you mind making it?”

Dex stares at the flimsi for a long minute, then carefully takes the scrap in his massive fingers and begins to brew. When he is finished, he takes two mugs and the ancient teapot to them.

“You need a mug for you, Dex,” Padmé says with a smile.

“So our child will know you’re part of the family, too,” Anakin adds, and his beam is so wide the Besalisk is surprised it hasn’t actually dislocated his jaw.

“Congratulations,” Dex said with a broad smile of his own. “Boy or girl?”

“Boy,” says Padmé.

“Girl,” Anakin declares firmly at the same time.

“One of each then!” Dex booms, and they chuckle as they drink their tzai.

“Either way, they’re going to be a blessing,” Anakin murmurs.

“I’ll drink to that,” Dex says, clinking his mug against the happy couples’. When finishes his drink, he extends the handwritten recipe back to Anakin, who gently pushes it back towards him.

“You witnessed our marriage, and are the first to know about our child. You are family. You have earned the right to that recipe. Keep it.”

Dex chuckles. “I’ll make it as often as you want.”

“I look forward to taking you up on that,” the Jedi replies.

“I never saw them again,” Dex finishes softly. The girl’s arm has been wrapped for awhile, but she hasn’t stopped or interrupted or even looked away from him since he started.

“Never?” she whispers, stricken.

“Never. Within a handful of days it all came to an end. The war. The Jedi. The Republic. Everything changed.”

She swallows. “And they…their baby…?”

“Anakin Skywalker was a Jedi and a hero of the Republic. Padmé Amidala was a ferocious defender of democracy. As far as I know, neither survived the endgame of the Emperor’s rise. Padmé is buried on Naboo – I watched her funeral live on the holonet, along with every other sentient in the galaxy. As for their child…she was still pregnant when they laid her to rest. Anakin…I cannot say. No one has ever been able to verify exactly what happened to him. But that’s not unusual for the Jedi – there are a number whose fate is still unknown. I would guess he fell when Vader sacked the Temple.”

The young senator is still for a long time. When she rises, she does so stiffly, careful with her arm.

“Thank you. For telling me,” she says softly. Dex notices that she does not ask why he told her. Perhaps she knows the story is hers in that same indefinable way that he does.

“They deserve to be remembered,” is all he says.

He sees her with regular infrequency over the next two years. Much of the time she is playing with a fire that seems to be growing ever-hotter, the close calls getting closer, the near-misses eked out by margins grown thin as a razor.

On a few rare occasions, she comes just to visit. Dex likes those times best.

Shortly after her nineteenth birthday, she stands in his doorway. She does not enter for a long moment, but her sable eyes travel over each worn surface, every scuff on the chrome lining of his counter and tables, the worn yak leather of his booths. The tabletop that still bears the scar of blaster fire, memento of a long-ago battle when the galaxy was a different place.

When her gaze finally meets his, it is all too easy to see the reality written there. She is leaving. And with the state of the galaxy now, and her place in it, she may never be back.

“What’ll it be, Princess?” he asks jovially, masking his sorrow over her departure with the ease of much practice.

She is quiet for a long moment before she says: “Tzai, please.”

Tzai is a drink for family, for allies in their desperate struggle against the masters. Dex’s recipe belongs to the Skywalkers. He hasn’t made it for anyone since that final, joyful meeting. The last spark of light before everyone was enveloped by the dark.

But she knows what she is asking. And he knows, somewhere in his aging bones, that she has every right to request it. He makes them tzai, and sits across from her as they drink in silence.

“I go offworld tomorrow,” she offers finally, her mug empty. “On a diplomatic mission to Alderaan.”

“I wish you the best of luck, Princess.”

She smiles as she rises, her mouth opening to form some pithy comment, when her face grows serious and she looks down at him, through him in that way that Padmé, Anakin and Obi-Wan always had.

“May the Force be with you, Dex,” she murmurs her treason, and walks out the door.

It is a long time before Dex can bring himself to stand. Longer still to clean the mug she’d used.

Dex has been actively involved in a lot of rebellions. He’s seen many of the best fall as The Cause claims them.

He prays this time that the Force truly is with them, that hers is not a screaming defiance in the face of the Fates. That she will not be joining his collection of ghosts.

He sets her mug aside on a shelf to gather dust and wait for her return.