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She was holding the photograph when he walked through the door. He knew which one it was immediately, if only by a glimpse of the wooden frame. Usually it sat at the very edge of his desk, the picture closest to the chair where his students sat - easy for curious colleagues to grab.
Luke knew what they would see - he had that picture memorized, if only from staring at it while he avoided grading papers. Himself, Leia and Han, wrapped up in Chewie’s arms: Han looking absolutely miserable as they each planted a kiss on one cheek, Leia’s perm, the dark green of her scrunchie, the corner of the AC/DC logo on Han’s shirt, Chewie’s round, dollar store sunglasses that were cut in half - along with the rest of his head - by the top of the frame, Luke himself sporting stitches over his chin and a black eye - the photo had been taken only a week after he had wrapped his Chevy Chevelle, along with all of its precious modifications his father had made, around a telephone pole.
The girl in his office tapped her pencil absentmindedly across her knee; she held the frame like she was afraid she would drop it. She hadn’t heard him enter, but Luke didn’t want to sneak up on her, so he knocked a fist twice against the wooden doorframe.
“Oh, I’m sorry-” she fumbled with the frame, made to put it back on the desk, then made to stand with it still clutched in her hand.
“Please, there’s no need.” Luke waved at her to sit back down and she was caught hovering, already blushing.
“Oh no but I’m - really I’m so sorry. Your door was open and I thought I might wait inside. I’m Rey.” Right, Rey. “We had office hours scheduled for 2:45. I didn’t mean to be early, it’s just -”
“You’re not early,” he tossed his bookbag onto the armchair, tugged the blinds open, ignored the aching in his knees as he shuffled around the corner of his desk. They had been stiff more and more often these past few months - he’d started meditating with his legs crossed instead of sitting back on his heels. It was only a matter of time before he would need one of those yoga blocks, or, god forbid , a cushion. “I’m late.”
“Well I didn’t want to say so, sir.” She was back to standing, holding the picture out between them with one hand, her shoulders curled like he had caught her scooping Werthers from the jar on his desk. “This is yours, I didn’t mean to snoop.”
“I don’t mind,” said Luke, returning the photograph to its rightful position, if only to make her feel better. She had a faint accent. It reminded him of his uncle. “Now, in your email it said that you were struggling with the Mohanty reading -”
“Is that you in the photograph? On the left.” Rey’s eyes were fixed on the back of the frame, and Luke had never minded being interrupted by a question. There was something about her he recognized, some vital, beating aspect of her person. Like she was trying so hard not to be curious, when it was increasingly, painfully obvious that curiosity was her natural state.
Friendly, inquisitive, Luke wished he could remember her from class - where she sat, who she sat with - but the lecture hall was just so big. She didn’t seem like the kind of student who would readily raise her hand in front of others.
Rey was on the edge of her seat, quite literally, her backpack pressed between her feet, as her knees jumped up and down. He could feel the nervous energy rolling off of her in waves. She didn’t want to pry, but she couldn’t help but ask. Luke knew that kind of kid - he had been that kind of kid: hanging onto Obi-Wan’s elbow, asking too many questions, spending hours exploring in the grotto only to come home with mud and bits of leaf in his hair. Leia and him would race, and wrestle, and climb trees just to see over the tops, make forts in old groves that they would visit when they were older..
He wondered if Rey had any siblings, anyone to play with - even university students need to play sometimes, if Gadamar was to be believed - and knew, almost immediately, that she did not.
“Myself, my sister, her husband, and our friend.” He tried to speak encouragingly, to show that he didn’t mind the new direction of the conversation.
Her hair was scraped back into a bun, the way his sister used to wear it when she would come back from the gym: her walkman clipped to her shorts, the bassline of whatever rock song she was listening to so heavy he could hear it through their shared wall. Whenever he would rap a knuckle across the paint, trying to bury himself in the newest Nat Geo, or Kit Fisto adventure novel, Leia would stick a finger around the door frame - just one.
He had taken to plugging his headphones into his record player, lying on his twin bed with his eyes closed, listening to the familiar voice of the grandfather he had hardly known; they still had some of his old guest lectures on vinyl. He couldn’t remember at what point their father had stuck those little plastic glow-in-the-dark stars to the ceiling of his room. He’d done it to Leia’s too, and had done it in the room they’d shared before, when they still had bunk beds. If he squinted for long enough, Luke could almost see Orion.
Rey’s eyes roamed over the rest of his office, pausing at the various frames on the walls, the photos tacked to the corkboard behind his chair. Smiling at a small polaroid leaning against his favourite coffee-mug - Chewie and Ben the day he had been born, Ben’s chubby fist knotted in the tangles of Chewie’s beard as he roared in pain - her nose crinkled at the bridge.
“That’s my nephew,” Luke spoke unprompted, “he’s actually enrolled here now.”
“Would I know him?” Asked Rey, gaze tracking past his shoulder to the family photo pinned to the paint: Luke and Leia, small enough that their grandfather had still been able to lift them, dangling like monkeys, one off each arm; their mother - in the yellow dress which had hung for years, untouched, in Leia’s closet - slung over their father’s shoulders like a sack of flour; Ahsoka giving Obi-Wan an extraordinarily lopsided piggy-back. If you squinted, you could see the block letters of the venue in the background: The Who By the Numbers. While jazz had owned his grandfather’s soul, his father had always loved Classic Rock.
Luke shuffled at the papers on his desk. He had placed the Mohanty reading there earlier, anticipating that he and Rey would go through it together - but it seemed as though that might have to wait until later. “That depends, what classes are you in?”
“Archaeology ones mostly. Your class is my only elective this year, sir.” She had moved on from photographs to furniture, and Luke was suddenly more aware than ever of chips in the varnish of his desk, the plants that littered every surface, the throw pillow embroidered with native wildflowers Chewie had stitched for his birthday, the bent little bonsai on his windowsill that reminded him of his old teacher - but that had been so many years ago now.
“Luke is fine. You have Professor Unduli, then?”
“For my intro to biological anthropology.”
“Then I’m not sure you share anything with Ben. He’s a visual arts major - well actually this is his third major, he keeps switching. Nothing wrong with that, of course. I hope you like Professor Unduli - she’s an old friend of my uncle’s.” He was rambling, an old habit, but Rey didn’t seem to mind.
In fact, because she brightened at the details, he pointed to the small frame beside his Masters degree: himself and Obi-Wan side by side, streaks of grey scattered liberally through his uncle’s hair and beard, his glasses slightly crooked, Luke’s diploma crumpled between them, his cap slipping off the back of his head. “That’s him there. He used to work in the English department. British literature. Modern poetry. What else are you taking this year?”
Rey slid to the back of her chair, crossing her legs finally at ease - although her left heel still beat an unsteady rhythm against the hardwood. Her jeans were a few sizes to big; she had belted them with a piece of shoelace twisted through the loops. “Intro to ancient sanctuaries, cultural and linguistic anthropology with Doctor Ackbar, intro to military history with Hux.” When Luke grimaced at the last one, she smiled fully, genuine, dimples on either cheek. “I don’t like him either, sir - I mean Luke. But Professor Unduli is one of my favourites, she’s brilliant. Though archaeology is my major, so I’m biased. Have all your family attended Coruscant University?”
“Some of them.” He offered her a candy. “My sister used to be a guest lecturer for military history.”
“Really?” She held the Werthers, unopened, in the palm of her hand. It looked like a coin. “When is she coming next? Maybe I’ll sit in.”
Oh. “Well -” and Luke didn’t want to say it to Rey, whose smile was so earnest and expectant. Didn’t want to shut her down, when it seemed she wasn’t used to having all her prying questions answered. He didn’t want to think about it. Didn’t want to think about how Ben had been the one to find her, keeled over in the garden, lily petals, crushed to powder, still clutched in her hand. “Not for a while, I’m afraid.”
His heart was thumping, but Rey blazed past his dishonesty. “Military history is so different from ecology. I like all the plants in your office - especially that one. Though I don’t know what it is.” She pointed to Philodendron perched on the filing cabinet behind him.
A small tremor ran its way down Luke’s hand as he pointed and named it. He prayed she didn’t notice. “They’re an easy beginner plant. If you take some upper-year forestry or ecology courses you’ll get to do some identification and research with our local wildlife.”
And then, because Rey was leaning forward, he continued with the rest of his plants in the room, laughing when she called a birds’ nest fern “useless spinach”. Luke ended his tour with the cat tree in the corner which currently housed two tropicals and a sprouting money tree.
He’d never taken it down from his office, even long after Artoo was gone - hadn’t even thought about it really. Even some days, years later, he would glance towards the branches, and expect to see his motley grey cat sprawled in the sun.
It seemed only yesterday that Obi-Wan had stood on his doorstep, his jacket hanging off his shoulders, and a box in his hands. You’ll have to forgive me, I didn’t know if it was appropriate . He had seemed appalled at the contents of his own gift, the tiny kitten that could fit in the palm of Luke’s hand. He was biting at his thumbnail as he spoke, he had been doing that a lot those days, and scrubbing a hand over his jaw while they all pretended not to see that he was crying. Well, I only know that when your grandfather passed away, I would have … I didn’t know if - and Luke had wrapped his uncle in a hug and tried not to notice the pearly whiteness of his hair.
Obi-Wan had been keeping Leia’s gift, a golden kitten named Threepio, waiting for her in his campus-side house. But by the time she had flown back, greeted by one more funeral than expected, it was far too late for him to be able to give her the cat in person.
“You certainly have a lot.” Rey was finally unwrapping her candy, movements slow and deliberate, like she was afraid of making too much noise.
Luke stood, a twinge in his low back - their tangent had reminded him the plants needed to be watered. “I enjoy them.” The watering can was nestled against the legs of his desk; it took longer than it should have to bend over and grab it.
“And you have a lot of photographs.”
“Well, I have a lot of family.”
It was the wrong thing to say, he saw that almost instantly. Rey’s smile didn’t slip - but it flickered.
Someone struck a match against Luke’s ribcage. Abruptly, his chest was warm, full of sparking fire, heart composed of heavy, heavy flame. He wanted to drape a fluffy blanket over her shoulders, he wanted to thrust the entire jar of Werthers under her nose, to knit her a pair of woollen socks and matching mittens.
“Why don’t I make us some tea?”
***
They were on their third cup by the time it started to rain. Luke switched on his lamp; Rey pulled a hoodie - dark brown and covered in paint stains - from her bag. The sky was flat, grey, raindrops tapping inconsistently against the window from a cloud too high to see. In only a matter of seconds, the pavement that ran past the Natural Science building was soaked to shining.
Luke had pulled the corkboard off his wall and set it on the desk between them. They had talked about travelling and piloting, native forestry and invading species. Their conversation was becoming a rug, rich colour woven together, small at first, but growing bigger with each topic they glanced over. One thread on stargazing had taken them nearly thirty minutes. Rey tied it off with a nod towards the damp sky. “No stargazing tonight.”
Together they bent back over the photographs: Ben at his kindergarten graduation, missing both front teeth; Luke and Chewie brandishing two misshapen vases at the pottery class Luke bought him for Christmas; Leia in uniform with her unit; Han in the pilots seat of the biplane he had bought with his last paycheque from PanAm; their father, sprawled over the green gingham couch that had always sat in the dusty sunroom of Luke’s grandfather’s house, long hair tucked behind his ears, Led Zeppelin shirt rumpled - he had always seemed effortlessly young and cool, infinitely cooler than all the other parents Luke knew - with the twins balanced one on each knee.
“When was that one taken?” She was referring to a print of Leia and him brandishing triple scoops of Kanata’s ice cream outside the theatre.
“Let’s see, I’m pretty sure Han took that after we were kicked out of a screening of Pulp Fiction… It would have been ‘94.”
“That explains this, then,” said Rey, pointing to his yellow leather jacket.
“Oh please,” said Luke, “it was all the rage.”
To demonstrate his point further, he pulled his well-worn copy of The Practice of Silviculture off of his shelf. It was a first edition; it had been a Christmas present from Leia, too many years ago. And just like it had been when she first handed the book to him, there was a photograph of the four of them sprawled over the roof of the Falcon - the Volkswagen Wagon that Han and Chewie had lived out of before they met Luke and Leia. As Rey laughed, he happily pointed out the tacky blue panelling Han had installed himself.
The last time Luke had seen Han, it had been four weeks after the funeral. He was slinging bags into the back of the Falcon, Chewie already bent beneath the hood. Sunshine beating down over his now-grey hair, his brother-in-law had stood with his hands on his hips, his smile just a fraction too tight.
Last chance, Luke .
The Falcon’s last hurrah - a month long road trip that had turned into a year, and then three. As far as Luke knew, the wagon was still oozing gas somewhere in the Chaparral. Whenever he thought of his friends, driving down god-knows-what highway, blasting the classic rock music Leia used to love, it felt like vines were trailing up his lungs and thorns were sitting behind his eyes.
I can’t leave-
Your students, yeah yeah. Heard you the first time. Well, if you change your mind... Han had slapped the side of his beloved vehicle. A sprinkle of rust made its way to the ground.
And then Luke had taken one last look at Han’s crooked, mischievous smile, and seen his own pity reflected there.
Leaving had taken only a little longer. While Chewie had toiled away at the engine with a wrench, the majority of Han’s time was spent cursing over the popped lens of his aviators. By the time the Falcon rolled down Leia’s driveway, where it had been parked for nearly twenty years, the sun was dimmed against the city skyline.
Luke had hazarded a wave. He didn’t offer a hug, not even when Chewie had given a disappointed grunt. He didn’t even say goodbye - not because he thought he would see them again soon, but because he didn’t want to admit they were at their point of separation. In response, Han had stuck one arm frantically out the window, wedding ring glinting in the fast-fading light, his eyes already glued to the road ahead.
“Professor,” Rey said, watching him shove the enormous volume back onto the shelf, “the Mohanty reading…”
Ah, of course . The Mohanty reading. The thing Rey had originally came to his office to discuss. Luke set down his cup. “Alright.”
“Why is it on the course?”
“Now, Miss Plutt -”
Her hand slipped over the tea cup. “Just Rey.”
Luke frowned, more alarmed at the way her eyebrows had drawn together than the droplets of jasmine that were now on his desk. “Oh, I’m sorry. I must have read your email wrong.” He passed her a box of tissues before reaching for his laptop. Their exchange had been right at the top of his inbox. “But then, on my attendance list…”
“Plutt is the name of my last legal guardian.” She was staring down at the teacup, the tissue nearly tearing where it was wrapped around her finger as she rubbed at the same spot of wood, over and over again.
Luke put out a hand, trying to meet her eyes as she pressed the damp tissue into it, ignoring the flush that had bitten at the tops of her ears. “Just Rey, then.”
Her smile was fleeting, grateful, no dimples.
“All things are connected,” said Luke, and he couldn’t help sounding earnest, “It’s important that we evaluate how things like history, politics, culture, and especially globalization, have changed the ways we interact with the natural world.”
“So the Mohanty reading…”
“Is to showcase the exploitative effects of capitalization and globalization, yes.”
“But why - ”
“Mohanty? I thought it best to showcase the failures of globalization through the most subordinated group. It’s a a brilliant feminist essay. I promise, as the course continues, the readings will start to make sense, to intertwine. Everything is on the syllabus for a reason, but if you can’t reconcile how a particular reading connects with our learning outcomes, please come talk to me again. Likewise, if you found Mohanty interesting, I can recommend Doctor Syndulla’s critical race theory course - if you can manage another elective.” Before Rey could nod, he had had it all scribbled down on a post-it.
“Alright,” Rey took the slip of paper somewhat hesitantly, and then smiled, sweet. “As long as she’s another friend of your uncle’s.”
“Oh no,” said Luke, “Not Doctor Syndulla. No, she’s a friend of my aunt’s.”
After so much conversation, her question had been remarkably simple, hardly worth nearly three hours in his office. Lapsing into a comfortable silence, Luke swung the corkboard up and off his desk, setting it against the wall behind him. The rain had slowed to the occasional tap against the window, even the sidewalk below was no longer shimmering. Bleakly, light was fading from the sky.
With an appreciative pang in his stomach, Luke glanced towards the clock. Time sludged towards six. Soundlessly, Rey was spinning her spoon through her tea, the corners of her mouth turned down.
A moment - he was meant to be meeting Lando and Janna at ten the next morning. Maybe Rey would want to come? She could talk to someone her age, meet one of the subjects of Luke’s photographs - was it strange to ask a student to lunch? Maybe she didn’t like croissants. Maybe she had too much studying to do. Maybe she would decline with a cheerful smile and then the next lecture they had her seat would be empty.
Luke opened his mouth, closed it, shifted in his chair, knees aching. It was decided - it wasn’t decided. Running a hand over his head, he cleared his throat. But -
There was a knock at the door: a boy in a blue button-up with his dark hair cut close to the scalp. “Professor Skywalker? I hope I’m not interrupting -”
Rey was tucking her pencil neatly into a pocket of her bag; when she swung it over her shoulder Luke saw the zipper was broken - “I’m Finn, in Professor Rook’s environmental engineering class.” She stood, she was moving towards the door, her cup of tea sat a quarter full on the opposite side of his desk, a fine vein of liquid down its side. “I just had a quick question about the guest lecture you did for Unit 3?”
Luke was scrounging through the drawers of his desk, Rey sent him a sympathetic smile over her shoulder, but he had nearly found it - “Just one moment, Finn.” Buried up to the elbow in paperwork, his hand closed around hard plastic.
“Rey.” She paused. Luke held out his offering. “Here.”
There wasn’t anything else to say, really. They would see each other again, in class, or on campus, or maybe she would come back to his office hours. It wasn’t goodbye. It couldn’t be. Like a shadow, she drifted forwards to take the cheap film camera from his hand.
He used to keep them for all his students, tools for their identification projects, before cell-phones suddenly grew cameras of their own. Finn was already marching towards her newly vacated seat.
Tucking it into her pocket she smiled once, and then she slipped into the hall, the imprint of her hanging in the air, like the last notes of birdsong in an empty forest.
***
The envelope was on his desk when he walked in; it was buried underneath the mountain of assignments that had been in his dropbox that afternoon. Tracking snow over the floor, Luke sat with his toque still on his head. The cold was doing absolutely nothing for the stiffness in his knees. He had to wear two pairs of socks just to survive the walk from his car to the Natural Science building. Outside, students were shouting as they rolled together a lopsided snowman.
Overturning the envelope in his hands, he recognized the writing immediately. Rey put a pen to paper like it was a carving knife to stone. He blew on his hands to warm them up, flipped on his space heater, (for the plants), and then set to work.
Under a few sheets of paper were a small stack of disposable camera photos. I’ll see you at Christmas! Rey’s message concluded. And Luke circled the date on his calendar when her plane would touch down.
Folded inside the letter was a picture: Rey and her dig team, bundled in parkas, toques, and scarves, Rey’s hair caught by the wind. It was crooked, and slightly blurry, an imperfect selfie at the peak of a mountain. Behind them, the snow-capped range spread out like footprints, each peak craggier than the last. Rey was smiling with dimples, the tip of her nose bright pink.
It joined two others pinned to his corkboard: the first, a picture of him and Rey at their weekly meeting, teacups in hand, Rey pointing excitedly at a fern that was sprawled over Luke’s desk; the unlucky TA who had been called into his office to snap the photo had left a inky fingerprint along the bottom edge of the polaroid which Luke thought looked like elm rings.
The second was a picture of them at Rey’s graduation, Luke in his professor’s robes, smiling wide to hide the fact that he had been sniffling earlier in the day, Rey’s tassel sitting like a fly against his shoulder, her eyes squeezed shut in a grin; even in the washed-out midday sun you could see the crinkle at the bridge of her nose.
Turning back to the envelope, Luke began shuffling through the set of photographs, careful to keep his grip to the very edges. Every photo he flipped brought a familiar twist to his chest, and he scrubbed a hand over his eyes, quick, before he began to sort them. A mitten in the snow; the edge of a birch, cracking in the cold; a prairies dog, nearly obscured by Rey’s hand in the frame; the mountains; an old school bus; cumulonimbus clouds; river water under the ice; wild roses in a field; and finally, open, and dark, and smeared with constellations, the night sky.