Chapter Text
The sun was setting over Jakku after a brisk day in early December. Professor Han Solo was looking out his window and out onto the main Quad; he saw students entering and exiting the library, rushing about and looking stressed out as the finals period approached. However, Professor Solo, like many of the students outside his window, was not really focused on the impending doom that was finals period at Resistance College.
Professor Solo had been working in the Business Management department at Resistance College for thirty years. His main focuses were finance and entrepreneurship. For many of his years at the college, Professor Solo had felt passionate about helping students. He liked to see his pupils walk away from a class or a workshop feeling confident. For some students, it was simply having the ability to balance a checkbook, or knowing what a mortgage was. For others, it was having a set of skills that would lead them to open their own business. As long as the students accomplished whatever they were seeking by taking one of his classes or attending one of his seminars, Professor Solo was happy.
Lately, though, Professor Solo was not feeling so satisfied. There was something missing from his life at Resistance College, and for a while he had refused to put a finger on exactly what (or who) that was. For a while he had suspected that it was a returning longing for his ex-wife. In his twelfth year at Resistance College, Professor Solo divorced his wife Leia Organa, an elementary school teacher in the town over from the college. She was a lovely woman, but something about her just did not sit right with Professor Solo. He found himself constantly thinking she was falling short, and eventually he decided that it was better to let her go now than to seriously hurt her later. Leia had been crushed by the divorce, and she later moved off of Jakku and got a teaching job on another planet.
Professor Solo soon realized that the empty feeling in his gut was not due to the absence of his ex-wife. Ever since the divorce, something in Professor Solo had changed, and new things had surfaced. He felt his emotions reeling around and changing focus, and they eventually landed on a new target about three years after the divorce.
That chilly December day in his office, Professor Solo found himself once again thinking about the absence of Professor Luke Skywalker, a colleague and special friend that he had found during his more recent years at the college. Professor Skywalker had been a professor of Geology at Resistance College even before Professor Solo had begun his work there. He had specialized in Mineralogy, and he had loved looking at crystals and going into the field to find new specimens. But Professor Skywalker had been absent from Resistance College for almost ten years. What started as a one-year sabbatical turned into a full blown geological exploration, and Professor Skywalker eventually declared an emeritus status so he could be away from the college for an extended period of the time to finish the dig.
Professor Skywalker was who Professor Solo felt was his missing piece. After his divorce from Leia, Professor Skywalker had been a really good friend and resource to Professor Solo. If Professor Solo was feeling sad one day, Professor Skywalker would invite him to his office for a chat and some coffee. If Professor Solo was overwhelmed by the classes he was teaching or the seminars he had planned, Professor Skywalker would offer him a game of chess as a “study break.” Professor Solo and Professor Skywalker were overall just a really good match, and Professor Solo began to read their relationship as more than a friendship. He couldn’t help but notice that Professor Skywalker’s behavior had evolved over time too.
To make a long story short, Professor Solo had developed serious feelings for Professor Skywalker. Ever since he left, Professor Solo had found fewer and fewer benefits to staying at Resistance College. Unfortunately, in his mind the pain of missing Professor Skywalker was no longer worth the reward of seeing his students happy.
Professor Solo had been considering the possibility of retirement for the entirety of the semester, but now that it was almost over the reality of actually deciding was a little too, well, real. In that moment, with Resistance College about to plunge headfirst into the Fall 1345 finals period, Professor Solo decided on a tentative “yes.” He would retire at the end of the school year. Even if he would no longer be able to see the satisfied look on his students’ faces, at least he would be able to escape the pain of being separated from Professor Skywalker.