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Cassian said she’d be safe on Yavin 4. So far… he was no liar. Kleya built up her perception of the planet and its people on how they saw Luthen—which gave her reasonable belief that they would view her as such, too.
Melshi took gentle care of her on the U-wing on the way back. She was quickly helped by soldiers and nurses to secure her a bed in the infirmary to work on her injuries. It was cold, the air was wet, and her bones were weary. She hadn’t had a restful, rejuvenating rest in over a day.
Her body was still in fight mode. Survival and stress overwhelmed her physical body and her mental state. She was in the field for hours, that which she never was. The Empire was watching her through their scope, and she was stuck balancing between evading its capture, and keeping the blood in her and Luthen’s veins.
Being hooked up to machines and therefore chained to a medical bed was the last place she wanted to be after the sleepless nights, and not purely from exhaustion.
Luthen was still out there. She didn’t know if he was safe… or alive. She saw a glimpse of him in the distance as stormtroopers and the ISB closed in on him. The look on his face was too far to tell, but she couldn’t help but wonder if his expression was solemn, sad, or held up with a slight smirk.
No one knew. And she, now, was without the strength or authority to make any calls to find out.
From around the near corner, Cassian and Vel came and stood at the foot of her bed. Kleya either hadn’t been willing to speak since she arrived, or her jaw was in too much pain to even consider speaking.
She made an assumption. Why would they both show up? For the first time since the safe house, she spoke, hoarse and quiet. “Luthen?”
Vel cleared her throat and kicked some dirt beneath her. “Nothing. If, by some miracle, he’s alive, he’d be in the dark. Making contact could compromise him; he wouldn’t risk it.”
Cassian eyed the infirmary and all of its empty beds. “He did say he wouldn’t come.”
A tear rolled down Kleya’s cheek.
That was the risk, the fight, the sacrifice. Sometimes someone’s end is a blaster bolt to the back. And for some, they’re surrounded by the Empire, no way out, even for the smartest, most conniving of the bunch. The sacrifice of their lives for the betterment and freedom for those to come after—for those who follow in the finished work, and who fight to keep the path open.
Luthen wasn’t a good man. None of them were. Kleya knew firsthand how much he wasn’t.
He was a part of the soldiers that killed her family, her friends. Maybe it was he himself who pulled the trigger, she couldn’t be sure. It never came up in much conversation on the rare times it surfaced with a sore throat and puffy eyes.
She hated him for that. Her people were massacred, and he was there. Even with the regret she saw on his face as the trauma of gunfire and murdered civilians nestled deep into his mind, and the change he made to burn everything he’d been a part of to the ground, there’s a part of it she can’t forget; a part of the love she so clearly had for him that can’t completely wash away the circumstances that brought them together.
But she loved him. The first time he ever made her laugh—really laugh. The hundreds of meals shared. The times when she saved his life, and he saved hers. When they finally got the Gallery—Kleya would spend the nights complaining about certain clients, to Luthen’s clear amusement. The first time she shot someone to save his life. Every day filled with hard lessons and every night as each fought their own demons, she loved him.
Luthen was home. Not Yavin 4, not the Rebel Alliance, not even the gallery.
Without him, home became naught.
Draven passed through the infirmary, a fist to Cassian’s shoulder. Vel joined in. Kleya knit her brows at their whispering. Cassian turned back to her, urgency in his words. “Get some rest.” He eyed Vel. “We’ll check back in tomorrow.”
—
The busyness of the temple wasn’t easy to sleep through. X-wing’s being welded, droids conversing, ship and medical equipment getting transported, ships coming in, and every conversation under the sun between every Rebel soldier and why they believed in it.
It was the work her and Luthen had been gunning for for years. All of it brought together, living in the bones of thousands of people. People willing to sacrifice, willing to die, all for the cause that none of them fully understood.
Motivation was found in death of family members or innocent civilians. Maybe a quick to miss act of oppression got under someone’s skin just enough to join.
But no one saw Kleya’s side. They didn’t see the inner workings. They didn’t understand what went into operations like it. The dirty work without any blood. The stress behind a couple of frequencies. The fear in one misspoken word and how that could bring everything down. Living undercover, a working gallery as a front, never being allowed to look or speak wrong out of fear of being under surveillance. The secret of buying and selling. Working directly under the Empire’s nose on its very own frequencies. Having an undercover supervisor in the ISB for mole information.
The weight of the world was on her shoulders. No one understood.
Her body groaned as she slowly awoke, the gentle light rays creeping into the sick bay from around the corner. Her eyes were hardly open as she watched nurses enter and exit and aid young rebels in the neighboring beds. Transports of medicine drove in, and a young man was brought in on a stretcher. She could barely make out ”welding accident.”
As she came to, so did her senses. The commotion grew louder. The musky smell of the temple mixed with active medicines flooded her nose.
She felt her body on the bed, and her hands resting atop her abdomen.
Well, her left hand. Her right hand was beside her, resting atop the mattress and peeking out from her blanket. A distinct pressure fully encompassed it, with a gentle movement that came every few seconds.
Kleya’s eyes grew wider. She watched as a thumb grazed over the back of her hand, rubbing an occasional line back and forth across her bruised skin. Her eyes tracked his arm, slowly to his chest and, and to his face.
Luthen. He was bloody. His sleeves were torn and burned, as were sections of the rest of his clothes, and significantly discolored. He had a thick streak of bloody dirt along his temple, and his hand was covered in dust. He was slumped back in his chair, conscious enough to comfort her, and resting otherwise.
A small gasp escaped her lips. She squeezed his fingers that were hidden inside her half closed palm. He reflexively squeezed back and shot up from his chair.
He smiled first. The kind of smile that goes unnoticed, but one that’s quite obvious to her. His eyes give it away. He brought his other hand up to hold hers and conceal it completely.
She reciprocated the smile. An obvious one, and one he treasured. Her bruised and battered face burned as her muscles worked, but once it was there, her smile couldn’t fade.
“You’re alive,” she chuckled, tears brimming at the surface of her still-puffy eyes.
He raised his eyebrows. “Barely.” He relaxed into his chair, her hand still in both of his. “They don’t make it easy.”
She studied his scars with tears. The commotion of the temple faded as her mind escaped to the last moment she saw him, unsure of his fate. It carried on into what he endured to get to Yavin IV. What the Empire did… and what he did to survive. The long, stitched laceration along his arm. The blaster bolt holes through his cape that was draped on the end of the bed at her feet. The clear ache in his eyes as he made certain movements.
He was Axis. They couldn’t have gone easy on him.
She breathed in deep and exhaled, curious of the events since they last saw each other. In arguments that they had when she was young, she hated when the massacre of her people was thrown in her face, and he hated when his obvious struggles as an imperial sergeant and the PTSD he carried from those years was thrown into his.
He was alive.
Safe.
That’s what mattered.
She knit her brows. “Did they let you in easy?”
“I played the card.”
Her brows stayed tight, clear confusion in her eyes.
He looked at her, an entire history book bright in his eyes. “You’re my daughter.”
She nodded in agreement, remembering that day. Remembering all the other times he played that hand openly… and every single time it worked. “When it’s useful.”
“It works… and it’s not entirely false.” A smile, more obvious, crept along his mouth. He took one hand from hers and held it in just one against the mattress again. “Cassian and Vel vouched for me.”
A small laugh escaped her damaged ribs. “Vel?”
“Only time she ever will.”
Neither knew Luthen like Kleya, but they were both victims of his ways and experienced him when he was bad, and when he was good… whatever good is. Vel was not someone who would jump at the opportunity to save his skin, and definitely not for something unimportant.
This was important. The weight of the Rebellion rested on his many sacrifices, a truth that no rebel could ever fully grasp. Kleya’s life was also owed to him.
Kleya fought to adjust her position, then directed her attention back to Luthen. “Surprised you’re not… off with Mon, or something.”
A small chuckle. “Cassian forced me to stay.”
She knit her brows again, amused. “Thought only I had that power.”
“You do.”
The amusement on her face turned to confusion.
His voice grew soft, that all-too-familiar gruff tone gone, replaced by honesty and warmth. “I came here immediately.”
Her lips parted, still confused by his mismatched story. His smile remained. “I lie, remember?”
The realization took a moment, and she laughed. He laughed, too. The joy that was held for each other in private and for well-timed humor to lighten up a situation. The kind of attitude that could’ve been lost amid all the loss and trauma and need for the sacrifice of life.
There was an argument to be made by him that there was no place for such a thing. In the grand scheme, perhaps, but not privately. The intimate moments showed humanity and told each other that a slice of it still existed in them, despite what some outward deeds may present.
They still had humanity.
Luthen turned toward the rest of the infirmary. Young and old rebels. Humans and races that Luthen couldn’t even name, all gathered together against the Empire; all of them building toward a sunrise that most will never live to see. People who’ve completely burned their lives, and some who just left home and arrived at Yavin hours prior—full of fear, but willing to fight.
Freedom. Choice. The future.
Hope.
Kleya gave his hand a squeeze to grab his attention. She garnered it fully, then smiled at him—somberly—as another tear fell down her cheek.
“I’m glad you’re safe.”
“Ditto,” he whispered. He glanced at the chords in her arms and inspected the machines around her. “If you’re well enough in the morning, we should take a walk. Get a feel for the place.”
“We don’t need to be on edge here, Luthen.”
“I suppose you’re right.” He relaxed into his chair, no sign of any future movement. “But what’s the harm in a little sunshine?”
Her head flew off the pillow. “Did you get hit in the head?”
“Don’t make me take it back,” he laughed, pushing her back down to the bed by her shoulder. She obliged, a teasing look in her eye and a mental note made for her to never forget that he suggested they take a nature walk.
But maybe that’s what it was all about.
On Coruscant, he told Cassian. No Yavin for me..
But it was the culmination of all they’d built over the years. Hundreds of people fighting for the cause, right beside them, every single day. Like-minded individuals and a giant safe haven. They lost and lost and lost and lost for years. Now, a real win was on the horizon, burning brightly.
More than that, they had each other, as they always did, and that’s what made it even more worth it.
Yavin was safe. Yavin was home—their home.