In which our Hero travels to seek out Master Yoda, and Artoo is nervous.
If there was one thing Luke Skywalker had needed to learn the hard way, it was patience. It had never come naturally to him, and his master had told him that his father had been the same way. It would take nearly a day to get from Hoth to Dagobah, which was quite a lot when you're in a very small cockpit with only a few emergency supplies available to you. Most of the supplies were packed into the ejector seat, only accessible once standing outside the ship or of course after ejecting in an emergency.
He'd completely meant to speak to high command in person, to ask for leave to go and find this Jedi Master Yoda that Master Obi-Wan had told him to find. He hadn't intended to take an X-Wing, they needed every fighter especially now, and he had worried they'd force him to resign his commission at least temporarily. The attack and sudden evacuation had nixed those plans and made a mess of everything.
A pang shot through him, it was so blase to say a mess had been made of things when he'd lost friends in that fight. He'd lost a lot of friends the last three years, sometimes not long after he'd made them. Some people got cold after a while, stopped being outgoing and trying to make new friends because it hurt too much to lose them. He wondered if that was why Obi-Wan said that the old Jedi eschewed attachments. It did hurt, losing people he cared about, but the thought of having never cared about them in the first place seemed a much worse thing. Obi-Wan said that he'd learned that as well, over the years.
It was easy to be aloof and unattached in a diplomatic situation when you'd not see any of the people involved again. You needed that detachment to be fair, since even being too friendly to someone could be seen as favoritism and damage a sensitive negotiation. But in a war, when you constantly have to rely on those around you, and have them rely on you in turn, sometimes those attachments are the only thing that kept you going.
Now his fingers tapped in the message on the comm, a bit less concerned that he might have been. No one really expected to see him anytime soon, no one would even be meeting at the rendezvous point for at least three months. No one wanted to take a straight route anywhere when someone might be tracked. Still, it felt as though he were abandoning the other Rogues, and he took his responsibilities seriously. He took a lot of things seriously these days.
Artoo warbled at him from just behind and above him, pale blue letters scrolling across the HUD, //You've spoken of taking time before, with Mon Mothma, master Luke. To draw some of the bounty hunters and others seeking you away from the fleet./
"Yeah, I know Artoo, but I was going to get Han to drop me someplace where I could get my own little ship with just me and you and not take any resources from the Alliance. Chewie said he might know someone who could help me, at least sort of. He knew Jedi in the Clone Wars."
/A Jedi Master might help you more./ Artoo's reply was simple, but if a droid could project anxiety the little astromech was doing so now.
Luke knew Artoo hadn't been memory wiped in decades, something he'd only revealed to his new master once he'd argued with a tech that he liked Artoo the way he was and to leave the droid alone. He had backups going back before the Clone Wars even, and hidden programs to make any casual technical checkup show the normal memory wipes and maintenance that most astromechs were subjected to on the regular. It explained a lot of things, particularly Artoo's robust personality and sense of humor.
"What do you mean?" Luke asked, settling down in his seat more comfortably and watching the blue lines and whorls of hyperspace go by, "Might help?"
/Most human Jedi began the training before the age of four standard, and other sentients at that equivalent for their species. This Jedi Master you seek, might find it much more worrying to take on a half trained student at the age of twenty-two./
Luke ran a hand over his face, "I'll just have to do my best to convince him I suppose." His fingers traced the lines of the fresh scars on his face. He wasn't particularly worried about his looks, since no one else seemed to care, but it would take some getting used to. Shaving was going to be interesting for a while, that was for certain.
He let out a breath and took in another, beginning the familiar breathing pattern of the simplest meditation he'd been taught, /I'll do what I can to help./
Luke grinned even as he let himself drift in the embrace of the Force.