A/N: A bittersweet Valentine's Day fic. Wrote this a couple months ago, then totally forgot to post, so it's a few days late. Luke, of course, does not belong to me, but "she" does. I got to thinking that over the course of four years, Luke probably saw a lot of fellow pilots killed, and most of them would be new recruits. This is a fic about one of them.

Proverbs 13:12a – "Hope deferred makes the heart sick…"

It was not love at first sight. It might have been something a little like it at last sight, but of course the thing about last sights is that they're the end, and there won't be any sequels. Maybe if he'd known about the last sight in advance, it would have been something—but he was a he, so his mind was still trying to catch up with the first sight when the last caught him by surprise.

She was a she, so hers was racing far ahead, and probably it whipped right by the last sight without ever realizing.

The circumstances were not auspicious. He was up to his elbows in engine lube from working on the exhaust intakes of his starfighter, and it was pushing a hundred degrees on this jungle planet and the ACs were shut off to conserve power. She had just staggered off the ship with the rest of the new recruits, and hadn't had a shower in four days and the humidity had frizzed the hair that wasn't heavy with grease. And both of them were thinking, thinking too much, and wanting to sleep off pain that they knew wouldn't be denied so easily.

Can you tell me where the mess is?

Down that corridor, on the right.

They nodded at each other and drifted back into themselves. He didn't think anything else about it and neither did she, until she showed up in the squad briefing room a couple days later and he came in late, and the only empty seat was next to her. He smiled at her, and she nodded a bit. Maybe if she'd been the only one who was new it would have been different, maybe, maybe—but all of them were new except him and Wedge. And really, he was new too. That day, after the orientation finished, everybody ate together in the mess. She sat on the other side of the table from him, but he was thinking about how he had to go on shift soon at the hangar and she was wondering whether her aunt had found her goodbye note.

What time does training start in the morning?

Oh-seven-hundred, see you then.

He did see her in the morning, but not for long because the Princess and General Dodonna had to talk to him about something important (years later, it wasn't important anymore). By the time he got back, she was off doing basic training someplace else. So it was actually the morning after that when they talked again. The new commander put them in the same simulator group, and they talked a little after the exercise while the computers analyzed the results. It was just business, all about the drills and such, but then he said something about the commander, something a little bit funny. She laughed, and he grinned. That was when she noticed he had very nice eyes. If he had been paying better attention, he would have remembered that that was when he noticed she had one of the best laughs he'd ever heard. But it was years before he even realized her laugh was the thing he'd liked so much.

Nice job in the sim, by the way.

Thanks, but you're better.

When orientation and preliminary training ended, she was assigned to Wing Four. He was on Wing Two. She saw him more than he saw her, because she and the other girl on the squad liked to watch "their boys." Sometimes they tried sneaking into the men's locker room with a holocam, but it only worked if he wasn't there; somehow he always guessed when they were coming. By the time General Dodonna sent the rebuilt squad out on their first mission, he was the only one they hadn't recorded in the buff. She joshed him about it, said he was a coward. But after the First Mission she never called him—or anybody else who flew a starfighter—that again.

I don't think I'm cut out for this. I was scared to death out there.

We all are. You did really good. Don't quit.

That was when she noticed he had a kindness that was nicer than his eyes even. If he had been paying attention, he would have noticed that she noticed, but he was a he (a young one at that), and all he'd noticed so far was that she had a great eye for mid-range moving targets. It wasn't until a while later, after the Third Mission, that he really realized she was in fact a she. It was on the Third Mission that the other girl died, winking out in a blazing ball of tragic glory. All of them had heard it whispered around that most of the rookies wouldn't make it past their fifth skirmish, but until the Third Mission it had just been a statistic. Someone else died on the Third Mission too, but the other girl was the one that mattered most to her. They sat next to each other in the briefing room right afterwards.

I lost my best friend out on my first mission, against the Death Star. It's hard.

I used to feel like we couldn't really die. Now it's like there's a blaster to my head.

She cried, and had to wipe her hair out of her face. It kept falling back and swinging in a loose curl next to her damp check: that was the thing that made him see she was a she. He stayed behind with her afterwards, told her not to be afraid, that she was good and she was going to make it way past the Fifth Mission and someday she'd tell all her hero stories to her grandkids. But inside, a bit of him was shaking as hard as she was crying, because what if he didn't make it past the Fifth Mission? After all, not even planets were immortal these days.

How are you doing?

I'm okay, it's getting easier. She died for a good reason.

He made a point of talking to her after that, a little more than usual, just to make sure she was okay. One afternoon he decided he liked the way she lifted her eyebrows high when she had a question or was very serious. The morning after that she laughed at him when he had a sneezing fit for at least five minutes; all of them did, but her laughing sounded nicer than the rest. That night he wondered shyly if perhaps he liked her, and just before he fell asleep a tiny thought suggested to his dreams that perhaps she might like him too. In the dark her secret hopes flew higher than any starfighter, and she dreamed that same night of telling hero stories to grandchildren that belonged to both of them.

Wing Four, abort attack and regroup—

Roger, sir—damn it, he hit my starboard thrus—

She didn't make it to the Fifth Mission…only to the Fourth. An enemy pilot clipped her starboard thruster, spun her out into a spray of laser fire from one of his comrades, and all the maybes vaporized into a cloud of bright glitter. A single luminous flash in space-time, a cruel nightlight for dead dreams. She wasn't the only one who died, but she was the one who mattered most to him. He determined never to forget.

At first it was going to be easy, because he couldn't think of much else except the way her eyebrows weren't going to lift ever again and the way her spirit had seemed to lean towards him for an instant before it vanished forever. Then the Fifth Mission came. More of their pilots died, but he didn't. Afterwards fresh recruits showed up, and most of them died too, and so did the recruits after them. Her dead face slipped slowly away from his living mind, swallowed up by the dozens flashpoint friends he buried in the mass grave in his brain, until all that was left was a vague, sad memory of innocence.

After all, he was still a he, and now she simply wasn't.

FINIS