LL3 10 The Long Story
Luke rolled over in the double-wide bed and stuffed his hand under the pillow, still wide-awake at two in the morning, Tatooine time. It was actually five in the morning by his inner clock, Yavin time. Just as he had guessed, he hadn't gotten any sleep.
He wanted to peek so badly, but he kept his senses slammed shut to the point that he couldn't even sense her location on the planet. She had to do this alone; he kept reminding himself of that.
She had to be a Jedi alone.
He kicked off the sheet and rolled onto his back, violently forcing his thoughts into another meditation, which worked about as well as surviving space by just holding your breath.
A quiet rap on the door interrupted him.
Luke raised his head and opened his mind, immediately detected her presence, and shot off the bed. He fumbled with the lock and flipped the switch, and when his eyes focused on Kess, his jaw dropped.
She glared at him from under a purple eyebrow. Her lower lip was cracked and her shirt was badly torn. "I hope you're happy now," she hissed, pushing passed him into the room. She limped to the bed and gingerly sat down on the foot of the bed.
Luke yanked himself from his shock, slammed the door, and locked it. He rushed over and dropped to his knees in front of her. "Are you all right?" he breathed, reaching for the bruised temple but winced and backed away before he touched anything.
She slapped his hand away. "I'm fine," she snapped, "just don't touch me." Pissed off and hurt, she ripped the rest of the shirt from her shoulders and threw it to the stone floor.
Luke's eyes widened at the bra staring back at him. He quickly closed his mouth and backed away on the floor like a frightened animal. The shirt was falling apart anyway so he would have done the same thing. But when his eyes moved away from barely-concealed breasts, he noticed a bruise shading her left wrist.
They shouldn't have taken the cast off so soon.
Luke scrambled off the floor with a mumble, "Let me get you some ice."
Kess glared at him as he disappeared into the bathroom. She tried to reach for her feet, but pain shot up her leg when she bent over and she sat up again with a gruesome wince.
Luke came out of the bathroom with a cold pack and a dry rag, now remembering they were on the planet that invented the drought. He tossed the useless rag on the bed and handed her the cold pack.
"What happened?" he asked quietly and went to the chair to fetch his shirt.
"He beat me up!" She bleated. "Do I have to draw you diagrams!?" She waved her hand in the air. She tried to reach for her boots again and failed.
Luke gave her an indignant look and brought the wrap-around tunic to her shoulders. "You know that's not what I meant."
Kess hissed impatiently, "No lectures now, okay? Will you just— help me take off my boots?" She pulled the ivory cloth around her shoulders and could smell Luke in its fabric. She wrapped it hard around her and her anger saddened. She closed her eyes with a violent curse.
Luke sighed and lowered to his knees again. His fingers began to unravel the laces from one boot. Kess fell back on the bed and started to unbutton the folds in her baggy pants. Luke stopped short, but convinced himself that there was probably a medical reason why she was stripping in his hotel room. He continued to pull the boot gently off her foot until a hard lump in an otherwise baggy pant leg jerked downward.
His lips parted as he realized what it was. When the boot came away, the lightsaber fell into his hand. He looked at it with disappointment. "You didn't tell him."
"He stopped listening long before I got to that part," she grunted and sat up again, wincing as she pushed the pants over her hips. "But two out of three ain't bad. I didn't lose my temper and I didn't hate him for his point of view."
Luke rapped the hilt on his forehead with a tested sigh. He set it on the ground. He brought his attention to the other boot. By the time he'd gotten it off, she pushed the pants all the way down to follow the rest of her clothes to the floor.
Medical, he insisted to himself. Luke sat on the bed next to her to tend to her wounds, but she gave him a look to kill the moment he reached. His hands went in the air, "Okay, okay." He was forced to just watch as she laid the cold pack gingerly on a black and blue hip.
Luke looked her up and down, sitting there in her underwear and his shirt, she was beaten and bruised as though she hadn't fought back. But he told her not to fight back. He didn't know he had to tell her it was okay to defend herself. He didn't know her father was going to do this. He didn't know what she was getting into. He even whispered it aloud in overwhelming guilt, "I didn't know."
Kess gave up on her hip and nearly slapped the cold pack on her eyebrow. Apparently, that bruise didn't hurt as much. "Would it have made a difference? You still would have sent me to face him."
Luke's eyes darted to her and darted away. He nodded at his lap.
Kess watched him sadly. His shoulders bulged from his sleeveless undershirt with strength yet he sat there like beaten pup.
Kess sighed, looked around the air a bit, and began to grin with fresh anger, "Ben Kenobi…"
Luke glanced over, guarded.
"And 'Master' Obi-Wan..." she squinted over to him, "same guy?"
Reluctance stretched across his mouth. He added quickly, "But I didn't know that until he showed up that day in the clearing. You never told me what his name was."
Kess nodded distantly at that.
The cold pack fell to the bed in her mental digression and Luke took it from her hand. With a look of sympathy, he placed it gently on her bruised shoulder again. She glanced at him, ready to snap again, but her expression was falling apart. She licked the drying blood from her lip and her brows knotted together.
Luke's free hand touched on the small of her back and she hesitantly fell into his shoulder. His chin rested on her forehead and his arms closed around her, eventually just tossing the cold pack away.
Her body didn't quiver with the usual signs of a good cry. Tears just dripped down her cheeks from a wide-eyed stupor. "I think," she whispered into his neck, "I think you owe me that terribly long story now."
She could hear his voice rumbling in his chest, "Let me tell you in the morning. You—
"No." She pulled away just enough to look him hard in the eye, already shaking her head. "Tell me now."
Luke saw her eyes pleading at him for a morsel of truth and nodded obedience. "All right." He pulled her into his arms again and sucked in a chest full of air.
Kess closed her eyes and listened to his voice from his breast. She drank in the smell of him and felt his arm around her, and, for the moment, she felt safe again. He brushed the frazzled hair to her back and stared into the air as he began to truly talk. "I was about 19 when it started. Uncle Owen needed a unit for the west end vaporator, and Aunt Beru needed a droid that spoke Bocce..."
Over the next several hours, Luke talked like he never had before, telling her the tale as he lived it. He told her about meeting Han and saving Leia. He told her about trying to train by himself on Hoth, about seeking out Yoda on Dagobah. Eventually, she pulled away from his arms to lay down on the bed. She was exhausted but still listening. Luke kept talking, complaining, admitting, and reliving all the intricate details that got him from Then to Now. He propped his elbow into the pillow and rested his head in his hand and he told her everything. Everything. He was telling her about the regret he felt when his father died when he realized just how much he was saying out loud.
He paused in the middle of his sentence, looked at her drooping eyelids, and realized again who he was talking to. Luke grinned to recognize how comfortable it was just to talk to her.
Kess blinked slowly, whispering more in support than curiosity, "So what did you do?"
Luke blinked and thought back, "I um… I took his body with me back to Endor and I cremated him there." His eyes darted to the sliver of empty bed that was between them. "I didn't tell Leia and Han about him until later. They were all so happy. I didn't want to spoil it for them on the first Victory Day."
Kess softly put her palm on his cheek. She brushed her thumb across his lips and dropped her hand again. Luke stared tenderly at her as she did it. He saw the bruises on her face, the tiny cut on her lip, and the fatigue in her eyes. "Go to sleep," he whispered.
She rubbed her lips together and slowly blinked. "Isn't there more of the story?"
He watched her cuddle her head deeper into the pillow, scooting closer to him. "Yes," he whispered back, "but the rest can wait until later."
Kess sighed a joke into his shoulder, "Yeah, you'll tell me when I'm ready."
"No." Luke wrapped his arms around her, lowered his head to the pillow, and closed his eyes. "I'll tell you when you're rested."