*PLEASE READ*

First, anyone like my play on the title?

Second, I JUST SAW THE RISE OF SKYWALKER SO THAT'S WHY YOU GUYS ARE GETTING THIS CHAPTER SO SOON AFTER THE PREVIOUS ONE. I didn't think I'd see it so soon after release, but I'm super glad I saw it and don't worry I'm not gonna say any spoilers. Just wanted to tell you that I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the character arcs, I totally called a few things in it after the initial release of The Force Awakens, and I liked the ending. There were a few parts I was iffy on, but to be fair, Rian Johnson messed up quite a bit and JJ Abrams did his best to fix those, so I'm not blaming JJ, just Rian. If anyone wants to talk about it, preferably civilly, message me.

Third, I need to figure out something for the follow up to this story. Should I have Poe, who will be the next love interest I write about for this series, be with Kal's daughter or son? I shipped Stormpilot a little and I can totally see Poe with a dude and think it'd be cute; however, I'm better at writing female characters because *spoiler alert* I'm female if any of you didn't freaking know despite it being mildly obvious imo lmao. There will be a poll up on my profile to collect your preferences so pretty please answer it. If any of you have thoughts, questions, or concerns, feel free to review or message me. Any and all feedback will be appreciated. I've been torn between it for a while. I already have face claims, names, and arcs for both thought up and in the works. Thank you all in advance.

Now, on with the chapter. Beware, I teared up momentarily while writing it for various reasons.

3 ABY

Commander Luke Skywalker stood at the base of the ramp of the Millennium Falcon with a broad grin and open arms with R2-D2 by his side as Han Solo, Chewbacca, and Kaleena Aput descended into the newly established rebel base. The base wasn't a hundred percent up and running, but it was nearing completion and needing all the help it could get. The humans were all bundled in cold-weather gear since they were on the remote ice planet of Hoth. It was the first time the trio had stepped foot in the new base and Luke was happy to be the one to greet them.

"Welcome to Echo Base," Luke exclaimed as he moved to give each of his friends a hug, Kal's lasting mildly longer than the other two. "How was the mission?"

"Let's just say I have no intentions of going to Ord Mantell anymore," Han replied gruffly, eyes flickering between Kal and Luke. He avoided smirking at their close proximity, standing shoulder to shoulder. "How you doing, kid? Heard you got promoted since the last time I saw you, Commander Skywalker. It's got a nice ring to it."

"Oh, yeah." Luke bowed his head sheepishly and Kal couldn't help but smile softly at his slight embarrassment, which Han didn't miss. "Commander Narra died at the Battle of Derra IV, so now that's me."

"Kid, regardless of when you got the title, you wouldn't have been given it if you didn't deserve it." While Han didn't often show his sentimental side, he knew just when to show it to help those he cared about. And the old farmboy from Tatooine who had the most obvious crush on Han's gunner was one of them.

Kal nudged the blond with her elbow and a grin. "Come on, Commander. You gonna show us around or what?" she cheekily asked. Gray beeped excitedly at the suggestion, wanting to get out of the hangar and go deeper into the base where it was likely warmer. The cold did not mix well with his circuitry. Both young Force-users completely missed the exasperated look Han gave Chewie. He was tired of the two dancing around each other and their complete lack of admittance towards their ever-growing feelings that were completely apparent to everyone around them.

"Oh, yeah, of course," Luke stumbled, shaking his head. "Come on, follow me." Luke waved his hand for the three to follow him and Artoo through the new base. After leaving Hangar Bay 7, he showed them the Tauntaun pen, which Han had some choice words about regarding the small, the command center, where they saw Leia, briefing room, medical center, main hangar bay, and, lastly, the barracks. The humans, Wookiee, and droids stood in the hall. "It's not much, but it's home for now."

"I don't know," Han said, rubbing his hands together. "Isn't home supposed to be warm?" Kal rolled her eyes and smirked and Chewie let out a small laugh, both of which Han glared at. "Sorry, I don't have a full body of fur or some mystical energy keeping me warm."

"Or you can just put some better clothes on," Kal suggested while shrugging her shoulders. Luke covered his face with his hand to hide his grin and laugh.

Han glared at both of them. "Alright, alright. If it's gonna be like that, I'll take my leave. Come on, Chewie." The smuggler stalked off with a laughing Chewbacca following close behind.

Kal and Luke chuckled while they watched their friends disappear down the corridor. Gray and Artoo beeped in amusement. Kal turned to Luke bundled in his snow gear. She hadn't thought the bright orange flight suits would ever be better than another outfit, but the Hoth uniform did not suit anyone. Even Luke, who seemed like he might look good in anything, had some difficulty pulling it off. He looked awkward and uncomfortable in it, which didn't fit him at all.

"They're still working on getting the tunnels better insulated, but it might be another day or so," Luke said off-handedly to fill the silence once he had noticed Kal wringing her fingers in what he believed was an effort to increase blood circulation.

It wasn't. She just didn't know what to say and needed to physically do something. She was glad he started the conversation though. "Han was just being a drama queen. He'll get over it." She paused for a moment and turned to him with a playful grin and a single eyebrow raised ever-so-slightly. "He'll probably find something else to complain about in a few days. Maybe next it'll be the Tauntauns or him slipping on the ice or Leia being angry with him again."

Luke laughed at the options. It sounded like Han. But before he could add anything, his comm started beeping. Luke let out a groan. "I have to go on patrol."

"Can't say I envy you." Kal offered him a small reassuring smile. "Be safe out there."

Nodding his head, Luke replied, "I will. Try not to get into too much trouble while I'm gone."

A snort escaped Kal along with a chuckle. "No promises." Luke's comm started beeping again. "You better get going before your patrol partner or Command start hunting you down."

A smirk pulled at his lips. "Well, the bounty hunter they'd send has already found me. Catch ya when I get back?" Kal nodded in agreement and then the Commander ran off to the Tauntaun Pen.

Kal made her way to the main hangar bay, not knowing what to do with her time. After she and Han had run into a bounty hunter on Ord Mantell, they had been cleared for two days of rest. Not that she needed it. She hadn't been injured and didn't feel overly exhausted. She'd much rather have been doing something useful with her time, like patrols or intelligence work. Or even mechanic work since she wasn't terrible with engineering, especially when she used the Force to guide her.

When she entered the large hangar, she spotted personnel carrying crates out of one of the transports. One of them was Hobbie, who looked as though he was struggling with his particular crate. Kal rushed over and took the other side of it, helping balance out the heavy crate and Hobbie.

Hobbie tossed her a grateful grin and said, "Thanks."

"Are there no more hover-sleds?" she asked, silently wondering what was in the heavy crate, her muscles straining as she and Hobbie worked together to carry it to one of the storage areas.

"The few we have are either being used or damaged or still need to be cold-adapted," he answered, and Kal groaned in response. Granted, she could use the Force to carry it, but not everyone in the rebellion knew about her abilities. It wasn't like it was advertised, like her having been a bounty hunter or friends with Luke, Han, and Leia definitely seemed to be.

The two set down the crate on top of another one in the storage room off the main hangar bay. They continued carrying more crates together along with a few other rebels until Kal noticed one of them struggling with putting a small crate on the top shelf and dropped it onto the ice and metal floor. Kal, Hobbie, and the rebel who dropped it froze as thermal detonators spilled out of the metal crate, sliding across the floor, two of them blinking. For a split second, no one moved. Kal came out of her stupor first, eyes wide as she looked up at Hobbie and the other rebel. Then she used the Force to shove them out of the storage room with a loud cry.

The thermal detonators exploded, throwing the Hobbie and the other rebel even further out of the room and Kal into the back wall, the Force unable to completely protect her from the explosion. Her vision went black as her head slammed into the ice, a strange mixture of excruciating heat and unbearable cold coursing over her skin from both sides.

Rebels all throughout the base heard or felt the explosion. Alarms started blaring. A few pilots rushed over to help Hobbie and the other one. Dak Ralter helped Hobbie sit up. Though a little shaken and ragged, Hobbie repeated, "Kal. Where's Kal? We gotta get Kal." He tried to pry himself from Dak's grip as he continued variants of needing Kal, but his fellow Rogue pilot didn't let him make his getaway.

"Hobbie, you need to stay calm," Dak demanded. "You're hurt." Medics rushed into the hangar and began tending to the two rebels caught in the explosion. Other people entered the hangar as well to see what had happened.

"Kal's in there," Hobbie muttered, his head tilting to the side, barely able to keep his eyes open and sharpness shooting up his spine with each movement. "We have-we have to. . ." His voice trailed off when he cried out in pain.

One of the medics looked at the storage room, or what used to be the storage room. Scorch marks, destroyed metal, and semi-melted ice was all the seemed to be left from the outside. Dak, with Hobbie no longer in his care, stood and made his way quickly to the gaping hole and peered inside. A mangled outline of a person was slumped against the opposite wall.

"Oh, no," Dak murmured, which Han and Chewie heard as they came up behind him.

"What happened?" Han asked as he looked inside as well. But Dak didn't get the chance to reply as Chewie howled and hurried inside the destroyed room, recognizing the scent as Kal's. Han followed in closely behind after Chewie's terror-filled howl sunk in. Chewie and Han bent down on both sides of Kal's unconscious, barely breathing, burned and broken body. "Be careful, Chewie. Moving her too much might hurt her more."

Han heard Chewie's slight whimpering as the Wookiee gently eased his arms under Kal's shoulders and knees and slowly picked her up, carrying her out of the room. They immediately began making their way to the medical center as quickly as possible without jostling the fragile girl.

While a limited few medics, doctors, and medical droids worked on Hobbie and the other injured rebel, a majority focused their attention on the high-risk patient that got set on the metal table in the one makeshift emergency room.

The moment Leia was informed, she joined Han and Chewie outside the room as the doctors worked on their friend inside.

The doctors and droids couldn't just stick her in a bacta tank. Kal had to be stabilized first. They cut off her ruined clothing, at least what wasn't imbedded into her wounds, gave her oxygen, reset her broken collarbone, and began treating the burns on her legs and arms.

Partway through, Luke's patrol ended. The moment he entered the base with Wedge, he sensed something was wrong. The somber looks they received when they entered the base didn't help his uneasiness. Luke and Wedge glanced at each other as they passed off the Tauntaun's to one of the deckhands.

"I don't like this," Wedge said off-handedly, looking pointedly at the rebels around the hangar bay.

"You can say that again," Luke replied. "Come on, we should report to Command." The two walked further into the base, making their way to the Command Center until they passed Dak, who looked worse than the others they had seen. Pale and haggard, walking slow and slumped: it was completely strange for the typically upbeat man. Luke reached out to stop his gunner. "Hey, Dak, what's going on?"

"Everyone's acting like someone died," Wedge added, trying to joke and lift the tension. It didn't work.

For a moment, Dak didn't reply. His eyes and mouth were drooped in worry as he went back and forth between looking at Luke and Wedge. "There was an accident in the main hangar while you two were gone," Dak finally supplied. "Three people were caught in an explosion."

Wedge's eyes hardened and his jaw clenched. "Who?"

"One of the deckhands. . . and Hobbie and Kal."

Both Luke and Wedge tore away from Dak and ran through the halls to the med center as fast as they could, narrowly avoiding crashing into a few people on the way. Han, Chewie, Leia, Threepio, and Artoo looked up at them the moment they rushed in.

"Hobbie is doing good and could probably use some company, but they're still working on Kal," Han told them right away. He knew they wanted nothing more than to see their friends, but only one was stable and in decent working condition, just a little banged up. They had to wait to hear about the other. It was slow going and they didn't like any second of it.

Luke and Wedge both nodded and went to find Hobbie. One of the droids brought them to where Hobbie rested on a bed behind a curtain. Luke closed the curtain behind them and turned to face Hobbie, Wedge already at his best friend's side. "Are you okay?" Wedge asked quietly, looking over Hobbie's bandaged head. "Don't tell me you and Kal were getting frisky in a dark corner and knocked over a grenade." Wedge tried to make his friend laugh or at least smile, but Hobbie didn't react, barely picking his head up.

"Is she okay?" Hobbie inquired, voice hoarse and throat sore. "No one's told me anything."

"Han said she's still with the doctors," Luke said with his arms folded over his chest. "Are you okay?" He hoped that by repeating Wedge's initial question, Hobbie might answer it, but the usually talkative blond didn't reply, choosing to stare at the blank privacy curtain instead. Luke took that as a 'no.' "Do you need anything?"

"I need her to be okay," Hobbie snapped. His nostrils and eyes flared as he turned to his commanding officer. "She wasn't even supposed to be in there. For whatever reason, she wanted to help us move supplies." His breathing back to quicken as he shook his head fervently. "I was right next to those blasted detonators, I was the closest one, but she-" His speech was broken by a hiccough and a sob as a few tears ran down his cheeks. "She saved me and him. Used the Force to throw us out of the room before they went off. And now she-" He furiously shook his head again which caused Wedge to lean forward to try and calm his friend, but Hobbie shoved his arms away. "Don't tell me to calm down or relax. Don't try and comfort me, telling me everything is gonna be okay. It won't work! I saw her body when they pulled her out. She looked-"

He leaned back on the bed and stared up at the ceiling, occasionally shaking his head as he thought over the event, again and again, not saying anything else. Hobbie didn't need to finish the sentence. Wedge and Luke already knew what he was going to say.

She looked dead.

A few hours passed. Each person waiting to hear about Kal's condition needed to leave at one point or another because of their jobs, except for Luke. He had finished his other duties for the day before Han, Chewie, and Kal had even arrived, in the hopes that he would spend as much time with them as he could before more rebellion duties filled their plates. Leia and Wedge had to report to Command with Threepio. Chewie needed to work on the Falcon. Han, too, but he mostly just couldn't stand waiting around for news and needed to do something: his way of coping.

Luke was left alone with Artoo.

But that also meant he was present when a medical droid left the room to report on the situation. Luke sprung to his feet with a hopeful expression and asked, "Is she alright?"

"Miss Aput has sustained numerous injuries, but she has been stabilized and is currently undergoing a bacta treatment to quicken the healing process," the droid recited with its mechanical voice.

"What are her injuries?" Luke asked, scrunching his hat in his hands.

"Miss Aput has a broken collarbone, multiple third-degree burns on her arms, legs, and torso, and mild fracture on her skull. Once she is out of the bacta tank, she will be given synthskin and bacta patches to finish healing the burns. She will require several days of rest to recover."

Luke sighed and nodded. "Thank you. Can I go in to see her?"

"The patient is still unconscious and in the bacta tank, but yes, you may go in." The droid swept its arm towards the door and Luke hurried over to it and inside.

In one of the bacta rooms, Kal was being watched by a medical droid and an attendant while she was suspended in the bacta tank in only plain undergarments. Luke leaned against the wall on the other side of the glass, watching and worried out of his mind. But at least she was alive and well. She was stable and going to live. The bright red burns, blisters, and charred-white skin that he thought he'd see more of were less severe than Luke had imagined, but he supposed it was because of the doctors and bacta working its magic and beginning the healing process for her wounds.

Luke took a moment to comm Wedge, Leia, and Han to update them each on her condition. He also went and informed Hobbie who immediately relaxed at the news. All they had to do was wait for her to wake up. It was easier for the others to say. Luke could feel her pain through the Force. He couldn't at first, but standing in front of the glass as he silently watched over her, he began to feel her Force signature. It felt like fire burning through him, like the detonators that had seared her skin.

Luke.

Luke just about jumped out of his skin when he heard his name said. Looking around, the young pilot didn't see any person or droid except the ones on the other side of the glass in the bacta room. It hadn't sounded like Ben reaching out through the Force as he had done before. But it was familiar. And almost calming.

Furrowing his eyebrows, Luke spotted a small basket by the bed on the other side of the medical room. He glanced back at Kal in the tank but nothing had changed, so Luke made his way over to the basket and realized it had Kal's belongings in it, or at least the ones that weren't destroyed. On top sat her lightsaber, mildly damaged. There were also two blasters, her necklace, and a bracelet with crystals. Luke could feel the Force around each crystal, so he knew they were the kyber crystals she had mentioned after their trip to Tatooine together.

Luke.

There it was again. But he realized why it sounded familiar when he looked up from Kal's stuff. It was Kal subconsciously reaching out to him through the Force.

"Please wake up soon, Kal," Luke whispered. His sad blue eyes watched her in the bacta. All he could do was sit there and repeat his words in his mind. He needed to see her doing more than looking dead in the water. They all did.

Han and Leia had made Luke rest sometime into the night, knowing that he would likely pass out from exhaustion if he didn't rest as well. His post had been taken up by Han who was replaced by Wedge at dawn.

Kal didn't wake for several more hours, well into the following morning. By that time, she had been taken out of the bacta tank and given synthskin and bacta patches to complete the healing process out of the tank. Luckily, Luke and Han were there to see her. Waking up in a bright room alone after a taxing experience wasn't something they wanted for her.

The moment they heard her groan, they jumped out of their seats and drew closer to her side with expressions of relief. The men stared down at Kal as her eyes struggled to open, disliking the harsh lighting of the room. She peaked her eyes open, almost hissing at the brightness, and spotted Luke and Han standing extremely close to her. "Can't a woman get a little space? Jeez, I'm not your mother," she mumbled out, trying to put a light spin on the situation while smirking.

"Aaaand she's back," Han said, unamused. Both men leaned away to give her a little wiggle room.

"Of course, I'm back, you blasted scoundrel. It takes a lot more than a couple thermal detonators to kill me." Kal's lips turned up to reveal the slightest bit of her teeth before grimacing as she rolled her neck and shoulders to stretch them, only to find out it was slightly painful.

Luke noticed a small wince from her and gently placed a hand on her shoulder. "Don't strain yourself. It'll take a while to fully heal."

Han scoffed and rested against the wall next to Kal's bed. "Luke, I've seen her walk on a broken leg. There is nothing in the entire galaxy that will make her take a breather. Not even a pretty face batting their eyes."

"I hope you don't mean you," Kal interrupted. Then she gasped and quickly sat up, to the immediate disapproval of both Han and Luke, but she ignored their expressions and the pain her body was in. "Where's Hobbie? Is he alright? And that other one. I never learned his name. Are they okay? Were they hurt?"

"Hey, sweetheart, it's alright," Han reassured, his voice low and soft as he stood up straight. "They were a little beat up, but they're okay. They were discharged a few hours ago, ready to hunt some Nuna."

A single eyebrow raised as Kal was torn between amusement, annoyance, and appeasement. "That's not exactly hard."

"No, but they are delicious."