[Lando]
"Hello?" Leia's voice was cautious and tired on the other end of the transmission.
"Heeyyy, Princess," Lando drawled happily. "I got through to you. Good!"
"How did you manage that?"
He grinned. "The Falcon isn't going to turn down my signal. How are you? I heard there was trouble. This is a secure line, by the way."
"There was trouble," she said grimly. Then, in as vulnerable a voice as he'd ever heard from her, she asked, "Where were you?"
He sighed and wiped at his face. "Leia, it's been years." More than a decade, actually. "To tell the truth, I was asleep and my staff had their standard orders not to wake me up for anything short of a city disaster. I never thought I needed to carve out exceptions for disasters anywhere else in the galaxy." What would he have done if he'd been awake? He wasn't sure. Probably not much else. He'd never been suicidal. "I'm sorry."
He heard her sigh. "We lost Luke," she said finally.
"We did?"
"Yes."
"I'm so sorry about that, too."
"I- yes."
"I've heard a story," he said slowly to fill the silence, "that Luke faced down a score of walkers, let ordinance and lasers pass right through him, and then fought the knight Kylo Ren to a standstill before teleporting away from the battlefield. How much of that is true?"
He heard her wry chuckle. "Most of it."
"Really? Then … how did we lose him?"
"He did too much."
"You can … do that?"
"I asked him years ago – I think we were still on Endor – why he couldn't just have pulled the Death Star out of the sky. Or if Palpatine was mind-controlling everyone in the Imperial Armed Forces. He said there were limits to how much of the Force you could channel without becoming the Force yourself. He said we were all 'luminous beings' and the more we used the Force the less real we were, the less a part of this world and the more a part of … another world."
"He said that? Han always told me Luke was some farm boy from Tatooine."
"He … well, some of that probably came from Yoda. But Luke was the one who told me."
"Oh." He had to assume she meant the Jedi Master Yoda, who was no more to Lando than a name from a few stories and maybe a history class a long time ago. "So Luke used too much of the Force?"
"Yes. He died so we could escape. And survive to fight another day. But you didn't call me to ask about Luke."
"No. That Kylo Ren I mentioned – he got kicked out of the First Order. You never told me who he was."
"Lando, a secret doesn't keep if everyone knows it. You know that. And yes, I've heard the news."
She hadn't even paused. Not a moment of hesitation. It rankled Lando. "Do you know what happened to him?"
This time there was a silence and then a deep exhalation. Guilt, Lando thought. She said, "Tell me."
"He came here to Cloud City to see me."
"He's there?" He couldn't tell if she was alarmed or pleased. "Is he still there?"
"Yes."
"What is he doing?" Lando hoped that was the concern of a long-estranged parent and not the cunning of an old general.
"Well, right now I think he's finishing up a few laps in the VIP swimming pool. I think he said later he'd zero in a blaster I'd set aside for him so many years ago." He let that trail off, then paused for a moment. She didn't say anything, so he added, "He wants to see you."
"Why?" Her voice had turned hard.
"Because you're his mother." It was quiet long enough that he said, "If he's not welcome, tell me. I'll break it to him. I agreed to be his godfather. There's nothing that's happened that changes that. And I think I know most of what's happened."
"No. He's … he's welcome. I just … I didn't think he'd …"
"He has. Tell me where you'd like to meet and I'll bring him to you." He hoped like hell he was reading her right.