Yana was confused. Wedge was smart enough not to try to kiss her after that first wonderful date at the Galactic Core Library, but he didn't try to get fresh during the two following dinner dates either. They just chatted through boring topics as they practiced the sign language, or walked along the streets and pointed things they thought were neat or silly, but there was little real conversation.

Chatting on the datalinks after work was a little better, but by not much. The chatting was more in depth, but the topics never grew serious. She explained the status of her brain damage and the pros and cons of the speech implant idea in more detail. He talked about trying to shop for furniture for his new place and complaining about the bureaucratic fiasco of setting up civilian utility services. She had to deal with a weird noise her speeder was making and trying to communicate that to the mechanic who didn't understand sign language. He had to facilitate public transport passes for his crew so they could get to work from their new barracks. (On Coruscant, nothing was in walking distance.)

Once, when they were walking back to his speeder after the second dinner date, she pointed at a strange building shape and signed to ask about its design. Wedge didn't know the answer, but his curiosity spiked enough that he forgot to sign back his thoughts on it. They gazed at the building from the street and he babbled for several minutes about his uneducated guesses, thinking aloud. The moment seemed to brighten him, had him chatty like a boy with a new interest. Yana warmed to listen to it, until he realized he'd been talking, not signing or using the link, and looked to find her watching him. She was smiling to listen, but he still shut himself up with a pouting apology for his rambling.

What she really wanted was some confirmation that this was the real thing, and she wasn't finding one. He wouldn't say anything definitive. Yana approached those two dinner dates with the focus of luring some kind of sign from him. Twice, she made up her mind to ask him bluntly, but the moment she saw him face to face, she fell into a shy giddiness and chickened out. Even with non-important, non-committal topics, she enjoyed his company too much to want to spoil it with 'relationship talk', especially since three dates over three weeks did not quite qualify as a 'relationship'.

What do you want from me?

This was growing dangerous, she realized, because she really liked him. And it got worse every night when the datalink lit up on her bedside table. She would leap into bed and pull the covers over as if to hide this secret addiction to talk to him. She would try to imagine his voice and body language to go with the words he typed, and she tried out her own voice as she typed hers. As the fourth date approached, Yana knew she was going to have to press him on the matter - to give her a straight up yes or no - Is this real? Am I wasting my time? Are we headed for something wonderful? Or are you still 'not looking for anything serious'?

It made her stomach flip to think about it.

It was her turn to pick the place for a 'day date' but she failed to find something architecturally nifty close enough for a day trip. Finally, she defaulted to Plan Besh and chose to take him to the Corellian Run Raceway, a theme park full of busy racing distractions that would make it less awkward when they continued not to talk about anything.

Wedge seemed warmly humored to learn her choice of venue, but he seemed distracted today too. He smiled a lot, but each time seemed forced or delayed. And since they were doing a lot of walking to get from booth, to the ale bar, to the restrooms, to the betting kiosk, to the observation platform... there wasn't a lot of room for conversation by sign. When Wedge realized he'd left his end of the datalinks at home, he grew irritable and kicked his own ass for several uncomfortable minutes.

He forced his way out of the mood when they got to the betting kiosk. She bet on the Gogo Water because she liked the color of the racer. He picked the Snotty Brat because the name was funny. They watched one race, both lost, and chuckled together to find something else in this massive theme park to do. Yana began to wonder if he was getting bored with her.

It was when they were strolling across the giant walk-bridge over the ground-car racetrack when she glanced over to find his eyes had lost all their shine, his mouth twitched to a frown, black brows slanted with stress. He was glaring out at something when she wasn't looking. She couldn't tell if it was the race he was looking at, or the pits, or the hundreds of observation platforms across the expanse, or one of the thousands of advertisements flashing and making noise... All she could tell was that he was frowning.

Yana stepped in front of him to stop his stroll and looked him in the eye to sign in his face, "If the raceway was a bad idea, just say so."

"Huh?" His moment of sour sadness was pushed aside. He forced a smile, and his tone to lighten. "What are you talking about? Aren't you having a good time?" Then, "Wait. Sorry." He brought up his hands and paused to try remember the signs for what he said.

She lightly slapped his hand that he didn't have to sign back and gave him a deliberate look of don't bullshit me.

"You don't seem to be."

Wedge sobered. He closed his mouth and tucked his hands into his pockets, nodding with humility. And then faced her with honesty. "It's not you. And it's not the raceway. I..." He sighed again, looking around, and shrugged to admit it. "I had a bad dream last night that I can't seem to shake."

She cocked her head with friendly concern.

He tried to relax and grinned. "Naw, this is good." He looked around the big view and all the colors and people. "This is distracting me. Cheering me up. I'm sorry, I guess I'm kind of out of alignment today." He rubbed the side of his face with his palm.

"Want to talk about it?"

"No." He smiled with truth. "I don't want to spoil the day with it." And then his eyes focused warmly on her. "I want to enjoy this time with you."

She inhaled to speak, her lips twitched, her voice peeked out, but she settled and flushed with embarrassment, frustration.

A true smile spread from ear to ear across his face. He took a tiny step closer and crooned quietly to tease. "Ack. She almost talked."

She sniggered and shined up. "I can't. Sometimes I forget I can't."

Someone bumped into him rushing by. Wedge took a step to the rail to get out of the way of foot traffic and leaned an elbow on it. "Well, I'm honored to be one who can help you forget that. I'd like to hear you try sometime. And I don't care how well it comes out. I just want to hear your voice again."

Yana set both elbows on the rail and blushed out at the carnival colors in the view beyond, frustrated. I miss my voice too, she thought.

"Y'know, maybe we should try chatting on the links in front of each other so we can see each other's faces while we're doing it."

She grinned uncomfortably over, nodded, shrugged. Her eyes found his and the butterflies went mad. She sucked in oxygen, overwhelmed with want.

"You know what though?" he postulated, his voice dipped lower and more gentle, "if I were to guess, with your job, you probably have a lot you want to say about a lot of things and already couldn't for years, long before you lost your speech."

Her green eyes dilated on nothing. She nodded with a new discomfort.

"I wish I knew how to help with that," he murmured. "I wish I knew what you want to talk about so I could open that door for you."

She glanced over.

Wedge shrugged, "By CIC bunker rules, if I bring it up, you can talk about it. Right? At least a little?"

"Only if it's a confession," she signed, watching him, guarded.

And Wedge stared back for a long beat. He licked his lips and braced himself. "Would you like me to guess?"

She rattled her head, confused. "Guess about what?"

Wedge's eyes were direct. His chin firm. "Whatever confession I need to make so we can clear the air; so you're shields are so full power all the time."

Yana dropped her sights back to the view out there and saw none of it. Yes, she wanted him to confess anything necessary so there were no big secrets between them, but she didn't want whatever it was to end this, whatever 'this' was.

He didn't say anything for a long time.

So long that Yana finally looked over to see what he was waiting for. He was still watching her, but sobered, dismayed. Suddenly, he blurted a nervous chuckle and nearly whined. "Hey, I'm sorry, I know it's not your fault that you can't talk, but I need you to shoot me a clue here!"

Her brows scrunched.

He shrugged a hand with defeat and set both elbows on the rail beside her, shaking his head with a wry smile. "I am working hard to figure this out, but I don't know how read you, Yana. I don't know if I'm doing this right. I don't know if I'm fucking this up. I don't know if you're going out with me out of sympathy, or because of some Jedi pressure, or what. Maybe you're doing it because we're the rare few the early crew that actually lived through the whole thing. I don't know. And it's driving me mad. It's keeping me up at night. Except, thinking about you is a parsecs nicer than thinking about them, so I'm not complaining about it." He smiled over with that. "But I've got no sensors on this and I'm flying blind."

Yana watched his expressions during that ramble, working just as hard to read him right now.

He met her eyes, and he drew in a tiny, quick sigh, as if the breath itself was a secret. He whispered as if to himself, "Damn, I wish you could talk to me."

Yana began to understand. Wedge wasn't making a move on her because she wasn't giving him any clear indication that she wanted him to. Yana was never much of a talker in the first place. She didn't chat much with strangers; didn't gossip with friends. This was, in part, what made her such a perfect fit for a top security level clearance. Once she moved up the ranks in the Rebel Command In Control Department, not talking about her day became a requirement, and so she learned to talk even less. The speech impediment only made her natural shy and quiet become positively intense.

Yana realized she was going to have to make the first gesture. She rubbed her lips together to think, angled her head with quavering confidence, tightened her teeth with odd humor, and flushed to say it aloud to him.

"Fuck."

Wedge splashed with laughter. His eyes slammed shut and he buried his red face in his forearms on the rail, shoulders shaking. He was bright as the sun when he lifted his face again. "So you can talk! You've been holding back on me!"

She shook her head, flushing as red as her hair, and signed. "It's one of the few words I can say."

He laughed loud and glowed at her. "How many words have you tried?"

She waggled her hand in the air, then tittered, thinking of the other word she could say, and flushed again. Freshly shy, she redirected her eyes to the view and tried to make her stomach stop flipping.

"Well, ma'am," he said with a smooth tone, "you have me at a disadvantage."

Yana looked over with a curl of her lip.

"Do you want me to clear any air?" He seemed to think he knew what she was worried about.

Trapped in his gaze, Yana rubbed her lips, scared of what he'd say.

He began to grin, "Nod or shake your head."

She realized it again, she wasn't giving him a sign. She blushed bashful, sobered, braced herself, and nodded.

He absorbed that, nodded, and murmured with the strength of a pilot flying into battle. "Mind you I'm not in any hurry to ruin this, but I might as well get the beating over with if a beating is due. No reason to waste any more of your time if you've got a shield I can't breach."

Now it was Yana's turn to stiffen. She put her elbows back on the railing and waited as if for a stab wound. She signed coldly, "Please."

Wedge sucked in a long breath and lowered his voice even more to say it. "You were in the CIC bunker for half of Hoth and all of Yavin 4, looking for spies for at least some of it. So I know that you know how much I was the very kind of pilot you never wanted to date."

Her shoulders twitched. She breathed tightly. Staring hard at nothing out there, Yana, reluctantly, nodded.

He angled his head with a curious murmur. "And you're going out with me anyway."

She swallowed hard.

His voice came back. "I don't know if this is going to make any sense but..." He scratched his ear and grimaced. "I wasn't supposed to live through that thing. I never expected to. I never saved anything for later, never dreamed of my retirement, or what I'd do after the war. I lived for the 'now' because 'now' was all I'd ever have. The death rates of us pilots... well I don't need to tell you what they were."

She signed without looking over. "You were an exception to the statistic."

"I'm- I'm sorry, I didn't get that middle one." He angled to face her, truly wanting to understand what she said.

She faced him and signed it again, spelling it slowly. "You were an exception to the statistic." She added, "You were the best pilot we had. Better than Skywalker. Better than Solo. Better than Calrissian. Of course you were going to live through it."

He seemed to dismiss the compliment and looked away. "Well, I wasn't planning on it."

More by his tone than his words, Yana began to understand what he meant.

His eyes found her again and, if she could read him at all, she would have sworn his stomach was flipping too.

"I kissed Kess goodbye that night before the launch only because I was saying goodbye to it all."

Staring at nothing, Yana's mouth opened, but she still found it difficult to breathe.

"So. Now. All four of us know that all four of us know."

Yana rubbed her eyes with thumb and forefinger. She was more angry than she expected.

Wedge cleared his throat and shrugged. "She was just the last one I saw when I left the pad, really. I mean, if there was never a Luke maybe we could have been something decent someday, but there was." He shrugged again. "As soon as I figured out he wasn't the monk he wanted everyone to think, I never gave her a second thought. She's a shipmate. A soldier. She's good at her job and she works her ass off to take care of our birds; I respect her for that. And she's the one who woke up my wing to have a life and be happy. And I love her for that... But that night, somehow, she seemed to represent a whole lot more for a minute. And I knew I was about to die. I knew it. I just knew it... That night, I went home, had a drink, laid down in bed and stared at the ceiling thinking about all the things I wish I had done different in my life. All the paths I missed because of the paths I chose. All the cheap fast dating over the years made it so I didn't even deserve a woman like you anymore. I used to think Luke was the idiot for not trying to find someone to keep him company, especially when he was surrounded by targets. But that last couple of months on Yavin 4, I realized... he was the smart one, waiting for the right woman, and I was the idiot. I got so jealous of what they have. Not jealous because he has her, but of what they are together. Even if there wasn't a Luke in the picture, Kess and I never would get that far. And to tell the truth I'm talking about her more right now than she even crossed my mind, but I'm saying it because I don't want you to think there's any residual fodder you need to worry about."

Yana looked over to nod understanding, but she was breathing stiffly. Her shields, as he put it, were still up.

His eyes were direct with truth. "I haven't dated anyone since before the Battle of the Line. Until you."

The way he said it, she believed him. And she let out a small sigh of clear relief.

"And even back when I was still dating, I never lied to them. I didn't want to leave a family behind. I didn't want someone crying over my empty medals. For a long time, I was fine to just be the first toast at a party and join the dead rebel ranks."

"What changed?"

He echoed her sign as if to read it out loud and grinned at the air. "What changed. Heh. A lot of things, I guess. Han changed. Who'd've thought he'd ever settle down! Luke changed. It was a long ramp up for him to get there, but bugging off with Kess after the Battle of the Line proved it. Resigning his commission proved it. And I was already so sick and tired of the cheap dates by then, just knowing he was out there somewhere finally connecting with somebody, somebody who was perfect for him... Luke Skywalker found a mate... I got so jealous that I couldn't have anything like that. That I never got anywhere close to having something like that. But I never tried to have something like that. I went out of my way to make sure nothing could become something like that. But at the same time, I didn't want to leave anyone crying when my name showed up on The List."

The invisible weight in Yana's mind grew lighter with every word he said. She listened intently, but not obviously, working hard not to interrupt that Wedge was finally talking, really talking.

She saw his eyes aimed out at the big view of the carnival and races and sky, but he was only seeing memory. She thought he was finished, but he hitched a new grin and continued.

"And then, as if the Force was firing an extra shot in the stomach to make sure I got the message, I had to go down to the CIC bunker to get all the Rogue Group commands transferred."

Yana blushed and smiled so hard she bit her lips to make them close.

He smiled too, but his eyes remained in the air, seeing the memory. "No more cheap dates, Wedge. You just told yourself. No more cheap dates. Don't waste your time, man. Don't do that to yourself anymore. Especially since we're about to go into the Big One. You know you're not going to come back... But my feet just kept walking right across that bunker anyway, just so I could talk to that one." Even with his eyes smiling out at the memory, his index finger came up and jabbed the air to point at her.

She bit her lower lip and flushed.

Wedge smiled down and seemed to read her bashful smile well enough.

She struggled to put her thoughts into words. "So why didn't you- She dropped her hands.

"Why didn't I ask you out that day?" He was grinning.

Trapped in his gaze felt wonderful now.

"Because you deserve better."

She tried to dash that off with humility, but she had to nod agreement.

"Mintalo was a bishwag," Wedge said. "You had every right to put the chocks on every pilot in the galaxy after that." He popped an easy shoulder. "I respected that. And with the Big One coming up, I knew I wouldn't be able to give you what you deserved either. Even I wanted to." He quieted. His eyes returned to the view and saw none of it. That oppressive darkness returned to his demeanor. He barely whispered it. "I wasn't supposed to live."

Yana didn't understand why he would say that, but she was beginning to recognize a recurring theme in it. She watched him with concern as Wedge stared out at the sky as if he was seeing death and angry it didn't take him too. He stiffened, sucking on the inside of his teeth, deep in his thoughts. It was as if he felt surviving was some kind of curse.

Uncertain, she reached over and brushed the back of her finger against his hand hanging from the rail, just to get his attention.

Brown eyes came back to present and found her.

She faced him down, kept his eye, and signed just within vision of the stare. "You lived." And then she started to grin. "New project."

His smile spread from ear to ear. His eyes sparkled at the old joke; bittersweet to the memory of the picnic when Kayla and Joanne -may the Force be with their souls- decided that Wedge and Yana was their new project now that Luke and Kess didn't need any more help. They shared a smile over it, which seemed to give Wedge what he needed to settle lower against the rail so he could look her closer in the eye with raw, friendly honesty.

"Look, Yana, I don't deserve you and I know it. And I'm a damn virgin when it comes to 'dating for the long term'. I never had mission plan for this stuff. I never tried to do it right before. And now-now I'm afraid I'm going to screw something up and I'm not used to that." He nearly chuckled when he said it, "You terrify me. Because I don't want to make a false step and blow this whole thing over a stupid mistake. I don't want to go too fast and scare you off. I don't want you thinking I'm still in fly-by-night mode. I don't want you to give you the slightest worry that I'm going to do to you what Mintalo did."

He dipped into pleading with her, "But at the same time, I don't know how to read what you want. Talking to you on the datalinks is great because it seems to be the only time we can really talk, because it's the only time we're on the same level of fluid comm but... but I can't see your face because we're klicks apart in two different apartments, so even then I don't know really how you're reacting to what I say," and his words dribbled into a mumble behind a palm rubbing his face hard and chuckling angrily at himself, "and I'm probably screwing it up now just saying all this fodder. I need to shut up."

Wedge hid in his own hand, wishing he could sink into a black hole right now. He was weary of walking on egg shells about this, and only now realized how much he'd been walking on egg shells with her. He liked Yana -a lot- but beyond that, she somehow represented an extra chance at life that he hadn't earned. He lived. And maybe someday after a planetary mass of therapy he could reconcile why the others didn't. But if he screwed up and lost this chance with Yana, what was the point of surviving in the first place?

Wedge wasn't a suicidal kind of guy, so these black visions in his peripheral subconscious didn't make any sense. He was only beginning to glimpse that they were even there, and they seemed to have a magnetic-like pull over everything else happening in his mind. They made him second-guess things on which he was usually confident. Life felt like he was trying to fly with a damper that wouldn't quit, he was always trying to compensate, not finding a balance, and the struggle sent his stomach spinning every time he tried to overcorrect for a hidden gravity-source that he couldn't find or calculate for...

"Wedge."

The sweet sound of her voice - especially to smoothly say his name- punctured the bubble of his momentary self-loathing. He opened his eyes to stare in shock, mouth fallen open, and grew terrified all over again the way her green eyes sparkled back at him. She opened that beautiful mouth...

Eager, Wedge shifted more toward her, overwhelmed with emotion that Yana was speaking.

"I..." She swallowed, rubbed her lips, and, "wa-" stiff breath of determination, "waaaaant..." she gritted her teeth for a long moment, eyeing him to concentrate, and shoved it out of her mouth, "this."

Wedge began to smile, but she wasn't done.

"t-t-t-o ..." rub lips, "b-b-b-" She slammed her eyes shut with frustration and looked like she was about to give up.

Wedge was giddy to wait as long as she needed.

She saw that, and forced it out. "be..." She pursed her mouth, winking one eye shut in trying to get the syllable to come out, "weal."

Awestruck, he murmured it back to make sure he understood her right. "You want this to be real." When she nodded, he nodded, and whispered it. "Me too." He lowered his gaze to figure out some profound way he could respond, and saw her hand hanging by the side of her floral, flowing skirt. He found the guts to finally reach for it, just to brush the side of his index finger against the side of hers, and look her in the eyes as he did. "Yana, for the first time... I am looking for something serious... because it's you."

Her eyes dilated, but it scared him so much to say that aloud he retreated into a nervous chuckle. "And I'm sorry if that's too fast, or maybe it's too slow, or I'm just being too corny or-"

"Wedge."

It struck his heart like a lightning bolt. Her voice saying his name felt like a shot of a drug. He turned his eyes back to her, to see those green eyes shining, the sunlight in her long hair, the color of her hair band, the flush of her perfect cheeks...

Her hand began to slide into his.

And Wedge found himself kissing her.