28
It was, Han reflected, another beautiful day on Sernpidal. The system's typical yellow star hung high in the sky, washing the plains with its bright light. Various trees and grasses that Han still didn't remember the names for yet were blowing in a gentle breeze, and the air, compared to most of the places like Coruscant that Han was used to, was absolutely pristine.
Yet, to him, it seemed almost too perfect. Then again, perhaps it was just the old smuggler in him, itching for action. He could not even remember a time at which he'd been settled down for any real length of time, much less the year or so they had now been on Sernpidal. His life had always consisted of running from place to place, being chased by authorities, chasing corrupt authorities, and other various excitement.
Han walked over to the Millennium Falcon with a slow, bored gait. As was the norm for the now almost antique, war-weary freighter, something else had decided to break, in this case, the remote-controlled blaster turret below the cockpit. Chewie, who Han suspected was just as bored as he was, was currently hanging halfway out of one of the Falcon's access ports trying to find out where the wiring had broken.
He almost envied the Wookiee. While he had spent a lot of his time pacing restlessly, Chewie had spent all his time tinkering on the Falcon as was usual for him. One of the local junkyards had turned up some parts from another YT-1300, which Han found somewhat surprising this far from any of the major spaceports, and as soon as Chewie had seen the parts he'd bought the whole bundle of them and set about repairing minor glitches all over the ship.
The only problem with fixing a glitch on the Falcon was that it had a nasty tendency to introduce a hundred other minor glitches, and after getting the parts Chewie had almost completely disassembled half the ship in the effort to fix them all. He'd managed to do it, but only after rebuilding almost a hundred meters of wiring harness that had decayed from close to a century of age and abuse. It now worked better than before, except that after Chewie redid the harness the remote blaster had gone bonkers, pointing in random directions whenever he tried to aim it.
Han sighed. There had been times when he'd considered getting a new ship, but the Falcon was so much more than "just a ship" to him now – it was almost alive with its temperamental behavior. Sure, newer ships were now faster, more powerful, and carried heavier loads or more firepower, but Han had known for years that part of navigating through hyperspace was your intuition. It was, after all, the reason he had boasted to a young Luke Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi that his ship had completed the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs. It didn't really refer to speed at all as much as it did to his navigational abilities.
The good old days, Han thought wistfully. Whatever had happened to the Galaxy? It used to be simple enough, there was one evil enemy: the Galactic Empire. Now, between all the political infighting and what seemed like yearly invasions by various galactic and extragalactic races, Han wasn't sure who was the enemy anymore. Everyone hated everyone else for one reason or another. In a way, Han almost missed the Empire, because it served as a polarizing agent: it was an enemy that everyone could agree on.
Han looked up at the sky, seeing the light crescent of Dobido, the smaller of Sernpidal's two moons, hanging in the distance, and sighed. Then a bright streak of light flashed by, which wouldn't have been very unusual by itself but the fact that it was followed by another several streaks caught his attention. Not only that, but unlike meteors that usually vanished after a couple of seconds, these left smoky trails in their wakes. On any other planet it could have been space junk re-entering the atmosphere, if it wasn't for the fact that Sernpidal was unusually free of space debris...
"Chewie!" he shouted as he started walking backwards toward the Falcon. "How close are you to getting that turret operational? I have a bad feeling..."
Chewie bellowed a reply.
"Well try to hurry it up, you never know when we'll need the Falcon." Han turned around and jogged in to the house.
"Hi, Han," Leia remarked from where she was laying on the sofa as he entered. As always, her skin was still a deathly pale hue, and her eyes seemed to have aged ten extra years from the strain of the disease. "What's the look for?"
Han shrugged as he sat down and thumbed on the vidscreen. "I don't know," he finally admitted. "Maybe I'm just too tense, but I saw some re-entry trails when I was outside. It didn't look like meteorites or space junk to me."
"Are you sure?" Leia asked. "Remember, we used to see those on Coruscant all the time."
Han nodded. "Yeah, and Coruscant's practically a battlefield, there's so much junk in orbit that it's a miracle more ships aren't lost to it. This place, on the other hand, doesn't have much of anything larger than a shockball flying around up there, and one of those pieces would burn up real quick. No, those things I saw were spaceship sized or larger."
As he was talking, Han had idly been flipping through the holo channels. Most of it was pre-recorded programs, dramas or documentaries, and some of the major sector news channels. He finally reached Sernpidal's local news, but of course there was nothing happening. One of the local farmers had reported all his crops dying but that was about it.
"Well, I guess you're right," Han said finally, standing up to go pour himself a drink. "I guess what the kids told us has me on edge. I hope they're all right out there."
Leia gave him a wan smile. "They're Jedi Knights now, Han. I'm sure they can take care of themselves. Besides, what would anyone want with a planet like Sernpidal, anyway?"
Several hours later, Han was jolted out of the doze he'd fallen into in front of the vidscreen by a news flash. He was somewhat surprised to see the planet's old Mayor on the screen, while the faint sounds of blaster shots rang out in the distance. Without thinking, Han hit the "record" button on his remote.
"Residents of Sernpidal," the old man began with a wheeze that was hinted with sadness, "it unfortunately falls to me to inform you that we are under attack by an unknown force."
As if to punctuate his statement, there was a loud crash and some dust was shaken loose from the building he was in.
"Sernpidal City has already been captured, and while the remaining police in the city are trying to recapture it, the situation is grim. If any of you have ships, get as many people as you can and leave. Try to send a message to Coruscant, I doubt they will listen but we can at least-"
There was a loud crash from behind him as one of the doors was blown open. Several strange-looking humanoid forms, their bodies showing exposed horn-like growths in random places, ran through the doorway and took up positions around the room. Several screams of panic came from off camera, and the Mayor turned around only to face the incoming aliens. "Guvvuk!" one of them grunted before pointing his staff at the old Mayor. The mayor backed up-then the feed suddenly shut off.
Han sat motionless for several seconds, dazed. "Leia!" he finally shouted as he sprung off the seat as fast as he could. "We have to leave NOW!" He grabbed a datachip with the recording and ran outside to find Chewie, who had apparently finished putting the panels back on the Falcon, watching more bizarre looking ships landing in Sernpidal City in the distance.
"Chewie, the city's under attack, the mayor's said that anyone who can get off should do so now. Is the Falcon ready to go?"
Chewie barked an affirmative.
"OK. Help me carry Leia out to the ship, then she can run the pre-flight checks while we get everything loaded."
He found Leia inside the bedroom, trying to pack some of their mementos. "Don't worry about that. Chewie and I are going to help you out to the ship, and I need you to run through the pre-flight sequence if you can. If anything happens, call me on the commlink."
Before he could say anything, Chewie scooped his wife up and headed out the door. Han looked around the room at the memories of twenty years of their life together, sighed, and started stuffing what he could into a duffel bag.
Han immediately went to the cockpit after unloading. "Honey, is there anything else we need?"
"You got the safe?"
"Chewie's putting it in the hold."
Leia thought for a moment. "Get the holodisks in the library, we'll need those. And anything else you can think of. Oh, and have you seen Threepio?"
As Han and Chewie ran down the ramp back toward the house, Han spotted a small group of Sernpidalans running toward them in the distance. "Chewie, go ahead and get it and try to find Threepio, I'll take care of them," he said, stopping to watch. Farther behind, he could see a large group of people that he couldn't really identify, but the Sernpidalans seemed to be running from them.
Chewie emerged from the house carrying the library and quickly took it up the ramp into the hold. Some distance behind him, Threepio shuffled through the dust, struggling to keep up with the Wookiee. As he returned to the ramp, the first of the Sernpidalans ran up up to the Falcon.
"What's going on?" Han asked.
The Sernpidalan gestured to the larger group, which was now not far behind. His Basic was broken, but otherwise acceptable. "Those... those things are trying to kill us, they destroyed our groundcar and our house already. Some of us were wounded trying to escape."
Han looked at the oncoming group, fear slowly rising in his mind. "Chewie, can you help them get the wounded on board?"
The Wookiee yelped slightly, going down and picking up an albino woman who could barely walk. Han ducked inside the Falcon and ran to the cockpit.
"How close are we?" he asked Leia.
"Engines are almost ready, I think another two minutes and we'll be ready for takeoff."
Han sat down in the pilot's seat and started checking the instruments. He was interrupted a short time later by an exclamation from Leia, which made him look up.
"They're attacking our hovercar," Leia said, which made Han look in the direction she was pointing. The car, a used SoroSuub that they had picked up when they came here, was surrounded by the same kind of strange-looking creatures that Han had seen on the vidscreen. They were all swinging their staffs at it, destroying the windscreen and putting gashes and dents in the metal.
Han frowned. "That's bizarre... they're focused on destroying the car more than attacking the refugees..."
There was a tinny exclamation from somewhere in the passenger compartment. Apparently Threepio had taken some sort of offense to the assault. Han sighed. He was probably scaring the passengers more than calming them down, but he couldn't leave the cockpit right now.
Apparently satisfied with the damage they had done to the poor car, the creatures turned their attention to the Falcon. Their apparent leader, a tall, hideously ugly thing, pulled something out of a pouch on his shoulder and suddenly threw it toward the Falcon. Han could see it come flying toward the cockpit, and he ducked involuntarily as there was a small explosion against the transparisteel. When he looked back up at it, there was no damage aside from a small scorch mark where the projectile had exploded.
"Nobody attacks my ship!" Han exploded as he reached for the controls for the remote blaster, hoping quietly that Chewie had gotten it working properly this time. The targeting grid came up, and Han took aim at the group, spraying them with blaster shots. Several of the ones in the lead went down, but the group was at least several dozen strong. Han kept up his fire, mowing them down as they approached. By the time they reached the Falcon and Han was forced to stop firing, there were perhaps a dozen left. Although he already knew the answer, he glanced up at the status lights, which confirmed that the ship was still nowhere near ready to blast off.
"Chewie!" he shouted. "Why is the landing ramp still down? We've got company and they don't look friendly!"
He heard a bellow in acknowledgement, and the next thing he saw was a spread of bowcaster bolts shoot out, taking several more of the strange creatures down. He jumped up and drew his blaster, already running for the landing ramp to prevent them from entering. One of the older Sernpidalans, barely able to walk, was hanging on to the padding of one of the bulkheads where Chewie had left him. Han quickly grabbed the old man and took him to the acceleration couch, then dashed back to the ramp. What he saw next left his jaw hanging open.
Chewie was in the center of the dozen or so creatures. He had grabbed one of them and was swinging him around as a club, battering the others down until they were bloody and broken. As he watched, Chewie swung and two creatures went flying backwards almost two meters, landing with a sickening crash.
As close as they were, Han couldn't fire for fear of hitting Chewie, and he dared not get up close since he neither had a lightsaber nor was trained on one. He just watched in shock, blaster ready for an opportunity that stubbornly refused to come.
Finally it was down to just Chewie and the heavily armored leader of the group, a creature that he would have readily described as a "kriffing ugly son-of-a-Gundark." Bony horns stuck out from all its joints, its face was hideously disfigured with protruding teeth, deep scars, and numerous tattoos. In its hand was some sort of long staff, which it twirled menacingly as it and Chewie circled, waiting for an opportunity to strike.
Suddenly Chewie lunged at the creature. Its staff suddenly writhed in its hand like a snake, spitting at Chewie who roared in pain and grabbed his eyes. Apparently blinded, Chewie lunged again at the creature and missed. It swung its staff, now hardened again, and the sharpened edge bit deep into Chewie's leg. The Wookiee, in pain and suddenly off balance, crashed into the creature and sent both of them to the ground, the snake-like staff sent flying to land a short distance away. Even from his vantage point on the ramp, Han could hear bones crack from the impact.
However, Chewbacca didn't even pause for a second. He immediately grabbed the creature's arm and wrenched it in an unnatural angle despite the creature's best efforts. Han could hear more bones popping and there was a sickening crunch as the arm was torn from its socket.
"Chewie, look out!" Han shouted. The staff had managed to crawl back into it's master's hand. Chewie recoiled when he heard Han, holding the arm he'd torn off as if it were a club. The creature, coming back to its feet swung its staff at its now-detached arm, cutting it in half. Still blinded, Chewie backed up several paces toward the Falcon but Han was still forced to hold his fire.
Chewie dropped low and lunged once again, apparently intending to tackle the creature's legs and knock him over. The creature, blood spurting from its arm's stump but not even showing a reaction to the pain, swung its staff again. It hit Chewie squarely in the chest and sent him off balance, yet he still managed to grab one of the creature's legs and pull hard. There was another crunch as the leg's knee joint broke backwards. Suddenly off balance, the alien came crashing down towards Chewie, its one good arm brandishing the staff for a killing stroke-
"NO!" Han shouted, aiming his blaster in a heartbeat straight at the creature's eyes and pulled the trigger. Unfortunately it was already moving fast enough that the shot missed, instead striking its shoulder armor and knocking it aside but not killing it. The staff dug itself into the ground, and Han fired again, sending it reeling backwards. Before it could pull the staff out, Chewie was again on top of it, his claws – which Han had never seen him use before in the thirty-some odd years he'd known the Wookiee - fully outstretched as he tore at the joints in the creature's armor with an earsplitting roar. The armor cracked at its seam in a fashion that sort of reminded Han of the last time he'd eaten a hard-shelled crustacean, and Chewie ripped it off, his claws once again retracted.
In the meantime, the staff had pulled itself out and slithered back to its master's hand yet again. Before Han could react, the hand just barely twitched and the staff hardened instantly. A moment later, the arm swung, the staff plunging straight through Chewie's back.
Chewie roared in pain at the blow, but his roar was tinted with a gurgle that Han knew all too well was due to the wound. He began to run down the ramp, his overdeveloped sense of self-preservation thrown to the wind, but stopped as Chewie, still impaled on the staff, tore off the creature's head with a sickening pop as blood suddenly spurted everywhere. Its body thrashed beneath Chewie in protest but went still after several seconds as the Wookiee continued to twist and crush.
Suddenly free from its master, the staff went limp and began to writhe, causing Chewie to again roar in pain (although he sounded much weaker this time).
"Hold on, Chewie," Han shouted as he took careful aim at the staff's apparent 'head' and fired. The head exploded and the staff went still. Chewie weakly grabbed the staff and pulled it out, flinging it aside.
As he ran up to Chewie he took one look at the gaping wound in the Wookiee's chest and tore a strip off his shirt. He struggled to pack it into the wound, which was bleeding so profusely that he wasn't sure how much good it would do. Several more strips he used to create a tourniquet around his leg. Then he tried to lift Chewie off of the dead creature and carry him up to the ship, but couldn't even move the weight.
"He's too heavy," he said, doubled over while panting. Deciding to try a different tactic, he instead grabbed Chewie by his arms and began dragging the huge Wookiee toward the Falcon. At the ramp, he was met by several of the Sernpidalans and together they carried him up the ramp and into the Falcon's medical berth. Chewie moaned weakly as Han hooked him up to the life support equipment.
"Come on, don't say that," Han pleaded as he unwound the hose for the oxygen mask. "Lando has enough medical staff on Dubrillion that I'm sure they'll be able to patch you right up.
Chewie chuffed a reply, coughing blood immediately afterwards.
"Of course I'm sure they have Wookiee sized equipment," Han shot back, a faint hint of his trademark lopsided smile creeping across his face. He was glad to see that Chewie was at least strong enough to make a joke as he grabbed a handful of bacta patches and sterile bandages out of one of the drawers. "Can you lean over at all?"
Chewie lifted his side enough for Han to reach under, wincing as he felt the pool of blood, and pack more bandages into the wound to try and stop it from bleeding.
"Han!" Leia shouted from the cockpit. "There's more coming, and they seem pretty pissed..." As if to punctuate her statement, the ship rocked from... well, something hitting it.
Han quickly strapped Chewie in, and put his hand on the Wookiee's shoulder. "Hang in there, old buddy," he said as he got up, trying hard to suppress the choking sensation in his throat. "I'll be right back." He ran to the cockpit, briefly checking that their passengers were strapped in to the acceleration couch, and threw himself into the pilot's seat next to his wife.
With a jolt, the Falcon suddenly rose into the air and Han spun it around to face the new group of attackers. Surrounded by the same small creatures that he had seen earlier was a large, snail-like creature that seemed to be vomiting glowing golden orbs of something, perhaps plasma, that appeared to lazily drift towards him. Another one impacted and a warning alarm blazed on the console, so Han quickly slaved the turrets forward and blasted the creature with all of the Falcon's turbolasers as he shoved the throttles all the way forward, blasting out of the atmosphere.
"Oh, kriff..." Han muttered as the Falcon ran headlong into exactly what he'd been expecting to find in orbit: the warship behind the invasion. What he hadn't expected was its appearance. It was a massive, Star Destroyer-sized lump of rock, with crags and spines sticking out of it almost at random. Although it certainly looked rocky, it didn't look like your usual asteroid – there was an almost sinister feel to it.Suddenly a horde of tiny specks, glittering in the light from Sernpidal's distant star, seemed to detach themselves from the massive asteroid-ship, and Han knew exactly why.
"Do you have a course for Dubrillion yet?"
"I'm working on it!" Leia snapped back. "Maybe it'd be faster if this bucket of bolts wasn't so jury-rigged!"
"You know full well that the Falcon would never let us down!" Han retorted, throwing the Falcon into a series of evasive maneuvers as the specks drew closer, golden orbs flying through the void.
"Remind me again how many times she's broken down at a bad time?" Leia replied, but there was no real anger left.
"That's all Lando's fault," Han jibed. Farther behind the Falcon, the sensors were telling him that there were perhaps another hundred fleeing ships.
He knew by the tone of her voice that Leia was rolling her eyes. "It's always Lando's fault. Let me guess, this is, too?"
"Yes, and I'm going to give him a piece of my mind the next time I see him, that no-good lousy cheat!" he shouted emphatically, before turning the squelch down on the comm, listening to some of the random chatter as he watched the attacking ships approach all too rapidly. The refugees were scared and disorganized, and not many of them seemed to know where to go. Well, he could give them a better chance than nothing, he thought, keying his comm to a known broadcast frequency and praying that Kyp's guess that the invaders didn't communicate on normal frequencies was correct.
"All Sernpidal survivors, this is Han Solo, captain of the Millennium Falcon. The nearest world capable of taking you is Dubrillion. We will transmit coordinates shortly."
Whether they followed or not, Han was at least satisfied that he'd done what he could to help.
Then the attackers hit them.
Of the fleeing ships that were armed, such as the Falcon, most opened fire as soon as they could on the strange, vaguely fighter-shaped but very rock-like craft that were now slicing through them. In any other situation, it would have resulted in at least a few enemies damaged or destroyed, but for some reason Han found himself unable to hit the fighters, the Falcon's turbolaser shots seeming to bend around them, or, on occasion, outright vanish. The other refugee ships were faring no better, with some of their shots actually hitting other ships instead of the intended targets.
As the Falcon lurched from another impact, shield warning lights flashing all over the console, a thought passed through Han's mind about just how unfair the universe was sometimes. It was just as quickly put out of his mind as Leia told him that the coordinates were ready. He quickly keyed the comm. "Han Solo here, transmitting coordinates." Then, double-checking the coordinates, he pulled back on the two hyperdrive controls... and the only action was the sound of the gravity well alarm as the hyperdrive refused to activate.
"What the..." Han muttered a number of choice Old Corellian curses under his breath as he frantically tried to figure out what was causing the well. They were already well outside Sernpidal's gravity well, so the only other thing that could possibly be causing it...
He looked up at the asteroid-ship in the distance, which barely looked like a speck at the range they were at now. He suddenly knew that they had to get as far away as possible from it, and thanks to the nature of gravity, the other side of Sernpidal would give them a better chance...
He keyed the comm again. "The ship out there's interdicting us, we can't go to hyperspace until we get away from it first. Our best bet is to dive through Sernpidal's gravity well and go to hyperspace on the opposite side of the planet."
Acting quickly, Han spun the Falcon and punched the throttle, diving at an angle that would take him on an arc just barely above the outermost reaches of the planet's atmosphere. Any lower, Han knew, and they'd hit the rarefied air and slow down. Far behind, the nearest of the other refugee ships started the same maneuver.
All of a sudden, cries broke out frantically from the comm. "It's taken down my shields!"
Han grimaced, knowing what was coming. His eyes drifted to the throttle, but it was already set at the maximum, and the Falcon was still accelerating, blasting away on a tangent towards the planet and hopefully freedom.
"Mine are down too!" another voice exclaimed, followed by several cries of "I'm hit!" Far back in the line, the sensors registered an explosion, the first of what Han hoped were very few.
"My hull is melting!"
"That's because they're firing molten rocks at us!" someone else replied with absolute certainty. Han thought sarcastically that the person had to be a scientist, as there was no way for an ordinary person to be that sure. Although as amusing as the thought was, he definitely had a point. Turbolasers ran at such a high power level that they tended to vaporize on contact. As a result, armor plating manufacturers took one of two routes: they either designed the plating to ablate away as it was hit, which was the preferred kind for small ships, or they designed it to conduct and radiate energy faster than it could be pumped in. That was generally the preferred armor for warships, since it meant they could slug it out longer in a firefight.
The increasingly frantic cries on the comm, Han considered, showed the exact weakness of the ablative armor. If you didn't hit it hard enough to vaporize the outer layers, if you just warmed it up, then it would simply transfer all the heat to the structure reinforcing it. Of course, such low-power weapons took forever to work, which was why nobody used them... or at least that's what Han had previously thought.
Han didn't even want to think about the poor bastards in the makeshift convoy that didn't even have armor.
"Kriff!" he exclaimed as all the sensor warning lights light up on the console at the same time as a flash of plasma streaked right by the cockpit, indicating that there was a bogey right behind him. He tried several twists and turns to shake the attacker, to no avail.
"Get on the turret controls, I can't shake 'em," Han said to Leia as he strained the Falcon's inertial compensators in another turn. He didn't dare to look out of the corner of his eyes to see what she was doing, as focused as he was on his maneuvering, but hearing the quad turrets open fire with a loud thump was as good of a signal as any that Leia had indeed gotten the slaved controls working from the co-pilot's seat. A few seconds later, she began cursing. "I can't hit it, my shots keep disappearing," she said as she continued her efforts to hit the attacker.
They were now halfway around Sernpidal, and the warship had just disappeared behind the planet's bulk. Up ahead, all Han could see with both his eyes and the sensors was open space. He snorted to himself; these invaders were pretty inept if they were trying to run a blockade with only one warship.
Another part of his mind disagreed, considering the fact that perhaps a blockade wasn't their aim, maybe they just wanted the planet and any people they captured were a nice bonus.
But didn't that defeat the purpose of sneak attacks if you let people get away?
"Somebody else got 'em," Leia lamented suddenly, snapping Han out of his thoughts in an instant.
"Tell them I send my regards," he dryly replied, which resulted in a snort on the other end. "See any more?"
"Not around here," Leia replied, "but there are a few harassing some ships at the end of the line from what I can tell."
"Good," he replied. "If these freaks don't pull another Interdictor out of their hat, we can make the jump in about two minutes."
Thank the Force, Han thought. Sure enough, there was no sign of any enemy craft by the time they cleared Sernpidal's gravity well, and almost as soon as Han had pulled the controls, sending them on their way to Dubrillion, he jumped out of his seat and ran back to the medical berth.
"Chewie?" he asked as he crashed to his knees next to the berth, wincing as he did so. He was going to be feeling that one in the morning.
The Wookiee weakly turned his head toward Han, moaning something that he could barely understand. He looked up at the lifesign monitors and his face went pale.
"Hang in there, Chewie," he repeated, hoping against all hope that his old companion would find the will to continue living as he grabbed more bandages and packed them into the still bleeding wound. He then grabbed a hydration bag from one of the compartments, hung it up above Chewie, and quickly stuck its drip needle into Chewie's arm. "We'll be there in a few hours."
Using what little was left of his strength, Chewie moved his arm, still soaked in blood, to put it on Han's shoulder. He moaned softly again then coughed, blood trickling out of his mouth as he did.
"No, Chewie, you can't say that!" Han insisted strongly. "Come on, you're stronger than I am. Pull yourself together, you old flea bag!"
Chewie repeated the moan, softer this time. He gasped and coughed, more blood coming out, and he barely managed to gasp out one last word.
Then he was gone.
Han was silent for what seemed like an eternity as he watched Chewie's lifeless form lying before him on the berth, frustrated by the utter hopelessness of the situation. Chewie was gone, despite everything he could do, and yet he still felt guilty, almost wishing that he had been the one down fighting the creature.
It didn't matter to him right now that Chewie, in his last words, had told him that his life debt was fulfilled.
For the first time since he was a child, Han broke down, screaming at the injustice of the universe. His screams got quieter and quieter until he was finally sobbing uncontrollably with his head on Chewie's chest.
At some point during his outburst Leia had heard him from the cockpit and came to see what was going on. She didn't say a word, just kneeling down next to him, gently reaching out. He didn't even notice as she pulled him up against her. Her gesture said more than words ever could.
How long he continued weeping that day, he would never be able to tell.