I'd never been on Yavin 4. The enormous, frightening, beautiful monolith of an amazing campaign before my time smelled like the spring of Antarion. Someone named Corran--he was shrouded in a brown cloak but well built I could tell, just like they're supposed to be, with a rather stern face, and short beard, pleasant to look at like they're supposed to be--met me and took me immediatly down, through tunnels I'll never get back through, through secret ways so I never saw any of the actual base, mad mysterious, with me following this --superman?--and down to a dark, not uncomfortable hot spring-filled cavern.

If I were not weirded out by this enough Corran told me that it was normal, part of the Jedi works, and that Master Skywalker was here as well.

He loomed suddenly in that firelight, a little bit frightening-and I felt my ferocity well up. It had carried me through battles before.

He gestured, one long hand flat, and Corran Horn slipped away beyond what might be a wall of rock or smoke or

heart?

"Hey." said Luke, human, and I was still turned sideways, fighting-fit, not loving-fit at all.

I think I glared at him. He came out of the fog, sat on an outjut of rock with almost the steaming, odd-colored water at his feet. He hesitated, feared, and that changed most everything-

"This reason you have to be angry at me." He said. "I know it."

"Because of someone else?" I flared.

"Because of you!" Again he stood. "What are you resisting, Cy-Raxx?"

I had the answer in a heartbeat. "Love that won't come."

He stared into me. "And what if it did? I think..." He reached out, touched a strand of my hair, dared the cliche, could he feel my heartbeat race, touched the back of his hand to my neck, warm skin. I turned further away, almost hissed, feeling up against an unliteral wall-a wall, and behind it are monsters that can see me I can't see them. I began to get angry at the Force itself.

He flapped his hands down at his sides. "What did someone do to you? Since Endor? Since Hoth, did I miss it-"

I almost screamed at this dangerous, mystical, overawing, stupid man. "No-one did anything, Luke! Commander Luke, no one-"

Tears felt heatless. I almost appreciated his touch, certainly appreciated his dear attempt, but suddenly I was realizing that was only the beginning. I was on a roll now, a role, my stagespeech, my multilayered silent soliloquy of life to an audience of one.

He dropped to his knees, lithe. He talked to the boiling water; I stared at his profiled shadow behind me.

"I'm sorry." He said, "Darth Vader was my father."

Selfishness, even reciprocated, died from me, because I could not avoid belief. Those chronicles, those tones of knowledge behind his eyes, --! They came from here. I dropped beside him, ignored the heat, fed my palm the rough fabric and hidden muscle of his arm. I could say nothing, but maybe what he knew-

I'm sorry. I thought. "I'm so sorry that--you felt--Endor--We're both drowning--"

I had pressed close against him, trying to look into his eyes, trying to not shake at the way I could be touching metal and terror and wanting it.

Something of the soldier in me managed to whisper, "Then that is why he killed the Emperor."

"Because of me." He nodded. "But I've dealt with that now, and I'm feeling again. I thought I would apologize to you, for what I said after the victory."

"All about love. I've convinced myself love can't be all that important. I mean--" and sitting there I felt fearful, poised, and a little coy, all at the same time. "I want it to be, just a little, compared to all this, Jedi and beauty and life."

He smiled down at me, slight. "I think it must be. Even compared to the Jedi."

"You can't see your self, Skywalker. So very imposing. Masterly." I grinned sideways, just a little, too.

"...then you understand a little, I think."

"I could love you." I said. "But I've been so much..."

He put his arm around me and moved a little closer, and we sat like that for a while.