Chapter 7

Luke sucked air through his clenched teeth, waiting for the bacta to hit his bare skin. Hovering just above the tank, splinted leg dangling beneath him, he felt the first blast of recycled air flood his lungs.

"See you after the dip, kid," Han said over the levering machinery. "I'll be right here 'till the sedative hits."

The respirator between his lips made it hard to respond, but he tried for some eye contact, and pushed a wave of anxiety away and into the Force. Han gave a crooked smile.

The bacta was cold, swallowing his toes and lapping at his ankles. Luke winced, teeth clacking against the plastic.

The Rebel frigate's medbay had one of the last of the Alliance's working bacta tanks. A two-day period had passed since Luke had woken from his last seizure on Endor's surface, and after the seizure medication had been doubled, Luke hadn't suffered another, as far as the monitors he wore reported. The rebel medics had thought it was safe enough to submerge him.

Safe enough. If he had a seizure while still in the tank, there was a high chance of him drowning in the stuff before the medics could save him.

Luke watched on the screens in front of him as his respiration spiked.

This tank was smaller than the one obliterated on Hoth's surface—the one that Luke had spent days submerged in after the attack, the wounds and the hypothermia prolonging his dip—but no less an entombing monolith.

Waking up, surrounded by the bluish liquid, millions of tiny bubbles clinging to his bare chest. His oxygen levels spiking, turning the panel outside of the tank red and yellow with alarm lights.

Couldn't move, couldn't scream, couldn't call out with the Force. He had pulled at the straps that dug into his armpits and heaving chest, shouted into the oxygen mask over his scarred face before slowly, the tank started to drain.

Up to his shins now, making the hair on the back of his neck stand on end, Luke couldn't help but jerk against the straps, his movements slowed by the settling sedative and the seizure medication coursing through his veins.

"Easy, Luke, easy," Han's hand reached out to rest upon the glass. It looked more like skeleton bones splayed there. "It's going to be okay."

Luke shook himself out of the last dregs of memory, taking another shaking breath. It wouldn't be like that this time. He knew what was happening to him, he wouldn't wake up in that silent terror. And Han was there, hand still reaching out. As Luke sunk even lower into the gelatinous pillar, he achingly raised his casted hand to match his friend's.

Luke's eyes drooped shut.

He started awake, disoriented.

The dark, the muffled sound of monitors—his mind raced as he sucked in a halting, artificial-tasting breath of air—where was he? His lips ached, dry and cracked. When he went to wet them, a respirator blocked him. The Force trickled through him sluggishly, paralyzed by his gnawing fear and the lingering effect of a sedative.

Bacta. Inhale, exhale.

He looked down, past the restrictive breathing mask around his face. Robes and tunic gone, Luke's pale limbs floated limply in the healing solution, drifting listlessly on some subtle current inside the tank. His cropped hair tickled his scalp and neck, a bright halo of seaweed in the sun. It seemed to possess a life of its own, softly caressing his once-fractured eye socket and stitched neck. The rest of his body, however, felt unresponsive and out of reach.

Luke shut his eyes, inhale, exhale, inhale, but it was only a few moments before he was floundering and sinking beneath the unsteady currents of meditation, coming back up and choking on the crashing waves of his own anxiety.

Frantically, he pulled his chin back up, tugging at the straps and burbling into the respirator, searching through the murk and the glass distortion and—

Han.

Han, with his hands outspread on the cylinder, mouth moving, eyes pleading, recognizable even through the bacta and the pain blowing his memory to smithereens. Han with a weak smile, then an encouraging nod, then more soundless words.

Hey, hey, hey, Luke saw Han say. [We're ?] good.

Force, as his limbs began to awaken, he felt the sharp ache of bacta's healing touch against his neck, his jaw, his arm, his shin. His hands—even the casted and splinted one—clawed, gripped at mere bubbles, helpless against the tinge of black gathering around his vision. A piercing sting rang out from his efforts.

Then the bacta's effects hit him hard.

His face was on fire, his head a mess of silence and light. He tried to tell Han as much, but whatever comes out of his mouth wasn't more than a groan. Chest in pain, wrist in pain, everything in pain, and there Han was, trying to make eye contact, trying to get him to calm back down, making everything better and worse at the same time.

[Luke?] calm down, buddy, just [take?] [?] [bread?]

The medical bay swam around him, distorted. Luke rollicked, riding waves of nausea, of dizziness. The bacta felt cold and clammy against his burning skin. Straining for some point of stability, Luke pulled on the straps, but shivers disrupted his progress.

A dull noise shook his skull, and he realized Han had his fist on the glass, knocking.

Thud. Thud thud thud. Thud thu-thud.

Like singing without a song, the rhythm pulled him into it, his whole body straining for the reverberations traveling through the bacta to hit his eardrums, his skin. It was some sort of code, or maybe it wasn't? Luke couldn't remember. The edges of everything were getting too diffuse, the clammy, sick feeling subsiding.

Luke waited, eyes half-lidded, for that Force-forsaken smell, sweet and sickly and all-consuming. But instead, what greeted him was a cold flush through his veins, and the darkness that came should have been a mercy, but it wasn't.

Luke knew who was waiting for him on the other side.

The environment around him was changing, draining, and his ears were the first thing to pop and adjust to their new situation.

Luke's head snapped up.

The tank was draining, Thank the Force.

The levers began to strain against Luke's unhindered weight, and for the first time he could feel the hesitant strength of his newly-healed body, taut with pink scars covered with new skin. The cast against his forearm and shin hugged needlessly against his set and solid bones, and aches replaced the once-prominent purples and greens across his limbs and face.

The burns from the Emperor's lightning had disappeared.

As the last of the solution swirled into the drain beneath his feet, the glass hissed open, the seal breaking. Too-Onebee stepped to help him out of the straps and mask, bracing him as his legs slowly remembered how to do their jobs with their cold, claw-like hands. Behind him, the tank clicking shut once again.

He was helped to dress, and a thermal blanket was thrown over him as his hair was none-so-gently toweled dry. His teeth clacked together despite the cloth's added heat.

"The second dose of sedative is still in effect. It would be wise for you to rest until its run its course," Too-Onebee said.

Luke sank into the room's molded plastoid chair, plucking at the rebel-grade hospital gown, too weak to make it farther into the room to the medical floatation bed. He had to consciously stop himself from worrying his lower lip.

The tang of bacta hadn't even left his nostrils, its tingle tinging his other senses—the floor looked to be bacta hardened and set, the dim light of the ship's ward tinted with the blue color of the solution. Every blip and click of the monitors and the hovering droid threw him back to the bacta's drip and goop along the glass tank's walls. His mouth tasted of bacta, its acidic scent coating his throat.

Luke wiped at his lips with the back of his hand, disgusted.

The medical droid's arm clicked into place in front of him, a pair of medical-grade scissors opening to meet his prone neck. Luke looked to the side obediently. In his peripheral vision, he could glimpse Too-Onebee's neat snips against the sutures made in the field. Feeling his newly-healed skin test itself hesitantly after each stitch was cut, Luke twisted his fingers hard, harder, and then squeezed until the servos in his middle knuckles cracked.

A presence settled beside him.

Too-Onebee didn't pause in its work.

Luke didn't look up.

One hand slipped onto his bared knee, then took apart his death-grip on his mechno.

"Leia." He laid the back of his head against the wall behind him, peering into the blue-lit darkness, trying to keep his mind off of the sharp snip, pull, and reset of the loosening sutures.

His sister rested another thermal blanket over his legs. "Luke."

"Force, I hate that tank."

He could feel her smile. "Han didn't leave the whole time, until about an hour ago. He'll be glad to hear you're out."

"I, ah, I need to apologize to Han."

"There's nothing to apologize for."

Luke sucked at his teeth, gathering sour, bacta-tasting spit under his tongue. The room was silent again save for the droid's careful ministrations. Leia was the first to clear her throat.

"If anyone should be apologizing, it should be me for leaving you and him alone here for so long."

Luke did look her way then, disrupting Too-Onebee's rhythm and causing it to flutter at him to return to his held pose. "You were called away by the Alliance?"

She gazed upwards for a moment before answering in a breath. "Yes."

Luke waited.

"I'm headed back to base in another day. The command team is so stretched thin, what after Endor and the wake we've caused across the galaxy. There are planets willing to negotiate again that we thought were lost to the cause, bases being built and moved, Death Star remains to take care of, and Imperials swarming us everywhere we go—I had to go and see what I could do."

"We're just a wild bunch of rebels without General Organa," Luke smiled softly. "How is everyone?"

Leia huffed out a sigh. "Overworked. Overwhelmed. The few still riding the high of the Endor celebration are either deployed somewhere they can have their heads up their asses or they're ignorant to the battles we still have between us and victory—not even beginning to assess the fragility of our current forces."

Luke swallowed hard as Too-Onebee moved away from his neck and down to cut the stitches on his bicep. "I'm just waiting for my all-clear, and I'll be right back by your side. I have an idea for an X-Wing preset start upgrade so that pilots can get off the ground faster without wasting—what?"

Luke stopped himself, seeing the pained look on his sister's face.

Leia rubbed the back of her neck, rocking her head side to side to release some of the built-up tension. Then she was looking at him again.

"What?" Luke asked again, hesitantly.

Leia stood as the droid moved to his other side to continue his work. "Wedge came back on the first shuttle from the battle. When he heard what happened to you, he was all pent-up anger and sadness and—and Admiral Ackbar's been letting him lead patrol. He's been cruising the ruins of the Death Star for the last couple days." She paused, gaging Luke's emotions in the way only she could. "He intercepted an Imperial drone ship about an hour ago—one of those antiques they used for carrying messages back before the Clone Wars. Incoming from deep space."

Incoming. Someone had sent a message to the Emperor. Luke smiled through his sense that this wasn't the end of the story. "Guess whoever sent that hadn't heard yet."

Leia wasn't smiling. "Wedge touched off a self-destruct cycle while trying to manual-release its message codes. Somewhere in the wreckage of the Death Star, he's manually blocking a critical gap—"

"Where's the relief pilot?" Luke wrenched himself from Too-Onebee's grasp, hauling himself to his unsteady feet only to stumble, falling straight for his sister. Leia caught him, wrapping her arms around his waist.

"Luke, they won't let you fly—"

"I have to go!" Despite knowing it wouldn't work, Luke pushed all of the Force he had in his bones into persuading her as he worked to get his feet underneath him. She didn't budge.

"Promise me. Promise me you will let your squadron handle this."

She lowered Luke back down into the plastoid chair, gently stroking his jaw where it had once been shattered, black and blue. Luke shook his head, tears springing into his eyes.

"Don't make me promise that."

She kissed his forehead, and Luke forced himself to take a deep breath, then another, each one more numbing than the last as it pulled on his scabbed-over injuries.

Then, in one sloppy motion, he pulled Too-Onebee's arm out of its socket, halting the snipping mid-cut. The droid backed up in shock.

Leia stared, then looked up to the ceiling again. "Luke. No."

"I should be out there."

Luke's body didn't respond to his own challenge; it couldn't, and he wouldn't allow himself for one second to believe it was the last of the sedative keeping him down in the plastoid chair.

He ached, a dull gnawing in all of his bones deeper than what the bacta could fix. He can't pretend, can't fight, can't save Wedge. The droid warbled over, mechanically asking for Luke to return its detached arm.

Shakily, Luke used the Force to take apart the splint on his leg. Testing the set bone, he placed his feet underneath him, using the chair behind him for support. His knees clacked against one another once, but held steady.

"I'm the only one who can save him." He looked his sister in the eye. "You wouldn't have told me unless you knew it too. I won't let him die without saying goodbye."

To his surprise, she stepped aside.

From the pouch at her side, she drew out his lightsaber and handed it to him.

"Be careful. Come back to me."

With his one hand still bound up in the setting cast, Luke touched his sister's shoulder before he broke for the door, running straight into—

"Whoa, there, pal, easy," Han said, already untangling his limbs from Luke's from their run in. "Where do you think you're going? I just got the alert they were draining your tub twenty minutes ago, there's no way you're cleared for du—"

"Wedge needs my help. I've got to get to the hangar before they send my squadron and they all blow up trying to disarm some old-school Imperial drone."

Han blinked once.

"Well, you're going to need a copilot."

The cruiser's landing bay was overrun by service crew. Magnacranes pulled droids out of their cylindrical droid sockets, pilots collapsed out of their cockpits after too-long patrols, sometimes sitting next to their ships with their helmets still on, asleep despite the noise around them.

Han pressed himself to his side, red-eyed but alert. "Where's your fighter?"

They passed a huddle of droids, and Luke thought he actually smelled the coolants and lubricants being applied around them over the stench of bacta, but then it passed.

A cranky whistle sounded behind them, and Luke whipped around, then had to hold onto Han for support as the spins took his vision around in a spiral.

"Artoo?" Luke asked when his mind finally settled. The droid buzzed a long series of scoldings, on how he had to resort to bribing medical droids to find out how he was. Luke coughed, rubbing the little droid's head. "Sorry, Artoo, I've been… in and out."

Force, was that becoming his mantra?

Looking behind him, Han was already accosting a khaki-suited crewman as he disengaged a collapsible fuel hose.

"They don't like it, since neither of us have been cleared. But if we go fast, I think we've got a fighter," Han said, waving him over. Then in a low voice, he added, "You still want to do this?"

Luke nodded, and Han took him by the shoulder as they spun toward the ready-room. A minute later, Luke had traded out his hospital gown for an orange pressure suit.

Crewers scattered as Luke hoisted himself up the ladder and into his inclined, padded seat, yanking on his helmet. Han was right behind him, still hopping into his own pressure suit.

"Things are downright uncomfortable," Han was mumbling as Luke touched on the ship's fusion generator. A familiar high-energy whine built around them. Han was already closing the cockpit canopy as a crewman tried to shout over the noise.

"I can't condone this! Mon Motha has us under strict orders not to let you leave without her express permission—"

"We'll be right back," Luke shouted. A promise he couldn't exactly guarantee, but if something went wrong, it wouldn't matter if their respective billion pieces were traitorous space dust or loyal space dust anyway.

Between the two of them, they must have hit an Alliance-record speed check of the X-wing's systems and instruments. They felt the click of Artoo settling into his place aboard. Nothing abnormal. Han pulled on his helmet, and his voice suddenly appeared in Luke's ear.

"Ready for takeoff?"

"Ready. They gonna open the hatch for us?"

"I sure hope so, kid. If not, this is gonna be a real short trip."

Luke cleared his throat. "Rogue Leader, ready for takeoff."

A hesitation. Then, "Opening hatch, Rogue Leader. Go get our boy. And welcome back."

Luke punched in the drive.

An instant later, the dull ache in his body careened into ferocious pain, the stars in his field of vision split into binaries and spun around each other as crewers' voices crackled in his ears.

Dizzily, he reached inside for the quiet center Master Yoda had taught him to touch, somewhere deep inside his solar plexus, a warm reserve of Light…

"Luke," came Han's warning tone. "Do I need to ask you if you remember how to fly? We could use some speed right about now. And some steering."

There.

Exhaling one trembling breath, Luke measured his mastery of the pain. Stars shrank into singular gleams again. Whatever had caused that, whatever had escaped the bacta's healing touch, he would deal with later.

"I got it, Han. Sorry about that."

Through the Force, he quested outward and found Wedge's presence, shivering but bright. His hands moved on the X-wing's controls almost effortlessly as he moved toward that end of the Fleet.

"Han, have you seen this?" Luke said into his comm, eyes wide.

"Yeah, well, a lot has happened since you've been hurt."

The battle damage was immense, repair droids and tow vessels still swarming. Debris clouded the otherwise crystal blue surface of Endor, the crowded orbit blocking out the stars in pockets of junk and wreckage. Small bands of smuggler vessels dashed in and out of those pockets, hoping to capitalize on the chaos. Mon Calamari Star Cruisers were plated and shielded to withstand multiple direct hits, but there were so few of them now, much fewer than Luke remembered from before.

His mind went back to the gut-wrenching Force disturbances that kept knocking the breath out of him while he watched out the Emperor's viewport window. Of the empty seats on Endor's surface as the living celebrated.

Shaking his head a little, Luke refocused.

"Wedge, do you copy?" he asked over the subspace radio.

"Scanners are indicating that most of the heavy transport is moving away from some blip on the screen. Think that could be him?" Han said.

Luke pulled at the steering yoke, redirecting his flight as Wedge's presence became a beacon with the new information. "Wedge, are you out there? Wedge, do you copy?"

The hairs on the back of his neck stood up as the Force warned him of—

"We've got company," Han groaned. "Four A-wings, six-o'clock."

Luke leaned back in his seat, swallowing his frustration. "Just let me do this, Mon Motha. Just let me save my friend," he said under his breath.

The Force must have heard his request, because all the A-wings did was hover behind them, a silent promise if they decided to turncoat.

Artoo's words started scrolling across his screen, warning him of debris.

"I see it, Artoo."

The droid went back to sulking.

"Wedge, do you copy?" Luke tried one last time, vectoring out among the debris desperately. C'mon, c'mon—

"Sorry," came a faint voice through the comms. "Almost out of range of my ship's pickup. I've gotta…" Wedge's voice trailed off, grunting. "I'm trying to keep these two crystals apart. It's some sort of self-destruct."

Luke's heart leapt into his throat. "Crystals?" he asked, to keep Wedge talking. There was pain under that tone of voice.

"Electrite crystal leads. Leftover from the old days. The mechanism's trying to push them together, Let 'em touch, and the whole fusion engine goes up."

Tumbling slowly above the blue glimmer of Endor, Luke spotted Wedge's X-wing. Alongside it drifted a nine-meter-long cylinder bearing Imperial markings, fully as long as the X-wing and almost all engine, a type of drone ship the Alliance still couldn't afford. Luke tried to breathe through the eerie feeling causing his stomach to roil.

"Empire wouldn't use an antique like that anymore," Han said with a whistle. "Why wouldn't they have just used a standard Imperial channel to get the message across?"

Luke ignored the comment for the moment. "Let's not blow that big of an engine. And let's not blow you up, for that matter." No wonder the transports were moving away.

"Right." Wedge clung to one end of the cylinder, wearing a pressure suit and connected to the X-wing by a life-support tether. He must have blown the cockpit air and dove for the cylinder's master control the moment he realized he'd accidentally armed it to detonate.

"Space pilot's lightweights only got a few minutes of survival in space like this—hey, Wedge, how long you been hanging out here?" Han said, switching halfway to the radio system instead of Luke and his personal ship's channel.

"Doesn't matter," Wedge said, panting. "The view's terrific, though."

Closing in, Luke reversed engines with care. Wedge held one hand inside a hinged panel. His head swiveled to follow Luke's X-wing as Luke used short, delicate engine bursts to match his momentum with the cylinder.

"What are you two doing out here, anyway?" Wedge's conversational words had an undertone that betrayed the strain he was under.

"Enjoying the view," Luke said, following Wedge's lead.

The A-wings had decelerated, hanging back after assessing the situation.

He heard Han go over the radio, broadcasting to them. "You boys can either hang around and make sure we either get blown to bits or try to light out to Coruscant, or you can take a safe distance and trust us to not kark this up."

"Artoo," Luke called, "what's the reach on your manipulator arm? If I got in close enough, could you help him?"

No—2.76 meters short at optimum angle, scrolled across his head-up display.

Luke gritted his teeth, feeling sweat trickle down the small of his back.

"Chissk, Luke, his hand must be half crushed in there," Han said.

Luke glanced at his lightsaber. Wedge's sense in the Force wobbled dizzily.

Taking a breath, Luke slipped the saber into the flare ejection port's feed tube.

"What are you—?" Han started, before Luke launched it out, then extended a hand toward it across ten meters of vacuum, slowly directing the glide toward Wedge. "You son of a blaster."

Luke twisted his wrist.

The green-white blade appeared, silent in the vacuum of space. Wedge's wide brown eyes blinked behind his faceplate.

"On my signal," Luke said, "jump free."

"Luke, I'm going to lose my hand."

"Talking to the wrong guy," Han said.

Luke winced. "You'll lose more than fingers if you stay there."

The line went silent for a breath. "What's the chance you could do some of that Jedi magic for a little nerve blockage? This, ah, this is going to hurt like crazy, isn't it."

Wedge's voice was getting weaker.

They watched as he pulled in his knees and braced to push off.

"You know I'll try."

"Those crystals," Han said. "Luke, can you get a closer look at them?"

Wedge pulled around to stare into the hatchway. Letting the lightsaber drift, Luke felt for Wedge's presence. He trusted Wedge not to resist this, to let him…

Through Wedge's eyes, and fighting the excruciating pain in Wedge's hand, Luke glimpsed a pair of round, multifaceted jewels, one inside his palm, the other crushing inward at the end of a spring mechanism from the back of his hand. Fist-sized, they reflected the pale golden sparks of saber light out of the hatch onto Wedge's orange suit. Luke didn't think the flight glove alone would keep them apart, or he'd've simply told Wedge to slip out of it, leaving it behind. Brief depressurization wouldn't do as much damage as this plan was going to do to Wedge's extremities.

"I've got a look at them," Luke said to Han, hearing his copilot's reply of "Freaky Jedi vision, too, this kid just keeps surprising us."

When Wedge jumped, Luke would have a second at most to slice one crystal free, and only a little longer before Wedge fainted. Wedge was tethered, and he would be able to keep breathing with no suit damage, but the blood loss…

He tried to swallow down the memories of his own severed hand, mingling with Wedge's secondhand pain.

The glimpse through the Force was blurring at the edges.

Pulling away, Luke took an unsteady breath.

He tweaked Wedge's pain perception.

Too much, his body screamed. The aching and exhaustion of his own body tried to ooze up from under his control. He ground his teeth together, straining.

"Luke? Talk to me, kid." Han was saying his name.

"Got it," Luke grunted.

"Got what?"

"Oh, chissk," came Wedge's voice, sounding detached and dreamy. "Luke, whatever you did, that's… Force, I can barely feel it."

"I know. Hang in there, Wedge. Jump on the count of three. Jump hard. One."

Wedge didn't object. Clenching his teeth to the point of pain, Luke eased into a closer accord with the lightsaber. His mind fought between tasks—holding the tap closed on Wedge's pain, directing the saber, holding Wedge and the cylinder in place—and needing more focus, he pushed harder on Wedge's pain receptors, letting go a little on his own.

He couldn't help the small moan that escaped his lips.

Maintain control, he told himself. Prove that you're ready for this. No more dead on your conscience.

"Two." Keeping up a steady could, he felt the saber, the crystals, the critical gap—all as parts of the universe's wholeness.

"Three." Nothing happened. "Jump, Wedge!" Luke begged.

Weakly, Wedge launched himself.

Luke swept in.

One crystal soared free, reflecting a whirling green kaleidoscope onto the X-wing's upper S-foil.

"Wedge, reel in!" Luke cried. No response. He searched in the Force, found Wedge's presence— "Han, he's passed out."

"Already on it." Han had the closed-face emergency helmet secured; his body suit already tethered up to the X-wing by his own life-support tether. "Back in a sec, kid, just get a med team on the way."

"Han—" but he was already two steps off, launching himself in a controlled reel toward Wedge's body, his tether stretched taut high above the other X-wing, injured hand—or whatever was left of it—still clutched to his chest.

Focus. Luke stabilized the tumbling lightsaber and deactivated the blade before it could injure Han, then slapped the distress beacon, begging for a direct signal to medbay that skipped over commanders hoping to get in a good scolding before his feet hit the deck.

"Rogue Leader to Home One. Explosives disarmed. Requesting medical pickup." He had Artoo give their coordinates just in case.

The A-wings had retreated out of the danger zone after Han's comment. From behind them, a med runner swooped into sight. Luke let himself take a breath, releasing a little more of the hold over his exhaustion.

Flowers.

Luke sat bolt-upright, hands clutching at his seat.

"Han," he managed into the mics.

"No worries, kid, I've got 'im, and I've got your saber too." Luke saw that Han had reached Wedge, and had him tucked against his chest. "Reel us back in, he's secure, but he's bleeding—"

He saw his father, lying on his back, slowly twirling a double-helix of copper wires together. He had changed, his helmet gone, leaving behind a scarred face that held the beginnings of a beard, short stubble of a deep brown and a silver-grey.

Vader was arching his neck, the programming on his chest laid bare. He took a shuddering breath, his ungloved, remaining, mechanical hand going back to twisting the copper wires before looping them back into what looked to be—

When the colors receded, and the ache in his bones returned unfiltered by his hold on them in the Force, Luke realized someone was calling his name in his ear.

"Luke? Kid? C'mon, now, you're making me nervous."

Han? Luke's tongue was swollen, and his mouth tasted like blood, but he found through the unwarranted confusion in his gut he could answer with an affirmative-sounding grunt.

"What the chisk, Luke, what happened in there? Your comm break?"

Luke worked his jaw, pulling himself out of the awkward position he found himself in slowly. He saw he'd bashed his shin in good, blood leaking through his orange jumpsuit, and a headache was gathering like a sandstorm in the back of his head. "I, ah, I—" he stuttered.

"Blast it, Luke, did you—"

But Han was cut off as the med runner announced their arrival, pulling Han and Wedge into their bay. There was a pause, as Luke winced at his soaked flight suit, his throbbing head, and then he saw the med runner turn and head toward him.

Author's Note: Some of the content from this chapter has been pulled from "Truce At Bakura," a novel written to take place during the 4 ABY time period this story takes place in. While this chapter shared a common event, this is where our paths again diverge into AU once again.

To all the readers who have patiently waited for this chapter, thank you. Your reviews keep me writing.