It was amazing how fast things happened. The second day and the place went from uninhabited micro islands to a somewhat-disguised military base.
How many days ago was it Luke was a farmer, and now he was- well, a number of things. Hero, but he didn't like that one. Pilot, finally. Descendant of the Jedi, too.
And he was building the theory that no matter how fast things happened, everything else after that was slow, lending the change a permanence you came to accept.
He was getting used to the water. It was something to coax out of the air on Tatooine where he was from, but here there was just so much of it, and it had a life of its own; currents and tides moving it in all directions. But after two days he was no longer nervous boarding a water speeder.
Island A was the command center; B supplies and requisitions; C the mess and so on. The islands were close- not to Luke's thinking, but it was all relative. Wedge had taken up someone's dare and he swam the distance between C and D. Luke and the new guy, Janson, followed in a speeder. "What if something eats him?" Janson had wondered. He was from Coruscant and apparently thought the ocean was carnivorous. They watched Antilles wade in, and he looked behind them and gave them a little wave before submerging himself. They couldn't see him at first. At all. Luke feared the water just folded over him, sealed him in, and wouldn't let him out. But he appeared after a moment, swimming a stroke and moving forward. He made it fine, only panting a little, and his face wore a glad, satisfied smile.
"Haven't done that in a while," he told Luke, water streaming down his face. "Felt good." And Luke saw some changes were gradual, like no longer being able to go for a swim, and a memory could take you by surprise.
The sky was blue and always windy, sending the branches of the trees whirling. If they were proper trees; that's what Wedge called them but Chewbacca shook his head in disappointment. They certainly didn't look like the pictures of trees in Luke's school primers. Those were limbed, leafed and branched, large and spreading. These were weird-looking. Straight trunks. Bark that shed. No branches to speak of; just large bunches of... fronds? that waved in the wind and inevitably got snapped off and then the tree looked like a giant dead stump. Until the next couple of days, where you could see new growth at the top.
There was a lot of other life, of course: birds, and large flowering shrubs. Lizards, even. It was really warm, and the water lapped with ripples or small waves, depending on the strength of the wind. There was sand, like from home, only not at all. This was beach sand, not desert sand. It was black and brittle. Luke could crumble it in his fist, and he found a change might be a lie, because there were only differences. Leia told him the sand was actually eroded rock from a volcanic explosion long ago. She said that was how all the islands had formed.
If there was change there had to be a catalyst, and that was Leia. She was a message, a Princess, an object, a concept. But she had become his friend, and so now was only Leia, and it was better this way.
They sat atop the hull of the Millennium Falcon waiting for the dusk's rainbow. They had spent the day helping to unload the freighter, and now bore the fatigue of a day well spent. It was something they both wanted to do. They needed the productivity, the activity. And they were acquainted with the Falcon when there was little else they knew.
They had wanted to use this vessel to evacuate. They wanted to leave the way they had come, with Han and Chewbacca, but the rebel Alliance had declined their petition. The Alliance didn't quite know what to do with the concept of the Princess or the hero with the lightsaber yet, but traveling with a free spacer was unbecoming, and so they were told to board a transport.
The Falcon would make several trips. Ironic that Han, the most- what was he, resistant? Luke wondered. Unwilling? anyway, not lazy- but he was the busiest. He was getting paid so he was satisfied, and Luke supposed the recent developments weren't really that much out of the ordinary for Han.
Luke felt oddly in limbo. He thought his change in circumstance was to become a Jedi and win the war, and that he was well on his way to both, but the evacuation to the new base made it plain that achieving those goals wasn't going to happen easily.
The breeze ruffled Luke's hair. It was a tricky time of day, when twilight made shadows and left you alone, and you thought of what had been. The sky turned a bit pink and the waving fronds were dark silhouettes up high. It was a nice view, sitting up high, where the little islands formed a broken chain and the sea seemed to go on forever. It usually rained overnight.
Luke was thinking of the Falcon. How the freighter was a constant through all this: fleeing his homeland, freeing Leia, ferrying them to the Alliance. The ship hadn't brought him to the micro islands, but she was here anyway, and it was kind of a nice feeling.
"Hey, Boss," Wedge's voice came from below.
"Wedge?" Luke called, scanning the ground. He found his flight partner near the ship's ramp, his pants rolled up and his feet bare.
"Wanna go fishing?"
"Fishing?" Luke asked like it was a foreign word, and next to him, Leia's face softened in a near-smile.
"Yeah. We're just wading out a bit, not far."
"Who is 'we'?" Luke asked.
"Your captain," Wedge grinned up at him.
"Han's going fishing?"
"He's Corellian, like me."
"Okay." The information meant nothing to Luke. He looked at Leia. She didn't look intrigued by the idea of a night time fishing expedition, or that she even wanted to move from her spot. "No, thanks. I'll stay up here and watch."
"Suit yourself," Wedge said, and in a moment the taller, leaner figure of Han Solo appeared, also bootless and with his pants rolled up over his knee. He held something tall and straight, like a pole, and offered one to Wedge.
He said something, and though his voice was deeper, the casualness of his speech was carried away by the wind. He didn't pay any attention to the two figures sitting atop his freighter.
Luke watched them walk toward the shore. The Wookiee Chewbacca, Han's partner, followed carrying a large cooler, and he threw a wave toward Luke and Leia.
"Our captain," Luke repeated thoughtfully. He turned to Leia, whose gaze was on the two men placing their feet gingerly on the brittle sand. "He is," he decided.
Leia nodded. "Certainly no one else's."
"Why's that, you think."
When Leia thought about something, she lifted her brows, which widened her eyes, and looked at nothing. "They don't trust him," she said. "Also, he has said he won't be theirs. It goes two ways."
Luke's eyes left her to watch the fishing party. Wedge was adjusting his roll of pants and Han was bent over, swirling his hand in the water.
"What's in the water?" Luke asked Leia.
"Fish," she said, not rudely. "I don't know what kind, but maybe we'll find out."
"Has he said he'll be ours?" Luke asked, though he agreed with Wedge; Luke had stuck a claim on Han. "Our captain?"
"He's trying to wriggle out," Leia said softly.
Luke smiled. "So we caught him, like a fish?"
Leia's lips curved up slightly; she barely smiled anymore. Not since the battle, when the victory took all her composure, and not since the awards ceremony, where she was gracious and beautiful. "What do you think, Luke?" she said.
Out in the water, Wedge was gesturing, sweeping his arm out. Probably telling Han of his swimming feat. The rain clouds were rolling in, dimensional against the flat pink-orange sky, almost black.
Luke answered, "I like him. We're not friends yet, but I think someday we will be. Good friends."
Leia looked at him. Just like you saw the sea before you saw the micro islands, it was the depth of her eyes that hit you first, large and brown. She noted his conviction but merely tucked his comment away.
"Do you?" Luke asked. "Like him?"
Her brows were up again, and Luke gave her time. Together they watched the threesome in the water. Wedge and Han held their poles; they just stood. Was fishing also waiting? Luke had no idea. His home was a desert planet. Chewbacca stalked in the water, the fur of his legs darkened by wet, and he held something in his hand under the water, moving it along.
"I think," Leia answered slowly, "I like this."
"Sitting up here," Luke nodded. "Having a place. Remember earlier, when Han was trying to throw water bottles up to us," he started to laugh at the memory, "and one bounced off and hit Chewbacca on the shoulder?"
"And he yowled and threw a rock at Han."
"Yeah," Luke finished the memory.
"They're rough, those two."
Luke felt a drop. The rains came like this, slow and hinting. Leia lifted a palm up to catch a drop, but it was too early. "Han says it spits before it rains," he told her.
"First comes the rainbow," Leia nodded.
Luke liked it when she agreed with Han. From a distance, two separate conversations, it was even better. "Anytime now," he said.
"On Tatooine," he related to Leia, "we didn't have clouds even. They are as wonderful to me as the rainbow. Kind of awe inspiring. The rainbow is- like magic; the colors and the arc. Unexpected. But the clouds," Luke marveled with a shake of his head. "The way they bloom, you know? And spread over the sky. They're beautiful."
Chewie had evidently caught something. He straightened from his crouch, and Luke saw as he waded back to Han that the Wookiee held a netted scoop. Something heavy sagged the mesh, and it was trying to flop. Wedge and Han turned to peer at it, their torsos twisting away from the poles.
"On Alderaan," Leia said the name of her destroyed homeworld carefully, "hundreds of years ago, maybe longer, before we understood the science of weather, the clouds were thought of as an army."
"Really?" Luke pretended to understand, but he didn't really. He thought he might have to be from Alderaan, or live hundreds of years ago to take in the superstition. "So, weather is-" he had to rephrase it, "- a storm is a battle?"
She nodded frankly. "Yes."
"That's- poetic," Luke decided.
Leia nodded again, wistfully this time.
"There it is," Luke pointed. "Over there, do you see it? Just the top of the arc right now."
"I see it," Leia said, her gaze fixed on it.
Maybe it was the lighting, looking up, but Leia's eyes shone.
"What was a rainbow on Alderaan?" Luke dared ask.
"It was a road," Leia said softly. "For the fallen in battle. It led to the- It was the way to the afterlife."
"Huh," Luke said. The rainbow here was a daily occurrence, and there was only rain. From what he had heard from the others, conditions for rainbows were not so common. "Did you see rainbows every time it stormed, then?"
"No."
Luke was silent. He wanted to ask about a fallen warrior when there was no rainbow, but didn't dare.
"It doesn't make sense, does it?" Leia's smile was barely there, sad. "I used to wonder about that."
Change had a purpose, Luke saw. If thunder was an army, then maybe change was... He was going to say it was an angel, but change was real. Did the people hundreds of years ago really think an army was marching somewhere in the sky they couldn't see?
A drop of rain found the tip of his ear. He thought of his home on Tatooine, how it used to look before Leia's holomessage, how it was easier to imagine an army of clouds than it was himself leaving his homeworld. It must be the same for Leia.
Suddenly it was raining, large drops coming down, bouncing on the hull, making a lovely hiss. From the water, Wedge exclaimed a curse. He was trying to draw the back of his shirt neck over his head. Luke smiled at Leia, and they stood, and rode the lift to the interior of the Falcon.
Han entered from up the ramp, his pants still rolled up, wet black sand clinging to his feet. He was in motion, walking and removing his wet shirt at the same time.
"Hey," he greeted them.
Neither Luke nor Leia had time to respond. He was using his shirt to dry his hair, and disappeared into his cabin before Luke had time to realize Han had more chest hair than Luke.
He returned in a moment, wearing a different shirt, white again and dry but with the same open neckline, and he had three glasses gathered by the fingers of his left hand and a bottle of something in his right. His pant legs were still rolled up.
"Where's Chewie?" Luke asked.
"Gettin' wet," Han answered. He pushed the bottle toward Luke, who understood he was to pour. Han set a foot on his other leg and started to brush sand away.
Luke set a glass before Leia but she made no move to take it. She was watching Han clean his foot. "Where's the fish?" she asked.
"Chewie let it go," Han said.
Luke looked at Leia. She sighed and took a drink.
"I've never been fishing," Luke said.
Han grunted. He took his glass and swallowed a healthy sip. "'Course you haven't," he said.
"Did you go a lot when you were younger?" Luke asked. "Wedge made it seem like a Corellian thing."
Han grunted again. "If you're a Corellian with a beach house, like Antilles."
"Oh," Luke said.
"Chewie taught me," Han added. He drained his glass.
Luke liked the answer. Somehow it fit with what he wanted to know about Han, or what he thought he wanted to know. Was there really such a thing as change, or was it just the process of living. Somewhere, probably in a far different spot, a fish was swimming, thinking about how it had been caught and gotten away.