So this chapter was supposed to be all action... but the characters rebelled. In a good way, I think.

Chapter 60: The Only Way

"Han, something's not right."

Leia had held her tongue on the descent through the clouds and their greeting on the landing pad but it had been gnawing at her all this while and she could no longer ignore it. The Baron Administrator Lando Calrissian had put up a welcoming front but there was a strain to his charm. He'd kissed her hand and ribbed Han as though he was trying to remember how the back and forth between him and his old friend used to go. Han said it had been a long time but Leia sensed it was more than that. There was a nervousness to Lando that he tried to hide within his diplomat's smile. A conflict within him. And you didn't have to be a genius to figure out the most likely cause of that in this day and age.

"Look," Han grumbled. "I'm not all that comfortable either. But we came here 'cause we needed to. We'll get what we came for and we'll get going again."

"Then let's fix the Falcon and skip dinner."

Chewie protested with a roar of hunger. They were nearly out of rations. Han sighed.

"You can't expect a man to have a hyperdrive ready at a moment's request, Leia. As Lando said, we'll do it tomorrow."

But Han's voice, too, was edged with anxiety. It seemed impossible that he and Lando had ever been friends; the social divide between them now was enormous. Han Solo was the last person in the galaxy that Leia would have tipped to be friends with the administrator of a settlement like this. Orderly, clean, stinking of credits. That sort of rise in status wasn't something that came easily to honest men. And it wasn't something anyone would be willing to give up again.

"Let's eat on the ship, then. I don't care if it's rude. I want to be ready to leave, if we have to."

"He's my friend, Leia."

"You haven't seen him in a decade!"

"Chewie's starving to death."

"Don't be dramatic."

"Will we feed him one of your arms?"

"That joke's overdone," Chewie advised.

Leia groaned.

"I'd rather lose an arm than my whole kriffing life."

They had been hissing their argument in the company of the guards flanking the halls. The whole place was too damn militarised for Leia's liking. Everyone taut, on edge. Like this was the big kriffing test. Like someone was here that they had to impress.

Leia stopped dead in her tracks.

Someone was here.

"Han…"

His hand on her arm, his frown etched deep into his face. He dropped his voice lower still.

"Sweetheart, you know I'm worried if you're worried, but we've got to at least act like-"

"No, no, no, no…"

A cold sweat over her whole body. A presence, shielded. But one that she knew well now. One too powerful to suppress entirely.

"This way, please."

A guard, nudging them forward, towards the sealed doors of the dining hall.

"No, I-"

"We've left something on the Falcon," Han sighed, in apologetic explanation. "If you'll excuse us, we'll just swing back to the landing pad-"

"Sir, your ship has been moved from the landing pad into safer storage."

Han's eyes bulged and Leia knew that now he was every bit as panicked as she was.

"Moved? Without telling me? Well, where the hells is it?"

"Everything alright?"

Lando Calrissian approached from the other end of the hallway, cape billowing behind him, walking with affected calm. This was bad. This was very, very bad. They were trapped.

"Sorry about the friendship," Leia muttered, finding her blaster on her belt. "But that's our way out."

She fired at the Baron Administrator, who twisted to dodge. There was no shock on his face. Resignation, perhaps. The look of a man who had betrayed them.

"Han, Chewie, let's go!"

Chewie was roaring with confusion, Han reluctantly lifting his own blaster and returning the fire of the guards who had turned on them without question. Leia ran. The soldiers scattered. She'd sensed it. She'd taken them by surprise and she'd sensed their trap and she'd confronted them before they could confront her and maybe, just maybe, her gut might have saved them, just like her father had always told her it one day would.

But the door to the banquet hall at the end of the corridor slid open with a hiss and there was cold like a vice around Leia's neck. She was pulled down, slammed into the floor, and dragged. Her vision was a dizzying sprawl of stars.

Gelid.

"Han!" she choked out. "Go!"

She saw black boots at her head and then saw no more.

It had been easy. Trilla had not had the pleasure of sharing a banquet with them – young Skywalker was too attuned to the Force for that – but the capture had been uncomplicated. No detonators, this time. She had ensured the guards of Cloud City who had welcomed them had been attuned to that particular threat. Trilla had longed to set a trap like this for the insolent child of Skywalker ever since her ambush on Caluula. And today, finally, after so many failures, it had been easy. Too easy, perhaps.

She ought to have called the Emperor and informed him of her success. But Trilla could not help the feeling that she was on the cusp of another victory, one that would be foolish to squander. The girl, it appeared, was the lesser talent among the Skywalker siblings.

"Your brother does not travel with you?"

Leia looked at Trilla with baleful gaze, at her feet on hands and knees, trembling from her first taste of Force lightning. She had not long been in Imperial capture but her defences had already begun to wear thin with the echoes of the Solo's cries in the adjacent cell. They may have found the rebel base but Trilla sought a great deal of further information about the Rebel Alliance that neither of their captives seemed inclined to share with her.

It was of no consequence. They had time.

"My brother is too important," Leia answered, in a low grumble. "Too important for the Alliance. He is training."

Trilla laughed. The downfall of the Skywalker dynasty was already in play.

"Training? In the ways of the Force?"

"I can only hope he kills you one day," Leia muttered.

Trilla hummed her vague approval. Yes, this was very good. It was much easier to play games with a bleeding-hearted Jedi than the ever-more pragmatic Rebel Alliance.

"I can only hope for his sake that he is not learning from Kryze."

Leia shook her head, retched on the floor. But her stomach had already emptied and she brought up only a shining streak of saliva.

A twinge of something banished. Trilla knew that feeling.

"And does your brother know that you are here, Leia?"

The young woman looked at her with renewed venom, hating the sound of her name in her enemy's mouth.

"No. We haven't told anyone we were coming to Bespin."

"Hmm."

This appeared to be the truth. And yet…

"You are well-attuned to each other," Trilla observed.

It was palpable in the Force, a deeper bond even than a Padawan and their Master, a bond that had existed for a sentient's whole lifetime.

"I wouldn't expect him to come," Leia told her. "This isn't the first time I've been in trouble, you know. Luke knows better than to do that."

Trilla shrugged. She suspected otherwise but it did not truly matter.

"And your father, Leia?"

"My father will not fall for the traps of the Emperor again."

"But he surely loves you."

Leia said nothing, because there was nothing to say. Trilla knew that she was right. That before her she had the key to manipulating Anakin Skywalker and realising the Emperor's deepest desire.

But why rush into the conclusion? There was time for another victory, before the day was done.

"I can feel her, so clearly, but I just can't-"

Leia's anger, her grief, her heartbreak. Luke could feel it all. He could feel it and he knew that Gelid was hurting her, that she was hurting Han and Chewbacca as well. Leia felt worse than when he'd felt her on Mako-Ta or Caluula. But what good was it feeling all this if he couldn't find her?

They were journeying through streaking hyperspace in the vague direction of Leia's presence. He didn't know where he was taking them but the Western Reaches were a reasonable assumption. If the Millennium Falcon hadn't made it out with the rest of the evacuation, there was presumably something wrong with the ship. They couldn't be all too far from Hoth.

Ariarne lay, eyes closed, on her back upon the floor of the ship. She had not been sleeping well of late. Luke would happily grant her any chance she could of catching up.

"Clouds," she murmured.

Luke frowned at her from the pilot's seat.

"Are you sleep-talking?"

"I'm awake."

Luke had suspected as much; he was well-acquainted with the heavier sighs of her sleeping breaths.

"What's all this about clouds, then?"

"I see them."

Her expression was entirely tranquil, so at odd's with Luke's desperate reaching. She was a far better student than him; it was no wonder Master Yoda was fond of her. But this was perhaps not her most illuminating insight.

"You want to know how many planets in this galaxy have an atmosphere capable of producing clouds?" Luke sighed.

To be fair, it was less than half of those in the Western Reaches, which narrowed their field a little, if not enough.

"I mean proper clouds. A city of clouds. Not atmospheric clouds, but clouds of…"

She cracked open an eye.

"Did you ever study geology?"

Luke scoffed.

"No. You think my dad taught me geology?"

"I wouldn't know what your father taught you."

"My dad isn't into geology. I don't think he taught us anything unless it could be related to mechanics. We barely learned to read."

"How am I supposed to know your father's academic interests?" Ariarne asked, finally opening her eyes properly and sitting upright. "I've barely met him."

It was strange to think about. For over a year now, Ariarne had been closer to Luke than anyone in his own family.

"Anyway," she mused, "I did learn geology, so I've got no excuse. I think I'm seeing…"

She shut her eyes, rubbed her forehead.

"Tibanna. Tibanna gas. Gas clouds."

Luke blinked at the revelation, then was quickly crestfallen again.

"Which takes us to the Anoat sector, I guess," he reasoned. "But just about every planet there is rich in tibanna."

"But only one of them," Ariarne reminded him, "has an actual Cloud City."

Cloud City. Luke was transported then to the nights of his childhood in his furious bids not to go to bed just yet; the pull of the cool desert had beckoned him with all the allure of a paradise. He had stood in his bare feet in the sand and looked at the stars. The enormous world beyond him. And his father had stood beside him, resigned to a delay of a few minutes longer, and named the planets at Luke's request.

Tell me about a planet that is green.

Tell me about a planet that is purple.

Are there planets, Dad, that are the colour of the sunset?

And his father had told him of Bespin, and of Cloud City.

As Ariarne said it, Luke knew. The feeling was confirmed in his own gut. Yes, that was where he felt Leia's pull.

"You're a genius."

"I'm psychotic," Ariarne sighed.

"Nothing wrong with seeing clouds," Luke told her. "It's hearing voices you have to worry about."

Ariarne shrugged in half-hearted agreement, pulled herself up and into the co-pilot's seat.

"Bespin it is, then?"

Luke input the coordinates into the navi-comp. They had a place, now, but they still could not truly know what they were flying into. He found a faint smile for her.

"I've always wanted to see Cloud City."

"Sabine was brilliant," Korkie crowed, for perhaps the fifth time. "To have re-engineered the weapon so quickly and effectively, with Tiber none the wiser-"

He was seated on the edge of the control panel, right where he could very easily inadvertently shift his weight onto an important button, and obscuring the periphery of Fenn's vision as he tried to focus upon piloting. Stars help them if they were to be attacked on their port side…

"Kandosii, ad'ik," Bo-Katan agreed.

Sabine wore the praise uncomfortably, but the grim, anxious determination had worn down to relief now.

"Least I could do."

"You did exceptionally," Korkie affirmed. "Now, as to where we go next…"

He twisted to look out the viewport, very much nearly striking the emergency oxygenation button with his thigh. Fenn pushed the offending limb firmly back into place.

"Let's not go back to Keldabe just yet," Korkie proposed. "I can't face it. I'm sure Erian's holding up the fort well."

Fenn raised his brows.

"I'm sure Erian's on the verge of a nervous breakdown."

Korkie waved a hand.

"Sewlen will take care of him."

He turned to look out of the viewport once more, deigning at least to be a little more careful with his leg. To avoid the emergency oxygenation button, he instead propped his foot on the back of Fenn's chair.

"We're so close to Kalevala. It would be a shame, wouldn't it, not to visit?"

Fenn looked at him in surprise. This was a far cry from the cynical soldier who had reclaimed the city of Keldabe from Gar Saxon and vowed to extend his kingdom no further until the day the Emperor was destroyed. It had, admittedly, been a conservative vow. And with not only Gar Saxon but also Tiber defeated, and the Empire seemingly well-occupied with the Rebel Alliance in the Western Reaches, the risk could not be so great. Bo-Katan Kryze looked even more disarmed than Fenn felt, looking at her nephew with stunned gaze.

"You want to go home?"

Korkie shrugged.

"It's your birthplace, not mine. But I'd like to see the lakes in autumn again. When was the last time any of us went anywhere for reasons other than conflict?"

And it was perhaps the image of the lakes that drove Fenn's hands at the controls. No one argued with him. Weren't they all aching for water after so long spent in the dustbowl of Keldabe?

They descended through the grey atmosphere and then through thick foliage; the massacres of the Purge survivors on Kalevala had been the personal kind, fought not with the Empire's bombers but the hand-to-hand combat of the Clan Saxon in petty vengeance against the homeland of their supposed enemies. Fenn landed on the far side of the lake from the remains of the Kryze palace. It wouldn't do any good to see the marks of violence upon this place. Not when they'd finally had a victory.

Korkie seemed to know this remote section of the forest just as well as he knew the earth that skirted the distance palace.

"This was our walking trail," he muttered, scuffing at the leaf-litter with a beskar boot. "The lake route. But we would carve paths up into the hills to search for strill dens and bird nests. And around the corner here, I think, was our path down to my favourite beach."

There was an affronting beauty about it: the silver of the lake reflecting the sky, the craggy spirals of dark rock rising jagged through the thin trees, the impossible hush of the slumbering land. Bo-Katan was as pensive as Fenn had ever seen her. Ursa murmured stories to her daughter a few steps ahead.

"They fought here."

Korkie's hand pointed casually to a series of carbon-scorched trees, where natives of Kalevala had no doubt been executed.

"Fled the village over the hill, perhaps, and then…"

Fenn wondered what he could feel of that memory, in the Force. Korkie dropped his hand, rubbed absently at his wrist, where a faint scorch-mark emerged from the loose sweater with which he had replaced the top half of his armour.

"Let me see that."

Fenn caught his wrist deftly, examined the damage. It was a superficial burn. Nothing dangerous. But it would hurt.

"It's nothing," Korkie muttered. "My comms bore the brunt of that shot entirely. I barely felt a-"

His eyes widened and he stopped in his tracks.

"My comms!"

He withdrew his arm from Fenn's grip, called out to their companions ahead of them.

"Was it one of you who tried to call me? During the battle?"

Shaken heads all round. Korkie groaned.

"Ah, kriff. It could have been anyone."

"Aren't you supposed to be able to sense this sort of thing?" Bo-Katan asked.

Korkie gave a miserable shrug.

"Sometimes. But honestly, right now, I feel sort of uneasy about everyone…"

This was, perhaps, the reason they had come to the lakes in the first place. Fenn felt an ache for his Mand'alor, deep in his chest. They had come for a few moments of comfort, before launching into whatever new disaster awaited them. And he'd somehow managed to ruin it.

Korkie turned to Fenn with expectant gaze.

"What did we hear from Hoth?"

"Partial success."

"What does that mean?"

"That sentients died and ships were lost, but it went about as well as could have been expected."

Anything short of a massacre was a partial success of the Rebellion, these days.

"Marvellous," Korkie sighed. "I'll head back to the ship. Use the comms set there."

He mounted a valiant smile.

"You lot carry on. Enjoy the walk. It'll take a while. And it might be nothing. Perhaps it was Kawlan calling for an update on my romantic prospects."

"What will you tell him, Korkie?" Sabine called after his retreating back.

"That he ought not trust the gossip of a purple-haired idiot, no matter how brilliantly she saved the day."

Fenn might have been alarmed that Sabine Wren thought there was anything worth gossiping about – did she mean him? Or someone else? – but given the circumstances followed Korkie back to the ship anyway, anxiety gnawing at his gut. In his limited experience, Korkie's strained optimistic predictions usually fell badly flat.

"It's alright, Fenn. Really. You should carry on."

"It's cold out here. I could use a mug of tea."

Korkie looked at him with withering scepticism.

"You come from Concord Dawn, Alor'ad."

Autumn in Kalevala's northern lake country was about as warm as Concord Dawn ever got. Fenn shrugged, no argument to offer in return. Korkie did not press the point any further, slowed in his strides, and allowed Fenn to return to the ship at his side.

Korkie would start at the top. A for Ahsoka. His list of people he cared for who could foreseeably be in terrible danger was far too long and nothing less than a systematic approach would do.

"Hey, d'you comm?"

"No. Figured you were busy with the second Saxon."

Ahsoka appeared before him in a thin tunic, the thick layers of insulation from Hoth abandoned. She was in a dwelling not dissimilar to that Korkie had shared with Kawlan Roken on Yaga Minor all those years ago; it had the look about it of the cheapest rent to be found in an overflowing city.

"How'd you go?" she asked.

"Success," Korkie reported. "The only casualty on our end was my poor comms. How was the evacuation?"

Ahsoka shrugged.

"Not terrible. Rex and I were separated from the others, haven't made it to the rendezvous point yet. I knocked my head and we decided not to jump to hyperspace until it was better."

Her gaze sharpened at someone beyond the view-field as she raised her voice slightly.

"And it's a lot better, by the way!"

The soft chuckles from beyond the screen affirmed the presence of Rex nearby. He wandered into view with a wave, dressed in civilian clothing that Korkie still found strange upon him.

"Getting better, yes. But you're still yet to pass a concussion test, Commander."

"Rex thinks he's Kix," Ahsoka grumbled. "But I've agreed to rest and wait it out. Doctor Rex tells me that if I don't take my concussion seriously, I might end up as stupid as you, Korkie."

Korkie wore the barb with a gracious smile but his anxiety did not abate.

"I think that's a good idea, Ahsoka. Tell me, have you been in contact with the rest of the Alliance? Did Leia and Han make it out?"

Ahsoka and Rex's faces fell in devastating synchrony. Korkie felt his voice catch in his throat.

"Ahsoka, please, don't tell me…"

"They're one crew of quite a few that haven't made it to the rendezvous point yet," Rex admitted. "They were confirmed to leave Hoth successfully. Made contact with the Advisory Council a few days ago. Didn't give out any location, in case anything got intercepted. Just said they had Imperial company nearby but that they were safe and it'd take them at least a few more days to get to the rendezvous point."

"The sort of thing I'm told your parents did all the time, Korkie," Ahsoka supplied, with a half-hearted smile. "Find an opportunity to hole up somewhere together where Qui Gon Jinn wasn't in the name of safety. I think they're probably fine."

"But we don't know," Korkie pressed.

Ahsoka shook her head, smile fading.

"No. We don't know."

And yet Korkie had the horrible, sinking feeling that he did know. That it was bad.

"I'm going to let you go and see if I can get onto them. Rest up, alright?"

"Will do. Good luck. And please, don't do anything stupid."

Korkie ended the call with a faint tremor in his hands. He tried Leia. Then Han.

Nothing.

Seated beside him at the controls, Fenn heaved a stoic sigh.

"They may well have technical troubles, if their ship was damaged, or they're hiding somewhere remote."

Korkie shook his head, neck wooden.

"It's not technical troubles."

"I thought you said you couldn't sense it, exactly."

"I can sense it now."

Korkie felt it building within him, the closest thing he'd had to a panic attack in years and years. The closest he'd come to crying. He felt the breaths jerking in his chest and effortfully slowed them.

"Ahsoka can't tell me not to do anything stupid," he muttered, "when I've already been so karking stupid-"

"You haven't been stupid," Fenn told him swiftly. "We don't even know if they're in trouble, and we just pulled off a very successful mission that without you-"

"You'd have been fine without me," Korkie snapped. "Sabine would have found the answer her own way. But I insisted on coming and now-"

"We don't know that it was Leia who called you."

"Of course it was Leia who called me!"

He had yelled. With anger, true anger. Fenn winced with the sound of it and Korkie felt even sicker.

"I should have known," he muttered, voice low again. "I should have known the moment it rang. I told her to call me if she needed me. I told her to call me if anything happened. I said I would come to her, no matter what."

He'd made a promise and he'd failed to keep it. He'd failed Leia, the person who needed him perhaps more than anyone else in this whole bleeding galaxy. He pressed the heels of his hands to his burning eyes.

"All these kriffing battles, Fenn," he gritted out, "and I'm never in the right karking place."

"Korkie…"

Fenn's hand came to rest upon his shoulder, pressed care through his fingertips, held him tight.

"Korkie, listen, please. You have given us our home back. Do you understand the gift you have given us? To be able to walk along the lakes of Kalevala in the autumn?"

Korkie shook his head, buried his face in his hands. He couldn't look at Fenn, so near to him.

"You have fought hundreds of battles in your lifetime. You have achieved great victories for our people and for the Rebel Alliance. You cannot be everywhere at once. No one can. But that does not mean you are anything less than magnificent."

And the kindness of those earnest words, the squeeze of his shoulder and the rush of feeling in the Force as he said them – all of it was too much for Korkie, who in that moment could feel nothing but a failure. He sat abruptly upright and pushed Fenn's hand from his shoulder.

"For star's sakes, Fenn," he erupted, tears spilling. "Stop being so kriffing nice to me!"

The Alor'ad shrunk back as though stung. Hurt.

"I'm sorry, Mand'alor."

The title Korkie hated to hear, from Fenn's mouth most of all.

"I thought…"

Fenn shook his head.

"It was my mistake."

"What?" Korkie asked.

Fenn gave a hopeless sigh, murmured an answer against his better judgement.

"You said we were friends."

Korkie had never heard a silence quite like the emptiness that fell between them now.

Yes, he had said it. He had said it with Fenn's fingertips upon his skin, working bacta into his blaster wound on Krownest. After they'd stood so close, eye to eye, as Fenn had effortfully stitched together the gaping wound in Korkie's forehead and when Korkie had realised, with the waning adrenaline and then a jolt of understanding, that his Alor'ad was not only handsome but beautiful. He had known then that it would be unwise to listen to the stir in his chest but he had been unable to resist what he had felt entirely. And so, he had asked Fenn to call him by his first name and told him that they were friends.

"I…"

Korkie faltered.

"I wanted that to be the case, Fenn. But perhaps…"

A curt nod.

"I understand."

But Fenn did not understand. He did not understand half of it. He stood to make the tea that had been his excuse for the return to the ship, stoic and accepting of the rebuke. An Alor'ad who had become overfamiliar and would step obediently back into his role.

Kriff. Hadn't it hurt, all those years ago, when Mahdi had done this to him? Korkie steadied, swallowed hard.

"What I meant to say, Fenn, is that I like you too much to be your friend. Obviously."

Fenn stood with his back to him in the kitchenette, his movements suddenly stilled. A slow, steady breath, his voice low and reluctant.

"Mand'alor…"

"Korkie," he murmured, in quiet correction.

Another gaping silence. But not empty like the last. Brimming with swirling emotion, with hope and fear and sheer bewilderment. Fenn turned back to look at him.

"Obviously?" he repeated, appalled.

Korkie dropped his head and gave a breath of shy laughter.

"Sewlen and Sabine seemed to think it was, at least."

"Right."

Fenn abandoned the half-brewed tea.

"It wasn't obvious to me, by the way."

"I can see that. Sorry."

The faintest flicker of a smile.

"I'll forgive you, I suppose."

"I'd be grateful for it."

They sat opposite each other once more, the long-familiar posture now alight with strangeness. Korkie should have known what to say. Didn't he always know what to say? And yet in this moment he felt as young and stupid as he ever had been.

"Well…"

Fenn's hand found Korkie's so that their fingers loosely entwined. A brush of his rough thumb across his palm, a gentle squeeze. It was such a simple and yet profoundly comforting gesture. When had anyone last touched him like this? Not in conflict, not with the fierce affection of another disaster survived, not even with the blind want that Korkie had given into, on occasion, in his years in the Rebellion as beautiful men flitted in and out of his life. But with tenderness.

"We'd best decide what to do about Leia," Fenn mused.

Korkie returned the squeeze of affection and withdrew his hand to pull up a map of Hoth and the surrounding Western Reaches.

"I think you know what I intend to do about Leia."

"I do."

Fenn rose to his feet.

"I'll get everyone else back on board. We'll drop them to Keldabe then go find her together."

Korkie looked at him with a slow, stunned smile.

"You're not going to tell me to behave and be the Mand'alor?"

Fenn shrugged.

"I'll let Bo-Katan tell you that. I'd rather be at your side when you inevitably don't listen."

As Fenn jogged down the ramp, Korkie sat back at the ship's controls and wondered what in the stars had just happened. How a moment so simple could have been so precious. He thought of how his younger self would have thrown himself into Fenn's arms and felt a faint twinge of regret. The moment had slipped by so quickly.

But the weight of Leia's silence and the danger that it spelled was heavier than anything else could possibly be. He appreciated that Fenn knew and understood that. They would track them down, help them out of whichever tight spot they'd got themselves into and the rest of it would wait. It had waited this long, hadn't it?

There would be a time for happiness later. A time for happiness and a time to call Kawlan, who would be pleased.

For now, Korkie couldn't help but fear he was already running late.

Ariarne knew as they drew near to Bespin that she had been right; the looming clouds were those she had seen in her visions and she mightn't have been particularly attuned to Leia Skywalker but there as no mistaking the Force signature of Darth Gelid. She also began to suspect that she and Luke had been rather stupid, when they had left Dagobah with two freshly-forged lightsabers and no real plan. Gelid, Ariarne could feel, was in her element. Her Force signature dripped with confidence. A spider sitting proud in the centre of her web.

"This is a trap, Luke," Ariarne groaned. "I don't know if we're doing this right."

Luke did not shift his gaze from the viewport as he navigated their descent into atmosphere.

"Sometimes, there's no option but to spring a trap."

He was, Ariarne suspected, quoting Korkie.

"They have Leia," he went on, his voice snagging with pain. "What choice do we have?"

"We could call Ahsoka and the Faulties," Ariarne suggested. "We could call Korkie. The Advisory Council should probably know they're here. They'd allocate someone to the rescue. Cal, or…"

"We need to get them out now," Luke countered, voice calm but certain. "If we ask for help, that means waiting for them to arrive."

Ariarne could tell he was considering it, despite his protests. But soon, a darkness came over his expression and he shook his head, resolute.

"This is the only way, Ariarne. We get them out right away. Before my dad finds out. If my dad finds out…"

"Your dad could help us, couldn't he?"

Luke never spoke about his father. Ariarne had learned what she knew of Anakin Skywalker from their brief encounter in the evacuation of Yavin 4 and later what she had read and watched furtively on her data-pad, when Luke was occupied or asleep. He had been the mightiest warrior in the age of the Republic until the Emperor had so very nearly killed him. He had given what life he had left in him to his children. But Ariarne couldn't truly understand the strange mixture of shame and admiration Luke held for his father. Anakin had helped the Rebellion when they had needed him, hadn't he, on the day they had destroyed the Death Star? And there was no shame in having devoted his current efforts to the eradication of slavery in the Outer Rim. Anakin Skywalker had been doing a whole lot more good for the galaxy than Luke and Ariarne had been doing, tucked away on Dagobah.

"No," Luke answered. "No, he definitely couldn't. Shouldn't. I told you, we have to keep him away from the Emperor."

Nearly lost to the Dark Side, Anakin Skywalker was, for fear of the future.

"Your dad didn't fall," Ariarne pressed. "I'm sure just about every Jedi has had some moment where they've lost their way-"

"We have to keep him away from the Emperor," Luke repeated, with certainty.

Ariarne sighed. Perhaps it was the only way. She felt Gelid's sick joy in another's pain and her resolve hardened. She knew that it was to be in Gelid's capture. Luke was right. They couldn't leave Leia a moment longer while they waited for back-up.

"Alright," she sighed. "Land anywhere. Getting inside is going to be the easy bit."

Bad news on Bespin. I apologise if this was a bad time for romance but I think in the spirit of Star Wars there is no such thing as a bad time for romance and they are too cute.

Next chapter (I promise), a famous confrontation awaits.

xx - S.