NEVER QUITE FREE

his remark makes her let out a small chuckle, crossing her arms and shaking her head. “i bet there’s some hidden compartments that are filled with what you need.” rey wasn’t sure if she had drank anything stronger than a homemade cider. even then, she didn’t think she had fermented it correctly since when she drank it, it still tasted like horstberry. just a little stale. “or, i’m sure the wookie knows where some of that stuff is.”

finally being reunited with the ones that she trusted was by far the highlight of the past few months after being alone for so long. meeting new people (she couldn’t really tell if they were actually alive or resurrected) was the most fun of it all. everyone came from mostly different backgrounds and had different stories to tell, if they wanted her to know, and it was nice. getting to know people. exploring the falcon brought rey some happy and not-so happy memories. from the time her and finn had called it a piece of garbage only to find out that it was the millennium falcon was a story in itself. boarding it after han’s death wasn’t her favorite thing to think about, though. 

she ended up running into someone she hadn’t met before. rey’s first opinion was that he was definitely well dressed. better dressed than anyone aboard the falcon, even the entire fleet. “sabacc…?” she may have been knowledgable in some things like ships and using a lightsaber (kind of) but she didn’t know any card games. 

–but cheating. now that sounded interesting. especially after training with luke and having months to experiment, rey didn’t think it’d be too hard. besides, everyone’s got a little dark in them, right? “wanna show me how to play?” 

so many new people around here - and lando adores every one of them, he really does. not all of them know who he is, which is frankly a shame, but he’s sure he can make an impression. one of the items he purchased on naboo was a portable interference field generator, purely so he can play sabacc. it’s one of the games that he loves, even if it holds particular significance on and for the millennium falcon. he knows plenty more, of course, but sabacc is almost always high stakes with the emphasis on random chance.

it’s his kind of game, basically.

he goes about shuffling cards as the girl approaches. she isn’t familiar to him, but she seems comfortable enough on the falcon.

     he’s never sought out the quiet much before his self-imposed exile upon ahch-to, for luke was always a man ( boy ) of action. upon tatooine, life had always felt as if it were at a stand-still, time moving achingly slow, and the dream of getting off the desert rock of a planet quickly fleeting as the years past by. before the knowledge of his apparent destiny, luke never did understand uncle owen’s insistence he remain with him and beru, why he crushed luke’s dreams of seeing the stars time after time  —  it’s only when he loses him, does he begin to recognize the genuine worry and fear within his words. now, with the galaxy rushing around him, he seeks for a moment alone once more  —  yet a moment with wedge, he has found over the years, is just as good.  ❛  i guess even the force can’t erase the feeling of having the weight of the galaxy upon our shoulders for so long. kinda sucks.  ❜  and the phantom weight remains with him at all times, almost suffocatingly so. a smile tugs at his lips, and luke lets it grow until he can feel it in his cheeks.  ❛  no sand, no humidity ? it’s like you read my mind, bud.  ❜  and it makes sense really, for who knows him better than wedge ?  ❛  when you wanna go ? if we head out now, we could probably make a clean get-away,  ❜  he humors the other, sliding down to sit beside him before stretching out his own legs with a quiet hiss as joints achingly do so.

wedge’s path to this point was a mix of good and bad actions. joining the imperial academy, for example, was a genuinely bad action which only became good thanks to some intervention. and most of it afterwards was good - just often relying on fate. wedge has never been one to really leave it up to fate, until fate makes itself known and shoves its way into his life. this whole situation, for example, is something he can’t reduce down to quantifiable actions. it’s the force after all.

he grumbles a little to himself, muttering some syllables at the force’s expense. “if it can’t do that much for us, then what is it even for?” then he glances up, narrowing his eyes a little. “don’t answer that, luke.” there’s no real venom behind it, though, because the smile leaps up to replace the glare almost instantly. wedge knows the force isn’t his expertise, and he’s okay with that. he prefers the real and concrete anyway.

Ceapothe likes to remind himself that he was to remain distant with the others, and that he thought himself to hold rationality more than sympathy; and of course, that reasoning would apply to his feelings regarding the knights as well ( at the worst times, he feels that he cares for them more than they do him – but that was to be expected, and was no longer a source of worry for the Chiss ). But he was not above the slightest bit of care for his brethren; he takes strides around the ship to find the others to check upon them, wish them good health, and offer a goodbye before he inevitably returns to his work, many many lightyears away. 

“Verya,” He addresses with a slight nod, briefly clearing his throat afterwards. Ideally, he would return to his post in wild space once he had fully healed, but when had the Order ever abided by what he needed? “Am I intruding?” He was and he knew it, but intention of the statement was to seek permission to be in her presence, anyhow. Out of any other, she accompanies him on the most missions; in most cases, he was alone. Though he did find comfort in solitude, her presence was something vaguely familiar – he wouldn’t call it comforting, but she held a serene calmness in the air around her. 

it is an intentional thing, to shroud her feelings about the other knights as much as possible. verya believes that part of her survival strategy here is to make herself intentionally distant - to maintain a certain demeanor. the illness did shatter some of that, but it seems to have done that for everyone. now she has to find equilibrium again, to make herself calm and distant and all the things that she was before. it will require practice.

but at the same time, things are going to be strange for a while without kylo ren running things. and running them poorly, no less.

after visiting the main ship on a small pod to get some water and food, she was about to make her way back to her own when the sight of the falcon had caught her eye. boarding was fairly easy, whoever was piloting knew that she was on their side and soon enough, she was on board the famous falcon. it was mostly her curiosity that enticed her to board in the first place.

orion found herself wandering around the ship, looking at the interior and all the mechanics. it had been through a lot and definitely looked like it to. she softly smiled as she walked about, the child in her was secretly freaking out that she had stepped foot on such a legendary ship. 

she slowly made her way back to her pod but not before she ran into the galaxy’s very own wedge antilles. “that’s why you gotta make your own,” she remarked. “i used to make fozbeer all the time during my training days.”

he hasn’t internalized who’s on which ship yet - only that there are definitely multiple ships and that wedge antilles is itching to find a bigger one. optimally one with a hanger, and even more optimally, one with a fleet of x-wings inside. he’s not completely useless, thanks to experience commanding squadrons, but he’s definitely more useful in the cockpit than standing around worrying about squad formations and staring at possible planets to use for a base.

he blinks and glances back at who’s arrived. the surprise gives way to warmth almost instantly. he’s glad to see orion’s doing well. “guess i’m going to have to try and get that started. the real problem will be keeping it secret from everyone else so i don’t walk in on everyone else drinking my liquor.” he glances around as if searching out an area that he could, conceivably, start making his own beer on the ship.

if cassian really thought that jyn would remain in bed while he went to go pilot the ship––well, actually, now that she thought about it, there was no chance he’d expect her to stay put…which was why she had pushed herself up out of bed and out of the room only a few seconds after cassian had left. she was sick of being weak and useless, and wanted something more––more meaningful to do. 

she stumbled through the ship, using the wall for balance. while just being in cassian’s presence made her feel slightly better, the disease was still taking a toll on her body. what she needed was a distraction, and when she managed to come across the communications room and heard a familiar voice crackle over the comms, that was exactly what she got. 

“don’t tell…me you’re drinkin’…without me, antilles,” she croaked into the receiving end of the comm, sitting (more like falling) heavily into the chair. despite the ache in her bones, there was a smile working slowly across her face. she hadn’t seen wedge in awhile, not since she’d escaped quarantine. “though there’s not…any alcohol on…this piece o’crap either.”

he slides open a cabinet and peers inside. bunch of nuts and bolts - good for fixing the falcon, not good for his purposes. maybe he’ll label it so rose can look through it later. if he remembers after all the drinking, of course, which isn’t all that likely. who’s to say, though? he moves to the cabinet above and digs through some random odds and ends when a voice comes through the comms, shot through with static. wedge almost laughs. he knows that voice, even hoarse and weak at the edges.

he grins a little. “i’m trying to drink. haven’t found anything yet, which is frustrating.” there’s some clattering as he moves some objects around. more odds and ends. he doesn’t even know what some of this shit is. that’s what you get with a ship this old and this storied, though - a lot of weird and random bullshit that only makes sense to the previous owner.

it’s the first quiet moment wedge has found since they left naboo.

everything else has been a flurry of activity - getting organized, finding everyone space, clearing out some of the junk that was still in the falcon - and he’s tired. he often doesn’t show it, but like anyone else, there’s points where he feels stretched thin so close to breaking, but there is no time for breaking. so he finds himself a quiet area in the falcon, which means the corner of a hallway where no one treads unless they’re looking to just take in some quiet, legs stretched out against the floor of the falcon.

he knows who’s down the hallway with barely a glance. “you know, i thought the whole deal with this was that i wasn’t supposed to feel like my actual age.” fifty-five, now. and yet the war rages on. he never thought he’d be sixty years old and still fighting a war that is mostly about all the same things, just with some new players. but that’s how it’s looking.

it’s been a while since lando’s been on the falcon. after the war, he let han have it. too much time spent rebuilding cloud city anyway and trying to repair the spectacular amount of damage the empire managed to cause, and if nothing else, a ship deserves to be flown, not wait for his life to pull itself together. yet he can’t say he’s disappointed to see this ship again. it’s one of the best with a good pilot at the controls.

it’s just cramped, which is a complaint. but he went through it before back during the rebellion, and he can definitely do it again.

nevertheless, he has smuggled more coats than strictly necessary onto the falcon, and he’s already looking to recruit as many people as he can into whatever card game he’s picked up in the intervening years. the celebration’s good and all, but they might as well do something with stakes while finding somewhere to go. people think the war’s all action. a lot of it is just waiting, and finding ways to fill that time. “there’s a new kind of sabacc that’s become popular in the last few years. easy to cheat at, or so i hear.”

it’s something of a rebellion reunion on the falcon - with a few key people missing, yes, but most of them are here. it makes wedge feel comfortable in a way that’s almost embarrassing to admit, even if the situation is more than a little cramped. there’s not really enough room for the amount of people stuck on this ship, but they’ll figure it out. it’s not like he’s old and decrepit and halfway to falling apart or anything. 

but he’s finding ways to make himself comfortable. they’ve got enough pilots to keep the falcon up in the air no matter what. 

right now he’s not behind the controls, though, even if he missed flight so viscerally that it almost feels like a physical loss. instead, he’s wandering the halls of the falcon, too enthused to actually sleep, even if exhaustion is setting in close to the edges. he isn’t as familiar with the falcon as some. he spent most of the war in his x-wing, after all, but he walked through it a few times, enough that he knows some of the paths.

anything related to the first order looks exceptionally sterile after naboo.

it’s not something to complain about, really, but she didn’t realize until after the ship punched through the atmosphere. still, it at least feels something a little closer to normal. there are still vague aches and pains, something scratching in the back of her throat that irks her every time she breathes or speaks. even with the life-threatening effects mostly negated by the cure. but the war is back on, just like that.

there shouldn’t be time for peace like this, brewing tea that she took from naboo, but she finds it where she can. it gives her space to understand the turning of her mind and push away the haze of the illness.