2200 hours, Galactic Standard Time.
Luke had set the holoprojector in front of him some time ago, and had been staring at the chronometer ever since.
The appointment is always night on the other end — on Nevarro. Here on Ossus it might be night. It might be midday.
SGG R-6 to K-20. Not a distance anyone crosses on a whim. And more often than not he is out in the Outer Rim anyway.
So they settle on an hour, and meet across the dark.
Every rule bends around his life.
Days, he is home on Nevarro. Late, once his son has fallen asleep. The call, always from his end.
Even then, if work comes in for him without warning, or runs long, being left waiting is nothing unusual.
There is no helping it. He is always one step away from dying.
The one worth holding onto even after every no helping it has been laid on the scales. Because that is what he is.
— So. There it is. No helping it.
And still. By now, in memory, the lover is being repainted little by little in pale blue. But that, too, is one more thing there is no helping.
Luke let his eyes fall shut.
On the nights the timing miraculously holds — he slips out of the house without waking his son, climbs into the ship parked just outside, and calls at the hour exactly.
Helmet on, as always. Only the armour off, and something loose and comfortable underneath. Back when he lived aboard the ship, Luke suspects, the armour had stayed on even for sleeping.
A house, a son to share it with, a choice made in Luke's favour — only then is Luke allowed to see this. A privilege given to him alone. No — a miracle, then, after all.
— The hour came and went.
Nothing tonight, then. Luke let the tension go out of his body.
It would be a lie to say there was no disappointment.
But whether or not the holoprojector spoke, the image formed there regardless, as often as Luke wanted it to. — Reaching out and touching nothing: that part was the same either way.
Well. As long as the two of them were safe. That was what mattered, above everything.
Luke gathered himself and offered a blessing to the figure in his memory.
"— May the Force be with you."
"Goodnight, Djarin. Until whenever."
Luke had whispered it and was already turning away when a light electronic tone sounded, and pale blue characters rose above the projector.
Luke hit accept at once. And was immediately, faintly embarrassed. — Like a dog throwing itself at its master in the doorway.
Luke cleared his throat, lightly, and arranged his voice into something like calm.
Ah. So a voice could have weight.
— Low. Slightly rough at the edges.
Not even the interference could blur its outline.
"— Good evening, Djarin."
— Luke could hardly bear the sweetness in his own voice.
"No trouble at all. — Sounds like you're 'outside'?"
The hologram was still nothing but the caller's name. Not a stable connection, evidently.
Luke adjusted his posture and leaned toward the speaker, wanting to gather up every scrap of that voice.
"Yeah. There's a storm nearby. Couldn't get a signal until I'd put some distance between us. Even now it's only audio th—t — g—"
The words were barely out before a loud burst of static stole his voice away.
"It's a shame I don't get to see your 'face.'"
No answer. Perhaps he was thinking, you never see it anyway.
"Asleep in the bunk. It was a hard one this time. He's worn out."
"You mean it was hard again."
He would be shrugging now, Luke thought.
"Nothing to report. Naught comes calling here, as they say. R2 excepted."
"Just say it. You're lonely."
A breath with a laugh caught in it, and then that teasing note. His voice held so much colour.
"And you're not, I take it?"
A word. Then another. Idle things, dropped one at a time into the hyperwave and carried to him. In the space of a blink. And back again to Luke. Faster, far faster, than light.
The meaning could be nothing at all. Only to keep listening, as long as possible, until morning came and parted them. A stalling tactic, and nothing more.
"— I wish I could touch your voice."
Luke murmured it, barely audible, into a gap in the conversation.
"Fair. …Keep it somewhere safe, I suppose. It might be entertaining if it played back every time I touched it."
"That's just a recording."
"You can't touch a recording."
He'd have found that exasperating, probably. It had been a little much, admittedly. And still he stayed and answered — that dutifulness of his was dear to Luke.
"— It's the middle of the night there, isn't it. Get some sleep."
Taken for someone talking nonsense out of tiredness, apparently. Being on the receiving end of that fatherly streak now and then wasn't unpleasant, exactly, but it stung a little.
Still — with the two of them not yet home, it was probably time. So much for stalling.
"And you can't sit out in realspace forever, either. It would be a nuisance to catch a pirate's eye."
"Then come and rescue me, Jedi Knight."
"I'd come, of course. Though knowing you, it would all be over by the time I arrived."
"Then I won't disappoint."
He laughed again. He was in a good mood tonight.
The voice dissolved into Luke's blood and carried heat with it, filling him to the fingertips. A strange sensation.
"— Listen to me. After everything I've said about letting go of attachment, and in that insufferable tone, too."
Luke traced the shape of his name. If only, truly, it had a form.
"I said I'd take it on. So I'll do everything I can. — It may not always be in my hands, though."
Luke remembered those words, the ones that had gathered him up that day. And he — he had remembered them too. So for him it hadn't been a comfort at all. It had been a promise.
"— I know. My bounty hunter. I trust your work."
"Well. There's two of us riding on it now. …Somewhere along the way I got heavy."
So am I, Luke said, without saying it aloud.
An unspoken rule — that each of them would leave the other's way of being intact — kept the affection banked like embers. A relationship that could exist only because it wasn't free.
"— I suppose I should let you go —"
Luke was about to call it a night when the charged particles of the ion storm let out a long roar.
That dry grit of a sound. Sandstorms, even here. Even in the black.
Luke sighed. No telling when it would come back. The Razor Crest would be jumping to hyperspace soon.
But before cutting the connection, Luke hesitated, and then let out the thing pressing heavy against his lungs.
"— The truth is, I don't want to sleep. I can't breathe. Not on the nights you aren't here."
Because none of it would reach. The words he had buried so as not to trouble him — Luke folded them into the noise. Let them drift off to whatever end of the galaxy they liked.
Through the raging electronic sand, a voice arrived — to Luke.
The sound was out before it could be stopped.
So he had heard after all. But that wasn't the point of it —
Just now, quite clearly, he had said me too.
Luke was still speechless when a beep bounced somewhere and the noise fell away.
"Hah. Losing audio as well. — Were you saying something?"
— Clear again, the voice had exactly its usual shape.
So it had been a mishearing, then?
Or had he, too, spoken believing it wouldn't arrive?
Luke let the question go.
"Right. Goodnight. — I'll let you know about next time."
"Please. I'll be wishing you and Grogu safe, always."
"'May the Force be with you'?"
"Yes — may the Force be with you."
They exchanged it, and the projector went colourless.
"— Goodnight, Djarin. Until whenever."
Tonight would be bearable. Sleep would come, and breath with it.
Luke let his mouth curve, and ran his thumb over the small round disc of metal.
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