A Random Blog

Arin's mind wandered now that all the excitement had died down, replaying the events of the evening. Her heart skipped every time she thought about the way that Luke had been kissing her, wished that it could have lasted forever. Only a couple hours had passed between that moment and pairing up to dance with him at the wedding, and they had been the best couple of hours in her recent memory.

The most entertaining too, as she recalled Luke’s absolute crisis as his Force bond with Leia betrayed him. She knew that the Force was powerful, knew that it was an immensely useful ally; she had no idea it could be so hilariously cruel.

She thought about that for a minute, about how that worked. Eventually, her curiosity got the better of her, and she broke their comfortable silence. “Okay….” She started, lifting her head from Luke’s shoulder turning her head towards him. She knew this was going to be a very awkward, uncomfortable question, but gods, did she ever want to know. “Forgive my morbid curiosity, but…. About earlier: if you could feel… that, from Leia…. Does that mean she can feel it when you…?” She tilted her head and gestured to fill the gap in the question. 

As predicted, Luke became quite flustered. His face flushed immediately and he avoided her gaze as he picked at his nails. “Oh… I– I don’t– Y-yeah…. Um, probably, I guess….?”

She assumed as much– it explained why that kiss hadn’t gone any further. It very well might have were it not for the glaring problem of Luke’s mental link to his sister. Arin grimaced and tried her hardest not to laugh. “I am so sorry, that’s… unfortunate.”

“She doesn’t have to worry about that though,” he said quickly. “I don’t– I haven’t–” He sighed, composing himself. “It’s… been a long time.”

“Really?” Arin asked with mild surprise. “People aren’t as interested in you as everyone seems to think, huh.”

Luke tilted his head slightly. “People are interested in me, I’m just not interested in them. Not anymore, I guess. I mean I… explored… a little bit after Yavin, sure; I was a naive nineteen year old who never got that kind of attention. I thought sex would be… exciting.”

There was an undertone of either sadness or disappointment in his reminiscing, and Arin looked at him with curiosity. “And it wasn’t all that it was cracked up to be?” She guessed. 

He shrugged. “Not really. Don’t get me wrong, it felt great– physically, anyway. But that was it– it was purely physical, and it wasn’t nearly the euphoric experience that Han had made it sound like it’d be. I just… wasn’t into it. I figured maybe it was just a couple of bad partners, but… I really couldn’t get in the mood no matter who I was with. I didn’t understand that– by all means, a sheltered farm kid should be a slave to his raging hormones, right?” He gave a quick, breathy laugh before his expression softened. 

“That wasn’t the case for me, though,” he continued. “I thought that maybe… maybe there was something wrong with me.” 

He absently played with the sand as he spoke again. “But no. I realized that I just need a strong emotional connection before I feel any sort of desire for a physical relationship.”

Arin gave a slow nod. “Can’t say the same for myself,” she admitted, remembering her occasional trysts when she was still with the Empire. “When you’re part of a military that does everything it can to strip your individuality and turn you into obedient pawns, you do what you can to feel human again. Casual sex was the one instance where you could be rid of the uniform and close with another person. Didn’t matter if you cared about each other or not, it was a human connection, and a lot of us were deprived of that. It was never very good, mind you– well, apart from this one girl– but it was a cure for the itch,” she said with a pained laugh.

He gave a quick chuckle and nodded. Arin paused, then looked at him with a thoughtful smile. “Fen’s like you, though.”

“Really?” Luke said, a faint, inquisitive look crossing his face.

“Kind of,” she corrected. “Except he doesn’t feel any sort of attraction at all, even with an emotional bond.”

“None at all?”

“When we were still serving in the Empire together, he came to me on the verge of tears because he didn’t understand why he wasn’t feeling anything when the people around him seemed to all be hooking up or trying to get into relationships. He asked me to kiss him; reasoned that because of how close we were, if he didn’t feel anything from it, he must be broken.” She paused, the memory still carrying some sadness with it. “I agreed to help him, and I ended up sitting with him for a while that night while he cried and tried to process what he’d learned. I tried to make him feel better by telling him that it was an advantage and not a problem, but….”

“An advantage…?”

Arin shrugged nonchalantly. “Being horny clouds your judgment; it’s distracting. Fen was never horny, ergo Fen always had a clear head.”

“I don’t think that’s the only cause for distractions and clouded judgement….”

She rolled her eyes. “You would’ve been worse at comforting him than I was.”

“Probably.”

“Anyway, it took him a while but he eventually accepted that he wasn’t sick or broken– he’s just wired differently.”

Luke nodded in understanding. “I remember being quite confused for a while before I was okay with it.”

“If you don’t mind me asking,” Arin said. “How’d you figure it out?”

She watched as his shoulders fell with a heavy exhale, and his face turned solemn. “I… thought I fell in love.”

Arin gave him a sympathetic look as she saw the pain on his face. He just looked straight ahead at the fire, his brows knit tensely. “Her name was Shira Brie. She was another pilot,” he said quietly. “We were good friends, but I started to develop feelings for her, and she for me. She was the first person that I ever actually desired intimacy with, and the only person I truly enjoyed all aspects of it with.” He paused, shaking his head. “I’d never experienced that before. I thought that I loved her; thought that she loved me.”

There was a long pause as Luke kept staring at the flames. Arin was almost afraid to ask, but she also didn’t want to deny him the potential catharsis of talking about it. “And… it didn’t work out?”

He lifted his head, took a pensive breath. Then, he looked at Arin gravely. “I killed her….”

His answer shocked her, and she tried not to look too shaken by it. Her eyebrows furrowed as she studied his face. He just looked defeated. “That mission was the last time I’d piloted a TIE, prior to coming here. We were undercover; got into combat with some Imperials and they scrambled our communications. I could only rely on the Force to separate my team from our actual enemies.” He paused with a shake of his head. “I fired on what I thought was an enemy ship, and didn’t realize it until after that… it had been Shira who I’d shot down.”

Shock turned to sorrow. “Luke… I’m so sorry,” Arin said, her voice quiet and careful.

“I lost my trust in the Force for a while after that. But as it turns out, it didn’t completely mislead me that day. We found out much later on that Shira was an Imperial agent, working undercover to get close to me so that she could either kill me or ruin my good standing with the Alliance. I had gotten over her by that point, but… that still hurt.”

“Well, sure,” Arin offered. “Your feelings for her were real, whether hers were or not. You can’t blame yourself for being hurt, finding out someone you loved wasn’t who they said they were.”

He sighed. “Yeah, I guess so.”