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It's almost pretty when their ship finally falls apart. Luke's seen plenty of ships exploding - several of which he personally caused, and countless more with people he cared about still inside them - but this one is different. Instead of shattering into sparks the way ships do under the impact of an ion cannon, their ship turns in endless flips, shedding paneling and transparisteel as it hurtles onward into space, until it disappears into the blackness and the flaming metal is indistinguishable from a distant star. Beside him, Leia cranes her head to watch the ship as far as it'll go.
At least their ship waited until after the diplomatic meeting with the Bothans to have a catastrophic reactor failure, and at least everyone aboard had found an escape pod in time. Once they'd launched, the nav computer had beamed out a homing signal and plotted a course following along their initial flight plan. It'll be a few hours before Home One can intercept them. A few hours...stuck in a space a few meters square, alone with Leia.
Luke can handle this. Bury your feelings, he thinks. Ben Kenobi had told him that his feelings did him credit, but he can’t quite believe that of himself now. Not for the first time, he wonders how much Ben didn’t know.
Stop, he reminds himself again. He'll drive himself crazy if he keeps thinking like this. Besides, it's not just his own conscience he has to deal with right now. It's not like Leia to be this quiet, even if she shakes her head ruefully and gives him a weary smile when he looks over at her. He tries to smile back and project a feeling of calm and warmth while he's at it. Leia is one of the most important delegates of the fledgling Republic, and before they left Mon Mothma took him aside and stresses how vital it is she stay safe. (She didn’t have to bother. Luke doesn’t know what it’s like to not think of what Leia wants, after everything that's happened to them both.)
The pod is tight, but there’s enough room for Leia to busy herself with her holopad and a stack of flimsi that she'd snatched from her cabin. Luke smiles for real as he settles himself into his seat, watching her. She tucks her stylus into one of her braids as she scowls down at something she’s reading and then jabs down at one of the buttons. It makes Luke want to smile, that look of sheer determination on her face - it made him remember a time before when he’d been with her in her quarters on Hoth, and she’d thrown down her work late one night and crossed over to him and straddled his lap while kissing him so fiercely he could barely think -
No. Wrong. Can’t think about that.
Meditation would be the best option, but between his racing mind and racing heart he doesn’t think he can manage that right now. The second best thing would be to adjust the twinge in his hand, again. Ever since he got shot through with lightning, the join connecting the metal to the flesh aches whenever his heart rate gets too high. Probably he should stop putting off an appointment to the medbay, but in the meantime he's figured out how to recalibrate the nerve center so that it'll numb the pain.
It’ll have to do. He pops open the control panel and fiddles with the settings, frowning when he notices a loose hinge in his wrist. He knows exactly when Leia notices him and becomes concerned - that connection they have has never wavered, has only increased now that they know - but he pretends he’s absorbed in his work as she comes closer to him.
"Is it bothering you again?" She sits down beside him, runs her hands over the metal fingers. It shouldn’t be affecting him like this - he turned off all the stimuli sensors besides pressure, she’s his sister, he can’t possibly be feeling the warmth of her hands on the prosthetic, she’s his sister - but he doesn’t move his hand away.
"A little," he replies, realizing he’d been silent for an awkward length of time.
She traces from his hand up to his hair, stroking it back like she’d done when he’d been injured on Hoth. She’d kissed him then too, and he finds himself leaning in closer before he realizes what he’s doing and slips backwards again. Her hands catch his prosthetic again as she shifts so close to him their knees knock together, and he's so involved in both feeling her pressed up against him and trying to keep himself from feeling it he almost doesn't hear when she says, "Want me to fix it for you?"
"What?"
He must have a funny expression on his face, because she snorts before she answers him. "Your hand. It's the nerve centers again, right? You showed me how to fix that before." She folds his fingers back one after the other, curling his hand into a fist before opening it up again.
He folds his hand closed again, conscious of her fingers caught up in his. "Do you want to?"
"We've got time, and it's better than going over the req flimsis again," she says, shrugging one shoulder.
He's never been good at not giving her anything she asks for. "Sure. Give it a try."
"I'll do better than try," she retorts, but she sets his hand in her lap and hunches over the prosthetic and there's that determined look again, he thinks. Not just her determined look, either - as she works, he feels all the will in her, her warmth and her worry and her bursts of satisfaction whenever she clicks something into place. They've always been more able to share emotions whenever they're close together, and this is as close proximity as they've been to each other ever since they stopped sharing a bed. When she's finished with the nerve center, he's not quite sure whether she or he is the one feeling laughter bubbling inside them.
And he's certainly not sure which one of them kisses the other first.
"I'm sorry," he whispers when he finally pulls himself away.
"I'm not. I miss you," she says, closing the panel and tracing her hand along the join. The sensors aren't fully back on yet, but his skin still tingles under her fingers, matching the tingling sensation in his lips.
"We spent the last week trapped in conference rooms together," he says, still in a daze. "We're basically sitting on top of each other in here. I don't know when you would have had time to miss me."
She whacks him on the knee lightly, then smooths her hand up his legs and takes hold of his hands. "Stop deflecting," she murmurs. "You know what I meant."
"Yes," he whispers back. He's never been good at lying to her. "Of course I did. But..." Memories echo through his head, your thoughts betray her too, you betray her.
"No. No, he's gone." she says fiercely, cupping his chin and making sure he’s looking in her eyes. He startles - rocks, can they read each other's minds now? "He's gone and I'm not going to let him take something else from me." She pauses, and her eyes are bright as stars drifting by. "We can’t go completely back, I know we can’t. But we're still us in every way that really matters - it doesn't have to change if you don't want it to. And I needed you to know what I want."
He doesn’t remember a time when he hasn’t thought about what Leia wants, and what he can do to make her happy. So when they kiss and fall onto each other again, all he can feel is her warmth in all of him.