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'𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐥𝐚𝐬𝐭 𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞' ═════════╝
━━ -ˋˏ★ˎˊ- ━━
...CRAIT, OUTER RIM
𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐄 𝐈𝐒 𝐀 𝐊𝐈𝐍𝐃 𝐎𝐅 𝐖𝐀𝐈𝐓𝐈𝐍𝐆 that is invisible and shrouded. It sits like a weight, it pulls and twists the heart, it delves deep into guilt for an unseen reason. It is recompense for mistakes unforgiven and it follows always.
Waiting doesn't always make itself known. It hides in the shadows of doubt that coat every sleepless night in a new shade of worry. It chokes the light of the stars into the flowing liquidity of an ink-black night. It is a coward. It doesn't show itself until it is too late, and then it dissipates into the air like smoke.
Then it was like it was never even there.
When Luke let his hood fall away, he let years of guilt be exposed. So many words rushed to his lips, things that he didn't even realize he had been waiting to say. They were all rendered obsolete in seconds. For a moment, Lyra just looked at him. She studied his face, and he was doing the same thing to her. From the moment he met her eyes, she knew he wasn't really there. Half real, an apparition of a ghost.
For that moment, existing was enough.
It was family as it should be. If he narrowed his frame of vision, there was no war outside the doors of the mine. There was a good chance that this would be the last act of Luke Skywalker, but it wouldn't be the end of him. Not when Lyra was standing there and looking at him with the same innocent hope he had seen in her gray eyes so many years ago.
"Luke," Leia breathed, face turned towards her brother. Unblinking and barely moving, she marveled at the sight of him after so many years.
He stepped into the cold, glowing light. Leia stopped him before he could speak; there wasn't enough time. He knew that the waiting had been too long. So much had been lost, too much, maybe. Her Resistance, the one that she had built from the ashes of a rebellion, was so close to being gone. But she could never be mad at him, not for long.
And they didn't have long left.
"I know what you're going to say," she told him gently. Her eyes were filled with tears, and she too could feel the finality of it all. "I changed my hair."
