On the Wings of Valkyrie

Chapter CLXXIII

It had been nearly a week before Luna learned she had been unconscious for about half a year. Perhaps it was strange that it took her that long to finally ask such a question, but there had been some many other more important ones on what she had initially missed that took precedence once she was well enough to ask.

Well enough being a relative term that Luna used extremely loosely. The Empire was in its death throes, likely having no more than a few more months if that left. Leia and Han had gotten married. Ahsoka was looking into how to find Ezra and figure out what Thrawn was up to. Luke was rebuilding the stores of lost Jedi knowledge in preparation to build the new Jedi Order. Padmé was often in communication with Mon Mothma to help draft plans for the New Republic which had officially been formed. Vader's funeral had been held months ago.

The galaxy had just kept spinning without her. Terrifying, really, how so much could change so very quickly. Luna knew it made sense, just because she was disconnected from the world around her it didn't mean the universe could be put on pause. That was unrealistic.

But by the Force, she didn't know how she was supposed to deal with it all. To her, they'd been in a battle only a little while ago, and now?

Now they had been marching on without her and were coming closer and closer to peace.

Peace. The word sounded scarier than it should have.

"....so I was thinking you could join me."

Luna's attention snapped away from her thoughts and back to the present moment. Her eyes focused on the speaker, Ahsoka, who had been talking for some time about what she'd been doing as of late. Luna hadn't been listening, not really.

"I suppose," the girl agreed as she crafted her expression into something that looked glad, not sure of what she was agreeing to and not truly caring. What did it matter? Her job was finished. Done.

Luna had no purpose here. Maybe that was why the extensive time that was going to be required before she left the medcenter didn't matter to her. Normally the girl would have been complaining about how much longer she would have to wait, but Luna just didn't care anymore. She knew what that meant. The girl had felt like this before in a hospital decades ago.

Was it bad Luna still couldn't bring herself to care?

"Great. We can take the Artemis's Illusion when we go. It'll be just like old times," Ahsoka said with a smile that seemed....incomplete. All the smiles everyone had been given Luna as of late looked forced. They always had a strange expression on their faces, like when they saw Luna they were seeing something unexpected. The girl's visitors all tried to hide it, but they never hid it well enough. "Two of us against the galaxy."

"Right."

"So, any idea of how long it's going to be before you can get out?"

"The droids said another week or two, after some more tests," Luna answered, her voice flat. Ahsoka frowned at her lack of annoyance but seemed to decide against commenting.

"That's good news. Did they say when it would be a good idea to take those off?" the Grey Jedi questioned, motioning to the modified cuffs resting on the girl's wrists. "It's weird, not being able to sense you."

"They didn't say," Luna answered. That was a lie, as the cuffs were meant to only be a temporary solution to get her body and mind used to not feeling for her surroundings with the Force, as had become second nature. The cuffs prevented the headache and the energy drain that would inevitably come about after fifteen minutes or so of alertness. In theory, the girl ought to be taking them off at least once per day to see if her subconscious had finally given up on the useless endeavor.

But that was from a medical standpoint. More usefully, the cuffs were preventing anyone from checking on her emotions and looking into her thoughts, as they could easily do now that she didn't have the power to protect her mind while instinct kept her open to the Force. Purposeful or not, Luna couldn't—wouldn't—allow something like that to happen. It was bad enough that she was so out of the loop and had been worrying everybody before she'd woken. The girl didn't want that any more, not now when she was unlikely to suddenly die and everyone had far more important things to be doing.

Maybe it was an unnecessary precaution, at least when it came to the living that she could fool, but Luna wasn't an idiot. There was a practical guarantee that there were ghosts hovering around her considering the near constant cold spots around her bed. Luna may not know the identities for certain, but ghosts were more intune to the Force being they were one with it. That paired with the fact she could name at least one likely candidate who would unhesitantly check on her state of mind and spill the information to the living should he consider it necessary, Obi-Wan's Rules Against Interference or not. And in full honesty, that was the true issue: Luna would go to hell before she'd worry her deceased Master about her mental health.

Not that she wasn't suspicious that he was periodically working as Luke's lie detector, but the girl hadn't asked and wasn't planning to.

"Just weird not sensing you," Ahsoka commented. "Luke thinks so too....guess it's mostly because we're used to that being a bad sign."

"Just trying to get better faster," Luna said, faking a smile, brushing back her hair and pretending not to notice a small piece of off looking color that appeared in the corner of her eye. Trying to ignore that small strand that appeared to have been bleached and contained more bounce than her straight hair should.