Of Love and War Book 5: The Tragedy of Hope

Chapter 9: Another Skywalker

As soon as the landing ramp shut behind her, Zelina dropped to the floor with a grunt, Luke already at her side with a hand on her uninjured arm. Part of her wanted to relax and give into the impression that she was safe, but she knew they hadn't finished their escape quite yet.

"Are you all right?" Luke was asking her, looking torn between helping her to her feet and making sure she didn't move from the spot she'd already found on the floor.

"I'll be fine—I'm fine. Go see if Han needs us anywhere, we're not out of this mess, yet," Zelina told him with a slight wave of her hand. Luke still hesitated. "Go, I'll still be here when we're safe, I'm not going anywhere."

Luke finally backed away, heading down the Falcon's hall towards the cockpit at a fast walk, looking back her way every now and then. Once Luke couldn't see her anymore, Zelina turned her attention to her minor injuries, looking over her lightsaber burn and blaster wound.

The bruises that would come out of the fight she'd had were the least of her problems, so she wasn't thinking much about that right now.

While Zelina did a closer examination of her blaster wound, a new voice spoke up, startling Zelina from her narrowed focus to realize there was someone else in the room, someone new.

"That looks like it's going to need some bacta."

Right. The other presence that was with them in the station.

Zelina looked in the direction of the voice, expecting...well, she wasn't really expecting anything other than someone feminine, but who she saw was definitely at the end of her list of who she would have expected to see.

She leaned back, taking a moment to really look at her now that she was here in person, unable to help but compare the young woman to her mother and father in her mind. Defiant brown eyes beneath elegant eyebrows, long brown hair done in a way that was giving Zelina flashbacks to the day she'd found out about her impending birth, a stubborn set to her jaw that had the aura of her father but look of her mother...

"Princess Leia," Zelina finally said, taking perhaps a little too long to get out the title before her name. The title was going to take some getting used to after so long just thinking of her as Leia, the other Skywalker Twin, the Skywalker Twin she couldn't protect, Anakin and Padmé's daughter. "I was wondering what the boys were doing running around the station."

"You're General Du'ahn, I take it," Leia remarked as Zelina got to her feet. "It's a pleasure to meet you, despite the circumstances."

Luke reappeared around the corner, leaning just far enough into the room to catch Zelina's attention. "Han wants us on the guns while he tries to get us to lightspeed."

Zelina nodded, and Luke ducked back out to get in one of the gun wells. "We'll have to get acquainted after we've jumped, I'm afraid," Zelina told her already starting to follow Luke's path.

"Wait, what about your arm?"

Zelina turned and removed her hand from over her blaster wound. "Already better," she said with a reassuring smile. She'd been healing the injury through the Force as she spoke with Leia, and let the young woman see there was no longer a wound on her arm before she turned and hurried back down the hall.

Luke had already climbed down into the lower gun, so Zelina made her way up into the upper gun, letting her gaze rove over the controls as she got settled into the seat.

She hadn't operated one of these before, and neither had Luke. Of course, Luke made himself more familiar with ships than Zelina did, so she was less worried about Luke getting the hang of the controls than she was herself. There was a headset that she put on first, hands tentatively finding their way to the steering, noting that the targeting computer was already firing up.