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"It's good to see you again, Lune," Ferus said softly. "Better than I could have imagined."

"Don't call me that. It's Div."

Lune was a child, who had needed protecting. A prodigy, a Force-sensitive. A hope.

Lune was special, according to those who had died for him. Lune was the naïve child who'd been stuffed into an escape pod, blasted off from the asteroid, leaving his friends behind, stranded. Brave Rebels before the Rebellion, they sent their one and only hope flying to safety, then waited to die. Lune was the boy who'd floated through space in an escape pod, helpless, useless, as an energy bolt slammed into the asteroid and blasted it into debris. And then, years later, when the scars had finally healed, Lune had sat on a hilltop and watched his entire family die.

Div was a man. He had only one thing in common with that ignorant boy: He was a survivor.

"I take it this is as much of a joyous reunion as I can expect?" Ferus said with a glimmer of his familiar dry wit.

"Is he going to be all right?" Div asked, glancing at Luke.

Ferus nodded. "Sleep dart. He'll be awake in an hour or so. I needed to buy us some time to talk—privately. There are certain things about me that Luke doesn't need to know."

"Like the fact that you're a Jedi," Div guessed.

"And does your friend know that you are?" Ferus asked.

"He's no friend. And I'm no Jedi."

Ferus didn't reply. He just looked pointedly at the lightsaber in Div's hand. As always, it felt so right. Like a piece of him too long absent had finally returned. Div deactivated the weapon and returned it to Luke's side. He had turned away from that life and away from the Force. He had lived with that empty hole inside him, that knowledge that he could have been something more, for a long time. The pain was no longer raw. It was tolerable.

Div scowled at Ferus. "Fine. The kid's out of the way. So here we are. You want to talk? Talk."

"Help me carry him?" Ferus said, kneeling before Luke's body. It was beyond lucky that he'd been able to sense Luke's presence in the Firespray. The Force was strong in Luke, very strong. "It's not safe out here in the open." Together, they lifted the unconscious Rebel and carried him toward the small shelter Ferus had been using as his base. They worked in silence. Ferus kept his head down but spread his attention, absorbing every detail of Lune with his peripheral vision. He had a feeling the boy wouldn't take kindly to being stared at. But it was tempting to do so.

It hurt seeing himself reflected in Lune's expression. The boy had once looked at him with respect, trusting, with the innocence of a child—the ignorance of a child—that Ferus would protect him. More than once, that trust, that duty to protect Lune, had been the only tether keeping Ferus from a bottomless fall into the dark side of the Force. But now…Ferus could feel Lune's disgust, his dismay at seeing what his old friend had become. How soft and flabby Ferus had grown over the years. How old.

How cowardly.

Lune couldn't be expected to see beneath Ferus's disguise, to understand that he'd spent decades hiding in plain sight, pretending to be a harmless, senseless courtier. And Ferus couldn't explain it to him, not without explaining why it had been so imperative to disguise himself. Not without revealing the secret of Leia Organa, the child Ferus had been sworn to protect. Anakin's child.

Leia was the second child Ferus had sworn to protect, the second "galactic hope."

Lune had been the first.

He's alive, Ferus told himself. That was something.

But it wasn't everything.

Ferus had long ago accepted that his mission would mean losing the respect of all around him, even Leia herself. Only Obi-Wan understood who Ferus truly was, and Obi-Wan was dead. This, too, Ferus had finally accepted. Much as he might have craved it, he didn't need Lune's admiration. So what hurt the most wasn't the look on Lune's face; it was the look in his eyes.

As Ferus had grown soft, Lune had grown