“It was a nice ceremony, wasn’t it?”
            Nylan glanced up from his console in the dim of base operations, still dressed in his Jedi robes, a half-eaten piece of wedding cake at his elbow.  He’d clearly dismissed the officer of the watch when he’d arrived-not long before, it seemed, because the mug of caf sitting with the cake was still steaming.
            The Jedi Master grunted in response to his cousin and longtime friend.  “It was.  Maybe a bit unorthodox, but…”

            Tag smiled.  “What in this day and age and in this crazy family isn’t?  Better than what Dal and I had.”
            “Mm.”  Nylan leaned forward, skimming the scroll of headlines off the Holonet feed that chased down the left hand side of his screen.  “Shouldn’t you still be dancing with him?”
            She shrugged slightly.  “He’s busy distracting Davil with some engine-speak I don’t pretend to understand.  Decided maybe I’d make you dance with me, but Slate said you’d left already when I asked if he knew where you were.”
            “And this was the first place you came?  You know me too well, General.”
            A slight blush crept across her features, all but invisible in the dim.  “You heard?”
            “Crossed my desk to be forwarded on to Alek at Kartuiin.  He wanted to give you your old post back completely.”
            “I know.”  She leaned against the bank of consoles, uncaring if the blue sequins of her dress caught on a rough edge.  “It’s not ever going to happen, not after what I pulled, and it’s better that way.  I don’t want that post again anyway.  I’m tired of sending people off to die.”
            “That’s not what any of us signed up for,” Nylan agreed, tapping something on the console to bring up a new report scrolling across the screen.  “Like it or not, it’s part of the job, though.”
            She was quiet for a long moment, staring off at nothing.  “Why us, do you think, Nylan?”
            He glanced up from the casualty scroll.  “Eh?  Why us what, Tag?”
            Still leaning against the bank of consoles, she folded bare arms across the top of them and rested her chin on them, watching him as he worked.  “Why do you think they tapped us for Intelligence so early on?”
            Nylan went quiet for a long moment, leaning back in his chair, momentarily distracted from duty on this late night shift.  “For the record, they tapped you for Intelligence first.  I was just Procurement and Supply.”
            “Semantics,” she snorted with a faint smirk.  “We both remember what that really was.”
            He inclined his head, ceding the point.  “Maybe it was Rose speaking well of us.  Two kids who knew the streets of Coronet better than any had a right to?  Maybe it was just us being able to stay out of trouble.”
            “Ever think it was because of your dad?”
            The suggestion sent him rocking back in his chair, blinking up at her.  “How do you figure?”
            “Look at how many of us ended up with Intel, Nylan.  He didn’t train Sony and Mara like he trained us, but he saw something in them that we recognized for what it was later.  Where did all of us end up-what’d we all end up doing?  We were all Intel by Endor.”
            “I still don’t see how that has anything to do with my father, Tag.”
            “You don’t feel anything when you think about it, though?  You don’t feel like there’s something there?”
            He frowned.  “No…I don’t think I do.  But thinking about Dad…I try not to feel a lot.”
            Her expression softened, the intensity fading.  “You miss him?”
            “I didn’t know him the way I wish I had,” the Jedi sighed, closing his eyes.  “I didn’t even know him the way you knew him.  I just…I don’t know.  I feel something, but I don’t know what it is I feel.”  The ghost of a smile crossed over his features as he tilted his head back, face toward the ceiling.  “Maybe that’s why it’s so easy to play the emotionless one.  Too much practice at it.”
            “You’re closer to Luke’s vision than any of us,” Tag grumbled, shaking her head slightly.  “I’ll never understand why he clings so tightly to the older ways.  I wonder what he’d do if he found out about some of the old tenets.”
            “Probably nothing.  Sometime in the past ten years, he’s realized that the old ways aren’t always the best ways.”
            She snorted.  “Do you really think that?”
            He looked at her, righting himself in his chair.  “I like to.”
            “You don’t really believe it.”
            “Not for a heartbeat.”  He looked back at the screen.  “You got the letter, too, didn’t you?”
            “I haven’t decided how to answer it.”
            “I think you already did, in coming back to Intelligence.”  Nylan raked his hand through his hair.  “I told him I was where I belonged, but thank you for the offer.”
            Tag shook her head slightly.  “It was a big olive branch that he extended toward us, but a weak one.  A very weak one.  He had to know we wouldn’t come.”
            “He also had to hope.”  Nylan looked back toward his screen, then toward her again.  “Tell me you wouldn’t pull his bacon out of the fire if it came down to it.”
            “You know I would.  That’s not what we were looking at here.”  She grinned a little.  “I think he’s finally lost it.  He told me once that he wouldn’t want me under his command again even if it meant that he would finally hit the motherload of holocrons and Jedi lore of old.  Wasn’t worth the headache.”
            “Apparently, he has learned something in twenty-six years.”
            “Even if it’s that small lesson.”  Tag smiled.  “I’m going to go back.  I take it you won’t be joining us?”
            He shook his head.  “No, I’m going to stay here.  Sent the officer on watch to bed, and I’m tired of watching the act.”
            “Which act?”
            “The one that Mike’s putting on with Indy.”
            Tag frowned a little, chewing her lower lip.  “Have you really looked at them, Nylan?  Really, really looked?”
            “Tag, I don’t need a lecture.”
            “And I’m not going to give you one.”  She straightened from her lean.  “I’m just saying…he really is still in love with her.  He could never evade me the same way he can hide shit from you and Slate.  I think maybe this is going to work out, this time.  That he’s finally going to do the right thing.”
            “I’ll believe it when I see it.  Which I don’t think I’m going to.”
            She shrugged slightly.  “I guess we all will.  G’night, Nylan.”
            “Night Tag.”
            He didn’t look up from his screen again until he was confident she wouldn’t look back and see the doubts she’d planted in him this evening, how shaken he was.  He listened to her footsteps disappear down the hall, chewing the inside of his lip.
            Nylan Bridger turned back to his console, shaking his head at himself.  It was a good thing nothing ever came of childhood crushes, he decided.  If something had, it probably would have been the loss of his sanity a very, very long time ago.

~ Erin