Down the corridor, Nick almost ran, and if not for Sher's presence – he probably would have run.
"What is it?" he asked, bursting into the cockpit, as if expecting to find an assault group there.
The mercenary pointed at the indicator and stood up.
"The captain needs help."
"Understood..." the navigator took the freed pilot's seat. "Rest for now."
When the door closed behind Larius, he nodded to the adjacent chair.
"Will you keep me company?"
Sher, letting the mercenary pass to the exit, belatedly thought that she should have heated food for her too, but anxiety for the captain immediately pushed aside extraneous thoughts. And Larius would surely manage on her own...
"Is Rick in danger?" she replied anxiously, answering a question with a question, sitting down next to him, but immediately cut herself off. "Company for you, Nick? Even in the belly of a sarlacc," the girl said softly. "What needs to be done?"
"Just be there and don't let me fall asleep," the navigator joked. His eyes remained serious. "Of course, not to the detriment of work..."
"I don't even know, Nick," Sher said slowly, not taking her eyes off his gray eyes, which flickered with the light of the sensors, stars, and the semi-darkness in the cockpit. "Maybe I should call someone else?"
And she added shyly.
"I didn't want to disturb your sleep. I had a dream that even your beacon couldn't help with..."
"Or did I want to disturb you after all?"
"I wouldn't mind if I were disturbed like that more often," Nick reached out to her, ran his fingertips over her cheek. "Now I'll change course. And then I'll just have to sit for a few hours and wait for the jump to end."
"No, no," she shook her light, wavy braid from having braided it wet and then re-braided it, trying with all her might to maintain a serious look. "Sound sleep is the key to health. I won't disturb it..."
Gods of Coruscant... Rick is risking his life, they barely escaped the pursuers, there might still be a hunt for Dey... And she...
She is happy at such a time...
"How soon will we see Rick?" she looked towards the navigator, her eyes now serious. But despite all the arguments of conscience, her heart was leaping in her chest.
"A few more hours here, next to Nick..."
Instead of an answer, the navigator turned off the hyperdrive. "Lucky Chance" shuddered, the rainbow bubble was replaced by a starry expanse – they were in open space. A chill of interstellar space wafted over Sher, the transport ship turned smoothly, laying a new course, and after a few seconds, jumped again.
"Estimated jump time – three hours and twenty minutes," the navigator finally said. The feeling of an icy abyss disappeared.
Sher hugged herself around the shoulders almost instinctively... But this feeling of icy emptiness was inside, in her consciousness, only for a moment, opening up the infinity of cold and loneliness of the cosmic abyss. She couldn't speak right away. And she wanted to ask Nick why she had the feeling that there were no bulkheads between space and the cockpit. There was something about him... But she asked about something else entirely. About something she had noticed more than once.
"And how did you manage to calculate the jump without using the onboard computer, Nick?"
She almost knew what she would hear in response.
"I was trained," the navigator replied quietly. "I always know where to steer the ship, I don't need a navigator, and I don't waste time on calculations. Very convenient, isn't it?"
"Tell me... You don't waste time on calculations? What do you waste then?"
Her eyes were completely black due to her pupils, because her heart had shrunk. She remembered his story about the Acceleration, which took minutes and hours of his life. And that cold...
"Nothing," Nick stroked her cheek again. "Nothing, my dear... It's just that in those moments... There's very little human left in me. To find your way in the Galaxy, you have to become the Galaxy yourself, Sher... And it's cold out there. And empty. And it's very important to have somewhere warm to return to."
Sher held his hand on her cheek with her palm. Is feeling like an icy abyss, infinite, and infinitely lonely, called not wasting "nothing"?
"So that's how you fly..."
She turned her head slightly, and her lips gently touched his palm.
"Nothing, Nick," she echoed in a quiet whisper. "I'll always warm you up. I can."
"I know," the navigator whispered. "We still have a long way to fly. Tell me a fairy tale?"
"A fairy tale, Nick?"
To tell a fairy tale to that little boy who lives in this gray-haired pilot, chilled by the cold and darkness... To protect him from the icy emptiness and that black abyss deep within his consciousness... To warm and illuminate his soul with that little sun that lives in her heart...
"Of course, my good one..." she reached for his shoulder and pressed her cheek against the rough fabric of his jumpsuit. Her slender fingers traced something on his palm. No, her fairy tale wasn't about princesses, or krayt dragons, from whom brave warriors saved them... Nor about mighty emperors who conquered half the galaxy... Ancient tales and legends, naive and beautiful, like the decayed pages of real paper books, preserved the eternal values of the Universe - love, friendship, devotion. and loyalty...
But Sher wanted to tell a different one now...
About a girl who lived, perhaps, on Corellia, perhaps on Naboo... Or maybe somewhere else....
"Just an ordinary girl, studied somewhere, raced speeders, met friends," Sher recounted, examining the lines on Nick's palm. "And once she happened to pick up some guy near a cantina. Completely sick, almost drunk from aged Corellian, unrecognized, and therefore absolutely penniless genius. But she saw something in him... And she really liked his poems. She brought him home, washed him, healed him. Believed in him, even though they didn't understand his poems... But she - believed, said - write, you're a genius, we'll make it. And her friends and girlfriends all said in one voice: "You've lost your mind! He's poor, sick, can't do anything, he doesn't even have a speeder. And he can't shoot a blaster!" But she just smiled and shone with happiness. "I can shoot a blaster," she said.
Sher glanced at Nick, smiling.
"You have a very, very long life line..."
"Everyone's life is long," he sighed. "Until the Force intervenes..."
"Well, you know, the Higher Powers always need to intervene in someone's life... They decided up there that it was enough for this worthless guy to pollute the sky of Corellia... or Naboo. And a messenger of death came for him. And the girl clung to the guy - she wouldn't let go, didn't sleep at night, guarded his breathing, took care of him, warmed him with her warmth. "I won't give you to anyone," she said... The messenger of death fought and fought - his armor began to wear out, but nothing worked. He fought for a long time, grew thin himself, and returned with nothing. And then there's that bureaucracy - "we don't know anything, we need one life," they say. "Then take her." The messenger took a different approach - he came for her life. The same story. He holds her, even though he's sick, even though he's never shot a blaster..."
The gray-haired messenger returned to the Higher Powers. Without armor. Almost crying. "I can't," he said, "individually. Only both at once..." But the Higher Powers are still sometimes fair - well, no, how can that be? Not in batches... It's not war yet. Yes, the messenger cried, and what am I supposed to do? Well, they shrugged: "Go and take the lonely ones..."
"An interesting fairy tale..." the navigator said thoughtfully, blowing on Sher's crown. "And what about the life line? I've heard of it..."
She raised her eyes with a smile, blinked from his breath, and quietly laughed at it.
"The life line," her smiling gaze returned to his palm, a thin finger slid along the line encircling the navigator's thumb. "It only ends because beyond it is a patch of skin without a pattern... It's a very long life. A hundred years, no less," she began to bend all his fingers in turn.
"There's also a line of destiny. And a heart line," she added almost in passing.
"And what do they say?" Nick buried his nose in her hair, not taking his hand away.
Sher lifted her chin up to meet his shining gaze.
"Do you really want to know? See where this line begins?"
It was hard to resist the urge to tickle him with her touch, and Sher was aiming for the opposite. "Here, on this mound under the ring finger... It means you have an exciting, travel-filled, diverse, bright life ahead of you. And this branch indicates good luck," Sher said with pleasure.
"I've already caught my luck," his fingers tightened on her palm, gently, so as not to cause pain. "And about life... We'll see."
"And... Aren't you interested in the heart line?" Sher asked cautiously, responding to his squeeze with her own, very gentle one.
"I know that one myself," the navigator replied quietly, chasing away a feeling of irreparable loss that had arisen from nowhere. "I don't think you'll tell me anything new about it, Sher..."
The girl's fingers trembled in his palm.
"And I didn't want to tell you," Sher teased him, "let what's drawn on my palm remain my secret!"
"You can't believe all sorts of nonsense, even if everything else seems true. Even if the woman who paid me for my treatment with such knowledge was a professional fortune-teller. After all, it won't change anything anyway..."
"And now you tell me your fairy tale. About the Force, if we still have time," she remembered, as if on cue. "Does it choose those who become gifted on its own?"
"Those are dangerous fairy tales," Sher's harness straps clicked softly, unfastening themselves. "Come here... Are you sure you want to know?"
She should have gotten used to the manifestations of the Force by now, being around him, but each time she was surprised anew, like now, seeing the restraint clasps unlatch on their own.
"I need to know, Nick, and yes, I want to... So as not to hurt you. Accidentally. To understand... And I'm not afraid," Sher slid out of her chair and stepped towards him.
The navigator pulled her to him, sat her on his lap, hugged her, warming her and being warmed.
"No one knows how the Force chooses its adepts," he whispered. "It's just that among millions of sentient beings, one happens to have extra cells in their blood. They can live their whole lives and never know about their chosenness. They'll just have slightly faster reactions, slightly better intuition... A little more luck. And no more miracles. They can pass this trait on to their offspring, or they may not... No one knows if the child of a gifted person will also be gifted until they are born. There have been, they say, entire dynasties in ancient times... But most often, the children of the gifted are the same as everyone else."
To hug him, as if protecting him from the whole world, to press close, to bury her warm cheek somewhere against his firm chin... An almost inaudible whisper tickled her ear.
"And how did you find out you're its adept?"
"They told me," Nicholas replied simply. "They took me off the street, brought me... to a place. And there they told me who I was. What I could achieve. How I could serve the Empire. I didn't believe them. They showed me what was truly possible. They gave me a week to think..."
"I think I can guess who it was," Sher said thoughtfully, instinctively covering Nick with her arms even more carefully. "Tell me... Did something happen to his eyes? No? To the one who taught you..."
"With his eyes?" Nick was surprised. "It would be more accurate to say that he simply didn't have eyes... There's a race, they're so intrinsically connected to the Force that they simply don't need eyes..."
"Yes, probably not..." Sher fell silent hesitantly, quieting down and pressing against the navigator. Should she tell him about it, or not disturb him with what she had dreamed of in the "Haven"? Especially since it was before he gave her that beacon. She moved her hand slightly, without breaking the embrace, to hear the pleasant clinking of the colorful beads against each other...
"And you decided..." it sounded more like an assertion than a question.
"Do you regret it?"
if her eyes were completely black from her pupils and the dim light in the cockpit, then her voice was filled with emotion. And pain. For what he had to go through. A lot to go through. She felt it.
"I never regret what I've done," Nick whispered. "Sometimes I make mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes, and I'm no exception. Mistakes are corrected and taken into account, learned from. But to regret... What's the point? Sometimes my actions have consequences that I didn't foresee. That's also a lesson, but not a reason for regret... I paid a high price for our meeting, Shergi... But I don't regret that price. I never will..."
Something pricked Sher's heart, perhaps a sharp tenderness for this gray-haired and so dear person... In a woman's love, there is always something of a mother's love, no matter how old her chosen one is.
"Nick, my good boy," she whispered, pressing her warm cheek against his rough, emaciated one. "I feel how hard it was for you, and if I could change anything, you would have been happy even then. Even at the cost of our meeting. But the past cannot be fixed..." even in the darkness, her eyes shone with love. "But I can protect you from sorrow and grief now and for all my life... And I am grateful to my fate for that."
His dry, long fingers stroked her light strands of hair. In a few hours, anything could happen - Rick wouldn't have called them for help for no reason... But as long as the jump wasn't over, every second belonged to them. The navigator wasn't going to lose a single one.
To become dependent on relationships with anyone is wrong, he had been taught that for many years. Sooner or later, anyone can betray. No one can be trusted completely.
The ex-CIB operative poured his whole self into the small palms, without reservation, and he didn't care who said what about it. If there's no one to trust, everything loses its meaning.
"Even if the whole world belonged to me, but you weren't in it, I would consider myself robbed..." Nick whispered. "So there's no need to fix anything, Sher... And we'll handle what's ahead. Together."
"Nick..." tears glistened on the girl's eyelashes. And the imperial lieutenant was not ashamed of them. The wave of overwhelming emotions had come too close to her eyes. She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head, preempting his question.
"It's okay... It's from happiness, Nick..."
"I know..." she heard. His lips gently kissed the salty drops from her eyelashes. "I never liked to plan ahead, because tomorrow might never come, and that seemed natural. But now I want to think about the future. About the future we have. It's so unusual... It turns out I can still dream..."
"You have no idea what you just said," her trembling breath, along with her damp eyelashes, tickled his cheek. "My greatest wish since I met you is for you to want to live again... You dream of the future - what else should I dream about?"
Sher pulled back a little, and with a quiet joy of a loving and happy woman, she stroked Nick's gray head and his boyishly sunken cheeks...
"But you can't help but dream when you're with me," she whispered, sighing. Her lips, which touched the navigator's cheek, were soft and warm.
"I'll think of something so you don't get bored," he intercepted her breath with his lips.
...There wasn't much time left until the readiness signal for exiting the jump when the navigator reluctantly released the girl from his embrace.
"I don't feel any anxiety, but just in case - be ready," he asked Sher.
"Yes, Commander," she whispered with a sigh, but before returning to her seat, she still managed to touch the tiny wrinkle at the corner of his eye with her lips.
The navigator sighed, returning to reality. Dreams are dreams, no matter how beautiful - one has to live to see them. At the very least.
Stars splashed into the cockpit blister.