PHOENIX ━ dameron

061 | where the time went

At first, she just blinked. He looked more tired than when she had seen him on Crait, still exhausted from the effort that had nearly killed him. But this time, he was real. Dressed like a Jedi right down to the cloak, all that was missing was his lightsaber.

"Dad."

Lyra's anger had dissipated when she sat in the cockpit of the Falcon with Han. Happiness had evaded her in the basement of Maz's castle and again in the snowy forest where Kylo Ren announced she was born to die. Excitement at all possibility had been erased when she watched the Resistance fade, and time had washed away all feelings of contentment.

So all that was left was hope. That would be enough.

They had both made mistakes, too many to count. Lyra had never felt more vulnerable than when she stood there, bearing the weight of every sin she had committed. She wasn't six years old. There was no innocence left. It had all been washed away with blood.

So how do you move on from all of that? There were eighteen years in which they had both been alive in vastly different spaces. Too far apart to even know the other was still alive.

"I'm sorry I didn't come with Rey," Lyra told him, keeping her expression stoic. Just like she had been trained, no emotion, no weakness. "Maybe I should have, but I didn't know. I just didn't know what to do."

He shook his head, solemn and slow. "I don't know how I can ever apologize to you."

Lyra hated to see him like this. She wanted to believe in the image of a legend. But this was real, and it was all of them. The broken reality of the life they lived.

"I didn't come here for an apology," she told him.

He regarded her and she felt as though she were being seen for the first time in her life. "Then why did you come?"

"I came to see you," she said, her voice small. "I had to see you."

Happiness, pain, all of it choked her voice completely. He knew exactly what to do, thankfully, because Lyra couldn't quite figure out how to move her legs. He engulfed her in a hug, making her feel small again. Small and whole, all at the same time.

"We have a lot to talk about, don't we?"

Lyra gave a choked laugh. "Yeah, we do."

-ˋˏ★ˎˊ-

...AKIVA, OUTER RIM

𝐓𝐇𝐄 detour to Akiva was proving to be no easy task.

Poe had thought that flying into Ikkrukk and fighting off an entire fleet of First Order fighters would be the hard part. The Black Squadron had been pinned in the mountainous capital city under a storm of hellfire. It had taken hours to get the First Order to back off enough that their ships could safely slip out of the atmosphere. The remaining members of the former Green Squadron (now part of Black Squadron) were sent back to Yavin IV under the command of Suralinda Javos.

Poe had never had problems with the Squamatan, and he might even consider her a friend. But Lyra was consistently suspicious of the former journalist. It was enough that he remained ever-so-slightly wary of Suralinda.

But that was the least of his worries. They had already received her landing confirmation from Leia. Poe, Karé, Snap, and Jess had hoped that they would be right behind the rest of them in getting back to Yavin IV. So far, it looked like they might never leave Akiva.

Trying to convince Wedge and Norra was making him wonder why Leia assumed it would be easy. What had she called it, a quick stop on the way back? A quicker stop would've been dropping in on a Dreadnought to say hello to their First Order buddies.