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Luke Skywalker knows how agonizingly fire burns.
It bites, teeth sharp and scorching and painfully triumphant, titian and slashes of angry scarlet and a pit of smudging coal so dark it looks like the yawning, angry mouth of open space. He'd felt its molten wrath and inferno alive and writhing within his veins when he found his aunt and uncle ablaze against a crushed apricot sky, nothing of them left but charred husks of memory and blackened ivory bone and empty, far-echoing screams of terror and anguish.
He feels it again now, the beginning embers of a red-hot furnace burning in his chest, clawing at his throat with talons of brittle, sharp steel colored a gray twilight, burning the back of his neck with the Empire's watchful stare. He finds himself adrift, spinning through empty space, even as his feet are anchored upon Mos Eisley's dusty streets. He wants to ask a dozen questions, receive a thousand answers, but he remains artfully silent as the Wookiee — who had been waiting at the entrance to docking bay ninety-four — leads them to the smuggler's ship, chattering impatiently.
Luke's shoes scuff the steps that lead into the bay, wondering at what the mercenary's starship must look like, if it's as good as he'd implied. He turns the corner, anticipation rising greedily, clutching at the veins that cord through his body — and stops abruptly, Ben, Threepio, and Artoo at his side.
"What a piece of junk," he says, dumbfounded.
And it is — the starship, if it can even be placed under the label of such, pieced together from junk and beat up pieces of metal that look as if each came from a separate cruiser, rests in the middle of the giant dirt lot. Standing there thunderstruck, Luke nearly expects to see smoke curling from the curved sides or pieces of the magnificently shitty ship falling to the dust.
"She'll make point five beyond the speed of light," Han Solo insists as he strolls out from underneath the mountain of smashed-together debris. "She may not look like much, but she's got it where it counts, kid." Luke represses his irritation at the condescending epithet and turns a doubtful stare back upon the 'ship' as Han moves forward to stand beside them. He looks upward at the monstrous thing, a gleam of something that might be pride flickering across his features. "I've added some special modifications myself."
That doesn't quite make Luke feel any better, but if Han notices the misgivings on his face, he doesn't acknowledge them. Clearly, the chance to gain seventeen thousand credits is too big of an opportunity to pass up. Luke can't blame him.
"But," Han says, "we're a little rushed, so if you'll just get on board, we'll get out of here." He ushers them towards the ramp to follow Chewbacca, and Luke forces himself to swallow his skepticism and the hundreds of questions that claw mournfully at his lips, allowing them to drown as he moves up and into the ship, the droids and Ben at his heels.
