Chapter Eighteen The Apology
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The Apology
For the second night in a row, I convinced Dad to let me take the night shift. He still looked so tired, and I couldn’t figure out why.
We weren’t scheduled to leave Naboo’s orbit until morning, so all I had to do was keep an eye on the surveillance vids every half hour or so and monitor the incoming comms. Out of the viewport, the wide blue-and-green planet floated like a pearl in deep space.
It turned too slow to see, steady and stalwart, a reminder of the passage of time when everything else felt still.
The longer I looked, the sleepier I felt.
Tonight would be a hard one to stay awake for.
Then, about halfway through the night, as I tossed sabacc cards into a captain’s hat, movement on the surveillance video caught my eye.
I pulled it up only to find the stowaway wandering the bottom deck again—this time waiting outside of one of the rooms, rocking impatiently back and forth.
Noola was sitting on his shoulder, playing with her tail.
I watched him for a while, wondering what the heck he was doing, before I realized he was outside my room. And strangely enough, he wasn’t trying to pick the lock with a fork and a dream.
I buzzed down to the terminal beside my door. “I’m not there,” I informed him.
He jumped, startled, and slapped a hand over his heart. “Warn a guy when you go omnipresent!”
“That’s my secret: I’m always a little bit everywhere.”
“Frightening,” he replied dryly, and raked his fingers through his hair to regain his composure.
It was gray in the nighttime lights, floppy and wild, as if it never quite did what he wanted it to do.
I’d never met anyone so young with his hair color, and judging by the roots it was natural. I wondered if it was soft—
What was I thinking?
Forcing the silly thoughts out of my head, I asked, “What do you want?”
While at the same time he asked, “Can’t sleep?”
I frowned. “I could ask the same.”
“I’m just stretching my legs….”
“And loitering around my personal quarters?”
His mouth dropped open. Noola squawked, and it sounded a lot like a laugh. “I…knocked. A few times.”
“Why?”
“Because I can’t just barge in?”
I rolled my eyes, even though he couldn’t see. “No, I mean why are you in front of my room?”
He shifted on his feet, glancing around the corridor even though it was completely empty and, at this time of night, everyone was sound asleep. “Can we talk in person?”
“Why?”
“I think I…owe you an apology,” he said. “You saw a reprehensible side of me. I don’t normally try to break into people’s rooms.”
“Oh?” I deadpanned.
He winced. “I really don’t.”
“As far as I can tell, I know exactly who you are. You’re cagey, secretive, infuriating—”
“And you’re mistrustful and revoltingly moral and stubborn,” he batted back, his eyebrows raised high as he turned toward the camera and looked right at it. Then, eyes locked on the lens, he bent toward the comm and added in a softer, growly voice, “Not that I’m complaining.”
I stared. My mouth was open, but no words came out. I felt the telltale heat of a blush rushing across my cheeks. “I…I am not mistrustful! Maybe you’re just not very trustworthy.”
“Says the mistrustful girl who probably thinks I’m trying to break into her room to steal something instead of, I don’t know, apologizing for being such a rude drydak yesterday.”
“You…could be,” I argued, but it was a weak argument at best.
He scoffed. “Why would I knock if I wanted to steal something, Starlight?”
Sadly, he had a good point. “I’m on the bridge for the night shift.”
A twitch of a smirk curled at the edges of his mouth. “Is that an invitation up?”
No. It was a risk bringing him up to the main deck. There were plenty more cameras, but I could disable all of them for him to get here. He could help me not fall asleep, if nothing else. “Fine,” I caved, “I’ll disable the cameras for a minute. But tell Noola to go back to the galley.”
He pouted. “And leave her alone? Fine. It’s her bedtime, anyway. I’ll be up soon.”
“Be careful,” I reminded him, hoping I wasn’t about to regret this.
I did, in fact, regret it.
Sian whistled as he stepped onto the flight deck. “Talk about a relic.”
I glared at him as I finished my routine hourly checks to make sure the ship was still normal and nothing was out of sorts. Just the normal sort of wrong—a malfunctioning heater, a leak in the air vents, an overheating water pump. “It’s an antique.”
“I’m just surprised,” he added, sensing my annoyance.
The door closed behind him, and he made himself right at home in the copilot’s chair, stretching out his long legs and crossing them.
In the light of the control panel, his hair took on a multicolored hue, reflecting dull shades of green and blue and yellow.
He looked out at the blue-green planet of Naboo, reflected in his black eyes. “I’d like to apologize. For yesterday.”
I studied him quietly.
He shifted in the chair. “I assumed the worst, and made an ass out of myself. I’m…
good at that. Assuming. My mentor used to say that I was always too quick to judge, trying to fit something into the narrative I already had in my head.
I thought I’d kicked that habit a long time ago, but…
I did the same with you. I’m sorry,” he repeated, and finally turned his strange black eyes to me.
This close, his gaze was mesmerizing. Not quite black at all, but a depthless darkness that seemed to go on and on for eternity.
Looking into his eyes reminded me of looking into the galaxy.
Silvery-white eyelashes framed them, matching his thick eyebrows, and I distantly wondered if he grew a beard, would it be the same color, too?
I resisted the urge to brush back the hair that had fallen into his eyes, just to see them better.
He was so earnest right now, it made me want to inspect my earnest feelings, too.
Apologies were hard to come by, and I guessed it took a lot for him to come all the way up here just to say he was wrong. He could’ve ignored it, but…he didn’t.
That wasn’t nothing.
He tilted his head, waiting.
I quickly looked away, busying myself with checking the coordinates on the navicomputer again. “Apology accepted.” I sat back in my chair, pulling my knees to my chest. “But I’m sorry you had to come all the way up here just to say that.”
“I felt it was important to do it face to face. Besides,” he added, looking around the cockpit again, “I always wondered what the view was like up here.”
“It’s one of my favorites in the whole galaxy,” I admitted.
“I can see why. If I had the choice to do this my whole life, I probably would, too.”
My lips pursed tightly together. What did that say if I didn’t want this? But instead I asked, “What else have you done? I mean, besides being a professional stowaway?”
He arched an eyebrow.
“If you don’t mind me asking?”
“Well, let’s see…” He counted on his fingers. “I’ve been a smuggler, fathier racer, janitor, Jedi Padawan—”
I rolled my eyes. “Oh-kay, you can leave now.”
“Sorry, sorry,” he quickly backtracked. “I knew what you meant. I’m just…shockingly bad at talking about myself.”
It was my turn to arch a cryptic eyebrow.
“I was training to be an archeologist,” he said.
That surprised me more than anything else. I thought he’d say something along the lines of pilot or courier or info broker. But an archeologist? “What part of history?”
“My mentor specialized in lost texts and civilizations. She went to university for High Republic–era politics and discoveries, and was trying to convince me to go, as well, but…I don’t have the kind of education to get in somewhere like that.
She taught me everything she knew, though, so I basically got an education anyway. ”
“Where did you grow up?”
“A little bit of everywhere.”
I frowned. “You’re being dodgy again.”
He knew he was and winked. “I have to keep some allure, Starlight. Or else you won’t keep me coming around.”
I scoffed. If only he knew. “That’s not why I keep you coming around.”
He grinned. “So, you admit that you are coming around to me.”
In more than one way, and in realizing that, I also realized I’d been caught red-handed. My face grew hot, so I scowled and turned back to the navicomputer. “That was a trap.”
He grinned. “You like it.”
“I despise you.”
“Liar.”
A smile tugged at the edge of my mouth, and I had to fight it down a little harder than usual.
“Maybe a little,” I admitted. “I was born here on the ship, somewhere in the Mid Rim but who knows where, really. The Starfarer was in hyperspace at the time. I used to wonder what it was like to grow up planetside, you know? Like down there on Naboo.”
The glints of ships entering and exiting the atmosphere flared like diamonds. It was one of my favorite planets to watch. There was just something so peaceful about it.
“I’d probably be a different person if I had.”
“Right? You could’ve been like Emperor Palpatine.”
I rolled my eyes. “Ha.”
“But seriously, I don’t think so. I don’t think where you’re born dictates whether you’re good or bad.
You can be raised in a perfectly lovely family and cause unfathomable amounts of pain.
” He folded his arms behind his head and leaned back in his seat, closing his eyes.
“People aren’t born evil, you know? They choose it,” he said, his voice carefully neutral, “and it’s usually the easier choice.
The choice that keeps you in power, the choice that ensures you’re comfortable, the choice that never challenges your worldview. Evil is easy.”
I scrunched my nose. “I think being good is easy, too. Valuing people, welcoming them, being respectful—”
“Is that being good or being nice?” he asked. “Nice is different than good, Starlight.”
“Says the man who stole a lightsaber,” I replied.
He cracked open an eye.
“You’re not correcting me,” I pointed out.
“You’re right. I did steal it.”
“Then are you nice or good?”