“Oh, really?” Matt snorted, a little unkindly. “Coulda fooled me.”
Still, his shoulders drooped, the fight abruptly leaving him the same time it did Lydia. As ready and almost eager he’d been to fly those rough but familiar skies after that crack about his ship (that wasn’t what he meant and she knew that!), suddenly he didn’t have the energy for it. Because he knew. He knew that familiarity was a lie, a crutch. That the real reason they used to fight didn’t exist anymore, and trying to play it out now wouldn’t work. Any damage they inflicted upon each other this time wouldn’t be undone by their misplaced passion finally finding its less destructive outlet. Those days were gone, clearly, and Matt… Matt was tired.
And he missed her. God, he missed her. He thought it was bad when he was alone on the Falcon with nothing but two lives’ worth of memories haunting the corridors, but that was nothing compared to this. Lydia standing there, so close but farther away than ever. No friends around to conveniently conspire to trap them in quarters so close they had no choice but to bridge the gulf between them. Normally he blamed the ache in his bones on long, sleepless hours in the field or on the bodily contortions he was too old to do in order to repair the Falcon, but it was harder to deny the real culprit when she was five feet away. She was the poison and the cure, all in one fiercely petite package. Every part of him wanted to say screw it, to cross the distance and open his arms to her, just like he used to. And what was stopping him?
Fear. Fear that if he did, she wouldn’t move. That the icy mask wasn’t a mask at all, but the real thing this time. That would be a killing blow worse than any bullet, and so he stayed exactly where he was.
Matt swept a hand over his face, as if that could wipe away the turbulence Lydia stirred in him. Never worked. Never would. Guess that’s why I –
“Wait, what?” Matt stared. Did she really just say what I think she said? Had he heard her right? Debatable, considering his ears were ringing as if a gun had gone off right next to them. His expression morphed by the second, from blank incomprehension to dawning horror to sardonic incredulity. Laughing it off, that was safe, right? Because this couldn’t be anything but a joke.
“You – ” He pointed at Lydia, one eyebrow raised. “ – want me – ” He pointed at himself, second eyebrow joining the first. “To be Head of Combat?” Matt shook his head, laughing both at the absurdity of the idea itself and the fact that Lydia of all people supported it. He was the last person who ought to be in that job, and there was no way she really thought…
Was there?
No. There couldn’t be. But then again…
Uncharacteristically at a loss for words, Matt asked the only question his shell-shocked mind could manage to get out of his mouth. “Why?”