At the mention of his record, Matt screwed up his face, turning away from Lydia again with a dismissive wave of his hand. His record. As if half of Combat didn’t have records just as good as his. Better, even! He could name half a dozen guys (and about two dozen women) he wouldn’t mind skipping ahead of him in whatever line Lydia made up just to annoy him. Heroes, every one of them. Leaders, too.
But Matt? There was nothing special about what he did in the field. He just happened to stay alive doing it.
And sometimes, if he was lucky, the incongruous combination of his military training and Han’s… Han-ness managed to keep other people alive, too. But luck never lasted, and it was only because he'd spent the better part of the last few years on a team of two that his luck managed to hold out this long. He could trust Gabe to keep himself alive when it was just the two of them. Matt and Gabe taking on Camelot’s most far-flung missions wasn’t so different from Han and Chewie getting on the bad side of every crime lord in the Outer Rim, after all. With only two backs to watch, the chances of losing one of them were a whole lot slimmer.
That was the way Han liked it, before a creepy old man and his short fuse of a farm boy booked passage on the Falcon and upended Han’s entire life. Arguably for the better, sure – but then, not really, Matt thought to himself, remembering the end of it. Han wasn’t immune to nostalgia, or the love he still felt for his family that he could never adequately express, but more and more Matt couldn’t help but question: was it really all worth it? Joining the rebellion, falling in love with a princess, only to end up a lonely has-been unable to save his own son, a failure impaled on a red lightsaber?
… Which, of course, had nothing to do with this promotion Lydia was offering. Except it had everything to do with it, didn’t it? Matt was no stranger to being on teams, or leading them. The kind of mutual responsibility a soldier had for his comrades and they for him was fundamental to Matt in all the ways it never had been for Han – or, at least, it used to be. Matt wasn’t the same man he used to be. Something inside of him was broken. His own fault, of course, no one to blame but himself, but even that didn’t change the fact that the man he was now wasn’t the man Lydia was offering that promotion to.
She could see a lot of things, but not that, apparently.
Not that he wanted her to. The idea that she might was so alarming that Matt instinctively turned on his heel again, opening his mouth to tell her to leave before – what? Before they said more things they couldn’t take back, or before her Jedi brain figured out the real reason he was refusing her offer? But then she sighed, and the words caught in his throat.
Old ones almost came out instead, echoes of conversations past. I do, I really do. Han had said those words with his typical slick pride, but if Matt said them now, it would be more of an apology than anything else. I don’t mean to, but I do.
But then she said something else familiar, and Matt felt the only armor he had left fall back into place.
“Hold on, we need?” Matt repeated, narrowing his eyes. Another conversation came rushing back, too similar to this one to be ignored when she just laid it out right in front of him. A grin pulled at the corners of his mouth. A grin he didn’t quite feel, but he made himself act like it, just for now. Maybe his luck would keep holding out and she wouldn't be able to tell the difference.
“Huh. That’s funny.” He threw a finger in her direction, as if just remembering something completely inconsequential but also, obviously, not. “Isn’t Combat’s office right next to yours?”