trans_9 | [The Space In Between]

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[The Space In Between]

Luke thought that he'd been doing entirely too much thinking since coming aboard Stacy.

He knew that since he'd taken on the task of rebuilding the Order, he'd become less inclined to act before he thought about it first; it was as though the words of Yoda (Adventure--tch! Excitement--heh! A Jedi craves not these things) had taken root in his mind. That was probably Yoda's goal. But still, it seemed he'd found himself out on the Obs Deck, staring into the Bleed, far too often since awakening from podsleep.

Nonetheless, there was a lot on his mind, and his father was foremost among it all. As it stood, Vader was a huge danger to anyone and everyone who got in his way on Stacy, and as much as Luke hated the idea of locking his own father up or somehow otherwise restraining his movement on the ship, he had to think of the rest of the crew too.

Sighing, Luke shifted a bit on the squishy seat, blue eyes half-closed and faraway.

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Steve frowned. "I can't help it much when I go off the deep end, though. What about somebody who just chooses to hurt people like that?" They were even more dangerous, hands down.

"I just don't get those kind of people."

Luke shrugged. "Sometimes, they've had something happen in their life that made them that way, like Vader. Sometimes they're just that way, like the Emperor was. It's hard to tell the difference between someone who hurts people because they enjoy it and someone who does it because they hurt, too."

He made a bit of a face and gazed up at the ceiling again. "I don't know. I think I'm pretty good at it sometimes."

He thought of the Ashfords and Umbrella and felt his mood starting to drop. So he forced those thoughts away. "So what are you going to do with him if you have to keep him locked up?" Steve had narrowly avoided the same fate, whatever it was, back before there was a quarantine.

"Talk to him," Luke said. "I realize that's a lame answer, but Jedi are pretty big on feelings and redemption. Hopefully we can get him to return from the Dark Side. Then he won't have to be locked up anymore."

"How will you be able to tell he's not just faking it?" Steve asked. He didn't mean to sound quite as suspicious as he did, but the way Luke believed in redemption, Steve cynically believed most people were not to be fully trusted.

"There are ways of using the Force to tell if someone's lying or not. Mostly, Sith and Jedi have different..." he searched for a way to explain this to someone who previously had had no idea of what the Force even was and didn't believe it when he had heard it. "They feel different."

He smiled a little wryly. "I know you don't put much store in that kind of thing."

"Yeah, sorry... life would be a whole lot easier if I could just feel if other people were lying to me or not," Steve said with a shrug and a trace of a smile.

He had given thoughts before to whether or not Luke might be able to teach him more about the Force, but it seemed like you needed a calm and rational personality to do anything with it. And Steve was honest with himself.

"It doesn't always work," Luke amended. "If the person's powerful enough to scramble your signal, so to speak. It is something I have to take into consideration when talking to him, at any rate. I wish I didn't. And I have to be careful, as I promised my wife I wouldn't get into life-threatening situations for a while, and she gets scary when she's upset."

Luke pretended to shudder. An angry Mara was not something he wanted to have a run-in with again.

"I met your wife, by the way," Steve replied, reaching up to scratch the back of his neck a little awkwardly. "I said hi and we chatted a little bit... she seems nice."

"She is." Luke smiled, and despite the nature of the conversation beforehand it was the smile of someone truly happy and in love. "Mara's always been practical, but she has a great deal of kindness in her too. Despite what I said a minute ago, don't be afraid of her. I think you two'd get along just fine."

"I'm not afraid of her," Steve protested, though Luke could probably tell otherwise. "I just don't like talking to people I don't know very well sometimes. Most of the time."

Indeed, Luke gave Steve another one of those Looks. There really wasn't any fooling a Jedi, but the fear wasn't just limited to Mara; from talking to Steve, Luke figured it was a deeper-seated fear of rejection combined with everything else that Steve had going against him. Another twinge of pride; despite all that, Steve was making headway, and that made Luke happy.

"It's understandable," Luke said, only halfway teasing. "Talking to strangers is scary and different. And if you talk to the wrong ones, they might try to shoot you."

He speaks from personal experience.

"Yeah, no kidding," Steve agreed. "Or throw you in prison." He felt kind of stupid admitting it, but Luke wasn't an idiot and it didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that Steve was a wee bit antisocial.

"I trust the people I know I can trust and that's enough for me," he said. "Why bother worrying about anybody else?"

"It's important to show empathy for others around you," Luke said. "At least here on Stacy, these are the people you live and work beside. Showing that you care about them--even if it's something as simple as covering their back in a fight--shows you're in this for more than your own ends."

He shrugged. "Worrying about others has been something of an art form for a Jedi, though."

"Oh, don't get me wrong. I'll work with people or whatever. But that doesn't mean I have to trust them," Steve said hastily. "It's just easier if I know who I can count on and everybody else is just as long as we have to. That's all I meant."

"No lasting friendships formed, nothing like that?" Luke asked slyly.

Steve made a face. Luke was obviously trying to make one of his famous points. "Come on. That doesn't count. I just figure out who I can trust pretty quick."

"I just don't want to see you limit yourself," Luke said gently. "Being choosy is fine, but be careful that you're not cutting yourself off from people too. This doesn't necessarily mean you should go out and start trusting everyone on sight, but keeping an open mind--that's fine."

"Yeah, yeah, I know. Like you always." Steve didn't mean to sound dismissive, but he knew he didn't have much ground to stand on with this particular issue. There weren't many ways to argue that getting to know people wasn't a good idea in a situation like this.

"Not exactly like me. If you were exactly like me we'd not be having this conversation, and honestly, I much prefer to you to myself." Luke grinned. "Just try a little bit. You might be surprised."

Steve shrugged a little awkwardly. "Yeah, okay." It was hard to tell if he intended to follow through on that or not, but he would at least try talking to Mara some more. It would be awkward to hang around Luke much otherwise.

"I'll be a rosy ray of sunshine and friendship."

"Now that'll be a sight. Think I could sell tickets?" Luke's lips twitched, then he broke into a full-spectrum grin.

Steve grinned back, taking it in stride. "Yeah, but only if you give me a cut of the profits."

"Sounds good. I was thinking a sixty-forty split..."

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