stykera | Onboard Moya, Sunday Fandom Time

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Onboard Moya, Sunday Fandom Time

It was there last day on Moya, for now, and Stark was giving Summer a more thorough tour of the ship which was ending now. They'd gone back to Pilot's Den, looked in the maintenance bay, seen some of the nearly invisible scars from the fire (and Stark had stood silently for a long moment with his hand on Moya's bulkhead there), and now they had reached the final planned location.

"This is my favorite place on the ship," he said as they stopped outside a door. "It's...you'll see. A very good place to just sit. It's beautiful and it's quiet and none of us come here very often. It's peaceful. Should we go in?"

That was the whole point of being outside this particular door, but Stark was still Stark. He was nervous even if this trip had gone better than he ever could have hoped.

[For Stark's very favorite person, NFB for distance, there are no laws preventing calls and texts because that would be really weird]

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Summer snorted softly. "Six billion, huh? And here I used to think I was hot shit for ruling over some dinky little planetoid."

And the levity felt good, and Summer wanted nothing more that to keep that hoisted and run with it and pretend all this never happened. But there was also the voice in her head telling her that she should talk him about it. She needed to talk to someone about it.

(That's what your therapist is for, another voice countered)

And if anyone could understand this kind of thing, it would definitely be Stark...

(Talking about it makes it real; there's no going back, once you talk about it).

She wished he didn't give her such an easy out. This would be so much easier if he didn't just hold open a door for her to escape it through like that...

She sighed, stilled her hand that had started nervously playing with a button on Stark's shirt and laid it flat on his chest as she looked up at him.

"Are you familiar at all," she asked, "with Schrödinger's Cat?"

Stark looked at her for a moment before shaking his head.

"No. Should I have? Is Schrödinger someone I should know? Is the cat? Is that someone you know?"

Crichton would have known exactly what she was talking about.

"No. I don't. Would you like to tell me?"

He wasn't going to stop holding her. It seemed like something she needed now.

Summer gave a soft smile at that response, and she looked at Stark just a moment longer before shifting, lowering her head a little to better get comfortable against him as she explained.

"Right, so," she said, "don't, like, quote me on any of this, but Schrödinger is this guy who did this thought experiment that's, like, supposed explain quantum physics or whatever. And so there's the box, and he's all, 'there's a cat in this box. There's also a mechanism that will totally kill the cat inside the box, too.' But you don't know if the cat is already dead from the mechanism or not, and you don't know unless you look. So, if you don't look, theoretically, the cat could be dead or it could still be alive. If you don't look, there's a slim chance the cat is still alive."

There was a pause, wrestling down a lump in her throat, another building of tears in her eyes.

"But if you do look, well, then..."

She trailed off, and waited, to see if he was anywhere near picking up what she was putting down.

"Then you know," Stark finished for her. He could understand that too well.

He was stroking her back gently as they sat.

"Sometimes it's easier, knowing. And sometimes...sometimes it's easier to hold on to the hope. Sometimes the hope hurts. Sometimes the loss of hope hurts. Sometimes there are no good options."

"Yeah," Summer sighed heavily, "we're on that last 'sometimes.' And, like, I know. I know it, deep down, almost stronger than I know anything. I feel like I've known from the moment I left Coruscant, even though there's no way it would have happened yet..."

She shook her head lightly, sniffled again, rubbed a fresh tear teetering off the tip of her nose with a finger.

"And that,' her hand gestured accordingly toward the view from the terrace...or maybe even the whole multiverse, while they were at it, "reminded me of a time when there wasn't a box, or at least there was the vague notion of a box, where the box itself was almost a box, because it was both there and not there.

"Which is stupid," she added, almost angrily, "because that's not even a nebula out there, it's just....space ass space, but noooo, it had to have a streak of color in it that was the same color as the streak across Archeon that day, like, five fucking years ago, out of fucking no where...!"

The rant ended in a sort of desperate half-sob, threatening to run her all through it again.

"Grief," Stark said after a pause to let Summer collect herself if she needed to, "doesn't make sense. It's never simple and it's never easy. It's complicated and it's messy and it comes when it will sometimes when you least expect it."

He paused again, idly tracing a circle on her back.

"I'm sorry for the hurt."

"I don't think," Summer said, after another long moment, mostly just appreciating the comforting touch for a moment, "I've ever really actually properly grieved, either. I've come close a few times, but that little possibility always pulls me back. Like, I know I said I know, but I don't really know know....you know?"

"It can be hard to let yourself grieve."

Stark sighed softly. "Although sometimes it's harder to let yourself stop. Or maybe that's just me." He did have a tendency to feel too deeply and get lost in those feelings. The last time he'd been onboard this ship it had been because he needed a reason to stop feeling hurt and loss and nothing else.

"And yes. I do know. There are plenty of people I've known who've disappeared from my life for any number of reasons and some of them may be fine and others...I'll never really know, even if I'm almost entirely certain. But we're talking about you."

Stark being a disaster was a given. Although right now he was calm and he was here, keeping his arms around the most important person in his world and gently toying with her hair now.

"Do you want to tell me about them?"

"Well, I guess that does make me feel a little better," Summer murmured, "if even you don't even know sometimes, and that's, like, your whole deal."

Yes, she knew it didn't work like that. Not the point.

"Did you ever know Kanan?" she then asked, with no small amount of hesitation. "Jarrus? I feel like I may have asked before, but I don't remember."

"I wish I knew more than I do. It would help," Stark said softly. "And...no. I'm sorry. I only know his name. We never met that I recall."

Maybe that would make it harder to talk about him. Maybe it would be easier.

"Well," Summer nodded a little, "he was my best friend. Long before Annie and Rey and you. Not before Mr. Poopybutthole, but, I mean, he and I go way back. He was one of the first people I met when I came here, and he made me pancakes at Luke's almost every Sunday, and I always sent him a stupid amount of roses every Valentine's Day. I lived on his couch for a little while, and he's a good part of why I'm such a good fucking pilot. He taught me about the Force and the Jedi and was the whole reason I opened a space jello cantina in the first place. Hell,he's the reason for all the really weird jello right off the bad. Well, him and Steeeeeve, both. My office at the school used to be his office, and I made sure I snagged it because Sabine did a painting on the wall of when he was a Loth cat, and one time, he was a Loth cat the same time I was a squirrel and we raided a picnic together, and he was the only one who knew right away when my grampa replaced me with a robot."

That was the easy part to talk about. This next part? Not so much.

"And I miss him so fucking much every single day, Stark." Her voice wavered again. "I got portal blocked from his dimension after blowing up a part of Coruscant, so I couldn't even pop in every once in a while to check up on him. But I could at least tell myself, in my ignorance, that he was still doing well...

"But then Sabine came back, and she had that time-skip, and I just knew by the look on her face. We didn't talk about it, but I kinda feel we didn't need to.

"It's hard," Stark said, holding her a little tighter now and bending a bit so he could rest his head on hers. "It's hard to miss someone so much it hurts. But...he sounds like a good friend, Summer. An important one. I'm glad you had him and I am so sorry you've lost him."

He took a deep breath, gave an extra little squeeze, and continued. "I'd like to hear more, if you'll tell me. It doesn't have to be right now. Just sometime, if you like. Maybe you could show me photos? Or the painting in your office?"

"Calling him 'a good friend' is doing him a big disservice, Stark," Summer said, more than a little defensively, but, hey, cut her some slack. She was feeling pretty emotionally raw at the moment, and she needed Stark to understand the sheer magnitude of how much Kanan really did mean to her.

"I didn't mean to...to minimize anything," Stark told her quickly. "Not at all. Not my intent. I'm sorry."

He'd said something wrong already and he should have known better. He should be better a this.

"He sounds important," he said again. "I'm sorry I never had a chance to meet him."

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Onboard Moya, Sunday Fandom Time

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