Iella opened her eyes.
The sky hanged dark overhead. She walked.
She walked and the stars shifted into lights and then into the familiar streets, the buildings fading into place as her feet touched the ferrocrete.
The familiar figure waited ahead, and she would recognize him anywhere but especially here, especially sitting on the edge of the fountain in front of their Coronet City apartment building with his hands resting on his knees.
She felt no surprise at seeing him; just smiled, wide and a little shaky, as he rose to greet her.
Diric Wessiri took both her hands in his and she presented her cheek, and if she weren’t barefoot and dressed in civilian clothes, she might almost have thought that he was welcoming her home after a long day at CorSec. Diric kissed her cheek. “You look lovely.”
Iella held his hands tightly, barely hearing the water burble in the fountain. “So do you,” she said, and it was the truth. He looked just as she remembered him, as he did when they first met; lean and distinguished in his late 40’s, dressed impeccably. He had bushy eyebrows and a hooked nose, and she thought—always thought, and had never hesitated to tell him—he was a handsome devil. She let go his hand to run her hand through black hair going gray at the temples. He was not the weak skeleton he had been after returning from Imperial captivity. He was not the older, broken shell of a man who had died in her arms.
Iella was thankful for it.
Diric hummed low in his throat. “I didn’t realize you were so enamored with my hair,” he said, but the laughing light in his eyes told her that he was pleased. He slipped his hand out of hers, only to offer her his arm. “Walk with me, Iella?”
She swallowed past the lump that rose in her throat at the familiar question. “Of course.” She took his elbow and he settled his other hand over hers, and they stepped out of the courtyard.
Once, the silence could have lasted between them for hours. Diric was decades older than her, but Corran had said once (in disgust, as they teamed up against him) that they fit together like oxygen and hydrogen, and they did. Today, though, Iella didn’t want that silence.
“Where are all of the people?” she asked, looking around.
“That’s a question I can’t answer,” Diric said, and one side of his mouth quirked up. “This is your dream, after all.”
Iella’s head snapped back to him. “Is that what this is?”
Diric’s expression was warm as he held her gaze and they stepped off the curb and into the deserted street. “I know your powers of logic are better than that.”
She gave a tiny, rueful smile and glanced down. “I know. I know. It feels realer than any dream, though. You feel real.”
“You have dreamed of me before,” he pointed out.
“Yes, but–” Iella halted under the awning of their favorite cafshop and she swung to face him, “but it was never you. It was always someone who looked like you, maybe even acted like you or felt like you, but in the end—”
She cut herself off; she knew Diric better than to think he would ever interrupt her, even when common sense might dictate that he ought to. “Well, dearest,” he said, and she couldn’t understand how he could smile so, “it’s me this time.”
Iella looked at him a moment, standing there with a light in his eyes and color in his face, and her breath caught hard in her throat. She set her hands on his shoulders, fingers digging in a little harder than she meant them to, and the words poured out of her, hot and angry with no punctuation. “Oh Diric I’m so sorry.”
“What do you think you have to be sorry for?” he asked, unmoving.
She breathed in and exhaled, then leaned back. “I’m intelligence-trained; I should have recognized that something wasn’t right. We could have gotten you help, could have saved you—”
Diric surprised her, then – he interrupted her. “No. No, Iella, you couldn’t have possibly known. Such was Ysanne Isard’s treachery.” He lifted her hair out of her face, and his voice was gentle. “You did save me.”
“I did not. I killed you.” She said it unflinchingly and for a moment –
– air dank and cold in the dark garage under coruscant’s surface and her husband’s face is white and blank in her lap and she can’t believe what she’s done –
But no, it had been six years since that dizzying moment.
Diric looked at her calmly and maybe she imagined it, but she thought he knew where her thoughts had been. “I thanked you for it then and I thank you for it now.”
“I—”
“Iella.” His voice carried a warning note rarely heard. “Listen to me. I told you that you freed me, and I meant it. I could not have lived like that.” He tilted her chin up, and he told her,
“I don’t blame you.”
Four words.
They were only four words.
They meant everything.
Iella smiled at him, and if it was a little shaky and wobbly around the edges, Diric was too much the gentleman to comment on it. “Walk with me?” she asked, and he smiled warmly.
“Of course.”
“Corran got married.”
“Did he?” asked Diric. The curve of his mouth suggested that he already knew, but he wanted to hear it from her.
“To Mirax. I think we all saw it coming, even you.” Iella smiled in the sunshine and it was growing easier, teasing him so. “They're happy together. They have a little boy named Valin. He’s sweet; still so small.”
“You always did like children,” he said.
“He’s a Jedi, too,” she said, sitting in the grass with her legs folded gracefully to one side and her hand resting on Diric’s knee. He was crouched at her side, weight resting on the balls of his feet as if he may spring up at any second. He never could hold still for long; always had to be up and about, talking, exploring; sticking his nose where it didn’t belong. “Corran, I mean. So was Hal. All those years and we just didn’t know.”
“I had some idea.”
Iella laughed at him, looking up and squinting against the sun. “You are such a liar, Diric Wessiri.”
He chuckled, “Maybe I am.” Herjhe Lake rippled into being before them; the blades of grass being twisted in Iella’s hands turned to streams of sand.
She glanced away from the brightness of the light reflecting off the water, and she found Diric looking at her steadily. “You’re happy?”
If this were real, she wouldn’t understand. But it wasn’t.
She fell silent, heart beating faster, then she nodded, tucking her hair behind her ear. “I am.”
“That is all I ask.” His expression was serious, kind. “I don’t want my spectre hanging over, Iella.” He paused a moment, then went on, warm brown eyes trained firmly on Iella. “After all, I would be hard-pressed to find two people better suited to each other.” He smiled at her, and it was a sad smile but there was hope in it, too; a future. Her future. The bright one that she was going to have with Wedge. “I know I couldn’t find two people who deserve each other more.”
Diric approved (so noble it hurt, but he approved; she never had been able to fathom the ease with which he could forgive, move on, make selfless decisions). Of course he did; he had the first time, after all.
“I want you to know, Commander, if anything has happened between you and my wife, I bear neither of you malice. I have been dead for a year. While I dreamed of being alive again, I do not bear a grudge against those who lived while I was dead.”
“First, no titles.”
“Where they kept me, we joked that titles were for when we were once again people. I use it to remind me I am again a man. And I use it out of profound respect for what you have done.”
“Don’t. I’m just Wedge. Nothing I’ve done is the equal of your enduring Imperial captivity, so titles don't apply here. Second, Iella is intelligent, a wonder to work with, a joy to be around, and above all else, loyal to her friends. In fact, save one thing, she’s just the sort of woman I could see myself growing old with. That one thing is this: she’s married to you. Her loyalty to you, her fidelity, has never been in question. You are undoubtedly one of the luckiest men on this planet.”
“I am glad Iella found friends as generous and honorable as you are, Wedge. I do feel quite fortunate.”
She didn’t trust her voice at first. She squeezed Diric's knee and rested her head on his shoulder, and she was silent before she told him quietly, "I love you, you know," and maybe it made it easier on both of them (even if he wasn't real) that he didn't respond verbally.
Diric covered her hand with his lined one and the wind swept across the lake and through the field.
Iella opens her eyes.
The room is dark all around. She turns.
She turns and Wedge Antilles is sprawled fast asleep at her side, looking boyish with his hair standing on end and one arm flung out. She studies him a moment, and then she knows how fiercely glad she is that he and Diric could meet. Iella splays an arm across Wedge's chest, mindful not to wake him, and she stays awake to watch the sun rise.
[OOC: Dialogue in italics from Star Wars: X-Wing: The Krytos Trap and is copyright Lucasfilm and Michael Stackpole.]
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