He stops. If she'd thrown a punch, stepped in front of him again, done a half-dozen other things, he would have just kept going. Or, he amends realistically, tried to keep going. But she just says his name. How many fights has someone been able to stop him, just saying his name like a question or a petition?

He lets out a breath too long and too broken to be considered a sigh.

"I told you. I've been flying since I was three." It doesn't begin to cover everything that means. How his mother let him hold the flightstick the second time they went up together, how she taught him to hang on to it while she maneuvered so he knew the feel of each jink and roll she could get out of her A-wing by the time he was five. The nights he spent sleeping in the A-wing after she died, his father doing nothing but bringing him a blanket and a pillow and telling him to leave them there until he was ready to come back inside.

The way even now, sometimes, he would swear that old ship still smells like her.

"They can take a lot, but they can't have the sky."