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allthingskenobi · 3 years

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Obi-Wan in Exile – Owen Lars

(Originally published on AllThingsKenobi.com January 10, 2021)

Welcome to the second in a series of looks into Obi-Wan Kenobi’s time in exile on Tatooine between Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith and Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. We’ve tried to mine as much Legends and canon material as possible to help guide you through some of the period’s most common and repetitive themes so that when the new Obi-Wan Kenobi series airs, you’ll be ready.

Not everything he ever did in the entire 19 years will be explored here, but as we said, we’ve tried our best to pick out the most prominent and impactful moments to give everyone a better understanding of exactly what one hermit had to endure out there all alone in the sandy deserts of Tatooine.

There’s no way around it: Owen Lars hated Obi-Wan Kenobi. But why? A young Luke Skywalker could have benefited greatly from the two men working together, but it was not to be so. Here we will look at just a few of the many times the Jedi was rejected by the hardened moisture farmer in an attempt to understand just how fraught with tension their relationship really was.

“That wizard’s just a crazy old man.”

STAR WARS EPISODE IV: A NEW HOPE C

Owen Lars was the very first person to ever paint a picture for us of the now-illustrious Obi-Wan Kenobi, and this is what he had to say about him. Though we, alongside Luke, quickly recognize Owen’s words for the untruths they are, we were left to wonder exactly where the animosity, and possible bad blood, between the two men began. Especially since well up until Attack of the Clones was released, Owen was Obi-Wan’s biological brother (as confirmed in original drafts of Return of the Jedi), which made the exchange all the more tragic.

“But what if this Obi-Wan comes looking for him?”

“He won’t, I don’t think he exists any more. He died about the same time as your father.”

STAR WARS EPISODE IV: A NEW HOPE C

Owen continues to try and deter Luke by point-blank telling him that Obi-Wan is dead. It’s another clear falsehood that, at the time, carried little to no weight until twenty-eight years later when we witnessed the “deaths” of both Anakin and Obi-Wan on the slopes of Mustafar in Revenge of the Sith. But that’s a story for another time…

“He makes his terms abundantly clear: “We’ll take him in, but you’ll play no part in his upbringing. If you have to stay on Tatooine, you keep your distance, do you hear? You neither see the boy nor speak to him. He must know nothing about his father.”

“TIME OF DEATH” – FROM A CERTAIN POINT OF VIEW C

“Obi-Wan was glad and relieved that Beru and Owen agreed to raise Luke, but his mission did not end there, as it was also his duty to watch over the boy. He had thought that his ongoing presence would be some comfort to Owen and Beru. He soon learned that he was mistaken.”

LIFE AND LEGEND OF OBI-WAN KENOBI L

Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith

From the moment Obi-Wan arrived on Tatooine with a newborn Luke Skywalker, Owen made it abundantly clear that the Jedi would have nothing to do with the child. It was an unfair set of terms that Obi-Wan, while doing his best to adhere to, would breach with regular frequency, often pushing his already contentious relationship with the farmer to its breaking point.

Over the years, not only would Obi-Wan often be forced into interceding on the family’s behalf as protection (much to Owen’s chagrin), but he would also willingly cross the line to try and form a relationship with Luke from afar. Whether it was a simple gift of parts for Luke’s skyhopper (1) or a handmade wooden toy (2), the attempts would be vehemently denied and Obi-Wan would find himself right back where he started.

Star Wars 15 C

Was Owen right to be concerned that trouble would follow Obi-Wan back to Luke and their homestead? Of course. Obi-Wan understands and even acknowledges that his watchful gaze could attract attention (3), so he backs off, moving farther out into the Jundland Wastes until the time comes when he is needed. (3)(4) But Owen took his concerns above and beyond, twisting reason into a deep-seated personal hatred of the other man.

“The hut was approximately 136 kilometers from the Lars homestead—farther than Obi-Wan would have preferred, but probably still too close to satisfy Owen Lars.”

LIFE AND LEGEND OF OBI-WAN KENOBI L

“I managed to steer clear of Owen Lars this time. The man doesn’t like me at all.”

KENOBI L

“I’d always believed – always hoped – that Owen’s anger would cool toward me, that one day I would be allowed to train young Luke in the ways of the Force.”

“TIME OF DEATH” – FROM A CERTAIN POINT OF VIEW C

“Old Wounds” – Star Wars Visionaries L

Why? Why did Owen Lars hate Obi-Wan Kenobi so much? First and foremost, he placed the blame of Anakin’s downfall solely on Obi-Wan, going so far as to accuse Obi-Wan of “murder.” (1) It’s interesting to say the least that Owen would have such strong opinions about a man he’d only met once (5), but it seems to become more clear when you take into consideration that Owen adored his step-mother, Shmi. But while Shmi no doubt loved her adoptive family, she often spent her time looking to the horizon waiting for the day when Anakin would return. (6) So for Obi-Wan to have lost Shmi’s beloved son might have been too much for Owen to bear.

We’ll discuss this more in depth later, but Owen even removed Shmi’s headstone, along with the stones of other family members, so that Obi-Wan could no longer visit the site. (7) Consequently, it also ensured that Luke would never know about his grandmother. At least not while he lived at the homestead.

“If killing me would have brought [Anakin’s] mother back to life, I know he would have killed me then and there. I could see it in his eyes.”

LIFE AND LEGEND OF OBI-WAN KENOBI L

At some point, Owen also seemed to have distrusted the Jedi as a whole. It was a prejudice formed the day he watched an angry and unrepentant Anakin Skywalker return from slaughtering a village of Sand People. (2) That being his only interaction with a Jedi before Obi-Wan came along, Owen didn’t want Luke to have anything to do with what he saw in Anakin that day.

“Everyone was stunned when Owen abruptly told Ben to leave and not to come back. The experience had left Luke baffled. Even now, some ten years after the incident, he still did not know why Owen had been so angry with Ben. From what little he knew, he assumed that Ben’s purpose on Tatooine had been to discreetly watch over him while Owen and Beru raised him as if he were an ordinary child, not the son of a Jedi-turned-Sith Lord. But if both Ben and Owen had been responsible for protecting Luke, why hadn’t they gotten along? Luke could only imagine why Owen had so aggressively objected to Ben’s presence. Luke remembered listening to conversations between his uncle and aunt, practically spying on them, hoping to hear any small detail about his father or Ben Kenobi. Owen and Beru never revealed much but merely reinforced that they preferred not to discuss either man.”

LIFE AND LEGEND OF OBI-WAN KENOBI L

Luke cheers, running full pelt toward me, arms as wide as his smile. There is a crunch behind me and I turn, Owen’s fist burying itself in my nose. I slam down hard on the ground, the lightsaber skittering from my hand. All my training, all my experience, and a humble moisture farmer has achieved what neither battle droid nor Sith has achieved, knocking me flat on my back.

“Uncle Owen!” Luke cries in confusion as his uncle manhandles the boy toward his aunt before turning to glower at me.

“Go,” he all but spits, an accusatory finger punctuating the furious decree. “Get away from here. Haven’t you people done enough to this family?”

“TIME OF DEATH” – FROM A CERTAIN POINT OF VIEW C

Lastly, and most unfortunately, Owen never minded expressing his distaste for Obi-Wan in front of Luke, going so far as to strike Obi-Wan and send him away while the boy watched. Would Owen’s treatment of the strange desert hermit help one day drive a wedge between the boy and his uncle? Maybe. Maybe not. All we do know is that Luke, like his father before him, was already inextricably linked to Obi-Wan Kenobi. And there was nothing Owen Lars could do about it.

Citations:

Star Wars 15 by Jason Aaron C

“Time of Death” – From a Certain Point of View by Cavan Scott C

Kenobi by John Jackson Miller L

Life and Legend of Obi-Wan Kenobi by Ryder Windham L

Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones C

Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones Novelization by R. A. Salvatore L

A New Hope: The Life of Luke Skywalker by Ryder Windham L

#Obi-Wan in Exile #Obi-Wan Kenobi #Kenobi Series #Owen Lars #long post #text post #crossposted from wordpress #allthingskenobi #no doubt we will get to see this play out on screen in the show #:((((

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capricornus-rex · 3 years

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A Shadow of What You Used to Be (5)

Chapter 5: Lingering Grief | Cal Kestis x Irele Skywalker

Requested by Anon

Summary: There is another! Years after young Anakin Skywalker departed Tatooine, his mother Shmi delivers a second child—this time, a daughter. Whilst the circumstance of the girl’s birth remains unexplained, Irele Skywalker has yet to choose the true path between those laid out for her.

Tags: Fem! OC, Irele Skywalker, Force-sensitive! OC, Anakin’s Younger Sister, Skywalker! OC, Darth Vader’s Secret Apprentice, Long-lost Sibling

Also in AO3

Chapters: Prelude – 1 – 2 – 3 | Previous: Part 4 | Next: Part 6 | Masterlist

6 of ?

“I love… Love…” Shmi choked before she succumbed to death, never able to complete the simplest yet most important of phrases.

Anakin’s shaky fingers closed his mother’s eyes. The pang of grief was quickly overtaken by an unquenchable vengeance.

A heavy, ominous darkness blankets the Tusken encampment. The guards outside Shmi’s tent barely had a reaction time to the ignition of Anakin’s lightsaber; when they had turned around after the flaps of the tent hit their sleeve, they were cut down without the hesitation of a moment.

Alarmed by the attack, the Tuskens untied their massiffs—their reptilian guard dogs—and unleashed those hounds on Anakin, before advancing to attack the intruding Jedi themselves. The rage and grief seething within him was weaponized, it had amplified his swordsmanship; however, it made his movements raggedy, uncalculated, and unbecoming of his practiced lightsaber form. He planted his feet on the ground while he kept his eyes straight on the enemy. Or were they at all?

One after another, the Tuskens came at him—cycler rifles and staves brandished in the air—and were instantaneously felled, not even allowed to have a swing of their own weapons. One of them alerted the snipers who were in the perimeter of the encampment, supposedly on patrol; many of them went for the encampment, attempting to give support in the skirmish, but they were quickly losing—despite outnumbering the Jedi to fifty or so.

When push comes to shove, a number of the females braved and took up arm to fight off this murderous trespasser—who’s cutting them by the numbers. In their native tongue, they urged one another to join the ranks and charge. The women joined the fray, amongst the males, while some other females—particularly mothers—scurried with their young into their tents for safety. Now, the latter caught Anakin’s attention.

Anakin cut through the Tuskens’ defenses, man and woman alike, and sliced down the mothers first then their children next, sometimes the other way around. The wounded but living mothers howled in the night, carrying their children—grown and newborn—sorrowfully wailing, praying to their deities to deliver them mercy from this agony. And that exact deliverance came in the form of a blinding blue beam of light. However, their granted prayers were not of mercy, but of an unquenchable hatred, more like a punishment—from a certain point of view.

But then again, does the way of death matter?

He proceeded to finish off the stragglers, many of them fatally injured and are just scrambling on the sand with one hand extended in a pleading gesture. In their eyes, Anakin appeared to them like an executioner—with the campfire at his back, tracing his unhooded silhouette, and a cyan beam illuminating his distorted features. That was the final thing they ever saw before their bodies met the lightsaber, a noble weapon now used for an atrocious annihilation.

That night, Anakin never discriminated. He killed not only the men, but the women, and the children, too. He left nothing in his wake but death and destruction.

–

In the middle of it all, a chill wraps around Irele over her shoulders. She thought it strange, it’s only the first few hours of nightfall—where it’s usually warm at that time of the day and the cold gradually creeps in. The cold was dramatically different from the desert breeze at dusk. It crawled along her arms, then snaked over her spine and the small of her back, forcing her to pause from her pastime of creating beaded and woven crafts—a hobby she picked up from Shmi.

“What’s wrong, Irele?” asked Beru, mending a scarf in the common room.

“Is it just me or has it gotten unusually colder?”

Beru’s eyes flicked to the side, paused to feel a draft, and then shrugged. She was wearing a short-sleeved tunic paired with her long skirt. She would have felt the same as Irele, but she didn’t. When the older girl noted the uneasiness in Irele’s expression, she stood up and patted her forehead.

“Are you alright, Irele? You don’t seem to have a fever.”

“No, but I guess it was just a funny feeling. Maybe heatstroke.”

“Irele, we’re all too used to the heat here to get a heatstroke,” Beru chuckled. “If any, we’d get one if we were in a volcanic planet!”

The girls shared a chuckle with the lighthearted joke, which may have distracted Irele for a bit until she eventually dismissed it as indeed a funny feeling, but only for a second.

She had been waiting for Anakin—along with their mother—to come home, but given that they lack the whereabouts of this Tusken band, she though perhaps he had asked the locals along the way, like Jawas and vagabonds. When the hours have passed, the night had grown darker, Irele had no choice but to sleep on it.

In her bed, the cold persisted. She pulled up her blanket—her favorite one for it was handmade by her mother—until it covered her up to her nose, exposing her only from the eyes up. She tried closing her eyes, but her lids twitched, begging to be opened. Lying flat on her back, facing the ceiling, staring at the stone ceiling, she wondered and imagined where Anakin and Shmi would be.

“Mom… I hope he brings you home safely.”

More thoughts coaxed into Irele’s mind. They’re hopeful thoughts. Behind her eyes, she’d visualize Shmi in the kitchen, whipping up a favorite meal of hers, and she’d insist on helping. Both of them would sew together, making whatever garment they choose. All that wishful thinking lulled the girl to sleep, blissfully unaware of the chaos that her own brother had wrought.

The next morning, the sound of the speeder made Irele drop everything and run to the porch.

Her hopes from last night were shattered when she saw Anakin riding the speeder alone and all he brought with him was a fully swaddled body. Her felt her heart drop her stomach, and she watched in silence as Anakin carried the corpse and glowered at the Lars family and then to Padmé. He brushed past them, and then in the corner of his eye, he caught his little sister staring. Irele standing there stopped him in his tracks, then his glower softened into a look of shame—one that says he didn’t fulfill his promise to her. Just one day of meeting her, he lets go of a promise, and fails it.

He didn’t know what to say to her. She let him know that he didn’t need to, for she turned tail and ran back inside.

Irele helped in the preparation of the grave, but for the rest of the activity, she did not speak. She did not maintain eye contact with anyone. The only interaction she’s ever had was with C3PO when she needed help on something, but not even he received a gaze from his young mistress.

She dusted her hands together, and dismissed herself.

“I’m going inside. I want a drink.” she told to no one in particular, but her father and brothers acknowledged it.

She was in the kitchen, just through the small doorway past the dining table, helping herself to a glass of juice. She sat in the seat nearest the door and just stared at the glass filled with a clear, apricot-colored liquid, tracing the rim of the glass with her finger, occasionally sipping it—for once, the sweet fruit juice tasted watery and bland, she finished the glass nonetheless, though reluctantly.

During her drinking, she had sensed Anakin walking into the workshop as she heard even the more careful of clinking of metal hitting the table. She remained silent, though he could sense her there, he just chose not to disturb her and rather make himself busy with fixing things. Next, she heard Padmé’s soft and kindly voice, a stark contrast to Anakin’s steely tone.

“Are you hungry?”

“The shifter broke,” he completely avoided her question.

Their conversation went on, with Anakin struggling to keep away from the grief that lingered in him.

“But I couldn’t…” he trailed. “Why’d she have to die? Why couldn’t I save her? I know I could have!”

Then he tasted something sour, not realizing that he had bitten the inside of his cheek and it bled. The walls listened and told everything to Irele, who’s still drawing invisible lines on her glass. Much later, she jolted when Anakin responded to Padmé’s fact with a loud frustration.

“Well, I should be!”

“I will be the most powerful Jedi ever!”

Irele continued to listen in, though Anakin’s behavior frightened her, and she had already come out of the dining room and hid behind the wall before the workshop’s archway.

“And I promise you: I will even learn to stop people from dying!”

Taken aback by the bold claim, she thought it impossible and dismissed it as wishful thinking clouded by unrealistic ambitiousness. Again, Irele heard more of Anakin’s roaring, this time blaming someone by the name of Obi-Wan of holding him back. She just continued to listen, hoping to find a way to empathize with her brother, but she found it difficult when he’s so flooded primarily of hatred and anger than sorrow and grief.

“Ani, what’s wrong?” Padmé cooed, attempting to break through his walls.

Anakin looked down on his hands, the very hands that held and swung the sword as he passed on his sentence to the Tuskens. They’re still red from the overly-tightened grip of his saber from last night. There were bruises too, little nicks that he didn’t notice during the genocide. The tears have dried, leaving glossy streaks on his defined cheekbones. His nostrils flared as he gasped for air, when the realization was slowly creeping up to him. He choked as he sighed.

“I killed them… I killed them all…” he repeated. Then swung to face Padmé. “They’re dead. Every single one of them…”

Padmé stared at him, dead frozen on where she stood. Her fingers unfeeling. Irele heard those very words from her own brother’s mouth and she could have sworn she felt her heart pause from beating. Her stomach tightened after every following word.

“And not just the men. But the women… and the children too!”

Irele’s knees nearly failed her as they lost their strength. Her heart felt heavy like an anchor. She silenced a gasp when she brought her hand to her mouth.

“They’re like animals. And I slaughtered them like animals! I hate them!”

Horrified of the unimaginable, completely unnecessary carnage her brother had wrought, she ran away from the workshop; the sound of her boots lightly scraping against the sand and metal as her heels sprang Anakin’s ears pricked up, but he was too preoccupied with his grief that he dismissed it as nothing. Irele sprints to her bedroom. For a moment, it didn’t sound like her brother was the one talking—she heard the words of a monster in the guise of a man.

Her hands trembled uncontrollably that she cannot even hold something with two fingers. She finally allowed herself to melt to the floor, and she cannot fathom how much violence and damage that Anakin left in his wake upon retrieving their mother. That night, Irele could not sleep; she waited for everyone to have fallen asleep and attempted to sneak out of the house to visit Shmi’s headstone again. They had buried Shmi already, Irele helped too, but Cliegg was too cautious of the nightfall that he insisted on setting the funeral tomorrow morning where it’s safer; of course, his son and stepdaughter agreed to it, Anakin didn’t have much of a choice. He stole a glimpse of Irele, who kept her vision forward; when she would turn to an angle where she’d have to face Anakin she kept her eyes on the ground, and would look in front when she’s gained distance from everyone else.

She and her own biological brother lack the comfort and warmth as siblings would share—especially in such a harrowing experience like losing a parent.

She’d rather prefer the comfort of a stone.

Settling herself on the sand, her handwoven scarf—made by her mother, no less—wrapping her little body from her desert chill, she spoke to Shmi’s headstone.

“Hi, Mom…” she sadly started. Unable to find the next, proper words, she had a silent moment in front of the grave, and rocked back and forth for a bit. “He’s quite taller than I expected. Though, I should’ve seen it coming. He is my big brother, after all.” She huffed out an awkward chuckle.

She scribbled on the sand and then would start over by brushing it with a single sweep of her hand. This would repeat as she spoke openly to the gravestone. For every passing moment, the tone of her voice would grow more somber and quieter, lacking the strength to let out another word than simply letting it go and cry.

“You know, he told me that he’d bring you home—but I never expected it to be in this way.”

There was a bitter taste in her mouth, she clicked her tongue, “He promised.”

No answer, of course. Nevertheless, the girl continued. Already yearning for her mother’s embrace.

“Had I known… I already had that feeling…! I should’ve come with you. I may be little but… You never doubted me. Thanks to that, I knew—I really knew—that I could fight them off, even for just a bit. If I did, I would have protected you. Then they never would have taken you away from me. I would have bought us time to escape… I would have called Dad and Owen—or anyone—for help.”

She hiccuped, picking up what’s left of her failing confidence, “I would have saved you.”

That wishful thinking then led her to finally releasing the tears she had been holding back all day.

“I miss you so much already, Mommy…”

Not even the warmth of her woven scarf blanketing her would be enough of a stand-in for Shmi’s hugs. It will never be. Being the only memory of her mother, it’s only a fragment of what Irele will remember of her.

She went to sleep quite late, understandably so.

–

The morning of the funeral, as promised, occurred. Cliegg gave his eulogy first, Irele had her turn on her eulogy next—she had not much to say, for she had already said everything in private last night—though she cannot be moved from where she knelt, then Anakin got on his knees right next to her.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there to save you, Mom, and I hope you can forgive me too, for breaking my promise to my sister.”

Irele craned her head to her side but quickly withdrew it, facing the grave again.

The funeral was interrupted when the white and blue astromech droid R2D2 came to bear news. Padmé and Anakin prepared to retreat to the silver starship meters away from the homestead.

“Come with me,” Anakin whispered, he sounded demanding even in a low voice.

Irele attempted to harden her voice, to convey the conviction of her decision, “My place is here, Anakin. Like it or not, they’re my family. I can’t leave them.”

Anakin’s head bobbed downwards, and then the unexpected happened—in an attempt to comfort one another, both Irele and Anakin planted their hands on each other’s shoulders; he gave her small shoulder a tight squeeze, hers was gentle and somewhat faltering as if the toll of Shmi’s death has only begun to sink into her.

“May the Force be with you.” bid Anakin.

She didn’t know what to say back and simply watched her brother sprint towards the ship.

The Cliegg family watched the starship blow a plume of smoke underneath its landing gear, hovered, and then darted through the sky before vanishing like star come morning light.

For Irele, it’s back to her regular life here in Tatooine. Where she belongs.

Or so she thinks.

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procrastinatingfeminist · 3 years

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Were Luke and Ben set up to fail?

As much as I don't like Kylo Ren, fuckboy extraordinaire, and dislike the whole forced redemption arc for him, I really have to wonder if he - and by extension, Luke, - weren't set up to fail.

Leia entrusts her only child's education into hands of Luke, who grew up in an isolated homestead as an only child, pretty much sheltered by his uncle and aunt out of circumstance, and out of necessity. If not Beru, at least Owen knew who Shmi's son was. Anakin Skywalker was not exactly an unknown figure even before his ascension to Darth Vader, but one of the more notorious Jedi Knights. And when whoever, though probably Obi Wan, gave him Luke - I guarantee he was warned to be circumspect about his nephew's heritage. Add to that the fact that Tatooine still had slavery / indentured servitude in common use even during the days of Old Republic - I doubt very much there was a lot in the way of formal school education. So, whatever friends Luke made, like Biggs etc, were probably few and far between and barely seen inbetween his chores.

Leia had more exposure to proper child rearing and education just by the fact that she grew up on a world where these things were offered at all, though I have no idea how much of it was free or mandatory, because the whole Star Wars universe's economy skews heavily towards capitalist’s wet dream (yes, including slavery. Those motherfuckers would happily bring back slavery and child labor if it meant an extra buck to squeeze out of someone). For all I know, Alderaan could have had a system of privatised schools only. And yet she gives her son into his hands, while she is off on Coruscant making politics happen.

Star Wars universe is a universe of orphans, and it doesn’t matter whether they were thrown away by their parents voluntarily or reluctantly in the kid’s best interests.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t begrudge Lei her career, because she is brilliant at it, just like her mother and her stepfather were. And Ben is safer not on the same planet as her, and definitely safer not on Coruscant, because he is a possible bargaining chip. The criticism, that women had been facing since they were allowed to be part of earning workforce, is here the same - either you are a bad mother because you don’t have time for your kid, or you are wasting your talents and squashing your dreams to fulfill a function you might not have particularly wanted anyway. Why have a kid at all, if you aren’t going to invest the time in learning to know him? I would have been much happier if at least Han went with Ben, so that he would have at least one parent he can rely on to be a steady, dependable influence; but as far as I am aware he mostly stayed at Leia’s side, until his wandering feet took him away. And Luke was certainly no Owen Lars.

It was hinted at that Luke wasn't the only teacher in his newly opened... I don't even remember if it was a Jedi temple or a Jedi academy. But if he and his sister were the Jedi's last hope, while so many of the motherfucking Sith survived (even the Emperor, for fucks sake), then realistically they were either not Force users or much worse at it than him.

He has no knowledge of Jedi teaching methods, no experience with children, no other teaching resources aside from what he might have scavenged from temple ruins and as a war veteran I can't help but think that he probably suffered from PTSD. No person who is of clear and rational mind would think that the best solution to keep the Dark Force at bay is to kill your underage nephew because of what he hadn't even done yet.

And while he could get advice from the Force ghosts of his former teachers or his father, I don't know how much he can trust that advice. For one, those Force ghosts clearly demonstrated that they have their own agenda, one that doesn't necessarily has Luke's best interests in mind, when they were still alive. For another, their... morals and methods are iffy at best. Obi-Wan spent how many years on Tatooine, watching out over Luke? And yet the Lars' homestead was completely defenceless, even when one Skywalker already lost her life there; arguably two were lost when Shmi died, because her death was the beginning of Anakin's slide to the Dark Side.

Another point is - the best moment to start teaching Luke in handling the Force was really on the man run to save a princess? Not in all the years before when he was bored out of his skull? On the run from the imperial forces after freeing her? When Obi-Wan knows first-hand that the younglings in the Jedi temples were taught for several years. But a couple months on a swamp planet, being insulted by a cryptic motherfucker, who is masquerading as a wise old one and it's "Yer a Jedi, Luke!" Even if Owen would have been against the lessons, Obi-Wan was literally known to be able to talk anyone into anything, and he couldn’t have convinced a moisture farmer from a podunk desert planet why letting the son of Darth Vader grow up completely unaware of the pitfalls of the Dark Side might be a grave mistake?

His next teacher outright tells Luke to let his sister die, because that is a loss he is prepared to bear. When he already expects him to invest all his free time and focus for the next several years to training, as if there isn’t a war going on, as if there wasn’t already a whole planet that was eradicated. Luke is not an automaton, he is a human and he needs to feel that there is something worth saving. If everything he had an emotional connection with is gone, what is he supposed to save? (Though, to be fair, we are talking about Jedi here, so they might actually see that as a bonus, that he has no one left he cared about.) And you are telling me that these are the Force ghosts he is supposed to ask for advice when it comes to teaching young children???

I'm not even going to go into the whole thing where Yoda already refused to teach Anakin because he was supposedly too old, but neither Obi-Wan nor Yoda intervened in the twins' education until they were adults - despite their adoptive parents knowing full well whose children they were and that they were more than likely to be Force-sensitive. How does that even make sense???

There was never any other outcome to expect but that one of them was going to fall to the Dark Side, while the other one was completely ineffectual in preventing it, and it's a toss-up which one of them both it would have been. If they had wanted another outcome, they shouldn’t have sat around on their hineys on their respective planets, twiddling their thumbs or claws, to act in the last possible second

#star wars #luke skywalker #kylo ren #meta

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duchess-of-mandalore · 4 years

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Kenobi Show Idea

Korkie Kryze and his friends escape after Satine's death and end up going ... somewhere. Idk, but considering he's not in any of the other episodes in spite of the fact that he's clearly got military training and whatnot, they probably disappear for a while.

After the death of his pacifist "aunt" (his only real family since his “mother” Bo-Katan's been gone so long), Korkie determines that Satine's mentality of peace was completely ineffectual (I mean, look at what happened!). He dives into his military training whole-heartedly and believes that justice can only be pursued by a strong hand that takes up the offensive when need be.

(I’m not sure what his thoughts would be on the rise of the Empire ... but obviously, that’s all happening in the first couple of years after Satine’s death)

He harbors a sense of resentment toward Satine for basically opening up Mandalore to attack by asserting their neutrality in the war, and this half-justified animosity continues well into Korkie’s adult life. It’s clear that he’s never dealt with Satine’s death (and probably the fact that he couldn’t save her). Instead, he’s stuffed his grief down and hidden it in anger.

Eventually Bo-Katan comes clean and tells him that he's the son of Satine and "that Jedi knight who spent a year protecting her." Korkie's shocked but it explains a lot, including his appearance and the fact that as a kid there were several moments that (he retroactively realizes) he displayed a minor force-sensitivity [he’s a mirror of Luke, who never knew about his force-sensitivity until he was basically an adult and Obi-Wan gave him the language to describe his differences].

Desperate to know more, Korkie ends up somehow tracking Obi-Wan [or rather Ben] down in Tatooine. Obi-Wan is shocked, but probably not terribly surprised that Satine never told him.

(Also, I demand Liam Neeson come back so that Force-ghost Qui-Gon can basically just smile knowingly and shake his head because it’s just so obvious that this young man is the son of his former padawan and the fiery Duchess of Mandalore)

I’m not really sure how Obi-Wan would react to Korkie’s presence at first (I think he accepts that Korkie’s his son basically without hesitation because he can feel that it’s true), but I could see Obi-Wan being a rather grumpy and frustrated man at the start of the Kenobi show, perhaps due to the isolation (there’s only so much even an introvert like Obi-Wan can take) and the frustration surrounding Owen and Beru’s refusal to let him have a relationship with Luke.

Ultimately, the Kenobi show is the growth of Obi-Wan and Korkie’s relationship. Obi-Wan trains him as a “sort-of” Jedi, though it’s difficult. Not only because he’s an adult and very headstrong, but Korkie’s very resistant to the ideas of surrendering to the force and finding peace through meditation, since all of his unresolved issues that he had shoved down come flooding back. Obi-Wan’s grief over Anakin rears itself again as he trains his new “sort-of” padawan, and of course the topic of Satine’s is a weighty and difficult topic for both of them.

The rest of the show (which I’m hoping is just one season long; relatively short and sweet) is Obi-Wan and Korkie fighting some local threat together, keeping Luke safe from afar, and working through their issues and grief regarding everything that has happened to Satine, Anakin, and the galaxy in general.

Regarding how it ends: You could say there’s already a problem with Korkie being force-sensitive because it raises questions about where he was during the original trilogy (and his whereabouts would have to be accounted for later on in terms of Luke truly being “last Jedi”). Perhaps he’s force-sensitive, but doesn’t pursue it further. I’m not sure, but what I refuse to have happen is for Korkie to die on Tatooine (dying, inevitably, in Obi-Wan’s arms). That would just be rubbing salt in too many wounds.

Still, I see this story having a satisfying but melancholy ending. I think that at the end, Korkie would leave to go back to whatever his duties involving Mandalore are. He would return with a much better understanding of Satine’s pursuit of peace and the Jedi way, which would make him a better leader. Obi-Wan is more at peace with what happened with Satine and Anakin and with his purpose in continuing to watch over the Lars homestead. But I think they both know that Korkie can’t come back to Tatooine again, since it risks drawing too much attention to Luke and Obi-Wan’s presence, so their parting is final, but full of new-found love for one another.

(Ugh!! I really have to tell myself not to get too attached to this idea in case the writers have no intention exploring this!! Stop it, stop it ... attachments only lead to pain!!)

#Kenobi tv show #Kenobi series #Obi-Wan Kenobi #Korkie Kenobi #Obitine #Korkie Kryze #Ben Kenobi #Qui-Gon Jinn #Tatooine #Luke Skywalker #Anakin Skywalker #Kenobi show ideas #Kenobi Disney+

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disneydreamlights · 4 years

Text

Across the Stars: Chapter 1

AO3 | FFN

[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9]

Summary: Tensions between the Separatists and the Republic are climbing as the Senate debates whether there is need for an army. Anakin Skywalker, Senator of Tatooine, has recently returned to Coruscant to speak against its formation, resulting in an assassination attempt that forces him to reunite with long time friends Jedi Knight Obi-Wan Kenobi and the newly knighted Padme Naberrie for his own protection. [Anidala]

(Or, an Attack of the Clones Roleswap AU)

A/N: What’s this? I’m publishing a multi chapter that’s actually a part of a series? Yes, yes I am. Updates should come every Wednesday since I actually completed this one before getting the genius idea to post it. After that it’ll just be whenever I finish another fic for it will be when the next one is posted.

The air around Anakin felt charged as he worked on piloting it down for a landing. Normally, he was eager to return to Coruscant after a few days away from the capital planet, Tatooine still far from his favorite planet (though it got better every day. He was proud of Beru for all the help she provided, and he was doing a lot of effort on his own since he’d been voted into the Senate) but tonight was different. The air around the city had felt tense, prompting Anakin to be glad of his decision to fly a small, inconspicuous ship down to the planet. Somebody was after him, he just wasn’t really sure why.

He felt a flash of something, a warning in the air to be careful and wary. He closed his eyes, trying to remember what Obi-Wan and Padmé had taught him years ago, and immediately turned the steering wheel, rolling out of the way of a projectile that had nearly caught his ship. That would’ve grounded it instantly. “Kriff.”

He heard the beeping of his Astromech companion and security detail, yelling at him for his risky flying. “Come on Artoo, we’re fine.” More angry beeps. “I didn’t get hit.”

More beeps, this time sarcastic and irritated from Artoo. “If you’re just going to try to yell at me, be useful and call Mom.”

A holographic projection of his mother appeared moments later. “What is it Ani?”

“You’re already landed, right?”

“Ani?”

“Mom please.” He felt it again, the same disturbance, and this time swerved out of the way of the second attack.

Shmi Skywalker shook her head. “Of course we have, the last person on the cruiser just disembarked. Is something wrong?”

Well, if he was honest, he wanted to say everything was wrong. But he wasn’t about to worry her, plus it wasn’t like he didn’t have things under control in regards to whoever was firing at him. “I think somebody let slip that I wasn’t flying in with the rest of the delegation from Tatooine. I’ve got the situation under control and I have Artoo with me, so I’m fine. We’ll still be landing soon.”

“You ask me not to be worried, but it’s never easy.”

Anakin chuckled. “I promise I’m fine mom. Leave the worrying to Threepio. He’s always been better at it. Just make sure to clear the landing platform. If this goes wrong I don’t want our friend hurting anybody else.” Before she could respond, he hung up, not wanting to worry his mom more in case another attack came. “Ready Artoo? Time to make a landing.”

He was pretty sure R2 was ready to kill him by the time they finally touched down on the platform as he approached rapidly, wanting to avoid a third fire from their mysterious and very murderous new friend. In fact, he wanted to make sure he wasn’t in the ship at all as the bad energy continued to flow around him. “Artoo, let’s go.”

The droid and Anakin emerged from the ship, Anakin pulling up a hood on his cloak to hopefully avoid detection from whatever assassin has his trail. Barely a minute after he was off the ship and approaching the entrance to the building, he was pushed forward, scarcely out of the blast radius with his faithful droid. And he looked behind himself to see the small ship that he had arrived on was absolutely destroyed. “Message received.”

Somebody didn’t want him on Coruscant.

They’d regret trying to get him to leave.

-x-

“Peace is our objective here, not war.” Palpatine’s voice pulled Anakin out of the stupor he’d fallen into as the senator from Malastare concluded his request for aid from the Republic to deal with the Separatist threat coming onto the planet. If he was honest, had the senator not been pushing for the Military Creation Act, Anakin might have felt sympathy, but the creation of an army was not an action Anakin would ever defend. Not one founded on individuals forced to join an army.

He felt his mom squeeze his hand, though she stepped back before he moved the pod out, not wanting the attention on her, but rather on everything Anakin would say. “My fellow senators, when I arrived on Coruscant today to come to this very meeting, an assassin made an attempt on my life. I was fired at three times, and while my skills behind the wheel of a ship saved my life today, had the assassin only been slightly quicker on the uptake when I landed, it’s likely I wouldn’t have made it off the ship alive at all.”

The crowds started to talk amongst themselves, a sign to Anakin that he needed to push. “The reason I was targeted today was because of the bill we’re supposed to be voting on today. Of all the senators against the creation of the creation of an army, I’ve been the loudest, most open about my displeasure, and the one who everybody knows is willing to do anything to get the results I want. Somebody here wants to take that a step further, just to make sure that the bill gets through.” He looked over the other pods, and felt Bail’s approval much to his relief. The speech hadn’t been gone over or discussed with his former mentor, and Anakin had been slightly worried that bringing it up in the Senate would be unwelcome, but it seemed to have been a good idea, even if no prior words had been drafted.

Despite the approval from Bail, the Senate was getting tense, and shouting was beginning. “Ani–” His mom put her hand on his shoulder, but he shrugged it off. He had to make his statement clear to the others.

“You’re all booing me, and for what? This whole idea is a joke. You don’t raise an army for protection. You raise an army if you want to start a war. It won’t deter the Separatists. It will embolden them, and then the fighting will be brought right to our planets. Our systems. Our people. You have to stop living in your delusions.” He slammed his fist on the pod in front of him. Not his best move, but far from his worst in the Senate. “People will die. Civilians drafted for combat will die. The people you force to fight this battle will be nothing but slaves.”

He had people’s attention, and their ire judging by the ever increasing yelling from the other pods. Which was good, it was what he wanted from the other senators. He wanted them to remember his words. “This ‘security measure,’” he said the words full of disdain, “that we’re all voting for is nothing short of a declaration of war on the Separatists, and unless you want to claim that you were the one who brought war to the Republic, you’ll vote with me against this bill.”

The outrage in the Senate was tremendous, but Anakin smirked, having done his job at riling up the chambers. Voices rang against each other as Mas Amedda called for order within the Senate to try to regain a semblance of control amongst the Senators.

After a few minutes, the Senate calmed down, and Palpatine spoke. “Due to the lateness of the hour and the seriousness of this motion, we will take up these matters tomorrow. Until then, the Senate is adjourned.”

-x-

Unsurprisingly, within an hour the Loyalist Committee was summoned to the Chancellor's office. Not a surprise, if Anakin was honest. He’d stirred up a storm in the Senate and even if Palpatine wasn’t mad at him (unlikely) the announcement that he’d nearly been a victim to an assassination attempt less than an hour ago was likely not welcome for him to hear, especially since Palpatine had been trying to get Anakin’s favor since he’d arrived on Coruscant five years prior.

Much more surprising to Anakin, was the presence of several Jedi in his office. Council members, if he recalled the faces correctly. He looked them over for Obi-Wan or Padmé in their midst, and quickly squashed down his disappointment at neither of his friends being present. “Senator Skywalker.” He looked down to see Yoda walking over. “Your tragedy on the landing platform, terrible. Seeing you alive brings warm feelings to my heart.”

“Thank you, Master Yoda. I’m just thankful I’d chosen to fly myself into Coruscant. The loss of life had I been on a transport with the rest of the members of my delegation would have been much greater.” Admittedly, a small part of Anakin still stung with resentment over the fact that Yoda refused to accept him into the Jedi Order, but he had mostly put it behind him. “Do you have any idea who may have sent the assassin?”

Windu approached as well, joining the conversation. “Our intelligence network thinks it may have been remnants from Jabba’s gang seeking revenge against you from when you overthrew them and brought Tatooine into the Republic.”

Anakin shook his head. “I think you’re wrong, Master Jedi.” He watched Windu raise an eyebrow and took it as a sign to continue. “I think the Separatists are behind these attacks.”

The room was silent, as though they were processing what Anakin had said. He didn’t blame them. Accusing the Separatists of wanting to kill the single person who was actively against the formation of a military against them wasn’t logical. But every part of Anakin just knew it was right.

“You mean to imply Count Dooku?” Windu asked, clearly skeptical of Anakin’s accusation.

“Not one hundred percent, but nobody else in his Confederacy would have the means or motive.” Or motive. He thought of Senator Bonterri for a moment. Onderon was a member of the Separatist movement, but she was certainly unlikely to try to level an attack on him given how closely they had worked when he’d been a teenager running around the Senate floor. He had little doubt the other senators who had left would be similar. Almost no other member of their group would have an interest in killing him if his hunch was correct.

“Count Dooku is a political idealist, not a murderer.” Master Mundi corrected Anakin, but he said nothing, letting the Jedi have their say.

“He was also once a Jedi, Senator. He couldn’t assassinate anyone. It’s not in his character.”

“Once.” Anakin frowned at Windu’s defense. “As in he’s not a Jedi any longer. There’s no reason to believe he would still hold to Jedi beliefs, and even then, I’m not arguing that he’s the killer, only that he hired one out.”

Before Windu could respond, Yoda spoke up. “Matters not, the killer’s identity does. For certain Senator in grave danger you are.”

“Master Jedi.” Palpatine looked away from the window he had been near to give a kind smile to Anakin, as though he truly wanted to protect him. “May I suggest the Senator be placed under the protection of your graces.”

“You really think that’s a wise decision under these stressful times.” Bail spoke up, and he was right, the Jedi council didn’t need to spare anymore Jedi from whatever peace keeping mission they were on.

“Chancellor, with all do respect, I don’t need protecting, I can handle myself–”

“I’m sure you can, Senator.” The Chancellor cut him off. “I know you are a great pilot, and have a lucky streak, but the situation right now is dire. I understand that you do not want the help of the Jedi, but perhaps you might be willing to accept the extra security if it were Jedi you were familiar with. Perhaps an old friend like Master Kenobi, or Knight Naberrie.”

Anakin clenched his hands into fists, feeling his nails dig into the palms of his hand. He desperately wanted to see Obi-Wan and Padmé again, that much was true, but he having his friendship with them used as a weapon against him soured his mood for a possible reunion, which further sank as Windu revealed that the two had just returned from a border dispute.

“Please, Anakin. You know how much I’ve desired to look out for you since you asked for our help. Allow me to arrange this one thing for you, my boy.” There was nothing more he could do with Palpatine’s plea like that, and while Anakin was sure there was some ulterior motive to what was going on, he had his hands tied.

With nothing else he could do, Anakin turned to face Windu. “Tell Obi-Wan and Padmé I’ll be in my apartment, and that I look forward to seeing them again.”

It wasn’t until he left the office that he smiled as he realized just exactly who he was seeing again.

[Next Part]

#Star Wars #Anakin Skywalker #Anakin #Padme Amidala #Padme #Obi Wan Kenobi #Obi Wan #Anidala #Heather Writes

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jolinar · 3 years

Text

A Very Star Wars Fictober (in December!) Day 26

(I bet you thought I’d given up, huh? But no. Here I am, rising from the ashes because rebellions are built on hope...or something...)

Prompt number: #26 “How about you trust me for once?”

Fandom: Star Wars

Rating: Teen and up

Warnings/Tags: Luke and Leia sibling bickering

Word Count: 1497

Summary: Leia and Luke have words while planning to free Han from Jabba’s Palace.

Read it on Ao3

“You want me to trust you? After what you and Han got into?”

“Luke!”

“Leia!”

They stared each other down, two immovable objects leaning forward in nearly identical poses. The holotable between them was littered with tablets, flimsies, half-scribbled notes, old kaf mugs, dirty plates, and broken styluses. In the center of the mess, a layout of Jabba’s Palace on Tatooine glowed an intermittent blue. Wordlessly, they glared at each other.

Surprisingly, Leia was the first one to break eye contact. She paced away, armed crossed, and Luke felt a moment of triumph -- then she wheeled to face him.

“I don’t see what your problem is," she said in precise, clipped tones. She sounded haughty, almost bored, as though his concerns were too base to even remark on.

“What my problem is that your plan is needlessly complicated. While you’re waiting for all these pieces to fit together, Han could be dying.”

Leia flinched as though he had slapped her. Luke felt, again a moment of triumph, before she rallied again.

“Jabba wants to use him as trophy -- you said that yourself: 'the Hutts love that kind of thing.' They’ll keep him alive. They have to.”

“And if you’re wrong??”

In answer to this, Leia drew her eyebrows together and pointed at him. “How about you trust me for once, hmm?” Luke was momentarily nonplussed. The expression and gesture...they were so Han. Leia wore them like a child trying on their parents' clothes. Luke shook his head and laughed.

“What? What is it? Do you think this is funny --” she demanded. She shifted her hands to her hips, a gesture entirely her own.

“No, it’s nothing --” She raised an eyebrow at him and he continued: “You sounded just like him there, like Han.”

Leia shut her eyes and took in a deep shuddering breath. “Oh no, he’s rubbing off on me.”

Luke suppressed a smile. “Looks like it.”

She let out a long sigh. “I’m serious. Luke. I need you to trust me here. I’ve trusted you since the beginning -- since you broke into my cell in that ridiculous stormtrooper armor. And I trusted you when I heard you on Bespin.”

There it was. The thing they’d avoided talking about. He’d dreaded her asking about it because, in truth, he didn’t know what it meant either. He’d been reaching out for old Ben Kenobi, searching the Force for someone familiar. But he’d found her instead.

“I heard you, I heard your voice in my head and I trusted it. Now it’s your turn to trust me. Just walking into Jabba’s palace and demanding that he let Han go -- that’s not going to work. We need layers, plans within plans and failsafes if this is going to work.”

He looked into her face, into her earnest and somewhat pleading expression. He could feel her hurt, pulsing beneath her brave and impenetrable surface.

“But why can’t we just break in and grab him?” Luke asked. “If we were fast enough --”

But Leia had already cut him off with a hand wave. "No, no, that won't work. If you'd just listen..." she gestured over her holo of Jabba’s Palace, talking rapidly but with a confident cadence. Her eyes were full of excitement and purpose. She liked this, Luke realized studying her, this planning. She thrived on it. And he knew that however unnecessary this may seem to him, she would be able to convince the others. That fire in her eyes would ignite even the weakest kindling.

As he turned this over in his mind, he had another flash of insight. “You miss him.” He’d said it out loud without realizing it. Leia looped up and raised an eyebrow at him, as though he was an exceptionally slow child asking an impertinent question. He opened his mouth to retort, but she beat him to it.

“Do I miss Han? Yes, Luke, we...we talked about this. Han and I, we --”

But Luke shook his head, and leaned forward across the table, cutting her off this time. “No. You father. You miss him.” He gestured towards the table, the notes. “This is the kind of thing you used to do with him. Go over a plan. And you miss it.”

A normal person might have been upset, confused as to how he could have known this. But not Leia. She took it in her stride. Without betraying any emotion, she leaned back against the console, regarding him, arms crossed. Finally, she said:

“You want to go there? Okay. I was adopted as a baby, but he and my mother were the only parents I ever knew. I loved my mother, but my father and I were very close," she paused for a moment, gathering herself. "Sometimes I miss him so much. Too much. I miss all of Alderaan. And I wish --" he could have sworn her voice cracked slightly before she could rein it under control, "I wish more than anything I could talk to him. Even when we both so busy, he would always write or record a message. That’s the hardest, I think...knowing he’ll never write to me again.” She paused and Luke felt as though something was unlocking within her, he was seeing a part of Leia that he had never seen before. But at the same time, he was thinking of himself. His adoptive parents had never written to him. They hadn't needed to; he'd hardly been out of yelling distance in his whole life. Of his own father, what he’d thought of him, what he’d turned out to be. How would Leia feel when one day she learned that his father had been instrumental in killing hers, and her whole planet?

Leia saved him any further thought by pressing onwards: "But I can’t stop. I can’t mourn. Not him or my mother or my aunts or all of Alderaan. Not now. And I won’t, I can’t lose anyone else.” She was pointing at him again, that Han Solo gesture that was so incongruous to her small form. Her eyes were overbright, but Luke didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know how to comfort her. So instead, he just nodded.

“I was adopted, too,” he said, after a moment, wanting to offer some common ground. “My aunt and uncle took me in, anyway. After,” he hesitated for a fraction of a second before continuing, “after my parents died.”

“In the clone wars?”

Luke nodded. It was the easiest explanation and note entirely a lie. Maybe that's why his aunt and uncle had gravitated towards it. “And now Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru...they’re gone too. Killed by the Empire, they --” in his mind he saw again the charred remains of their homestead. He felt anger and tried to distance himself, pull away. Master Yoda had told him where anger led. He cast his eyes around the room, trying to find something else to hold on to. He found it in Leia. She held his gaze, firm and steadfast despite her own tears.

They stood in silence for a moment. They were each deep in a grief that was both shared and unimaginable to the other. Then, tentatively, Luke said:

“Well, I think your father would be proud of you.”

“Really?” Leia asked, incredulous. “I lost most of my men, the people I was responsible for, on Hoth. Even this plan...we’re not going after the Empire, we’re going after one man, we --”

“But you’re still moving forward, still carrying his dream. That counts for something, right?”

Leia looked at him sideways. “Are you trying to make me feel better?”

“Yes?”

She laughed a little. “For what it’s worth, it’s working.” Then, more seriously: “Thank you.”

“And for what it’s worth, I do trust you." He held out his hands, gesturing at the table below them. “Tell me what you need me to do and I’ll do it.” As he said it, he realized that for him, it really want that easy. He could help Han and make Leia feel better, so he’d do it. And her plan hadn’t been that bad, it just took too long. But if it meant success...maybe that was part of the lesson that Master Yoda had been trying to impart as he'd left. If he could see something through, not get distracted...

Ironically, he was then distracted by Leia clearing her throat. He looked up at her expectantly. All trace of grief in her face was now gone, replaced instead with an almost mad fervor.

“I might need you to play an all-knowing and mysterious Jedi,” she tilted her head to the side, regarding critically. “Think you're up for it?"

Luke smiled wryly. "I'll do my best. What else?"

“Rule One: always have a man on the inside. I bet we could get someone on Jabba’s guard staff easily enough...” she looked up at him meaningfully.

“Me? I don’t --”

“No, Lando.”

“He’ll do it? I thought you said --”

“He owes me a favor,” Leia replied, eyes flashing. “He’ll do it.”

#fictober20 #a very star wars fictober #mae writes #star wars fanfiction #sw fanfic #luke skywalker #leia organa #I am maybe a little drunk

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lukeleiahan · 4 years

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Ripped at every edge but you’re a masterpiece

I read an AU, and I had to follow up...

Essentially, the Empire falls when Luke and Leia are five, and now their parents figure out how to go from here. Lot’s of appreciation for Bail and Breha Organa and Owen and Beru Lars, a generous helping of Sabe, and precious baby!twins Luke and Leia.

Also on AO3, read the fic that inspirated this here.

Five weeks after the fall of the Empire

It starts, like many great things, with a knock on the door.

(No, that's not right. It starts with an old man, who isn't really that old at all, bringing a baby in the middle of the night. Or maybe with a freedwoman dying in the arms of her son. Maybe even with that same slave woman, not free yet, giving birth to that same son.)

Beru is standing in the kitchen, preparing a small dinner for her family. Luke is sitting to her feet, quietly playing with the spare mechanical parts Owen organised for him. He likes mechanics, that boy of theirs. Likes playing and tinkerin g and building and fixing things. He's got a talent for it, like Shmi always said her son, Luke's father, had.

It's the thought of Luke's father that makes Beru tense up. She isn't really expecting anyone, and while that doesn't have to mean anything...

Well, Beru's never really been a trusting person. She's freeborn herself, but her mother had been born a slave, and she's never really felt safe from the slavers. And ever since Old Ben gave them Luke, that little boy that is both Beru and Owen's sunshine, and told them only that Anakin was dead and the Empire wasn't to know about the boy...

Well, Beru's tense. She wishes one of her friends was here, or Owen. But wishing for something won't make it true, and so she puts down the bowl and bends down to Luke.

“Stay here, darling, please. I'll be right back.” She tells him. He nods, and then he smiles at her. He shines, whenever he smiles, that precious boy, and Beru drops a kiss on his forehead.

The woman at the door doesn't seem particularly dangerous, but that doesn't have to mean anything. Her clothing is dark blue, practical but with intricate details that remind her of water flowing. It's a beautiful effect, and one that immediately makes it clear that this woman is not of Tatooine.

Then Beru's eyes reach the woman's face, and she gasps. She's staring, she realizes distantly, but this... Old Ben said...

“I'm not Padme.” The woman says, sounding both resigned and sad, as though this is not the first time she's said it. “I know I look like her, a lot, but I'm not. She was a dear friend of mine, though.”

That's why she sounds sad, Beru realizes, and tries to get herself under control. It can't be easy to look so much like a dead friend.

“Come in.” She says, and steps aside. The house seems so small, so dirty and cheap, with this woman inside, but she doesn't seem to notice it. Now that the first shock has passed, Beru can see the differences between this woman and Padme. Padme had been... less purposeful in her movements, maybe, and her face hadn't seemed quite this sharp.

“What is you name?” She asks, once the woman is sitting down at the small table and she's brought her a milk. Luke is still in the kitchen, playing quietly. She doesn't want him to come out. Not yet.

It might not be the fair, or even particularly likely, but it has always been Beru's fear that one day, one of Padme's family would come and take Luke away from them. He's her boy, her son in everything but name, but she is very aware that there is no official adoption, nothing to stop rich offworlders from taking him away.

But that's not a reason to be impolite, at least not yet. So she smiles and sits down next to the woman.

“Sabe. Sabe Nertay.” The woman says, taking a polite sip of the milk. Her face is like a mask, completely unreadable. Then she takes a long breath, and looks Beru in the eyes.

“The Empire has fallen. I don't know if you've heard about that, out here, but it has. The Emperor is dead, and so is Lord Vader.” She says it in a rush, as though she has been waiting for a long time to say these words.

Beru has heard rumors, of course she has. But there are always rumors. She doesn't usually put much stock into them, and this time... well, it's not like life was so different under the Empire than it was under the Republic.

But it is important to the woman in front of her, and it caused her to come all the way to Tatooine, so Beru stays quiet.

“Padme... she fought the Empire, you know. She fought it before it had ever been founded, and she died... It was clear that the Emperor, that he'd want to use the kids, and Vader...”

Sabe stops for a moment, trying to regain her composure. In that moment, Luke comes in, smiling at Sabe, but heading for Beru.

“I made something for you!” He says with a smile, handing her the mechanics he was tinkering with before. They fit together, somehow, and when Beru takes it, she realizes it's a small holo recorder. She doesn't quite know how he made that out of some small junk parts, but that's her boy.

“Thank you so much. It's amazing!” Beru tells him, hugging him close. She is very aware of Sabe's eyes on them, but she doesn't look. She just looks at her boy.

“This is Miss Sabe Nertay.” She tells Luke. “Say hi to her.”

Luke goes over to Sabe, holding out his hand to great her. “Hi Miss Sabe.” He says, smiling. The woman seems shocked for a moment, then she takes Luke's offered hand, and smiles at him. It looks fairly honest, too.

“Hi Luke. It's nice to meet you.” She says, something almost... amazed in her voice. Luke looks at her. Beru doesn't know whether he realizes the tension in the room, the weirdness of this woman here in her kitchen, but she thinks he might. He's five, but he's also a perceptive sort, her boy.

“It's nice to meet you too.” He says, shaking her hand seriously.

“How about you go get your uncle, darling?” Beru says, and Luke runs off. Sabe looks after him, that amazed look still on her face. Beru can relate.

“He has her smile.” Sabe whispers, almost to herself.

She debates staying silent. Sometimes, she knows, listening is the best thing to do, but yet... she has to know.

“Are you going to take him away?” She asks, voice steady. She's not going to let the woman know her terror.

“No.... no, of course not. I would never... you have raised him for five years. He's yours. I'm not … I'm not going to steal him... He's Padme's son, but he's... he's yours, too.” Sabe says. She seems... insecure is the wrong word, but she doesn't truly seem to know how to handle this, either.

“Is he safe?” Beru asks. Another terror rises. If Sabe is not there to take Luke away, then why is she here? Is there anything else, something more terrible than even the Empire, coming for her boy?

“Yes.” Sabe says, louder than she was probably intending. She looks Beru in the eyes. “He is safe. Vader... Vader was the danger. Vader and the Emperor. They're dead now. They can't get him. They're dead.”

It shouldn't cause so much relief, Beru thinks, that this stranger, this offworlder, tells her Luke is safe. But it does.

“Why are you here, then?” Beru asks.

“I think... I think your husband should be here to discuss this?” Sabe sounds insecure now. It causes Beru's nerves to ratch up again, but she tries to control that. She thinks of what Shmi would have done.

“How did you know Padme?” She asks. Luke has asked about his mother. Not that often, but it's natural for him to be curious, and Beru knows so little.

“We were little girls.” Sabe says, sounding grateful to have something to talk about that she is comfortable with. “On Naboo, we do our civil service young, you know? We elect our princesses when they are about twelve, and out of these prinesses, we elect our queens.

“I started training as a handmaiden at the academy when I was twelve, and two years later I was sworn in to become handmaiden to the new queen. That queen was Padme. She was fourteen, like me, and she took the ruling name Amidala.”

“That's very young.” Beru can't help but say. Fourteen. She remembers being fourteen. She'd been a child. Of course she'd been. To imagine being in charge of a planet at that age... it's terrifying.

“It's how we do it on Naboo.” Sabe says, sounding unconcerned. “You have noticed we look the same. That's why I was chosen to be one of her handmaidens, you know? Us handmaidens, we are not just there to help the queen with her clothes and hair, we are also there to be decoys in dangerous situations. I was always the one who looked the most like her, so I was usually the decoy.”

“That sounds dangerous.”

“It was, I suppose, but I knew what I was signing up for. It was a huge honor, you know. To impersonate the queen. And it was an amazing thing to share, with a friend such as Padme. She wasn't just the queen to me. We were all close, all of us handmaidens and Padme, but the two of us, she was... I never had a sister, but Padme became my sister. I served as a handmaiden for both her terms, and we stayed friends afterwards. She still had handmaidens as a senator, but... I left the service. I became a teacher. I've always wondered.... if I'd stayed...”

Beru takes her hand. There isn't really anything she can say. She wants to tell this woman it's not her fault, but she doesn't even know how Padme died. It would feel like lying to promise something like that.

The door opens, and Luke's chatter fills the room. He's telling Owen about building the holo recorder. Owen is listening, but he's also looking at Sabe with suspicion. Of course he is. Strange offworlders appearing isn't usually a good sign on Tatooine, and he's just as afraid of someone taking Luke away as she is.

“How about you look at those vaps in the garage.” He says, voice gruff but affectionate, running his hand through Luke's hair. Luke grins and runs off.

“So, what's going on.” He says, looking at Sabe. He's not quite glaring, but it's a near thing. Sabe does not seem intimidated, though.

“The Empire has fallen. The Emperor and Vader, they are dead.” Sabe says, looking him in the eyes, the way she did with Beru.

“So what? You gonna take Luke away from us now? 'Cause that's not happening.”

“No. Nobody is going to take Luke away. You are his family. But...” Sabe looks like she's trying to find the right words.

“But what.” Owen says flatly.

“He has a sister. Luke. He has a sister.” Sabe says, and she's looking at both of them now. Beru covers her mouth with her hand.

“Leia.” She whispers. Sabe's head wips around to her.

“Obi-Wan told you?” She asks.

“Old man told us jack shit.” Owen gruffs. He is willing to be nicer, though, now that Sabe told him she's not going to take Luke. “It's a Tatooine thing. Twin names. Luke and Leia... they're only given together.”

“We thought she might have been stillborn. Or died later, something like that.” Beru adds. Luke has asked for his sister. He has asked for her a lot. He was convinced she was there with him, he's dreamed of her. She thought it might be the knowledge that she had existed at one point, or that touch of the desert that allows him to see things others don't, allowing him to communicate with his dead sister. To know she lives...

“I didn't know that.” Sabe says, looking slightly fluxomed. “The thing is... I'm here because it's safe now. As long as the Emperor and Vader lived... if the twins had met, the danger was too high they would have found out.”

“So you do want to take him.” Owen says, defensive again. Beru hears the fear, but she doesn't think Sabe does.

“No! But … they are twins. They should be able to meet. Just meet. Bail and Breha... Leia's adoptive parents, they understand. Leia is theirs, the way Luke is yours. They'd never expect you to give him up. But we thought... we thought they should meet. They have a right to know the other exists. And Leia... she's asked about him. About her brother.”

“Luke's asked, too. About Leia.” Beru says, before Owen can say anything. His hand finds her, warmth and protection and safety.

“We thought they should meet. If you agree. You could come visit, bring Luke. Bail and Breha would be happy to welcome you. And Obi-Wan, of course.”

“I don't see what the old man has to do with anything.” Owen growls, but there is considerably less bite in it. A second set of adoptive parents... Beru can believe they understand.

Sabe seems confused. Beru wonders whether it's the hostility towars Old Ben, or the fact that they refer to him as an old man. He isn't, not really. Beru doesn't think he's much over forty, but he holds himself like a man at least twice his age. He behaves like that, too, so to think of him as Old Ben just feels more natural than anything else. And well... Owen's never liked the man. Too close to Anakin, to the Repbulic, to the sort of things and people that would endanger Luke. Beru doesn't share the dislike, but she understands it.

“He doesn't have to come. You are Luke's parents, not him. But he is an old friend of Bail's so I'm to invite him as well.” Sabe says diplomatically. For a moment, there's silence.

“What is she like, Leia?” Beru asks, and for the first time since Luke left, Sabe truly smiles. She takes out a small holo, places it on the table and let's it play. A small girl, Luke's age, with dark eyes and brown hair in braids, is sitting on the floor, flipping through the pages of a book. After a moment, she looks up, smiling at whoever is recording the holo, and Beru's heart melts. That's Luke's smile on that girls face.

She looks at Owen, and knows that they've both decided in that very moment.

Four weeks after the fall of the Empire

It's a day of celebration. It should be, by all rights.

The End of the Empire, and the Beginning of the New Republic, capitalized for importance, and what it means, now, after a month of celebrating and working and organizing a new government, should be a celebration.

And yet, the mood in Bail's brand new chancellors office is somber. They've all seen too much war, lost too many friends.

“To the lost ones.” He says, raising his glass. Breha, Mon, Carlist, Garm Bel Iblis and Sabe mirror the gesture silently, each of them deeply in thought.

The new government is running, sort of. Bail has been elected the new chancellor, more or less happily. The senate has it's old powers back, and there are three different motions started that should, if they go through as planned, at least put up some strong protections against another Palpatine. Nothing is guaranteed to stop a determinated, manipulative, powerful being like Palpatine to come and take over again, but at least with these new laws it should be more difficult. Bail hopes.

He'd once thought that there was no way for the republic to fall, either, and he'd been wrong. He won't let himself be sure of anything like that anymore.

“Padme should be here.” Mon says, looking at the empty spot at their table wistfully. They always leave a space for her, when they're together like this. The Empire tried to ignore her, but they won't. They won't forget her.

“She knows. In the Endless Sea, Padme knows what has happened.” Sabe says, a quiet conviction in her voice. It's a Nabooian belief, the Endless Sea of the afterlife, but Bail has always found comfort in the idea that Padme is there now, watching over them.

“She deserves her rest. Her and all the fallen.” Garm says.

For a moment, they all stay silent, remembering all their lost friends. Too many of them, Bail thinks. Too many good people died in this fight. Then, Garm gets up.

He looks tired, Bail thinks. They all do, tired with exhaustion and grief and a sense of fear that doesn't seem to want to disappear, even though the Empire is defeated. And his marital troubles won't have gotten easier, either. How someone so passionate about democracy could marry a supporter of the Empire, he'll never understand.

It makes Bail all the more happy about his own marriage. He smiles at Breha, and feels warmth in his heart when she smiles in answer.

“I have an early morning tomorrow. The Imperial forces don't decomission themselves, after all. I'll turn in. A good evening to all of you.”

“Don't remind me. I'll come with you. Good night.” Carlist sighs.

“I'll go, too. My son has been having nightmares these last weeks, all the changes, probably, and the battles, and I promised him I wouldn't be out too late.” Mon says, standing too. “Winter and Leia don't have that problem?”

“Not yet, though it might still come. Currently they're still fascinated by all the changes, especially Leia.” Breha says.

“Consider yourselves lucky, then. We'll see us in the morning. Good night.” She says, smiling, and together they leave.

Bail waits until they're out of the room, then he stands up and picks up one of the holos of his daughters he has standing on his desk. Winters white hair shines next to Leia's brown, and both their smiles glow. They're healthy and happy and safe, he tells himself, just a few rooms down, guarded by Artoo, in hearing distance. Protected by Artoo and two guards in the corridor, to make sure no vengeful imperial gets any ideas.

“There is something else we have to do.” He says. It's been on his mind since the Emperor and Vader died, and now is the time to start doing something about it.

“Luke.” Breha says, putting down her glass. Bail nods.

Sabe seems confused. He never outright told her about Leia's biological parents, never sat down and told her the whole sad story of Padme's last days, but he didn't have to. Sabe knew Padme so well, knows him so well, had prepared Padme's body for the funeral, and Leia just looks like Padme. It wasn't difficult for her to piece it together, as he knew it would be.

But because they never talked about it, she doesn't know about Luke. Doesn't even know enough to suspect anything like this. Maybe he should have told her, but … well, people have always said that the Jedi can read minds. Obi-Wan had denied it, when Bail asked, years ago, but nobody ever truly explained the Sith to him, either, so he couldn't be sure. And though he trusts Sabe with his life, and more importantly with both his daughters lifes, the first rule of espionage still holds: One can't reveal a secret one doesn't know.

Breha knows, though, because she is his wife and he could never keep something like this from her, and she takes the lead.

“We need to call Obi-Wan.” She says.

“What are you talking about?” Sabe asks. She knows Obi-Wan, of course she does, but neither Bail nor Breha ever corrected her assumption that he died with the rest of the Jedi.

And she'll have assumed they'd contact the Naberries first, probably. They'll have to do that, too, Padme's family has a right to know, but it can wait a bit longer. Just a bit.

“Luke is Leia's twin brother.” Bail tells her. Sabe stares.

“It wasn't... it wasn't safe, to raise them together. Obi-Wan and Master Yoda... they said something about... I don't know, combined Force presence? It didn't make very much sense to me, but they were absolutely sure that if the children were raised together, the Emperor and Vader would find them. So Obi-Wan took Luke to be raised by Anakin's stepbrother and his wife on Tatooine.”

“Leia has... Padme had...” Sabe stumbles over her words, clutching her glass of wine as though it would provide her safety. Breha walks over to her, wrapping an arm around her shoulder.

“Twins. Yes. Now that it's safe, they have a right to know.” Bail says. They had a right to know since the beginning, he thinks, but now is the first time since their birth that it's a possibility.

“Are we sure? That it's safe. Are we sure?” Breha asks. Her voice doesn't betray it, but Bail knows she's scared. He is, too. Leia has never quite been safe, never really been out of danger. Neither of their daughters have, on account of being the princesses of Alderaan and the daughters of two rebels, but with Leia it has always been more immediate, the danger. The thought that she might be safe now is so strange. What if they've overlooked something?

“As far as we know, the only people who would pose a direct threat to Leia and Luke due to them being Padme and... Anakin's children are Vader and the Emperor, and they are dead.” He hesitates over Anakin's name, only briefly, but Sabe notices. Of course she does.

“What about Anakin? He died when the Jedi fell, did he not?” She asks. She's not asking whether he is Luke and Leia's biological father. Of course not. She'd known of Padme and Anakin's relationship before even Bail had. But there are things he'd never told her. Things he never wanted to speak about to anyone. He takes a deep breath, seeks stability in his wife's eyes.

“No.” He says, and tries not to get caught up in memories.

(Fire and smoke, Padme on a table, a child being murdered by clone troopers, Obi-Wan and Yoda suddenly broken old men, a newborn's cry)

“Anakin Skywalker did not die when the Jedi fell. He died with the Emperor, a month ago.” Bail says. No one knows exactly how those last hours went inside the Imperial palace. All Bail knows is that the Alliance forces won the battle against the Imperial forces, and that when they came to clean up the palace, Vader and the Emperor had both been found dead. Bail himself had done the identification.

Anakin Skywalker had looked somehow both so old, scarred and tired and dead, and so very young. He'd only been 28 years old.

“What are you talking about?” Sabe asks, shouts, really. He's happy that the girl's room is far enough away that they won't hear. They're too young for this conversation. Much too young.

He should have explained all of this to her before, but he hadn't dared risk it. Hadn't dared take the risk that she'd get caught and talk, hadn't had the strength to deal with it himself.

He's only ever talked about it once, when he told Breha the day he brought Leia home. He'd broken down then, completely, and he hadn't ever talked about it again.

But he'll have to do it again. Now, and then at least once more.

“Vader. Anakin... was Vader.”

“What? How?” Sabe is pacing, he notes distantly. Breha has moved to stand by his side again, a supporting presence he's grateful for.

“I don't know. I thought … I thought, when Master Yoda called, that we were there to pick them up, Padme and Anakin and Obi-Wan and even Master Yoda. They survived the … the purge, they're calling it, aren't they? They'd survived, and when Master Yoda called I thought I was going to pick them up, and we were going to figure out what to do next.

“But then... Padme was giving birth, and when I asked Obi-Wan about Anakin, all he would say was that he'd 'fallen'. That was the word he used, 'fallen'. Didn't really understand it until I was introduced to Vader.

“And Padme... the med droid said she was fine, you know? I kept asking, because she was pale and so damned silent, but the med droid kept insisting she was fine. She named Luke and Leia, and then she... I don't know. She slipped away.” There are tears in his eyes, and he can't break down again, he can't. He focuses on Breha's hand in his, willing himself to focus.

“Slipped away? What does that mean?” Sabe asks, tears running over her cheek, but she's refusing to break down, too, just like Bail, and isn't that a testament to how much they're all politicians, all spies, that they won't let themselves break down over the death of a friend?

“Master Yoda said she 'lost the will to live'. As though that's a cause of death. I … you and Dorme and Yane, you were the ones who prepared her for the funeral. You saw how... you saw that there were no obvious injuries. Nothing to indicate what could have killed her. I still don't know how she died.”

It's something that's been bothering him since that day. Lost the way to live , what bullshit . Padme was desperate, and she was grieving, and she might have given up, but one doesn't die of that. Not without other things happening. And the med droid said she was fine...

And yet, the Sith... He's never voiced this thought out loud, but well... the Jedi were never open about the extent of their powers. And the Sith are supposed to be worse...

“That doesn't make any sense!” Sabe yells, throwing her hands up.

“We've been puzzling over it for years.” Breha says, calm and compassionate. “There is no answer we can see, but we can't help her now. We can help her children, though.”

There's a long silence. Then.

“Where is he?” Calm. Focused. She was a handmaiden to the warrior queen Amidala, a spy for the Rebel Alliance against a fascist empire. It shows.

“Tatooine. Beru and Owen Lars are his parents now, at least that's what Obi-Wan said he was planning. We'll have to talk to them, make plans with them.” Bail says.

“I'll go. I'll talk to them. Bring them here.” Sabe says, running her hand over her dress. She wipes the tears of her face, resolute in the face of having a mission. Bail knows he won't talk her out of this, and he doesn't want to. He can't go himself, the new chancellor leaving would be seen as weakness. And Breha as the queen of Alderaan would draw way too much attention. Sabe though, a gouverness and former handmaiden, she can go wherever she wants whenever she wants.

“Bring Obi-Wan too, if he wishes, but the important ones are Beru and Owen and Luke. We need to figure this out, all of us. We're in this together.” Breha says, equal parts queen and friend.

Sabe nods.

“I'll be leaving in the morning.”

Six weeks after the fall of the Empire

The air is tense when Sabe leads the Lars' through the halls of the chancellors residence.

They had considered having Bail, Breha and Leia meet them at the shuttle, but it had been decided that it would be less weird for the children, if they didn't meet each other for the first time in a crowded and busy station. Not to mention the possible media attention that would be the new chancellor of the brand new New Republic, his wife the queen of Alderaan and one of their daughters meeting a family of poor moisture farmers from the territories.

Beru and Owen are holding hands, and every now and then they whisper in a language Sabe doesn't understand. She's fairly sure that they're talking about the wastefullness of such grand halls standing empty. If this were Naboo she'd argue, probably, if only out of patriotism, but after having seen their home on Tatooine, warm and small and lovely and enough , she can't quite disagree with them.

Luke, though, is running around them, always either a few steps ahead or behind them. He sticks close enough to them that Sabe always has him in her sights, and she knows that Beru and Owen, too, always watch him, but he doesn't seem to feel the tension.

He seems so fascinated, by everything, just like he'd been on the flight here. Sabe's ship, Nabooian build but stationed and customized on Alderaan for the last few years, had interested him just as much as the grand houses here, and the art that decorates the wall. He's staring at it all in childlike wonder, and Sabe can't help but smile at his genuine amazement.

Finally, they reach Bail's office. She opens the door and let's the Lars' go in first.

Leia is sitting on the floor, a book in front of her. Sabe wonders whether she was truly reading it, or whether she was just pretending. Leia is good at picking up on tension, so she might have just been trying to put her parents at ease. She's looking up now, though, staring at Luke.

It must be so weird for her, Sabe thinks. Five years old, and suddenly she's moving to another planet, and the Empire is gone, and her father is the new chancellor, and on top of that she now has a brother whom she's never met.

Then again, it must be quite weird for Luke too, to suddenly leave Tatooine, if only for a week, and visit a sister he never knew about on Coruscant. Though... he had been so excited about it. She turns to look at him, and finds him clutching his aunts hand tightly. He looks shy, suddenly, in a way he hasn't been with her … ever, she thinks. Maybe it's because she came to him, to his planet, into his house, and was offered milk and hospitality by his aunt. Maybe it's just this place that must be so strange to him.

“Welcome to Coruscant.” Breha says, straightening and holding out her hand to Owen and Beru. For a tense moment, they don't move, then Owen takes the hand. Sabe breathes a quiet sigh in relief.

“I'm Breha Organa, I'm Leia's mother. This is my husband Bail, and this is our daughter Leia.” She says, smiling at Beru and Owen. She offers her hand to Beru, and Bail steps closer.

“I'm Beru Whitesun Lars.” Beru says, her voice not betraying any nervousness. “This is my husband Owen, and this is our nephew Luke.” She shakes Bail's hand, too, and Owen follows suit.

There's a silence, again, and the Leia moves. She's up to her feet and running to Luke before anyone truly notices, and then she's hugging him. It's an absolutely adorable sight, and Sabe has to bite her lip not to break out in tears.

Padme would have loved this, she thinks. Padme would have loved seeing her children together.

“I'm Luke.” Luke tells Leia, looking at the floor, mostly. He doesn't seem to be too scared, though, and he's let go of Beru's hand when Leia hugged him.

“I know that.” Leia says, smiling, her eyes warm. Any worry about how they'd get along disappears in that moment, and Sabe feels a little bit of the tension leaving the room. They're all different people, from completely different backgrounds, but they'd all do anything to see these two children happy. It's quite something.

Leia takes Luke's hand and starts showing him around the room. Luke let's her. They'll be best friends before dinner, Sabe thinks. She hopes Winter won't be jealous. But then, she's spend some time with Luke now. He'll be Winter's best friend, too. At least he'll try.

“Come sit with us.” Bail says, leading Owen and Beru towards the table. There are some refreshments there, water and wine and some biscuits. “Did you have a good journey?”

Owen's not looking too happy, grim and worried and probably scared, but it's Beru who speaks.

“Yes. We have never been off Tatooine, and Luke has been fascinated by it all. And Sabe has been very kind.” It's awkward. Incredibly awkward. But Luke and Leia are running around the room together, holding hands, so... that's that.

Bail doesn't ask after Obi-Wan, and Sabe is glad for it. It had been strange, to realize just how much Beru and Owen distrust Obi-Wan, but Sabe accepted it. She'll have to ask about it at some point, but she had been relieved when Obi-Wan had decided to stay on Tatooine for the moment, to make plans, he'd said. He'd probably realized his presence at this meeting would only make things more difficult.

“What's your plan here?” Owen asks, gruff and hostile. He's scared, Sabe thinks, terrified of losing Luke to some rich coreworlders he doesn't know and doesn't care about. She hopes that Bail and Breha see it too. But she shouldn't have worried.

“For the moment, just to let the children play.” Bail says, looking at them. “For the future... that's for us all to discuss.”

“We're not taking him away from you.” Breha says firmly. “He is yours, like Leia is ours. But they are siblings. Twins, even. They have a right to know each other.”

It reassures Beru, Sabe thinks, though Owen is not quite convinced.

“What does that mean? Are we supposed to come live here? Because I'm not leaving Tatooine, that's for sure.”

“You don't have to.” Bail says. “Nobody would ask that of you.”

It would be easier, Sabe thinks, if they moved here, and closer to Naboo, too, but it wouldn't be fair. They have their own lifes, and nobody is expecting Bail and Breha to move to Tatooine, so why should the Lars move?

“We could just have them visit. Every few months, at least, you bring Luke here or we bring Leia to you. And com calls work too. We could set up a permanent holonet connection, so that the kids can talk to each other as often as they want.” Breha adds.

“We don't have to decide now.” Beru says, taking her husbands hand. “We're here for the week, and we've had a long journey.” She looks at the kids, talking quietly. They're still holding hands, and are intensely focused on some game Leia is showing Luke. They look different, blond and blue eyed with tan skin to brown hair and eyes and pale skin, but their expression is the same. It's one of Padme's expression, the one she always had when reading some complicated law proposal. For a moment, the resemblance almost takes Sabe's breath away.

“Luke asked after her, you know. Leia. He's asked after her since he could talk, and the last few days, when he knew she's alive and there and he can see her... he's only stopped talking about it once we reached Coruscant.” Beru says, her eyes never leaving the children.

“Leia too. I don't know how she knew... she's always talked about her brother. We didn't tell her, but … she'd dream about two suns and the desert, and her brother. We never knew what to tell her.” Breha says.

“Now we can just tell them the truth.”

xxx

The adults are still talking, important things and meaningless small talk, but that doesn't matter.

In a corner in Bail Organa's office, two children sit, a girl and a boy, a princess and a farmboy, twins. They have never met each other before today, yet they have known each other their entire life.

They hold hands, and soon they will not need words to communicate anymore. At the moment, though, they still do.

“I missed you.” One of them says.

“I missed you too.” The other answers.

They are five years old, and yet, for a moment, they are more wise than any of the adults.

“We're together now.”

#star wars #beru whitesun #owen lars #bail organa #breha organa #sabe #mon mothma #leia organa #luke skywalker #i have so many headcanons that i can write into this au #like that the organas always intended to tell leia about her biological family and especially luke #or that bail never understood how padme died but suspected the sith #which means he follows the same theory as most fans do #and that also means that he had unlike the fans two suspects #he was so terrified of vader knowing about the twins because he considered it quite possible that it was vader who killed padme #also he's really traumatized by the whole thign #also sabe knew about leia but it was like just not talked about #i might write more in this au but i know myself so i won't promise anything #farmboy #twinsies #queen of everything #whitesun #farmer #senator rebel #queen #my writing #sw

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notbecauseofvictories · 6 years

Note

You wouldn’t happen to have a little Beru and Luke lying around somewhere?

Beru forced herself to keep smiling politely, even as Aunt Belyr served herself yet another cup of Naboo tea. It helped to have Luke in her arms, mouth making soft shapes as he blinked up at Beru; he’d started smiling in just the last few days, gummy, cooing smiles that had Owen swearing Luke would be a heartbreaker when he was older. (Beru privately suspected that this had more to do with Owen, who went soft as sand every time she put his nephew in his arms.)

Beru’s mother cleared her throat deliberately, and Aunt Belyr froze.

Beru bit back a more genuine smile. She’d started setting out Naboo tea—imported, made with real water—for her family’s visits after her marriage, as a kind of deliberate gesture. Proof that even though the Lars’ weren’t one of the old Tatooine families, she had married a man who could offer her finer things than the Redsand’s boy, or the Waterson’s eldest.

But there was a difference between accepting the hospitality offered and taking advantage of it. Aunt Belyr delicately set down the carafe of tea.

“So,” Beru’s mother said calmly. “This is your surprise.”

“Yes,” Beru said. “Luke. Owen’s nephew.”

Her mother blinked. “I wasn’t aware Cliegg had any other sons.”

Beru looked away. She and Owen had practiced this, over and over, until she could say it smoothly as breathing. But there was nothing that could convince her to look in her mother’s eyes as she lied. “You remember Shmi Skywalker Lars,” Beru said, touching the fine hair on the top of Luke’s head. He flailed his fists, cooing; Beru couldn’t help smiling.

“This is Shmi’s grandson, from before her marriage to Cliegg. Her son earned his freedom off-world, but he died in the war. Owen and I have taken him in.”

“Have you,” her mother said, and Beru could hear the disapproval curling through her voice.

Aunt Belyr was less subtle. “Are you sure that’s wise?”

“Of course. Owen is doing very well, he was just granted a permit to build another two moisture vaporators over on the ridge. And with the dry season coming, Owen and I will have time to look after Luke more.”

“I don’t think that’s what she means, darling,” Beru’s mother said, and Beru opened her mouth to reply—

“Skywalker is a name we haven’t heard in a while,” Belyr said, and Beru froze, her breath caught in her chest. “Such a funny sort, always talking about Jedi, kept to herself…I even heard she was considered something of a witch in Mos Espa. Are you sure you want that blood in your house?”

It was staggering, how quickly the cold left her, replaced by a rage as hot as the suns.

Beru bristled. “He is family,” she said, and she must have she tightened her grip or raised her voice because Luke let out a cry and began squalling.

Beru inhaled sharply and stood, pacing up and down the kitchen and rocking Luke in her arms, murmuring a litany of “No, no, I’m sorry;; it’s all right little one…shh, Luke, it’s all right. Shh…”

By the time she had quieted him again and turned back, her mother was watching her with dark eyes, and even Belyr looked thoughtful. Beru forced herself to walk back to the table, and sit, primly crossing her ankles like she was still a girl at the First Rainfall celebration, and not a tired woman caring for an infant.

“You’re good with him,” her mother said, and Beru exhaled.

“He’s a good baby. He sleeps well, and he eats like a bantha.”

“Your brothers were like that,” her mother said lightly. She had not finished her cup of tea, and she took another sip now. She was still looking at Beru in a strange sort of way, and Beru wasn’t sure how to—react to that. “You girls were another story, up at all hours, and such finicky eaters—”

“I remember Rishi would burst into tears anytime she left my arms,” Aunt Belyr added, with a kind of rueful humor.

“He doesn’t like music,” Beru found herself saying, and both Belyr and her mother stared.

“What, any music?” Belyr asked, at the same time her mother asked, “Have you tried the lullaby I used to sing you?”

It took Beru a moment to find her voice. She’d heard that tone before, but never directed at her; it had been reserved for her older cousins, siblings. The particular badge of honor given to mothers and fathers, but it was—there, in her mother’s voice, and her aunt’s. Welcoming her into that company.

“No music,” she said quietly. “Not even lullabies.”

Her mother asked to hold him, after—”Well, he has the Whitesun hair at least,” she said warmly, brushing the tuft of white-blond hair on top of Luke’s head. Luke smiled up at her, cooing. And, to Beru’s undying surprise, her mother smiled as well.

#the warry stars #star wars #harlowmanchester-blog #okay so actually more about beru than luke but like.....shit do I love tatooine and my extremely developed vision of tatooine culture #also someone in the star wars universe has to have a deep and expansive and female domestic network so #it's beru #I've decided #this is a thing I made

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puckiety · 6 years

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sitting on an overpass, screaming at the cars // chapter 1

"The whole affair is Ben’s fault - at least, that’s what Luke’s father says. After all, it was Ben who prompted him to drive across the country just for a quote-en-quote “talk” - a talk which ended in one tp’d Beverly Hills mansion, a very angry CEO, and a whole new generation of relationship drama in the Skywalker family."

Or,

It's 1988, and 17 year-old Luke and Leia Skywalker go on a road trip with Han, Chewbacca, and Wedge to teepee Palpatine's house in Beverly Hills.

(read on ao3)

The whole affair is Ben’s fault - at least, that’s what Luke’s father says. After all, it was Ben who prompted him to drive across the country just for a quote-en-quote “talk” - a talk which ended in one tp’d Beverly Hills mansion, a very angry CEO, and a whole new generation of relationship drama in the Skywalker family.

But if one really thinks about it (at least, this is what Luke figures), it’s all Aunt Beru’s fault. She’s the one who pushed Luke to go to Bible Study anyway, which is why he started talking to Father Ben about his familial issues, which is why Ben told him to go visit his father. If Beru had listened to Uncle Owen, Luke would have continued living a life where the word of God had no impact on his everyday actions, let alone the word of one of God’s rather more questionable followers.

(That was how Uncle Owen referred to Ben, anyway; he’d never liked the older man, possibly because of his friendship with Luke’s father - before Luke’s father threw out his rosary and sold his soul to a capitalistic devil, aka going to the “dark side”. Those were Ben’s words, not Luke’s.)

And if one looked at it from a certain point of view, it was Anakin who began the whole affair. He was the one who couldn’t be bothered to take care of his children after Padme died, which led inevitably to the Skywalker twins being split up. Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru took in Luke, citing that they had an actual blood relation, while Leia was left to the care of Bail Organa, whom they called “Uncle” but was really just an associate of their mother’s. Beru often tried to reassure Luke that they would have taken Leia in, too, had they the income necessary to raise two children, but Luke’s never believed it - not really. He didn’t know the real reason he and his sister had to be separated, but he knew it isn’t what his aunt and uncle tell him.

(Granted, Albany wasn’t exactly far away from their New York farm, but it was far enough that Luke only saw his twin for holidays, and otherwise spoke only through letters or over the phone.)

In the end, it doesn’t matter whose fault it is, who pushed Luke into such a reckless course of action. What does matter is what he did on the way to that great big mansion belonging to his father’s boss.

The answer? Quite a bit.

“Hey, Aunt Beru?”

He barely pokes his head around the corner into the kitchen; Beru is elbow-deep in some floury mixture, probably cookies of some sort. For a second, Luke is almost sorry that he’s leaving before they get out of the oven - but only almost. He’s already packed, and Han’s on his way; all that leaves is to convince his Aunt that it’s all his father’s idea.

“What is it, Luke?”

“Dad wants his yearly visitation.”

Beru pauses, and her lips purse into what Luke likes to think of as her Very Unamused face. He winces, wondering if she’s going to say he can’t go - or if she’s going to ask too many questions. But after a moment she sighs, her eyes falling closed, and she says, “Okay. I suppose we can’t stop him. When is he taking you?”

Luke laughs a little, and he knows it sounds nervous but he’s always been terrible at lying, especially to his aunt and uncle. “Actually, when I called him today he said he’d sent us a letter. His driver is set to arrive today.”

Beru turns and pins him with a flat look. “Today?”

Luke nods, hopefully convincingly. “I told him we never got a letter - it probably got lost in the mail?”

There’s a moment of silence as Aunt Beru stares him down, waiting for him to flinch. Luke continues looking apologetic, and finally she lets out another sigh. This one sounds very tired. “Today,” she repeats under her breath, then, “I swear, that man will be the death of me.”

Luke waits in silence for her to deliver the final judgement - yes, he can go, or no, he can’t. Beru shakes her head a little, sighs again, and finally speaks.

“Fine,” she says, then, “Your uncle won’t be happy about this.”

“Thanks, Aunt Beru!” he chirps, kissing her cheek, “The driver’ll be here any minute, love ya, bye!”

“Luke, wait - ”

But he’s already halfway down the hall to where his suitcase waits at the door, his guitar case leaning against it. He pulls his key off the hook, slides his guitar onto his back, and wraps his fingers around the handle of his suitcase. Before his aunt can catch up to him, Luke tugs open the front door.

Wedge is standing on the porch, drumsticks in his hand and backpack by his feet. His other hand is raised as if he’d been about to knock on the door when Luke had opened it, his mouth open in surprise at Luke’s sudden appearance.

“Where’re you going?” Wedge asks, dropping his hand to his side. His words spill out of his mouth in a big jumble, Brooklyn accent coloring his vowels even though he hasn’t lived in the city in ten years. With his relaxed posture and the way he lazily twirls his drumsticks, it’s clear why everyone at school thinks he’s a stoner.

(The irony of that situation is that Wedge has never touched a drug in his life. Well, as far as Luke knows, and Luke’s known Wedge since they were seven.)

“Road trip to see dad,” Luke says, because he doesn’t trust Aunt Beru not to be listening in and he doesn’t want the plan put in jeopardy. “You wanna come?”

The twirling of the drumsticks stops. “Serious?” Wedge asks. Luke nods.

“My ride’ll be here any - ”

Before he can finish his sentence, a beat-up VW Bus comes careening down the road, going at what is probably top speed. Wedge turns at the sound of tires squealing, and squints at the van.

“Is that…”

Luke steps outside, slamming the door behind him. “Yes,” he says, voice low enough that Aunt Beru wouldn’t be able to hear him even if she had her ear pressed to the heavy oak behind him. Wedge frowns.

“You sure this is a good idea?”

“Wedginald,” Luke says, allowing exasperation to creep into his tone, “when have I ever let you down?”

Wedge pauses for a moment, considering this question, and then shrugs. “Well, never, I guess.”

“Exactly. So get in the van, and we’ll worry about any specifics later.”

As soon as he finishes his sentence, the VW bus screeches to a halt, and the back door is thrown open. Luke throws his suitcase in, pushes Wedge in as well, and then clambers over the mess lying on the floor as he pulls the door shut behind him.

“Hey, kid!”

“Han,” Wedge greets, a little coldly.

“You should drive,” Luke says quickly, “Or else Aunt Beru’ll find out I lied.”

“You lied?” Han sounds incredulous, but he hits the gas anyway; Luke almost falls forward at the sudden burst of speed, but he grabs the seat. Wedge does fall forward, swearing as he bangs his elbow on the door.

“I only lied a little,” Luke says once he’s situated himself back in his seat, guitar case firmly situated between his legs. “We are going to California, we are going to see my dad, it’s just I didn’t tell her that you were driving me there.”

Han crows with laughter, banging on his steering wheel. In the passenger’s seat, Chewie laughs and says something rapid in Papiamento that Luke doesn’t catch because even after two years of friendship he only knows a fraction of the language. Whatever he says only makes Han laugh harder; Wedge casts a confused glance in Luke’s direction. Well, at least somebody’s as lost as he is.

“What’d he say?” Wedge asks. Chewie says something vaguely condescending – even if he can’t understand words, Luke’s gotten pretty good at tone – and Han’s laughs falter into chuckles.

“He said that we’ve corrupted Luke,” Han says. Luke scoffs.

“I’m not corrupted.”

“Sure you aren’t, kid. Well, I guess it’s to California, then.”

“Actually, we have another stop to make.”

Han hits the breaks, turns around to look Luke in the eye, and frowns. “You didn’t mention anything about that, kid.”

Luke holds up his hands. “Listen, Han, this was all Leia’s idea, not mine.”

The older boy’s brow furrows. “Leia?”

Luke sighs, dropping his hands back into his lap. “My twin sister? We have to go pick her up before we head out west.”

“You have a twin?”

Luke blinks, because has he really never brought up Leia before when he’s with Han? It seems unlikely, but then again, Luke has a tendency to be forgetful – and Han doesn’t seem like Leia’s type. Nor does Han seem like Leia’s. Quite honestly, Luke thinks Leia might kill Han before they even make it to Beverly Hills, which would not be ideal. He doesn’t think his sister has a license, he knows Wedge doesn’t, and Luke? The only thing Luke can drive is a tractor. And he can’t do that well.

“Uh, yeah?” Luke fiddles with the strap on his guitar case, wanting to take it out and play but also not wanting to annoy his best friend. Well, his best friend besides Wedge. And Biggs, but Biggs went off to the army a year ago and Luke hasn’t seen or heard from him since then. “Uncle Bail adopted her when mom died and dad…” he makes a gesture that doesn’t really do a good job of encompassing left us to work for some CEO and stopped giving a crap about us. “I don’t get to see her very often. I’ve never mentioned her?”

Han shrugs. “You might’ve, kid, I don’t know.”

Luke glances at Wedge, who gives him a look like what do you want me to do? I know who your sister is. Which is true; Wedge has crashed enough family Christmases and birthdays that he’s known Leia nearly as long as he’s known Luke. In fact, Wedge arguably respects Leia more than he respects Luke, but Luke can’t blame him for that. Leia’s a natural born leader, and she gives off the vibe that she could absolutely murder someone who crossed her. At the same time, she’s incredibly charming – Wedge likes to say it’s because she’s been raised by a senator.

“Well, she’s real,” Luke says, which is something he instantly regrets saying, because nobody was doubting Leia’s existence and now he’s just made a fool of himself. “And she’s in Albany, so. Head that way?”

“You’re gonna owe me for this, kid,” Han says. Luke shrugs, partially because he knows Han won’t dump them halfway across the country and partially because Leia’s the one with the money, not him. “Fine. Albany it is. Chewie, put in a tape.”

#star wars #star wars fanfic #star wars au #star wars 80s au #puck writes

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lurkingcrow · 7 years

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I don't quite know what this is but I wrote it anyway

Did I hear @forcearama request more sad Obi-Wan and Baby Luke? I think I did! Have a very quickly written fic used to distract me from my head cold. This didn't exactly go where I thought it would, somehow it turned into an AU and shifted character focus on me, but hey the only way you can improve is by practicing right?

It is strange, he thinks. To the untrained eye this is a barren wasteland, miles and miles of sand and rock baked hard under the harsh light of twin suns. And yet... beneath the surface he can feel the movement of an industious colony of dustbeetles carving out a additional tunnels to accommodate their growing hive. In the next canyon over a herd of banthas is taking shelter from the midday sun, their minds a peaceful balm against the sharp hunger of the krayt dragon that stalks in the shadows. Further out he tracks the passage of a group of Tuskens as they make their way towards a hidden cave system - it looks like they will miss the Jawa sandcrawler, trundling along it's trade route to the outer settlements. There is life here, all the more precious for its scarcity, and the man who was once Obi-Wan Kenobi takes comfort in that.

He sighs, stroking his beard in thought, and reaches out to seek one particular lifeform (beloved, innocent, to be protected at all costs) . Luke's presence is bright -a mess of of sounds and images and burbling curiousity and oh! With cheerful glee the infant mind latches onto his and it takes a moment for Ben to realise that the child is much closer than expected. Gently pulling away he takes note of the combined sense of determination and maternal fondness headed his direction. He turns back to his shelter - it has been some time since he last had guests. He should probably clean up.

By the time the speeder pulls up he has managed to look a little less like he has spent the last couple of days sitting outside in the elements. From Beru's expression as she looks him over it's not enough.

"Honestly Ben, one of these days I'm going to come out here and nothing but a pile of clothing and bleached bones." She says as she hitches Luke one one hip while slinging a pack over her shoulder. "How you've managed to survive with so little common sense I don't know!" ( he asks the same thing every day - how does he live when those he failed are gone? the dunes offer no answer but the wind takes his tears.)

"I have my ways." He smiles, ushering them inside. "What brings you to my humble abode?" Beru huffs and offloads a squirming Luke into his arms before digging into her bag. Immediately tiny arms reach up to pull at his beard while the equally fragile mind seeks out his own, poking and prodding in childish delight.

(oh yes. he thinks. here is why. he lives because he loves this one too much to fail him too) So wrapt is he in Luke's presence that it takes Beru clearing her throat to bring him back to their conversation. Her smile is gentle and they share a quiet moment of mutual understanding before she draws his attention to the datapad in her hand.

His heart freezes.

(nononononono.he is dead. surely the universe would not be so cruel?) On the page the dark form of the Empire's newest enforcer remains unchanged, the headline declaring their triumph over the last remnants of CIS forces blaring overhead. (it is. vader lives. vader lives and he must never know of the treasure hidden beneath tatooine's suns)

In his arms Luke begins to fuss as he picks up on his panic and Ben calms himself. (he can break down later. later, when he cannot hurt any more innocents) Something must show on his face though, as Beru looks up, concerned. "Are you alright?" Another look at the datapad, and her eyes narrow. "Are we in danger?" He clears his head, puts aside his fear and guilt (anakin, anakin, where did we go wrong?) and thinks it through. This had always been a possibility. Nothing has changed - there is still no reason for the Empire to seek him here at the edges of civilization, even less for them to look for a boy with his father's blue eyes (blue. not yellow. anakin's blue).

"No, no. Not for the moment. Just... Something to keep an eye on." She looks at him carefully before nodding. "Ok. But that's not what has me worried. Here." She points to a much smaller article at the bottom of the page, welcoming the continued relationship between the esteemed Hutt conglomerate and Imperial forces and the signing of a new deal facilitating trade in high value goods along the outer rim. His eyebrows raise in disbelief. "Is that what I think it is?"

Beru shakes her head ruefully. "High value goods. They've all but legalised the slave trade so long as it doesn't touch their precious core. Didn't think the Hutts would manage it - they must've caught his Majesty on a good day." She eyes him carefully. "You're not from around here, so I don't know how familiar you are with..." "No. I understand. More than you might think." (bandomeer, a heavy collar around his neck. zygeria, the cutting agony of lightwhips and despair. coruscant, a blond boy who flinches at the use of "master". and still he will never fully comprehend.) He shakes his head and clutches Luke a little tighter. "But not enough. I imagine Jabba is delighted to extend his reach, but I'm guessing his coffers aren't your immediate concern."

Again Beru assesses him carefully, and appears satisfied by what she sees. She takes a seat against the wall motioning for Ben to join her. "You'd be right. Look Ben, I know there's a lot you can't say, but I need to know. Who are you? To Luke I mean."

The question takes him completely by surprise. "I... His parents were good friends of mine. I once taught his father" (it is not a lie, and yet it tastes like one, heavy and cold against his tongue). Beru scoffs. "Friends. That's why you look at Luke like he's the last cask of water before the cool season." There is something about her posture that makes him reconsider his words. (and surely now, now his old world was ashes and dust, surely now he could admit it.)

He bows his head, inhaling the scent of Luke's sun warmed skin. "I loved them. Anakin, he was my brother, my partner, my other half. I would have done anything for him." (but he'd never outright told him had he? anakin never knew just how much obi-wan would sacrifice to protect him. he never knew how deep the attachment ran. because it was not the jedi way. now the jedi are dead. and, though his body yet breathes, so too is anakin). He clears his thoat "Padmé, she was a light in the shadows, a reminder that there are still those who would fight for justice rather than personal gain. I was proud to call her a friend, prouder still that she considered me one too." (brave beautiful padmé. strong and courageous with a heart made of kyber. she made anakin so very happy and for that alone he might have loved her. but she was always greater than the sum of her parts, and he mourns her for her own sake.)

"Then you're his family." It feels like a razors in his throat."Yes." "Good." He looks up in surprise. Beru is still looking at him keenly. "Were you there for his birth? Who named him?" "I...yes. Padmé lived long enough to name him."(and his sister. just as tiny and just as perfect and so very clearly her parents child. it had hurt to hand her over, to know she would grow up without her brother, without him to watch over her. but she would be loved. bail could keep her safe in ways he cannot. it is for the best. but his heart still aches). "I brought him to you soon after"

Something in his response makes Beru relax slightly (distantly he recalls a conversation with anakin, children follow the mother.) "And you love him? You'd protect him?" "Yes." His voice is stronger now, full of certainty. "Beru, where are you going with this?"

She takes a deep breath. "You're still an outsider here, so there are things you don't quite get yet. Me and Owen? We're both freehold stock, descendants of slaves who bought their way out. Our families are well established, reputable. We might not be rich but so long as we don't break any laws or get too far into debt no-one's gonna try taking us in." Ben doesn't like the sound of this. "But?"

Beru raises one hand to ruffle Luke's downy hair. He's begun to drift off, head nestled against Ben's shoulder and at the movement he lets out a quiet protest. "But, with the Rep- sorry, Empire, no longer enforcing the ban pretty soon every scum sucking sleemo this side of Ord Mantell is going to want to cash in on the flesh trade. And they're not going to care where exactly their stock comes from. Luke is freeborn. You just confirmed it. But that doesn't mean shit if there isn't something to back it up. Our reputation, that's something. One day though it might not be. I need you to promise me Ben, something happens to us? You claim him. You're family, you'll look after him. And unless I'm very much mistaken, you have the skills to back up your claim."

His gut roils at the picture Beru paints, but there is no question as to his response. He has already made this oath once, a silent vow to the newborn bundle of hope clutched against his chest. It takes no effort to verbalise it now."I will. I swear to you, Beru Whitesun-Lars, that as long as I still live and breathe I will do everything within my power to ensure the safety and happiness of Luke Skywalker."

She looks amused by his formality. "I'll keep you to that."There is a moment's silence, broken only by the occasional whine from the sleeping boy. "So, I'll expect you over for weekly dinner. No excuses. Luke needs to get to know his Uncle Ben if he's gonna start learning the mystic stuff and you need fattening up"

Once he had been known as the Negotiator. A thousand diplomats had done their best to stump him only to fall prey to his silver tongue. And yet it is the simple self assured statement from a moisture farmer's mouth that leaves Ben speechless."What!? Beru, I'm still a wanted man. We agreed - it's best for everyone if I keep away."

"Banthashit. Owen agrees with you but you're both wrong. He thinks the further away you stay the safer it'll be. That it's your sort of trouble that'll put Luke most at risk. Me? I remember Shmi's stories. I remember the young man I met and the woman who followed him."

She grins, sharp and bright. "I remember it was both of 'em who made the decision to go running straight into danger. If he's anything like them, Luke won't wait for your trouble to find him - he'll find he local stuff first. And when he does? Now that Jabba's on the rise? Owen and I aren't going to be enough to keep him safe."

"You don't understand. I am a danger, to Luke and to you." (failure, pain, too close and they suffer. luke must not suffer) "It doesn't matter. I know you're grieving, that you're trying to punish yourself for something. But the stakes just got higher. I've heard stories about the Jedi. Don't know how many of them are true, but if those skills could save his life one day Luke needs to learn."

He tries again. "Beru, the Empire is actively seeking out Force sensitives. I can hide myself, but it is a skill that takes time to learn. Luke is powerful. You have no idea what they would do to him should he be discovered."

"All the more reason for him to start soon." She looks him in the eyes, unflinching. "I swore an oath too Ben. I swore on Shmi's memory that no grandchild of hers was ever going to live as a slave. I swore it the day I swore my marriage oath, and I will keep both until the day I die. I love that boy. If I could I'd let him grow up never knowing the fear of enslavement. But I know now I can't. So Hutt or Empire, I want him to be strong enough to break their chains. And for that, I need your help."

(the force rings with her sincerity and he knows what he must do. he is reminded of the other determined young women he has known. he hopes this time things will end better).

He closes his eyes. "It will not be without risk. Even in peace time the life of a Jedi was not an easy one." Beru smiles sadly. "Nothing worthwhile ever is. If the price of his freedom is die a hero then so be it. At least he will die free."

And suddenly he can see it, the echoes of the future that awaits, the man this child will become (a stubborn boy with reckless fervour, a smiling youth with fire in his veins, a centred knight burning with resolve. his father's drive, his mother's compassion mixed with beru's will and owen's practicality, a touch of cunning humour obi-wan recognises as his own. and underneath it all the overwhelming love of a family.)

Ben grins, wide and genuine. "Let's try to do without heroic sacrifices for the moment shall we? Unless we are counting changing Luke's underclothes, in which case I will note that nobody ever accused me of being the hero without fear."

Beru's laughter is loud enough to wake the said child from his slumber, and as the wave of grumpy indignation washed over his senses Ben lets go and joins her. As their giggles die down Beru turns to him again.

"Thank you Ben. You have no idea how relieved I feel. Things don't seem so dark anymore" (with his nephew cradled close and his new friend by his side he cannot help but agree). "My pleasure. What else is family for?" He thinks for a moment. "You get to break it to you husband though." Beru coughs. "Let me sort out Owen. You just focus on not becoming one with the desert. Seriously, how have you survived out here?" This time Luke joins him in his laughter.

***Fifteen? years later***

Maul is dead. Truly dead. Fitting, that it should all end here, on the same planet where it all began. Obi-Wan (and he is obi-wan now, jedi master and guardian of their last hope. tomorrow he will go back to being uncle ben the hermit, herder of banthas and adolescent troublemakers but tonight he is obi-wan) takes a deep breath and looks back toward the canyon where he lay his old foe to rest. Perhaps now his soul will find peace in the Force. In his pocket lie the cracked remains of a pair of kyber crystals - he doesn't know why he picked them up. Perhaps it was sentiment, the desire to keep a hold of a long lost past, no matter how painful. It didn't matter - he will realise their purpose eventually.

He draws near the homestead, the lights from the kitchen casting long shadows against the pale adobe walls. A quick flicker against his shields lets him know that Luke has noticed his presence and he sends back a brief reassurance. He is fine. They are all fine.

Beru greets him at the door, one hand wiping itself against the front of her apron, the other discretely hidden behind her where he knows she carries a spare blaster. "Finished your business then?" He gives her a weary smirk. "For now at least." She relaxes, waving him inside before hesitating for a moment. "There's a storm coming, isn't there?" He knows she is not speaking literally. "Yes. Not immediately, but soon." She sighs.

"Just as well then we've prepared in advance. Come on, or else Luke will have eaten the rest of the stew. I have no idea where he puts it all!

Obi-Wan smiles. "His father was much the same at this age. Though I can assure you Luke has far better table manners."

Her laughter echoes reverberates through the corridor and they are met by an enthusiastic "Uncle Ben!" and a grunted "Kenobi." at the table.

It turns out Luke has not, in fact, devoured the last of the stew, but he does manage to levitate the rest of the flatbread onto his plate while no-one is looking. Obi-Wan looks at the boy's gleeful expression, his aunt's mock outrage and shares an fond look with his fellow uncle. (this. he thinks. this is what I protect.)

Later he is woken by the piercing call of a flytbat hunting though the night sky. On a whim he ventures outside, settling himself against a broken vaporator and running the broken June crystals between his fingers. He reaches out into the darkness. Beneath the sand the insects rest, and in the canyons bantha huddle against one another in their sleep. Behind him he feels the sleeping minds of us family, Luke shining like a full moon in the Force, his shields relaxed in sleep. The desert is full of life. All is well.

#star wars #my fic #what am i even doing

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leiaskywalkvr · 7 years

Text

another hope - chapter iii

summary: Rebels have stolen the Death Star plans. Entrusted with the task of seeing them safely to Alliance leadership, Prince Luke Organa of Alderaan races to Tatooine, hoping to find and recruit Obi-Wan Kenobi, a survivor of the Jedi Purge. Pursued by agents of the sinister Galactic Empire, Prince Luke is running out of time, and must find a way to keep the plans that carry the last hope for the Rebel Alliance from falling back into Imperial hands…

characters: leia organa, luke skywalker, obi-wan kenobi

length: 4.6k words

ao3 link: (x)

Luke woke slowly, the world coming back to him in bits and pieces as the fog that clouded his mind began to clear. He was lying on a bed; the mattress was hard and lumpy, and the blankets that covered him were itchy. When he opened his eyes, it was to see a bright, sun-filled room laid out before him; the walls were made of a chalky-coloured stone, and all the light seemed to be pouring in from a narrow slit of a window near the ceiling. He felt icy fear pump through his veins at the sight — he had no idea where he was.

Thinking back, he found that all of his most recent memories were cloudy and unclear; it was like trying to recall a mostly-forgotten dream. He didn’t remember how he had gotten to this place, and it took several moments of digging to remember that he had been headed for Tatooine. That must be where he was now, he realized; despite the fact that he was indoors and surrounded by stone, he could feel the desert heat pressing against him, leaking in through the window and the walls. He remembered the droids who had been with him, the pod they had been travelling in, and something about a Star Destroyer, and he just barely held onto the memory of placing the Death Star plans within R2-D2. It was that memory that caused him to sit up, slowly hoisting himself up on unsteady arms.

The droid was nowhere to be seen, and a feeling of horrible panic joined the fear still lingering in the pit of his stomach. There was a dull ache pounding against the front of his skull, and when he reached up he found a bacta patch plastered to his forehead; he guessed that it had been put there by the same person who had brought him here. His mouth and throat were dry and scratchy, and when he threw back the thin covers and attempted to stand the room began to spin in front of him, causing him to squeeze his eyes shut and fall back onto the pillows. He needed to find R2-D2 and make sure he was alright — that the plans were still with him — but he didn’t think he could stand without passing out.

He took in a deep breath, trying to calm himself as he twisted his shaking hands into the covers. He needed to come up with a plan to figure out where he was and what had happened to R2-D2 — preferably without collapsing. The dull ache in his head was quickly becoming more and more painful, and he wished desperately for a glass of water. Opening his eyes, he glanced around the room. It was small and sparsely furnished, with very little in the way of decoration. A collection of sandy-coloured rocks and cloudy quartz sat atop a short, rickety dresser, and a pile of laundry was heaped on a bench beneath the window. The only other item of any interest was the old slugthrower propped against the nearby corner. Luke wondered if it still worked, and filed it away in his mind just in case.

There was, however, no water, and his mouth was beginning to feel as dry as the arid desert outside. He was starting to consider calling out for someone when the door to the room slid open, and a brown-haired, middle-aged woman stepped inside. Luke shifted further back onto the bed, surprised, but the woman just smiled, her hands clasped together in front of her.

“Ah, you’re finally awake,” she said. “That’s a good sign. How are you feeling?”

“I…” Luke stared at the woman, and shook his head. “Who are you?” he asked. “Where am I?”

“My name’s Beru,” she replied. “You’re at my home, on Tatooine. More specifically, in my niece’s bedroom. She’s the one who found you and your droids in that crashed pod.”

Crash… yes, Luke could remember the Star Destroyer firing on them, and being hit. He must have smacked his head on something and blacked out; that would explain the bacta patch, and the stabbing headache. “Where are the droids now?” he asked.

“My niece has them,” Beru explained. “Something about finding them new parts. They weren’t too badly damaged, though, I promise. Just a few repairs, is all.”

“When did she find me?”

“Yesterday afternoon. It’s still early morning now, so I don’t think you’ve been out for long.”

He nodded, but the movement caused the pain in his head to flare up, so he stopped. “Could I have a glass of water, please?” he asked.

“Yes, of course! Just a second.” Beru quickly retreated back into the hallway, leaving Luke alone again. He didn’t move, instead taking in several deep, rhythmic breaths in an attempt to soothe his nerves and ease his pounding headache. R2-D2 and C-3PO were both alright; that was good news. He only hoped Beru’s niece returned soon.

Less than a minute later Beru was back, handing him a glass of cool water. He drank it greedily, until the whole thing was finished, then Beru took back the empty glass, placing it on the bedside table.

“Thank you,” he said, and she nodded. “I… You’re very kind to have taken me in.” He paused, hesitating, before continuing, “I can compensate you, for caring for both me and my droids, and buying them new parts. It’s the least I could do, to thank you for your generosity.”

There was a beat of silence, and then Beru nodded again. In the Core Worlds, most people would have rejected his offer, or at least argued before accepting. But Tatooine was a poverty-stricken planet in the Outer Rim. Here, Luke knew, you did not turn away money when it was offered, and he offered it to her wholeheartedly.

“My niece…” Beru started, seeming to hesitate a moment before continuing, “She says you’re a prince. That’s what your protocol droid told her.”

Luke wondered, briefly, if she was going to try and get more money from him, but he quickly pushed that idea from his mind; Beru seemed like a kind, honest woman, and though they looked nothing alike, she reminded him vaguely of his mother. There was something about her that just seemed instinctively maternal. “Yes,” he said, nodding. “I’m a prince. My name is Luke Organa. I—“

He was cut off by the sound of someone yelling outside. It sounded like a man, but their words were too indistinct for Luke to understand. A frown crossed Beru’s face, and she went over to the door, leaning out and peering down the hallway.

“Who is it?” Luke asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m going to go see. I’ll be right back.” She cast him one last glance before disappearing down the hallway.

Luke remained seated on the bed, listening intently as her footsteps retreated. The sounds of a conversation floated down, but it was all much too quiet for him to understand, or to even tell who was speaking. A feeling of dread began to seep into him, and he glanced at the slugthrower in the corner of the room. Slowly, he moved to sit on the edge of the bed. There was a burst of yelling from outside, and then heavy footsteps sounded on the stairs. Even though simply moving had sent the world whirling, Luke stood, hurrying across the room and grabbing the slugthrower.

It felt as if the ground was going to fall out from under him at any moment, but he managed to remain on his feet. He’d never used a slugthrower before, but it was close enough to a blaster that he felt he could figure it out. He gave it a quick once-over, blinking to focus his vision, and then aimed the weapon at the door. The footsteps grew closer, stopping every few moments as if inspecting something before continuing. Luke’s heart was thudding in his chest as they approached the bedroom.

An Imperial stormtrooper stepped into the doorway.

◊◊◊

When Leia came to, it was to find Ben Kenobi kneeling beside her, a look of concern on his weathered old face. Exhaling slowly, she carefully lifted herself up into a sitting position, rubbing at the tender bump now raised on the back of her head.

“Easy now,” Ben said, his hand on her shoulder. “You’ve had a busy day. You’re fortunate to be all in one piece.”

Leia blinked, attempting to clear away some of the fuzz that still lingered in her mind. “Ben Kenobi,” she breathed. “You have no idea how glad I am to see you.”

“The Jundland Wastes are not to be travelled lightly,” Ben said, standing and reaching out a hand to her. She took it, and he helped hoist her to her feet, leading her to a rock and settling her down onto it. R2 rolled up to her, beeping his relief that she was alright, and she gave him a small smile. Ben looked, briefly, at the droid before turning back to Leia. “Tell me, young Leia, what brings you out this far?” he asked.

“This droid here,” Leia answered, pointing to R2, who gave a series of little beeps. “I found him in a crashed escape pod yesterday, alongside a protocol droid and a boy. Apparently, they were looking for someone, but the boy was unconscious from the crash, and so this little guy decided to complete the mission himself. The person they’re looking for seems to be someone named Obi-Wan Kenobi. Do you who that is? Is he a relative of yours?”

At the sound of the name Obi-Wan, Ben’s eyes widened, and he slowly sank back onto the rock across from Leia. “Obi-Wan Kenobi,” he said, staring at her with a look of incredulity on his face. His voice quieted. “Obi-Wan… Now that’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time… a long time.”

Leia’s eyebrows drew together as she watched the old wizard. “My uncle said something about him,” she said. “He told me he was dead.”

Ben shook his head. “Oh, he’s not dead. Well, not yet.”

“Then you know him?”

“Well of course I know him!” Something of a small smirk crossed Ben’s face, and he tapped his hand against his own chest. “He’s me.” At that, R2 let out a stream of loud, excited beeps. “I haven’t gone by the name Obi-Wan since, oh, before you were born.”

“So do you have any idea why they were looking for you?” Leia asked, gesturing to R2.

Ben looked at the droid, a thoughtful expression on his face. “I might have an idea,” he said, but before he could say more the cries of a group of Sand People came resounding down into the canyon. “I think we better get inside,” he said, standing. “The Sand People are easily startled, but they’ll soon be back, and in greater numbers.”

Leia stood, and looked to R2. “Where’s Threepio?” she asked, but the only answer the droid had was an unknowing whistle.

She found the protocol droid several metres away, lying in a pile of sand with his left arm ripped off and discarded beside him; it was the same arm that had been damaged in the crash. He must have been set upon by the Sand People before he had had a chance to hide. Grabbing his arm, Leia helped him to stand, and Ben lead the way to his home.

◊◊◊

Ben’s dwelling was small and cluttered, outfitted with only the barest necessities for survival, but it was comfortable. Leia had settled 3PO onto a bench in the corner and was in the process of fixing his arm, hopefully for good this time.

“My father didn’t fight in the wars,” she said, glancing over her shoulder at Ben, who sat across the table from her. “He was a navigator on a spice freighter.”

“Is that what your uncle told you?” Ben asked, one eyebrow raised. “He could never understand why your father left; he thought he should have stayed here, and not gotten involved.”

Leia paused, turning to face him fully. “Did you fight in the Clone Wars, too?” she asked.

“Yes.” Ben nodded. “I was once a Jedi Knight, the same as your father.”

Leia stared at him, and at the distant expression on his face. “What was he like? My father?”

A small, almost sad, smile pulled at Ben’s lips. “He was the best star-pilot in the galaxy, and a cunning warrior.” He looked at Leia, and his smile grew. “From what I understand, you have become quite proficient with a blaster yourself.”

She grinned and shrugged, looking back at 3PO’s arm, now almost completely reattached.

Ben nodded and looked away again, the smile slipping from his face just the tiniest amount. “And he was a good friend… Which reminds me — I have something here for you.” He stood, walking over to a small chest sitting on the floor nearby. Lifting the lid, he began to rummage about inside. “Your father wanted you to have this when you were old enough, but your uncle refused. He said it wasn’t proper; I think he was afraid you would follow old Obi-Wan on some damned-fool idealistic crusade, like your father.”

Having finished tightening the last bolts on 3PO’s arm, Leia looked over to where Ben stood; he now held a strange cylindrical object in his hand, covered in buttons and other strange gadgets.

“Miss,” 3PO said, and Leia glanced back at him, “if you’ll not be needing me, I’ll shut down for a while.”

She nodded. “Yeah, that’s fine.” She stood, not even checking to see if the droid had even shut down before wandering over to stand near Ben, staring at the strange object in his hands. “What is it?” she asked.

“Your father’s lightsaber,” Ben said, holding it out to her. “The weapon of a Jedi Knight.”

Carefully, Leia took it in her hands. As soon as her fingers wrapped around the cool metal, a barrage of images flew across her vision, so fast she could barely tell what she was looking at. She saw battles, one after the other, fought between droids and men in white armour; children, dead and crumpled on a stone floor; a river of lava and a woman lying unconscious. A man’s voice sounded in her ears, a cry that was nothing more than a whisper: “I hate you!” She could feel a crushing mix of rage and sorrow, churning inside her like an angered animal and leaving tears, unshed, lingering in her eyes.

The images faded as quickly as they came, taking with them the anger and the sorrow, and leaving Leia staring at the weapon, stunned. “What… what was that?” she asked, looking up with wide eyes at Ben, who was watching her curiously.

“Did you see something?” he asked.

She nodded. “Just flashes of images; battles and… and massacres.” A shiver ran down her spine as she thought of what she had seen.

Ben was silent for a moment, scrutinizing both her and the lightsaber with an unreadable expression on his face. “I believe you might have just unwillingly witnessed events from the lightsaber’s past,” he said. “It is a rare ability known as psychometry; very useful, but also very dangerous.”

Leia looked down at the lightsaber hilt, turning it over in her hands. “I saw children,” she said, “murdered. Who killed them? Who could kill children?”

Ben sat back down, and Leia followed suit, staring at him expectantly. He sighed, rubbing tiredly at his knees before turning to face her. “The Clone Wars were a dark time,” he began. “For over a thousand generations, the Jedi Knights were the guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic. But that was before the Empire. They hunted down and destroyed the Jedi, killing all who they found — including the children.”

“Is that how my father died?”

There was a moment of hesitation, barely even noticeable, before Ben nodded. “A young Jedi named Darth Vader, who was a pupil of mine until he turned to evil, helped the Empire to find and kill the Jedi. He betrayed and murdered your father. Now the Jedi are all but extinct.” He looked at Leia, and the expression he wore was grave. “Vader was seduced by the dark side of the Force.”

Leia frowned. “The Force?”

“It is what gives a Jedi their power,” Ben explained. “It’s an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together.”

Leia wanted to ask more, but R2 suddenly let out a stream of loud whistles, drawing Ben’s attention away. “What is it, my little friend?” he asked, standing and walking over to where R2 sat. “Have you got something for me?” The astromech beeped incomprehensibly, and then one of the knobs of his head began to glow, projecting a blue hologram onto the small round table that sat in the middle of the room. Leia recognized it instantly as the prince.

“General Kenobi,” the hologram began, “a long time ago you worked alongside my father during the Clone Wars. Now, he asks you once again to help him in his fight against the Empire. Regretfully, my ship has fallen under attack and I have been forced to flee in an escape pod. If you are seeing this message, then my mission to bring you to Alderaan has failed. I have entrusted this R2 unit with the safekeeping of information that is vital to the Rebellion’s survival. It is imperative that my father receive it. You must see this dr—“

He was cut off by what sounded like an explosion. The hologram shook and flickered, then died. Ben sat down and leaned back, thoughtfully running a hand over his short beard. Leia’s eyes remained focused on the place where the hologram had been; so, the boy was a rebel. Not only that, but he had been carrying sensitive information — information that now sat in R2-D2’s memory systems. Information that the Empire was no doubt anxious to get a hold of.

Ben looked over at her and leaned forward, a small smirk playing on his lips. “You must learn the ways of the Force,” he said, “if you are to come with me to Alderaan.”

Leia blinked. “Alderaan?” She stared incredulously at the old man. “I… You want me to go with you?”

“Of course,” he said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the galaxy. “I’m getting much too old for this sort of thing, you know.”

She felt a smile stretch across her face as a sort of incredulous joy filled her. He wanted her to go with him to Alderaan — to the Core Worlds, on a mission for the Rebellion. Off of Tatooine. Ben would get her off Tatooine; he was her ticket.

“The prince is at my home,” she said, gesturing to the table where, only moments ago, the hologram had appeared. “He was injured in the crash, but he should be alright to travel soon. I can bring you to him.”

Ben’s eyebrows rose, his expression hopeful. “So then you are coming with me?”

Leia took in a deep breath. Uncle Owen would be furious to know she had agreed to travel to Alderaan with Ben Kenobi, but it was an opportunity she could not pass up. It might be her only way of ever getting off Tatooine, and she was going to take it, with or without her uncle’s approval.

“Yes,” she said, nodding. “I want to learn the ways of the Force. I want to become a Jedi, like my father.”

◊◊◊

Leia saw the smoke long before the entry dome came into view. It was thick and black, pouring into the blue sky like oil. Her heart caught in her throat at the sight of it, and she sped up so quickly that Ben, sitting beside her in the speeder, reached out to steady himself.

The black smoke was coming from the garage. As they approached the farm, Leia stopped the speeder and jumped out, running towards the scorched entry dome; its sandy pourstone was black with soot, and wisps of grey smoke floated from the doorway. Everything stank of fire, and the smoke stung her eyes and scratched at her throat as she spun around wildly.

“Uncle Owen!” she called, scanning the area for any sign of her aunt and uncle. “Aunt Beru! Uncle Owen!”

There was no answer. She took a few stumbling steps towards the entry dome, and paused; there, in the doorway, were two blackened corpses, burnt beyond recognition. A sob caught in her throat, and she threw her hands up to cover her mouth. She didn’t even need to ask herself who had done this — the Empire had come for the prince, and they had killed her aunt and uncle in retaliation. Because of her.

Her breath came in heaving gasps, and she crumpled to the ground. Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru were dead, and the prince was likely in the hands of the Empire, and she hadn’t been there to stop it. She had nothing now — no home, no family, no possessions save the clothes she wore and her dead father’s lightsaber. And it was all her fault.

The weight of a comforting hand settled on her shoulder. “There was nothing you could have done, Leia,” Ben said. “Had you been there, you too would be dead, and the Empire would have the droids as well as the prince.”

Leia wiped angrily at the tears leaking from her eyes, blinking to keep them at bay. “I knew he was part of the Rebellion,” she whispered. “I knew the Empire was after him, and I didn’t warn them. It’s my fault they’re dead.”

“It is the Empire’s fault they are dead,” Ben said, squeezing her shoulder. “That is who you must blame. Not yourself.”

She nodded. Despite what Ben said, she didn’t know if she could ever forgive herself for this — for causing the deaths of the people who had raised her and loved her all her life, however inadvertently it might have been.

But she did know one thing: She would become a Jedi, and she would help put an end to the Empire.

◊◊◊

Luke followed behind the two stormtroopers as they lead him through the hallway, his hands bound together in front of him. He felt unsteady, and the shiny black floor of the corridor seemed to swing from side to side, as if attempting to throw him off balance. The pain in his head was slowly becoming excruciating, and the gash on his forehead had begun to sting; the bacta patch had fallen off at some point, leaving the wound only partially healed and likely to scar. He tried not to focus on that, however — he had bigger issues to deal with.

He had been dragged rather unceremoniously from the home on Tatooine; the stormtroopers hadn’t even allowed him to put his boots on. Barely able to stand, they’d had to practically carry him away. He didn’t remember most of the journey, but they had brought him up to a Star Destroyer, where he had promptly been locked away in a cell and had fallen unconscious again. He had woken only when they had come to bring him to the Death Star.

The Death Star — the battle station with enough power to destroy an entire planet, whose plans he had been entrusted to bring to Rebel leadership, and on which he was now a prisoner. Luke liked to think of himself as brave, but the thought of being imprisoned on the Death Star left no small amount of fear in his heart.

The stormtroopers lead him deep within the bowels of the station. He had been given a pair of shoes before leaving the Star Destroyer, and they fit poorly, pinching at his toes with every step he took. Before long he knew his feet would be red and blistered, but they did not stop until they reached their destination — a cell, on one of the station’s many detention levels. One of his escorts removed the binders from his wrists, and the other all but threw him inside.

The cell was bare, with only a hard metal bench to sit on. The walls were black, and the lights set into the ceiling were covered by a metal grating. A camera sat on the wall above the door, watching his every move; Luke stared into it defiantly as the door to his cell hissed shut, leaving him all alone.

He sat down on the bench, his fingers curling around the edge to grip the cold metal. He felt nauseated, and the pounding pain in his skull didn’t help. Closing his eyes, he took in several deep breaths and tried to console himself — he had been captured, yes, but all was not lost. R2-D2 had not been found, and was likely still safe with Beru’s niece. The droid would seek out Obi-Wan Kenobi, and get the plans to Luke’s father. The Rebellion could still be saved.

In the meantime, Luke would do what he could to survive. He was a member of the Imperial Senate, and a font of knowledge regarding the Rebel Alliance. The Empire would not kill him — not right away. They would try and get whatever information they could out of him, by whatever means necessary, but he had been trained to resist interrogation, and to withstand torture. He would not willingly give away the Rebellion; of this he was sure.

It was not long before the door to his cell was sliding open once more. Luke opened his eyes to see two black-clad guards stepping into the room, but they did not worry him; it was the looming figure behind them that gave him cause for concern. Darth Vader strode into the cell, bringing with him such an air of malice and fear that Luke felt his conviction waver, and he shrank back, as if there was somewhere for him to escape to.

“Your Highness,” Vader said, his voice deep and menacing, “how kind of you to finally join us.”

“Darth Vader,” Luke replied, hoping that none of the fear he felt showed in his voice. “I suspect you’ve come to interrogate me?”

“Yes. Very good.” The praise was mocking, and Luke clenched his jaw. Vader almost seemed to be smirking beneath his mask. “You will tell me what happened to the plans you received,” he said.

“I don’t—“

“Do not try and lie to me, Your Highness,” Vader interrupted. “Several transmissions were beamed to your ship by rebel spies. The plans were not found onboard, and you are the only one who escaped. So, I will say it again, Prince Luke — you will tell me what happened to the plans you received.” He stared down at Luke, and Luke stared back up at him, despite the fear that rose in him at the sight of Vader’s black mask and its soulless red eyes.

He said nothing, and Vader turned to the doorway. An interrogator droid, black as the suit of its master and covered in all manner of disquieting gadgets, floated into the room. It held a needle in one of its probes, and the liquid inside glinted menacingly in the dim light.

Vader stepped close to him, leaning down as the droid made its slow approach. “We will find the plans, and your hidden Rebel base, as well,” he warned, his words dripping malice. “Of that you can be sure, Your Highness.”

#star wars #my writing #luke skywalker #leia organa

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capricornus-rex · 3 years

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A Shadow of What You Used to Be (6)

Chapter 6: No, There Is Another | Cal Kestis x Irele Skywalker

A/N: Sorry it took so long, you guys! ;;w;; What with the holidays and me managing what to order for my 24th birthday today (It’s the 27th where I live so we’re celebrating in a quite chill way heheh), so this is my birthday treat to you! A new chapter! 💖💖

Tags: Fem! OC, Irele Skywalker, Force-sensitive! OC, Anakin’s Younger Sister, Skywalker! OC, Darth Vader’s Secret Apprentice, Long-lost Sibling

Requesting to be tagged: @heavenly1927

Also in AO3

Chapters: Prelude – 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 | Previous: Part 5 | Next: Part 7 | Masterlist

7 of ?

19 BBY

Irele, her stepbrother Owen, and his now-wife Beru Lars live together in the same roof. After their father had died of natural causes, they placed him next to the grave of Shmi, as they deem it appropriate; they have taken full control of the homestead, though their ways didn’t change that much.

Now thirteen years old, Irele Skywalker had grown into the spitting image of Shmi Skywallker albeit younger. Medium length hair always secured as a ponytail with thin braids woven along the tail, warm and earthy-colored eyes, and a somber yet friendly smile.

The teenager had grown into an adventurous young spirit. Perhaps, if one is to see Shmi as a girl, she would have been the exact same as her daughter. Gaining friends in Anchorhead and even as far as Mos Eisley, though she had learned to steer clear of the latter town unless the need truly arises. Taking odd jobs in either of the towns, her hustler’s nature remained intact, she did not want to depend heavily on her brother and sister-in-law for monetary support—albeit Owen strongly disagrees, but to not avail.

“You’ve been out more often than staying at home!” chided Owen, who was now perhaps in his early thirties.

“Well, I do need to work, don’t I, big brother?” she tapped his bulky arm as she strolled into the house.

She had just returned from her work in the shop that’s a hybrid of a speeder vendor and a servicing center. Whether she realizes it or not, she always finds herself tinkering with something, fixing them… like her real brother’s pastime as a child.

Irele had taken home a piece of a machine to her house, a personal project of sorts, completely unrelated to her work. She settled herself on the small worktable in her bedroom and immediately casts her lamp’s light on the working space. A metal rod put together with various, mismatching shafts and components held together by screws and sewn leather wrappings; it’s even a miracle that it worked, one way or another, it would serve better as a melee weapon than that of a Magnaguard’s electro-staff. Perhaps this staff is one of the many testaments of Irele’s skillfulness and resourcefulness, for growing up as a hustler and being exposed to machinery at an early age.

As she grew, she always donned a woven scarf made by Shmi. It has been a few years or so, and the heartache is very much fresh; every time she catches a glimpse of her headstone, with Cliegg’s next to it, the healing wound is ripped open once again—though she found comfort in confiding and speaking to both of them as if they were still alive, sitting with her and listening.

“Oh, circuitry should be here. Mom would have pointed that out too.” she mumbled to herself as she fiddled the wires with the sharp end of a thin screwdriver.

Come the hour of sunset, Irele had finished her chores after her handicraft. In the middle of her working, she felt a presence—it was sage and calming—she also heard the grunting of a single eopie. Curious, she and Beru went to the door. She was right about the eopie, carrying a single rider who held the reins with only one hand and is carrying something with the other. Irele thought the hooded rider to be her brother, as she remembered his own cloak, but the cowl revealed a slightly older man—his jaw was covered with a full, sandy-brown beard, his eyes were kind and yet she hinted the sadness in them, as if tragedy had befell him shortly before coming here.

It was Obi-Wan.

When the stranger coaxed the animal to kneel, he carefully hopped down, and supported his precious cargo with his free arm. He approaches the older girl and she willingly takes what he gave. The wide sleeve of his robe gave way to show an infant boy, perhaps a few weeks old. Beru and Irele’s eyes lit up, they spoke nothing to the stranger but they bid him with a short, polite bow.

Obi-Wan noticed the second girl, her olive skin and brown eyes gave him a memory of Anakin—the reminder sharply jabbed him into the recesses of his mind. The angry voices, the echoes of the sputtering lava, and the sorrowful howling of Anakin drummed behind his ears.

“Are you alright, sir?” Irele noticed.

“Oh, dear. I am fine, thank you,” he cleared his throat and tucked his arms inside his sleeves. “I am just not used to travel here in this place… but I will be.”

“I see.”

“My dear, may I know your name?”

“It is Irele…”

“Irele…?”

“Irele Skywalker-Lars.”

Obi-Wan slowly angled his head upwards, concealing his surprise as her name sinks into him.

Another Skywalker?

“Well, Irele,” he cleared his throat again. “May I ask a favor from you?”

“I’ll do my best to fulfill it.”

“I’m sure you can,” Obi-Wan’s gaze went to Beru carrying the baby who joined her husband, Owen, looking at the binary sunset. “Take care of him.”

“I don’t mean to sound uptight but… Who is he to me?”

“He’s your family. Your nephew. His name is Luke.”

Irele was a smart girl. She knew whose son the infant would have belonged to. A part of her wanted to ask where the father is—her brother—but perhaps it was for the best that she does not obligate the stranger to indulge her questions.

“Then I’ll do everything in my power to keep him safe.”

“I know, Irele,” Kenobi smiled, although a little sadly. “I know.”

“Sir, I’m sorry but I don’t know your name.”

“Ben… Ben Kenobi.”

Kenobi did not stay long in the premises of the homestead. He bowed to Irele, who returned the gesture, and returned to his steed. The eopie grunted as Kenobi hauled the reins to the right side, then spurred the tall quadruped to the distance, clouds of sand puffing under its hooves until the figure disappears as the twin suns set.

When Kenobi was gone from her sight, she turned to her brother and sister-in-law, along with their nephew—whom Owen would have probably called his son, given the chance. Irele was excited. She was already thinking of the things she and Luke would do—what games they’d play, what machines she’d teach him to fix, what kind of speeders could they hop on together.

He was the brother she never had.

From a certain point of view, it’s a wrong that she could right, while fulfilling her promise to Kenobi.

After Beru nursed the infant, she laid him down on their bed, Irele never left Luke’s side. She chuckled every time he would squirm, coo, and smile at her. Her heart fluttered and she fell in love with him. When Beru left the two children alone, Irele tasked herself to watch over him.

She moved her finger to his tiny hand and with his tiny, soft fingers he clasped her thumb with a grip as light as a feather. Irele’s heart melted once more.

And then she whispered as she kissed the tiniest hand that held hers, “I’ll keep you safe, Luke. I’ll always protect you.”

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notbecauseofvictories · 7 years

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psst! thoughts on Lyra Erso, especially what you think might've happened if she had somehow survived? does she get to meet Beru and Breha, do they form a little club of middle-aged women in the Rebellion?

The crystal was…interesting.

Breha had wandered over to the cluttered table out of vague interest—amid the looming structures and finicky-looking equipment, the table was the only thing she trusted herself not to damage. It was a chaotic mess, tools and rock samples and notes scrawled on flimsi all scattered, stacked haphazardly. But Breha’s gaze had been drawn to the innocuous white crystal immediately. She couldn’t help picking it up, turning it over in her hand. Someone had drilled a hole through one end, and threaded a cord through it, as though it was meant to be worn as a pendant.

It felt oddly warm against her skin, like something living.

Breha thought of Leia inexplicably, and for a moment she panicked—but Leia was fine, stuck in yet another strategy meeting. She would be there in the mess for dinner, probably arguing with Captain Solo, or trying to bite back a grin as Luke teased Lieutenant Antilles. Leia was fine. She was—

Breha startled at the sound of a loud grunt, too-close behind her. When she whirled around there was a helmeted sentient sticking out of what had previously been a gaping hole in the ground. The faint sound of hammering, voices, could still be heard drifting up from depths unknown.

“Oh!” the human woman—at least, Breha was reasonably sure; it was hard to tell under the layer of grime—said. She hauled herself up and out of the hole, stumbled to her feet. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize anyone was here. Have you been waiting long?”

“Only a moment or so,” Breha demurred. Now that she could see all of her, the sentient was definitely a human woman, dressed in something that may have, at one time, been a Rebel uniform. (It was encrusted with entirely too much dirt to be called that anymore.) She had repurposed a blaster bandolier, and stuck it full of what looked like laserscopes and spectrographs.

There was a pickax at her hip.

Breha cleared her throat, tried again. “I was told Lyra Erso—”

“You must be with Acquisitions! They said someone would be coming by for the wishlist.”

“It’s not a wishlist,” Breha said, but she couldn’t summon her usual fierceness, the accompanying lecture about the importance of resource planning.

So this was Lyra Erso.

Your husband killed my husband, Breha thought dizzily. She’d forgotten how to breathe, what came after exhale.

“Yes, yes,” Lyra Erso said, waving a hand dismissively. She had come to stand beside Breha, and was sifting through the cluttered mess of the desk with purpose. “I swear on the Force, the Rebellion has become almost as bad as the Order was when it comes to paperwork…”

Breha blinked. “The Order?”

Lyra Erso froze, a sheaf of flimsi in her hand. Breha watched a complicated expression flicker across her face, and then slide away. “Oh. That’s—I mean the Jedi Order,” she finally said, stiltedly. “I was…a youngling. At the temple on Coruscant. In another life.”

Now that Breha was looking, she could see that the lines around Lyra Erso’s mouth, her eyes, were not cracks in the dirt—she had to be just older than Breha, and that was a strange thought, that Galen Erso’s widow was the same age as Bail Organa’s.

“AgriCorps?” Breha hazarded. She wasn’t sure if there was a politer way to say, so you never made it to padawan.

“Engineering division. Mining geology and geoengineering, mainly.” Lyra Erso straightened up, and looked Breha in the eye. “You?”

“I was not in the AgriCorps,” Breha retorted dryly. Lyra Erso pulled a face, and Breha found herself adding, “But I knew many Jedi.”

“Ah. From Coruscant, then?”

“Alderaan,” Breha said, and Lyra Erso jerked, stumbling a few steps back, away from Breha. All the blood had drained from her face, and Breha watched her throat work as she swallowed.

“Oh.”

“My husband was a senator on Coruscant for many years, though, and counted some of the High Councilors his friends.”

“I know,” Lyra said weakly. She looked as though she wasn’t breathing. “I—heard stories of Senator Organa. Though more from…My husband was a engineer. He worked on military contracts, so he—”

“I am aware,” Breha said, and she wasn’t able to keep the ice and fury out of her voice this time, not entirely. Lyra flinched.

“I should—get you that list,” she said quietly, and Breha stepped aside so she could continue searching through the mess of the table. Finally, she slid a piece of flimsi out from beneath a strange corckscrew-like tool and a hunk of black rock. Held it out to Breha.

“Let me know if you can’t decipher the handwriting.”

“Thank you,” Breha said, and turned to go—

“Organa.”

Breha turned, drawing herself up, but Lyra was only just standing there with her hand outstretched. “My crystal, please.”

Breha blinked, and Lyra pointed at her hand. Breha uncurled her fist—she’d forgotten, and the white crystal was still in her palm. It was strangely cool now, and her hand was clammy around it.

“Is it valuable?” Breha asked, stepping forward to drop the crystal into Lyra’s open palm.

“Only to me,” Lyra said, curling her fingers around it so tightly that her hand trembled, just slightly. “It was my daughter’s.”

There was a particular tone of voice they all knew too well these days; it spoke only in past tense. “I’m sorry for your loss,” Breha offered, but it sounded weak even to her.

“Yes, well,” Lyra said. She smiled bitterly. “The sacrifice of Rogue One will be remembered by the Rebellion for as long it as endures, isn’t that right? I think your daughter said that, at the memorial.”

Breha remembered, with a suddenly awful pang. Jyn Erso, Leia had read aloud, but Breha had been numb, Breha had been sobbing bailbailbail with every beat of her heart and howling for Alderaan from her very spirit and she hadn’t thought—

“I should go,” Breha said, feeling suddenly very clumsy, and young, in a way she hadn’t been for decades. “I’m—needed elsewhere.”

“Of course,” Lyra Erso said, and despite her grubby uniform and the bulky tools, there was a fearsomeness to her, this old woman with her grief. “I wouldn’t want to keep you from your duties.”

Breha could feel Lyra Erso’s eyes on her as she climbed into the speeder, and left the mining camp in her exhaust.

“What in the nine hells did you say to Lyra?” Beru asked, the moment she had set down her mess-tray.

Breha glanced up from her datapad, idly marking her place in the Intel report and then banishing the file. “I don’t think I know any Lyras.”

“Erso. The geologist.”

That had been days ago, now. “How do you know Lyra Erso?” Breha asked, raising an eyebrow at Beru, who huffed softly.

“I’ve spent my whole life building, maintaining, and repairing water vaporators,” Beru said, stirring the fortified vita-gel into her stew. (Breha wrinkled her nose, she couldn’t help it; she was perpetually amazed by how much Beru and her nephew seemed to enjoy dehydrated food.) “It turns out mine drainage tech isn’t that different, so I consulted on her project.”

“Well, I didn’t say anything to Erso,” Breha said. “I was there for Acquisitions. I got her requested list, and left. I was perfectly polite.”

Beru hummed noncommittally. “Fine, but were you polite, or were you—queen-polite?”

Breha blinked. “What’s ‘queen-polite’?”

“Oh, you know,” Beru said, gesturing unhelpfully with her spoon. “That way you get whenever Draven speaks over you, or Han teases Leia too much. Polite, but with a lot of cold underneath.”

There were times Breha missed being a queen. People showed proper respect when you were queen.“I do not do that.”

“You’re doing it right now.”

“I am not.”

“Leia does it too. Gets it from you, I imagine.”

Breha wasn’t sure whether to take that as a compliment or not, and so settled for looking icily at Beru. Beru sighed. “You know that—even if Galen Erso hadn’t built a means of destroying the Death Star, you can’t hold his wife accountable for his actions.”

Breha felt her face go hot, and she resisted the urge to defend herself. (There was nothing to defend. There wasn’t.) “I’m not going to discuss this.”

“You’d like her, you know,” Beru said after a moment, and smiled sunnily when Breha glared. “Lyra, I mean. And you would. She’s very…No one is going to convince her to be anything but what she is.”

“What she is is at least partly complicit in building the Death Star,” Breha scoffed. Her datapad buzzed, and she glanced down—just another message from the Director of Logistics, reminding her they had a meeting. “We’re all too old to learn new tricks these days.”

When she looked up again, Beru’s face had fallen, and she was picking at the stew with a faint scowl. Breha swallowed. “I didn’t mean…”

“It seems to me,” Beru said quietly, “it wasn’t long ago you were a queen and I was a farmer’s wife. Now you buy bombs, and I drain underground rivers. I think—all we do these days is learn new tricks.”

Breha was not sulking, because sulking was something badly-behaved children did. She hadn’t sulked since she was a spotty adolescent, and every whim of her mother’s was cause for angst; she had no intention of taking the habit up again after forty-odd years.

…though Breha had also spent the last forty-odd years as the unquestioned Queen of Alderaan, whose will was the law of a world, which might have helped.

“Just—deliver the equipment, please,” the Director of Logistics said with a sigh, rubbing the spot between his eyes. “It’s already been loaded onto the speeder, all you have to do is bring it to the camp.”

So: sulking.

When Breha arrived at the camp, the sun was low, and the orange light of it only sometimes broke the tree cover. Yavin was strange in the dusk—Alderaan had always been bright and clear, cool, and the dark fell quickly. None of this dreamy haze, the sky streaked with chemical color.

The miners were gathered around an open fire, doing nothing much that she could make out. They rose to their feet as Breha brought the speeder down, switched off the engines.

If Lyra Erso was among them, Breha couldn’t pick her out from the other dark shapes around the fire.

“Acquisitions! I brought your—machine,” she announced, waving at the heavy durasteel thing that had weighted down the back of the speeder. “But I’ll need help unloading it. It is probably best to do before it gets fully dark…”

Breha would say this of the Rebellion—it attracted the sort of people who were already in motion by the time you finished asking for help. Before Breha could put more than a few thoughts together, she found herself with her shoulder pressed to the heavy durasteel frame as someone shouted cheerfully, “Lift, you sons of banthas!”

In front of Breha was Lyra Erso, though the shape of her was barely discernible in the half-light. It was such a surprise that Breha nearly startled away, dropped the machine—though the heft of it was the only thing weighting her down just then.

Breha wondered if Lyra Erso was wearing the crystal around her neck right now. It was too dark to make out out anything but vague shapes.

By the time they finished moving the machine, Breha was sweating and ready to lie down there in the grass if it meant her arms would stop aching. It was disheartening to feel so suddenly elderly and infirm, when all the miners were laughing, ambling back towards the fire and talking among themselves. They were all very young, strong and alive and laughing.

(Breha tried to imagine what it would be like, to look for your daughter among them, and not find her, keep not finding her. She exhaled.)

At last, there was just Breha and Lyra, standing there in he dark grass.

“I spoke to Beru,” Breha said, in absence of anything else to say.

“Oh,” Lyra said, and even in the dim light from the fire, Breha could see her eyes dart to her. “Did you?”

“She says I’d like you.”

“Hm. She told me the same thing,” Lyra said.

“Meddlesome old biddy,” Breha muttered, and Lyra laughed. It was so unexpected that Breha stared.

“I didn’t—I mean, aren’t we all these days?” Lyra asked, grinning. “Better a meddlesome old biddy than anything else.”

Breha craned her neck, to look up at the machine—it had grown dark enough that she could just pick out the shape of it against the dark tree cover, the few stars. Breha had persuaded the transpo to part with it on the condition that the Rebellion make it look like his ship had been sacked by pirates.

Breha had been the Queen of Alderaan, Jewel of the Core, and now she helped two-bit transpo agents commit insurance fraud.

“Beru says that all we’ve done since coming to the Rebellion is new tricks,” Breha said, turning to look at Lyra. In the flickering firelight, she was pale enough to pass for a ghost, a dead woman—and that was appropriate, wasn’t it? Wife to a dead man, mother to a martyr. Two old women standing in the dark, who ought to have been dead before now.

“I suppose you had better learn, then,” Lyra said.

#middle aged ladies fighting for the rebellion!!!!#skymurdock #asked and answered #the warry stars #star wars #as always I am very disappointed with this but I'm sick of writing it so here #breha lives au #lyra erso #this is a thing I made

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