coolhandluke | Ahch-To, Baby

Entry tags:

Ahch-To, Baby

There were a lot of things Luke hadn't asked himself in the years since arriving on Ach-To. Some because he didn't want to know--or imagine--the answers. Some because there was no reason to borrow more trouble than he already had, and the litany of regrets was already long enough. Some because, well, they just weren't thinks that Luke Skywalker ever thought of.

Like the fact that he looked like some old Jedi hermit, complete with beard and unkempt hair and dingy robes. It hadn't exactly been part of the plan, but then, there hadn't been anyone to comment, or even a mirror.

That was the outside, however. Inside, something in Luke had died long ago, stopping in its tracks. Meeting himself, he would have assumed wisdom and calm, if a little eccentricity. But that hadn't been why Luke had come here, and it hadn't been what he'd found. No, it wasn't the Jedi Master who had retreated. It was the scared farm-boy, who'd flown too high and been brought crashing to ground. It was Luke from Tatooine, who had tried to be Master Skywalker, the hero, and failed.

That was what he'd been running from. That expectation, and his failure at it. That, and the disaster he knew his presence would bring to what was left of what he and the Rebellion had built, if Ben knew where he was. Better, he'd thought, to close himself off and shut down before he hurt anyone else. By his own hand, or by leading Kylo Ren to exact revenge.

It was not so simple a thing, however, to die. Unwilling to take any more lives, including his own, he lingered. Unwilling to open himself up to the Force, he nevertheless existed within it, his body sustained by it as much as by the food he caught. For awhile it seemed that he would just continue, in a sort of limbo of his own making, unwilling to make a move that would upset the galaxy even further than his presence already had.

Until she came.

Rey held a mirror up to him, one he wasn't always willing to gaze into but one from which it was impossible to escape--not least because she simply wouldn't go away. At first resentful, he quickly became resigned.

And then, suddenly, he became expectant. Not hopeful--he would not go so far as to say that--but there came a morning when he realized he would be disappointed to find her gone, given up. Despite his fear, despite his warnings, he wanted her to persist.

Maybe because he hadn't. And as much shame as he felt over that fact, the shame was at least an emotion. And as much as he'd tried to suppress those over the past years, the irritation at her arrival had begun to wear away at his resolve like grains of sand until emotions he'd thought long buried began to unearth themselves.

The truth was, Luke Skywalker was every bit the mess he looked. And yet, the longer she stayed, the less he could find it within himself to resent it. He'd been too long alone, and too long waiting. It only stood to reason that he'd bend to the first wind that came.

Wasn't how this had all started, to begin with?

The sun had barely risen when he took position, waiting outside the hut she'd claimed, unwilling to seem too eager but having to quash a small stirring of impatience, just the same. Warnings not to get too close, too attached, flickered in his mind's eye like a glitched holovid. But Luke had never once detached from anything--and if going to the most remote location he could find hadn't done it, he didn't know that it was worth trying, anymore.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Rey was more than happy to be told she was wrong, especially since she hadn't been the source of any of these stories and she was instead now getting them directly from the source. Or, at least, the source of a third of the story, with many arguing that it might have been the most important part. Somehow, though, she doubted Luke would agree.

She took the plate when he offered it, giving him a nod of thanks but not wanting to interrupt him as he seemed ready to burst to tell her about how wrong she was. It was sort of nice, seeing him actually care enough about something to want to make sure it was fully understood, not just because it was a lesson that needed to be learned but because of the sheer principle of the thing. Maybe that was why she had a small smile on her face as she followed after him, listening to him as he spoke.

"Heroes and legends are people at their core," she brought up, sitting cross-legged on the rocky ground. "Or droids, though I guess some could argue that they count as people too. It might be hard to keep that in mind sometimes, but history is written with every passing day. What the Resistance is doing today, win or lose, is going to be remembered differently tomorrow by whoever hears its story."

Assuming, of course, that the First Order didn't succeed in wiping out the entire galaxy in a mad drive for power. But she pushed that thought aside, tucking into her food as she thought over what he'd said.

"So you just... accidentally saw a message from Leia, never knowing who she was other than a princess, and left your farm on Tatooine - which, by the way, is almost as bad as Jakku, so you were one to talk when you called it nowhere - to go rescue her?"

The eggs were... not great. But they were edible. They were also hot, which meant they were basically preferable to most anything Luke had eaten in months.

"Yoda or Obi-Wan would have said it was anything but an accident," Luke hedged, glossing over her talk of the First Order. "But essentially, yes. Not without some prodding. I wanted nothing more than to go. Anywhere, really. I was so eager to join the Academy, I might've just as easily been on the other side. But Uncle Owen was always trying to protect me. He couldn't keep me hidden forever, of course. But he tried."

Luke fell silent for a moment. It had gotten him and Beru killed. The first in a long list of lives taken simply because of who he was. He wondered, not for the first time, if perhaps his own mother was on that list, too.

"He killed my aunt and uncle," Luke began again, quietly, looking at the ground. "Or ordered them killed, anyway, in the search for Artoo. So you see, the whole thing would never have happened if Leia hadn't been above Tatooine, if she hadn't uploaded the plans to Artoo, if Artoo hadn't mentioned Obi-Wan Kenobi, if Ben hadn't been living close by... Before I knew it, I was orphaned again, rescuing a princess, destroying a space station. Training to be a Jedi because there simply was no one else."

The eggs were food. Rey didn't really have a lot of requirements when it came to food. So long as it didn't go back up again, she'd eat whatever was offered to her gratefully.

It was nice hearing about Luke as a young man, though she paused at the mention of an "Uncle Owen." She'd never heard of any uncle of Luke's, and she wondered if he was a biological uncle or just a man that he'd come to know as an uncle. Somehow, though, it didn't feel right to ask. Rey never was good at figuring out how to talk about family matters.

So when Luke fell silent, Rey didn't know how to respond, or whether she should respond at all. It seemed best to stay quiet, contemplatively chewing her eggs until Luke thought it fit to speak again. And when he did... well, at first she didn't know who he was talking about, but it soon became clear that this was just an even more complicated family matter than she'd anticipated.

"So... out of sheer coincidence, a princess who happened to have been your long-lost sister uploaded important war plans onto an astromech droid that found you and you somehow stumbled across a holo message from said princess and were inspired to go rescue her and destroy the Death Star. And you picked up a smuggler along the way, and ended up conducting a very poor rescue of said sister that resulted in you ending up in a garbage chute."

She was quiet for a moment, trying to digest all of that before seeming to just accept it with a small nod. The only question she had after swallowing another mouthful of eggs was, "Who are Yoda and Obi-Wan Kenobi and-... Ben?"

That had been the name Han had called Kylo Ren, hadn't it? Ben? It must be someone that had been important to him or Leia at some point, but while the other two names may well have been somewhat familiar in the mess of lore she'd heard over the years, she doubted she'd heard of a Ben before.

"More or less," Luke confirmed, chewing on his eggs. His gaze, set out over the ocean, got even further away than that when she asked.

"Ben Kenobi. Obi-Wan. He and Yoda were my... my teachers. The masters who taught me about the Force, and how to use it." There was a fondness in his voice, as well as sorrow. Not simply for their loss, which was long past, but for the way he'd disappointed them by failing. Not that they'd ever shown up to tell him so. He wasn't sure he could handle that. "Obi-Wan Kenobi knew my father. Trained him, fought with him. When Vader turned, he hunted down as many of the Jedi as he could. Obi-Wan and Yoda... hid. Bided their time. Until our little Artoo found me, basically brought me to Ben--that's the name he was using--and started it all."

He straightened, spine cracking just a bit, and set the pan aside.

"It all depends on whether you think it was a coincidence," he offered. "Was it chance, or the Force? They were the last of the Jedi Order. The keepers of what knowledge was left." He turned his head to face Rey, folding his hands on his lap. "And that's why the Jedi have to end, Rey. Because that way should have ended with them. Along with the idea that some old man on a deserted planet can fix everything."

"... Kylo Ren was named after the man who trained Vader."

The realization was unsettling, and it explained at least part of why he'd been so desperate to emulate his grandfather. Rey didn't think families could get this complicated, and she suddenly found herself wondering if she'd been named for someone, and what sort of intricate dramas her closest relatives may have been involved in.

She stared down at the remainder of her eggs, frowning softly as she thought over everything Luke had told her. It was a lot to take in, but as she eventually managed to bring herself to glance up at him, she wondered if he wasn't just looking at it at the entirely wrong way. Of course, the same could be said for her, but....

"But that way didn't end with them. The Jedi have done too much throughout history to simply not exist anymore. That's why you're still here. And that's why we need you."

She hesitated for a moment before setting her plate aside and reaching out, gingerly placing her hand over one of Luke's. "You aren't an easy fix to the galaxy's problems, Master Skywalker. But your legend is a beacon of hope in dark times. The Resistance might not need the Jedi, but they desperately need hope."

"Obi-Wan Kenobi trained Anakin Skywalker," he said, almost absently, but the correction was important to him.

Luke stared down at her hand on his. It seemed almost comical, her smaller, younger, but no less work-hardened hand on his, and part of him wanted to laugh. It was not, he realized before it could escape him, a sane or healthy laugh. It was the realization that it was the first human contact he'd had in longer than he could remember. Before coming here, even.

And he was starting to understand why it was dangerous for him to have it, why he'd cut himself off to begin with, long before he'd ever conceived of hiding himself away. It meant far too much for him to take for granted, and always had. It was probably why he'd been unable to make actual friends on Tatooine, why he'd latched onto the first people who'd shown an interest, why he now had to hold Rey at arm's length. He'd always wanted too much.

He neither deserved it now, nor knew what to do with it.

"You haven't listened to a word I've said," he said, but his tone was sad, not angry. "Legends are people, and people are flawed. What good is that beacon, if it's the very thing that created the problem in the first place? Do you think Vader would have existed without the Jedi? Would Kylo Ren? Seeing hope in legends is like asking a holovid to come to life. You're going to be disappointed, and it's not going to give you anything but a false understanding of what's possible."

Rey was confused for a moment before she realized that Anakin Skywalker must have been Vader's name before he'd fallen to the Dark Side. Though she'd heard whisperings of Darth Vader's name virtually her entire life, years after his death... she'd never heard of Anakin. She wondered if the same would happen to Kylo Ren, with the name Ben Solo being lost somewhere in history.

But Kylo Ren wasn't her concern, not now. Luke was, as was her mission to bring him back. Though really, if she were honest with herself, it was less about the mission at this point and more about making him understand why he was needed, even if he only thought of himself as some dour old man.

"Wanting a holovid to come to life is asking the impossible. I'm not asking you for the impossible. You're a person. And your story means something to these people. Flawed or not, just seeing you stand besides General Organa will be enough to stir something inside of them, something that will keep them fighting. And they need to keep fighting. This isn't about the Jedi or the Sith. This is about the Resistance and the First Order. And we can't continue to resist the tyranny of the First Order if we don't have a reminder of what we're fighting for."

Though she generally wasn't one for hand-holding and usually minimized physical contact whenever possible, Rey actually scooted closer to Luke, giving his hand a quick squeeze as though to emphasize her point. "I have been listening to you. You're a man; no more, and certainly no less. But don't you see that that's part of your influence? You had humble beginnings and stumbled across something far greater than yourself; these people, Leia's people, need to remember that the same can be said for them. Otherwise... we've already lost."

Luke looked at her. So close. She had freckles. Had he known that? Why did it matter? And maybe it was his imagination, or maybe it was something about the link they'd shared, but he could swear he smelled sun and sand--the fresh, clean scent of the desert.

He shook his head, as much to clear it as to negate her words.

"They don't need me for that. I'm not what they're fighting for, nor should I be." He disengaged his hand from hers, and placed it on her shoulder. "There are other men--and women. I'm not the man you need. They need to fight for themselves, for what's good and right. Not for me, or some fantasy out of a legend."

He heaved a sigh, dropping his hand. He suddenly felt tired, as if he'd fought some sort of battle. He looked away, out over the ocean.

"You mentioned... doing something."

The turn the conversation had taken was not one he welcomed, and it was either change it, or end this. And she had already voiced her objection to being left alone. Well, she'd have to compromise.

It was slightly unsettling being so close to Luke and watching him watch her. Not because she found anything unsettling about him - which was odd in itself, given that years of isolation were bound to make a person pick up habits that could unsettle others - but because she could make out just how blue his eyes still were, and if she focused on them long enough she could almost picture what he might have looked like as a young man.

Almost, but not quite. She couldn't see his worn look on a younger man, that exhaustion and nihilism in the face of someone thirty years younger. But the hope she'd envisioned on his younger self looked equally out of place on Luke's face, and that made Rey more than a little sad.

He was never going to see things her way. Not because he couldn't, but because he didn't want to. She supposed she could understand that, since she was just as willfully stubborn.

Frustrated but not entirely defeated, she sighed as well as she followed his gaze. She could continue to attempt to hammer in her point, but it she kept going at it too hard, she might just ruin whatever tenuous relationship they'd managed to build up. She'd fail Leia if she couldn't bring Luke back, but she'd fail Luke if she ended up pushing him away. And again, for all the respect she had for Leia, Luke was her immediate concern.

"What was Tatooine like?" she asked softly. "I never really got to visit other planets before finding my way to the Resistance."

Or maybe she had, but those memories have been swept away along with her parents' faces, and so she chose not to dwell on that too hard right now.

Luke was stubborn. It didn't mean he'd never come around, but if he did, it would have to be in his own time. And part of him knew that--and that was why he was giving her an out. An option other than his shutting her down completely. It was, in his way, a truce.

And he was grateful that she'd accepted it, because suddenly it seemed a very lonely island. The prospect of the day ahead without company, while familiar, seemed suddenly empty. What did he do all day? He couldn't remember. And if she left, if he drove her away, he'd have to think about it.

"You're not missing anything," he said gruffly. "I grew up on a moisture farm. The closes settlement was almost an hour away, and wasn't much at that. If you went anywhere, you had to watch for Tusken Raiders or krayt dragons, and if you went into town--which my uncle would never let me do--you're contending with the various forms of corruption the Hutts controlled." He shrugged. "Maybe it's different now. I've avoided going back as much as possible."

Rey was resourceful. If he did shut her out, she would find ways to occupy her time, hopefully ways that wouldn't involve any interruption from the Force or earn the ire of any of the Caretakers. But... she didn't want to be alone.

While it was nice to just take in the quiet sometimes and get lost in her own thoughts... sometimes it was nicer to do that with someone sitting nearby.

"I'm assuming it was largely desert, then, if there was need of a moisture farm. Your Tusken Raiders and krayt dragons sound like my Teedos and nightwatchers. And this town sounds like the Niima Outpost, only I never had an uncle to keep me out of it."

She lingered on that thought just a fraction too long before pretending she hadn't and continuing. "Maybe Tatooine has just been renamed Jakku." It was a joke, of course, even if there wasn't much in the way of humor there. She just couldn't help noting how similar their places of origin had been... though in her case, she likely hadn't originated on Jakku. Probably. Maybe.

"Largely?" Luke raised an eyebrow. "Try 'all.' Force knows why anyone ever settled there. The only thing to do--besides survive--was race. Plenty of open space for that. But I suppose that's why Obi-Wan thought I'd be safe there. Even if Vader had relatives, there wasn't any reason to return to someplace that out of the way and lifeless."

There was no way for him to understand what was going on within him at this moment. The loosening of everything that had calcified over time.

"It's probably a good thing I wasn't allowed in Mos Eisley," he mused, with hindsight. He glanced at Rey. "You're remarkably unimpressed by the ocean for someone who grew up where you did."

"You should have seen me when I first landed on Takodana," Rey remarked softly, a small smile playing along her features. "I've never seen that shade of green, never mind so much of it." Of course, she had other memories of that place now, thanks to Kylo Ren. So as much as she'd like to hold onto that sense of wonder, she pushed it aside as she glanced over at Luke again.

"It impressed me, if that's the word you want to use. I was just more impressed by you at first, instead." She glanced away again, smirking just slightly before shaking her head. "I still am, in my own way. Impressed by both. But you already said you don't want to hear about that."

Looking out over the choppy waves, she asked, "Does it ever quiet down, or is it always like this?"

He did not want to hear about how impressive he was. It was a myth, inasmuch as it could be given the truth he was aware of. That is, he knew his history, and his past. He did not negate any of the facts of that history. But to say they were important was to give himself too much credit.

"You get used to it," Luke said dismissively. He arched an eyebrow. "Han took you to Maz's." It wasn't exactly a question, but a small smile played around the corners of his mouth. "It figures. I met him in a cantina where the first person I spoke to tried to kill me."

"You must have made quite a first impression around that cantina," she joked lightly, chuckling a little. More similarities. No one had wanted to kill her, but....

"That was where I found your lightsaber," she mentioned, voice a little quieter. And where she'd had a series of visions she couldn't begin to understand, though given that she'd seen the foreboding figure of Kylo Ren before ever having met him, they still bothered her. "I'd left it behind, but it still found its way back to me."

Luke chuckled. It might have been the first laugh he'd expressed in years. "I don't know if it was in the way you mean," he offered. "I was... probably about your age. And half as worldly. I looked like I'd never left the farm, if you know what I mean. At least, that's what Han told me, later..."

He shook his head, lost for a moment in nostalgia, until she spoke again.

"Now that... that's something I can't explain," he mused, almost to himself. He'd refused to acknowledge the saber when handed to him. Refused to entertain the natural curiosity at its presence on the island, in the hands of this girl. He was breaking his own self-imposed exile by entertaining it now--almost as if he'd forgotten to keep it in place. "I don't know how Maz got hold of it. Last time I saw it..."

He trailed off again, lost in another type of memory.

The idea that anyone could be less worldly than Rey struck her as funny, but she didn't say as much. She liked to think that no one would look at her and assume she was naive. So if that was the way Luke had meant it, she'll take his word for it, though it was still something of a difficult mental image when compared to the stories she'd heard of how he'd go on to save the galaxy.

She also tried not to think of how long ago it had been since Luke had been her age. That made her feel odd, though she had no rational reason as to why.

"She didn't tell me how she got it," Rey explained. "But then I was sort of... preoccupied at the time, so I might not have been listening. It's all a little hazy." Except it wasn't. She just liked to pretend that it was hazy, since it felt as though she somehow had less responsibility that way.

"I only know that it had called out to me, and no matter how hard I ran... well, I still wound up with it, in the end. Maybe it just knew that I would be able to reunite it with you, though that might be giving it too much credit, for it not being sentient."

Luke looked at her a long moment, wondering how much to say. He'd vowed not to do this, not to teach her, not to pass on the knowledge of an order that had sown so much pain and sorrow. The lightsaber itself was antiquated and outdated, not to mention a symbol, now, of everything Luke had tried to deny by coming here. His tossing away of Anakin's--Rey's, he reminded himself--was not merely a petty gesture. It had almost physically hurt, seeing it again.

"I would not be too quick to dismiss the motives of the Force, when it comes to that," he said finally. "Though I would be equally hesitant to assume I knew what those motives are." The idea that the Force wanted him reunited with the weapon sat uneasily with him. "It was passed on to me by Obi-Wan. It has now passed to you." He didn't want it back.

A lightsaber was just a hunk of metal that emitted a plasma blade; the Force couldn't have a hand in something completely inorganic like that. Could it? "I don't-...." She didn't know what to say, given that Luke knew more about these matters than she did.

"I didn't want it," she murmured with a frown, looking away. "I didn't want any of this. I didn't want what it would do to my life, keeping me away from Jakku for so long and throwing me in the middle of all... this."

But even as she said it, she looked around, and even the lonely island that Luke had chosen for his self-imposed exile was a far more hospitable place than Jakku. "I still say that, whatever the Force might ultimately have had in mind, I was meant to find you and bring that lightsaber back to you. What you do with that is entirely up to you."

"It's yours," he said, not dismissively, but firmly. "And the fact you had reasons to want to wait on Jakku does not mean you weren't longing for something else." He tilted his head, watching her. He had not pried, but he had touched her mind. She couldn't tell him she'd been content there, alone. She couldn't tell him she hadn't wanted something else.

Maybe, he thought, not this. Not poking at an old sand bear, light years from anything like her purpose or family.

She hated that he kept insisting that the lightstaber was hers, though Rey couldn't deny what she'd said. She hadn't wanted it. Past tense. Now...

Now it gave her a sense of purpose, and she'd never had that before. It was exciting. But it wasn't without a sense of irrational guilt as she wondered over whether her family was currently wildly scanning the deserts of Jakku in search of her.

But even Luke had found his father after having left Tatooine, a father that he'd been told had died years before. Maybe staying on Jakku had been the very reason she hadn't found her parents.

"I just... wanted to feel as though someone cared about me," she murmured softly. "Staying on Jakku was all I knew to do to achieve that. Leaving meant possibly never coming face to face with anyone who would know anything about the little girl who'd been left with Unkar Plutt years back." It was why she'd always tried to never directly antagonize the ugly Blobfish, since he'd been the only link she'd had to her life before being a scavenger.

Luke's gaze wasn't outright disbelieving, but he definitely harbored his doubts about her family. His own had not exactly been around, but all things considered it had made sense, why he'd grown up without them. And he'd had Owen and Beru. And, it turned out, Ben. To leave this girl on Jakku, with no life but to comb through junk for scraps?

Somehow that was far worse than what Vader had done to him. And whoever it was either had their reasons or didn't deserve her. Either way, waiting for them didn't seem like the answer.

"Do you still feel that?" he asked, belatedly surprised to hear the words coming out of his mouth. "That no one cares?"

Really, Rey had made significant progress. While she still clung to the desperate hope that she'd one day find her family, she at least understood now that it was irrational to put her life on hold until that day came. If she'd done that, she never would have known she was Force-sensitive, and she'd never have been set on her current path... wherever that might lead.

At Luke's question, Rey fell silent for a moment before slowly shrugging. "Honestly? I'm fairly certain no one would notice if I stayed here and never came back. Except maybe Finn, if he wakes up from his coma. And you, of course, but likely because you'd be wondering when I was going to hurry up and leave."

Watching her face, hearing her words, Luke almost--almost--reached out. But he didn't. It would have felt unnatural, that simple comforting gesture. And yet... and yet, there was a twinge of pain, that he'd let her think that.

Of course she thought that. He'd done everything he could to discourage her.

"That's... not true," he said after a moment. "If I seem in a hurry to get rid of you, it's..." He stopped, the words catching in his throat with unaccustomed emotion. His right hand clenched at his side. "I've removed myself. From the fight. From the... from anywhere I can negatively impact anyone ever again." He held up a hand, as if to forestall her protestation of that. "I didn't do it to drag anyone else out with me. I don't want you gone because I want you to go away. I want you gone because you should be anywhere else."

He heaved a sigh and sat back, staring at the sea. It had taken a lot, that admission, and he was still unsure if he should have voiced it. It was too raw, after all these years, admitting he was lonely. However indirectly.

As soon as he claimed it wasn't true, Rey just barely managed to resist the urge to roll her eyes, though the look she gave him was one of barely-veiled amusement. She was sure that his words were meant to be simply placating, and she was about to tell him that she didn't need him to try and make her feel better when it was obvious that he wanted her gone.

Except... his words quickly made that clear that that wasn't entirely true. It wasn't as though Luke had any reason to try and be nice to her; honestly, Rey would be surprised to find that he still knew how to be "nice," at least in the sense of empty etiquettepl. That sort of thing happened after spending so long in isolation.

But if he'd just said he didn't want her gone because he wanted her to go away, did that mean...? "So... you don't want me to go away?"

It might not have been the best thing to take away from his comment, but the thought of actually being wanted was so bizarre to Rey that she didn't quite know how to wrap her mind around that. The Resistance needed her, yes, but that was largely because of what she was capable of. Luke had made it clear that he didn't need anyone. Whether or not he wanted anyone, though, was still a question.

She hesitated for a moment before shifting a little closer to him, tilting her head to look at him and wanting him to meet her gaze. "If that's the case, then maybe I'm exactly where I should be."

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject