coolhandluke | Ahch-To, Baby

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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.

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"I believed that too, once," he said, edges of his vision blurry. "I was going to help rebuild the galaxy, create a haven for those who, like me, had a power within them they didn't know how to use. Instead, I built a trap, and baited it with my own nephew. So tell me, Rey, how I can reverse that now? With all you've seen, with what you know despite not knowing the whole of it, can you truly see a way out, for me?"

"You can't change the past; we've said as much already," she told him, voice thin. "There's no reversing. You just keep going forward. And if you can't find the way, maybe you just need someone to hold your hand and help you through. Someone like me."

He let his face fall slightly, cheek into her palm, a strangely intimate gesture he wasn't thinking about but could not help.

"All right," he said softly. "Keep telling me that." There would come a day that she knew the whole truth, about him and Kylo Ren. And she would look on him with all the horror and disgust he'd expected. But for now, he could not fight it. He would bask in the glow of her hope, for a little bit.

And maybe, just maybe, he could quell his fear of her power, and his. If he could just get through more than an hour without freaking out about the past, present, or future.

So much for his vaunted Jedi mastery.

"I will," she told him, only a touch of dryness in her voice. Her thumb stroked gently along his cheek as she managed a small smile, trying to be as comforting and supportive as she could. It wasn't easy, given that she had very little experience with being on the receiving end of either of those things herself, but... it looked as though Luke might be so isolated that he wouldn't be able to tell that she was a bit rough around the edges.

"I'll keep telling you that until you believe it. And I'll hold your hand the entire time. I promise, Luke."

He chuckled, beard scratching along her fingers. Touch-starved and unaware, he was almost cat-like in his gentle refusal to resist the touch. "I don't think that's why you came here, is it? I'm sorry."

He really didn't give off the impression of a grizzled old man that he liked to think he did, not when he was chuckling and all but nuzzling against her hand. Of course, she wasn't about to tell him so.

"I came here to bring you back with me," she pointed out. "Now that I've actually met you, I just have that much more reason to want to keep you close by."

Luke snorted, shaking his head, but his rebuke was gentler than before. "I still think you're crazy," he said, but his mood seemed to have lifted. He reached up to grab her hand. "But I suppose I ought to be teaching you. We've talked about reaching out through the Force, connecting. But what does that mean to you?"

She was glad to see that Luke was in a better mood, and she breathed a little more easily as a result, giving his hand a gentle squeeze. His question, though, made her remember what they'd originally been doing, and why she'd asked to learn more about it, and Rey tried not to think too hard about Kylo Ren, not after she and Luke finally seemed to be on better terms.

"Communicating?" she replied simply. "Just... being able to see and hear another person despite distance and not knowing exactly where they are?"

"No," he said simply, shaking his head. "I mean, that's a possibility. But not the point. The Force doesn't care who you talk to, or why. It's about connection to something deeper, and that ability is just a--"

He stopped, blinked, and looked at her for a moment.

"What are you talking about?"

Rey listened to him carefully, trying to understand her particular dilemma without being overly obvious that she had a dilemma in the first place. So Luke's pause and his question took her by surprise, causing her to blink as well.

"What?" she asked lamely. "W- we were talking about connecting through the Force. I thought it was like-... like a comlink or something. But it's more complicated than that, isn't it?"

Unfortunately for her, Luke was now connected to Rey, becoming familiar with her moods and expressions in a way that went beyond reading her face. And something was off, here. There was something she wasn't telling him.

"Back up," he said. "You said... what was it? 'Despite distance and not knowing exactly where they are.'" He nodded, sure he was right. "But I've only ever spoken to you while sitting right here." His brow furrowed. "What made you say that?" For now, it was only curiosity, not suspicion. But there had to be a reason those were the words she'd chosen.

"No, that's not-...." She was still shaking her head, still trying to deny it, but it would be no good to undo all the trust and risk breaking the bond they'd only just built over something like this.

Sighing softly, she looked down and replied, "It's nothing. I just... I saw something. It was probably just a nightmare or paranoia, but-... I just wanted to know if it was possible for it to be something else. That's all."

Luke was now searching her face as if he could read more in her expression, certain now that something was wrong.

"I think we both know the difference at this point between imagination and a vision," he said, his voice a low growl. It had to be something, or she wouldn't be looking away, wouldn't have hidden behind some vague need to know. "What did you see?"

"It was nothing," she insisted, not wanting to make a big deal out of it. "I'd just woken up and I was... frazzled. Distressed. And I... I thought I saw him. Kylo Ren."

Rubbing sheepishly at her arm, she lowly added, "That might be why that hut has a hole in it."

Luke dropped her hand like it burned him, unconsciously leaning away as if to put distance between them. "You saw Kylo Ren," he said flatly. She saw you, too, his brain supplied unhelpfully. It's not the same! he shot back. Sure it's not--but you think your connection to this girl has nothing to do with her connection to him?

Rey hated the way Luke arched back from her, immediately feeling tense all over as she looked at him desperately. "It was nothing!" she tried to insist. "Luke, please, it was probably just my imagination! Or even if it wasn't, it still didn't mean anything. It just... startled me. That's all."

"No," he said, shaking his head. "Nothing here means nothing. That's not how the Force works."

What was he supposed to do? Part of him wanted to walk away, like he'd done when she first showed up and he'd seen that darkness hovering around her. But the time for that was past--she was no longer a stranger, a cardboard figure to be dismissed. He'd let her in and this was, now, his problem as well.

And if his nephew had some sort of connection to her, and Luke had opened himself back up to the Force...

"I've put us all in danger," he muttered to himself. Rey had, really--but not by design. Just ignorance. "That's what you were digging for the whole time. The root of your connection to him." And what was that? What did they share, other than Luke's fear of their raw power? "You'd better tell me everything."

Rey wanted to keep insisting that Luke was overreacting, that they were in no danger whatsoever, but then, she had been concerned that these visions might end up revealing her location to the First Order. If Kylo Ren really could see her, then there was no telling what other information he might have gleaned from their brief interactions.

"It's not a connection," she told him adamantly. "I just... I saw him, that's all. Once just after my fight with him, when he was getting patched up. It was like looking through a window. He seemed just as surprised as I'd been, and then I went for my blaster, but... he was gone in an instant. And another time... I was outside by the Falcon and he was standing inside a room, and he spoke to me. Asked if I could see him. Then said he couldn't see me; he could, but not my surroundings. I think he was telling the truth."

What she didn't tell Luke about was Kylo's conversational tone, the same one he'd kept around her from the moment he'd proclaimed that she was a "guest" on Starkiller right up through their most recent strange Force bond. It sounded almost as though he'd been trying to reach out, and Rey was loath to guess at why that monster would want to befriend her.

"I'm sorry," she told Luke weakly, hating the sting of tears she felt at her eyes. "Please don't be upset. I just... I didn't want you to look at me and see him."

He felt cold. Dangling over the vent in Cloud City. Sitting in the smoldering remains of his school. Watching this girl with too much power casually discuss her link to the most powerful Force user Luke had ever known.

Empty.

But it was a different sort of empty from that which had drained him these past years. It was a void, yes, but a vacuum waiting to be filled. It was only left to decide with what. Anger? Fear? Betrayal? He sorted through them. Yes, he could feel all those things.

But that wasn't what the girl needed, and it wasn't what he'd sensed in her the night before, and it wasn't what rose to the surface when he looked at her. He wasn't sure what it was, but it was complicated. And he couldn't walk away from it anymore.

"How could I not?" he said dully. "The power. The arrogance. The belief you know better than I do about what I'll think, or feel. How can I help but see him, when you tell me you've been keeping this from me?"

Luke wasn't the only one feeling cold. Rey felt as though someone had dipped her in ice water, freezing her blood in her veins and turning her bones stiff and brittle. She'd felt the cold before, but it had always been something external and temporary, something that would pass with an extra layer wrapped around her. This sort of cold, though... there was no cure for that.

"I don't know anything!" she shot back once she found her voice. Her chest felt too tight to speak, but she forced herself to anyway, unwilling to let herself be silent now that all the cards were laid bare. "That's the point! I didn't ask for this, for any of it. I didn't even really believe in the Force until that monster abducted me and tried to force himself into my head! I don't know what's possible and what isn't possible, so I'm sorry that I wanted to learn what could be going on before I risked saying something that would upset you."

Unable to keep her voice from shaking, she concluded, "But don't you ever compare me with Han's murderer ever again. I am nothing like Kylo Ren."

But how was he supposed to give her answers, when he didn't know what the question was?

Luke shook his head, watching her sadly. For some reason, her anger shook him free of his own, rather than shoring it up. It only made him sad. Even in her denial, she reminded him of Ben Solo. And she didn't understand what that actually meant.

"Before you say that," he said with a detached sort of calm, "you should know what it means, for me to see him in you. You should know that he did not ask for it, either. That he was unable to tell me what he needed or feared until it was too late. That he became a monster only because I turned my back on him. That I am the reason he became Kylo Ren. You should know that when I see him in you, it is because I fear losing you as I lost him. I fear letting you down because you fear what I will think of you.

"You should know that when I look at you, I see the chance I missed, with him."

Rey didn't realize just how tense her entire body was until her jaw began aching, and she unclenched it somewhat reluctantly when she noticed that he was attempting to be reasonable rather than let himself get hurt or angry or scared, or whatever combination of emotions he felt when he thought of his nephew. She hated that he could still so easily say that he saw him in her, that he still saw some sort of similarity between her and the thing who'd murdered the first person who'd ever tried to reach out to her. But while she might not have known much about the Force, she knew enough to understand that giving in to her anger will only prove him right, will only act as another point she had in common with someone she detested and feared, and so she took a slow, shaky breath as she tried to clear her head and listen to what Luke was actually saying.

"He became Kylo Ren because he chose to," Rey replied hollowly. "He chose to put on a mask, he chose to kill, he chose everything. Even if you think you'd turned away from him, he was still the one who made a conscious choice to fall down the path to the dark side."

She had to believe that. Because so long as she could keep telling herself that it was all about choice, she could keep the worst of pain and anger reined in. Otherwise, it would become far too tempting to believe that she could be capable of doing terrible things because of other people or her lot in life, rather than hold herself accountable.

"I'm not going to make those choices, Luke. I don't want power or revenge or whatever it is he thinks he's gaining by being who he is. Don't look at me and see what you think of as your failures. See possibilities."

"You don't understand," he said, and now his expression had edged from blank to slightly... earnest. "That's what I mean."

Because there's someone else he saw in her, and that was himself. Isolated, confused, thrown this mantle of power with no instruction manual--and then offered a connection with a monster she didn't want associated with herself. It wasn't the same, and he knew it, but it was a way for him to understand what was happening to her. It was an avenue out of his own darkness, to reclaim some hope. For her.

"This isn't a rejection. Or an insult." He reached out, palm up. "It might have been, a few days ago. Am I upset that you hid this from me? Yes. That was a choice you made that was foolish and dangerous. But if he made a choice, so did my father. And my father chose to come back. I, too, have made choices. Some I stand by. Some, I regret. I will not choose, again, to turn on someone with a connection to something I fear, simply because I don't understand it."

Rey wanted to take his hand, but she kept herself back. He claimed it wasn't a rejection, but at the same time... what had become of the easy peace that had settled between them just moments ago? Why was he still calling whatever she and Kylo Ren had a connection?

Because that was what it was. She hadn't wanted to think of it that way, even though she'd known it had felt different from anything she'd ever experienced before. Even with Luke, that connection was something else entirely, something new and unique. She preferred it that way, really, since she wouldn't want to sully it by comparing it with this other aspect of her life, one that she didn't want and that could only prove dangerous before too long.

But she couldn't keep denying that it was a connection, not if she needed Luke's help to overcome it. And she did need Luke. In more ways than one.

At last, she slipped her hand into his, meeting his eyes so she had something to focus on so she wouldn't cry. "You're not the only one that's afraid," she pointed out softly. "My choices had always been decided for me by circumstance. This is the first time that I can't see where I'm going or what I need to do to get there, and that's... it's terrifying, Luke. I can't do this without you. Please don't make me."

When she had arrived, he had turned his back on her. It hadn't been her he'd been running from, of course, but himself. His own mistakes, his own fear of making things worse, his conviction that, if history repeated itself, his interference would create the evil in the world, not quell it.

It was too late for that, of course, and wrong besides. He saw that now. He had failed Ben Solo, not by interfering, but by allowing his fear to turn on him. He'd allowed a scared boy to run to the only truth he knew, the 'truth' Luke had created by giving into a vision. Fear was the way to the dark side. And Luke had almost gone down its path again, simply because this girl didn't know any better and he'd refused to be the one to let her down.

Ironic, wasn't it?

He wonders if Obi-Wan ever felt this kind of fear, dealing with him.

"I forget," he said softly, "what it was like, being you. Finding out you're supposed to do something grand, then finding out you're connected to the very thing that you're supposed to be fighting. Finding out that a wrong turn, a wrong choice, maybe a wrong thought could take you down an irreversible path. Having someone who is supposed to know better try to dictate your life and your choices for you."

He sighed, squeezing her fingers.

"My mentor left me before his time, killed by my own father, his protege. My own protege left me, betrayed by my fear as well as his own. I won't let that happen again."

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