Work Text:
Luke had never felt at ease on Coruscant. It had been Mara’s home for so many years; her bones made of steel and chrome, the lights of the city reflected in her eyes, and she could disappear into a crowd like the tide returned to the sea.
He still thought about her in the present tense, as if unable to relegate her to the past. She was gone, and yet he felt as if she was beside him always. She’d gravitated to rooftops - whenever he’d wanted to find her he’d only have to look for the highest possible nearby point and she’d be there, in quiet contemplation with the sky. In her absence he’d found himself doing the same, and had to admit the city was more tolerable from above. The buzz and bustle was muted, the oppressive sense of millions of life forms was kept at bay, and from a distance the patchwork of lights lost their glare. Of course Luke always found himself drawn to the beauty of the natural world, which on Coruscant left only red and pink hues of the sky. But he didn’t mind - he’d always liked sunsets.
His peace was disturbed by heavy footsteps, and Luke looked over to see his son crossing the rooftop to where he sat on the ledge, leaning against the wall.
“Hey, Dad.” Ben sat down next to him, swinging his legs over the edge of the roof. Luke nodded in answer, his son always welcome to join him, although his instincts tended towards action over reflection and so he rarely did. Even having just sat down he was unable to keep from moving entirely, drumming his heels against the duracrete wall in a staccato beat.
“Were you thinking about Mom?” Ben asked as he looked out over the city Luke had been musing over.
“What makes you say that?” Luke wondered if his son had felt where his thoughts were dwelling, or if it was because Ben was thinking of her also. Turning back to the horizon, Luke felt the setting sun pinch his eyes. “A little.”
His thoughts often strayed to her. What she would have said in a Council meeting, how she would have reacted to some event or another, what pointed remark she would have thrown his way when he said something stupid. It was impossible not to think about her.
They’d had a nice little family; Luke, Mara and Ben. Not perfect by any means, they’d had their differences, but they’d been so bound together by mutual love that Luke’s heart had never been so full as when they were all together. He and Ben had butted heads the most, but Mara had been there to ground them both, a constant reminder of the affection beneath any conflict. Quite contrary to the attitude of her youth, she had become a peacemaker.
But then she had died and he and Ben had flailed, like two sides of a triangle unable to fully connect to one another without the third, vital dimension. And yet it had forced them to grow closer, to accommodate one another without Mara as intermediary. The odyssey of the past year had brought them closer still, and Luke finally felt he was near to having the relationship with his son he had always craved.
“Everyone acts like they need to remind me of her,” Ben spoke into the dwindling light. “They’re always telling me that I sound like her, or what she would have thought about something.” Ben stilled his legs, the beat he’d been drumming out stopping abruptly. “I mean, I like to hear about her,” he added. “But...only when I ask, you know?”
Luke looked at his son, already a man at seventeen. His face only held a hint of boyishness; his hair, once brilliantly red, had settled to a more sedate auburn as a consequence of the time they’d spent cooped up on the Jade Shadow . His built was slight and compact, as Luke’s was, but he was no longer an ill-proportioned teenager growing into his limbs. He was fully grown, in body if not in mind.
He sometimes wondered if it had been a mistake to make Ben a Jedi Knight so young. Luke had been so proud of his maturity and growth, and it had seemed the logical step to take to reward his son who had already accomplished so much in the face of great odds. Ben had been the one to talk sense into Luke following Mara’s death, and had shown not only prodigious skill in the Force but a keen determination that Luke recognised as similar to his own. In his pride perhaps he had overlooked Ben’s youth, and yet he’d been acutely aware that his boy hadn’t had much of a childhood. As a baby he’d already felt more pain and death through the Force than most did in a lifetime, he’d been conscripted into a war barely into his teens, had been brainwashed and almost dragged to the dark side by the only person he’d opened himself up to, and had spent the years since trapped in a seemingly endless cycle of conflict.
At seventeen Luke had been fixing vaporators. His son had fought monsters.
It was a battle that had left him scarred, and now when he looked at Ben he saw the child inside he’d been ignoring for so long. Luke realised had been so consumed with relating to Ben man to man that he forgot his son was still a boy who had lost the mother he adored to the cousin he had worshipped. And that boy needed comfort and commiseration.
“People are always saying how sorry they are for me,” Luke said, knowing Ben was perhaps the only one who would understand. “I’m sorry for your loss, Master Skywalker. That’s what they say – as if I misplaced her in my robes.”
“They’re always telling me great she was,” Ben added, looking down at his hands, “but I know that, I’m not going to forget.”
“People don’t always know what to say,” Luke counseled him. “They want to make you feel better, and even if they know they can’t they still need to try.”
“Yeah, sometimes I feel like I end up comforting them.” The barest hint of a smile appeared, and Ben shook his head slightly.
“That’s because you have a good heart Ben,” Luke said, reaching out to pat his son’s shoulder. “And you understand that we weren’t the only ones who loved her.”
He sometimes wondered if Mara was out there watching them, and whether she was surprised at just how much she’d touched other people’s lives. She’d probably be annoyed that she’d failed to keep people at a distance, and it made Luke smile to think that despite his wife’s best efforts to cultivate only a small group of loved ones, the impact of her death had been felt far beyond their family.
“I talk to her sometimes,” Ben said softly, and the way his mouth twisted on the words reminded Luke so much of Mara his heart felt fit to break again.
“I talk to her too.” He leaned back against the wall, bending a knee and propping up his foot on the edge of the roof.
“I wonder what she’d say about that,” Ben smiled wryly, but also looked relieved.
Luke considered for only half a moment. “She’d probably say that we were both being lunk-headed and that we should talk to each other instead.”
“Yeah, probably,” Ben laughed, and ran a hand through his hair and seemed to relax. “So, what do you want to talk about?”
“Smashball’s always a safe topic,” Luke suggested. “But I suppose that’s not the point.”
“It's not that safe,” Ben said with a grin, “with the way the Dreadnaughts have been playing.”
Luke chuckled lightly, but caught Ben’s eye. “After years with your mother I can recognise a classic deflection technique.”
His son stared back at him, the quirk of a smile on his face as he inclined his head in acknowledgement. “I learned from the best, and it wasn’t Mom.”
Luke couldn’t deny it - he and Ben rarely talked about Mara, but when they did he always tried to keep it light, to impart some fond memory of the time they’d all had together, an inadequate attempt to claw back Mara’s part in their trinity as if that would help he and Ben to grow closer. More often than not, he changed the subject as quickly as possible, but now understood that Ben needed more from him - something he’d never told anyone else.
“When I was in the Lake of Apparitions, I saw her again,” Luke said softly, looking out where the sun had almost dipped below the horizon. “Abeloth was dead, but I’d been injured in the battle.” His hand came up unconsciously to the wound in his chest that still ached on occasion. “I was ready to die, Ben. To sink beneath the waters and be with your mother again.”
“But she wouldn’t let you.” Ben’s voice was soft, almost a whisper.
Luke swallowed heavily, remembering the strength of her beneath him in the waters, refusing to let him give up. “No.”
“Did she say anything?” Ben asked plaintively, and when Luke turned back there was pain etched deep into his young face. His meaning was clear - did she say anything about me?
“She said not yet,” Luke told him. “I’m sorry, Ben, I forgot about you, about all my responsibilities, all I wanted was to be with her again. But she didn’t.” He smiled to himself at the memory. “She said too bad, and sent me back.”
“Yeah, that sounds like her.” Ben looked at him with large blue eyes that so often seemed like a mirror. “I’m glad she did,” he said, a catch in his voice. “I don’t...know what I would do if I lost you too.”
Luke felt his heart ache with Ben’s bare confession. He’d always thought his son so strong, and in those moments in the Lake of Apparitions he hadn’t even thought what making Ben a true orphan would mean. He’d been so tired, worn down by the battle which seemed to have been raging his whole life, taking him apart piece by piece. But Mara had known - protecting Ben had always been her first priority, even in death.
“I know I haven’t always made it easy for you,” Ben said, looking down at his hands and nervously drumming his heels again. “Spent most of my life trying to prove that I was better than you, or at least just as good. But you were right Dad. About Ves.” He cleared his throat, hands clenching into fists. “I mean Vestara. There was no hope for her.”
The words struck Luke painfully. He’s more machine now, than man. Twisted and evil. They had been words spoken to him long ago; words of finality and resignation. Words he had chosen not to believe.
Maybe I’m too set in my ways to believe that someone who was born Sith, raised Sith, and grew up surrounded by Sith can set that aside enough to become a Jedi.
They were Luke’s words only recently, his refusal to see past the corruption in another, to believe that they could renounce the dark.
When had he stopped believing in redemption? Perhaps when the Vong rampaged through the galaxy, slaughtering thousands and bending planets to their will. Perhaps when there had been one conflict after another, the Killiks and the Swarm War, the Second Galactic Civil War, Abeloth.
Perhaps when the nephew whom he had dearly loved had turned his son into an assassin, and brutally murdered his wife.
And yet...there had been some good left in Jacen. Perhaps not enough for him to save himself, but it had been there, the love for his daughter enough to reach out to her with his dying breath, rather than take his sister’s life. In the end, Jacen had won, and Caedus had been destroyed.
“No, Ben,” Luke shook his head. “I was wrong - I forgot the lessons I learned when I was young.”
He’d become just like Obi-Wan before him, beaten down by years of anguish that he’d only seen hope in death, rather than love. It had been the guiding principle of his life, and yet he’d dismissed it, driven by fear for losing his son too, and suspicion of those who may take him away.
“Everyone describes the dark side as a fall,” he mused, thinking of his father, of Jacen, even young Vestara. “But you cannot fall forever - eventually you have to hit the bottom, and you either stay there, or you climb back up."
He'd almost tumbled a few times himself, he knew how deep that pit could go, even if he'd never seen the bottom of it.
"So, there’s always hope," he added, turning his gaze back to his son. "There's always a choice - and the way back may be steep, but it is never barred, not completely.”
Ben sniffed, clearly trying to hold his composure as he stared out where the last rays of sun were filtered through the steel towers of the city.
“I wanted to save her,” he said, his voice tight. “Like you did for Mom.”
Luke sighed – in many ways Ben was a child, still. “I didn’t save her, Ben,” he explained softly. “She chose the path of light herself.”
“Yeah, because of you,” Ben insisted, turning his head and nodding towards him. “She told me.”
Luke looked at his son quizzically - he had always known Mara to be brutally honest and willing to give no quarter. Except, it seemed, with her son. Although Luke knew he had helped Mara realize the truth about her service to the Emperor, she of all people would have insisted that her failures were her own, and therefore so were her successes.
But how could she explain to her son that when she first met his father, she wanted to kill him, that it took time for hate to fade to begrudging respect held in check by cool indifference, and years for that to turn to an unconventional and prickly friendship, and finally, to love?
Perhaps she couldn’t. Perhaps their journey had been too difficult to explain to a child who had only known parents devoted to one another. So she had embellished and softened the story. Quite uncharacteristically, she had made it romantic.
And maybe there had been a glimmer of truth there. Perhaps they had been drawn to one another since the day she’d found him floating in deep space. Perhaps a part of her choice to serve the light had been because of him; because of that connection they had denied for so long, but he now knew had been there the moment they’d met.
It was difficult for Luke to consider the matter objectively. The love he had for her was so strong it seemed he had always felt that way, even though he remembered the other women in his life. Callista and Ankanah, consumed by Abeloth, Gaeriel Captison and Jem, many years dead. He had loved them also, and yet they had not been the other half of his soul as Mara had. He promised Callista he’d save her, and still felt a lingering affection which had given weight to the promise, but the devotion he’d once felt for her had long faded.
“All I can tell you is that you’ll love again,” Luke said finally. “And maybe it will hurt just as much, but that’s part of being alive.”
“Do you think you’ll love again?” Ben challenged him, lifting his chin in the way he did when provoked - the way Mara always had too.
Luke’s hand came to rest over his heart again almost unconsciously. The wound he’d sustained should have ended his life, his insides all but torn from his chest by Abeloth’s tentacles. Then again, he should have died fifteen years earlier when Shirrma’s amistaff had struck him in almost the same spot, but Mara had been there to heal him with her tears, as she had been there in the Lake of Apparitions, refusing to let him sink. A part of her had lived within him since the caves on Nirauan when the Force had bound them together, until the day she’d died and half of his heart had been ripped away.
He wondered whether the wound from Abeloth had not killed him because what she’d carved from his chest had been empty anyway.
***
Ben watched his father, his quick pique as always fading into regret. Luke was far away, staring unblinking and unseeing at a spot above Ben’s shoulder. It happened from time to time.
“I’m sorry,” he said nervously, a twinge of worry that his father’s silence was due to anger. It had been a presumptuous and unfair comparison, and he had wanted to take back the words as soon as they had left his mouth. “I know that Ves and I...it wasn’t anything like what you had with Mom.”
“It’s alright Ben,” Luke reassured him, his eyes clearing as his gaze returned to his face. “I was just thinking.” He was silent for a few moments more, before answering; “I guess I don’t know.”
“I’d be okay with it,” Ben said, albeit somewhat grimly. “I want you to be happy, Dad.”
His father smiled, and it almost seemed indulgent. “Thank you Ben, but at the moment it’s something I can’t imagine even thinking about.”
Despite himself, Ben was relieved. “Well, for when you are,” he said, sweeping his hand in a nonchalant gesture. “If.”
“Well I’ve told you something,” Luke said, bring the conversation back. “It’s your turn.”
“What do you want to know?” Ben was happy to play his part, it was only fair after what his father had told him.
“Well I know that you feel partly responsible for your mother’s death,” Luke said. “But I don’t know why.”
Ben was surprised by the question, not only because he found it hard to believe Luke didn’t know the truth, but that he would ask him at all. He was silent for a while, looking out at the horizon where the sun had fallen, leaving them with the glowing lights of the city.
“Because of Gejjen,” Ben said finally, the name that still haunted him. “I was the one who killed him, in cold blood, because I was asked to. I knew it wasn’t right, and I still did it, and afterwards...I woke up to what I was doing, who I was becoming. But I was too scared to tell you.”
“But you told your mother.” Luke’s voice was soft, and full of understanding
“That’s why she took off after Ja-” Ben cleared his throat and looked down at his hands. “Caedus.” He didn’t deserve to be thought or spoken of as Jacen anymore, not after everything he’d done.
“It wasn’t your fault Ben,” Luke assured him. “I don’t know if there’s any way we could have avoided tragedy - he could have killed you instead, and I know your mother would trade her life a thousand times over for yours, just like I would.”
He knew that, intellectually, he knew his mother was fiercely protective of him, that she would have gone after Caedus at some stage anyway, but it was far too easy to draw a line between events, with himself at the epicentre.
“And Gejjen?”
“It’s something you have to learn to live with, Ben,” Luke said, but his voice was kindly. “All you can do is follow the right path now, and one day learn to forgive yourself.”
Perhaps that was partly why he’d been so desperate to bring Vestara to the light - he’d wanted someone to walk that path with him, knowing how close he’d come to the dark under Caedus’ influence. But in doing so he’d treated her badly, he hadn’t shown the compassion and understanding his father had once shown his mother - he’d fallen far short of the example set by both his parents.
“You know Ben, I was always so happy that you could turn to your mother for help,” Luke said drawing is attention again. “But if we’re being honest with each other, I can’t deny that it hurt a little that we weren’t as close. And I’m not saying that’s right, or justified,” he added before Ben could interrupt. “But that’s how I felt.”
Ben had known that, and also knew it was an old wound, long since covered by other, more painful scars. His father had always seemed like this incredible being, impossible to live up to no matter how desperately Ben wanted to. Perhaps that was why Mara had told Ben that Luke had saved her – knowing that Ben’s own relationship his father was strained and that he feared disapproval. Perhaps it had been Mara’s way of telling Ben that she’d done much worse in her life, and yet Luke had not only accepted her, but loved her unconditionally.
“It’s not that I didn’t love you, Dad,” he explained himself. “But Mom…understood. I just didn’t want you to be disappointed in me.”
Luke was clearly hurt by the answer, his brows coming together and a pained look in his eyes. “I never wanted you to feel like that, Ben.”
“I know,” Ben nodded. “It wasn’t anything you did, it’s just who you are - the great Luke Skywalker - you can’t escape that.”
“Mara was always pretty good at helping me forget.” Luke smiled wistfully, looking at that place beyond again. “She always made me feel just like anyone else, always willing to puncture my ego if necessary.”
Ben thought about the past year they’d spent together, how much his father had come alive when he’d joked with him, how they’d felt like any other father and son on a family trip rather than a journey through exile.
“Well, you know if you want someone to point out your mistakes, I’m your man,” Ben said with a grin. “Starting with that haircut, it’s at least twenty years out of date.”
“I’ll take that under advisement,” Luke said dryly, “and make sure we take a stylist on our next trip.”
“Promise me no immortal, soul-sucking tentacle monsters and I’m there.”
“With our luck next time there’ll be two,” Luke smiled, leaning over to punch Ben lightly in the shoulder.
“One for each of us then,” Ben gave an answering grin. “Looking forward to it.”
***
It felt good to laugh and joke with his son again, to help shake off the sadness that was always there under the surface. But this time Ben didn’t use the moment to deflect, he quickly sobered again, looking out into the dark sky above the glow of the city.
“Tell me something about Mom I don’t know.”
Luke was surprised at the question. Ben was blessed with a near-eidetic memory, and so probably recalled much about his mother that Luke did not. And yet Luke had the advantage of time - he’d been married to Mara for seven years before Ben had been born, and had known her for ten years before that.
“I can’t remember the last words she ever said to me,” Luke began after a moment’s thought. “I’ve tried to, but it escapes me no matter how long I’ve meditated on it to search for the answer. But I remember the first - when she was working for Karrde and sensed me through the Force - she saved me, all the while thinking that she would kill me when she got the chance.”
Ben’s interest was clearly piqued. “What did she say?”
“It was over the comm, she said: unidentified starfighter, this is the freighter Wild Karrde. Do you need assistance ?”
“Ah.” Ben looked almost disappointed.
“Hardly profound, or even memorable,” Luke conceded. “And yet I do remember it, like it was yesterday. Funny how the mind works, at the time I would have had no reason to store than moment away, and never thought about it until after she died but there it was, as if it had been waiting thirty years for that moment, when I needed it.”
“Maybe it was more profound than you think,” Ben suggested, shifting his position to face Luke fully. “I mean, you did need her assistance, beyond the kind she was offering in that moment.”
“I suppose I did,” Luke said softly, surprised by Ben’s insight. “I still do, really.”
“You have me.” A muscle twitched Ben’s cheek. “I know it’s not the same, but I’m here for you Dad. Like you’ve always been for me, even when I didn’t understand or appreciate it.”
Luke rose to his feet, taking Ben’s hand and pulling him up and into a firm embrace. “I know, son,” he said, holding him tightly. “Thank you.”
When he pulled away, he cupped Ben’s cheek in one hand, like he used to do when the boy was small. There were tears in his son’s eyes, and he felt the tremor through the Force that he didn’t try to conceal.
“I heard someone say once that grief is the price we pay for love,” Luke said. “It may surprise you, Ben, to know that I once thought that price was too high, and decided to close myself off. Your mother, of course, told me what an idiot I was being, and said that I should never let my fear of losing anyone prevent myself from getting close to them. She gave me the courage to love her, and I am forever thankful for that.”
He swallowed heavily, the pain of his loss always there, ready to overtake him but kept at bay. “Even when those fears were realised, I knew that she was right, because I wouldn’t trade a single second of those happy moments I had with Mara to spare myself the pain now.”
“Me either.” Ben sniffed but managed a smile. “I just miss her.”
Luke embraced him again, and for perhaps the first time they shared their grief together, sorrow mingling through the Force. But somehow it the burden was shared, and therefore lighter to carry. Luke promised himself that he would make an effort to share more with Ben, to let his son know the woman she’d been before they were blessed with him, and in turn hope to hear some of Ben’s memories. Mara was still there, he realised, connecting them them blood and time and infinite love.
Ben pulled away and ducked his head, wiping his nose with his sleeve. “Are you coming to Aunt Leia’s?” he asked. “You know how she gets when we’re late.”
“In a few minutes,” Luke told him, needing a little while longer to himself. “I’ll see you there.”
“Okay,” Ben smiled and nodded. “I...love you, Dad.”
“I love you too, Ben,” Luke told him. “More than anything.”
He watched his son walk away, his step seeming a bit lighter. Luke turned back to the city beyond the roof, and the stars beyond that. The light breeze touched his face and brushed back his hair almost like a caress, and Luke spoke his wife’s name into the night, thinking of his son’s words.
He knew that he would never love another like he had loved Mara, but did that mean he would never love again at all? Luke knew that Force willing he could live for another fifty or sixty years – and that was a long time to be lonely.
And yet he wasn’t alone. Luke again pressed his hand to his chest, over his heart, and knew that he’d been wrong, before. It was as full as it had ever been.
Mara was still there, inside of him. She lived on in Ben. Her saw her in his niece, the Sword of the Jedi who moved so much like her in battle, style and technique she’d picked up from her Master, and in so many others Mara had taught, or lives she had touched. But mostly she lived on in his mind, in the Force which had formed an irrevocable connection that could not be severed even by death, reminding him of the truth.
If grief was the price one paid for love, then memory was the reward.