Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

On the surface of a forgotten planet far out in the Outer Rim, the solitary sun had gone down many hours ago and every gritty stone that composed the newly-dedicated temple is covered in a veil of darkness.

The familiar quietness announces itself by way of the subtle shifting of tree branches; the settling dust between the cracks in the pathways soundless. Not for too long– it descends from the boughs and crawls out of the cracks, rejoining the night’s darkness and cooling the remote planet with its familiarity. It gingerly makes its way through the grassy fields and then the collection of buildings that rise out of the clearing, first towards the largest building’s entrance lying at the head of the cobblestone pathway. The arched entryway opens to a spacious, circular room that would have suggested opportunities for council meetings, training, or perhaps sparring, had there been anyone around. The quiet enjoys the hollowness here the most, though it often leaves to visit the few other, smaller buildings just a short walk away from the main building, following the stones set into the dirt.

One of these structures is different from the others, created out of a whiter stone, an old symbol of the Order presiding over the entryway– years' worth of effort had been put into the accumulation of texts that lay on the carefully structured shelves in the walls, and quietness recognizes these with gentle comfort. Only one other loves these texts as much as the quiet does, and with that memory it leaves the white building in search of him, a sigh in the darkness. The moons in the sky tonight are only partially full, but it’s enough to find one's way.

Outside of the buildings, quietness flows over the stationary and cold X-wing, resting in a flat clearing off to the side of the temple and on the border of the edging forest, seemingly forgotten. It doesn’t linger though, instead retracing its steps and joining the stillness that rests on the consecrated settlement, the carefully constructed stonework in the middle of a forested world not quite devoid of life.

It searches through a simple grey hut just north of the main temple, already knowing that it houses a comfortable living space with a bed going unslept in for nights. A powered-off astromech droid sits in the corner, the blue paint indistinguishable from the ashen stone in the cover of the darkness. Smaller huts for a few others– guests, the quietness supposes, given the simplicity and comfort of the rooms– rest just off the same main pathway with the dust in the cracks, a quick walk between them and the largest hut. Still within an easy distance of the main temple, of course, though no one but the quiet moves between the guestrooms and the temple.

It's in this star-lit stillness that the quietness senses the change, the disturbance in the air, before he does and it knows that soon it must leave. It cannot find him tonight, and the call for him grows stronger by the second.

Far across the galaxy, tens of thousands of parsecs away on another ancient planet a lot like this one, rich in its millennia of history, a child sits on a Seeing Stone and calls out. A plea for someone to find him, for someone to train him when others couldn't. The child knows he doesn't have long on the Stone; he can sense the danger around him and his father, and his call remains unanswered. Yet he waits, and he calls for someone, anyone–

On a quiet planet called Ossus, at the top of a great hill a distance away from the stone temple and a bed unused for nights, a man sits alone, his head lowered in the dim molasses light of the crescent moons.

The Jedi gasps, cold air entering his lungs for the first time in minutes, head snapping up in the darkness. He wipes the tears from his eyes and swiftly stands, throwing his cloak around himself and letting his fingers drift briefly across the lightsaber hanging at his side. Making quick work of the walk back, he powers on the astromech, the flashing lights and whirring of Binary echoing around the stone room. The astromech wheels off to prepare the X-wing for travel while the Jedi packs necessities for the trip.

Despite his walk back, the cold seeps into his bones and he feels as if no matter how much he breathes, the air isn't quite enough. He runs a gloved hand through his hair, letting the Force calm him and the balance settle into his bones. A steady breath in, a steady breath out.

He jumps into the X-wing with the same steely determination as his younger piloting days, having no coordinates, no idea of what he's facing, no idea of what this call could mean for the Jedi Order.

From the shadows and dusty corners the quietness bids him farewell, and for the first time in a long time, Luke Skywalker feels a sliver of hope.

✩

It takes several days for him to find the source of the call. He has a specific destination and yet nowhere to navigate to, instead simply relying on the lingering traces of the call in the Force to guide him closer like a beacon in the greater galaxy.

It’s a skill that Luke’s grown comfortable with over the years, catching that glimpse of someone’s energy like a solar flare, a hint in the peripheral of his senses– kriff, if he allowed himself to think far enough back, he could even remember being guided back towards his Aunt and Uncle on the farm when he had wandered too far out in the uncharted desert. He hadn't asked for an explanation then, only knowing that it was safe to feel that gentle pull towards the glow in his senses, that soft nudge deep in his heart that where he was going was right. That the direction he was headed in was secure.

Luke feels something like that now, pulling him towards what was theoretically the right place.

He sighs heavily in the small confines of the X-wing cockpit. Eyeing the destination-less monitors in front of him, he is fully aware that he’s no stranger to the discomfort of days on end in travel, but it doesn't mean he wouldn't prefer having the opportunity to stretch his legs. Or honestly, a generally clear nod towards his location would do just fine as well. The pull in the Force had kept changing; at first he thought it was closer towards the core worlds, but that feeling swiftly disappeared after the initial call. Luke has the unfortunate apprehension that some threat was disrupting the call and forcing the relocation, considering that if the caller truly wanted to be found by him, then ideally they wouldn’t move so much.

Although he still feels the sheer relief that someone knew how to call out, someone who could reach him, some darker part of him gritted against the irony. All of those months in meditation, of losing himself so deeply to the Force that he feared being unable to crawl back out of it, as if he were some useless novice to it all–

He closes his eyes against the bright blue of hyperspace swirling outside his ship, letting it soak the thin film of his eyelids and suddenly willing time to move faster, as if he hadn't spent years stamping out the impatience of his youth. Or tried to, anyways.

In his senses, he searches for Leia and Han, letting his heart rest with theirs for a few moments.

Luke had tried to explain it to them once, how every life in the force emits this… light, in a way. If the great plains of the Force were like the dunes on Tatooine, then the energy of life was like the steady streams of sand blowing over the dunes themselves, ever flowing and creating patterns in the grains. As a Jedi, he watches the way the wind blows and redirects it, either in gentle suggestion or by the situational need to create new patterns. In the stream of life, his sister stands as a glittering presence in the far off dunes, the light of the suns reflecting off of her existence. Luke may not be able to reach her, but simply standing in the warm sands, letting the suns' twin lights soak into his skin, he knows she's out there both real and alive.

In a similar way, Luke knows that the Force-sensitive who called him is out there. Both him and the caller stand in the sands, searching for each other’s energy and hoping that it’ll flare up in the distance of their senses, pointing each other towards the right direction.

Shifting in his seat, Luke concentrates, in his mind turning from the warmth of Leia’s light and instead seeking that unique call again. By the Force's timing, or perhaps sheer circumstance, in that moment the light spikes up again in a flare of desperation, and Luke worries that his theory about some threat is correct. The pull is stronger than it’s been before, and Luke feels a bolt of alarm strike him as if he might miss the call all together if he doesn't pull out of hyperspace now–

"That's an imperial ship," he mutters to himself in indignation as his small X-wing wrenches out of the hyperlane, right into the cold black space where a large cruiser drifts as threatening as they were years ago.

By all means, between the work that both Leia and Luke had put into securing the New Republic, imperial ships of this size should not be in service any longer. He had poured all of his time and energy of the first few years into directing the removal of all remaining Imperial bases and fleets, jumping throughout the galaxy on every whisper of insecurity, wiping all remnant Imperial operations with a squadron of fighters until Leia had called them home.

It was a divisive argument between them– held behind locked doors, naturally; the beginning of a new Republic could not risk distrust in its leadership– and Luke had left once he realized Leia was resolute in her decision to re-designate the few resources they had– including himself. Sure, it was a reasonable, frustrating, and very political decision, but Luke couldn't fight off the unease of the work being incomplete, of the root not being eradicated– only the symptoms.

Everyone who had any ounce of authority is gone, she had repeated with far more patience than Luke had managed to find at that time, and there is no one else to lead the remnants. The Empire has fallen, Luke, and we must pull together our people with the strength we have now.

He receives an open transmission as he circles around the cruiser, a solid voice crackling from his speakers with the demand to identify himself. Given the lack of any protocol in her request, Luke guesses that the voice belongs to one of the people with the Force-sensitive caller, someone protecting them. Carefully searching the cruiser for its docking harbor, he simultaneously reaches out with his senses, detecting no other life forms aboard the ship besides the few at the bridge. With the hopeful simplicity of the situation, Luke disregards her inquiry and flies his X-wing into the empty bay.

He turns to the mech behind him, itching with lingering unease. "Artoo, stay ready by the ship until I give the all-clear."

The droid beeps back in affirmation and Luke opens the hatch, finally breathing in relatively fresh air. He jumps out, cloak flowing from the seat behind him, and immediately unsheathes his saber as a sudden jolt of fear grips his spine. Whether it came from him or had echoed down from the people on the flight deck above him, he isn't entirely sure. What he knows is that something waits for him, something powerful enough that the people with the Force-sensitive couldn't leave the cruiser.

A steady breath in, a steady breath out.

The green of the saber illuminates the dim passageways as he walks forward– calmly, carefully. He draws the hood of his cloak over his eyes, blocking out all distractions but the path that the Force had set him on, ready for whatever is ahead of him.

The first blaster shot rings out and Luke immediately deflects it with his saber. No life forms still– these were purely mechanical troopers, ones that Luke realizes had been programmed with the sole purpose of extinguishing life.

They come in groups then, and Luke concentrates on the steadiness of his motions, letting their attacks fall on empty space as his lightsaber burns through their metal wiring. Two ahead of him, one behind him. He hurls the first two away from him with a targeted push from the Force, swinging his saber over his head to block his back as the third trooper fires behind his sights.

Continuing onward, he feels the solidity of the floor beneath his boots, not letting any fear break his concentration or his unity with the Force. Another steadying breath fills his lungs as he faces the onslaught of relentless troopers, blocking blast after blast, a deflected bolt firing right back into one’s head as Luke deftly cuts through its legs, then immediately spinning around to spear another through its central circuitry. A push outwards with his hand and the next trooper slams into the wall, helpless to the Jedi’s powers before his saber cuts cleanly through its neck.

After a few minutes the docking bay is clear and he feels the steady pull leading him upwards like a star just out of reach.

Moving ahead onto a narrow pathway crossing the hangar, three more block his way and he deflects, deflects, sensing the next blast and dodging before it shoots him somewhere vital. He dedicates himself to the fight, emotions neatly tied down until he reaches safety. He searches for the other life forms above him still, all accounted for, the unique call of the Force-sensitive ringing in his near periphery. He only has to make it a bit farther until he can see this person for himself, living proof that just maybe he isn't alone, that he didn't make himself the last of his kind.

These thoughts motivate Luke forward, vibrant and deadly as he slices another mech trooper so cleanly in two that each half falls over the sides of the narrow walkway. There seems to be an endless amount– and part of his mind absently wonders who could have constructed these and what their intent was for them– before pulling back to the fight as he continues to deflect, destroy, and hurl the troopers across the room until they were nothing but smoking piles of useless metal. He reaches an elevator, everything in him buzzing in the anticipation that he's getting closer to where he was meant to be.

Luke signals for Artoo to come to him now that the pathway behind him is clear, and he steps into the elevator without waiting.

First the silence washes over him, and then, slowly, the warmth radiating from the people above him. There are two, he decides, that have created this pull, this thing that dragged Luke from the temple. As he draws nearer he can feel some part of him beginning to ache, as if he had lost something and didn’t know how to find what it was. The cool sweat builds on his face, under the strands of hair made a mess by the hood’s fabric, as well as in the palm of his organic hand, his heart pounding as if whatever good he was about to face was far more damaging than the troopers he knows he has yet to defeat.

And that's what it was, wasn't it? That pull, that strong light emitting from the Force-sensitive that called him– it was pure goodness, and something else that Luke couldn't name. Something that echoes inside the hollowness, something which makes him hate that he should already know what it is.

But he can't name it.

The elevator pings open, and ten more troopers are already facing him, blasters at the ready. They block the blast doors to the bridge, and Luke knows that's where he'll find them.

The troopers begin shooting immediately, all at once, and he deepens his senses with the Force, eyes still covered by the dark fabric. He knows in that moment exactly where each blaster will shoot and he deflects every bolt, adeptly twisting in the hallway to meet every single move with another deadly blow from his saber. Dragging another trooper forward with his hand outstretched in the empty space, he exhales sharply as he brings the calculating green light down on its machinery, letting the pieces crumble onto the floor. The motions are repetitive and concise as he moves further down the hallway.

The last one approaches him in precise fury, ready to end his life, but Luke simply thrusts out his other hand, feeling the strength of the Force flow through his ribs and down his arm and decimating everything this dark trooper was built for.

There is silence in the imperial ship once more, broken by the soft hum of his lightsaber. Luke stands in front of the door in anticipation, something suddenly rendering him absolutely still. His boots feel stuck to the floor like an explosive attached to the side of a building that knows it's about to go off, and he hates it. The heavy fabric over his face begins to irritate him, and he feels a strong compulsion to finally look with his own eyes, his fingers twitching in the urge to move.

The doors in front of him open slowly but surely, and Luke holds his breath.

The smoke rolls into the now open room, and after taking the first few steps forward, he smoothly shuts his saber off before attaching it to his hip once more. He is no threat to these people, and he needs to see them as much as they do him. Collecting his face into an expression of calm confidence that he sorely wishes he could genuinely feel, Luke folds his hood back and looks up for the first time.

At the head of the group is a silver-armored Mandalorian, body posed defensively between him and what Luke recognizes as the source of the call. Luke immediately regrets not knowing more about Mandalorians besides his unfortunate experience with them in previous years; there appear to be three of them in the room, as well as an unmasked sniper and a rebellion fighter which bothers Luke the wrong way. What is she doing with a group of Mandalorians, let alone harboring a Force-sensitive child?

The silver Mandalorian speaks first from the group, his raspy voice taking Luke off guard almost more than the inane question:

"Are you a Jedi?"

Luke concentrates on maintaining the cool confidence. "I am."

He then turns to the child, who peers up at Luke with such wonder and innocence that it makes Luke pause for just the slightest of moments. He can almost directly see the light emanating from this child, rather than the usual glint from the corner of his eye, and he knows they were right to call on the Jedi to train this child. Luke holds out an invitational hand for him, the hesitation in the room making the exchange soundless.

The child glances back and forth between Luke and the man who had spoken.

"He doesn't want to go with you," the silver Mandalorian states into the silence, his subtle relief as clear as daylight to Luke.

"He wants your permission," Luke corrects, clearly feeling that much, the child’s question just barely scratching the surface of the obvious love filling the room from their connection; most strongly between the child and the Mandalorian. A love strong enough to pull a Jedi across the galaxy, a love that wants the best for its child, and one that wants nothing more than to please its father. It might as well have punched Luke in the stomach, for all the ways it made him ache.

He knows he continued to say more, something to convince them about the necessity of training and his willingness to protect the child, but the memory of it was lost to the realizations happening in real time.

He hadn't expected to deal with… this. The Jedi Order made it very clear in every historical text of their opposition to attachments, wary of the threat that becoming overwhelmed with emotion posed– the threat very similar to the desire for control of everything that is held dear. It was certainly a concept reinforced in Luke's own abbreviated training, both under Obi-wan and Yoda, and it was something Luke knew he had to continue in his own training. He would raise a better, stronger generation of Jedi, fueled by their belief in balance and goodness. He had no other choice; his own family history was an explicit and painful example of what there was to lose once a Jedi gave themselves up to the dark side.

Luke refused to let that happen to another family.

Seemingly deciding that the Jedi no longer posed a threat to them, the Mandalorian turns for the child, picking him up in his arms and speaking in a tone that Luke feels he has no right to hear. He has an urge to step backwards, to give them space, but he knows now without a doubt that he was called here to take the child with him, training him in the way of the Jedi. He carefully watches on as the Mandalorian and the child looked at each other for a last time, the child gazing up into the dark visor as gloved hands hold him so gently, and the Mandalorian–

Removes his helmet?

Luke quickly squashes the surprise that bursts through him, and then even more strongly at the interest at seeing the man's face. For reasons he can’t explain to himself, he averts his gaze, deciding to be content with watching the interaction through the edges of the Force, leaving the physical moment to be kept safely between the two. In the energy of the universe, it felt like Luke was the sole audience to the way their light rippled over the dunes, sand softly blowing in intricate patterns in the stories of their history.

The moment was broken once the Mandalorian set his child down on the ground so that he could walk over to Luke. Small as he was, he first stops at the foot of Artoo, who must have made his entrance to the room in the seconds of Luke’s distraction– and then satisfied by whatever conclusions he came to, the child turns his gaze up to Luke, holding his little arms out.

Luke gladly obliges, sweeping him into the safety of his arms before resigning himself to looking the Mandalorian in the eyes.

In an instant, an overwhelming course of emotion swells through Luke. He automatically makes observations of the man's exposed face against his will– the way his brown hair curls over his forehead, doused in sweat just as much as Luke's own blond hair, noting the depth of brown eyes that Luke is suddenly afraid to look into for too long. The strong face, not much older than Luke and pale in the empty Imperial ship lighting, leaves him in a distant curiosity of what the man could’ve looked like if he just turned towards the sun, letting the warmth of it wash over the expanse of his soft brown skin.

Fuck, Luke had to leave.

He gives a single, courteous nod towards the Mandalorian, denying himself any further observations. The other man nods back levelly, relinquishing his child to the care of the Jedi, and at that moment Luke thinks how rare it is to find that same sheer, brave selflessness anywhere else.

He turns on his heel gently, conscious of how every move he made was being evaluated. The black cloak flows behind him as both he and Artoo enter the open elevator, and Luke allows himself to look up one more time– he’s not sure for what, maybe to catch something he had missed?– but the man's gaze was lost on the child.

Yet he wonders…

Just before the elevator door shuts closed, before he can doubt himself, Luke pushes a barely formulated directive into the Mandalorian's mind:

Come find us on the planet Ossus in six months' time.

And just like that, the other man's eyes snap up to Luke's right as the door shuts closed.

Luke settles in for the trip back to Ossus with the child in his lap and no small amount of utter panic in his mind. He had been alone for so long, and the thought of being the sole caretaker for a literal child is… something.

He feels the overwhelm beginning to rise, the deeply buried worry that he isn’t capable to act as a Jedi Master, the ever-present reminder that something happened a year ago that he still doesn’t have the answers to– but he no longer has the time to worry about both the child and himself, so he prepares for their return trip with disregard for the uncomfortable nagging in his chest.

Luke releases a steady exhale, holding onto the child as Artoo charts the course back to Ossus.

Once they're in the hazy blue of hyperspace, he takes the time to really look down at the quiet youngling in his lap. He's the exact same species as Yoda, which makes a grand total of two that Luke has ever met in his lifetime and offers him a whole lot of brilliant non-answers. Given Yoda's extensive age, Luke would reckon this youngling to be several decades old, which means as a Force-sensitive he would have been around when the original Jedi temple on Coruscant was still standing. Certainly enough time to have been given a name, Luke realizes, as the quiet child rests a small hand on his sleeve.

He clears his throat. "Well, we have about a day's travel ahead of us. Why don't we meet each other properly?" he begins, reasoning it as good of a start as any. "My name is Luke Skywalker, and I am a Jedi Master. That's what all younglings who sense the Force train to become," he explains lamely, feeling the edges of despair creeping up on him the longer he speaks.

The child turns in his lap, casting those big eyes on him in something akin to evaluation. A sudden a memory is pushed into Luke’s mind, washing over him, an offering:

"I am a Jedi Master."

The person speaking offers a quick chuckle, undeniably placating and meant to set at ease. "No, don't be afraid. In my hand is a lightsaber, the weapon of the Jedi. The crystal within the saber chooses its master, and one day, so shall yours."

The large, robed figure rises from where they had been kneeling before him. From where he sits in the blankets, the room is strange, yet airy and wide open with views into the great city beyond it. The marble gleams in the afternoon, and small as he might be, he still feels the light of the sun in the warmth of the Jedi. He would be safe here.

"Come, Grogu. Let's settle you in your rooms."

Luke's jaw drops at the clear, firsthand memory of what had to be one of the original Jedi temples, lost years ago to The Purge. At the gift of it, and the child's name.

He feels the smile pull at his lips before he is conscious of it. "I'm extremely happy to meet you, Grogu. You'll find the temple I've made to be…" he hesitates, searching for what it is after seeing the marble of a real temple in his mind’s eye, before settling on "…simpler, than the great temples of old.”

“But you, Grogu, shall be just as safe there, I assure you," he finishes, softly stroking the child's hand with a gloved finger, hoping to offer some form of reassurance for both of them.

They were going to figure this out, and they'd do it together.

On their first day back on Ossus, Luke stops worrying about what to feed Grogu once he sees the child reach into the pond by the temple and wrench an Arges frog directly out of it, downing the wriggling creature in one go. Luke briefly rolls his eyes up at the open sky, allowing the pause to give him a moment to enjoy its usual brilliant blue, still captivating in its vivacity to him-- having grown up with the hazy grey-white-yellows of Tatooine-- but he quickly refocuses on preparing Grogu's room.

Luke had built several huts for future padawans that might study under the presiding Master, but even now as he guides the briskly toddling child beside him, he still feels some level of surprise that they'll be put to use so soon. They walk down the main pathway together, stones laid in the dirt of grassy fields. Luke tries to look with the eyes of a youngling seeing this place for the first time, one having no idea of what it had looked like before Luke had built the temple.

The expansive forest surrounds the entire area, banked by the imposing edges of the distant earthen blue and green mountains. He knows that if you went north of the clearing and followed the gently trodden path through the forest for just over an hour, you'd end up at the base of a great foothill, the peak of it holding the scattered pieces of his abandoned project. In itself, the hill wasn't very grand compared to the surrounding mountains of the region, but the distance offered a bird's-eye view of the area he had built and claimed home, for himself and for the reestablished Jedi Order.

The actual "plans" for the temple were nonexistent: Luke knew he'd need a safe space for physical training, a second place to store the texts he'd collected over the years as well as the ones on Ossus itself, and then the residential rooms– one for himself to the right of the main temple, and three smaller huts on the opposite side. He had wanted to ensure that the hopeful younglings felt like they still had their own space, even as they spent their next years dedicated to training, and Luke felt pleased with the result.

Overall, the place had taken a year or so to fully construct, as finding the stones in the local area and actually transporting them was as much of an effort as building the huts themselves.

Reading between the lines of what history he could find, it seemed that a long time ago the planet had been ravaged by lightning storms that killed the majority of life across its surface. As it stands now, the area is verdant in life and greenery, and without acknowledging the historical significance of the Jedi Order establishing one of their first temples here, Luke found that the place was nearly as strong as Dagobah by its pure connection to the Force. As a matter of fact, he credits much of the Force’s strength here for the Jedi he would become later on.

In its universal intent for balance and growth, the Force had taken the scarred lands and gently nurtured them back to life, allowing time to bring the lightning-wrecked elements together. In some sense Luke feels that he could catch a glimpse of what the place had looked like millennia before, the hazy suggestions fading in and out of the corner of his eyes. Not quite a full image, but the idea of what something had been, and the sense of what it could be.

It was months ago that the first event had occurred, drawing Luke closer to the Force.

Fed up by the perpetual hints and partial images in his mind as he wandered the planet for a safe and habitable location to build, Luke had finally reached out, shutting his eyes and willing to actually see. If his eyes had remained open, he knew that in the valley where he stood he would've seen the same as anybody: the river before him, lying at the foot of the mountains that rose from the ground, the jagged peaks grand and covered in life. Yet at the shore of the river, the dirt and sand glittered in some kind of promise, glitching like it couldn’t decide whether to be present or something from millennia past.

He could smell the earthy minerals, the strong, weather-hardened stone that the land had been before the river's erosion had softened the ground and broken the stony shore to sand, and it made the tips of his fingers prickle with excitement.

Figuring he had nothing to lose, he chose to pull at that feeling– and in that instant the sand abruptly crashed over him on the riverside, plugging his ears and filling his mouth, saturating his lungs in one quick movement like the energy in the area had been waiting for Luke to find it and tug. Could he have breathed, he surely would've been taking panicked breaths– but some distant, hazy part of himself knew that his physical presence stood unharmed at the riverside, eyes closed and the Force of time flowing through his body and into the land beneath his feet.

Perhaps it was minutes later, perhaps an hour of asphyxiation, Luke didn't know. What he did know was that once he opened his eyes again, blinking in the orange glare of the low sun, was that part of the river had dried and moved outwards, a dent in its flow.

What had been sand was now a rocky outcropping, irregular and disrupting the landscape. No longer blinking in the sun’s glare but rather in sheer surprise, Luke had crouched down to look at the rock quarry before him, quickly understanding that its visible discoloration was from how altered it was at the molecular level, from the immense and sudden heat of a lightning storm millennia past.

He knew then that this was what the Force had meant for him to build the temple from.

The moons are just beginning to rise when Luke settles down on his bed back at the temple, bones stiff with exhaustion, Grogu having settled into his own room after several hours of unintelligible chattering and one proper dinner later. Clearly it didn’t take very long for the child to feel at ease with someone he’d deemed safe, which Luke counts as a good sign for their future months together.

Now, feeling the odd sensation of a bed beneath his bed, Luke breathes in the silence and loneliness once again, the familiarity of it.

The stone around him now is far smoother, yet still discolored and textured by the lightning that had shaped this rock long ago. He had broken into the stone and brought it back to the clearing where he’d decided to build, remembering how ironic it felt then that he would live and learn in a home just as shaped by lightning as his own body was. The hours of work he put into creating and shaping the material certainly didn’t mean he had any less awe for it all, the energy that pulsed in the air around him.

The way Luke sees it, that day on the riverbank he had unintentionally acted as a catalyst for the energy that drifted over the sand dunes of the Force, redirecting them and gently pushing the winds to shape the dunes’ patterns, just… the other way. Such as, the elements of the physical sand on the rivershore brought back to its original state of lightning-ravaged stone. Yes, it was still the same “wind” he called the Force, and it was still the same grainy particles caught in the wind, but simply shifted to be somewhere else.

He supposes it isn't too different from how the Force is typically used, in the way that a Jedi can sense the energy flowing through the universe and shift it here or there as needed.

He still remembers seeing Obi-wan push his suggestions into the weak minds of the troopers on Tatooine, bending them to his will, and the immediate realization of how little he knew about the world. He remembers Yoda pulling his lost X-wing out from the depths of the mire on Dagobah, and how resolutely he had believed it to be impossible; the task was simply too big when he hadn't had the patience to learn. Especially later on, as the Emperor tortured him under the searing pain of Force lightning, burning into his nerves and making his skin smoke, he hadn't stopped being surprised by the uses of the Force. Who was he to say anything about this new perspective of it all? The same even Force allows him to be guided by the ghosts of masters long gone.

Or at least, it did.

The black robes he wears suddenly start to feel suffocating, heavy and tight across his ribs. He sits up in a rush, thoughts too distracting to realize his breaths had been coming out in rapid bursts. A comfortable shirt and a pair of well-worn pants fly into his outstretched grip, his mind finally catching up with everything from the last two days and seemingly reaching the limits of his faux calm.

Padding through the night's dewy grass, he gathers himself enough to stop by the doorway to Grogu's room-- finding him safely curled up in the middle of the bed where Luke had left him, fast asleep. He heaves a sigh of relief, moving past Grogu's hut and down the familiar stone pathway that ends where the dirt trail begins, leading into the forest around them. Despite the clarity of the night, Luke still feels like he can't quite get enough air to fill his lungs, and his feet begin to move faster towards where he knows a small lake rests just a mile further into the forest.

Reaching it in mere minutes, Luke hastily tears the Jedi robes off his shaking frame, feeling far colder than the brush of night air should’ve felt on his exposed skin.

The inky black lake awaits him and he watches the reflections of the stars ripple at his intrusion, astutely ignoring the way the bottom swiftly disappears with no light to gauge the depths of the waters. Luke dives in anyways, letting the water fill his ears and the pressure of it all press into his shut eyelids. He holds his breath for as long as he can, until it burns and burns and he bursts from below the surface, taking in a true lungful of air for the first time in what feels like hours.

There is no one to meet him at the surface, and so he lets the water droplets fall from his hair and drip down the planes of his face, feeling them slide down his neck and eventually return to the water.

Here he was preparing to train a child in the way of the Jedi, knowing full well that something was wrong with himself, and had been for a long time.

After the destruction of the second Death Star and all the sorrow that erupted from it, he had worked under Leia's command for the following three years. He believed he was doing the right thing, commanding a team of skilled pilots that sought out the remains of Imperial bases, putting a stop to the stray fighters that had been causing as much destruction as possible before their end at the hands of Luke's squadron. He was proud of them and their work, and he hoped it would clear an easier way for Leia to begin bringing planets into the New Republic's democracy without the impending threat of chaos.

Obi-wan and Yoda guided him when he felt himself becoming lost to the effort, in the times when it all felt so big: how were they supposed to build something new, something good out of what remains? Of course he relied on the wisdom of his forebears, reminding him that the Force flowed through everything, that it sought balance in ways that Luke could only try to fight for. Yet Luke couldn't help the nagging feeling that something was off, and it seemed that he was the only one who felt that way.

When he tried calling on Obi-wan in the first instance of this wrong-ness, he was met with silence. As he was for all of the following times after that.

Where before he always had some peripheral sense of support and unity, there was nothing but his own reality, nothing but what was directly in front of him. Had Leia not chosen to set aside the path of the Jedi in favor of strengthening her position as Senator, Luke might have gone to her-- and yet, the echo of no attachments still rang loudly in his mind. If he offered her the part of himself that was truly afraid, that would mean sharing in his weakness together. She would have another reason for concern, another stress in her life, and Luke couldn't be the one to put her in that position. No attachments.

And so he had left.

His leaving wasn’t secret; he had gone to Leia after their argument and said that he would continue the Jedi path, collecting what remains and hoping to begin the Order anew. He told her that he loved her, and he did, so deeply that it almost hurt, but he couldn't explain that he had to leave because something was wrong and he had to preserve what he knew before something else broke, before whatever was crawling on the horizon finally revealed itself to be as ugly as he feared. Two years later and here he was, the ugly truth grinning at his helplessness, waiting for him to say it aloud.

Luke steps out of the water and into the open air, shivering no more or less than before and feeling utterly drained. He dries off, looking down at his shoulder and chest where he knows the scars are hidden under the veil of night, feeling relieved by their invisibility. Swiftly dressing in his comfortable clothes, the earth welcomes him as he walks barefooted back down the dirt trail.

He holds his pair of boots in his synthetic hand as he walks, letting the artificial neurons indulge in the cold leather far different from the warmth of the glove he usually wears. The steady inhale and exhale of his lungs greets the clear air of Ossus's nights, its sky's stars appearing as pinpricks in the galaxy just above the tree branches.

He is calm, and he has it under control. He will begin training Grogu in the morning, and in six months' time he will show the Mandalorian that he was right to trust him, that he's had it under control all along.

The first few days Luke takes it slow as they get to know each other. He lets Grogu walk freely around the area, though they do spend some time in the main temple, sitting across from each other as Luke works on figuring out what Grogu already knows and what he's willing to share with Luke.

As it turns out, he actually has significant gaps in his memory which Luke eventually concludes as intentional, a preventative measure to protect someone so young. Luke wonders if he could look at them without removing the filter that was placed in the child's mind, but hesitates to try until they know one another better.

One positive that is glaringly bright from Grogu's mind is the impact that the silver Mandalorian has had in the child's life. Nearly every single instance of joy or comfort, Luke sees the Mandalorian in his periphery– as if in the child's perspective of the Force, the man is something that belongs with it, going hand in hand: the ever present flow of the Force, and the stability of the Mandalorian. Something like what Leia is to Luke, something bright in the endless dunes, a steady presence.

Luke understands more then, why the parting between the child and his father was so bright, so vivid. He also quickly grasps the attachment that has already formed between the two, and hopes on everything good that it isn't too late to separate the child's concept of balance and attachment.

In other regards, it turns out Grogu has a sense of humor that seems cultivated to particularly provoke Luke:

A few days into their training, Luke learns that Grogu is an early riser.

A few weeks into their training, Luke learns that Grogu has absolutely zero qualms with Force-lifting frogs he had collected from the pond and sailing them through the window of Luke's hut, abruptly dropping them from the air and onto Luke's sleeping form as the sun rises over the horizon.

Luke has never wanted to plant frogs in a child's bed during the night so badly until now. He doesn't, of course, but that doesn't mean the idea doesn’t occur to him. After seeing evidence of the child's abilities, which he had yet to uncover until the frog incidents began, he works on training him in concentration and in precision. There is progress over a course of days, including learning how to balance stones on top of each other and more precisely land frogs on Luke's face at five o'clock in the morning– though the process of really learning precision takes the next several weeks.

A month in, Luke begins to take Grogu on trips outside of the temple, the child atop Luke's backpack as he runs through the golden green trails throughout the forest. They go down to the river, Luke catching fish and harvesting the fruit from the growth around them as the child wanders over the area, chasing any wildlife brave enough to step out of the forest. The part of the river that Luke had inadvertently converted back to fossilized lightning still remains bone-dry, deeply carved into by hand and now a stony pit in the earth. A good enough pit for Grogu to crawl down into, jumping over the various cracks and shelves made by Luke's mining.

Luke sits on the sandy shore at the top, right at the line where it transitions into the stone pit, picking at the fruit from the basket beside him. "I was thinking we could learn Force jumping, next. What do you think about that?" he offers, voice raised over the stream of the river rushing past.

The child casts a look back up from his precarious position in one particular crack in the stone and emits some sort of excited chatter, which Luke takes to mean he's either a very devoted student, or there was a bug scuttling in the crack.

"Perfect."

Luke draws his knees up, pulling them to his chest and growing equally distracted by whatever small thing had begun crawling on Grogu's face. He watches it attempt to crawl into Grogu's ear as his mind wanders in the golden afternoon glow, a smile tugging at his lips.

It felt good to not be alone.

Really, Luke thinks, everything was relatively stable and almost… good, even if it was just over a month of being together. He hadn’t been able to see any other memories from the child, and whether that was a skill to be learned on his part or a choice entirely decided by Grogu, Luke wasn't sure. All he had learned up to this point was that Grogu had been delivered to the Jedi Order with no evidence of parentage, and presumably he was physically present during The Purge and had survived it long enough for another Jedi to shield his memories, before the Order's extinction. Everything after that is a haze, gently drifting into a clarity that’s guarded by the presence of the Mandalorian in the child's mind, and the emotions tied to it all.

Luke himself almost feels an absurd sense of safety at the thought of the warrior, even having never truly met him or seen him in a fight. Deeper down, he finds some stupider part of himself wishing he could feel just an ounce of that same security that the child felt, some presence out there telling him that he's doing alright. Perhaps, now that Grogu was more accustomed to the rhythm here on Ossus, Luke could go back to working on his project– the hope that he holds out for an answer in the silence. He's had years of experience in messing with the complex mechanics of droids and spacecraft, just how different can it be with the Force?

He thinks back to his lonely nights at the top of the hill overlooking the temple and knows that he has more to give, other possibilities to try and fix whatever broke inside him. Sucking the berry stains off of his fingers, he wipes the rest off on his black vest with little grace.

"It's getting late in the afternoon," he begins, peering over to watch whatever was left of the crawling bug get popped into Grogu's mouth with a crunch. "Time to call it a day, I think."

The child protests, as Luke has learned he is keen to do, and pulls himself out of the stony pit and back onto Luke's knapsack anyways. With the pack and child hanging onto his back and a basket filled to the brim with fruits and greens hanging off his arm, Luke finds himself walking back at a casual pace without the usual intensity for training. He lets the gentleness of the day soak into his skin, though the only parts of him exposed are his face and left hand. At the thought of it, he turns his face towards the sun, and a stray memory of the Mandalorian crosses his mind before it slips away just as quickly as it came.

The first time he returns at night to the great hill rising out of the forest, he is both relieved and unsurprised to find everything where he had left it all those weeks ago. He throws off the cover he had placed over it all, the light of the full moons catching on the small, but not insignificant, collection of kyber crystals he had managed to find scattered throughout the galaxy during his travels. He places them individually in their unique grooves within the ground, creating a circle wide enough for an adult to sit comfortably at its center.

To Luke's understanding, kyber crystals resonate with the Force more than most other materials in the galaxy, sensing the intent of their user. However, Luke is far more interested in their amplifying abilities and ability to truly focus the Force, as much as it sickens him to be around such raw power. In a way, it feels like he has been slowly but surely building up a tolerance to the powerful and heady feeling of the Force being so concentrated in his mind, overwhelming him with the ebb and flow of the universe. If Leia was a glittering presence in his regular senses, then here the concentration of pure power lights up the sands in his mind's eye like a reactor explosion.

Here, the currents of the Force blow across the dunes as if the engines of a freighter were preparing for take off, and Luke stands in the midst of it all– the glaring lights, the harsh winds– and refuses to be knocked over, as much as he stumbles.

Here, he searches for an answer: physically present in another Ossus night, and yet his mind lost to the currents of the greater Force. He feels the danger of it all, doesn't want to know what happens if he falls into the roaring sands at his feet.

"Obi-Wan!" He shouts into the wind, already knowing his voice is lost to it. "Master Yoda! Anyone," he trails off, a flurry of frustration choking him not for the first time. The sand glitters so brightly that when he blinks he sees stars.

He walks further into the desert of his mind, watching the horizon grow no closer as if he were stuck walking in place. Here, it doesn’t matter how fast he runs. He always ends back up at the same place.

"I'm here," he mumbles to the sand blowing past his face, coating his eyes in gold. "I'm here–"

The hazy skies are empty. The sand washes into his mouth and his airways are cut off–

Luke's eyes snap open and he falls out of the air and onto solid ground, gasping for breath once again. He wipes the burning tears from his eyes and swiftly places the crystals back into the box he had been harboring them in, throwing the cover back over it all.

The night at the top of the hill has a gentle breeze to it, warmer than it was a month ago but not enough to keep Luke from shivering under the starlight. He misses the words of his mentors, the warmth of his sister on a planet parsecs away in the Core. He misses feeling like someone out there was guiding him, instead of abandoning him to this solitary mess he had become. Worst of all, he hates the fact that he doesn't know why he was cut off from it all, if it was his own fault for not following the Jedi way correctly, or if it was the lack of something he didn't know how to learn.

And here he is now, a mentor for this child that so clearly belongs with his father that Luke doesn't know if he'll be able to fully teach him the ways of the Jedi– and then what will become of him?

He lays on his back to gaze at the stars above, bright and untouched by pollution and yet entirely different from the ones he had wished on as a boy, the ones he wanted nothing more than to fly into.

The breeze rustles through the messy reeds blanketing the hill, eventually catching up to Luke himself and caressing his face. So much of him aches for what he can't have, by creed and circumstance. In closing his eyes again, he allows himself to lay in the lights of Tatooine's twin suns, the light he'd created in his perception of the Force that could feel so real that he was sure he’d wake with burns.

Luke’s favorite days are when they go up into the mountains, Grogu firmly hanging onto the straps of the backpack that Luke carries. Here he feels more at one with the Force, and he knows that Grogu feels it more strongly here too. In places away from it all, the child shares the occasional fragment of an emotion or a memory of his times with the Mandalorian while Luke runs around the region’s hills, sidestepping the jagged stones in favor of more solid ground as they climb up the mountains.

He gets an idea of what the child had seen– the brief image of a mudhorn flashes across Luke’s periphery, accompanied by the child’s distinct urge to protect and save. He wonders just what the Mandalorian had gotten himself into in that memory, if Grogu’s impression of the event left such a clear and lingering feeling, even as a child.

Luke shares his own stories with the child as well, ones of when he raced in his Aunt’s landspeeder across the deserts of Tatooine and ended up crashing it not too far off. Or, of the time that Han accidentally sealed shut the vent over himself when he was working on repairs in the Falcon, leaving Leia to find him hours later. Leia had laughed for so long that she had tears streaming down her face, laughing even more when she decided to leave Han in the vent so Luke could see it. They did manage to open the vent some time later, but not before Han’s resigned expression had a permanent place in both of their laughter-stained memories.

Luke looks over his shoulder to check Grogu’s reaction, and his deadpan face sends Luke into another bout of laughter, his voice echoing in the mountain’s forests.

It’s in moments like these that he forgets to worry about proper training, nothing able to reach him here on this mountain. He holds onto the trunks of the trees with contentment, surveying the valley far below him with the child on his back, so bright that he thinks the darkness wouldn't be able to find him here in the first place.

The brief moments of relief come to an unwelcome end three months into their training.

Luke guesses Grogu’s build up of nightmares come from all the unusual agitation, from becoming closer to the Force and letting his young mind open up to its potential. Again, he wonders if there might be an unobtrusive and harm-free way to look at the shielded memories held in the child's mind, which could give Luke some clue as to how to direct his training methods.

So far, they've mostly focused on lifting objects over a small distance as well as Force jumps, something tactical and tangible for them to work on when Luke can’t solve the complexity of either of their minds. He's even allowed Grogu a glimpse into what he sees when he visualizes the Force and its motion, hoping to share some of the peace of mind that Luke experiences in the glittering sands. Though, perhaps it was a mistake to let the child anywhere near his mind.

Either way, the nightmares come some nights and leave on others. Luke would wake from his own dreamless sleep in a sweat, the eminent fear saturating the air around him. There was no hesitation between waking and crossing the clearing over to Grogu's room, finding the child sitting up with wide eyes. It was during this time that Luke found himself sleeping far more often at the foot of Grogu's bed than in his own.

He commits himself further to the meditations at the top of the hill when he has the time, searching in the greater Force for anyone else at all, someone who knew the Jedi ways better, someone who could tell him he was doing right by this child in his care. When those efforts fall fruitless, Luke begins to train himself in his own perception, forcing himself to reach deeper, making himself something that might finally be useful and see, someone that knows what to do with a child’s nightmares.

In the day he trains the young one, taking him further out on Ossus and letting him experience the Force’s reaches in a safe environment. During the night when he's nothing but alone, he pushes himself harder, standing firmer in the raging desert winds, letting the Force collide into and through him, exhausting him into dreamless sleep.

Although he couldn’t find anything to warrant immediate concern, he should've known then that something had begun to shift into a dangerous territory.

One particularly exhausting night, Luke doesn't wake to the fear that saturates his room. What he does wake to is the warmth of a small body crawling onto the bed with him, reaching for the only place it knew would be safe and protect him on this lonely planet.

Luke's eyes flutter open to meet the large, pleading eyes of the child, so close to his face. Quickly coming to full consciousness, a part of his brain wars with him– no attachments, no attachments. And yet the other side, the one that watched his only family burn to ashes before him, the one that knew what it was like to feel small, whispers that Grogu was just a child, and his father couldn’t be here for him right now. Who else would?

And so Luke smiles at Grogu, sweeping him in closer towards his own warmth and hushing that they were safe, that it was just a dream, that nothing can get them now– the Force is with them. As the child's eyes drift shut, Luke wishes it all wouldn't feel so much like a lie.

As soon as it becomes obvious that the child would look for him in his hut at night, Luke has to stop his trips up to the hill, and the rising feeling of helplessness eats away at what control he thinks he has.

They train in the day, and the fatigue catches up to them at night and weighs them down in the morning. If Luke hadn't felt prepared at the start, he was certainly feeling far from it now. He isn't even sure which parts of it all made it so difficult. The part where he has to be the sole caretaker for a child that hasn't learned to speak yet, attempting to train them in a way lost to time, or the part where reality is that all of it had to be done alone.

Existing with the fact that as a supposed master of the Force, he couldn't control it in the ways that he needed– couldn't find the voices that guided him, couldn't undo the shielded memories in Grogu's mind, or even the simple fact that he hadn’t been powerful enough to find Grogu in the first place– it was the child who had reached out to him.

In his darker moments, he finds himself truly mourning the massive destruction that the Sith had wreaked across the galaxy, and just how much history had been destroyed by their hatred and thirst for absolute control. He feels that bitterness haunt him on the days that they go down to the river and on the days that they hike beyond the temple and into the mountains; during the evenings when Grogu chatters away unintelligibly during their dinner and Luke wishes he could have shown this bright spark of a soul to anyone else that would have understood him as deeply. Not that Luke fully understood the child– he reserved those rights for the Mandalorian– but he felt that he might have been beginning to.

Later on, Luke would recognize the role that all of these feelings had in leading up to the event, the impossible loneliness corroding him from the inside, and wishes he could have caught them sooner.

The night that it happened felt no different from the others, at first.

For some reason unknown to him, they had discovered that Grogu slept far better in Luke’s bed than his own. The nights long and the child already asleep in Luke’s hut, he had taken to passing the time with something far simpler and familiar to him, hoping that the pure exercise would be enough to wear him out. Given the rainfall outside obscuring the moonlight, he decides to take the training droids and go with simple lightsaber practice in the open space of the temple, rather than in the northern clearing as he might usually. Leaving behind the cloak and boots in his hut, he walks barefoot down the short path and lets the rain wash over his bare skin, having worn a sleeveless top that gladly seizes the rare opportunity to expose him to the elements.

The stones forming the pathway hold the rain in their gaps, but Luke continues on with a steady gait. By the time he reaches the temple he is far from dry but something in his ribs buzzes, likely in anticipation– though he swears he can still see the electricity sparking from the stones in the corners of his vision. The raindrops clutter his eyelashes and he rubs them off before tying a smooth blindfold securely around his head, the droids already hovering silently in the temple’s dry air.

Luke slides his thumb over the button on his lightsaber's handle, hearing the reassuring hum of the blade as he turns it on. In the darkness of his vision, he can feel the positioning of the four droids as someone might feel the steady weight of another standing inches behind them, the breath on the back of their neck.

The droids begin firing bolts at him and he spins around accordingly, deflecting each with the accuracy of experience.

He thinks of the first time he did this, all those years ago on the Falcon. The burns that had been left on his arms for days afterwards, the determination that stayed for far longer. He remembers doing it on sleepless nights every time his searches throughout the galaxy fell short of results, some places being too wrecked to even attempt sorting through the pieces that remained. He feels the memory of repetition here on Ossus, back when the grassy clearing held nothing remarkable but a man with too much faith.

It should be soothing, letting his instincts take over and settle the chaos of his mind, an activity he's done hundreds of times over– and yet as the green blade slices through the air he feels unwanted memories taking over. His hackles rise as if he were back in the throne room facing Vader, his greatest hope and dearest enemy, not strong enough to have stopped his own father from hurting him.

He feels the breaths coming in more rapidly, the sweat beginning to join the rain dampening the blindfold over his eyes. His feet dance with precision on the stone floor, saber no longer deflecting the training droid's offences but instead defending Luke from whatever had broken in his mind, the ghosts that seemed to crawl out of the cracks he couldn't cover.

He distantly detects the break, feeling like an outsider watching something deep and irreparable snap in him, the desperation to stop it growing stronger and stronger as he spins around the hallowed temple, the saber held in his hands falling short of protecting him.

The thoughts don’t stop crashing through his head. He had been too ignorant, too selfish to prevent the slaughter of the people who had raised him. Too helpless to stop Vader from taking down one of the only two mentors he'd ever know, too unprepared to help Leia raise a republic out of the ashes of an empire.

He swings around to deflect the shots behind his back, the buzz in his chest harsh and oppressive.

Born too late to save anyone, inheriting powers belonging to a nonexistent race. Condemned to collect fragments of what should have been his, witness only to himself. Guardian of a child that he didn't even know how to help in the ways that they needed. He feels like an observer to his own impotency, incapable.

The word echoes in his head, the brightness in his peripheral senses growing stronger by the second. Luke then feels the sand blowing over his feet, feels the heat of the dunes burning his soles as if he were back on that hill, and nothing he does can stop it.

The twin suns expand in the sky and he feels dizzy with the heat and light, the Force blasting its way through his chest as if he were an obstacle to get through, the uncomfortable brilliance of it all blinding him regardless of his eyes being open or closed, and he feels something crawling up his throat and catching just as it tries to leave his mouth– a plea for it all to stop, for someone to do something, anything–

Something tears between his ribs.

Or it feels like his ribs, or where his lungs should be, if he could breathe, but he can't, and something had split him open and it's so impossibly bright–

It's searing white light, and pain, but he knows pain but this is different, burning his throat–

Somewhere in it all, he shuts off his saber, helpless to the Force tearing through him, skin cold despite the heat crackling in the room.

The pain encompasses him despite the irony of him getting his wish– he can suddenly see because something in him has broken, he can see the ghosts of this place, the stains of Jedi past, not here in the temple Luke had built with his hands, but the trails of the Force from millennia ago–

And yes, there it was– he could see Grogu's beautiful light head-on, no longer hiding in his periphery, but it's too much, the uncovered memories in the child's mind, and Luke doesn't know what to do but let it flow over his burning skin, let it overwhelm him and hope that there will be something left of him by the rise of tomorrow's sun–

✩

Grogu finds him collapsed in the temple, training droids motionless and scattered in ashen pieces on the floor around him.

Luke himself wakes to the discomfort of damp clothes sticking to his skin, the sun beginning its climb up the horizon to personally make him want to rip his eyes out, and to the child climbing on top of his face to gawk at him in very evident concern.

Regardless, a wave of relief washes over his entire body at the simple marvel of surviving such a cataclysmic encounter with the Force. Alive, but not unchanged, Luke grudgingly realizes as he blinks to full awareness, feeling something along the lines of having been trampled over by a hoard of banthas.

Everything was still too bright. Grogu might as well have been his own miniature star in the orbit of Luke's face, and certain parts of the area around them seemed the wrong color, like the sun was shining on them even though Luke could see perfectly well that it was rising on the other side of the building. His head hurt, and something was still wrong with his breathing, like he had never learned to do it right before this moment. Or maybe it was just the child sitting on his chest? Or-- no, something else was wrong. Or different.

Luke begins to sit up, attempting to relocate the glaringly bright child on top of him to somewhere more helpful, like beside him. The child who had been babbling away this whole time, Luke registers belatedly.

"Don't worry kid, I'm all right," he assures, breath irregular and head likely about to explode, by his reckoning. "Just a..." he wheezes for a moment, "...late night."

Grogu looks at him with an expression that Luke had seen far too often on Han's face, usually paired with a skeptical "banthashit.” For a brief moment, the question of what the Mandalorian's parenting techniques might have looked like crosses Luke's mind, and he feels the wave of laughter threaten to overtake the stabbing pain.

The impulse quickly comes to a halt as Luke watches the kid's eyes close and hands raise in a very familiar, Force-detecting stance. Oh, he was not letting the kid try to fix him, training be damned.

"Hey, hey now, I'm all good!" He raises his own hands in an attempt at sincerity and decides to see if his legs were still working. After a few tries, it appears that they haven't given out on him yet and Luke comes to a shaky stand with a non-insignificant level of effort.

He takes in the shattered remains of the training droids, discarded lightsaber, and the big, brown eyes of the child staring up at him, opting to leave the entire mess for later as he lifts Grogu into his arms. Breathing came easier with proximity to the child, Luke realizes with some despair. It followed into the next realization that whatever had just happened to him meant that he had both completely fucked his senses in the Force and made himself unfit to train someone, and the Mandalorian was set to find them in three weeks' time with the expectation that Luke had done right by his child.

Everything was still so bright but becoming more manageable as the minutes progressed, so Luke decides to gracefully stumble out of the temple and into the dewy fields outside with Grogu in his arms, the rain having let up overnight. He sets him down by the pond with the frogs, a short distance away from the buildings but just within earshot should Grogu need him, then heads back to his hut still feeling like someone fired a blaster an inch from his ears.

Inside, he peels off the shirt and checks his chest for any injuries-- and is nearly blinded by the fracture he sees. Nothing physical, but within his perception of the Force where he feels it the strongest, there's a split beginning somewhere around the top of his sternum and ending again just above his navel, cracked like dry ground in a desert. And it's bright, emitting some white light that Luke knows he can only see because he's broken something in the Force, or something has broken him.

He sits down on his bed, overwhelmed, and falls right back asleep.

He wakes some unquantified time later to frogs being tactfully dropped on his face through the open window. Picking the slimy creatures off with a groan, he's relieved to feel his head more or less in one piece. He squints against the daylight and guesses it's around early afternoon, failing to see the necessity of being awake-- only to bolt right up in a distinctly where-is-the-child panic. At the moist collision of another frog hurled directly into his eye, his muscles relax and he takes a moment to actually look out the window with his present eyes. Grogu sits beneath it, Luke's basket filled with what is probably ten or so frogs harvested as ready ammunition, and Luke lets the familiar hilarity and annoyance of it all wash over him, even as the child’s brightness nearly blinds him in his senses.

No, Luke could not continue training the child, but he would remember this.

The world is bright, and in the days to come Luke learns how to live in it. He can still see what really exists in front of him: the trees that shoot out of the ground and spread into fractal branches high above him, the long shadows cast in the morning and evening when the sun hangs low, the grassy reeds that sway in the breeze, hues of sun-dried leather and oxidized copper mixing with the planet's vibrant greens. Yet now he can just sense... more. The trees on the north side feel older, somehow, than those on the south side as if the planet had burned unevenly in the past. He swears that, in the hazy blue-violets of Ossus’s evenings, he can see occasional sparks in the ancient stone that comprises the temple. In some way he can almost see the paths he had walked earlier that day, or perhaps yesterday-- lingering in the air before him like dust that doesn't know how to settle.

More interestingly, he can feel the child's memories waiting for him, as if they had been offered a long time ago and he just didn't know how to look. Even though he knows what lies beneath the now-thin protective film over them– living experience of The Purge at the Jedi Temple, the words of true Jedi Masters, perhaps, something that he could read in between the lines of and learn something more of his family’s history– even though he knows this, he feels as if he's revoked his right to them.

So he doesn't look.

The days pass by, the warm weather rapidly coming to an end on Ossus, and Luke prepares to say goodbye to the child that he had devoted the entirety of himself to these last months. He does his best to maintain the meditations he had been doing with Grogu, learning how to reach out with control to the Force around him, but it's different for Luke now. He sees too much and doesn't understand how to interpret it all, and if he can't control it himself, how does he teach it to someone else?

The day before the Mandalorian is meant to arrive, Luke hears a whisper for the first time, and a possible danger dawns on him like an unwelcome fleet in the middle of an empty night.

The words are cut-off and nonsensical and only for Luke to hear, and he thinks it comes from the fracture in him. At first he thinks that someone is trying to communicate, that finally he reached someone, maybe old of his old masters. Listening in the silence of Ossus's lazy afternoon, he reaches for one of the journals he keeps by his bedside and physically writes what he hears– Force, Jedi, nothing too distinct about either of those, until he hears his name, interjected in the stream as if he ever wanted anything to do with this. The words are laced with something, a feeling of bitterness, and Luke registers the difference it makes from the calming voices of his mentors– and he thinks that maybe he had reached someone after all.

Someone he hadn't been able to find when he flew as a Commander under Leia's order, clearing the galaxy of Imperial remnants with his squadron.

He doesn't know who it is– not even who it could be, but fear strikes him like a landspeeder crash, fast and destructive.

He isn't alone, and has been barring himself open for them for weeks.

The sun rises the next day and Luke knows it has been six months– suddenly worrying that the Mandalorian might not come. Luke didn't exactly give the other man jump coordinates, and as a Mandalorian surely he was off hunting, or doing something important. He had been on an Imperial cruiser when he'd found Grogu, after all, surrounded by a platoon of dark troopers. What if he was in the middle of a bounty? Or worse, had been killed by a bounty he was after?

Luke works on steadying his breathing, not looking over as he hears the tell-tale sound of a frog landing in his blankets. A breath in, a breath out.

The kid himself wanders from beneath the window outside, moving to stand by the doorway of Luke's hut. He babbles at Luke and invites himself in, jumping up onto the bed with the Force before shoving the frog into his mouth, and Luke feels a brief moment of pride for the skills Grogu had learned despite Luke's astrofield of complexities. Looking down at the child beside him, small and beautifully bright as the day that they found each other in this vast galaxy, Luke feels a surge of love join the pride in his heart.

The feeling is swiftly crushed by a sigh of disappointment in himself for growing attached, and he dredges himself upwards to get ready for the day, whatever it brings.

The black outfit had been set aside for several months now, mostly in favor of the lighter, well-worn clothes that met Ossus's warm days far better than the absorbent black. But this was no average day, and Luke pulls on the clean dark shirt and pants, then the tabard and belt over it, sharp and exhibiting both professionalism and intention. Finally, the tall leather boots are put on– a surprisingly odd feeling Luke realizes, having gone mostly barefoot save for the days that they hiked into the mountains.

He has no mirror here, and most technology that he brought with him when he initially arrived on Ossus remains in the X-wing, so he brushes through his hair in what he knows should result in a generally mature look.

It's just now morning, but he's ready for the Mandalorian to come already, anxious down to his stomach and hoping that he can manage to embody the professionalism that he was otherwise portraying. Breathing in, he reminds himself that he is one with the Force, and the Force brings balance to all. Or, it should, he thinks with more bitterness than he knows a Jedi is supposed to feel.

The child sits on Luke's bed, hand outstretched and messing with Luke's things, sending them floating through the air like asteroids in orbit around him. Luke turns and offers a smile at Grogu, resolutely deciding to stand watch at the doorway for… well, anything at all, really. His fingers brush the lightsaber tucked against his side, a poor form of reassurance, in the wait for an answer to his worries.

He senses a presence break through the atmosphere of the planet just a few hours later. Luke's belongings drop out of the air onto the floor and Grogu's face snaps towards the open doorway as well.

Luke huffs a laugh, torn between relief and something else he can't quite name. "I'm guessing that's your dad, kid."

The craft flies overhead and spots the temple, making its way towards them. Luke and Grogu go to meet him in the clearing, his ship landing neatly beside Luke's X-wing. He can't help but admire the smoothness of the Mandalorian's N-1 starfighter, subconsciously marking the dexterity of it, the hyperdrive of which should have rivaled his X-wing's atmospheric speed and he recalls reading about their commonality on Naboo back in–

For fuck's sake, Luke.

The hatch pops open and the Mandalorian climbs out, as lithe and silver as he was all those months ago. His cape flows out of the pit behind him and he stands on the solid ground, an imposing presence on Luke's little planet of solitude. That is, until Grogu leaps off of his spot on Luke's shoulder and runs right up to the other man, his arms already open and moving towards his child.

Luke smiles at the reunion, feeling an old ache in him rise again and watching as they glitter in the Force, the pair completely unaware of how beautiful they look against the rich earthen tones and open blue skies, Luke being the only audience to witness it all.

He gives them their moment, eventually joining them a respectable amount of time later and addressing the Mandalorian first without feeling the need for pleasantries. "Your child has a remarkable amount of talent, and he learns quickly. I believe that he has enjoyed much of his time here, and I have begun his path towards what he needs to learn."

The Mandalorian, who had up until this point been focused on the green child in his arms whose small hands had been reaching for his helmet, finally turns to Luke at his sort-of welcoming summary. He seems to analyze the Jedi, looking just long enough to start making Luke's skin itch before replying, his voice mature and modulated by the metal helmet.

"Thank you. Is he… is his training done?"

He phrases this in much of the same manner as when he had asked Luke if he was a Jedi, and Luke smiles at his earnestness to understand, though feeling something inside himself shrivel at what he knew he had to say.

"He has begun his training. Traditionally, the Jedi accept the younglings and then train them in the Force for many years, gradually progressing to higher levels until they can claim the title of Master."

Luke takes in a breath. "Unfortunately, he has gone as far as I am able to train him with my present abilities."

"I thought you were a Jedi Master," the Mandalorian responds, accusation tinging the edges of his voice, yet he continues gazing steadily on at Luke.

"I am," Luke responds just as evenly. "However, something has come up that prevents the possibility of me training him further. Additionally, the Jedi Order maintains the principle of 'no attachment.'" He hesitates, unsure how far to continue in his explanation. Grogu was clearly inseparably attached to the Mandalorian, to the point that it had shifted the way he perceived the Force, and Luke wasn't sure how to handle that issue with the aforementioned Mandalorian staring him down like some anxiety complex specifically sent for Luke.

He spreads his hands out in a hopeful gesture of goodwill, softening his voice. "It's clear to me how much you mean to each other, and I cannot separate that in good conscience. But I also cannot continue the training.” He hesitates, unsure of how much was necessary to explain to this man. He had come to retrieve his child and leave, never seeing the Jedi again, and it’s with this in mind that Luke narrows it all down to a simple: “There is someone I must find first."

That, and he was having difficulty breathing again, and the fracture in his chest was starting to hurt and the glare from everything around him was threatening an imminent headache, and mostly at this moment he just wanted to go back to his hut and feel miserable in peace.

The Mandalorian cuts in, head tilting just slightly to the side. "Who do you have to find?"

Luke blearily reasons the other man only asks that because he’s wondering how in the kriff that's relevant to his son. "It's not something that concerns your child, if that's what you are worried about. He has proven himself more than capable, and certainly ready to return to you."

The man nods, just once, and Luke gets the feeling that he still has more questions but has chosen to leave them behind, save for, "Should I bring him back to continue?"

Luke restrains a heavy sigh, not having an answer. His list of tasks grows longer by the day: he has to learn how to properly adjust to the fracture, has to hunt down some Imperial (or Sith, some unwanted part of him whispers) enemy that's still stirring in the shadows, has to figure out why he still can't hear the guidance of past experience. Why nothing speaks to him from within the Force like it used to.

He's waited far too long to answer and he hopes that nothing in his expression has given him away. "Eventually. But not for a while," Luke hazards, the late morning sun bearing into the all-black of his clothes and making him feel uncomfortably hot. "I'm sure we will meet again.”

He had never been less sure of anything at all.

The Mandalorian then nods again, but Luke thinks this time less certain. He turns to get back into his starfighter, but Grogu cries out, reaching for–

Reaching for Luke.

"I'll see you again, young one," Luke assures, smiling with all of the warmth he knows how to give and trying not to feel like a piece of him is leaving with the Mandalorian. Grogu still reaches out, wriggling in the Mandalorian's arms, and Luke certainly isn't imagining the confusion in the man's posture as he hesitantly sets the child down on the ground.

Grogu immediately runs over to Luke, and the Jedi is helpless in picking him right back up and holding him gently to his chest as he did all those days looking from the tops of Ossus’s mountains, all those nights with the child’s nightmares. Small green hands find Luke's cheeks, and whatever words he was about to say get choked up in his throat. "We have to say goodbye," he whispers to the small face, and then looks back up at the Mandalorian. It's difficult to tell with the tinted visor, but Luke can't help but feel like he had been looking at Luke and not the child. It makes his skin crawl again, but in some different way that he can’t name.

The child is passed back over to the Mandalorian, who readily accepts him and turns to begin climbing into the ship.

Luke steps back, exhausted and relieved to have it all be over, but the Mandalorian hesitates halfway up. There's a moment where he carefully looks down at the child, and then against all odds, his helmet turns back towards Luke.

The Jedi steels himself against whatever is about to come; some reproach for the damage he's done to the Mandalorian's son, or perhaps catching some flaw in Luke's reasoning and wanting to have it out with him, here and now in the grass of the temple Luke built with his hands.

The Mandalorian steps back down and onto the grass, free hand ever so subtly fidgeting at his side-- a motion that Luke subconsciously tracks.

His voice is calm, intentionally level even as he rewires Luke's entire perception of the exchange when he speaks:

"I know how to find people."

Luke looks between the Mandalorian’s indecipherable gaze and the child beaming from the secure position in his arms, and for the first time in weeks, the impossibility of everything weighing on him shifts.

Chapter Text

The moons have begun to rise on the late afternoon’s horizon as the smell of a warm and salty dinner permeates the air– and Luke abruptly remembers learning that Mandalorians do not remove their helmets, for any reason.

He groans over the pan sitting above the fire, crackling with the frying oils. The memory plays back in his head: facing the odd group of Mandalorians on the Imperial cruiser and promising himself, in all his Jedi confidence, to learn more about the people that had seemed so tied up in the business of a Force-sensitive child.

Six months, a dull headache, and a child with nightmares later, he's remembering that he certainly did not.

Sighing, Luke finishes roasting the fish anyways; a meal familiar to both him and Grogu by now– all these years away from the blandness of Tatooine, he still finds himself pleasantly surprised by how hydrated certain foods could be– and sets it in a bowl with some of the goods he'd dried from the riverside. He supposes the Mandalorian can eat separately, whenever he chooses to.

A brief image of a face flashes unbidden into Luke's mind; the deep and earthen tones of hidden eyes–

Luke shakes his head, grown-out and shoulder-length hair flopping into his eyes– a reminder of another item to add onto his increasing list of tasks. Was there some exception on the Imperial ship that let the man remove his helmet? Or had he broken some rule for the sake of the child?

Luke wishes he knew.

He prepares a larger bowl and a second one that he’d come to think of as Grogu’s bowl, setting them beside the fire to keep the contents warm. Luke takes his own serving, fully prepared to eat alone inside of his own hut and yet still finding an odd melancholy at the thought of eating alone again after all these months. Is this what it was like for the Mandalorian, once he parted with the child on the ship?

The sun joins the moons low in the horizon as he finds his guests at the front of the main temple, walking in the grass as the light illuminates the field and its surrounding forests in hues of gold.

The Mandalorian's silver armor is caught in the lighting as he watches Grogu run around the field, and for reasons he can't explain, Luke finds himself coming to a halt at the sight. He knows, he knows, that this man before him is lethal if he was anything like the other Mandalorian bounty hunter, and yet Luke can't help but watch the Force’s golden sands flow around the man and the child like they'd found home. He tracks the flow of its path over the beskar vambraces, strapped tightly onto crossed arms that rest over a chestplate. It flows downwards over the polished metal, around the blaster attached at his hip, over the silver charges strapped to boots that had seen countless more planets than Luke ever had.

It was an oxymoron, the balance of the Force and the disruption of this man whose entire stance spoke of weaponized skill, brought together in the name of just one small child.

He wonders just what this man has seen.

Luke is about to clear his throat to alert them to his presence, but the Mandalorian turns his head first and the Jedi can’t decide whether to be impressed or mildly offput by the other man's situational awareness. Regardless, he takes the opportunity to speak first, letting the Force flow through him to display calm and sincerity.

"I've made dinner for us, and if you would like, you're welcome to eat yours with Grogu just up the path by the fire. I've set the bowls down there for both of you."

The Mandalorian, now fully turned towards Luke, seems to hesitate as he looks between the Jedi and the cooing child that had finally caught a frog and was now sauntering up to his foot.

Was it distrust? Luke supposes the other man didn’t really know the Jedi at all, so any hesitation was fair. "I'll be in my hut, which is further down that way," he says, pointing to where you could see the building rise past the fire pit. "There is no one else here to see you, I promise."

The other man looks down at Grogu, then nods at Luke. "Thank you."

Nodding shortly in return, Luke takes off ahead of them with a head full of questions. He wonders how much of the Mandalorian’s short answers are honestly credited to a quiet personality or just the unexpected position he's found himself in, if there’s something he can do to make him feel at ease; he wonders how Grogu is feeling about this odd meeting, and whether he was making a mistake in suddenly abandoning the child's training.

Though, if the Mandalorian's word was anything to go by, perhaps they wouldn't be parting so soon after all.

There had been a brief conversation after the man had given his implicit offer to Luke, the one that said if my skills could be of use to you, then Grogu will be able to continue his training, right? It was reasonable, yet a large part of Luke regrets the mix of hope and terror that makes him so indecisive-- the Mandalorian, who undoubtedly had excellent tracking skills and knew the ins and outs of the galaxy, would become another person who could be pulled into Luke's chaos. The Jedi simply has too much to do, is becoming something that he doesn't understand, and then to drag someone else into the mess?

It was too much to give an immediate answer, so Luke had offered the Mandalorian to stay for a while longer-- let him spend a safe afternoon with his child, and then they could talk more thoroughly later in the evening.

Luke is broken out of his thoughts by his own sigh of frustration. Apparently he had walked past his hut all together and instead had headed for the farthest end of the clearing, the corner where his X-wing sits. The complexity of it all, as well as the fact that his hair wouldn’t get out of his eyes, would be the death of him. A second, smaller sigh escapes his lips and he remembers that he had meant to research the Mandalorian race anyways, so he climbs up the side ladder-- bowl carefully steady in one hand-- and boots the spacecraft on, mourning that while lost in his thoughts he had walked past astromech in his hut and would have to navigate the information himself.

He had left all of his technology connected to the ship's cockpit when he first settled here on Ossus, an attempt to become more in tune with the Force. Though, he will admit, he was still guilty of checking in on his comms every so often-- in the small chance that Leia or Han might have reached out in some thought of him; and yet there was never anything there. It was just as well, a practice in the ancient Jedi concept of no attachments.

As the dashboard flickers to life, he opens the holonet and enters a general search for any and all Mandalorian references.

He hums, resting his chin in his hand as text loads across his screen. There is... a surprising lack of officially recorded information about the warrior race. What has loaded is countless articles pertaining to anecdotal events that occurred, first-hand reports of sights witnessed on scattered planets, and yet nothing from the regular historical databases. It was very similar to information on the Jedi Order, he realizes, and wonders if their history had been tampered with as well.

The bowl grows warm in his hand and he remembers to dig into the steadily cooling meal, sighing through his nose as resigns himself to the gruntwork of manual research.

He tears his eyes from the screen several hours later, curled up in the X-wing cockpit as the world around him takes on dusty blues and purples, bowl long-empty on the floor beside his feet.

At least he can say that the time certainly wasn't for nothing. His years of searching for bits and pieces on the Jedi Order made him no stranger to reading in between the lines of sanitized reports, no matter how seemingly irrelevant the sources. After digging further and solidifying his regret that he hadn't powered on Artoo for cleaner research, he had come to a few relatively reliable conclusions:

First, their homeplanet Mandalore had been purged by the Empire. Even if it wasn't described in such words, it was easy enough to believe-- Luke understands the feeling personally, and it makes his heart ache in sympathy for what their people had lost. Even now, Leia still struggles to speak about Alderaan. Oh, she can speak about the facts, about its history of politics and trade, but both Luke and Leia herself know that the pain of emotional loss runs far deeper than fact. He wonders how far it runs in the silver Mandalorian.

Secondly, the race was extremely self-reliant. There seemed to be little of any cultural exchange besides what they kept to themselves, but reading from outside accounts, what scattered Mandalorians there were, stuck firmly to their Creed.

What all the creed entailed, Luke isn't too sure. Certainly armor and weaponry Luke could attest to himself, and in the footnotes of older recorded texts he found fragments of Mando'a that caught his eye-- perhaps he could learn some to reinforce Grogu's training and upbringing. It would be right to honor the Mandalorian way as well as the Jedi. As a matter of fact, he had already created a new personal chart that collected all the phrases he had found and their implied meanings, words for child and parent, words for common exchanges, a few more that he couldn't quite decipher.

Not that he was one to ordinarily become excited by making charts.

The last thing that Luke knew he’d confirmed, even after such preliminary research, is that the untouched beskar that the man wears is nothing short of a testament to his skills and a declaration of the threat he poses. Yes, Luke had found the material logs of commonly forged metals, had read through publicly available armor blueprints, seeing the term beskar fall short of them all. It was expensive and it was rare-- something purged by the Empire, no doubt, just as much as the Jedi relics and sabers-- and this man had obtained enough to wear like the warning it was. Luke had only seen glimpses, blurry images gleaned from the young Grogu's mind, but it was enough.

He shuts off the X-wing once again, the guilt of being gone for so long beginning to creep in despite what he’d learned.

The fire is as strong as ever when he walks back, clearly well-maintained by the helmeted man sitting before it, the child with drooping eyes curled against his side like he had never left it. Luke joins them silently by sitting to the side, the only indication that the Mandalorian had noted his presence at all being the subtle turn of his head.

It's eerie, in a way, the fire glinting off the beskar and creating deep shadows in the folds where the light doesn't reach.

Despite Luke’s best efforts to sit quietly, the child stirs at his presence, dark eyes widening as he wakes. Small green arms stretch into the air for a moment before he begins crawling out of the spot at the Mandalorian’s side and crossing the short distance to come to Luke. He feels the smile tug at his lips and pulls Grogu into his lap just like countless nights before, only disrupted by the ever-present thrum of instability deep within himself and the faceless presence of the Mandalorian.

The crackling fire fills the emptiness of the night, stars in the darkening sky shaping themselves into unfamiliar patterns. Once the child's eyelids begin to drop once more, Luke lifts a hand to gently stroke one ear, a soft sadness reminding him that this may be the last time that he's allowed peace with the child.

To his surprise, it's the Mandalorian that speaks first, tone gentle and modulated by the helmet’s filter:

"He's happy here."

Luke's eyebrows shoot up. Is that really what the Mandalorian thought?

"The Force is stronger, more... raw on this planet. I think he finds peace in being somewhere that he can feel so much of himself, without having to run," Luke admits.

The Mandalorian shifts his visor from Grogu to the fire. "But you have to leave?" Leave Grogu, goes left unsaid.

"Yes," Luke frowns, the familiar thread of anxiety winding through him. He couldn't stay here as fractured as he was, he needed to find some way to heal the rift, had to prod at the whispers again like a scientist with a rotting body, knowing that it would be ugly.

"I believe there is someone out there causing a disruption in the Force, which inhibits both myself from teaching and Grogu from learning." There, that was a smooth answer.

The other man goes silent for a few seconds and Luke lets his own senses rest at the edges of the Force, gently opening himself to the energy to watch as it creates a deeper, warmer glow around the man than the fire on his armor.

"The Force?" The man finally asks, and it catches Luke off guard, pulling him right back out of the glow. Does he not know...?

"It's the energy that surrounds every life form," Luke starts, worried that he's misinterpreting the question. "Did no one explain what Grogu was?"

Behind the helmet, the Mandalorian lets out an unexpected huff and Luke is sure that if he could see them, the man’s eyes would be rolled upwards. The unbidden thought has Luke struggling to stamp out a smile on his own face.

"He's part of the Jedi, he can do things with his mind. What else could there be," the Mandalorian explains casually, as if Luke wouldn't be able to detect the irony in his otherwise deadpan tone.

Luke does, and before he can think better, he pokes at it. "Ah, well, I’m glad the Jedi are so simple, then."

Not a very Jedi-like move.

The pause in the conversation suspends into the night, yet Luke wins when the Mandalorian turns his head away from the fire and in the other direction entirely as he flatly concedes with:

"Alright, go on."

A short laugh escapes his throat and the Mandalorian’s head sharply turns to face Luke again. He swiftly covers his mouth with a gloved hand as if it could send the laugh back before continuing.

"The Jedi used to form an Order, a large collective of people that were able to uniquely sense and manipulate the energy around us. They were purged by the Empire," Luke explains, remembering the Mandalorians' own Purge-- nothing had gone untouched by the bloody hand of the Empire.

"As far as I’m aware, I am the last Jedi,' he continues. "I must ensure the survival of the Jedi, which means training Force-sensitives like Grogu. We maintain balance and order in the galaxy."Or we're supposed to, if the Force hadn't torn through some of us and upset every possible balance, he thinks with a recurrence of frustration.

The Mandalorian seems to take this information in stride, though Luke isn't sure how he'd tell if the Mandalorian hadn’t.

"Then Grogu can't learn while the Force is not in balance?"

"Something like that, yes."

The other man hums and leans back. "I was tasked with delivering him to his people so he can be trained. If there's something... disrupting the training, then my task is incomplete."

Luke had thought as much, but kriff if he knows how a broken Jedi and a singular warrior of a dying race are supposed to fix the Force, to put it honestly.

He says as much, frustration tinting his voice. "I don't have a target, or 'bounty' to find. As much as I admire your honor, I don't presently have someone to track down.” There wasn’t anything for the man to do for his child but to take him and leave.

The Mandalorian nods shortly and Luke hates that he can't offer confidence and answers, that he can't call the other man's task complete because he's whole and ready to train someone else. As if Luke’s thoughts had bothered him, Grogu twitches in his sleep, still curled in Luke's lap, and he wonders how much time they have before the nightmares take hold– though, just maybe, with the Mandalorian being here, physically present for the first time...

"The disruption is caused by someone in the Force that you can't see?" the modulated voice cuts in. And it hurts to hear it put that way, but Luke feels that it's far easier to say yes to that than consider that it's something innately wrong with himself.

"Something like that," Luke says again, looking steadily into the darkened visor.

The Mandalorian hums again. "When we were trying to find you, we went to a Seeing Stone on Tython. The kid sat on it and a blue shield surrounded him-- it repelled me away until he was done calling out. Is that something you could use to find your target in the Force?"

Luke's mouth parts in surprise.

That could… that could work. The planet Tython is vaguely familiar to Luke, a name in the footnotes of crumbling texts and records, but not somewhere that he had explored before he'd settled on Ossus. And if this man had already been there?

He smiles. "Yes, it just might be. Would you give me the jump coordinates?"

There's a slight pause, as if the Mandalorian had expected some other request of him. At least whatever happened on Tython, Luke would be the only one there to damage– he wouldn't have to worry about his instability affecting others, harming the child.

"I can, although the hyperdrive differences might mean we'd get there before you."

Luke blinks. "What?"

"I…" the Mandalorian sighs. "My old ship got blown up. I can't take you there myself in the N-1."

"You would go with me?" Luke asks, not seeing any reason that would compel the other man to get himself physically tangled up in Jedi complications.

"Yes. Like I said, until Grogu is able to safely train with his kind, my task is incomplete."

“I’m sure with the information, I could seek out the Seeing Stone myself,” Luke says, brows furrowing.

The Mandalorian doesn’t back down.

“I’ve already been there, it would be faster to go together.”

Something nudges him in the Force, something he was meant to ask, and Luke blurts out the question before he can stop himself. "What happened with your old ship?"

Another sigh, but this time far more subtle. A slight shift in the man’s beskar chestplate, a soft tilt to his helmet.

"Imps came and shot us up on Tython. They took Grogu– that's why we were all on the cruiser. The Razor Crest wasn't the fastest ship, but she was pre-Empire. Got me through a lot of scrapes."

"I can only imagine," Luke begins, the edges of an idea beginning to form in his mind. Clearly and without a doubt, Luke could sense that this ship had meant far more to the Mandalorian than he was letting on. He could understand, in a way, that in being a lone bounty hunter you'd never have a true home, would never settle. The man's old ship would have been something of a home and just as much of the hunter's story.

Luke would have to be insane to do this, to even offer it. Yet in the flickering light, with the small child sleeping soundly in his lap and a man with an absurd amount of honor sitting across from him, Luke feels an old spark coming to life again. Something he'd left behind years ago.

He clears his throat. "The ship was destroyed on Tython, right? Are there any remnants?"

The Mandalorian stares at Luke, and he feels more than sees the incredulous expression on his face. "It's ash. It was blown up."

The idea begins to grow stronger in Luke's mind.

"I might be able to do something about it. What type of ship was it?"

"An ST-70 Assault ship,” the Mandalorian answers immediately.

"Could you send me the schematics for it?"

The other man shifts where he's sitting, now fully upright and attentive, armor sharp as ever. "Why would you need the schematics?"

Luke breathes a quiet breath in and out. "I think I might be able to rebuild it. With your help. If you were willing," he offers, some familiar feeling churning in his stomach. He would need the necessary electrical parts, but it was easy enough to find engines and operational equipment on the market, despite it meaning he'd have to reach out to the people he'd left behind. But… he thinks he could do it, if it were anything like the shore by the river– and he'd had an entire life of configuring droids and working on ships, going as far back as when he'd do repairs in the hangers at Mos Eisley.

"That's impossible," the Mandalorian cuts in.

"Maybe," Luke admits, but the excitement for a new project was already setting in. He hadn't had an excuse for this much fun since his Aunt and Uncle had sent him to Tosche Station to find electrical odds and ends, and the idea of it was nothing short of thrilling. "Will you still come with me?"

The Mandalorian looks down at the sleeping child in Luke's lap, and then back up at Luke himself, ever the evaluating, calculating man.

"Yes."

Luke gives the Mandalorian and Grogu his own rooms to sleep in, which still aren’t much, but the hut was adult-sized– more than the temporary padawan huts across the clearing. For all the exhausting list of things that Luke was, he was certainly no brilliant architect or academy-builder.

He remembers to turn Artoo on again before his guest settles, and bidding the man and his child a goodnight, Luke takes his astromech and heads towards the X-wing again. In the softness of the night, the world is a deep swirling blue to Luke's senses, a relief to the exhaustion of the day.

Connecting the droid to the starfighter, Luke tells him to pull as much data about ST-70 Assault ships as he could find into a separate folder, finally letting the grin erupt over his face now that he was alone.

Holy shit, Luke is excited.

He would leave in the morning, and though he was bringing someone with him– privately, he had already decided that he wouldn't use the Seeing Stone until the Mandalorian had left Tython with the child– there was a direction, something for him to do.

As he walks the routine path up the hill that his body had memorized by each step, he lets the excitement and purpose wash over him, a relief to the thrumming instability that resonates within his lungs. A second thought crosses his mind– how long had it been since he’d come up here and bared himself to the full energy of the Force?

The further he walks up the hill, the more he begins to notice the brightness of the world seeming to come and go, and he wonders how much to credit the Force fracture for the unpredictable shifting.

This morning, the headache from the assault on his senses nearly threatened to take him out, but by the quiet evening, everything had toned down to an extent: he could still feel the sands of energy and time flowing past his ankles, curling around and in his palms, and yet it was more soothing than overwhelming at this moment. Instead of the glaring whites and yellows of the sun on the dunes, his tongue tasted the soft cornflower blues of night, of balance and coexistence.

It could have been beautiful, if he weren’t going to ruin it.

The top of the hill is as solitary and untouched as always, the kyber crystals put away and covered. Luke sighs and begins to set up the circle, the crystals inexplicably burning to the touch– one actually burns so hot that he drops it, hissing as he brings his fingers to his lips to cool them with spit. It's too dark for him to tell if he was truly physically burnt– the moons were only partially lit tonight– but the tips of his fingers and parts of his palm throb uncomfortably as if he were.

Some part of him knows that as exposed as he is, it was likely a bad idea to aggravate his Force fracture with the amplified, channeling strength of the kyber crystals.

Luke was never particularly good at staying away from bad ideas.

He sits in the center of the circle anyways, taking in a few deep breaths after the upwards climb and letting the cold night air brush across his face. His eyes fall shut.

As soon as he opens himself up to the Force, the cool blues of the night are immediately shattered by blaring suns in his senses, the fracture that only he can see in his chest glowing red like iron in a forge. Although physically the dim moons of Ossus hang carefully in the sky above him, all Luke can process is how heat tears from his hand and up his arm, body twitching in response to both old and new memory.

A throne room.

A dead emperor.

A child he’ll never be able to teach, not like this.

The heat crashes in his throat; scratching grains of sand fill his eyes and nose, pouring into the fracture in his chest like a waterfall into a flowing void. Everything is burning, and he can hear the whispers cutting into his ears again– the world is thrown off-kilter by their presence and nausea rises in his stomach, coupling with the searing heat in his chest. The fractal scars across his body burn, an echo of the day he received them.

He knows his breathing is rapid, can feel it in the lightness of his head, but he knows he has to focus on the voices he’d only caught fragments of last time; a clue to whatever was out there, threatening his and Grogu's futures.

Luke stands in the burning desert, fracture exposing him to its torrential storms, and he is utterly alone, save for the hushed and sickening whispers that catch in the wind past his ears.

Luke Skywalker.

You… will never… become–

But there– for the first time, there’s a figure in the distance, bright and unyielding to the suns and the wind. It doesn't come any closer to Luke, and Luke can't seem to drag his burning body any closer to the figure, but he can see it, irregular from the known presences of his family in the far off distance.

The voice cuts out as something crashes in the distance, as if something had detonated in the far off dunes. Luke can barely see anything, everything raw with sand. The heat is unrelenting and dry, preventing tears from forming in his eyes, but he listens still.

You… will die. Useless to your people.

It’s overwhelming, but the feeling is familiar. He endures.

–you are…

_–as much of– _

…a threat to- the Jedi–

He strains himself to listen, skin scratched raw and throat closed off.

–as Anakin Sk–

Luke gasps as something touches his shoulder and he immediately draws his lightsaber, deadly green illuminating the night in the darkness's stead. He attacks whatever had touched him, saber striking something but never killing, insufficient to stop whatever had found him even though his head was spinning and he couldn't catch his breath– was there still sand in his eyes? Everything was bright and something had found him and he wasn't safe–

His skin is bleeding and burning, something is falling out of the fracture, pulsing in and out of his mouth, he can’t tell the difference between oxygen and searing sand–

"Jedi! Jetti," a voice shouts into the whirlwind, and the saber in Luke’s hand stutters. It wasn’t the same voice as the whispers.

No, it was here, present, and it had seen him in this mess.

Luke lowers the saber for a moment, brought crudely back into himself as his breaths come in desperate gasps, and oh no, he wasn't supposed to see this side, no one was meant to see the mess, the wreck that happens when he’s scared and useless, that can't protect the people he loves–

No, wait a moment.

A small amount of clarity settles in Luke's mind beside the panic, and he looks into the world with his own eyes.

The night was still a deep, swirling blue, and the silver of the Mandalorian’s armor was dulled by it all, only lit by the glowing hum of Luke’s green saber. Logically, the other man didn’t know what Luke had looked like in the Force or just how weak he was. To the Mandalorian, he would have been sitting on a hill on Ossus, meditating.

He could still fix this.

Luke swallows hard, willing his breathing to come to a regular pace. "Mandalorian. I didn't expect you up here." Grogu immediately comes to mind and Luke feels a surge of fear bolt through him. "Is Grogu alright?"

The Mandalorian had backed off now, blaster still firmly in hand but now lowered from Luke's heart. He doesn't holster it.

"The kid is fine. He woke me up, a nightmare in his sleep, I think– he got up and was looking for something. Couldn't find you, so I went looking myself."

For the first time since he had met him, Luke senses behind the armor an unexpected thread of… was it nervousness? Uncertainty? Whatever it was, it didn’t match what Luke had come to know of the man.

"I didn't mean to disturb you in your…" he trails off, clearly not sure what to name whatever the Jedi had been doing. He waves the blaster in Luke's general direction in lieu of whatever he would've said.

"It's alright," Luke said, head spinning. He calmly folds his hands in front of him; the Mandalorian didn't have to know. He wouldn't know. "I was meditating in the Force; I'm sorry for being absent. I can go to Grogu, if you would like?"

The hand with the blaster twitches by his hip, before eventually settling on holstering the blaster once more. "I'll go with you."

"Of course." Luke attaches his saber to his own hip, slowly and carefully. He would not be a danger to this man.

Collecting every last amount of calm and confidence in the Force that he could find, Luke gathers it to himself and tries to ignore the pulsing ache in his limbs, the burning in his hand. He sets aside the words he had heard through the Force, something to remember later.

Instead, he leads the Mandalorian down the hill and back to the clearing, although Luke suspects that the Mandalorian only follows behind so that he can keep a watch on the unstable Jedi. Luke finds this the first time that he regrets that the Mandalorian had to be such an observational hunter: he forces himself to display all subtle clues of stability: an even gait, steady breathing, an awareness for their surroundings. He restrains his head from twitching, keeps his eyes focused.

If he presents himself well enough, everything would be alright.

They walk into the clearing and cross the distance towards Luke's hut where they find a wide-eyed Grogu standing vigilantly outside the doorway. Luke is suddenly and uncomfortably reminded of when the child had found him collapsed on the floor of the temple, and he flexes his synth hand within its glove.

The green child cries out and immediately runs up to Luke, and with a backwards glance at the child's father (thank the Force, the man’s posture was cautious but not hostile) Luke gathers the child into his arms. It's comfortable and familiar, the sweetness of it all soothing some of the burning in his chest and he properly closes his eyes for the first time tonight, the gritty sensation of sand softly fading away.

The few minutes they stand in silence are healing, but the exhaustion quickly catches up to Luke anyways. Child still securely in his arms, he settles on the grass, back leaning against the outside stone wall of the hut.

A few moments later, Luke hears the rustling of fabric and the quiet slide of metal– he opens his eyes to see the Mandalorian sitting identically to Luke, back against the outside stone wall, a cautious but short distance away. The Mandalorian was well-armed and hopefully would be able to take Grogu away, should anything overcome Luke again, and he feels the relief wash over him.

There are only a few hours left to the night, but with the softening breathing of the child against his chest, Luke is pulled under as well.

✩

Something wet slaps his face and Luke hears a hushed reprimand, footsteps falling quickly across the planet’s dewy morning grass.

Opening his eyes to the daylight takes some work, but Luke manages– and is immediately greeted by one gleeful child with two frogs in his arms, and one hovering and fully-armored man with disapprovingly crossed arms.

"I tried to stop the kid but he lifted the thing in the air."

Luke huffs. "It's–" he coughs, trying to clear his throat from the gravel, "– it's no problem. I've been training him in precision; he is a good student." He clears his throat again. "Grogu."

All the frogs that had been bundled in Grogu's arms are suddenly dropped and left to jump away into the early morning light, leaving an empty-handed child that doesn't look apologetic in the slightest.

Barely restraining an eye-roll, Luke stands up. Unfortunately, his back is immeasurably stiff from learning against literal rocks for hours, but it'll have to be another thing that he has to bear– clearly the Mandalorian has been awake for a while, if he even slept in the first place– which means it's time to get the day moving, despite all of Luke’s sensitive limbs.

The Mandalorian takes his child to the front of the clearing without being told, a considerate distance away from Luke's hut and enough for the Jedi to strip off his robes and rinse the residual sweat and fear away, only switching the undershirt for a clean one before putting on the black Jedi robes once more.

The next order of business is making breakfast for the three of them, ready food easily gathered from where he's stored it in crates on his shelves. He brings two of the bowls out for his guests, finding Grogu reaching into the front pond, the Mandalorian attentively standing just a short ways behind him– and leaves the fresh bowls with them as he walks the entire clearing back to his X-wing, working out the cramps in his legs.

Artoo chirps in greeting, and if Luke had forgotten that he left the astromech on to research the holonet, no one would ever know.

"Hey Artoo, you got anything on the Mandalorian’s Razor Crest?"

The droid beeps in affirmative and projects a hologram from the cockpit.

"Hang on, I'm not up there yet, give me a second–"

Luke one-handedly climbs the ladder up into the ship once more, eventually sitting and balancing his breakfast in his lap. He begins by shoveling it into his mouth and reading through the rolling script on his screen, matching it with the parts being projected.

"Looks like mostly standard parts, I'm sure we can upgrade a few of them– Artoo, run what hyperdrive classes can function in the system of that kind of assault ship."

The screen goes blank for a few moments, then the droid’s binary runs translated across.

"Shit."

His previous assessment was correct– he’d have to reach out to someone who knew where to find something as pre-Empire as this.

It's mid-morning by the time that Luke and the Mandalorian actually talk logistics, everything from last night miraculously ignored, as Luke had never drawn his lightsaber on the other man.

They come to the conclusion that the Mandalorian will drop off his ship on Tatooine with someone he supposedly trusts, though his tone is skeptical and Luke is far from doubting how difficult reliability on Tatooine can be. After he leaves his N-1 in the hangar, Luke will pick the two of them up from Tatooine with a ship that can actually carry multiple people and a substantial cargo, and from there they'll fly their way over to Tython and build the Razor Crest from there, as well as use the Seeing Stone.

This makes Luke anxious for so many reasons that he gave up trying to keep count.

On one hand, he'll have to talk to his sister again.

On the other, it means having to revisit his old home– which he hasn't done in years, not since he built his lightsaber and broke into Jabba's palace. Though it was with some sense of irony that he would be returning with another Mandalorian, even after the first one tried to kill him and his family and consequently sell them to the Empire--

But those feelings were for another time.

Luke leans against the doorway of the temple at the front of the clearing, looking into the Mandalorian's visor as if he could find some mysterious answer to the complexities of Luke's history in the inky black. Unsurprisingly, there aren't any.

Grogu looks back and forth between the two adults, clearly torn as to what to do right now, or how to be involved in a conversation he doesn't quite follow.

"Then I'll meet you on Tatooine in two weeks?" the Mandalorian asks, as if he wasn't the one that came up with half the plan.

"Yes, that should be enough time for me to get what we need," Luke affirms.

The other man nods, and Luke is struck with an oddness of how natural it already feels to see that nod, decisive and certain, leaving no questions.

The Mandalorian picks Grogu up, pausing in the turn towards his ship to look at Luke again and then, surprisingly enough, offering the reaching child out to the Jedi.

Luke can't help but laugh, feeling his heart warm at the face of a child he’d come to–

"I'll see you again, little one," he half-whispers, looking between both of Grogu's wide eyes and listening to him chatter up at Luke. A word springs into his mind from his hours researching the Mandalorians, and he fears getting it wrong but the thrill of saying it far outweighs the fear-- and so he adds on, ever so quietly, "Ad'ika."

Little one.

He avoids the Mandalorian's gaze entirely, not sure if he wants the man to have heard, yet not confident enough to find out if he did.

Luke sets Grogu down and lets him walk back to the Mandalorian, who picks the child back up again, gaze never breaking from the Jedi.

"I'll see you again," Luke promises, not sure if the words mean a good or a bad thing for the other man.

Another nod, and the man walks across the open field towards where he’d landed his own starfighter, climbing up and preparing the ship to leave. The child presses his face against the transparent hood that covers the cockpit, looking down at the Jedi left on the ground and Luke feels a familiar ache. But he will see them again, the child that had brought light into his life and the Mandalorian that had inexplicably remained on guard during the long hours of the night.

Something odd turns in Luke's stomach as the Mandalorian looks down at the Jedi one last time, before his ship lifts and leaves Ossus for good.

There's really not that much to pack– basic food packs, water, a change of clothes, probably. His lightsaber, definitely. At least where he’s going, they’ll have something for headaches.

Luke decides to leave the kyber crystals behind on Ossus, considering they were far more likely to be untouched by anyone other than him on this planet, with the amount of foot traffic that it got. All that was really left was calling his sister.

Even now as he stares down his comms in the X-wing, he can't quite get himself to do it. What if she didn't want to hear from him, since she never reached out? What if she was still angry at him from their argument, or didn't need another problem in her life? She definitely didn't need another problem in her life, she was a Senator for the Alderaan sector.

Oh, Force, Luke couldn't do it.

"Artoo, chart a course for the New Republic’s station in the Alderaan sector," he says instead.

He would just have to show up and hope that they don't send him away.

The travel there is stupidly long, around two days-- though Luke won't deny stopping on some non-descript Mid-Rim planet around the halfway point to fuel up and walk off some of his nerves. Sure, he was a Jedi, a person whose whole existence was comprised of bringing peace and balance to the galaxy, but Luke was fairly certain that he could count on his organic hand alone just how many times he felt "peace and balance".

Kriffing fuck.

He walks around outside of the hangar where his X-wing was being refueled, feeling the dry ground beneath his boots. He'd swing his saber around if he could, but he really didn't want to attract any attention, and the thought of it made him miss his training droids. Unfortunate.

The person at the port waves him in from the entryway, signaling that his ship is ready to go, and Luke is off once more, the blurry blue of hyperspace crashing past his X-wing.

✩

Artoo beeps at him from the back of the ship, waking Luke from an uneasy sleep to the announcement that they were approaching the station and preparing to pull out of hyperspace.

Soon enough, there it appears before them: New Alderaan.

Really, it was quite brilliant: crafted from the remnants and debris from the second Death Star, a project mostly headed by Senator Leia Organa of course; it represented both a central hub for the Republic's new democracy as well as the Alderaan people who no longer had a home to return to. It was fortunate for Luke that they were always accepting new ships; the station was large enough to dock a good number of travelers at a time, and since people were constantly coming and going, his presence wouldn't cause much of a stir to New Alderaan's systems.

"T-65B X-wing, we have you on our radar, please identify yourself to the New Republic." The professional voice breaks into the silence of Luke's ship.

"This is Luke Skywalker, looking to dock for short-term connective purposes," he answers back just as evenly, opting for the simplest excuse that didn't directly pull the Head Senator into this.

During his time with the squadron and working under Leia's command, they had developed a new department under the working title "Reconnection," which essentially left room for anyone who needed time, from a few hours to a few days, to dock at the station and make the connections they needed-- whether it was seeking outside help, looking for missing family members, or simply holding conversation in a safe and guarded environment. It was a great concept that resulted in increased employment, utilizing the unexpected surge of people who had lost everything in the wake of the Empire's destruction. Luckily, it also meant that Luke didn't have to over-explain himself.

Or so he thought, until a different and unexpectedly familiar voice speaks on the comms.

"Well if it isn't Red Five. Commander, dock at Hangar Three. You hull-slugging, no good bantha herder," the voice says in one go.

Luke shuts the comms off and laughs.

✩

Pulling into the station, he jumps out of his ship and finds no one other than Lieutenant Sanne Dara waiting for him, impeccably dressed as always, hair pulled into immaculate braids that tactfully cross her scalp and gather at the base of her neck, falling down the stretch of her back.

"Sanne."

She eyes him, arms crossed, no doubt evaluating his overgrown hair and worn black robes– though her gaze lingers on his eye, oddly.

"You motherfucker," she finally acquiesces, moving towards him at the same time and pulling him into a tight hug. "Think you could leave for so long and you wouldn't be missed, huh? Think you could leave me with these idiots and everything would work out?"

He laughs wetly into the crook of her neck, refusing to get choked up over this. "Well, you always did say you were more capable than anyone else of doing the job. Had to take your word for it."

Finally letting him go, she keeps her hands on his shoulders, looking deeply at his face and likely reading into his soul. Taller than him and not even Force-sensitive, Sanne always had a way of being right that made her both extraordinarily competent and frustratingly insufferable.

"I heard you went off to find some dusty old books. Guess your senile age was catching up to you, had to find another hobby?" she asks, face innocently passive.

"That’s what it was, thought I could bore you to sleep with them and finally give everyone else a break from your reign of youthful terror," he responds just as passively.

Sanne lets out a laugh, two sharp and bright bursts, before wrapping an arm around Luke's shoulders and pulling him towards the direction of the station's cantina. "Why don't you try giving that a shot over some Alderaan-crafted spotchka?”

He spends the next few hours catching up with Sanne, who covers everything from how well the station was operating, to the menial frustrations of the crew she had been promoted to commanding since his absence.

"Gavarl said the next time the Gamorrean shows his ugly face, he wouldn't be the only one without insulated circuitry, and honestly we all believed him," she says, throwing back another shot as if the occasion for today was simply Luke's presence. "The Senator said she didn't want to be involved when I brought it up to her, though, said that Gavarl does well enough for the New Republic. Left the issues to me, as if I could use the power of my ancestors to knock some sense into his thick head. Doesn't she know it doesn’t work like that?"

Luke snickers, well-acquainted with how his friend and her religion were always something of a sore and crucial subject to her position– first as Lieutenant and now, evidently, Commander. Her honor and integrity were always considered in the name of her family's planet, her actions born out of respect for those that she felt watching over her. In some ways it reminded him of himself, his own experiences with the Jedi, but in an unexpected way it now also reminds him of the Mandalorian. How honor plays into his own religion, his creed, to do right by his people and his objectives.

The odd thought of the Mandalorian surprises him and he feels his brow momentarily furrow.

"What?"

He snaps his head back up at Sanne. "Oh, something you said reminded me of someone I met recently.”

“You’ll have to tell me about them, you have a knack for running into odd people,” she snickers. “Though that’d be ironic considering yourself, had to go and kriff up your eye, too?”

Now it was his turn to be confused. “My eye?”

“Yeah, I’m guessing you got it replaced with something cybernetic? Not satisfied enough with just your synth hand?” She throws another shot of spotchka back.

“Sanne, I genuinely don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says back, though fear begins to tighten his throat. Certainly the fracture didn’t reach that high.

“Then go look in a mirror, star boy.”

At her prompting, he leaves the table and searches for the refresher, crossing the room in a rush and wrenching the door open once he finds it. And there he was, hair grown out, face sharp and assessing as always, and yet one eye was brighter than the other. The blue of his pupil had been overwhelmed by the same fractal white light that emitted from the break in his chest, there was no doubt.

No wonder he could see so much more in the Force, or had a persistent headache the more life erupted around him– the fracture had torn up his ribcage and broken into his damn eye. And he still had to meet Leia like this?

Worse, the Mandalorian that had entrusted his child to Luke’s care had seen him like this, and still didn’t say anything. Why didn’t he mention it to the Jedi?

Luke gathers himself and walks calmly back to Sanne’s table, though he swears he could feel the faint traces of sand blowing over his feet, every body around him just the slightest bit brighter than they should be– he tells himself it’s just the panic, that it’ll go away once he has himself under control again.

“Sanne, do you know where Leia is?”

She raises a suspicious eyebrow but doesn't question him further. "I'm fairly certain she's been tied up in negotiations all day, if I'm right--" she probably is, "--then she'll be leaving for Naboo in the next few days for face-to-face discussion with their government, she's trying to bring them into the New Republic, I think." She flicks a braid over her shoulder. "But don't ask me, I don't know anything."

"You know everything," Luke says absently, mind working in overtime. He had to meet with Leia and get the parts for the Razor Crest– the sooner he’s out of sight, the less questions there will be for him, especially if there was physical evidence of what had happened on Ossus.

"Yes. Well."

"Does she have any time in her schedule for me to meet with her?"

Sanne rests her chin on her palm, appearing to think very hard for an answer that Luke knows she already has. "Well, she should be wrapping up the last discussion with the delegates from Kashyyyk, I heard her husband and Chewbacca were leading those, and then she's covering the general updates from New Alderaan's engineers." She flicks a piece of nonexistent lint off of her uniform. "If I had to guess."

"Perfect, then I'll head there now," Luke decides, fingertips prickling with anxious anticipation.

"Yeah, alright, leave me again. With your cybernetic eye."

Sanne lamely pushes her spotchka glass around the table with one finger and a laugh bubbles out of Luke despite himself.

"You're tragic, you know that? I've got my old comm on me, it's still under the same code. Let me know when you've got time later," Luke says, trying to bring some of his old bravado back with a smile.

"Whatever, flyboy,” Sanne says offhandedly, but she’s smiling too.

Getting up again, he makes a stop by the bartender first to order water and a fruit seltzer for Sanne's table, not wishing for anyone else to encounter Sanne when she's in one of her moods. The spotchka they make by Alderaan's recipes isn't nearly as strong as it would be on Tatooine, but it was enough to set a person slightly off.

Leia would most likely be in one of the upper floors, but he wonders if at this point it might just be easier to let his senses take over, the pull of his sister drawing him closer like an insect to a flame– especially since one eye is apparently more observant than the other, for kriff’s sake.

Opening himself up to the Force, even the slightest amount, regrettably brings on a rather miserable headache and makes his scars light up in an uncomfortably sharp sensation. An unfortunate development for a Jedi, but all the more reason to continue onwards– the closer he gets to Leia, the closer he is to heading to Tython and finding an answer on the Seeing Stone, as he reminds himself again.

He takes an elevator upwards, onto the level with the council chambers for guests and Alderaan people alike, seeing the glow in the Force become ever stronger as he nears his sister. Walking down the hallway, he knows he's outside the right door when everything in him comes to a stop, halting his feet as well, and in his nerves he knows his fingers hover over his saber, brushing the cold metal of the handle.

He isn't sure whether to knock, or if he should wait outside, or really what to do at all, because, what if--

The door slams open.

"What in the kriffing hells, Luke."

Luke doesn't even have time to register Leia's expression before he's dragged into the room with the door crashing shut behind him. Immediately a set of arms wrap around him, pulling him so close and so tightly that he can barely breathe for a moment, but before he knows it his own arms wrap around her like he was coming home.

Another voice speaks into the room. "Hey, kid, nice of ya to show your face."

From his muffled position in the crook of Leia’s neck, Luke can also hear Chewbacca give a welcoming roar from the other side.

Two more pairs of arms surround him, and suddenly he's being held by his family-- Leia, Han, Chewbacca, they must've just finished their meetings-- and it's overwhelming. The Force hums in contentment, or Luke does, he isn't sure, he just knows that here in this moment is safe.

As he stands in the arms of his family, the comfort ebbs into something else, as if it was almost too much for someone as fractured as Luke. He can still feel the tenderness of the burns from just a few days ago, even if they were only in his mind, and as safe as it is, he finds another part of himself breaking in the effort to pull away.

He quickly sniffs, eyes surprisingly puffy. "Apologies for interrupting your meeting."

Leia scoffs, and Luke is able to look at her properly for the first time.

She's beautiful as ever, hair tightly braided into a style that distinguishes her position and maturity, though a few stray pieces fall out near her forehead like they would during their days on the Falcon. The circles under her eyes are tactfully covered, but Luke can sense the exhaustion from her, just as much as she probably does from him. Luke smiles at the graceful and clean-cut deep blue outfit, nothing particularly dignifying her rank over the station but nonetheless embodying it, just as she always did.

She's beautiful, she's strong, and she's everything that Luke could never stay to be with.

"We concluded the meeting several minutes ago; Han and Chewbacca and I were just rehashing the details of it. We think we've come to some sort of agreement with Kashyyyk, which would mean very well for the new democracy." She pauses to look him up and down. "What happened to your eye?”

He searches for a quick answer, landing on a vague, “I ran into a few complications.”

“Clearly, what in the kriff are you doing here? I thought you were off building Jedi temples, but then I sense your ship pulling into the sector like it happens every day."

Han chips in with a, "For a Jedi, your hair is looking an awful lot like the kid I picked up from Tatooine all those oof--"

A precise elbow from his wife cuts him off halfway.

"Hey now," he starts again, not deterred in the slightest and smiling even wider. "What I meant is that you're looking good, Jedi Master, and hey, I like the eye. But now that you mention it, what are you doing here?"

Luke laughs half-heartedly and collects himself into a more professional manner. "Do you have time to talk now?"

Leia looks over at Han and they share some look that Luke can't interpret, but it's Han that breaks first.

"Chewie, go tell Threepio to reschedule the talks with Coruscant for tomorrow morning– look, if the guy's upset, tell him he needs to learn that diplomacy means he has to cope with not always getting what he wants."

Chewbacca stares at Han for a moment then shrugs, walking away. Han's face turns in a panic and he immediately shouts after the Wookie:

"No, don't actually tell him that, just stick with the polite rescheduling. Have Threepio deal with it, he knows what he's doing on a good day."

Han turns to Luke, grinning. "Yeah kid, we've got time."

✩

Over the next few hours, Luke gives a shortened and more sanitized version of the order of events to his sister and Han, and Chewie as well when he comes back in. He explains the Jedi texts he'd found in his searches, speaking on his collection back at the temple he'd built on the historical planet. He talks about Grogu and how the Force-sensitive child had called him through the Force, and how he had been training him in the way of the Jedi, until a complication arose and caused a disturbance in the Force. How he had the responsibility to find out what was going on.

Luke doesn't talk about the Fracture, how using the Force feels like he's being held under Palpatine's hands again. He doesn't talk about his loneliness, or how he lost the voices of his old Jedi Masters, doesn't mention the pain and exhaustion.

He only briefly mentions the Mandalorian, and that’s only because he doesn't like the way Leia is looking at him.

"And this Mandalorian, he decided to help you because 'it was the noble thing to do'?" she asks, putting up her fingers in air quotes.

Luke frowns. "Well, yes?"

"Right, not because he saw that his child felt safe and at home with you and therefore his curiosity was piqued at the sight of you, especially considering your technical skills with a saber which would be admirable to a warrior like him."

Luke frowns harder. "How much do you know about Mandalorians?"

A gleeful smile spread across her lips. "Oh, I've done the occasional research, especially as we're trying to put together new databases after the Empire had wiped out so many people and cultures. The Mandalorians were one of the ones we're working on restoring, you're welcome to read through it if you'd like. I can give you the access code later, though I don't think that's what you're here for." Her smile falls slightly. "And you can't stay either, can you?"

Just like that, the exhaustion begins to take a hold of him again. "No, I can't. Actually, if you're able, I have the schematics for a ship, pre-Empire-- I already have the frame, I just need most of the internal components," Luke says, mostly telling the truth. "I'm looking to build the ship with the Mandalorian, hopefully with slightly more upgraded parts."

Both Leia and Han give him the same surprised look.

"You're... building the ship? From scratch?" Leia asks hesitantly. "Why not just find a new one?"

Honestly, Luke can barely explain it himself. "The ship means a lot to him, and rebuilding it for him would be something of a payment for his services," he settles with. And the thought of working on something tangible with my hands again makes him giddy like a kid on his first spaceflight.

Han's eyebrows fly off his head. "His services--"

"As a hunter, he's likely helping Luke find the physical source of the disturbance in the Force, Han," Leia cuts in sharply.

He throws his hands up, turning to Luke. "Alright, alright, yeah I can probably find you the parts. Want me to dig into that account you've got with New Alderaan? I don't think you've used any of the money since your time as Commander, so there should be more than enough to cover the cost."

Luke smiles, glad to have reached an agreement and hoping that means he might be able to have a room to crash in for the next few days. "Perfect. Is my old room...?"

"All yours," Leia grins, though her eyes are shadowed by something else that Luke can't quite identify. "Go ahead, Han and Chewie will find your parts as soon as you send over the schematic. I'm sure you must be tired, and I have to check with Threepio that these–” she jabs a thumb at Han and Chewbacca “--bolts-for-brains didn't just initiate war with Coruscant."

She hugs Luke again, shortly, pulling him in closer to whisper in his ear: "I know you haven't told me everything, but I love you anyways. Always."

A breath catches in his throat, looking Leia in the eyes before he's dragged upwards by Han and into his own lung-crushing hug, shortly followed by Chewbacca.

"Go get some sleep, kid, we'll take it from here."

It's muscle memory, the walk back to his old rooms. They're nothing fancy-- a comfortable bed, a desk with many drawers, a refresher to clean up. A closet on the far side of the room with shelves on the interior, as if he were going to have so many items that he needed options of where to put them.

Fortunately, his old clothes still hang from the closet, meaning that he can wash out the Jedi robes during his stay here. He showers the days of travel away, the tiredness seeping into his bones the longer he stands in the warmth of the room. Eventually he steps out, drying off and putting on a plain short-sleeved shirt and comfortable pants to sleep in, uncaring at this moment if the scars were visible to anyone that might walk in. He falls into his bed without even bothering to find food down at the station's main cafeteria.

There's a small mirror on the backside of the door and he can see some of his reflection from where he's sprawled on the bed, unfortunately proving Han right with the messy length of his hair, blonder than it’s been in years from the constant exposure to Ossus’s sun. He can also see the glint of his eye, and though it was nothing stronger than a soft white glow, he couldn’t deny that it was there.

To the pounding of a dull headache, to the tickling burning of his hand and heaviness of his lungs, with an eye that he couldn’t explain, Luke finally falls asleep.

✩

A disturbing sixteen hours later, Luke wakes to a knock at his door.

Sixteen hours be damned, it was too early for this. Yet he rubs his eyes and gets up anyway, opening the door to find Sanne staring blank-faced at the probable mess that Luke was.

"Thought you died. Anyways, I've got dinner," she announces, letting herself in and setting down the tray that Luke hadn’t seen onto his desk. She grabs a puffy roll from the assortment and reclines on the bed exactly where Luke had been just thirty seconds prior, taking a ravaging first bite.

He stands dumbly at the doorway, unsure if he should find something to cover his arms and still trying to place all the pieces together.

Right, last night he had spoken with his sister and come to an agreement over the parts for the Razor Crest-- though he suspects he had forgotten the part where he needed to ask to borrow the Falcon. Hopefully, if Sanne was correct, then Han wouldn't even need it on their trip to Naboo.

"Don't you have responsibilities?" He finally asks. Sanne had already seen what remained of the Force lightning on his body, just once when Luke was injured to the point of needing her help– he doubts she would say anything about them now. Instead, he shuts the door behind them and grabs an identical puffy roll from the tray.

"Says the man that slept the entire day," Sanne retorts through a mouthful.

"Budge up," is all he says in return.

He crams himself next to her, reminded of their squadron days hunting down imperial remnants together and the longer nights of sharing stories and secrets. Smiling to himself, he enjoys the moment as they eat together in silence, only briefly broken as she orders him to bring the tray over from the table and onto the bed.

Finishing a tube of some repulsive sludge that Luke always hated but Sanne seemed to devour like a sarlacc pit, she turns to him, a thoughtful gaze in her eyes.

"So what's really going on?"

He sighs. “Nothing, I was just passing through– needed Han to find me some parts for a ship.”

Sanne raises a singular eyebrow at him. “I don’t believe you. Talk to me.”

He would always admire Sanne Dara's unrelenting faith, her attention and her honesty.

Yet Luke still can't bring himself to talk about what had broken. About the Fracture that splits his chest apart because the Force didn't know what to do with him, and so it ripped him open. It would be too much, trusting too much of himself to another person and breaking that careful line of attachment that he draws between himself and the people that he loves.

Oh, he can love them, but they can't really know him. He can't give them reason to put themselves into danger, to spend time searching for him, becoming a liability to him. Nothing that would risk the careful balance of the Force within him. He needs to be ready to easily unattach himself, if he ever felt himself falling to the Dark Side. He would be better than his father.

And so he tells Sanne, his most trusted and beloved friend,

"There’s really nothing to say."

She never believes him, but she lets it go– something that Luke can’t find the words to express how grateful he was for. Hours later when the food tray has been wiped clean and the conversation turns to simpler, friendlier topics, she brings up the matter of his hair.

“How come you haven’t cut it? You used to wear it short, I thought?”

“I did,” he starts, but Sanne interjects again.

“Is it a family thing? I remember you being a lot like me.” She curls in on herself the slightest amount, shifting the blanket. “Family means a lot to us.”

Luke shifts onto his back, staring up at the ceiling. “I guess you could say it’s a family thing.” He thinks of his father, but the sentiment no longer feels entirely accurate to him.

“You know, out there doing my ‘book collecting’ I ran into this kid,” he says instead. “We ended up spending a lot of time with each other, and…” he laughs, not sure where he’s going with this, not sure why his mind jumped to Grogu at the thought of family. “I guess it was nice having someone to look after. My father had hair like this when he was younger and I know that’s why I’ve worn it before, but. When you meet new people, people that you want the best for, it becomes a part of you.”

“That makes sense,” Sanne says, tugging on a braid that had fallen over her shoulder. “You know I wear mine to represent my family, even when I’m away. They’re who I want to honor.”

Of course it made sense– it’s why Luke wears black, even as a Jedi. To honor his father when he still remained in the light. But was that what he needed now?

“Do you want to keep it long?” Sanne suddenly asks, like she knows there’s more to it.

And honestly, Luke isn’t so sure anymore. He knows he had wanted to carry his father with him as he searched for what remained of the Jedi Order, to honor what he knew of him as he built his own Jedi academy by hand. But being here again was a reminder, seeing Leia and Han and Sanne, people who meant so much to him– people that had shaped him just as much as the consequences of his father’s actions. Maybe he needed to be reminded of a different part of himself instead. Of the boy who trained under Yoda, of the Commander that had fought to bring balance to the Republic alongside Sanne and the rest of their squadron. Of the Jedi he would become after he had put himself back together again.

Maybe something had to change, and while the Force was silent to him– no masters to call on, no father for guidance– he could carry others with him in the meantime.

He throws his legs over the side of the bed and gets up, rummaging the drawers for where he knows he kept his scissors back when he lived on the station. Holding them out hand-first to Sanne, he says, “Would you do me the honor?”

Something lights up her eyes, and somehow Luke knows that she understands without having to explain anything at all.

✩

Later, when he finds Han and Chewie arguing with each other over some sort of control panel in the second reactor's control room, he's greeted by a low whistle and an appreciative grunt from the Wookie.

"Well, look at you, kid! I'm guessing that's Sanne's handy work? The woman's been unbearable since you showed up on this station, if she didn't have flight crew training all this morning I was sure she would've been glued to you since the crack of dawn."

Luke laughs and runs a hand through his now neatly-cut hair, bangs swooping cleanly across his browline but still curling around his temples. Add that on top of his cleaned Jedi robes, he felt a hell of a lot more like the Jedi he was supposed to be-- sharp, clean, confident.

"I hesitate to cut it very short myself when I can't see the back; I'm glad that Sanne was able to do it for me," he says by way of an excuse.

"Just wait until Leia sees you, she'll have a field day."

"Hey, speaking of Leia," Luke remembers. "I hear that you're both headed to Naboo for a while, is that right?"

Han heaves a heavy sigh, standing upright from where he had been hunched over a panel of identical buttons for the reactor. "That's right, we leave in four days. Leia thinks she'll really be able to do something this time with the people on Naboo, but if it's anything like last time..." he trails off, sucking his teeth. "Let's just say we have a lot of work to do if we're going to really be able to bring them into the New Republic."

"And Ben?"

At the mention of their son, Han laughs with a glint in his eye.

"Officially, Threepio's on babysitting duty, but fortunately Leia had the sense to assign slightly more competent people to the task. Only to assist Threepio, of course," he adds, winking.

Luke smiles at the thought, fondness filling him at the mention of their kid and the group’s droid friend, who was no doubt shittalking the entire station down with Artoo at this moment.

Something loud clatters to the floor and Chewie roars in frustration from the storage closet around the corner. Han rolls his eyes, an exchange of exasperation just between Luke and himself. "Anyways, what'd ya need?"

Oh. Right.

"Do you think the Falcon could fit the parts for the Razor Crest, and could I borrow it while you're gone at Naboo?" Luke says more quickly than he’d intended.

“The what-crest?”

“The ST-70 ship,” Luke clarifies.

The other man's face immediately flattens in distrust. "The Falcon, eh? Yeah she can fit the parts, but can you borrow her? For what, your service Mandalorian?"

Luke cringes and pinches the bridge of his nose. "He's not... I would be the one flying it, but yes, we're heading to Tython to build the Razor Crest. Once we're finished, I'll fly it back."

Han unintelligibly mutters to himself, fiddling with a large button on the panel as he considers Luke's request.

"And you'd bring her back without a scratch? Just a short little vacation to Tython lugging half a ship across the galaxy with some bounty hunter I've never met?" He spits the words bounter hunter like it was some grave insult to a person's character.

"Not a single scratch or dent, I promise," Luke pleads. “Also, this bounty hunter seems far less liable to turn me into the Empire than the last one.”

The other man messes with the button some more, which Luke did not need happening in a reactor control room. Cringing, he hazards: "Can you maybe... not tou--"

"Alright, yeah, fine, you can borrow the Falcon. I've got her in a hangar on the lower levels of the station, once I get the parts in I'll have them loaded into her cargo bay. Alright?" Han stands up sharply to check up on whatever Chewie was doing in the storage closet, clearly attempting to cope with the thought of someone other than him flying the Falcon.

Luke hadn’t even had the chance to argue with him yet, standing flabbergasted back at the control panel. A grin tears across his face, regardless. “Thank you!”

From around the corner, a shout, "This is only because you're all responsible now with your Jedi stuff!"

Luke smirks into a gloved palm, appreciating the rare sight of a resigned Han Solo.

The time passes both slowly and too quickly on the station, and in the quieter moments he finds himself rummaging through his desk back in his room, looking for nothing in particular. He comes across old files, reports that were written and uploaded to the higher ups, but still sitting in his drawers as code cylinders. There’s rations of a favorite packaged and dried food of his that he’d tear into in the nights that ran late, and he tries not to think about just how expired they were at this point. Though if they were dried properly, he doubts they would ever really expire at all.

Rummaging through the bottom drawer, his fingers brush across something cold and he draws back with a frown. Reaching in again, he pulls out a small, crude figure of a womp rat and a wave of fond memories rush through him– he remembers Sanne giving him early on in their friendship, back when she had first learned he was from Tatooine. She said it was important to keep his home with him and had presented him with the ugly little metal creature as a token of remembrance, as if he was supposed to take it seriously.

Years later, he looks at it and can’t help but huff softly at the memory. Tatooine wasn’t his home any longer, no more than any other place. Sometimes he wasn’t sure if he truly belonged anywhere, the product of too many things that had died off or had been burned to the ground, but then there were the gentle reminders of times he had belonged, once.

Hair sharply cut into the style he had worn as a Commander.

A little figurine from the best friend he’d once had, before he found he could no longer stay.

He turns the womp rat around in his hand, feeling the grooves of its body fit familiarly in his palm, and his mind absently wanders to Grogu with his arms full of frogs, always looking for the whimsy in the galaxy.

Satisfied that the figurine remained the same as it had been years ago, he glances upwards at the clock- the numbers telling him that it was just about time to meet Leia for one last conversation before they part ways again.

Popping the bones in his neck, he stands up to inspect his appearance in the mirror– something he hadn’t had the chance to do in a long time, and something he’d avoided the last few days.

His hair falls cleanly across his forehead, tucking behind his ears and tapering neatly at his nape, though it bared the back of his neck where the collar of his robes didn’t reach. Although he looks like the Jedi he once was— the one that had negotiated with Jabba the Hutt, the one that had fought his own father in the Emperor’s throne room, the one that had left the New Republic to search for pieces of his people– something was still ringing wrong, like he was looking at an echo of himself.

If he looks further beyond the dark robes, he can see the jagged edges of the fracture within himself, a constant reminder of his failure to become what he was supposed to be, the tear making its way upwards and into his eye. A misalignment that Luke doesn’t know how to fix.

Before he leaves the room, Luke is sure to tuck the figurine into his pocket.

✩

"I hear you're taking the Falcon. How did you ever manage that?"

Leia's sat him down for dinner, the air awakened with spices and flavor that he hadn’t tasted since he left and he has no doubt that it’s by Leia’s conscious command.

The last few days have been somewhere in between chaos and rest-- it's odd spending so long in isolation only to have the galaxy come crashing back all at once, a reminder that life goes on even as he tries to restore the Jedi Order. With that said, he's spent many of the days alone and the evenings with Sanne, catching up over missions and training, even getting together with those of their squadron that had stayed on New Alderaan. There was a melancholy to the evenings spent in the cantina with familiar faces, reminiscing over their past victories and quietly passing over their losses. However, that had left little time to properly talk with Leia, especially as she prepared to depart for something so important.

The smirk comes back in full force-- not very Jedi-like, but Luke can't help himself, not with his sister in the room. "I can be very convincing."

As per usual, she reads him to filth. "I presume you just stood there and Han fought himself into an answer?"

At that, Luke bursts into a proper laugh. "As I said, I'm very convincing."

She hums and takes another bite from her plate, content to let the silence take hold for a moment. It was odd, falling back into a rhythm like this after being separated for so long-- yet on some level it makes Luke anxious, like he's sitting prey, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

"So," Leia starts, swallowing. "How come you never responded to my messages?"

And there it was.

Luke freezes, fork halfway lifted to his mouth, and he takes a moment to actually consider the words. "What messages?"

His sister frowns, a near identical expression to Luke's own. "You're serious?"

"I never received any messages the entire time I was gone. I figured you... well, it doesn't matter. You've sent me messages?"

She huffs an indignant breath. "Yes, Luke." Like watching the leaves on Ossus shift in a heavy wind, Luke can see the thoughts fly across her face, jumping from one explanation to the next, depending on the quantity and quality of evidence.

"Do you think the interference is by the same actor that's tampering with your perception of the Force?” She starts, already considering the most probable possibility as she waves her fork in the air. “To intercept any messages you'd receive is a very targeted action that only harms you. Some Imperial remnant, perhaps, who could have any number of reasons to want you damaged.”

Luke doesn’t even have time to worry about the implications that he had, in Leia’s perspective, been avoiding all of her messages for two years. Of course Leia would believe right away that it was someone else who had messed with their comms, especially after hearing Luke’s story of something tampering with his Jedi training.

Nodding once like Luke had contributed something important to the conversation, she continues. “Well, they weren’t particularly revolutionary messages anyways, just updates. We care, you know?”

Luke nods back. “I know. I’m sorry I can’t stay.”

Leia’s face tightens into something indecipherable, evaluating him with an intensity that sets Luke on edge as her gaze drifts to his eye once more. The conversation continues onto her hopes for the negotiations on Naboo, though it gradually ebbs into a silence as they finish their dinner quietly, lost in their own thoughts and memories of years gone by.

Eventually, she stands up from the table, utensils neatly stacked on top of her now empty plate. "I'll have my people look into anyone possibly interfering with our end. You know you're welcome to come back to the room with Han and I, but we'll only be finishing packing and heading right to bed. Though I'm sure Ben would love to meet you properly," she offers, smiling warmly at Luke like the tension had never been there.

As much as he'd love to chase that warmth, the stability of family, he can't find the will to impose on their night even further, not now.

"I'll find you again once I have the answers to my questions, I promise," Luke says instead. He gets up as well and crosses the table to hug Leia, gathering her into his arms. "Thank you for everything," he says into her hair, the scent reminding him of something he's forgotten.

"We love you, Luke." She smiles again, pulling herself out of the hug and heading for the door. Her boots click gently on the polished floor, coming to a halt as she reaches the door.

"Oh, by the way, Han says that the rest of the parts should be here in the next few days. I really do hope that rebuilding the ship goes well.” Her hand brushes the doorknob, preparing to part ways with her brother once more as she bids her final well wishes.

“Safe travels with the Mandalorian, and may the Force be with you."

✩

By the next morning, Luke knows that both Leia and Han have left the station. He can feel it in the Force, their distance a physical thing in his senses, though not too different from what he was already accustomed to on Ossus.

He spends the next couple of days waiting for the parts and taking up Leia’s offer of reading through her data on Mandalorians, and though there wasn’t much more information than Luke had already gathered, he finds more words to add to his list of Mando’a that he was steadily learning.

When he wasn’t committing the words to memory in his room, he was checking the shipments that were arriving for him and messing with an old, out-of-service Tantive IV Alderaanian starship that the station had rusting in a corner, getting himself familiar again with the order of electrical components. He knew well enough where all of the parts went in a standard ship, but hesitated when it came to the wiring– the mechanics of it all never fully stuck around in his brain, even after years assisting old Peli at Mos Eisley.

Looking back and forth between the Tantive and the schematics for the Mandalorian’s Razor Crest, he finds that a lot of the flight systems are generally similar and the differences he thinks he can account for in person, though he double checks with the wiring on the Falcon itself as well. Han’s ship was conveniently stashed in the same hangar as the Tantive, and Luke can’t say he really leaves the workspace except for when Sanne finishes her obligations for the day and drags him to the cantina for a proper dinner.

The time passes all too quickly and his old friend finally finds him boarding the Falcon with Artoo, all Razor Crest parts safely contained in the cargo bay and triple-checked for accuracy. Luke supposes that just leaves everything else ahead of him.

"Can't believe Solo is letting you fly that thing. Do you know just how touchy he gets when any of us go near it?” Sanne shouts at him from where she’s been sitting on a stack of crates just around the corner.

He's finishing making the final checks on some of the external systems and plating underneath the ramp, reassuring himself that the ship was both ready to fly and carry a load heavier than usual. "I think I've got an idea."

"At least you've got an idea, Gavarl has actual trauma from when Solo chased him down the hallway with a blowtorch after he tried to get the Falcon to open."

Luke snickers at the image, suddenly grateful that it was Sanne who had to deal with it all and not him. "I really will miss you, Sanne."

"That's what you said last time, are you cursing me to another two years without your blasted presence?"

"I said it last time because the sentiment was the same, skughead."

"Whatever, flyboy." She jumps off the crates and approaches the ramp, hands shoved in her pockets as the image of nonchalance and confidence, if it weren’t for the fact that she was looking anywhere but his eyes.

He leaves the underside of the ship where he’d been working and pulls her to him, standing on his toes to nudge his head with hers. The move only makes her laugh in his face, the irony of their height difference always a point of comedy to her.

“I’ll see you again, Sanne.”

She smiles, a terrifying, toothy thing, and rustles his combed hair. “Fly safe and don’t crash that thing, or we’re all going to die as a consequence.”

“Mhm.”

Luke walks onto the ship, overwhelmed with emotion and memory, refusing to look back for fear of finding a reason to stay.

“I really do mean it!” Sanne’s voice carries from the hangar, just as the ramp seals shut.

✩

The ship is difficult to fly alone, but not impossible. Fortunately, given whatever in the kriffing hells Han had jacked into his hyperdrives, the Falcon flies considerably faster than… well, literally every other ship that Luke has flown. Meaning that with the course that Artoo had charted to Tatooine, they were due to arrive within about a day.

Which was stupidly fast.

Despite the objective facts of fast travel, the hours alone aboard the Falcon seem to drag on, filling Luke with nerves for a reason that he can’t pin down. Maybe it was the thought of actually using the Force in a way that no one else has before, in front of someone else. But Luke was always the gambler, and he knows his younger self would’ve scoffed at his fear of taking a risk. Taking risks was what he knew how to do, and he could do it confidently again.

The thought of the Mandalorian’s steady gaze watching Luke work with the Force on Tython sends a chill down his spine, and he quickly stands up from the cockpit, resolving to walk a few paces around the main hold instead.

Despite his best wishes, time doesn’t slow according to Luke’s will and the Millenium Falcon pulls out of hyperspace to connect with the space port at Mos Eisley, landing just outside of town.

If he’s counted correctly, it’s been twelve days since he last saw the Mandalorian. That would mean there’s another two days of waiting at Mos Eisley for them to arrive, and he didn’t particularly trust his cargo to be left alone during his stay here.

Regardless, he goes ahead with landing, paying someone to watch the ship as he ventures into the town, dark hood drawn over his head, cloak trailing behind him in the subtle breeze. He didn’t need anyone recognizing him here, whether from his past or from his work with the New Republic– Leia had been right, anyone could have any number of reasons to want him gone. Though, the black robes weren’t very inconspicuous here on the desert planet.

An alternative idea forms in his mind as he browses the stalls in the market, vendors selling cheap goods at exorbitantly high prices as they always did, and keeps an eye out for the stall that he remembered Uncle Owen always declaring as reliable. He’s already purchased enough fresh and rationed food for the three of them on Tython– cringing at the cost but suffering them all the same– when he sees it.

A soft white fabric catching his eye from where it hangs on the rack, lit by the light of the two very real suns in the sky above him. The dusty pair of shoes rest on the ground just below it, a familiar style.

He had worn the black Jedi robes for years in honor of his father and the solemnity of the Jedi Order, but just maybe, it was time to carry another part of him with himself, a nod to the Force that he walks in and the planet that had shaped him.

✩

The Mandalorian lands on the planet the next afternoon, one day short of two weeks since they last met. Luke knows when it happens just as much as he did the day that the man’s N-1 broke through Ossus’s atmosphere, the warmth and anticipation lighting him from within as he tracks their presence down into one of Mos Eisley’s many flight hangars.

Luke steps out of the Falcon where he’d been waiting, the glaring brightness of the two suns a welcome pain when they’re real and physical in the sky above him, hauntingly familiar.

The trailing tails of the white fabric off his shoulders flutter in Tatooine’s humid breeze, the heat-repelling material woven by the skilled hands of the Tatooine-born. Fortunately, the long-sleeved top and tabard still cover all of his skin, tucking all of his scars out of sight just as well as the stiff black attire, but the Tatooine material was something old and new put into one. It was reminiscent of who he was, but worn by someone with far more experience than the boy who had grown up here.

He strides over the sands of his old homeworld in the wrapped, sand-crossing boots of the style that he’d worn for years of his life, each step sure and steady as he approaches the outside of the hangar where he can feel the pull of the Force bringing him.

When he meets the Mandalorian again, the real and coarse sand blows over the warrior’s own scuffed boots, the ones that had seen countless worlds throughout the galaxy. The red and white suns dance off of his silver armor and in that moment Luke is captured by reflected light, breath catching in his throat.

The moment breaks when Grogu shouts from his hold in the man’s arms, jumping out of them and running across the sand to Luke. Of course, he immediately bends and grabs the babbling child from the sands with a laugh, offering many hello’s to match the child’s own enthusiasm.

Finally within a few feet of each other, Luke looks up from Grogu’s smiling face and offers his own grin to the child’s father. “We meet again, Mandalorian. You made it.”

The man in question tilts his helmet at Luke-- not for the first time, the Jedi wishes he could read its meaning.

“Did you doubt it?”

And although a part of the Jedi wonders what the other man’s expression could possibly be underneath, the rest of him exhales in relief. The Mandalorian doesn’t ask him about the changes, the eye and the desert-made fabric, doesn’t mention how Luke holds onto Grogu just a little bit closer than necessary.

For now, it was enough.