Luke Skywalker (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lightsaver) wrote2016-01-03 10:14 pm
lightsaver) wrote2016-01-03 10:14 pm
Open Post
open post
This is a post for PSLs, overflow threads, ic contacting and prompts. If you'd like to thread with me but don't like the look of any of my meme toplevels, go ahead and drop a starter or a blank comment here instead!
For Padme!
He's almost certain that he's looking at his mother, frozen in time.
It's strange, and the strangeness of it carries him through the whole process, looking in from the outside as they work at thawing her, restoring her to life like he means to do for Han someday soon. She's beautiful, even while disoriented and blind, in a way that's almost familiar: it reminds him of someone he knows, without him realizing it. When he was growing up in the sandy wastelands of Tatooine, he'd admittedly fantasized more about his father than his mother - born mostly, he thinks now, from the fact that his Uncle Owen actually knew (and lied about) who his father was - but there had been a nebulous ache to know her as well, to find out what she was like. An impossibility, he'd been sure, until now.
(Just as he'd been sure about his father, until a few weeks ago on Bespin. Ben, he thinks angrily, sadly, for what must be the millionth time since then, why didn't you tell me? All attempts to speak to his dead mentor have gone unanswered, and Luke begins to wonder if he's being avoided by a ghost.)
In any case, the doctors let him see her after, when she has regained her senses. She doesn't look healthy, exactly, but then she'd been dying when they froze her as a last ditch effort, hadn't she? And while the information they've shared with him about the process and how to reverse it has been invaluable, he can't take it and leave now.
Not without at least meeting her first. (It can't possibly go worse than meeting his father, right? He'll run out of limbs to spare.)
He shuffles awkwardly into the room, empty now except for one of the medical droids quietly stationed at her bedside, and clears his throat. Realizes, belatedly, that he didn't actually think up anything clever or interesting to say while he had the time. "Ah, your... highness?" Is that the right form of address? He doesn't know, but it's not the one he wants to use. Mother sticks to the roof of his mouth, instead. She seems so young, though: what if he's wrong? He doesn't think he is... just like he doesn't think he's wrong about Vader (even though he dearly wants to be.) "I'm Luke Skywalker."
If that doesn't get some sort of reaction, things are going to get pretty awkward, pretty fast.
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The Republic had just fallen to the sound of applause, all of the senators cheering Palpatine's announcement about both the supposed suppression of an attempted coup by the Jedi and the formation of the very antithesis of democracy. Why even have a Senate in an Empire except to pacify the oppressed?
And then Anakin. His responses, how he spoke about his Empire, how they were to rule it, and then the Force tightening about her throat... That had been the true source of her health's deterioration. It was as if she'd felt her life being drained away while she'd laid on the landing pad, and she hadn't cared. Everything she'd worked for had slipped out of her fingers. Once she saw the babies were born and would live, she'd known that Obi-Wan and Bail would keep them safe. So what use was there for her?
Thinking about that, it made sense why they'd put her into the coma, let her body continue the life that her spirit could no longer stand. Time spent in carbonite had let days pass and her body find a way to heal itself without involving the ache in her heart. Padmé even had the sense of time passing. How much, she wasn't sure, but she could feel that some aches were now the aches of hurts healing instead of the ebb of life.
Her vision was still blurry when the door opened, admitting a man who--
At first, she thought it was Anakin. The hair was right. The colouring, except for the hair. That was what stopped her from saying the name aloud. Her eyes fully focused to see a young, blonde man. More accurately, a young, blonde Jedi.
And then he said his name. Her heart leaped into her throat. "Luke... Skywalker?" she exhaled, disbelieving. Luke. Her little Luke? All grown up? Stars, she'd barely seen him as a baby moments ago--
"Luke..."
Her eyes filled with tears. She'd missed so much. "How long has it been? How old are you?"
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He blinks rapidly for a moment, relief warring visibly with elation and nervousness (he hasn't managed to develop much of a poker face yet) enough that his tongue feels heavy and useless in his mouth as he steps further into the room to stand by her bedside. Not close enough as to be overly familiar, just a shade past awkwardly distant while still hovering, the fingers of his real hand fidgeting and twisting in the fabric at the bottom of his shirt. He doesn't know how to behave in this situation, exactly, even though it's the second time he's found himself thrust into it. Last time he met a parent he'd long thought dead, he ended up throwing himself down a mining tower instead of sticking around to get to know them - he's got no urges to repeat that particular feat this time around, though. Convenient, considering that Naboo's buildings sit flush with the ground, rather than hovering just within the atmosphere of a gas giant.
"I'm," he hesitates. Since leaving Tatooine, the yearly cycle had felt almost unimportant: there was no harvest, and far too much to do besides. The bustle of the war had distracted him enough that he might have entirely forgotten to celebrate his last birthday, come to think of it. "Twenty two. But I'll be twenty three, next-" Oh- nope, he already started, he can't stop the words from fumbling their way out of his mouth, like the rush of an awkward river. He never was one for thinking things through before hitting full throttle. "--Empire Day."
He winces. Before Bespin, he'd always just thought it a coincidence that his birthday fell on the day the Emperor officially assumed his full power - after all, millions of people across the galaxy were born that day, even Leia! - but now, knowing what he knows, it all feels... more sinister.
It was also the day that Senator Amidala had been encased in carbonite, preserved perfectly. Calling that mark in the galactic calendar by its holiday seems blasphemous somehow.
"Are you okay? How do you feel?"
He can see the wetness in her eyes and he wants to hug her more than he's ever wanted to do anything, but he hesitates, unsure of himself.
He has a mother now. (And a father, but he's not going to think about that.)
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So long. So long, and he was grown, and he was a Jedi--
Padmé swiped at the tears that were starting to fall and extended her arms toward him. This was her little boy. And she thankfully still had a few years on him. Not many, but a few. "Look at you," she found herself laughing - a wet, unsteady laugh. He was alive. Alive and well and he'd found her. "Obi-Wan must have trained you."
It was logic. Simple logic. While she trusted Bail Organa, with the Jedi in ruins, if he'd been in Bail's household, it wasn't likely he would've gotten any sort of training. But Anakin...
Anakin had to know about him, if he was this grown and a Jedi. There was no way he didn't. And that meant at least one of her children was in danger.
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He stays like that for a moment, letting the feeling warm him all the way down to his bones, chasing away the cold he'd felt for years now. It turns out that there aren't a whole lot of places in any rim as hot as a desert planet with binary suns, and as much as he hated it on the miserable, sandy rock, sometimes he misses that. He manages to bask in being in his mother's - his mother's! - arms, until realization of what she's saying sinks in and he jerks back, surprised.
"He--" He knew you? Luke bites his tongue. More lies from his brief master, or at least, a great big truth not given. Obi-Wan knew his mother as well, and he never said. Never told Luke that she was still alive, after a fashion. "He did. For... a little while." Just days, and then he'd died.
But that's not entirely true, is it? Luke had known Obi-Wan all his life, in a way. Until his nineteenth year, though, the old wizard Ben Kenobi had been more a mystical figure than anything - the hermit who lived out by the dune sea, whom Uncle Owen thoroughly disapproved of - seen only occasionally in Anchorhead when he went into town for supplies. He'd been kindly, calming presence, and infinitely moreso when Luke learned that he'd known his oft-imagined father. The tales of Anakin Skywalker's bravery and strength during the Clone Wars which had lifted his spirits when he'd lost everything on Tatooine now felt almost suffocating, confusing and terrible. Why, Ben? he'd asked the air, a hundred times over after Bespin. After Han, and his hand, and learning the truth.
Somehow he doesn't think Ben will answer him now, either.
"He didn't tell me, I would have come here sooner if I'd know about... this." There's something tremendously sulky and accusatory in his tone, which is not one of the better traits he'd inherited from his father.
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But one thing she was finding - she felt stronger. Her son had survived to twenty-two years old. And if he hadn't known about her, then it was likely he didn't know about his sister. It was likely he didn't know about most of the truth, which was, really, the safest thing to do for him. Now, though? Now it was past time he found out.
Her hands closed around his, squeezing. "Tell me what you do know. And then I'll fill in the gaps for you. A lot of the truth was probably kept from you, for your own safety. But now you're an adult. You're a Jedi. You're going to be in danger no matter what, so you should know your own past."
So much of him was Anakin. The way his hair laid, his eyes, that tone of voice. It made her smile to remember better times, before the darkness rose and swallowed him. But she could see herself in him, too. He'd certainly taken after her in height, and there was a warmth to him that she thought was more her than his father. She had so much to learn about her own son.
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He swallows, sagging against the side of the bed as she shifts, his eyes trained on their fingers where they touch. He can feel through both, even the prosthetic one - he's got nerve receptors running beneath the synth-skin so he can pilot (and wield a lightsaber) just as effectively (or poorly) as before - but he still feels clumsy with the one, like it's heavier than it should be. He swears he can hear the mechanisms whirring beneath it in a quiet room, and he's accidentally crushed a few things by not being careful enough. When his thumbs twitch out to run along the sides of her hands where they're curled around his own, he is very, very careful.
"Is it true?" he asks, finally looking back up at her face. He knows it is true, he searched his feelings and found the answer he feared all the way back on Bespin, but he can't help the need to hear it aloud from someone that isn't a monster in a suit. (A monster in a suit who let him live, when he could have just as easily snuffed him out, after being rejected. Luke has been trying to avoid thinking about that, and trying to figure out what it means in turn, these past few weeks.) "Is Darth Vader really my father?"
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"That isn't a name I recognise," she admitted. "Your father is Anakin Skywalker. But the last time I saw him, and knowing what I do about the Sith-" which wasn't much but was enough for her to be sure about a few things "-I do think it's possible that that's the name he could have now.
"But I need you to know..."
It was almost like interrupting herself. He had to know. He had to know the truth.
"He wasn't always the person he became at the end."
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She's already better than anything he'd imagined though, he thinks. Beautiful and kind, and her hands are warm and her voice is soft, and she was some kind of amazing queen-cum-senator, important and beloved and it makes him wish that his father were only the spice freighter navigator that Uncle Owen had always told him about growing up. All he'd ever wanted was for some legacy that took him beyond the Outer Rim dustball he'd been trapped on all his youth, and wasn't Padmé Amidala all that and more?
"What was he like?" He has to ask, anyway. It's important to her, that's clear - and, despite himself, it's important to Luke too. He doesn't want to want to kill his own father, it feels so wrong. (And he doesn't think he has a chance, in any case.)
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But she couldn't think about that. A surreptitious swipe of her hand under her eyes and she pushed herself further back in her memories - back to happier times. Times that she could smile at.
"At his best, he was amazing." Padmé loosed one hand from his, lifting it to his cheek, then up to his hair. "You look a little like him. The way your face is shaped, your eyes, the way your hair falls around your face - but I think you got more of your height from me." She could even laugh at that. Softly, but still a laugh. "Should I apologise?"
But she was getting off the subject. Still with a fond expression, she exhaled, laid back against the bed. Soon, she'd be determined to regain her energy, but it seemed that twenty years in carbonite didn't leave someone with much strength to go around.
"He was a brilliant pilot. I don't think there was such a thing as a ship he couldn't push into doing exactly what he wanted. He had a touch with anything mechanical, and when he was confident, he could do anything he put his mind to." Her happiness started to fade. "But..."
There was always a 'but.'
"He was also... frustrated. Anakin never felt like anything was going the way it should. His training felt too slow, or he was sure nobody trusted him, or the very senate wasn't handling things the right way. He always hated sand." Padmé sighed. "I wonder if maybe some of its irritation didn't end up permanently under his skin..."
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Even back then, piloting and mechanics had been the two things Luke was best at: one out of passion, and the other out of necessity (because they never could afford anything but the broken down junker droids that the Jawas came by to peddle a few times every year, which meant Luke spent a lot of time elbow-deep in equipment trying to patch it up enough to run.) If he'd inherited that, and the Force, his face and his hair... impatience, too, Yoda would insist, what did that mean, really? How alike were they?
Luke is reminded uncomfortably of his failed test on Dagobah, his own face staring back at him from Vader's broken helm. His father said he wanted Luke to join him, take part in some shared, abhorrent destiny where they ruled the galaxy together, and it's almost enough to make him squirm.
But then the joy starts to ebb from his mother's expression, and Luke finds all that forgotten, simply leaning closer like that proximity might chase the sadness away instead. He offers a shaky smile - a bit wry and a bit crooked - at her last observation. "Sometimes I still feel like I have sand in my shoes and I have to turn them over just to make sure nothing falls out," he admits, just a strange little small thing that he's never told anybody, "even though I haven't been back to Tatooine in years."
He'd go back soon, though. For Han.
He shakes his head. Maybe... maybe he's not all like his father. He should think about that instead. "What about you?" A beat, and he considers that question might seem to have come out of nowhere and so elaborates: "What do you do for fun?"
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Padmé sighed, managing to smile again. Luke had somehow grown up to look like sunlight. He was so sweet, so good-hearted. It was like a glow around him. Maybe a bit of the Force remained around her. She had to wonder. She knew she'd been at least a little sensitive while she'd carried her babies.
"What do I do for fun," she exhaled, musing. "I didn't have much time for things that were strictly 'fun.' I was in the youth legislation and I did a lot of humanitarian missions... But when I did do something to relax, I would usually go swimming and sunbathe. I had my sister, Sola, to play with, and then her children. I loved going on picnics, and... I did teach myself to pick simple locks, just on principle. I'm a decent pilot - not the best, but I can fly most ships passably. I think I'm a better shot than your father, and maybe even Obi-Wan, but he always hated blasters passionately." She smiled with a touch of old mischief. "Not all of us can carry a lightsaber."
She reached out to touch his cheek again. "I wish I could tell you more. I was always the more serious between the two of us - Anakin and I. I grew up quickly; I was queen of Naboo when I was fourteen. Anakin had some childhood, even though he grew up a slave. His mother, Shmi, was a wonderful woman. I remember her fondly - thoughtful and kind..."
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But he tries to shake that bit of hurt off for now. It'll all be better, it has to be: she's here, she's alive, and that means they can bring Han back: the family he's chosen will be whole again. "He passed away, and my grandmother too." He feels almost guilty, because she sounds so fond of Shmi. He remembers both of their memorial markers on the homestead, and Uncle Owen's quiet discomfort with him visiting them. That might have had something to do with Luke's fascination with his own - he'd been lead to believe - deceased parents, and all the questions he'd ask after. It has become abundantly clear now why his uncle had hated answering them so much, considering every single reluctant word he'd parted with on the matter had clearly been a lie.
At her answer, he finds his mind drifting away from the frustrations of so much deception and time wasted to... curiously, Princess Leia. It all just sounds very familiar: royal and growing up so fast, a teenager in the galactic political arena, and more than handy with a blaster, herself. He can hardly believe that she's his mother instead, some bumbling farmboy from Tatooine who never made it farther out than Beggar's Canyon (and even that had been against the rules) before his nineteenth's cycle. But she is! She is, this queen who is brilliant and generous and kind, who can pick locks and out-gun old Ben and swim (for fun!), and she's his mother. Luke smiles again, cautious but blooming still at the warmth of her touch. He's having difficulty regulating his moods with all the information he's processing, fluctuating wildly between hurt and angry and utterly joyous: Yoda would be so cross with him, if he were here. (He can almost feel the phantom sting of his knees being cracked with a knobbly cane and hear the huff of control, you must learn!) He can't be bothered though, honestly. Not here. Not now.
"I think it's silly, I mean, not to carry a blaster too." Well, Han had thought it was silly, and Luke had thought Han knew a lot more than him about surviving outside of a desert wasteland, so he'd capitulated easily after the Death Star when Ben wasn't alive anymore to continue expressing his distaste. Now, he doesn't have a lightsaber anymore, it had been lost with his right hand. "We should fly together sometime, I'm good at that. Um-- if you want."
A thought occurs to him suddenly: she'd been a queen at fourteen, but a senator after that. "The senate was dissolved," which had affected Tatooine - a planet that was officially under Imperial control but was functionally Hutt territory - precisely not at all, though Luke had become more aware of the Empire's history and policy in his years flying for the Rebellion, "what will you do now?"
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Maybe she could help her son avoid his father's fate of that pain growing and taking him over with fear and anger. She'd lost Anakin to the dark. She wouldn't lose Luke. This time, there would be no giving up.
The determination steeled her spine, settled into her expression as determination as she met his eyes. "I'll do what I've always done," she said. "I'll fight. I won't let the Dark win.
"And to do that, Luke, I'll need your help."
Medical droids be damned, she pulled herself to sit up, raising her hand to his shoulder. "I need you to help me get back to my full strength. You can teach me the new ships, and we'll fly together. You can teach me what's happened since I was frozen. And then I'll fight alongside everyone who's fighting for freedom."
Her children deserved her protection, and that meant wading into the thick of it - exactly where she'd always been. The system she'd known had broken down. Now it was time to break down what had come after.
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And besides all that, there's a selfish little voice in the back of his mind wondering how, if she were to stay away from the war, could he ever get to know her? He'd been lucky so far, but it isn't as though the life expectancy of X-Wing pilots (or not-quite-Jedi, considering he's the last one) have categorically been very impressive - this just... feels like a now-or-never sort of deal, and he can't not take it.
So he nods, a determination to mirror her own crawling up the set of his spine and shoulders and jaw. She sounds so sure, so strong, and the idea of it seeps into his limbs, spreading slow and warm: he starts to feel like maybe they're not crazy, that they can do this. He hasn't dared to think that way since Bespin, since they lost Han.
Han... "I will, I'll do all that," it's amazing how he feels suddenly buoyed by optimism, something he's been sorely lacking these past few weeks. "But I came here for a reason, I mean, before I knew you were here. My--" He pauses, wondering how to verbally navigate the new relationship-- "Vader he... froze my friend in Carbonite. To test it, uh, as a method for... transporting prisoners," that's how Lando described it. He'd been making sure the method wouldn't be fatal to Luke. "I have to save him, now that I know how. He's saved me so many times."
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Was he on the way here?
A thread of fear worked through her, but she squared her shoulders. Whatever happened, she wasn't going to back down. She'd been saved for a reason, and one reason was right there in front of her. "All right," Padmé nodded. "Then we should both learn from the attendants here. They know how to best remove someone from carbonite." Her own life was the proof. "And then, on the way to rescue your friend, I'll have the time to learn and regain my strength."
It sounded like a plan to her, at least. She would need some clothing and some weapons, some time to learn everything that she needed to know, and that same time to teach Luke everything she knew that he should.
And also to find out about Leia. Was her little girl as bright and shining as Luke? Stars how she hoped so.
A nod of decision and she held out her hands. "No time like the present. Help me walk, Luke. We have a lot to do."
For Anakin!
After finally, painstakingly liberating the Imperial Center (Coruscant, now, Luke reminds himself) from the grip of one of the innumerable remaining grand moffs with troopers and ships still at his disposal, the last jedi (and decorated pilot of the rebellion) found himself drawn inexorably towards the Emperor's palace. Every night it haunted his sleep, and even during the day every time he'd tried to focus on strategy meetings or even private conversations, he couldn't stop his mind from wandering back to its towering spires, bright and tall even amongst its millions of glittering peers. Having grown increasingly frustrated with his constant daydreaming, Leia gave him leave to go explore the damn thing if it meant so much to him, so long as he promised to return unscathed, which is exactly how Luke discovered that Emperor Palpatine had not flattened it but had instead gutted Coruscant's jedi temple and turned it into his own castle.
Perhaps he'd thought it amusing, or fitting, or... Luke doesn't know, but it niggles at him in ways that work past his still-fledgling attempts to rid himself of anger and grudges.
But beneath the terrible changes were still some old things, singing through the Force: they came out in visions beneath Luke's eyelids as he walked the halls with his flesh and blood hand trailing along the walls, the ebb and flow of the universe directing him down corridors and stairs until he was almost certainly underground and in front of a locked door. Mystified, Luke meditated at the door for the better part of an hour before losing all patience and trying to cut through it with his lightsaber. When that failed, he tried hollering for Ben or Yoda to come give him advice, but neither answered. It was only when he was on the verge of giving up and turning around that he felt it--
Something familiar. A presence, colored by anger, frustration, longing, all of which he'd tasted before. Luke stared, transfixed, unable to stop himself from reaching out...
Which caused the door to fly open before his outstretched hand, and immediately Luke wished that it hadn't. The room beyond was somehow darker than the space between stars and felt even more impossibly empty - devoid even of walls and a floor, so far as he could see. He feared that if he tried to step inside he might fall forever, but the feeling of someone within kept him from taking the step back that every cell in his body was desperate to.
No, instead his breath hitched, and he could almost swear something inside the room was reaching back towards him. Something he knew, someone he'd felt before. "Father?"
Suddenly he knew he could curl his fingers and - yes! - grab at something that felt altogether too real, too alive, too human to survive in that black hole of a room. Once he got a firm grip, he pulled as hard as he was able, and a fully grown man came tumbling out of the darkness and into the hall with him in an altogether undignified tangle of limbs. He grunts and turns his head to the side to avoid getting a mouthful of wavy hair the second he parts his lips to speak, only once he does that he finds he doesn't know what to say except, "it is you!" A beat. It's not like he's had much to go on, visually. "... Isn't it?"
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"Father?" He merely mimicked the word back to Luke without considering its meaning or any weight it might add to his already over-taxed senses. His body ached. His head throbbed. A door threatened to close in his mind as quickly as the one that had closed behind him, and still he knew that he needed to guard himself, bit not so much that he cuts himself off from being receptive to the universe around him.
Unwinding, righting himself, Anakin placed his gloved hand to his temple and tried to shake off the disorientation to no avail. He hadn't experienced anything quite so jarring in some time.
Sharp eyes focused on Luke and for a second Padmé was there too — a vision, just a blur over Luke's shoulder — and that only prompted him to edge closer. "The temple— everyone's—" He swallowed and his flesh hand reached out to grasp Luke's mechanical hand, clasping tightly around his rigid wrist. "What's happened?" His tone was more commanding than demanding, although there was still a measure of both contained within his words.
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Father. When his question comes echoing back at him he flushes, feeling stupid for having asked. Even if the Force is mysterious, and all things are possible through it, he definitely watched Anakin Skywalker die on the second Death Star. Also the guy he just pulled out of that room has hair, and a slightly healthier color to his skin than eggshell-white, and it's not very likely that he'd been conceived by someone in their infancy. But there's no way to deny the non-visual similarity between this man and the one who had saved him from the Emperor's wrath.
Luke shakes his head and throws a startled look down at his artificial hand when it gets squeezed in a sudden grip. He's pretty sure Anakin won't be able to feel the delicate mechanisms twitching and sliding smoothly beneath the stretch of synth-skin as his fingers curl suddenly inward and then relax again, but Luke has still become hyper-aware of them. He shoves down the memory of a bright red blade and blinding pain as far as it'll go and refocuses determinedly on their surroundings.
"I don't know, I— the Force brought me here." He winces, even as the words fall out of his mouth: what an unhelpful non-answer. Yoda would be proud! (Probably less proud that he'd gone tromping through the Emperor's Palace and sticking his nose into mysterious doors without a backup plan, but that's a minor detail.) He presses his lips together and moves on, pushing past that. "Who are you? What were you doing in there?"
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"I don't know." Another echo, but this time he understood the meaning much more pointedly. If nothing else, he thought Luke might be right, that the Force had brought them both here, but for the moment the reasoning was lost on at least one of them. Anakin could see no obvious reason that he would be pulled away from the war, from the army, and from his friends and the family he was building.
Reminding himself he needed to gather his senses and to stay focused, Skywalker suppressed his burgeoning demand for immediate answers — for clear indications of Padmé and Obi-Wan's locations within this new world — and instead opted to provide some answers of his own. "I'm Anakin Skywalker," he introduced, tone turning a little flat. "A Jedi like you." No need to venture on that guess — clearly the Force was very strong in him. So much so that it bred a fascination of its own within Anakin.
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His jaw snaps back shut.
He'd wanted so many things from his father, and for his father, all of which he'd thought dashed once, beneath Bespin. But after that, he'd slowly regained hope, at least a little - he realized that he had a chance to know his father, to free him, to make that little sliver of goodness left inside him mean something real. But he'd died: he'd returned to the light, but that didn't mean he wasn't gone in all the ways that mattered. And now... is this meant to be a second chance? A way to change things, perhaps? Can the Force do that?
There's so much more good in him, Luke can feel it - there's still the anger and the pride and the impatience, but he's still whole - it's amazing in itself. Luke's exhale shudders on the way out and he makes himself grasp at composure once again.
"I'm Luke," he offers, attempting a recovery but still stopping short of the whole truth. A little curl of guilt blooms in his stomach when he remembers Ben's own half-truths and outright lies, but all he can think is what if he doesn't believe me? and, perhaps more absurdly, what if it scares him off? "Were you looking for the old temple, too?"