Revenge of the Jedi (7/17)
Sep. 18th, 2011 06:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anghraineIn the interests of practicing conciseness (...not my strength), and not beginning every post with random updates about my life, I finally caved and made a twitter account instead. Anghraine, of course.
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Title: Revenge of the Jedi (7/17)
Fanverse: Revenge of the Jedi
Blurb: Leia is guilty and restless in the Rebellion; Luke is sent through the Department of Backstory, and realizes what it means.
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Chapter Seven
“Maybe I should just spend the rest of the day posing dramatically,” said Leia. “Or wait, I could get tears tattooed my face. Then they wouldn’t need me to do anything at all.”
“My programming indicates that would be an ineffective tactic,” Threepio said. “The overwhelming majority of organics will respond only to water-based tears. I feel it is highly unjust and irrational, but . . .”
Chewbacca snarled something.
“Well, really!”
“Both of you, just -- ” Leia began, then rubbed her forehead. She’d only managed to get this modicum of privacy by claiming a headache and retreating to her chambers with Threepio and Chewbacca. The useless guards had stationed themselves just outside her door.
Leia didn’t think Chewie and Threepio disliked one another, but without anyone else to vent their -- singular frustrations on, they seemed to be constantly at odds. She couldn’t blame them.
Threepio retreated to the corner.
“I beg your pardon, Princess Leia,” he said, all wounded dignity. “I only wished to be of assistance.”
“Don’t we all -- for all the good it does,” Leia snapped, then dropped her head into her hands. “Gods, I’m acting like a child. I’m twenty-two. I’m a princess; I’ve been a senator. I should be better than this.”
The droid took a cautious step forward. Chewbacca snapped at him, as quietly as he ever managed.
“I was the first to say that Mon should lead us now. She has far more experience than I do with everything except blasters. She started the Rebellion. She doesn’t just deserve to be in charge, she really is the best person. She’s much more charismatic than I ever was, too -- she makes people want to follow her.”
“Chewbacca says you would make a far superior Wookiee chieftain,” said Threepio.
Leia laughed. “Thank you, Chewie. Unfortunately, I’m not a Wookiee.” She kicked a pillow back against the wall, eyes narrowing. “Or a chieftain.”
“I understand that it is an extremely dangerous occupation. We are much better off here.”
“I don’t mind danger,” Leia said impatiently. “But I haven’t spent this many years risking my life to fight the Empire only to sit around reading reports. Anyone can do this! It’s just a sop to my vanity. Something to keep the precious princess from running off and getting herself captured. As if I would ever give up the Rebellion’s secrets to the Empire. Vader himself couldn’t get anything out of me. Tarkin couldn’t, and Vader was nothing to him.”
She fell silent.
Threepio’s eyes flashed uncertainly. After several minutes, Chewie gave a low, interrogative growl.
“Chewbacca asks why you are not chieftain of your people, Princess. He suggests a significant remainder must have survived.” Threepio paused a moment. “In fact, approximately three million, six hundred fifty-nine thousand citizens of Alderaan would have been off-planet at the moment of its destruction. Under the Act of -- ”
“I know.” Leia stared ahead, just as she had done on the Death Star, dry-eyed, chest burning. “I found some of them, as many as I could. But I’m not a one-person army like Vader, like a Jedi. All my resources have been confiscated by the Emperor. I can’t do anything for them but fight the Empire, so that’s what I’ve been doing.” Her jaw tightened. “But now -- I can’t just sit here and be a symbol of resistance while my people, everyone’s people, are out there actually resisting.”
“My records do suggest that over ninety-five point nine one eight six percent of known Alderaanians are also known members of the Rebellion, or notably sympathetic,” Threepio admitted. “If one includes colonies of Alderaanian origin, the number rises to -- ”
Chewbacca’s head jerked up. Leia, who had been speaking more to herself than to him, gave him a quizzical glance.
“He’s talking nonsense,” Threepio said. “Chewbacca, a Wookiee colony is extremely unlikely to have originated from Alderaan.”
“I didn’t know the Wookiees had any colonies,” Leia said, still occupied with her own thoughts. We’ve had hardly any Imperial attacks lately, she told herself. Even though we’ve been able to strike against them more often, thanks to Luke, and all the new recruits. It’s the best possible time --
“Only one,” reported Threepio. “He says that several generations ago, a Wookiee expedition discovered a system at the fringes of the Republic, with two habitable worlds. One, a small planet, was already occupied by what appeared to be humans, but the other, a forest moon, had been left untouched. The Wookiees settled the moon and have lived there ever since, though they retained contact with their homeworld, and -- ”
Leia, glad enough to be distracted from her troubles, raised her eyebrows. “What appeared to be humans?”
“Clones,” said Threepio. “They were eradicated during the wars, but the Emperor had too many other concerns to bother with the system. It is technically within the boundaries of the Empire, but only barely. Chewbacca’s cousins have not seen any Imperials since the wars.” He paused while Chewie added something. “Even then, they had no trouble from them.”
A jolt of excitement pulsed through her. “You mean there’s an uninhabited planet just sitting there? And it can support human life?”
Chewbacca’s enthusiastic reply needed no translation.
“And you never mentioned this before?”
“He believed that you would have already purchased a planet, had you required one,” said Threepio.
“One does not simply purchase planets!” She grimaced. “Especially if one has no money.”
“He says -- ”
“Never mind.” Leia sprang up, smoothing down her shirt. “If there’s any way I . . . you two, come with me. We have a fight to pick.”
The past, Luke quickly realized, was by far the most difficult to grasp. It came no more naturally to him than the present had, and even once he managed to turn his mind’s eye back, the images were as fleeting and incoherent as anything he’d seen in the future. Finally, he did manage to catch something reasonably concrete, and it was only a middle-aged man -- a general or perhaps a moff -- leering at a dark-haired woman in senatorial robes, her face concealed behind a mask of white paint.
“My dear Senator Amidala,” he said, and Luke’s mind rang -- he’d heard that name before, just a few days . . .
A few days ago. This was Janren’s aunt. Well, his not-aunt, if Vader were right, but the woman through whom he’d claimed relation to the Emperor. Someone Anakin Skywalker had known, too -- well enough to recall who her nephews were and weren’t, when he’d forgotten so much else.
“Moff Tarkin,” she returned evenly.
Tarkin? The governor of the Death Star? Why would Luke see him? -- flirting with some cousin of the Emperor’s, no less?
“I was shocked to hear of the recent attempt on your life, Senator,” Tarkin said. Luke felt a slight stir of curiosity. Assassination attempts might be interesting. “In such circumstances, is it really wise for you to stand in the open like this, with no protection?”
“I am not unprotected,” Amidala said, her flat voice revealing nothing. “My friends have arranged for a bodyguard to accompany me. He should be arriving presently.”
“Presently? How unconscionably negligent -- why, anyone with a blaster could abduct you with no one the wiser.” His hand closed over her small wrist. “Even without a blaster.”
Amidala didn’t flinch, but simply regarded him with cool, unfriendly dark eyes, reminding Luke of no one so much as Leia.
“Not quite,” said a dry, female voice from behind him. Tarkin started, whirling around.
The voice belonged to a slight, fair, sharp-featured young woman. Next to her stood a still younger man, at once tense and abstracted, his face half-turned away. He, too, had blond hair, though his approached light brown where hers was pale. Both wore Imperial uniforms and wary expressions.
Luke would have started himself, if he could. At first glance, the man’s profile was his -- no, it couldn’t be. Tarkin had been elderly when he’d died, not fifty-something, and tall as he was, the young man towered over him. And now he could see numerous differences in the halfway-glimpsed face. The resemblance was unmistakable -- but nothing more than resemblance.
“Take your hand off the senator, Moff Tarkin,” the young man said, turning his head to look at Tarkin straight-on. The face was, of course, the same one Luke had seen on his uncle and aunt’s mantle, perhaps five years older, while the voice was lighter and clearer than he had ever heard it, but still a little deeper than his own.
“You would do better to look for those who intend real harm,” Tarkin replied, his eyes cold, but he removed his hand. “I presume you are Senator Amidala’s new guards?”
“I’m Lieutenant Nellith of the Royal Fleet of Alderaan,” the woman said, “and this is -- ”
“Skywalker,” said Anakin curtly. “The same. Did you have any other business with the senator?”
Tarkin paused, then smiled, bowed, and took his leave.
“I’m sorry to be such an inconvenience,” Amidala told them, her voice warming. “I told Bail I didn’t need bodyguards, but -- ” She gestured.
Anakin laughed. “Getting shot would take the wind out of that argument.”
“Getting shot at,” Amidala corrected with a smile. “I ducked. However, thank you. I’m very grateful to you both for your time.”
“There’s no need to thank us,” said Nellith. “We’re soldiers. When Viceroy Organa says ‘go,’ we just ask ‘how far?’ Well, I do, and I’ll keep Skywalker here in line. Following orders has never been one of his strong points.”
Anakin gave her an exasperated glance. “You needn’t be concerned, Senator,” he said. “For some entirely inexplicable reason, Arissa is under the delusion that she is amusing. In fact, I always comply with my orders.”
“Creatively,” Arissa told him, and wrinkled her nose. “I had been going to say, Anakin, that you’re also the best shot and the best pilot in all of Imperial Starfleet, but . . .”
“I can’t say obedience is one of my strengths, either,” Amidala said lightly. “I’m guessing you’ve worked together before?”
“Occasionally.”
“Very frequently,” said Anakin, with a long-suffering look.
“Excellent. Now, personally, I think this is a lot of fuss about nothing -- ” Arissa’s eyebrows shot up; Luke’s would have too, if they were here -- “but you should know that there is some small danger of attack on the way to Theed. If you would like to request a reassignment, I will understand perfectly.”
Arissa and Anakin blinked. Then Arissa’s mouth trembled and she turned away, so quickly that Luke caught a glimpse of a narrow silver cylinder amongst her weaponry. A lightsaber.
“That should not be necessary,” said Anakin, biting down hard on his lip.
They were both Jedi Knights -- Jedi Knights serving a Jedi sympathizer and future founder of the Rebellion, and assigned to protect an . . . Imperial Senator? A kinswoman of the Emperor, no less. Amidala, Luke thought, was the only thing that didn’t fit in the picture.
With a sinking feeling, he remembered Obi-Wan telling him how the carnage and loss they’d suffered in the Clone Wars had changed everything. This Anakin, at worst a little formal and unconciliating, wasn’t just a world away from Vader; he was a world away from the scarred, broken Anakin Skywalker Luke had heard about, too.
His wife had been one of the Jedi who died in the wars.
Luke stared at the Jedi-soldier in front of him, almost as absurdly youthful as Anakin Skywalker. They trailed after Senator Amidala, Arissa trying to scowl up at him, and then absently rubbing her neck. Luke sympathized; she was over a foot shorter than Anakin, barely taller than the tiny senator. Her nose, he noticed irrelevantly, was shorter too -- small and turned-up where Anakin’s was straight -- and her mouth wider too. Was she --
“Once you’re done flirting with Senator Amidala,” Arissa said under her breath, “we need to come up with a better plan to protect her.”
“Once I’m what?” Anakin pushed his untidy hair out of his eyes. “Arissa, I’m not flirting with the senator.”
“Oh, as if you’d know,” Arissa snapped, and hurried forward.
Definitely my mother, Luke thought --
-- and returned to his body.
“Ow,” he said. He was lying flat on his back in the mud. His head seemed to have landed on a rock at some point, and Yoda and Obi-Wan had wandered over to peer at him.
“Successful, you have been,” Yoda announced.
“Sometimes I think you have very strange ideas about what qualifies as success,” Luke said. Then he grimaced and covered his face. “Obi-Wan, can you . . . sparkle less? I don’t think I can handle any more eldritch lights in my eyes.”
He obliged, fading to a dull glow. “What did you see?”
Luke sat up and gingerly rubbed his head. “My mother, I think.” He paused. “Father too, of course. And this Imperial Senator who seemed . . . strangely kind. Viceroy Organa sent them to protect her after she almost got shot, though she didn’t seem to think it was necessary.”
“Ah,” said Obi-Wan. “Padmé Amidala.”
“You knew her? The Emperor’s . . . cousin?”
“Third or fourth, nothing important,” Obi-Wan said dismissively. “And I could hardly have avoided her acquaintance, even had I wished to. She was your father’s best friend -- and married to mine.”
Yoda made a scoffing sound. Luke felt no surprise at this; friendship was among the many things that his master disapproved of.
“Yours?” He tried to remember who Obi-Wan had known, besides his father.
“Bail was . . . perhaps overzealous when it came to Amidala’s safety,” said Obi-Wan. “Particularly at that stage, when he remained convinced that carrying her books to the Senate was the appropriate way to express his affection.”
It took Luke’s brain a moment to catch up. “Bail? Bail Organa? Leia’s father?” His eyes widened. “Senator Amidala was Leia’s mother?”
Obi-Wan gave a complacent smile. “The Force binds our lives in unusual ways.”
“No kidding,” Luke muttered.
This foresight -- or rather, hindsight -- did, of course, grow easier with practice, as they all had. After several more attempts, he could reach into the past and feel reasonably certain that he would find something there. The visions became less overwhelming, less absorbing.
Still, he had less control over it than he did over either of the others. His visions of the past were never so irrelevant as those of the present often were, but they were only roughly shaped by what Luke himself sought in them. Perhaps his own scruples got in the way; this seemed more invasive, for some reason. The others -- well, this was a war. He had to use what tools he had at hand, and the information he dredged out of the ether helped.
The past, though -- it’s done and over with. What good does it do to know that my father and Leia’s mother were friends once? Amidala’s dead now and her memory obviously didn’t stop him, any more than my mother’s did.
Even Shmi didn’t have any useful advice. She’d been alive then, and Anakin had visited her whenever he could, but he never spoke of his other life. Her own clairvoyance was, and had always been, focused firmly on the future.
He’d never really minded that Yoda had watched him. But it didn’t seem right to peer into others’ pasts, when no strategic value could come from it. He knew that, at fourteen, Leia’s mother had been forced to tranform from the shy, thoughtful Princess of Theed into fearless Queen Amidala, that then-Prince Palpatine had, for his own unfathomable reasons, taken the girl under his wing. What did it matter? If Leia didn’t know that her mother had been the Emperor’s favoured protégée, Luke had no intentions of telling her so.
He’d seen Obi-Wan grieving over the students he lost in the war -- all but the one he’d lost most thoroughly. He’d seen his daring, cool-headed mother slaughtering clones and then curling into a corner, grey-faced and twitchy, arms wrapped tightly around herself. Well, now he knew how she lived with what she’d done: she hadn’t. She just endured. A valuable life lesson, and not one he needed to learn from invading a dead woman’s past.
And most of all, there was his father. Obi-Wan had already told him how the war had broken Anakin Skywalker. Did he really need to see it, too?
“Mother? Mother, no -- no, no, not -- ”
It was a woman who found him there, half-crouching. For one moment, Anakin simply looked at her over Shmi’s corpse.
“This is my mother,” he said, in slow, careful Jawa, and added, “Your tribe will pay for this. But it need not be you -- not the women and children. Find the others and leave this place. I will not pursue you.”
She fled, screeching as she went, and Luke could hear the warriors pounding towards the tent where they’d tortured Shmi. Something -- not a smile -- curved Anakin’s lips.
He lit his lightsaber.
“Why do I keep seeing these things?”
Shmi looked sympathetic. Luke had elected not to detail his latest vision to her.
“I am not certain,” she admitted. “It isn’t usual, not with such consistency. If I had to say, however, I would think that together, they form some kind of pattern, something you need to know -- or that you already do, but have not properly realized.”
“I haven’t been looking for them, no matter what Master Yoda says. I hate it, poking around in people’s lives like this, but Yoda insists I need to practice. And it doesn’t work if I don’t think of anything at all -- I’ve tried that.”
“Perhaps,” said Shmi, “you should poke around in your life.”
Luke stared at her.
“You were taken too young to know of your early years, and I only saw you once, when Anakin brought you home to see us. You can never remember it -- but you could see it. Surely your own life is your concern.”
It was stupid, but he’d never even thought of that. He felt like Pelsyric, carrying the planet-boulder on his shoulders, and then feeling it shrink into a pebble. Luke even found himself straightening his back.
“Ye-es,” he said, and then his voice quickened. “You’re right, Grandmother. I have a right to know that. Though it’s probably awful.” And if it wasn’t, that would just make it all the more tragically depressing. But still.
Next time, as Yoda lectured him about the necessity of control in all things and something about matrices and vergences that he still couldn’t quite follow, Luke nodded and propped his back against a tree.
“Just in case,” he said, rubbing the knot on his head. Yoda chortled, so Luke assumed he didn’t disapprove.
Instead of letting his thoughts drift to his parents, or Leia’s, or Obi-Wan or Yoda or Palpatine, Luke kept his mind firmly fixed on his own identity. I am Luke Skywalker. I was born twenty Standard years ago --
A baby was crying. It took Luke a moment to realize he’d already fallen into the past. Certainly, his proper body sat cross-legged on Dagobah, but he was here, not merely a disembodied consciousness. A ghost, of sorts. Perhaps, he thought, trying to get his incorporeal legs moving, this was what it felt like for Shmi and Obi-Wan.
He walked, in some bemusement, towards the baby’s voice, and kept moving even when it felt silent, passing through doors and walls, until --
“He’s very small,” Obi-Wan said doubtfully, hovering over an elaborately carved cradle. Luke moved past him, and saw the baby -- himself -- asleep in the cradle, and then, over Obi-Wan’s shoulder, Anakin collapsing into a window-seat. He was younger than Luke had last seen him, his face lined from exhaustion, rather than strain.
“He is six weeks old,” said Anakin, yawning.
“Does he have a name?”
Anakin’s sleepy smile was unmistakably genuine. “Luke. Luke Skywalker. He's my son.”
“Well . . . yes.”
“Obi-Wan, I am a father.” He peered blearily at his mentor. “We are taking him home as soon as my leave gets cleared. Padmé is managing it. I will not be available for -- ” he yawned again -- “some time.”
Luke swallowed. Even though no one could see him, he turned away, and the room blurred, the walls shifting and spreading.
Anakin was standing at a window, his still-infant son in his arms. Something about the way he held himself, stiff and pained, like an old man, alarmed Luke even before his younger self began to cry.
“Mama -- ” Anakin began, his pale eyes wide and unseeing, “she’s -- she can’t be with us now.”
Luke’s screams escalated, and his tiny fists clutched at his father’s tunic. Anakin simply closed his eyes, pressing his face against the baby’s hair.
The adult Luke half-reached out, uncertain whether he were trying to comfort his younger self or his father, and his concentration wavered. The room lurched -- and then resettled, very little different from before, except in its complete lack of occupants. Luke sighed and made his way through his father’s apartments until he found someone.
“ -- discovered,” said Obi-Wan, weathered hands tight on the arms of his chair.
Anakin, who appeared to have an aversion to furniture, stood with his back to another window and Luke still in his arms. He didn’t look greatly different -- a little older, a little thinner, his expression concerned rather than devastated. Luke was perhaps a year old.
“It is certain, then?”
“Yes. I must leave immediately, or be executed.” Obi-Wan hesitated. “Every day is becoming more dangerous, Anakin, for any Jedi. No one would blame you if you left now -- ”
“No. My place is here.” Then he glanced down at Luke, babbling cheerfully at nothing in particular. He bit his lip.
Obi-Wan waited.
“I have constructed a new lightsaber, one more suited to my present responsibilities,” Anakin said abruptly. He reached inside his robe, and pulled out the weapon Luke had carried for so long. “I want Luke to have this one, when he is old enough.”
Obi-Wan’s brow furrowed. “Aren’t you going to give it to him yourself?”
Anakin simply looked at him, and held the lightsaber out.
Was he already planning to turn? Luke glanced from himself, yawning into his father’s shoulder, to Anakin, to Obi-Wan, and realized. No. No, he wasn’t. He just didn’t didn’t think he’d live that long.
“Obi-Wan, w -- if I die,” said Anakin, regaining his usual brisk air, “I can trust that you will watch over my son?”
Obi-Wan’s fingers closed on the lightsaber. He nodded, apparently not trusting himself to speak.
“Buh. Buh-un,” said Luke. “Buh-un!”
Obi-Wan smiled sadly. “If something happens, where will I find him? Not here, I presume.”
“No. I am sending him home, to my brother and his wife,” Anakin said. “Owen is not fond of children, but for my sake, they will take care of Luke while I am otherwise occupied.”
Luke caught his breath. At last, he understood, at least in part. Father and Mother and Senator Amidala and Obi-Wan and Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru. Family. His family, and Leia’s, all bound up together -- that was what he’d been shown. Even as the past slid away from him and the swamp reformed before his eyes, he racked his mind for what it meant, for what he needed to do.
We are taking him home, Anakin had said, just after his birth, and a year later, I am sending him home.
Family, Leia, home.
Home. A surge of longing came over him, and he knew. Luke stared blankly at Yoda.
“I have to go home,” he said.
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Title: Revenge of the Jedi (7/17)
Fanverse: Revenge of the Jedi
Blurb: Leia is guilty and restless in the Rebellion; Luke is sent through the Department of Backstory, and realizes what it means.
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Chapter Seven
“Maybe I should just spend the rest of the day posing dramatically,” said Leia. “Or wait, I could get tears tattooed my face. Then they wouldn’t need me to do anything at all.”
“My programming indicates that would be an ineffective tactic,” Threepio said. “The overwhelming majority of organics will respond only to water-based tears. I feel it is highly unjust and irrational, but . . .”
Chewbacca snarled something.
“Well, really!”
“Both of you, just -- ” Leia began, then rubbed her forehead. She’d only managed to get this modicum of privacy by claiming a headache and retreating to her chambers with Threepio and Chewbacca. The useless guards had stationed themselves just outside her door.
Leia didn’t think Chewie and Threepio disliked one another, but without anyone else to vent their -- singular frustrations on, they seemed to be constantly at odds. She couldn’t blame them.
Threepio retreated to the corner.
“I beg your pardon, Princess Leia,” he said, all wounded dignity. “I only wished to be of assistance.”
“Don’t we all -- for all the good it does,” Leia snapped, then dropped her head into her hands. “Gods, I’m acting like a child. I’m twenty-two. I’m a princess; I’ve been a senator. I should be better than this.”
The droid took a cautious step forward. Chewbacca snapped at him, as quietly as he ever managed.
“I was the first to say that Mon should lead us now. She has far more experience than I do with everything except blasters. She started the Rebellion. She doesn’t just deserve to be in charge, she really is the best person. She’s much more charismatic than I ever was, too -- she makes people want to follow her.”
“Chewbacca says you would make a far superior Wookiee chieftain,” said Threepio.
Leia laughed. “Thank you, Chewie. Unfortunately, I’m not a Wookiee.” She kicked a pillow back against the wall, eyes narrowing. “Or a chieftain.”
“I understand that it is an extremely dangerous occupation. We are much better off here.”
“I don’t mind danger,” Leia said impatiently. “But I haven’t spent this many years risking my life to fight the Empire only to sit around reading reports. Anyone can do this! It’s just a sop to my vanity. Something to keep the precious princess from running off and getting herself captured. As if I would ever give up the Rebellion’s secrets to the Empire. Vader himself couldn’t get anything out of me. Tarkin couldn’t, and Vader was nothing to him.”
She fell silent.
Threepio’s eyes flashed uncertainly. After several minutes, Chewie gave a low, interrogative growl.
“Chewbacca asks why you are not chieftain of your people, Princess. He suggests a significant remainder must have survived.” Threepio paused a moment. “In fact, approximately three million, six hundred fifty-nine thousand citizens of Alderaan would have been off-planet at the moment of its destruction. Under the Act of -- ”
“I know.” Leia stared ahead, just as she had done on the Death Star, dry-eyed, chest burning. “I found some of them, as many as I could. But I’m not a one-person army like Vader, like a Jedi. All my resources have been confiscated by the Emperor. I can’t do anything for them but fight the Empire, so that’s what I’ve been doing.” Her jaw tightened. “But now -- I can’t just sit here and be a symbol of resistance while my people, everyone’s people, are out there actually resisting.”
“My records do suggest that over ninety-five point nine one eight six percent of known Alderaanians are also known members of the Rebellion, or notably sympathetic,” Threepio admitted. “If one includes colonies of Alderaanian origin, the number rises to -- ”
Chewbacca’s head jerked up. Leia, who had been speaking more to herself than to him, gave him a quizzical glance.
“He’s talking nonsense,” Threepio said. “Chewbacca, a Wookiee colony is extremely unlikely to have originated from Alderaan.”
“I didn’t know the Wookiees had any colonies,” Leia said, still occupied with her own thoughts. We’ve had hardly any Imperial attacks lately, she told herself. Even though we’ve been able to strike against them more often, thanks to Luke, and all the new recruits. It’s the best possible time --
“Only one,” reported Threepio. “He says that several generations ago, a Wookiee expedition discovered a system at the fringes of the Republic, with two habitable worlds. One, a small planet, was already occupied by what appeared to be humans, but the other, a forest moon, had been left untouched. The Wookiees settled the moon and have lived there ever since, though they retained contact with their homeworld, and -- ”
Leia, glad enough to be distracted from her troubles, raised her eyebrows. “What appeared to be humans?”
“Clones,” said Threepio. “They were eradicated during the wars, but the Emperor had too many other concerns to bother with the system. It is technically within the boundaries of the Empire, but only barely. Chewbacca’s cousins have not seen any Imperials since the wars.” He paused while Chewie added something. “Even then, they had no trouble from them.”
A jolt of excitement pulsed through her. “You mean there’s an uninhabited planet just sitting there? And it can support human life?”
Chewbacca’s enthusiastic reply needed no translation.
“And you never mentioned this before?”
“He believed that you would have already purchased a planet, had you required one,” said Threepio.
“One does not simply purchase planets!” She grimaced. “Especially if one has no money.”
“He says -- ”
“Never mind.” Leia sprang up, smoothing down her shirt. “If there’s any way I . . . you two, come with me. We have a fight to pick.”
The past, Luke quickly realized, was by far the most difficult to grasp. It came no more naturally to him than the present had, and even once he managed to turn his mind’s eye back, the images were as fleeting and incoherent as anything he’d seen in the future. Finally, he did manage to catch something reasonably concrete, and it was only a middle-aged man -- a general or perhaps a moff -- leering at a dark-haired woman in senatorial robes, her face concealed behind a mask of white paint.
“My dear Senator Amidala,” he said, and Luke’s mind rang -- he’d heard that name before, just a few days . . .
A few days ago. This was Janren’s aunt. Well, his not-aunt, if Vader were right, but the woman through whom he’d claimed relation to the Emperor. Someone Anakin Skywalker had known, too -- well enough to recall who her nephews were and weren’t, when he’d forgotten so much else.
“Moff Tarkin,” she returned evenly.
Tarkin? The governor of the Death Star? Why would Luke see him? -- flirting with some cousin of the Emperor’s, no less?
“I was shocked to hear of the recent attempt on your life, Senator,” Tarkin said. Luke felt a slight stir of curiosity. Assassination attempts might be interesting. “In such circumstances, is it really wise for you to stand in the open like this, with no protection?”
“I am not unprotected,” Amidala said, her flat voice revealing nothing. “My friends have arranged for a bodyguard to accompany me. He should be arriving presently.”
“Presently? How unconscionably negligent -- why, anyone with a blaster could abduct you with no one the wiser.” His hand closed over her small wrist. “Even without a blaster.”
Amidala didn’t flinch, but simply regarded him with cool, unfriendly dark eyes, reminding Luke of no one so much as Leia.
“Not quite,” said a dry, female voice from behind him. Tarkin started, whirling around.
The voice belonged to a slight, fair, sharp-featured young woman. Next to her stood a still younger man, at once tense and abstracted, his face half-turned away. He, too, had blond hair, though his approached light brown where hers was pale. Both wore Imperial uniforms and wary expressions.
Luke would have started himself, if he could. At first glance, the man’s profile was his -- no, it couldn’t be. Tarkin had been elderly when he’d died, not fifty-something, and tall as he was, the young man towered over him. And now he could see numerous differences in the halfway-glimpsed face. The resemblance was unmistakable -- but nothing more than resemblance.
“Take your hand off the senator, Moff Tarkin,” the young man said, turning his head to look at Tarkin straight-on. The face was, of course, the same one Luke had seen on his uncle and aunt’s mantle, perhaps five years older, while the voice was lighter and clearer than he had ever heard it, but still a little deeper than his own.
“You would do better to look for those who intend real harm,” Tarkin replied, his eyes cold, but he removed his hand. “I presume you are Senator Amidala’s new guards?”
“I’m Lieutenant Nellith of the Royal Fleet of Alderaan,” the woman said, “and this is -- ”
“Skywalker,” said Anakin curtly. “The same. Did you have any other business with the senator?”
Tarkin paused, then smiled, bowed, and took his leave.
“I’m sorry to be such an inconvenience,” Amidala told them, her voice warming. “I told Bail I didn’t need bodyguards, but -- ” She gestured.
Anakin laughed. “Getting shot would take the wind out of that argument.”
“Getting shot at,” Amidala corrected with a smile. “I ducked. However, thank you. I’m very grateful to you both for your time.”
“There’s no need to thank us,” said Nellith. “We’re soldiers. When Viceroy Organa says ‘go,’ we just ask ‘how far?’ Well, I do, and I’ll keep Skywalker here in line. Following orders has never been one of his strong points.”
Anakin gave her an exasperated glance. “You needn’t be concerned, Senator,” he said. “For some entirely inexplicable reason, Arissa is under the delusion that she is amusing. In fact, I always comply with my orders.”
“Creatively,” Arissa told him, and wrinkled her nose. “I had been going to say, Anakin, that you’re also the best shot and the best pilot in all of Imperial Starfleet, but . . .”
“I can’t say obedience is one of my strengths, either,” Amidala said lightly. “I’m guessing you’ve worked together before?”
“Occasionally.”
“Very frequently,” said Anakin, with a long-suffering look.
“Excellent. Now, personally, I think this is a lot of fuss about nothing -- ” Arissa’s eyebrows shot up; Luke’s would have too, if they were here -- “but you should know that there is some small danger of attack on the way to Theed. If you would like to request a reassignment, I will understand perfectly.”
Arissa and Anakin blinked. Then Arissa’s mouth trembled and she turned away, so quickly that Luke caught a glimpse of a narrow silver cylinder amongst her weaponry. A lightsaber.
“That should not be necessary,” said Anakin, biting down hard on his lip.
They were both Jedi Knights -- Jedi Knights serving a Jedi sympathizer and future founder of the Rebellion, and assigned to protect an . . . Imperial Senator? A kinswoman of the Emperor, no less. Amidala, Luke thought, was the only thing that didn’t fit in the picture.
With a sinking feeling, he remembered Obi-Wan telling him how the carnage and loss they’d suffered in the Clone Wars had changed everything. This Anakin, at worst a little formal and unconciliating, wasn’t just a world away from Vader; he was a world away from the scarred, broken Anakin Skywalker Luke had heard about, too.
His wife had been one of the Jedi who died in the wars.
Luke stared at the Jedi-soldier in front of him, almost as absurdly youthful as Anakin Skywalker. They trailed after Senator Amidala, Arissa trying to scowl up at him, and then absently rubbing her neck. Luke sympathized; she was over a foot shorter than Anakin, barely taller than the tiny senator. Her nose, he noticed irrelevantly, was shorter too -- small and turned-up where Anakin’s was straight -- and her mouth wider too. Was she --
“Once you’re done flirting with Senator Amidala,” Arissa said under her breath, “we need to come up with a better plan to protect her.”
“Once I’m what?” Anakin pushed his untidy hair out of his eyes. “Arissa, I’m not flirting with the senator.”
“Oh, as if you’d know,” Arissa snapped, and hurried forward.
Definitely my mother, Luke thought --
-- and returned to his body.
“Ow,” he said. He was lying flat on his back in the mud. His head seemed to have landed on a rock at some point, and Yoda and Obi-Wan had wandered over to peer at him.
“Successful, you have been,” Yoda announced.
“Sometimes I think you have very strange ideas about what qualifies as success,” Luke said. Then he grimaced and covered his face. “Obi-Wan, can you . . . sparkle less? I don’t think I can handle any more eldritch lights in my eyes.”
He obliged, fading to a dull glow. “What did you see?”
Luke sat up and gingerly rubbed his head. “My mother, I think.” He paused. “Father too, of course. And this Imperial Senator who seemed . . . strangely kind. Viceroy Organa sent them to protect her after she almost got shot, though she didn’t seem to think it was necessary.”
“Ah,” said Obi-Wan. “Padmé Amidala.”
“You knew her? The Emperor’s . . . cousin?”
“Third or fourth, nothing important,” Obi-Wan said dismissively. “And I could hardly have avoided her acquaintance, even had I wished to. She was your father’s best friend -- and married to mine.”
Yoda made a scoffing sound. Luke felt no surprise at this; friendship was among the many things that his master disapproved of.
“Yours?” He tried to remember who Obi-Wan had known, besides his father.
“Bail was . . . perhaps overzealous when it came to Amidala’s safety,” said Obi-Wan. “Particularly at that stage, when he remained convinced that carrying her books to the Senate was the appropriate way to express his affection.”
It took Luke’s brain a moment to catch up. “Bail? Bail Organa? Leia’s father?” His eyes widened. “Senator Amidala was Leia’s mother?”
Obi-Wan gave a complacent smile. “The Force binds our lives in unusual ways.”
“No kidding,” Luke muttered.
This foresight -- or rather, hindsight -- did, of course, grow easier with practice, as they all had. After several more attempts, he could reach into the past and feel reasonably certain that he would find something there. The visions became less overwhelming, less absorbing.
Still, he had less control over it than he did over either of the others. His visions of the past were never so irrelevant as those of the present often were, but they were only roughly shaped by what Luke himself sought in them. Perhaps his own scruples got in the way; this seemed more invasive, for some reason. The others -- well, this was a war. He had to use what tools he had at hand, and the information he dredged out of the ether helped.
The past, though -- it’s done and over with. What good does it do to know that my father and Leia’s mother were friends once? Amidala’s dead now and her memory obviously didn’t stop him, any more than my mother’s did.
Even Shmi didn’t have any useful advice. She’d been alive then, and Anakin had visited her whenever he could, but he never spoke of his other life. Her own clairvoyance was, and had always been, focused firmly on the future.
He’d never really minded that Yoda had watched him. But it didn’t seem right to peer into others’ pasts, when no strategic value could come from it. He knew that, at fourteen, Leia’s mother had been forced to tranform from the shy, thoughtful Princess of Theed into fearless Queen Amidala, that then-Prince Palpatine had, for his own unfathomable reasons, taken the girl under his wing. What did it matter? If Leia didn’t know that her mother had been the Emperor’s favoured protégée, Luke had no intentions of telling her so.
He’d seen Obi-Wan grieving over the students he lost in the war -- all but the one he’d lost most thoroughly. He’d seen his daring, cool-headed mother slaughtering clones and then curling into a corner, grey-faced and twitchy, arms wrapped tightly around herself. Well, now he knew how she lived with what she’d done: she hadn’t. She just endured. A valuable life lesson, and not one he needed to learn from invading a dead woman’s past.
And most of all, there was his father. Obi-Wan had already told him how the war had broken Anakin Skywalker. Did he really need to see it, too?
“Mother? Mother, no -- no, no, not -- ”
It was a woman who found him there, half-crouching. For one moment, Anakin simply looked at her over Shmi’s corpse.
“This is my mother,” he said, in slow, careful Jawa, and added, “Your tribe will pay for this. But it need not be you -- not the women and children. Find the others and leave this place. I will not pursue you.”
She fled, screeching as she went, and Luke could hear the warriors pounding towards the tent where they’d tortured Shmi. Something -- not a smile -- curved Anakin’s lips.
He lit his lightsaber.
“Why do I keep seeing these things?”
Shmi looked sympathetic. Luke had elected not to detail his latest vision to her.
“I am not certain,” she admitted. “It isn’t usual, not with such consistency. If I had to say, however, I would think that together, they form some kind of pattern, something you need to know -- or that you already do, but have not properly realized.”
“I haven’t been looking for them, no matter what Master Yoda says. I hate it, poking around in people’s lives like this, but Yoda insists I need to practice. And it doesn’t work if I don’t think of anything at all -- I’ve tried that.”
“Perhaps,” said Shmi, “you should poke around in your life.”
Luke stared at her.
“You were taken too young to know of your early years, and I only saw you once, when Anakin brought you home to see us. You can never remember it -- but you could see it. Surely your own life is your concern.”
It was stupid, but he’d never even thought of that. He felt like Pelsyric, carrying the planet-boulder on his shoulders, and then feeling it shrink into a pebble. Luke even found himself straightening his back.
“Ye-es,” he said, and then his voice quickened. “You’re right, Grandmother. I have a right to know that. Though it’s probably awful.” And if it wasn’t, that would just make it all the more tragically depressing. But still.
Next time, as Yoda lectured him about the necessity of control in all things and something about matrices and vergences that he still couldn’t quite follow, Luke nodded and propped his back against a tree.
“Just in case,” he said, rubbing the knot on his head. Yoda chortled, so Luke assumed he didn’t disapprove.
Instead of letting his thoughts drift to his parents, or Leia’s, or Obi-Wan or Yoda or Palpatine, Luke kept his mind firmly fixed on his own identity. I am Luke Skywalker. I was born twenty Standard years ago --
A baby was crying. It took Luke a moment to realize he’d already fallen into the past. Certainly, his proper body sat cross-legged on Dagobah, but he was here, not merely a disembodied consciousness. A ghost, of sorts. Perhaps, he thought, trying to get his incorporeal legs moving, this was what it felt like for Shmi and Obi-Wan.
He walked, in some bemusement, towards the baby’s voice, and kept moving even when it felt silent, passing through doors and walls, until --
“He’s very small,” Obi-Wan said doubtfully, hovering over an elaborately carved cradle. Luke moved past him, and saw the baby -- himself -- asleep in the cradle, and then, over Obi-Wan’s shoulder, Anakin collapsing into a window-seat. He was younger than Luke had last seen him, his face lined from exhaustion, rather than strain.
“He is six weeks old,” said Anakin, yawning.
“Does he have a name?”
Anakin’s sleepy smile was unmistakably genuine. “Luke. Luke Skywalker. He's my son.”
“Well . . . yes.”
“Obi-Wan, I am a father.” He peered blearily at his mentor. “We are taking him home as soon as my leave gets cleared. Padmé is managing it. I will not be available for -- ” he yawned again -- “some time.”
Luke swallowed. Even though no one could see him, he turned away, and the room blurred, the walls shifting and spreading.
Anakin was standing at a window, his still-infant son in his arms. Something about the way he held himself, stiff and pained, like an old man, alarmed Luke even before his younger self began to cry.
“Mama -- ” Anakin began, his pale eyes wide and unseeing, “she’s -- she can’t be with us now.”
Luke’s screams escalated, and his tiny fists clutched at his father’s tunic. Anakin simply closed his eyes, pressing his face against the baby’s hair.
The adult Luke half-reached out, uncertain whether he were trying to comfort his younger self or his father, and his concentration wavered. The room lurched -- and then resettled, very little different from before, except in its complete lack of occupants. Luke sighed and made his way through his father’s apartments until he found someone.
“ -- discovered,” said Obi-Wan, weathered hands tight on the arms of his chair.
Anakin, who appeared to have an aversion to furniture, stood with his back to another window and Luke still in his arms. He didn’t look greatly different -- a little older, a little thinner, his expression concerned rather than devastated. Luke was perhaps a year old.
“It is certain, then?”
“Yes. I must leave immediately, or be executed.” Obi-Wan hesitated. “Every day is becoming more dangerous, Anakin, for any Jedi. No one would blame you if you left now -- ”
“No. My place is here.” Then he glanced down at Luke, babbling cheerfully at nothing in particular. He bit his lip.
Obi-Wan waited.
“I have constructed a new lightsaber, one more suited to my present responsibilities,” Anakin said abruptly. He reached inside his robe, and pulled out the weapon Luke had carried for so long. “I want Luke to have this one, when he is old enough.”
Obi-Wan’s brow furrowed. “Aren’t you going to give it to him yourself?”
Anakin simply looked at him, and held the lightsaber out.
Was he already planning to turn? Luke glanced from himself, yawning into his father’s shoulder, to Anakin, to Obi-Wan, and realized. No. No, he wasn’t. He just didn’t didn’t think he’d live that long.
“Obi-Wan, w -- if I die,” said Anakin, regaining his usual brisk air, “I can trust that you will watch over my son?”
Obi-Wan’s fingers closed on the lightsaber. He nodded, apparently not trusting himself to speak.
“Buh. Buh-un,” said Luke. “Buh-un!”
Obi-Wan smiled sadly. “If something happens, where will I find him? Not here, I presume.”
“No. I am sending him home, to my brother and his wife,” Anakin said. “Owen is not fond of children, but for my sake, they will take care of Luke while I am otherwise occupied.”
Luke caught his breath. At last, he understood, at least in part. Father and Mother and Senator Amidala and Obi-Wan and Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru. Family. His family, and Leia’s, all bound up together -- that was what he’d been shown. Even as the past slid away from him and the swamp reformed before his eyes, he racked his mind for what it meant, for what he needed to do.
We are taking him home, Anakin had said, just after his birth, and a year later, I am sending him home.
Family, Leia, home.
Home. A surge of longing came over him, and he knew. Luke stared blankly at Yoda.
“I have to go home,” he said.