“I don’t think they’re staring at me,” Han says with a grim sort of certainty. He’s clutching his mug too tightly, his knuckles white around it, and even whiter where he’s holding Leia’s hand—Luke is too tired, exhausted down to his bones, to do anymore more than note it. Han holding onto Leia’s hand so tightly that his blood is chased out..
Luke blinks, and then exhales.
“I was…”
Kalix Darksky took their order—the Darkskys have owned this cafe since Luke can remember, but when Lando said, Hey, I could go for something to eat, and Leia, still dressed in the cantina-dancer rags said, I’m starving, Luke had found himself answering, I know where to go.
His hands were still aching from the lightsaber, how tightly he’d clutched at it as he’d killed them. (He didn’t have to, the lightsaber moved through them like they were just air, nothing there. And then there was nothing there.) His chest ached from—well, that too, but still he’d led their awkward little band to the Darksky cantina, because he didn’t know where else.
“Luke?” Talesin Darksky had said, choked out. His eyes were wide as the sky they were both named after. “Luke, where…how…?”
“A table,” Luke had said, conscious of the hem of his black cloak dragging in the sand, and how Han was mostly draped over Leia; Lando’s still-bleeding side and Chewbacca, looming over them all.
Talesin’s Darksky’s eyes were wide, he didn’t seem to be breathing.
“A table,” Luke repeated. “For my friends.”
“Of—course, sure,” Talesin said, and he’d moved by sheer instinct, his eyes still dark and trained on Luke’s face. Even as he’d led them back into the recesses of the dimly-lit cantina, he kept looking, darting glances from the corners of his eyes. “Let me know—”
“Thank you,” Luke said stiffly, and Talesin swallowed whatever he had been about to say. He bowed his head, and then he was striding away towards the kitchen.
Luke had collapsed to his seat, feeling as though all the blood had been very suddenly drained from his body. Han was still half-blind from the carbonite, even if he insisted he wasn’t, and he was staring somewhere over Luke’s shoulder. Thank—whoever for small favors, Lando seemed to realize this and announced that he and Chewie were going to help themselves at the bar, so it was just Luke and Han and Leia suddenly, the three of them.
“I was…” Luke tries again, and even though Han’s eyes are fixed somewhere over Luke’s left shoulder, Luke feels his skin prickle. “Yeah,” he finally chokes out.
“Yeah,” Han says with a half-shrug. “They’re not staring at me, that’s what I said.”
Luke’s sense of the Force is—humming, churning over and through the cantina. He can feel them, feel them, murmuring about him, staring. And it was different, stranger and heavier than it had been…before. (It’s not as though he hadn’t been an object of fascination, the Lars’ orphaned nephew who stubbornly insisted on wearing a slave’s surname. Even more when that nephew grew up odd and dreaming of the stars. But it had been light, the ordinary scrutiny of a small community where Irain Redstone dying her hair purple had been gossip for three cycles.)
“Maybe they’re staring at me,” Leia adds, with something of the old imperiousness, the princess, edging through her voice. However, when Luke looks at her, her eyes are warm.
“Why would they be looking at you?” Han asks, turning to squint at her.
“Well, I did kill a Hutt lord,” Leia says, flicking the tail of her long braid over her shoulder. (They ignore the unsteady note in her voice. The marks of the chain are still red on her neck, her hands.)
Han scoffs. “Sure, but they don’t know that.”
Luke relaxes by increments as they argue back and forth—they’re not even arguing, really, their voices low and gentle, and Leia keeps smiling despite herself. But it’s a kind of normalcy they’re offering, from Yavin and Hoth and the cockpit of the Falcon and Luke’s grateful for even that.
They’ve progressed to debating whether Han would indeed look better in the cantina girl getup (“Are you saying I can’t pull off that shade of red? Luke, buddy, back me up here!”) when there’s a clattering and a sudden swell of noise from the entrance of the cantina.
When Luke looks up, Talesin is trying desperately to drag some woman away, his face contorted as though he’s speaking very quickly and too quietly for Luke to hear. There’s fear there too, and Luke wonders—
Talesin accidentally catches Luke’s gaze and goes ashen, freezing in place. The woman turns.
“Oh,” Luke says, because he isn’t sure if there’s anything else to say, except that. Leia looks at him sharply, and Han glances up, then he’s busy craning his neck to see who the hells Luke’s staring at.
“Do you know her?” Leia asks, but Luke is already getting to his feet.
He never really gotten along with his Whitesun cousins—too much older, they’d already been marrying, getting into trade or helping run farms by the time Luke was old enough to know them. Stiff conversation during the First Rainfall celebration and a gift on his life day, the occasional speeder ride when they were already headed into Toshe…Luke hadn’t known them well enough to expect more.
But that didn’t stop something black and sucking, desperately glad and aching, from opening up in his chest as he stood in front of a woman who looked like Aunt Beru.
Younger, of course—Cousin Myon had been only thirty-some when he left, and her hair is still pure Whitesun gold. But here. Standing, alive and unburnt.
“We thought you died,” Myon says, taking an abortive step towards Luke. It is very quiet in the cantina. “With Owen and Beru, at the homestead. Everything was so badly burnt…”
Luke swallows, shakes his head. “No, I was with Old Ben when it happened. He took me away, we…” He doesn’t know if there are any words to encompass it all—the hologram of a princess in whiteand Darth Vader, the Death Star and—Yavin and Hoth and Cloud City, Yoda and his father—
“I joined the Rebellion,” Luke says finally. He’s glad his voice doesn’t waver. “I became a Jedi, and I joined the Rebellion.”
The words ripple out, like wind over sand. Luke can feel them moving through the room, in and out of people’s heads. (They leave stranger shapes than he’d thought; he can see his dusty black outfit straighten, deepen to the color of night, his head held higher. The strange double-image of himself, outside himself, and taller.)
Myon blinks, and opens her mouth, then shuts it again. “Oh,” she finally says. “What brings you back?” Home, she doesn’t say. It’s accurate, but the absence still stings.
“Jabba captured my friend.”
Han, because he’s Han, raises a hand in a lazy salute and grins. Myon blinks again.
“You’re still alive. What did you offer him?”
Her voice is hard, and accusing, and it takes Luke a minute to understand what it is she means. Luke is the youngest nephew, by marriage, but under the kin-ship laws of Tatooine he still could claim a stake in the Whitesun farms. Could use it as collateral. “No, no, we didn’t…offer him anything, I have nothing to offer. You know I wouldn’t—”
“He’s dead,” Leia interrupts, and Myon’s eyes go wide, when they take her in. “That’s what he’s trying to say. Jabba the Hutt is dead.”
It’s not what Luke was trying to say, but the cantina is so quiet he feels as though even just his breathing is intruding. Myon keeps glancing between Leia and Luke like she’s trying to look for the lie.
“Jabba the Hutt is dead,” Myon repeats.
Leia stands, and even in the bedraggled and torn cantina girl costume, she could be armored in white, standing in the Alliance command deck. She is close enough for her shoulder to bump Luke’s. (He could be burnt up by the fire of her, but he’s still just grateful—glad to have her here, beside him.)
“I wrapped a chain around his ugly neck and choked him until he was dead,” she says.
Luke has to look away from the awe on Myon’s face. Belatedly, he notices Lando and Chewbacca at the bar, both of them watching the scene with hands too-casually resting on their blasters. Lando catches Luke looking, and raises his eyebrows.
Luke understands what he’s offering. He wouldn’t put it past Lando to have three escape routes in mind, an exit plan—but he can’t run from this. (Well, he could, but there wouldn’t be any point. His family finds him, is destined to find him, even swathed in black and calling itself by another name. Even from beyond the grave.)
Luke ducks his head, breathes out. “Would you want to sit down, Myon?” he asks, and when he looks up, Myon has turned all that awe on him. “I think we have a lot to discuss.”
Thank you for the prompt and for the kind message. I’m not in any real pain, thankfully, which always sounds weird to the doctors I’ve seen, ‘cause from the MRI that really shouldn’t be the case. And well… Siento que no estamos tan distantes así, por lo menos linguisticamente, ¿no? 😉
I’m not really secure in writing from Luke’s POV, but I’m always fascinated by him coming into the Rebellion in ANH and just, you know, being him. I went with something that reminded me of when I was a teenager. Hope you like it!
–
It took a while for Jyn to convince Bodhi that she and Cassian weren’t a couple. The bizarre way they both had fallen into step together since Jedha had left, it turns out, a lot of people with that impression. Bodhi seemed torn and he explained it to her, albeit a little confusedly, why it was so: on the one hand he didn’t feel as left out in the middle of what seemed so many little units – Jyn and Cassian, Cassian and K-2, Chirrut and Baze. On the other, he felt slightly betrayed by the mere notion that two people so in sync and so obviously smitten with each other weren’t actually a couple.
“You should be together,” he said a bit drunkenly, one night when they were having another revelry in the aftermath of their victory while packing up to evacuate Yavin IV, “just do something about it.”
Jyn scoffed, but said by way of appeasing him that she was working on it, all the while turning starving eyes on the lithe profile of their subject-matter as he picked up drinks for the three of them.
Cassian still had a slight limp and when he sat down next to her, she felt warm without even having tried the Corellian whisky yet. She wished Bodhi could feel the same about someone.
Awkward Teenage Luke is my JAM! ¡Muchísimas gracias, @estherlyon, me encantó! (Y me alegro saber que no te duele tanto – ¿es posible que tienes un superpoder, y por eso no sientes dolor?)
Day 5: Favorite Dynamic/Relationship ❙ Alternative prompt: Hope
Cassian Andor had seen many people broken. By war, official or otherwise. By poverty. By impossible choices. By the sheer hopelessness of daily oppression from the Empire, and, if he was being truly honest, from the Republic before them. He had gotten used to seeing people break, and he no longer let it get to him.
But sometimes, it still did.
Luke Skywalker had joined the Rebellion as a teenager. Fresh-faced farm-boy from a sandy rock in the middle of nowhere. Reeling from sudden loss, but still full of youthful enthusiasm. Still full of hope. Cassian couldn’t stand to see it die in him.
Rebellions are built on hope, he’d told Jyn, and Jyn had repeated his words to the Council. And somehow, those words had become true. It had become a kind of catch-phrase, the unofficial slogan of the Rebellion. Cassian had heard those words come back to him time and again over the next five years. General Organa, bolstering the failing faith of a battle-weary soldier. Veterans inspiring the fearful new recruits. Wise-asses, throwing it around every time they heard someone say I hope we don’t have faux-bantha stew again tonight. Erso, muttering to herself when she thought no one was listening. (Or maybe she did know he was listening. It was hard to tell with Jyn.)
It seemed to be commonly accepted that Rebellions were Built On Hope. But what about what came next?
The war was over now. Cassian was not so naïve as to think that the work was over, too. He knew that this war, any war, was merely one battle in the fight that would never truly end. Still, there might be some respite, every once in a while. In this moment of calm, they’d earned the chance to regroup, to look back on what they’d accomplished, and to enjoy it.
Shara Bey had lost no time and had begun enjoying right away. The wedding was so rushed, they hadn’t even bothered inviting anyone. She and Dameron had just held the ceremony right here on base, and whoever happened by was free to celebrate with them.
Bodhi Rook had gone off to visit Baze Malbus, one of the only other surviving NiJedhans. They were rebuilding Jedha City, or rather, building anew – nothing could replace that ancient site of pilgrimage – and Rook thought he might stay on and help. He thought he might even help out a bit with the scrolls Malbus was writing, dedicated to that other monk Cassian had known so briefly.
Erso was planning to find some out-of-the-way planet, the sandier the better, to settle down, and never think about war or rebellion again. Cassian gave her three standard weeks. It was the most generous bet in the pool.
Lando Calrissian had returned to Cloud City. Class stratification had worsened in his absence, and Lando realized that he needed to make some changes before it became another Canto Bight. If some of Cassian’s favorite jackets happened to go missing the same day he left, it was surely just a coincidence. As was the sun-yellow shimmersilk cape hanging in their place in Cassian’s wardrobe.
But what of the fresh-faced farmboy? The brash young hotshot who’d destroyed the Death Star? The sandy-haired kid whose care and faith and hope had made even the most cynical smuggler stick around and join the fight? That young boy was dead and gone, replaced by a stony faced Jedi. The very last one, as far as anyone knew. So many millennia of tradition would die, at last, with him.
Cassian couldn’t bear it. He’d been young once, too. He’d believed in the goodness of people, the rightness of the galaxy, and he’d had it crushed out of him by the time he was six. Skywalker hadn’t, and this had saved him. He couldn’t lose it now, not when they finally had time to put down their weapons and be free.
Skywalker was sitting alone in the mess hall. It wasn’t hard to find an empty table – since the war had officially ended, most people had left the Base and gone home. The only ones left were those without a home to go to. Cassian gave a nod to General Draven, also sitting alone, but passed his table to join Skywalker instead. The young man looked up, surprised, when Cassian sat down.
“I know who you are,” Skywalker said off-handedly. Then he smiled ironically. “I assume you know who I am too, don’t you?”
Cassian nodded, taken aback.
“Well you can just call me Luke. No title needed. The war is over, apparently, so we’re all civilians now.”
Cassian huffed a laugh. “I guess so. That’ll take getting used to. I haven’t been a civilian since I was six years old.”
Luke’s eyes grew wide, and his cynical mask slipped. “Six? You – What? – That’s terrible! You were a child!”
“I didn’t officially join up until I was eight,” Cassian amended, but Luke’s eyes just grew wider. “I mean twelve?” This conversation wasn’t going the way he’d hoped.
“I was nineteen when I joined up,” Luke said, staring off into the distance. “I thought I was so young. I was just sheltered, I guess. Six,” he repeated with a touch of despair.
“That’s just what I’d like to talk to you about,” Cassian said firmly, pleased to see Luke turn back to him, the dazed look fading. “Nineteen is young, should be young. And it can be young again. These children growing up now, and the ones who come after them – they won’t have to fight like we did. They’ll get to have a childhood, a real childhood, in a free galaxy. And we have to help shape that galaxy for them.”
“Shape the galaxy…” Luke turned away. “What do you propose? What master plan do you have for the galaxy’s glorious new future?” His voice was bitter.
“No, no, nothing like that! Please, I’m from a Separatist planet, I would never suggest…” Cassian shook his head vehemently. “No, I would never suggest we take away choice, just when it’s finally become possible again. But what are the choices offered to these children? Freedom is a half-gift if there’s nothing left to hope for.”
“Rebellions are built on hope,” Luke quipped ironically. Then he started. “Oh shavit, I’m sorry, I forgot you were the one –”
Cassian just laughed. “We don’t need to reuse those tired old words anymore,” he replied. “It’s not a rebellion now. It’s peace. It’s possibility. And what will you bring to it?”
Luke shrugged. “I don’t know. I… I know I should be happy – ecstatic even – but honestly, I just feel tired. I reconciled with my father, saw the good in him, got him to see the good in himself, just in time to lose him. We won the war, and I’m thrilled, but once the parties died down, I just – I feel like I don’t know where to go next.”
“It’s normal to feel this way,” Cassian assured him. (He certainly hoped it was.) “Take your time, but don’t wallow. Think – what is it you wish you had had, when you were younger?”
“A teacher,” Luke said automatically. “I don’t mean I never went to school or anything. But I wish I’d had more training as a Jedi. I got about three lessons from Master Kenobi before I lost him, and I had longer with Master Yoda, but it still wasn’t enough. And I felt so stupid, getting these basic lessons when I was already fully-grown. I wish I’d had those lessons as a kid, like I was supposed to.”
“Then that’s what you can offer,” Cassian said earnestly.
Luke perked up. “I guess you’re right. I probably won’t be the best teacher in the galaxy, but I’m the best we’ve got right now. I won’t let that go to waste.”
“Now all you need is children.”
“Are you propositioning my brother?”
“W-what?” Cassian sputtered, whipping around. Princess Leia – General Organa – whatever she was going by these days – was standing half a meter away, smiling that enigmatic smile of hers. “N-no, Your Highness – General – I was just…”
“Call me Leia. As my brother keeps telling me, we’re all civilians now. What were you saying about children, then?”
Cassian regained his composure, ignoring the mirth in Luke’s eyes. This was the thanks he got for trying to cheer the boy up? “I was just saying, Your – Leia – that Luke should become a teacher. Train the next generation of Jedi. And for that, he’ll need children. Not necessarily his own,” he added, blushing under Leia’s amused smirk. How could such a young woman be so intimidating?
“Oh, good, so borrowed will do? That’s good because – and I haven’t told anyone else, not even Han, and I will killyou both if anyone finds out about this – you just might have your first student soon.”
“Shh!” she shushed him, but she was still smiling. Cassian took the opportunity to start to slink away.
“Wait, what about you?” Luke asked, and Cassian sat back down, chagrined.
“What about me?” Cassian asked innocently.
“What will you offer to this Glorious New Future?”
Cassian shrugged.
“Glorious New Future?” Leia asked, arching an eyebrow.
“Cassian was just reminding me that we each have our parts to play in the post-Empire galaxy. That we each have something to offer. I can train new Jedi. You can rebuild the Senate, without all the corruption. Han can, I dunno, tell amusing stories? Ferry you around to important councils?”
Leia laughed. “He’s good for more than that, you know.”
“Spare me the details, please. Anyway,” he turned back to Cassian, “what about you?”
Cassian’s stomach clenched. He was a seasoned spy. He could charm his way out of any situation, convince almost anybody of almost anything. But some lies, he had trouble convincing himself.
Suddenly, his fingernails became very interesting. “I gave a lot in the war. Before the war. Like I said, I’ve been in this fight since I was six years old. Maybe I don’t have anything left to give. But that’s alright, I did my part.”
Leia laughed again, and Cassian looked up, bewildered. “Don’t be stupid,” she admonished. “You just brought my brother out of the funk I’ve been failing to get him out of for weeks. You do know what you just gave him, don’t you?”
Cassian shook his head.
“Hope.”
Cassian started to smile, and the twins added in perfect unison, “Rebellions are built on hope.”
Leia gently placed her hand on her still-mostly-flat stomach. “And the Glorious New Future is built on hope, too.”
Rebellions are built on hope 