Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

✩

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A steady breath in, a steady breath out.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But he can't name it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Are you a Jedi?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Luke refused to let that happen to another family.

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

Removes his helmet?

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

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

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

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

Fuck, Luke had to leave.

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

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

Yet he wonders…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I am a Jedi Master."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Or at least, it did.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And so he had left.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Perfect."

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

It felt good to not be alone.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Something tears between his ribs.

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

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

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

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

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

✩

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So he doesn't look.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For fuck's sake, Luke.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He had never been less sure of anything at all.

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

Reaching for Luke.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I know how to find people."

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