InsaneJournal

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More than one being in the galaxy would declare, not entirely without cause, that Skywalkers in general had a death wish. Most would agree that anyone who deliberately attracted the attention of one Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader had a death wish of monumental proportions. Luke never had been terribly worried about what the galaxy had to say about his insistence on confronting his father.

Ahsoka thought Luke should keep Anakin company. Luke himself wanted to spend more time with his parents. That made it a simple decision to visit Anakin to try to draw him out.

Luke reached out to his father as he neared the building. I'm here. The notice was as practical as it was sociable. With so many people living at the house, it saved everyone some trouble if Luke let his father know when he was about to reach the front door.

Anakin was tinkering with Artoo when he sensed Luke's presence and message. Quietly sitting and trying to meditate had never worked for Anakin to clear his mind, but occupying his hands with some sort of task or working through exercises did. He'd heard some Jedi refer to it as 'moving meditation' before. The traditional kind just didn't work. He felt too in touch with the Force when he did that.

He put his tools aside and gave Artoo a pat on the dome. They could finish working later. Too bad for Luke that Artoo only knew as far as the Clone Wars and didn't have data on those later years with Luke. Anakin understood very well what it was like to be attached to this particular droid.

Although Anakin didn't doubt Luke's senses were strong enough to eventually locate Anakin in the mansion, that would still take time. Anakin instead went to meet Luke at the front door and greeted him with a small smile. "Hey. Do you want to come in? Or we could go somewhere else."

Luke's easy smile accompanied a casual shrug. "Just thought we could spend some more time talking," he admitted. He hadn't had much of a plan beyond that. He wanted Anakin to be comfortable, always cognizant now of the fine line his father walked. They could do whatever it was Anakin liked, within reason.

"We can do that here," he said, "or anywhere, really."

"I'd rather walk and talk than sit, if that's all right with you." Anakin grinned crookedly at Luke. "And after all your recuperating, I'm guessing you might enjoy moving around?"

He was relieved that Luke no longer was weakened and pained as he had been on arrival. Anakin hadn't been able to do anything to change Luke's physical state despite how much he'd wanted to, and he'd obviously never been very good at handling a family member's… not-so-healthy condition. He always wanted to act, and he knew very well how badly his actions could turn out for those he loved, himself, and the galaxy. Simply allowing Luke time to heal had been maddening and against his instincts. Maybe it was a good thing for Luke (and everyone) that he'd soon had distractions to keep him from dwelling on his son. Time with Ahsoka had certainly been a positive; Aphra's arrival, though… less so, as Luke had sensed.

That easy smile turned bright. It was clear from looking at him in the moment that Luke was still a young man, and that having this chance to be around his parents meant the world to him. "I'm not the best at sitting still," he allowed. "It's possible I may have snuck out once or twice for waffles." Luke carefully did not let on that the first time out of Leia's house had been with Padme, uncertain of how his father might respond to that.

"Do you need to get anything before we go?"

"No, nothing. You could have asked me for waffles, you know." Anakin was mostly teasing. Mostly. He would have liked the opportunity to bring something like that to Luke, but they would have time for that now. "Or your nephew, Anakin Solo. He made an Artoo waffle iron. Not a bad likeness."

After Anakin made sure the door was closed behind him, he continued, "I'm terrible at sitting still."

"I could have, but then I couldn't have snuck out to get them, so … " Luke shrugged. "Anakin, Leia's son, I mean - how do we tell you apart in conversation? - told me about the waffle maker. He also told me that Threepio had babysitting duty with him and the twins through the years, with all the drama you'd expect."

Luke stepped out into the cooling winter air, his hands in the pockets of his light jacket. The right hand, of course, didn't feel cold quite the same way his left one did, though it was temperature sensitive for the purpose of preventing damage. "I was told, growing up, that you were off looking for adventure when you left home. I liked to imagine that you were just as restless about getting out into the galaxy as I was."

"I can understand wanting to sneak out." When Anakin was younger, he used to sneak out of the Temple. Amazing, how many aspects of himself were also apparent in Luke. "I'm not sure if I'm more sorry for Anakin or Threepio. Threepio isn't exactly a babysitter, but poor Anakin…"

He wasn't surprised that Luke's 'aunt' and 'uncle' had lied about him, but it stung that they would claim he abandoned Luke. Was that worse than Obi-Wan claiming Vader murdered Anakin? "I was restless, yes, but I didn't intentionally leave you."

"Sneaking out is genetic?" Luke queried, with an amused tilt to his lips. "I guess that explains how much time I spent at the Darklighters' or Tosche Station." He hadn't actually been too bad, aware even as a small child how dangerous it was to go out alone into the Tatooine desert. "I wonder how many times Leia and Han's children snuck out from under Threepio's nose, so to speak."

At Anakin's firm statement that he hadn't left, Luke reached out with the Force and allowed his father to feel the sentiment behind his next words. "I never thought that you did. Beru and Owen didn't say so, either." Owen might have implied, heavily, that Anakin's wandering had gotten him killed, but he'd never accused the other man of abandonment. "In their stories, you were a navigator on a spice freighter. I never got the sense that you ran away, or anything like that. More that ... " He paused to find the words. "More that Uncle Owen couldn't understand what pulled you away from Tatooine. That he was afraid if I left too, something bad would happen. So it was useful, from his point of view, to make it sound like leaving only courted trouble. He never tried to make you less in my eyes, exactly, just to keep my feet planted where he knew I'd be safe."

"I guess so. After I left Tatooine, I snuck out a lot." He couldn't do that as a slave, of course. If he'd gone too far without a master's permission, they might have terminated him, not to mention the many dangers present on Tatooine.

He was silent for a time before he responded again. "Technically, I did own a former spice freighter during the war. If I didn't 'run away,' why was I not around?" He glanced over at Luke and grimaced. "Maybe 'safe' because it was familiar and known, but he knew how dangerous things could be right where you were."

"Of course he knew, but those were dangers he knew how to help me avoid or face. What was he supposed to tell me about how to stay safe in the wider galaxy, knowing that I was the son of a Jedi?" Luke ducked his head. "I gave him a hard time about wanting me to stay. Probably too often. Aunt Beru tried to keep the peace between the two of us, but we didn't make it easy." Carefully shielding his lingering grief for the people who had raised him, Luke turned his attention to something else his father had said, and the questions it raised.

"Snuck out from where? After you left, where did you stay?"

Anakin held his tongue and his temper. He wanted to rant about the Tuskens, how they'd come to that very homestead where Luke was raised and taken his mother, and clearly Owen had been unable to prevent that… but opening up anything to do with his mother's death was too painful, too risky.

"The Jedi Temple on Coruscant. You may know it as the Imperial Palace. The Emperor thought it was… ironic, to make it his own."

Luke raised an eyebrow. "You snuck out of the Jedi Temple." He made no remark on the palace, or the Emperor's sensibilities. He'd rather not stray into that territory. Tatooine had been risky enough to mention. "When you say that, just how far are we talking about? And just who were you giving the slip?"

Luke understood, objectively, that Obi-Wan had trained his father, and that Yoda had, in some fashion, had something to do with it. What he lacked was the framework to give that context. Obi-Wan had called Anakin a friend. Yoda had claimed to sense fear in him, and a need for adventure, for heroism, that had ultimately led the elder Skywalker to stray from the Light Side of the Force. Neither had thought to say a word to Luke about how they'd truly come by this knowledge, or what steps they had taken to train Anakin.

"I snuck out of the Jedi Temple." Anakin shrugged as if that was no big deal, but for the younglings and padawan raised there, it would have been almost unthinkable. "I'd go to the lower levels mostly, looking for scrap and parts for my projects. Obi-Wan didn't approve, but he didn't understand. And the other padawans…" What could he even say about them and how they treated him?

"The other padawans?" Luke regretted the question almost as soon as it left his mouth. He could sense something uneasy in his father's discussion of beings who should have been his peers. Luke had been fairly well-liked on Tatooine, but he'd begun to feel more and more like an outsider as he became stronger in the Force. He wondered abruptly if Anakin's own gifts and skill had set him apart, a division more pronounced than simply being from a backwards Outer Rim planet.

"Did Obi-Wan … he said you were like a brother to him, but it sounds almost as though he raised you," Luke ventured.

Anakin clenched his jaw and kept looking ahead as he walked. "They were raised in the Temple. I wasn't. They had no memories of lives before the Jedi because they came to the Temple too young to have memories of their time before. I was a former slave. They weren't." And, of course, he was rumored to be the Chosen One, which hadn't helped with making friends. He was too different.

For a moment, he remembered Obi-Wan screaming at him, the heat and the lava rocks digging into his maimed body, 'You were my brother!' His inhaled sharply and his footing stumbled before he recovered himself to the present. "That's how he saw it. I saw him more as a father. I have no father, but that's what he was like to me."

Luke clasped Anakin's shoulder with his flesh-and-blood hand, projecting comfort through the Force. He lacked the necessary experience to truly understand what it had been like, and he did not attempt to equate his own life to his father's. He couldn't. He wasn't sure it would help even if he could.

"Could you tell me more about Ahsoka?" he asked instead. "I don't need the Force to know how fond of you she is."

Anakin drew a deep breath and put his own flesh-and-blood hand over Luke's. Luke couldn't have known how Anakin would react to so many things, and that made it hard just to have a conversation.

"Ahsoka is…" How could he sum up someone so significant to him? "You know she was my padawan. I didn't ask for a padawan, but the Council placed her with me. She challenged me and made me grow. She still does. She became a best friend, like a sister, or a daughter. I guess you could say she's like your family, too."

"Then I'm glad to have her," Luke assured his father. "We've been talking." He smiled and squeezed his father's shoulder before dropping his hand back to his side. "Not just embarrassing stories, either, but those are interesting, too. I have a feeling I can learn a lot from her. From both of you."

Anakin moved his hand into a facepalm. "She really does like telling the embarrassing ones." That would be an interesting legacy if his former padawan, who was now somewhat teaching him, also went on to teach his son. They all had things they could learn from each other or teach each other. "Your insight is one I share."

The younger Skywalker laughed and grinned. "I definitely won't argue if she has more of those stories to share. For educational purposes, of course. After all, I need to know how to uphold the family's dignity."

"Start crashing more ships?" Anakin had quite a reputation for that, and the time he'd literally passed out and had to be pulled out of the wreck by Ahsoka… he was sure Luke would be hearing about that. Anakin was about to joke about losing lightsabers when he realized that was probably in very poor taste considering how Luke had lost the lightsaber that had been Anakin's. How Anakin had lost it himself wasn't a fun story, either.

"Isn't the objective generally to keep them in the air?" Luke teased. He hoped to keep Anakin on a more positive topic. The way his father's sense shifted in the Force every time they strayed near something potentially painful concerned him. "Not that I haven't crashed my fair share. Gravity usually kicks in whenever it's most inconvenient."

"I am great at flying. I never said landing was my thing." Positive was definitely important. Anakin was growing more aware of his own triggers, but getting a handle on his shifts eluded him.

"I'm still a little disappointed they don't have proper flight here." He cast a glance at the sky overhead. "It's still strange to think there's no real traffic up there. Nothing outside of the atmosphere, anyway. I know that they have satellites and a space station and the occasional shuttle, but it's not the same."

"A lot of us feel the same way." Anakin looked up to the sky when Luke did. Before the town had strangely expanded after the displaced's brief foray into the past, it had been very easy to see the stars at night. Now there was more light pollution— not Coruscant levels, of course, but a noticeable change. "Even in the most remote parts of our galaxy, we at least knew someone else was always out there. This planet has no idea. They think they're alone, and the ones that don't are often called ‘crazy'."

"It's possible that they are alone, in this universe," Luke noted, "unlikely as it is. I imagine our galaxy wasn't all that different from this planet, a long time ago, people wondering if there was anything beyond what they could see.”

"Possibly," Anakin agreed. "They have no way of knowing since they haven't gotten actual people or strong enough probes far enough. We do still have planets like that, but they're usually in the Outer Rim, not the Core. Or some that decide to reject spacefaring." He hadn't kept count of how many planets, moons, and space-based settlements he'd been sent to in his years as a Jedi.

“I’ve visited a few like that. It seems as though none of them get left alone for long.” Luke tried not to think too much on the Ewoks, and the upheaval the Empire, and the Alliance, had brought to their world. “I’m glad that this world has some peace in that respect.”

"If they have any resources, they inevitably get exploited." That wasn't only under the Empire, of course, but the Imperial approach had intensified that treatment. Whole worlds were drained and abandoned.

“Well that won’t happen here,” Luke decided. “There are too many people who wouldn’t stand by and let it happen.”

"Or nobody would be interested in this planet," Anakin said. "Assuming they noticed it. Which planets have you been to so far?"

If they kept it to topics that weren't so much about their pasts, especially their pasts on Tatooine, or focused on mutual interests or just getting to know each other, that made it easier to just… talk.

Luke smiled, and began to regale his father with tales of the places he had been, focusing on the more embarrassing or enjoyable adventures. They would eventually circle back to the house, and part ways feeling a little more like family than they had before.