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materassassino · 1 year ago

Text

Patrimony

From the DinLuke Server prompt of the same word.

Luke reaches the end of his tether, and Ahsoka gets yelled at, as she deserves.

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Luke feels out of his depth.

Everyone seems to know more than him.

“We didn’t used to do it like that,” Cal says, frowning.

“Oh, Kanan told me it was done this way,” Ezra says, flippant.

“That’s not how the Jedi teach,” Ahsoka says, disapproving.

“I don’t remember anything about that,” Reva says, dismissive.

“I DON’T THINK THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN APPROVED OF,” Gungi says, uncertain.

“Are you sure you want to do it that way?” Ezra asks, wincing, and Luke has had it.

He likes to think he’s left his rashness behind. He’s matured, he’s fully mastered his emotions. But even his patience can’t last forever.

He whips around to Ezra, shoulders set, face a mask of fury.

“You run this karking Order then!” he snarls. “If you’re all so much wiser than I am! Run it yourselves!”

And he storms off, blood hammering in his ears. He’s surprised he only said that, and not something so much worse, which was exactly what he wanted to. He stomps away from the little compound they’ve made, their temporary temple, and out into the streets of Sundari.

His boots pound the pavement as he tries to get as far away as possible, and Mandalorians quickly get out of his way, staring at him as he passes. He doesn’t care. All he can hear in his head is reproach, remonstration, criticism, dismissal. What do you even think you’re doing? the voices in his head demand, jeering at him. You don’t know anything!

Of course he doesn’t know anything, he thinks bitterly. He’s found himself in one of the little parks, a residential area, and he throws himself beneath a tree that still needs time to grow. No one told him anything. His masters were forging a weapon, not a Jedi. He didn’t even know what a Jedi was until he was nineteen! And they had the gall to call him the last, as if there weren’t people out there, people the same as him, who could have guided him from the start. They didn’t even attempt to remake the Order, and now they come here, judging every wrong step he takes without offering to teach him the dance in the first place.

He refuses to meditate, even though that would be the correct, Jedi thing to do. But he doesn’t want to be a Jedi just then. He doesn’t. He wants to drop everything and just run to the farthest corner of the galaxy where no one has even heard of the Force. Sithspit, even Tatooine would be better than this, right now.

What is he even trying to do, anyway? Maybe the Order would be better off dead and buried. What would the galaxy even gain, if he succeeded?

“May I sit?”

Luke hears the silver bells in the Force, their resonant chimes, and he scowls.

“What do you want?” he demands, not even looking up.

Ahsoka, wisely, chooses not to sit, because Luke would simply stand and then march off again.

“To discuss, perhaps,” she says, mild and supercilious and it grates on Luke’s nerves like metal scraping against metal, the hulls of two ships colliding. He surges to his feet, and her height doesn’t intimidate him – frankly, he’s faced taller, and meaner, and uglier.

“What’s to discuss? How I’m destroying everything? Ruining the legacy of the Jedi?!”

“Rage doesn’t—”

“Shut up, Ahsoka!” he snaps, and she does, her mouth clamping shut like he’s cast a spell on her. “You’re the worst of them all! Always needling, always criticising! You waltz in here whenever you want, proclaiming you’re not even a Jedi, and then proceed to tear everything apart because it’s not to your exacting, aloof standards!”

Luke breathes deeply through his nose, and instantly regrets everything he’s said. He pinches the bridge of his nose.

“I’m tired,” he says, fighting to keep his voice steady, “of everything I do being worthless.”

Ahsoka is quiet. “Luke,” she says, and finally there’s some emotion in her voice after it’s been so distant all the time, “it’s not. You’re… you’re trying to do everything on your own. You’re exhausted, you’re barely at home.”

She reaches out, cautious, like he’s a cornered, wounded animal that might bite, and gently her hand settles on his shoulder. Viciously he contemplates shrugging her off, but that just feels petty. He simply glances at her hand, and then at her.

“We know how much this means to you,” she says. “How much is at stake. You’ve done so much and you’ve done it by yourself.”

He scoffs at her.

She frowns. “It’s not just your legacy, Luke. You can’t carry it alone.”

“I’m not trying to!” he says through gritted teeth. “I was never trying to! I need help, not constant belittlement!”

Ahsoka sighs. “I… I think some of us are afraid,” she says. “We’re afraid it might be too distant from what we knew, even if we barely knew anything in the first place.” She removes her hand and sits, cross-legged, rubbing her arms. She looks much younger than she is, in that moment. “The world we knew is gone, and it’s been gone so long, that to see something being born out of its ashes means… letting go of it.” She looks up, tears in the corners of her eyes. “I’m sorry, Luke.”

He takes a deep breath, and for a long moment he stares at the ground beside her, before making a choice. He sits as well.

“It can’t go back to how it was,” Luke says. “I’m trying. I know it’s not the same, but it can’t be the same. Am I qualified? No. But are any of us? You all left me alone to do this by myself, no help, no guidance, no knowledge. I’ve been working off puzzle pieces that don’t even fit together. You say you want to help now, but it doesn’t feel like help. It just feels like resentment.”

Ahsoka’s breath hitches and she shuts her eyes, a look of pain on her face. “I know. The thing is, you’re doing so well. You’ve given us a place to call home again, you’re finding our history, you’re finding us the future as well…” She rubs at her eyes. “We had nothing for decades. We ran and we hid and we died, and then you came along and...” She gestures at everything around them, the rebuilt dome and the cleared streets and the rebuilt houses. “You even made allies out of old enemies. You’ve done so much.”

She looks at him then, biting her lip. “Is… is this because of Anakin?”

Luke scowls at her. “Not everything is to do with Anakin kriffing Skywalker,” he says waspishly.

“No, I meant… do you feel guilt for what he did?” she asks. “Do you feel bound to it because of him? Because of his actions?”

“I…” Luke swallows, and searches inside himself. I am a Jedi, like my father before me. “No,” he admits. “It’s not guilt. It’s not repentance, because I didn’t do it. It’s more… the right thing to do. It’s because the galaxy will be better for it.” He laughs bitterly. “Not that it feels like it.”

“How so?”

“Sometimes I wonder what the point of it is,” he says gloomily, tugging at the grass beneath his fingers. “Maybe the Order should have stayed dead.”

“Have you ever… thought of leaving?” Ahsoka asks, her voice gentle.

Luke blinks.

“You could, you know,” Ahsoka continues. “You have a husband, a son. Grogu doesn’t need to be a Jedi. You could simply be Luke.”

He’d thought about it, on lonely sleepless nights, curled up in bed on Yavin 4, all alone, where the future seemed impenetrable and murky and ultimately futile. But he hadn’t. He gotten up the next day and continued, one foot in front of the other. Although… well, if Grogu hadn’t have come along, perhaps he would have. Loneliness was becoming too familiar a state of being.

Luke shakes his head. “I am a Jedi. That’s what I am. I couldn’t… I couldn’t see the suffering in the galaxy and turn a blind eye to it, just walk away from it all. Not when I can do so much more.”

Ahsoka smiles then, her eyes creasing. “There’s your answer. That’s the point.” She sighs again. “I think we’ve been neglecting that, but we’ve also been neglecting each other. We’ve all been so isolated, it hasn’t done us good.”

“Jedi are pack animals?” Luke suggests, teasing, and Ahsoka chuckles.

It’s quiet, broken by the sound of children playing a street away and the recycled breeze in the leaves above them.

“You’re a good grandmaster, Luke,” Ahsoka says. “Don’t let us tell you otherwise.”

Luke stiffens, head snapping round to stare at her. “What?”

“A good grandmaster,” she repeats.

He shakes his head. “No. No, I’m no grandmaster, I’m far too young for that…”

“Who else is there?” Ahsoka asks. “Me, the coward running away from her own truth? Cal, who ran away from everything else? Reva, who was an Inquisitor?” She sets her hand on his shoulder again, more confidently this time, and Luke welcomes its weight. “You’ve done more than we ever could. You’re the only one it could be.” She makes a face. “And perhaps being old isn’t always the best choice.”

“I’ll take that,” he says, shrugging. “I’m not calling myself that, though. Not yet, anyway.”

Ahsoka nods with a chuckle.

Together they head back to the compound, and all eyes are on them as they walk through the gate. Grogu sprints across the yard and launches himself into Luke’s arms, babbling wildly and accusatorially.

“Well, they didn’t kill each other,” Reva says.

“Are you ok?” Ezra asks, nervous.

Luke sighs. “Yes. But… It’s been feeling like you’re all against me, like you hate everything I do, and that’s been… demoralising.”

“Talking out your feelings like normal people?” Merrin heckles from her seat beneath the porch – she tends to watch, distant and slightly mocking of it all, but fundamentally supportive. “Not very Jedi.”

Cal rolls his eyes as Reva huffs darkly.

“WE DIDN’T MEAN THAT, LUKE,” Gungi says. “IF YOU HADN’T HAVE FOUND US, WE WOULDN’T EVEN BE HERE, TOGETHER AGAIN.”

“We owe you a lot,” Cal admits, folding his arms. “What you’ve done so far, it’s incredible.”

“And we didn’t get this far by doing it by the book,” Ezra says. “We had to adapt to survive.”

Luke rocks Grogu gently, looking down at him pensively. Grogu looks up, curious, and touches his little claws to Luke’s hand.

It’s for him, isn’t it? Everything that he does, ultimately, is for Grogu, and those that will come after him. The legacy isn’t something they’ve been handed from the past, it’s a debt owed to the future. And there is no future without change.

“The past can prepare us,” Luke says, tickling Grogu behind the ear, just to hear him giggle, “but we can’t chart a course back to it. And I can’t do it alone, I need all of you with me.”

“Spoken like a true grandmaster,” Ahsoka murmurs, giving him a gentle pat on the shoulder.

The word doesn’t fit right now, but perhaps it will, in the future.

#star wars #luke skywalker #ahsoka tano #ezra bridger #cal kestis #grogu #very very background #dinluke #pixie writes #new jedi order

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