Saviour's Son
A/N: This was inspired by Ketharil's 'Sanctuaries'. I don't know where the AnakinBen link came from. It feels like something I could expand in a much longer fic. Maybe on day I will.
This was meant to be an essay on Phillip Larkin's poetry. Review and scold me for abandoning essays in favour of fics so close to the exams.
Disclaimers: Star Wars and the Extended Universe belong to George Lucas. I'm making no money from this
Warnings: First person narrative, character deaths, set way-post NJO
Luke Skywalker. That's the name on his mausoleum. I wonder if he had a middle name. There's no one left to tell me, no one who knows.
When I was little I thought they were keeping some great secret from me. When I learned that they didn't realise I couldn't remember them, I was heartbroken. I was six when they died. They were just mom and dad. How was I supposed to know their names and all that was entailed in them? They were just mom and dad, who I barely ever saw.
I remember that my mother had red hair, but I've gone over that memory so often that it's not there any more, I just remember that I used to remember it. I remember seeing 'Luke Skywalker' in a text book, when I was in my early teens. It held no significance for me, even knowing then what our relationship was. Uncle Han looked like he was going to cry when I told him that we were studying the Imperial War. We did him in school the next day. Han Solo and Chewbacca and the Millennium Falcon and saving Princess and eluding bounty hunters and working for the army, later. I guess when you're old enough to have fought in a war like that you don't like to think it happened so long ago it's part of history now, like all the other people who died in it. Jaina's kids will be learning about the Invasion. I don't remember that at all, but I know mom and dad will be in the history books for that, and I might too, just as a footnote. "Luke and Mara Jade Skywalker sent their newborn son to a safe retreat while they fought, an action later criticised."
Well, it was by me. I only want a few more memories. I remember Artoo better than either of them.
It was Jaina who told me who Ben was. That was at Aunt Leia's funeral. She and Jacen sat and talked about Obi Wan Kenobi and encouraged me to go and look at all those old Jedi records. I never got round to that. Instead I wandered off and convinced Uncle Han to tell war stories to me, about that feisty princess he rescued on the Death Star. He likes telling those stories, especially now she's gone. I ask him whenever I'm around, even though I know them all by heart. He's getting really old now. I bet he doesn't even know how many times he's told them to me.
He was the first to tell me I was just like Anakin. Others did, over the years, but this Anakin was just someone else I was impossibly supposed to remember. I didn't want to ask when I saw the looks on their faces. I didn't look for Jedi records, but I did for Anakin.
There was this kid Uncle Han and Aunt Leia met, during the war. Just after Coruscant fell and Anakin died. Apparently this politician lady had him altered to look like Anakin, just a bit younger. There was this guy called Wolam Tser, and his apprentice Tam, who'd been made an unwilling spy by the Vong, and the kid was called Tarc. So, Tarc's quite famous now. We use a lot of Wolam Tser's stuff in school, and everyone's saying how our kids will be watching Tarc's stuff. He's even done some fictional stuff, which I collected. But it was Wolam's stuff that had a few clips of Anakin in, and the stuff about his death.
Cousin Anakin. If I kept a journal, I'd address it to him. Maybe they're right, maybe we do have a lot in common. We kinda look alike, but he's got darker hair. Well, had. And he was good with machines, like I kinda am, and we definitely share that idiot rash streak. I understand why he was so keen on being a Jedi too. After all, he had that name to live down. I've got mine to live up to.
I don't want to be a Jedi. I've never managed to put it into words for anyone to whom that would mean something. I guess I'm kinda waiting for Uncle Han to die, which sounds stupidly morbid. I just don't want him looking at me and thinking about my parents and Aunt Leia and wondering what's wrong with me. I think Jacen might understand, but only because I'm like Anakin.
I heard, once, that dead Jedi kinda fade away, and sometimes they even come back to talk to the living. Dad never visited me, or mom. I can't work out if that means they weren't powerful enough Jedi, or just didn't care enough. Maybe the other side is so good they just forgot. Maybe they thought I wouldn't understand. I used to try and talk to them, once someone explained it all to me. No one ever answered. I talk to Anakin instead now, because at least I know he didn't fade and can't come back. It's not a decision.
So, there's this Tahiri girl. She's way older than me, but I still call her girl. She's part Yuuzhan-Vong. It's weird to think how tough that must have been once. I mean, I've got my own ooglith masquer. Even Jacen can't use one of those, and he's been pretty accepting of the Vong. Well, compared to Jaina. I guess she just can't forgive them for taking Anakin. Funny how she and Tahiri are so close though.
I asked Tahiri if I was like Anakin. I got the impression she knew him best, you see. She told me I was, but pointing in a different direction. She can get a bit cryptic sometimes. All that hanging around with priests, I guess. For a while, in my early teens, I thought about converting. It really appealed then, more than the force. My parents had put their faith in the force and look where that got them. I kept al this to myself though, because it would have killed Uncle Han and Aunt Leia, not to mention al those Jedi, to hear that Luke Skywalker's son wanted to turn his back on the force.
I guess telling them that's never going to be easy. There won't be a good time for it.
It's not like I don't want to use the force. I don't think I'm as strong with it as people like to think. Master Durron is way out of my league, for example. I think even aunt Leia was ahead of me, and everyone said she never bothered with it much.
Maybe I'm a bit like Aunt Leia. Maybe that's how I'll put it. I don't mind the force, but being a Jedi is not the path I see my life taking. I don't mind knowing how to se what I've got, develop my danger sense or whatever, but I don't want to train and be a Jedi. I don't want to be my father. I'd only disappoint.
Tarc came and visited Uncle Han the other day. They had a long talk. His face is a bit odd, probably because of al the alterations made while he was still growing. You can tell it's not his, in a way. He does look a lot like Anakin though. I caught him on the way out, asked if they'd talked war stories. Tarc told me he was one, and that's how I knew who he was. He was carrying some of his equipment, but when I asked he said that was just habit, not because he'd actually done any recording. He'd been apologising for not coming to Aunt Leia's funeral.
It's weird to think that was only a few years ago. Less. It had taken that long for the news to reach him and for him to get back. He showed me a bunch of footage of the Outer Rim. We talked for a long time. Uncle Han thought it was hilarious to come out and find Tarc still there. We looked at a huge amount of footage together in the end, everything Tarc had with him. Tarc's cool, and he visits more often now he's living closer. He wants to go back out, but it's like he's waiting for something. Uncle Han thinks he's looking for a girlfriend or something, because he got lonely. I kinda think he's looking for a partner.
There's this planet called Tattooine. It's where dad grew up, apparently, and granddad, and Ben Kenobi. It's like the place where all the great Jedi come from. I was born a long way from there. I grew up, a bit, in the Maw. That's where Kyp Durron spent a chunk of his young life. I've spent some time on Coruscant, where Jaina and Jacen and Anakin grew up, though like me most of them didn't spend their first few years with their parents.
Jacen was the one who realised I couldn't remember my parents and had no idea who they were. He told me about how Jaina and Aunt Leia had fought for a while, because Jaina really resented being tucked away somewhere safe for so much of her childhood. I guess just as she was getting old enough to look after herself and stick around her mother the war broke out. Jacen showed me a bunch of holos of mom and dad from various times. One was even of my mom as an assassin.
Part of me wants to do that for a living, or at least a smuggler, like Uncle Han. Anything a bit dangerous but family related. I just don't ant to be a Jedi. I'm not Luke Junior. I'm not another Anakin. I'm a Ben, and do you know what Ben Kenobi did? He hid in a hovel by the desert and barely used the force at all. Obi Wan Kenobi was a great Jedi knight during the Clone Wars, but Ben was just a little old man who saved kids when they wandered too far into the desert.
I don't want to go into politics, like Aunt Leia. I don't want to be a pilot, like Uncle Han or Jaina. I don't want to be a Jedi like Jacen or dad or mom. It's like everyone in my family has to have some high profile job to get themselves in those history books. Everyone has to save the galaxy.
I've got nothing against the galaxy, but it doesn't really need saving any more. Jaina spends more time fixing the Falcon than flying it, and Uncle Han can't even summon the energy to do that. Jacen and Tahiri spend their whole lives meditating. Aunt Leia was always desperate to get out of politics, even if she didn't really escape until she died. When they're dead they'll just be names and holo clips, like mom and dad. Most people in this galaxy aren't even that, I suppose.
So, I know what I want to be, and it's nothing like a Jedi. I want to record the history, not make it. Maybe it's a cheat to just leave a letter explaining where I've gone and why, but now Tarc's waiting for me and I haven't really got time to go around and say proper goodbyes to people, let alone explaining why I'm leaving. I'm a Ben, not a Luke or Anakin, and I'm going to be a holoreporter, not a Jedi or pilot.
See you same time, same place, tomorrow. Ben Skywalker signing out.
Make me day, R&R. Pwetty pwease?