This is dedicated to my dear friend Treenahasthaal for her birthday. I hope you've had a perfect day! :-)

He had been feeling her for years, far away, eking out a life on a planet not unlike his own home planet of Tatooine. A life marked by hardship and a fight for survival.

She hadn't even had an aunt and uncle to take care of her.

And now he had felt what he had been waiting for. A disturbance.

Distinct flashes of a black metal mask leaning in close. Pain tearing into him as the creature hiding behind it tried to wrest information from her - accompanied by flashbacks of another black mask, another dark voice demanding answers, another woman resisting nearly irresistible power in the cell holding her.

Memories from decades ago, and memories of more recent years.

Reminders of his greatest triumph - and his most devastating failure.

And now the present was catching up with him, was going to draw him back into the current from which he had withdrawn. He was going to be forced to face the fact that he had failed his sister and his closest friend - and their only child.

He could feel her getting closer, and he could feel what she was carrying.

He knew she would not be turned away.

And he owed the galaxy. It was time to own up to his mistake, and correct it.

Slipping into his robe, fondly thinking of Ben as he'd stood there in robes so similar to these, untouched by the heat, equally torn over his past and over what had happened to his student, he stepped out into the wind.

Luke looked out over the craggy cliffs of the island to which he had exiled himself. More rain in one week than all of Tatooine saw over the course of a year. More green on this tiny speck of land than on his entire home planet. More clouds in one week than he had seen on Tatooine in all the years he had lived there.

It had been a good life, a quiet life - but a life steeped in guilt and regret over the way he himself had failed the student closest to his own heart. Although he dreaded it, he was relieved to get this opportunity to make it up to his sister and her son - if not his friend.

The hole that Han's death had left in Luke's life, in Luke's heart, would never close, regardless of how many years he had left.

A stab of pain as he recognized the familiar shape approaching the island, knowing that it wasn't Han at the controls.

He stood on the edge of the slope, looking out over the ocean, feeling the wind, the sun, the salt water spray on his skin.

Waiting.

And finally she was there - lithe, slender, young, angry.

Once she had made it up the mountain and stood facing him, she held out his light saber - not an offer, but a demand.

She had come not to ask but to summon him, her eyes hot with passion.

Pushing back his hood, he turned to face her, his eyes riveted to his old weapon.

The galaxy was calling, and he would follow.