Author's note: I came up with this idea while folding laundry and thought it was interesting enough to write a short story. Luke is a very emotional character and I feel he's always acted impulsively (ahem, Bespin), so I don't think he would have been happy, in the end, with what I personally believe was an impulsive decision to do what he did in The Force Awakens. Of course, I own nothing.
Luke Skywalker's life was all about going.
Not content to stay on his uncle's moisture farm, he'd been pushing to go to the Imperial Academy. A choice, he now realized, that would have quickly become a disaster. He cringed to think of what would have happened if he had ended up fighting for the Empire. It would not have been long, he was sure, before the Emperor somehow realized how strong Luke was with the Force, and then what? Luke was sure he'd have been trained in the dark side from the start. In the end, he reflected, it was unquestionably better that he did not go to the Academy. It was sad, in a way, he thought, that the uncle whom he had treated so poorly had actually known more than Luke himself did, and was only acting in Luke's best interests. Uncle Owen might have been a harsh man, but he knew what would have happened if Luke had joined the Empire. Luke was grateful that he was unable to make that decision for himself.
Even so, he had still gone somewhere. And that 'somewhere' had brought him on a collision course with the Empire and the Death Star and Leia. Leia…. He winced as the guilt rose up once more and threatened to overwhelm him. But he couldn't find any regret for the choice to go with Obi-Wan Kenobi. In the end, that had saved not only him and Leia, but their father, and the galaxy. Or, well, so he'd thought, anyway.
And then after he'd blown up the Death Star and found a place within the Rebellion, he found himself half-dead on an ice planet, being told by what he still to this day was afraid might have been a hallucination that he needed to go, to the Dagobah system. And he did go, but as he went, he felt a twinge of confusion, because suddenly he was realizing that there was a much bigger picture than he'd ever thought; it was not just him, and his choices, and those choices affecting his destiny. Not anymore. And maybe, he allowed, it never had been that way. Here he was, going again, and he didn't seem to have a choice in the matter; someone else had told him to go, but he was quickly becoming aware, even then, that the fate of the galaxy and the fate of Luke Skywalker were somehow intertwined into one, and so even though he didn't really want to leave his friends to go to the unknown Dagobah, he went anyway.
And then, shaking his head at his own stupidity and arrogance, he thought of the time he'd rushed to go to Cloud City to free his friends from Vader, ignoring Yoda's warnings that he was doing the wrong thing. And honestly, he really should have listened to Yoda when he told him not to go, but Luke's life to this point had consisted only of going, and never of choosing not to, so of course he did what he'd always done and he went. True, Cloud City hadn't turned out to be the disaster that it could have been, but it had definitely created more problems than it had solved.
"This one, a long time have I watched. All his life has he looked away, to the future. Never his mind on where he was, what he was doing."
Luke cringed as Yoda's words came back to him, as clearly as he'd heard them the first time. Yoda was right. Luke never really thought things through. Even now, a Jedi Master and (Luke hoped) much wiser than he'd been in his youth, old habits die hard, and he still found himself jumping to do things before really understanding the choices he was making. He always thought, in his heart and soul, that he was doing the right thing. But the problem was that his track record on the matter wasn't too great. Sure, some of the choices – fighting Vader (the second time), going to see Yoda – had been good ones. But some had been terrible ones, too: wanting to join the Imperial Academy, fighting Vader on Bespin…. Abandoning the Resistance.
"Not my best idea," Luke thought, then cringed as he realized he'd spoken aloud into the silence. His words echoed in a strange and unexpected way. Sitting among the ruins of the first Jedi Temple, Luke sighed. He'd left his friends because he'd thought he had hurt them beyond repair when he lost Kylo Ren. That, and he'd wanted to avoid ever, ever making the same mistake again. Or, that's what he'd told himself, anyway. But here, alone in the evening light, surrounded by the Force presences of numerous Jedi and their wisdom, still imprinted into the rocks of this place, he had to finally acknowledge the truth:
He never left because he thought he was doing the right thing. He went because he was running away from his choices. He left because he was afraid. He left because he was the type of person that dealt with his problems by doing, and he couldn't just sit back and do nothing when he was as afraid as he was; when he'd become as involved as he was. Because his fate really was intertwined with the galaxy's, and that was terrifying to him.
"That's why I have to go," he remembered himself telling Leia on the forest moon of Endor.
"That's why I went," he whispered aloud, answering his hitherto unanswered question as to why he'd left his friends in the first place. He had abandoned the Resistance not only (not even mostly) because he didn't want to produce another dark Jedi, but because he was so afraid – of Leia, of Han, of Kylo Ren, and even of his own powers – that he couldn't stand to sit by and wonder. And so he did what he had always done.
He went.