Sometimes he could still hear them. And by "them," the young man of a meager twenty-seven standard years meant the voices of Jedi he had had the honor to meet and the privelage to train under.
Obi-Wan, former general of the Clone Wars, was the most easily recognized. His first master, "Old Ben" had been the first to teach him of lightsaber techniques and finding power in the force. Even after his untimely death by the blade of a Sith Lord, he had continued to instruct his final Padawan throught the Force itself.
Master Yoda, ancient when the young Jedi had first met him, had taken up the mantle of intructor at an age well over 900. He had trained his pupil through unorthodox methods and criptic phrases on the swamp planet of Dagobah until his death on the same world by the hand of time and the will of the Force.
The identity of the third voice othen escaped him until recently despite how many times he must have heard it throught his struggle against the Empire. Only once had he truly heard it, unincombered by mask and breathing apparatus. It belonged to a Jedi who had once lost to the Dark Side, a man of extraordianry power who had been tricked into killing his comrads and serving a new master, the one who had been renamed "Darth Vader" and given a visage that had once struck fear into the hearts of those who opposed the Empire. His true name was Anakin Skywalker.
His father.
Luke rarely heard from the yound voice that nearly matched his own, but he could never escape the intemingled joy and saddness that surged in his heart whenever his father would whisper in his ear.
"Too young," Yoda whould often mutter whenever Luke would inquire of his father's age. "Too young to die, he was."
Obi-Wan offered more by way of explination. "I fought your father on Mustafar mear hours after he became Darth Vader." The sagely spirit had explained on once occasion. "The man I knew was long gone by that time. He would have been about your age when the Jedi part of him died."
About your age.
Theat statement had come as a sort of numbing reality to the young man who still considered himself the student in many ways. He understood that a Jedi could die- history and his own experiances could attest to that much- but that a Jedi died when they fell to the Dark Side... He had never even considered that as a possibility. And it bothered him.
Because now he was the one who had to watch the life of another.
He no longer had a master.
He was the master.
And his Padawan was possibly the most stubborn girl in the galaxy.