DISCLAIMER: Star Wars and all characters; names and related materials are Trademarks of and Copyright of Lucasfilm, Ltd. This includes characters identified with the films produced as part of the 20th Century Fox studios, Walt Disney Studios, Bad Robot and all published worked recognized by Lucasfilm, Ltd. (In other words, they're not mine.) There is an OC that is pivotal to this story – and she is mine.
WARNINGS: This fic is rated T, however it addresses multiple adult topics. One is related to mental health – please be cautious when reading this if you are sensitive to stories involving depression-related emotions and behaviors.
And now, without further ado, here is my take on what our dear Jedi Master Luke The Hermit has been up to for the last 15 years.
I was sixteen when I first saw him. He came into my uncle's store in search of supplies, and he was like nothing I'd ever known. Our village isn't small, but the males within it are all cut from the same cloth. Tall, thick, and built for tending the land we live on. They are variations on a common theme, none of which were kin to the sandy haired man in black I saw that day.
He oozed an air of quiet confidence, perusing our store casually with a trained eye. I gawked at him from afar, partially hidden behind the tall shelves lined with baskets of fruits and vegetables. When his eyes eventually connected with my own, my mind was filled with an aura of blues and golds that shone with blinding intensity. It was that aura that branded my brain and sent me tumbling head over heels for him. He was clearly different and hence designated in my teenaged mind as 'special'.
At the time, I was desperate for such commonality and immediately categorized him as similar to me. In hindsight, I was correct, but back then I genuinely didn't have any idea who or what he was. I just swooned like any other hopeless teenage female when she finds a male she favors.
You see, I am 'special', too. My sensitivities and my ability to see the auras of others are a well-kept secret, and for good reason. Few know, and only my grandmother fully understood it. The people of my village frown on such things, as they are a small-minded and superstitious lot. Hence the other burden I bear, but I digress.
The man spoke calmly, making his small list of needs known. A consummate professional, my uncle tended to him quickly and within an hour the man was gone from the store and my life. I fantasized about my man in black for months, dreaming he would swoop down to rescue me, whisking me away with him into the stars from whence he came.
My aunt and uncle would hear none of it, despite my statements about his lack of the common green/brown auras my people emit. I swore he was special like me; perhaps I could learn from him. I wouldn't quit pestering them. I begged and begged for them to contact him for me. Eventually my uncle lost patience and forbade me to speak of him again. He even went so far as to threaten me with an Outcast if I continued with such nonsense. The man in black was not special, he did not know I existed, nor would he ever know. I was pursuing something beyond my station and they would tolerate my insubordination no longer.
My uncle's bellowing was effective. I cried in my room for days and then moved on with my life.
Five years later I married. Josel was kind and brilliant and genuinely cared for me. He was a member of the Counsel, along with his father and my uncle. I spent my days tending to our homestead or assisting him with his research. It was a comfortable life for us. Josel tried many times with me to produce an heir, but the Fates would not allow it. I would lie patiently beneath him, as time and time again he would strain against me, willing his seed to take root and provide him with a son.
It never happened. After three years, Josel stopped his attempts and lay with me no longer. He instead devoted his time to his work and his studies, pouring his life into data pads and computers. He continued to be kind and courteous towards me, but I knew his family whispered the rumors into his ears. How he shouldn't have married me. How my line was cursed and destined for torment and pain.
Those rumors started many generations ago, but were fueled by events in my childhood. My mother died two years after I was born. My mother's mother had died in a similar way, never quite recovering from childbirth. My father, who loved my mother dearly, fell into despair. My grandmother tried to protect him, to pull him from the darkness, but eventually he became lost within it and wore the Eyes of the Damned. The Eyes took his life one month after the Fates took my mother, and I was left in the care of my aunt, uncle and grandmother.
The Eyes are not mentioned in my village by anyone – only my grandmother spoke of them to me and swore me to secrecy. The Eyes are not something that most can see. My grandmother claimed that I would be able to see the Eyes, given my gifts. That the ability ran in her family.
"Never let yourself fall prey to them, Jas'kah. You must always have hope. Hope is the key to keeping them at bay. The Eyes of the Damned will bring death to those who wear them. Your father was not strong enough to fight them, and his gifts were as powerful as yours. The Eyes prey on those who are different; you must be wary during times of turmoil and strife. Above all, you must not lose hope. Promise me you will not lose hope, Jas'kah!"
I swore to her, repeatedly. After she died I wondered if all she had told me about the Eyes was real, or if they were just the delusions of a lonely old mother who grieved the loss of her favorite son.
I learned that all she said was true on the day the man in black returned to our village. He had plodded into the store and approached the counter, addressing my uncle. I was only in the store that day because Josel had been away that week at a trade conference. I had been helping my aunt and uncle with the yearly task of documenting the inventory. It was convenient timing, and earlier I'd wondered if Josel and my uncle had planned things that way.
The man was draped in a dark brown hooded robe that was torn along the bottom edge. He wore the same dark garments my adolescent memory recalled, only now they were rumpled and worn, not crisp and clean and elegant. His hair was longer, dulled to a muddy brown of varying lengths. His skin was the pallor of the sick, his face smeared with unkempt unshaven growth.
There was a tension in the air around my uncle as he spoke with the man. I left my ledger on a nearby stack of boxes and went to join them - childishly eager to once again see the blues and golds of the most unique aura I'd ever known.
What I perceived from his gaze made me gasp aloud, and earned a sharp stab in the ribs from my uncle.
The man in black, my beautiful heroic fantasy man, wore the Eyes of the Damned. His aura carried no colors at all, only the jagged edges of the deepest grey. I stared straight into that sea of crystal blue and knew he saw nothing of me. He saw nothing at all.
A deep sense of fear overcame me as I understood my uncle's behavior and tone. His long, lean hand shook slightly as he entered each requested item into his data pad. I was too cowardly to leave, yet felt awkward in staying. I listened as the man explained what he needed and why. He was going to set up residence in one of the abandoned Cavities within the Losatian Cliffs. No one had lived in the Cavities for decades, and for good reason. The heat from the ground within fluctuated so greatly that the Cavity was either freezing or boiling. The winds across the Cliffs were so strong they would tear your hair from your skin. The suns were too close, the stars too far. Why would anyone in their right mind want to live up there?
Insight struck, blazingly clear. The man was going to the Cavities to die. My heart broke for him, emotion welling in my eyes and blurring my vision. My uncle noticed my distress but misunderstood it.
"Jas'kah – you have inventory work to do. Leave us."
I did leave. I turned and left the counter, my footfalls the pattern of a utilitarian march. I didn't stop until I reached my home, and didn't let the sobs fall until I softly closed the door behind me. I wept, long and deeply, while leaning against that door. I wept until there were no more tears to shed, no more loss to acknowledge.
Then I stood up, dusted myself off, and vowed never to succumb to the Eyes of the Damned. I could not see my own aura, but I would never let it dim and grey like that. The Eyes may have taken my father, and they may have taken that man, but they would not take me.
Two months later, the storms arrived. The weather in our village had always been arid, making the cultivation of crops difficult and forcing us to rely on off-planet traders and the distribution of goods as our means of survival. Our planet was one of only a few in our system that catered to interstellar travelers. The Empire discovered us many years ago, and we were freed from its grasp once it collapsed. The New Republic left us alone, as we required little from them and they from us. I overheard from other off-worlders that areas of our planet were lush and green, suitable for times of rest and relaxation. I found this odd, since the rains rarely came to my village. Our winters were cool, our summers warm, the epitome of balanced weather that crops should thrive in. Yet the lack of rain from our cloudless skies left our soil barren and cracked. Until the storms changed everything.
You would think we would relish in the improvements in our ecosystem, it did wonders for our harvests. But we were unprepared. Our houses could not handle the deluge and many leaked. The older homes were nearly washed away. Lightning was an unfamiliar concept and in the first few storms, animals and a few people were killed.
Josel and the Counsel met for weeks on how to solve the problem of our insufficient infrastructure. My husband's creativity brought about the four towering metal poles that stand at the edge of each corner of our village. They attract the lightning and keep it from hitting our homes. Our houses were fortified or rebuilt with stronger materials designed to withstand the rain and wind.
It was a mixed blessing. We were able to cultivate our land and produce many crops of various uses, our largest export being rough material for textiles. But we used the money from the sale of those items to fund the improvements to our village so that we didn't float away with the next impending storm.
They had no discernable pattern. Weeks would go by without a single drop. Then suddenly a deluge would come and it would last for days. It was a transformational time for my village – the fear of losing all we had struggled for spurred new ideas. Josel's lightning towers were excellent, but another member of the Counsel recommended we create cisterns to store the water underground.
Many went to help build and install the cisterns. Josel was one of them, and it was during the install of the last cistern that he died. His father told me that Josel had miscalculated the stability of one of the platforms and it had collapsed, crushing him beneath the pyres of metal and wood. People later told me he was killed instantly, as if that would somehow make his death easier to accept.
A piece of my soul shattered that day as I stood in my kitchen, listening to my father-in-law's choked and halting words. I knew I had lost more than the kind husband who cared for me. I had lost the ability to have the child I never fathomed I'd want, the one the Fates refused to give us. I had lost my way of life.
Within weeks I also lost my home. Josel's family never cared for me and claimed they needed to sell the home to resolve his debts, debts I was completely unaware of. Resigned to my fate, I moved back into my old room in my aunt and uncle's apartment above the store, and returned to the dreary life of shop keeping. Each night I cried for what I lost, and chastised myself for doing so. I did not want the Eyes to latch onto me in my moments of weakness and despair.
A stiff breeze could have knocked me over when I saw the man in black walk into our store again. I had not seen him for over a year and assumed him dead. I can't imagine how I appeared to him as I gaped at him from behind the counter.
He looked worse than before. The hooded robe was now patterned with holes, his clothing beneath even more crumpled and threadbare in places. His movements were droid-like, on autopilot. He gathered some foodstuffs, some basic toiletries, and a new power cord adapter. All this he brought to the counter, head down, the hood obscuring his features.
I was desperate to make eye contact, yet couldn't bring myself to do so. I fought the urge to lift that hood, to peer into those depths of blue I so fondly remembered. I was insanely curious why he wasn't dead. Had he fought the Eyes? Prudence won out in the end - I conducted his transaction in silence, bundling his purchases into two bags. He placed a handful of credits on the counter, took his bags and left.
The man in black would visit the store for supplies once every other month or so. It took time for me to speak to him directly, but as I had nothing better to do with the rest of my life, I worked up the courage. Occasionally I would get him to look up at me from under his tattered hood, and hauntingly I would confirm that he still carried the Eyes of the Damned within him.
I felt a deep sorrow for him. Death would have been better than the constant agony upon his soul. I wondered why he didn't end it all and surrender himself to the Eyes. They must be clawing their way through him, destroying him bit by bit.
Four years after I lost Josel, my aunt took ill. The growth of our village and the creation of a formal spaceport on the opposite side of the planet had brought alien things into our world. New races, new languages, new parasites and pathogens. My aunt succumbed to one of them within two weeks of exposure, and another section of my soul left with her – leaving me hollow and drained.
She was the buffer against my uncle's rash abrasiveness. She was our homemaker, doing all of the domestic cooking and cleaning of the store and the apartment above. Those chores would now fall to me, something I did not relish at all. My uncle aged years within days at the loss of his soul-companion. His once dark hair streaked to solid white. His eyes lost their glow, but the color of his aura remained. Dimmer perhaps, but still alight with greens and browns.
I suppose I aged as well, but as a confirmed widow and the token bad luck charm for the village, my appearance mattered naught to me. No one would be calling for my hand, and I now had my uncle to care for as well as the store.
Those next years were hard ones, the joy my aunt provided gone from my world. I didn't realize how much of it she brought to us until her absence made it apparent. I wondered if I would ever truly feel a love like hers again.
There was a single positive during that time – I discovered cooking. There was a science to it as well as an art. I researched off-world cuisines and learned to mix our locally grown ingredients with imported foodstuffs. We had herds of nerf on our lands now, and I experimented with their meats. Some experiments were failures. In fact many were completely inedible. In the beginning, my uncle wailed at me over the wastefulness of good food prepared poorly. His complaints lessened as my skills improved. When not tending to the store, I spent my time immersed in research, leveraging the techniques I learned from Josel on how to connect and communicate with the galaxy in order to learn different cooking methods and cuisines.
One night over dinner, I brought up the idea of creating a small tap café within the store. It did not go well. Mostly there was a great deal of yelling and banging of his fists against the table, but beneath it all was the clear fact that my uncle did not want the store to change. Ever. He and my aunt built it that way, and that's the way it would remain.
I chafed over this. The village had adapted to change and grown from it, why couldn't we? Our profit margin would be much higher if we had the additional income. Barely making ends meet was not ideal – there is a difference between surviving and thriving.
I told this in rebuttal to my uncle and his rage doubled. He proceeded to rake my character across the coals, claiming I never appreciated him or my aunt, how I always wanted more than what I had. He claimed I didn't appreciate Josel or his family, which is why they abandoned me after Josel's death and returned me here. He claimed I appreciated nothing, and it was due to the craziness in my head that both his brother and his mother were cursed with.
"It killed them, and it should have killed you by now too. It is toxic, that power you hold. It causes suffering to those around you, and if it is my lot in life to deal with it, then by the stars I will deal with it only on my terms!"
His words left me stunned, the tears frozen against my lashes. I could feel his anger in my mind, violent spikes directed towards me and everything my gift represented.
Without a word, I turned and left the dining table. In a daze I went to my room, grabbed my coat, and proceeded down the stairway to the store and finally the street. I wandered aimlessly, lost in thought. My uncle was all I had in this world, and he wanted nothing to do with me. I was a burden to him. I was a burden to our village. I tilted my head upwards towards one of Josel's lightning towers. I had accomplished little during my lifetime, contributing nothing to my family, Josel's family or my community.
I jumped in horror as an arc of lightning hit the tower I was studying; the earth-shaking boom of thunder that followed a scant second later nearly stopped my heart. Huge drops of rain began to pelt down upon me and I ran for cover under the nearest overhang. My thoughts were only of survival as I fumbled with the knob on the door nearest to me. There was a hair-raising crackle that sent my senses ablaze as I saw a brilliant flash streak by to my right. The cacophony of sound that followed it was deafening and I stumbled against the door. I had to get inside, fast.
I banged on the door, and when no one answered, ran to the next. By the fifth door I encountered a young couple that were newly settled within the village. They knew little of the rumors about me and shuffled me quickly inside. The wife was the nurturing type; she wrapped me in a towel and gave me some hot tea as we waited out the storm. The power cells within their home flickered as the storm raged on. When it became apparent that it wouldn't let up anytime soon, the couple settled me on their sofa with a pillow and blanket, and tucked themselves into their bedroom for the evening.
I held back my tears, remembering my life with Josel and how he would have wrapped his arms around me and kept me safe during such a night. I thought of my grandmother's words – to have hope. I was running out of things to hope for.
The next morning dawned clear and dry. I thanked the couple profusely and encouraged them to come and visit the store where I could thank them properly. I considered baking them something with the fresh berries that I knew would be ripe in a few days. Thoughts of crusts and berry combinations were on my mine when I turned the last corner home.
A crowd was standing around the store. Confused, I pushed my way through until I saw that the back half of the store and the upstairs apartment were in charred ruins. Instinctively I knew it was that lightning strike from the night before – the one that raised my hair and burned my teeth.
I hollered for my uncle. My father-in-law came towards me, the crowd parting to give him room.
"Where is he?"
"Jasz…" There were cold tears in his eyes as he told me about the fire. How it burned out of control, fueled by the aged insulation within the walls of the apartment. I felt the stares of the people around me, sensed their horror as I again proved their rumors and beliefs to be true.
I pushed past him and studied the remains of the store. The shelves were dripping, all the products ruined. The beautiful counter and all my aunt's decorations on the walls behind it were now a blackened, warped mess. My uncle would never again stand behind that counter, nor any counter. Nothing remained of my life or my family but ashes and ruin.
I fell to my knees, dimly hearing my father-in-law's voice as he said the Counsel would help me rebuild. That I could stay in the basement of the Counsel building until the repairs were completed. There were echoes in the crowd, full of pity and charity. Volunteers offered to help with the services for my uncle, generous souls speaking of donations of clothing and food. These people loved my uncle for his service to them, loved my aunt for the happiness she brought them. They loved Josel for his intelligence and leadership. But there was no love for me in their words. They would help because of them and them alone.
The last shred of hope I had for my life fragmented into dust. Raw emotion filled the void: fear of the future, anger at the past, hatred towards myself and what I'd become. I felt the world dim around me and I didn't care. Everything became distant, unreal. There was nothing but the tempest of emotions and me centered within them. They swirled around me in spirals, dulling my senses and bringing a welcome blindness of the world around me.
I don't recall leaving the store, but I must have done so. I don't know how long I traveled, or why I climbed the Cliffs to the Cavities, but I did and that is where I stand now, mere feet from the edge of the highest drop-off.
I am shivering from the wind howling around me. It rips at my clothing and scatters my hair into wiry tendrils that snap and sting. My mind is awhirl with blackness, my heart and soul screaming for something, anything to stop the chaos and suffering.
I take a step. The blackness in my mind deepens, urging me forward. I take another. It will be easy to do this. The pain will end and I won't be a burden to anyone any longer.
I lift my foot, dangling it over the edge, the wind whipping against the fabric of my skirt. I start to lean forward and the survival instinct within me starts to scream, warning me to stop. But the temptation is undeniable - the whispers are calling for me and I must heed their cries.
I'm shocked out of my stupor by a strong, cold hand as it yanks me back from the edge of the cliff. I'm spun around and find myself nose-to-nose with the man in black. His face has aged, the growth of his beard full and wild. His muddy hair is long and matted, peppered with grey. But the brilliant blue of his eyes has remained. I feel his gaze pierce my soul – a bond forming between us as we are both blinded and therefore connected within the Eyes of the Damned.
There is surprise in his thoughts as he recognizes me for who and what I am. I can see myself in his mind for a split second, the tattered swirls of grey that must represent my soul.
A defiant fire burns within me at the image – a white-hot surge that refuses to be ignored. The man also senses it and I feel the same flare within him.
He gently places his other hand against the back of my neck and pulls me closer to him. Slowly he lowers his head, touching his forehead to mine. I feel his light scour through my mind and my soul roars within it, refusing to be smothered any longer. It is my will to fight, my will to survive. I lean into him, pushing my forehead against his. Our hearts beat as one as I see the darkness shatter into oblivion, speared by our inferno of brilliant white.
There is a moment of emptiness, vast and hollow, a void waiting to be filled. I register it for a scant second before my body surrenders and collapses me into unconsciousness.