The original prompt on tfa-kinkmeme was
Rey and Kylo Ren have some major UST going on. Normally Luke wouldn't care, but more and more he finds himself jealous of the bond Rey shares with his nephew (and not with him). It doesn't do for Jedis (especially Jedis of a certain age, he thinks) to feel envy, but a small voice in the back of his head wishes it were him she thought about.
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For Luke's memories I used Star Wars A New Hope and the Empire Strikes Back scripts
and I'm happy to share with you a fanvid I found on youtube that portrays Luke beautifully and it helps me to write his character (Luke Skywalker - Be Somebody
by 1jonde1) watch?v=JRmRMBuYcPM
They progressed fast after that evening. Not out of a sense of impending doom. Not out of a fear that their time together would end too soon. The rhythm just felt natural to both of them. Rey was a quick learner. Luke was not bound by any rules in his teachings. There was no Academy. There were no more Jedis. Just Luke, whose mistakes weighed so heavy he had to divest himself from them or risk being paralyzed by fear of repeating them.
The second thing they found they had in common was the desert.
"How was Tatooine?" Rey asked him one morning.
They were watching the mist rise from the ocean before dawn break. Talking still didn't come easy to them. When either of them spoke, the other knew that it was important. And when one asked a question, the other tried to open up as much as possible. They were aware how much depended on the strength of their connection, yet they each were holding something back. Luke knew his secrets and could feel that she had hers. There was so much Luke wanted to share with her and yet so much he needed to keep from her.
"When I lived there, I used to think that it was the farthest planet from the bright center of the Universe. I was about your age and all I knew was how to tinker with droids and race T-16s in Beggar's Canyon. Everything was just sand as far as the eyes could see. But I miss watching the suns."
Rey allowed him to wrap himself in the memory of his innocent youth, and just when his mind was about to reach the moment when he found the corpses of his aunt and uncle, she spoke.
"I don't miss the desert. I just don't like all this water around us. It feels… wasteful."
They walked back to the temple in silence. Luke ran his hand over a shrub covered in due as they passed. He closed his eyes, letting his mind record the sensations. The girl was watching him out of the corner of her eye. He had the impulse of touching her forehead with wet fingers, like a benediction. It was an effort of will for Luke to stave the incipient affection for her. She was everything he could have asked for in a student. Or in a friend. He had renounced the Jedi training methods, but experience had taught him that one of the pillars of their faith had to stand. Attachment was forbidden.
Attachment leads to jealousy, the shadow of greed, that is.
The vivid memory of Yoda's words worried him.
He stretched the wet hand above the shrubbery and made the drops of water lift from his skin. The perfect little spheres were floating a few inches above his palm, catching the shades of the flowers in an unreal, fragmented rainbow. Rey's smile was brighter than the rising sun. She was mesmerized by the little spectacle he had created for her. Soon, as he expected, he felt her trying to participate. Her innate ability with the Force was at its best in high stakes situations and when she had to deal with massive amounts of power. She had told him about the fight with Kylo Ren and Luke had a few theories about what had happened. One of them was about the reason why the earth had opened up between them.
Since the challenge for Rey was to do the small things, Luke was hiding some of the lessons inside delightful puzzles. She often didn't even realize they were lessons until they were over.
She was making the water droplets dance in the air, even created a tiny tornado above his palm, which reminded Luke of the dust devils he would see on the dunes of Tatooine. She then paused all the drops in the air, and concentrated on only one. She pushed it with her mind towards him. Slowly, as if it weighed as much as an X-wing fighter, she guided the drop higher, closer to his face. Luke could feel her strain and knew it was caused by her difficulty to hold back the immense power at her disposal. The drop reached his forehead, just about his temple, and as soon as it touched the skin, it slid down, along his cheek and jawline.
Don't be afraid. I feel it, too.
He heard the words as clearly as he had heard Yoda's earlier. But the voice was not from any of his memories. Rey's concentration broke and all the water suspended in mid-air splashed onto his open palm.
"Sorry."
He didn't have to ask. Luke was always mindful of her, especially during lessons, and he did not miss the signature. As much as he would want to postpone the moment, they had to talk about that connection.
She took a step back, and he was proud of her for not running away.
"Rey, when you feel ready, tell me about Kylo Ren."
She almost gasped at the sound of the name. His skin definitely crawled when he uttered it. In his mind, there was always Ben and the thing that took Ben's place. Saying its name made the monster real. He was abandoning hope that Ben would return.
"You want to know about the fight again? The interrogation? About the night he burned to the ground a village on Jakku?"
He let her accusatory tone wash over him, expecting her reluctance.
"You can start with whatever you want. When you're ready," he said.
They resumed their walk. She was distracted, probably sifting memories and sensations in her mind. Luke steered their steps towards the beach. The sand was wet, but it was the only sand on the island, and more than once being there had helped his ability to focus on the past.
"You know, don't you?" she asked.
Luke shook his head.
"Just that there's something."
He sat down on a rock facing the ocean, making room for her to sit on his robe instead of the wet, moss-covered stone. To his surprise, she sat next to him, so close they were almost touching. The warmth of her young body was causing tingling all along his arm. An alien sensation for him.
"I don't know what you expect me to tell you about him. I already told you everything that happened and your memory is legendary."
His memory was legendary? Everything about him was legendary, so why not his memory, as well. He decided to nudge her along.
"Every time you mention him, I sense a wavering in the Force."
"Only when I mention him?"
"No. Sometimes when we spar."
"Only then?"
Her repeated question bothered him. He nodded, not knowing what to expect. And he waited. He was aware of her physical presence as much as he was aware of her in the vastness of the Force. He couldn't hear her breathing over the sound of the waves crashing to the shore, but he could see her chest rise and fall in an unusual rhythm.
"I don't know what happened. I don't know what it is. He's constantly on my mind. Something between a memory and a ghost. You heard him earlier, didn't you?"
Luke wondered if she thought he was spying on her. Judging by her demeanor, she wasn't upset with him. He was worried she had said "constantly". That meant that he only picked up the peaks of their… connection. In his mind, he didn't shy from the label. Rey had a connection to Kylo Ren that bypassed his abilities.
"My sister once heard me when I needed her most."
He was thinking of those moments, after he chose death instead of the dark. He remembered how much he wanted to stay alive at the end of that long slide into the unknown. He remembered calling out Ben's name before Leia's while cradling his stump, legs wrapped around that fragile weather vane, death lurking for him in the vastness of space. He looked at his metallic hand, flexing the fingers, one by one. He startled when her small hand snuck into his.
"I listened for him, you know? I was his teacher since he was a teenager. We're related by blood. But his call never came," he confessed.
The girl was now squeezing his metal hand and she propped her forehead against his shoulder.
"Why me then?" she asked, her voice muffled against the sleeve of his undertunic.
He sighed and her body shifted a little, almost snuggling next to him. The revelation of their constant connection worried him. Because there was a chance that Kylo Ren might be able to find her through it. Because he might use it to lure her to the dark side. No other reason. Not because in his self-imposed exile he had dreamed of a desert planet, with coarse sand and only one sun. Definitely not because he expected her to have this connection with him.