Food was going to be a problem. A big one.
Luke was hungry, already. He had three ready meals and four nutrient bars as provisions. Heck, on Hoth he'd eat all that in one day.
He looked around. There was life, a great deal of it. Things that were edible, maybe, but things that took a bit of work until they got to that point.
He'd never been an outdoors man. On Tatooine, such a concept didn't really exist, unless one was crazy or a Tuskan Raider.
That's all there was on Dagobah, apparently- the outdoors. Luke saw things that flew, leaped, or slithered. He knew things swam under the water, because something swallowed and spat out R2. He'd caught a glimpse of a gleaming, arching black back. In his mind he discovered a new species, the Skywalker Swamp Monster, but he knew he wasn't being fair. He was just projecting his fear and terror on it. Maybe it wasn't violently carnivorous; maybe it had just been curious.
He had emptied the emergency repair crate from the ship and found a tarp, which he would use to sleep on, at least tonight; a generator, which served to charge up R2 and provide a little light, and which would not last long, unless he found fuel for it; and tools. Wire nippers, a soldering iron, a spanner, and a screw driver. No knife. No tow cable to haul the half-submerged X-Wing out of the mud. No swamp drainer.
Luke really hadn't wanted to return to the X-Wing. At all. Only if he were able to lift off and find a more suitable place to land. Or more likely, he thought honestly, if it were possible to get the ship out, he might lift off and turn coward, just keep rising up and leave; let Ben and this Yoda find another way to reach out to him. It would serve them right. He was angry at his predicament and wanted someone to blame; anyone.
I'm stuck, Ben, he sent rebellious thoughts to his dead mentor. Fine, maybe there's a Yoda here and maybe in fifty years I'll be a master. Then what? I sure as hell can't do anything about your evil pupil while stuck in the mud.
Maybe Ben would send Vader here.
Well, shit.
From what Luke understood of Ben that was totally within the realm of possibility.
Darth, Ben would call Vader- because like Han Ben would equalize by disrespecting a title- the future of the galaxy is on Dagobah, stuck in the mud. If you would like to change the future, why don't you go there and see if you can defeat him?
"You're lucky you're made of metal and duroplast," he told R2, thinking he might as well start talking to the droid even though he couldn't understand its responses. He'd be crazy in a month anyway, half -starved and hysterical, "or else I might eat you."
He could start a fire. That was something. And he had a blaster and his lightsaber. So he could kill- hunt- something, and cook it. But he couldn't skin it.
Thunder rumbled overhead. Great, now it was going to rain. He should probably grant himself permission to eat something. It was hard to stay focused with an empty stomach. When was the last time he ate anyway?
Thunder rumbled again and R2 whimpered worriedly.
Breakfast, on Hoth. When he was still in recovery. He could see it now, so real, realer than anything he looked at here. His discarded meal tray on the bedside table. He'd enjoyed the eggs, meat, and the roll, but he had left the grains portion uneaten. It was not popular. Everyone called it chaff.
Oh, if he could just go back… he'd finish that chaff. And he would tell Leia about his vision, not tuck it inside him like it was something to be ashamed of. She would help him pack, make sure he brought a case of nutrient bars. And she would arrange for a care drop in a few weeks' time on Dagobah, maybe even show up herself…
Oh, Leia. What have I done?
Would anyone ever find him? He could picture himself after a month's time here, his clothes in tatters, hair matted, chomping on a limb of something and spitting fur out of his mouth, ranting about roots trying to trip him.
That was his greatest fear, even greater than starving to death- that he was stranded.
Han knew to look for him here, but Han was probably dead by now. And Ben- Luke heard, or dreamed or was dying, saw Ben's glowing blue form- Ben was the one who sent him here. If it was a vision.
In the morning he would explore some more, he decided. Find some dry wood for a fire. Vines and saplings for a shelter. Maybe he'd come across some berries, or nuts, and sampling them wouldn't poison him.
He had no idea how to commence a search for this Jedi Master, this Yoda. Everything was wet, and wild; dark with a dense fog. Black branches or roots were hidden from view until the fog decided to reveal them.
"Strange place to find a Jedi master," he mentioned to R2, who whistled back gently.
He might as well surrender now. He opened the tin and selected a nutrient bar. Just one. He needed discipline.
"This place gives me the creeps," Luke told R2, and it was the truth. He'd never been in a place like this, full of mystery and things unseen. He kept turning his head, on the lookout for worms or insects, and felt life approaching.
"Still," he continued to R2, suddenly missing Chewbacca. If Chewie were with him, Luke wouldn't feel bad at all being the weak one. He would run and climb and live on the Wookiee's shoulders, protected and calmed. Chewie knew how to be wild, and he would establish himself on Dagobah on top of the food chain, and somehow Luke envisioned if he ate well, then his hair would be groomed and his clothes wouldn't tatter.
Something was behind him, something curious, not threatening. Slowly, Luke reached for his blaster. Dinner, Luke thought. Might as well start now. Sorry little thing. I've got to eat. He babbled to R2 some nonsense, thinking to not let the creature know he was aware of it. "I feel like..." Luke said vaguely.
"Feel like what?"
Luke whirled, his blaster pointing at a green, small being cowering on a stump. "Like we're being watched," he said triumphantly.
It spoke Basic, which astounded Luke. He'd heard lots of noises so far today, but nothing that resembled a language, at least to his ears. His sensors had not picked up any technology or civilization, and hadn't Han told him it wasn't colonized? So how did Basic spread here?
Luke guessed it was elderly, and male, and a mammal, because it had a scattering of gray hair on top of its head.
"I am wondering," the green being said in a gruff voice, "why are you here?"
If Luke was going to hunt it, he needed to act now. But he couldn't bring himself to shoot the being. It spoke Basic. It would be nice to be able to have someone to talk to, someone who could help him.
The being's hands and feet had curved and thick, wide nails. It seemed more like a body suited for a mountainous terrain. One couldn't swim well with hands like that. Or climb trees. Or keep out of the mud.
Luke felt himself relax and he reholstered his blaster. "I'm looking for someone," was the only explanation he offered.
"Looking? Found someone you have, I would say!" and the green being burst out in laughter and hopped down to explore Luke's campsite.
In a few moments, Luke was ready to strangle this new neighbor and risk chancing the swamp without any help. R2 and- Greenie, for lack of a better name- got into a tug of war over a light and Greenie actually hit the droid repeatedly with is walking stick. He also put his green lips on Luke's ration bar before tossing it away carelessly, as if there were plenty of food in the swamp.
"Hey," Luke protested angrily. "That's my dinner!" It was a precious commodity to him, more so than the contents of the emergency repairs crate Greenie was throwing into the swamp. Maybe it wasn't too late to shoot Greenie, after all. There was no time like the present to learn to hunt, and Luke's provisions had just gone down by one.
"You're making a mess," he grumbled as he cleaned up a transmission belt only to have a spanner land by his feet. Why he was reining in his temper he had no idea. Maybe lessons Aunt Beru had taught him took hold, even when he wanted to snap and chase Greenie away. Han would have shot him already, and Chewie would have built the fire to cook him. Leia would try and sweet talk Greenie into coming back another time, when she was more rested.
Luke shook his head. Thinking of his friends, knowing how they'd react, made this whole experience seem so unreal. Maybe I'm still having a vision, he thought to himself. I'm still in the survival shelter and this is just one long, bad dream.
"Stay and help you I will," Greenie insisted. "Find your friend."
Greenie looked up at Luke with wide brown eyes. His ears were mobile and he didn't seem to take anything seriously. He kept making odd noises, chuckles or grunts. Moments earlier Luke despaired at being the only intelligent life on this planet, and now he just wanted to be left alone.
Losing patience, Luke snapped, "I'm not looking for a friend. I'm looking for a Jedi master." He wore a challenge in his eyes, he knew it. There's bigger things here than you know, little fellow. That is, if I'm not dreaming.
Greenie's expressive ears raised and his face shone with wonder. "Yoda," he marveled to Luke, as if it were a coincidence. "You seek Yoda."
Luke squatted in front of Greenie. "You know him?" It was a coincidence. But surely a Jedi master would be known to the beings here. Even Old Ben, living like a recluse and a hermit, was known all over parts of Mos Espa.
"Take you to him I will." Greenie burst out in his odd laughter again, and Luke wondered just what was so funny. "Now, we must eat. Come, good food." Greenie hobbled away, beckoning with the small light he had appropriated from Luke.
Eat, Luke heard. Good food. He didn't even care if it was good. As long as it was food. "R2," he decided, "stay and watch over the camp."
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Greenie's home surprised Luke. It nestled in the hollow of a huge tree, and was supported by roots buttressing it from outside. Greenie had smoothed the interior with mud that had dried smooth over time. A small fire blazed in a pit, and Luke saw earthenware dishes that had a crude yet artistic execution. Gathered plants hung from the ceilings, and Greenie's bed had a woven brown blanket. Luke rubbed the blanket between his fingers, thinking of Ben, and asked, "are you a native of this place? How long have you lived here?"
"My home, this is," Greenie acknowledged.
Outside it was raining, but it was warm and dry in Greenie's abode, and Luke felt badly for R2, standing outside and getting dripped on.
"Why can't we go see Yoda now?" Luke asked for the third time.
"Patience," Greenie cautioned, and Luke scowled. How many times had he heard that? "For the Jedi it is time to eat, too."
Maybe he had better food, Luke thought ungratefully as he sampled from a pot that hung over the fire.
All Greenie talked about was eating. And food, and patience. If Yoda was here, Luke wanted- needed- to see him. Now. It meant everything, and suddenly food meant nothing. It meant he hadn't been hallucinating; the vision had been real. Yoda was here! It meant he would study the Force, he would be a Jedi. He wasn't crazy. This was real.
Was Greenie crazy? That was a possibility, wasn't it? Cheerful and childish, all he wanted to do was eat. Didn't he see how important this was?
Was Greenie even real? If Luke had had one hallucination, then it stood to reason he could have more. And he'd been dying when he saw Ben. Maybe Luke was dead… maybe when the X-Wing crashed in the swamp and Luke sat waiting for his brain to tell him it was alive, maybe he had died, and was.. or he was dying, and this was another hallucination…
Luke looked down at his bowl, the color of mud. Mud. Everywhere, mud. His hands looked real. The substance in his bowl, thick and brown and green, the colors of Dagobah. Dagobah- he was looking at Dagobah from… from Death… he was dead...
But he could taste. And smell. And feel the wet of rain. He had to know. "I just don't understand why we can't see Yoda now," he said again. Just tell me already. Am I dead? Tell me I'm not dead.
Greenie finally showed some polite interest in his guest and asked why he sought the teachings of Yoda.
"Because of my father, I guess," Luke said, though suddenly he was no longer sure. Because of Ben, he realized. True, his father had been a Jedi, but he never knew that; it was Ben who told him when Luke sought to bring him Leia's message. Luke was Force-sensitive, again a fact of which Ben had informed him, only then. And because of Owen and Beru, killed so brutally, destroying any ties he had to his homeworld.
"Powerful Jedi," Greenie observed, cutting into Luke's thoughts.
Luke stared at Greenie. He is crazy, he thought. Why would there be Jedi here? This place was a swamp. A gods-forsaken, ugly, swamp. A place where beings came to die, or become crazy muttering hermits.
It was dry, and there was food, but Luke was not going to tolerate anyone making suppositions about his character just because they were crazy. Or he was dead. Then he certainly was not going to put up with it. Gentle lessons of Beru fled, and any diplomacy he had learned at Leia's side vanished also.
This is ridiculous, he thought. A little green creature pretends he knows everything just because he knows a Jedi master. His food doesn't even taste good. I should be finishing setting up camp. I should be figuring out am I alive, or dead, or -"I don't even know what I'm doing here," he yelled, throwing his spoon back in the bowl. "We're wasting our time!"
He immediately regretted his outburst. He seemed to have hurt Greenie's feelings. Greenie turned his back to Luke and sighed. Luke watched the little hunched form, about to offer an apology, an excuse, look, I think I've gone insane, I'm sorry…
But he heard Greenie say in an entirely new voice. "I cannot teach him."
More crazy, Luke started to think, but then Greenie seemed to speak in Ben's voice. "He will learn."
Luke's mouth dropped open as realization struck. "Yoda," he whispered, looking at Greenie in an entirely new light.
Greenie- Yoda, Luke corrected, and Ben continued to talk together. This was the test, Luke understood. All this time when he thought he was tested, on Ord Mantell, on Hoth, he wasn't. Now was the time.
He wasn't dead. He wasn't crazy. Neither was Greenie. Greenie was Yoda.
This was the test! Luke was so angry. Gods- He passed a hand through his hair. Why didn't they, or Ben, just-
They were still testing him, talking quietly. Luke, Yoda was telling Ben, was too old. Too old?! Acting like Luke couldn't be trained, should be sent on his way. I am stuck here, Ben! he reminded his mentor.
He didn't understand. He kept glancing at the ceiling, looking for Ben's shimmering light. Was this just Ben's idea to bring Luke here? Had he not informed Yoda he was sending Luke? How could there be an option, Luke wanted to shout at him, you will or won't train me?
Yoda was jabbing him painfully in the shoulder with the walking stick, arguing with Ben. "Never his mind on where he was." Another jab. "What he was doing."
"But I've learned so much," Luke entreated, thinking I know, Uncle tried so hard with me, he did.
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He slept in Yoda's hut, warm and dry. He ate stew grown crusty and thick in the morning, still in the pot over the constant fire. Yoda added more water to the pot and threw another branch in the pit and they walked to the camp site to fetch Luke's belongings and bring it to the hut.
His training began.
"Run," Yoda said. Luke wore his bag over his shoulders and Yoda sat in it, his thick nails gripping the muscle under Luke's arms tightly.
"Run?" Luke questioned.
"Run!" Yoda barked.
He ran. Then he climbed. And swung. He waded and vaulted.
That was day one.
He returned to Yoda's hut, sore, filthy and exhausted. He washed his orange flight suit in the muddy swamp water, and put on the undershirt and khaki pants of the snow uniform, ate some more stew.
"Are Jedi vegetarians?" he asked.
"Why ask you this?"
Luke showed the contents of his spoon to make his point. "We're eating leaves."
"You eat leaves. My diet, this is," Yoda said defensively.
"But the Force is made by living things."
"A great variety of life there is," Yoda told him. "I knew a Jedi, only fish he ate. Become ill, he would, if his diet changed."
"But if you take a life-"
"All the same it is. The dead, the living. A leaf or a fish."
Luke finished his stew and pondered this, but all he got out of it was the Force was full of contradictions. He fell right to sleep.
"Run," Yoda said on the second day.
On the third day, after Yoda said "run," Luke was too sore to start.
"When will we do something else?" Luke had asked to try and get out of running. "Use the Force."
"The Force is running," Yoda answered sternly. "Breathing it is. Living."
"Ben covered my eyes with a shield and had me block a remote's shots with my saber on my first lesson with him."
"So sure are you to greet the Force in all you do?" Yoda pointed over Luke's shoulder. "Then swim."
"I can't swim," Luke said quickly, not wishing to enter the dark swamp water and meet an unseen occupant.
"Then ready are you not to do something else."
The days were monotonous, wearying, and Luke lost track of time. He spent it in physical activity.
Yoda was a different teacher than Ben. Ben was gentle, sharing awe with a student who embraced the Force.
Ben trusted the Force, trusted the student with the Force. He guided and encouraged.
Yoda was demanding and exacting, all vestiges of childish Greenie gone. He didn't encourage, but observed without comment a student's progress. Luke wasn't yet comfortable with his Master. He felt he was allowed to live with him, allowed to study; not yet allowed to share his thoughts.
At first Luke didn't see any changes in the way he behaved or thought. But one day his stiffness worked itself pleasurably out when he started moving, and he found he was not tiring. There was confidence in movement, power. One didn't just get around; one used the air, the wind; height and obstacles, and it all came to him in a flash of instinct.
"What learned have you?" Yoda finally spoke after a thoroughly enjoyable day of running and leaping.
Luke steadied his breathing, stalling for time. The question had the definite aura of a test. Specifically, he hadn't learned anything. Yoda was always silent, a weight on his back, as Luke performed his exercises. He had learned, anyway, to not answer the question with "we do the same thing every day."
He had said that once to Beru, the Force presence on one of his many visits to his kitchen to talk with Ben, and his uncle and father. He had complained that his father only talked about Darth Vader and Ben his father. "You say the same thing all the time," he told them, and Beru had shown him the door and closed it in his face.
So, Luke concluded, I am not answering, which means I've changed, which means I've learned. "I've learned," he said slowly, "that," he paused again, not wanting to blow it,"that I can't let my… that how I think isn't really what is. That I can't let my expectations, or fears, cloud my judgment. That I need to strip everything down to what is." He looked up at Yoda, the amazement of the truth on his face. He smiled for the first time since landing on Dagobah. "I got all that from running."
Yoda was non-congratulatory as always. "Took you twelve days to learn that it did." He pointed to the swamp and nodded. "Swim," he directed.
Luke's lips parted and his eyes darted involuntarily to a section of swamp. He rose, moving slowly. Yoda wanted him to swim, when he knew Luke couldn't. When he knew I told him I couldn't, he corrected. Which means I can.
He took off his boots, watching the water carefully for ripples of movement. He was going to swim, he knew it, but still thought meeting Skywalker's Swamp Monster might earn him a mouthful of water.
Oh, gads, Luke shivered, but the mud had the most disgusting texture. It oozed through the spaces between his toes and he knew he was disturbing mollusks. He walked out up to his shins, feeling branches, slimy weeds. I seek the water, he told the swamp, and when the water reached his thighs, squatted down and pushed forward.
Yoda wouldn't let him drown, Luke was pretty sure. He didn't know what to do, but Yoda sat where he had left him, gripping his walking stick and watching intently. Luke's feet left the ground and his belly touched the mud, his face disappearing from the surface. He clawed forward, using the mud, then moved his arms and legs with the momentum, and before his belly touched the mud moved his arms and legs again. He repeated this, until he found a rhythm and he no longer needed to rely on the bottom. Soon though, there was a tightness in his chest, a limiting of his time underwater. He pawed through the water upwards, and was completely surprised to find he'd broken past the water's surface, and was breathing air.
He started to sink again, and took a breath, turning around and noting Yoda's location to return to him. He swam back, underwater.
He stood dripping before Yoda, steam rising off his tank top, happy, with himself, with his place in the galaxy, for the first time in his life.
Yoda plucked leeches off Luke's feet. "Edible, are these."
"Oh, I'm fine with leaves, thanks."
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"Master Yoda," Luke said, checking his rear for more leeches, "you haven't asked me for news." He stood drying off before Yoda's cooking fire.
Twelve days, Yoda had mentioned, since Luke arrived. Luke thought of Han and Leia several times a day. Some day, he wouldn't, he knew. Beru and Owen had disappeared from his thoughts, except occasionally. But Leia was not dead; he wouldn't let Han be unless he knew for sure, and he found himself striking up imaginary conversations with them. Han, how can I make the vines strong enough to pull an X-Wing? Leia, I wish you could see the way the wind blows rain over the swamp. It's a cloud of drops, and it's beautiful.
If Luke were here twenty years and a stranger arrived, he knew he would almost attack the visitor: I need to send a message, he would plead urgently, wringing his hands, the desire to hold a comm so desperate. Tell me, is Vader defeated?
"News?" The Jedi Master was tearing mushrooms up with his strong fingers. He told Luke a human digestive system could handle them. How he would know that, Luke had no idea. Either a human had visited here before, or the Force was full of trivial information.
Luke slept over gathered mosses covered by his tarp on Yoda's earth floor. His duffel lay empty there, next to his muddy and wet boots, ready to hold Yoda for the next lesson. The rest of the contents, his clothes, the data board, and the Falcon's security camera, lay atop the tarp. R2 stayed outside.
"Are you in touch with someone?" Luke asked. "Does anyone contact you with news of what's been going on?" He was thinking of Leia, of letting her know he was alive, of how much he missed her, how much he wanted to tell her.
"No news have I." Yoda hobbled into the cooking area with his walking stick.
"Oh. Aren't you curious? Do you know there's a war going on?"
"A war there was when arrived here I did." He scraped the mushrooms off a plate into the stew pot. "And know more I need not; I see the dark side for what it is."
"And yet, you're not retired," Luke said, not asking. "You feel it important to train me."
"End, should wars," Yoda said.
"You really think I can help?" Luke stirred the stew pot for Yoda. It was the same stew, day in and day out. Yoda just added more water and things to it, but to Luke it was a spring, the magically replenishing stew.
"Yes."
"How?" Luke saw Yoda wasn't going to answer. He had a way of pretending he didn't hear the question. He would walk away. Or he may simply tell Luke, "no questions." This time Yoda just sighed.
"Are there more like me?" Luke asked. "Force-sensitive?"
"Answer that yourself, you can," Yoda said.
Luke nodded. "There are. I bet there are a lot. There's got to be." He leaned forward. "Why me? Why only me? Why not a whole-"
"Feel the Force, can Vader. And Palpatine-"
"Palpatine,too?"
"-Feel it, they can, when used it is. When by many, noticeable that would be."
That didn't really answer Luke's question, but Yoda's answer prompted a new thought. "Can a Jedi- can someone like me," he altered his question at Yoda's glare, "use the Force, to," Luke struggled, "to contact anyone? Or feel them? Somehow? Be able to think of them and be brought to them."
Yoda regarded Luke, and at first Luke thought he would be scolded for thinking too far ahead, for not keeping his mind on where he was. But he expression was kindly, and his ears moved back. "Friends you miss," he concluded.
Luke nodded eagerly. "Yes. Can I show you?" He got up to get his image recording device and activated it. He flicked through pictures of cantinas.
"Why collect you holos of drinking establishments?" Yoda wondered. "A silly hobby that is."
Luke smiled as he moved through the file of landscapes. "It was a joke." His lips kept smiling past landscapes. "For a friend. Here, him. That's Han." Luke touched his finger to the screen.
Yoda merely grunted.
The picture was of Han standing with a group of people they had met on Leia's human cosmography tour. Luke couldn't remember where. They all held a flask, gathered around a small, high table. Looking among themselves, and at Han, their visitor, in the midst of a laughing conversation. Han was near the end, his half-empty flask in one hand, and he was the only one looking directly at the camera. At Luke.
Wry and rangy, the sight of Han hit Luke in the gut. He lingered over the picture a moment, at the scar on Han's chin that caused his mouth to angle upwards, at the eyes, dark in this picture, full of mocking awareness. It was a clarifying moment, how Han was in the picture, but also he wasn't. Joking, drinking, talking; physically present, yet some consciousness sent him out, beyond. To Luke.
"He helped me get here," Luke commented distantly, staring at Han and wondering how he was. Would the galaxy feel different, he mused, if Han's presence was gone? Would he know? He kept swiping at the screen, lost in time, Yoda forgotten, moving holos, moving moments aside. "This is Chewbacca," Luke stopped to show Yoda Chewie with a bandage on his chest, seated in the copilot's chair. "He's a Wookiee."
"The mighty Chewbacca," Yoda said.
"Yeah," Luke agreed, then turned his head sharply at Yoda, marveling at the accuracy of the assessment. "He is. Were there Wookiee Jedi?"
"Mm, yes."
"That's," Luke flicked quickly past C-3PO, "well, a droid."
"Attachments, you have. Many."
Luke nodded quickly, ignoring Yoda's comment. "This is the one. Leia. She's how the whole thing started. She sent a message in R2 to Ben. She was a Senator-"
"Senator, was she?"
"-working with her father in the Rebellion. But I got the message instead. Me and Han saved her and helped bring about the Rebellion's first real victory. And Chewie." Luke stopped. Almost three years of life summed up in a few sentences. It felt shallow. Instead of the message and the Rebellion, Luke preferred to go on about Leia. The way she was hard, yet soft; the way she fought everything, love and war. The way she looked in the pictures, her eyes luminous and gentle.
"She's the one I'd like to..." Everything, Luke thought. Comm her, invite her here, calm her. "...touch somehow." Yoda, he saw, was unmoved. "Don't you miss everyone you worked with?"
"Miss them, I do not." Yoda turned his hand up, and Luke noticed pieces of mushroom. "The Force have they. Have they become."
"But," Luke objected, then shut his mouth. Stripped, for what is. "Someone told me"- was it Rieekan or Han? "- Force-sensitive children left their families very early on." Stripped, Luke realized, of love and family. To form a new family.
Luke was too old, Yoda thought. He wasn't stripped. "I wouldn't be who I am without them," Luke looked down at the image of Leia on his image recorder. "I'd be blank."
Yoda grunted. "Not blank. Open, to the Force."
"But," Luke objected again. He couldn't let this go. He couldn't let Leia go, or Han. "The Force is created by life, and life is more than... than a heart beat. It's experiences. I would think you'd be strong with the Force, if you've lived."
"Strong are you." Yoda was looking at Luke as if he hadn't seen him before, his ears expressing apprehension and resentment.
"You'd rather I not know my aunt or uncle?" Luke faced his master defiantly. Not have a stuffed bantha, or a Skyhopper, or be punished when Luke didn't do his chores. "Not see how they died?" For it was Ben, and Leia and R2 who caused their deaths. "Would the Force have changed their outcome?"
"Not the Force. Only you, and the Senator."
Luke's eyes glittered with anger. "You can't blame me. Or her. That's wrong. " He rose and stepped out of the hut, into the evening rain. R2 whistled a greeting, and wobbled on two of his feet, a demonstration he was glad to see Luke. His whistle called Luke, sit with me so Luke dropped to the ground and leaned his back against his droid.
Leia, he thought. Are you there? He waited a moment, until an image of her arose in his mind, Leia in white, of Hoth, bathed in a quiet blue light. She sat alone, deep in contemplation.
Leia, it's me, Luke. I'm here. I see you. I'm fine. Just know I'm fine.
A feeling... from her? An image, a picture. Luke tried harder, but he could't place Han as easily as he could Leia. It was like Han was a projection from Leia.
Stars out the viewport, and Han was surrounded, and no one looked at her, except him. His gaze was intent on her.
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AN: The only drawback to a Luke POV story is we will have to miss Han and Leia's trip to Bespin. Good thing he has the Force! FYI I'll be posting a story called "Continuum", tomorrow maybe, which was written earlier than this one, but seems to tie in as a nice companion piece to this story, so I've held on to it.
Thank you for all the support and reviews. It means the galaxy!