A/N: Deep thanks to randomlyimagine, who let me borrow some core elements from her story «Under the Cover of Darkness». I've borrowed the following: that Luke travels back in time to the Clone Wars era, that he's imprisoned in the Jedi Temple under suspicions of being a Sith, and what Luke and Old Ben's ghost do to Obi-Wan. Her story can be found on Ao3.
Much to my misfortune, The Carnivorous Muffin suggested to me that I have the Force narrate the story and God help us all, I took it as a challenge. And since her suggestion made things so much weirder and even more religious than they were already going to be, she gets to beta this so the fic stays readable. So let's all bow deeply before the Muffin, faithful, fabulous beta as well as no good, very bad, terrible influence.
Last note - this fic adheres to Lucas films canon only.
«You were my brother, Anakin. I loved you.»
The words spoken in Obi-Wan Kenobi's voice were final, a goodbye. The blue eyes that belonged to Obi-Wan shone too brightly, alight with a fire Anakin had never seen in them.
All around them, their surroundings were blurred and uncertain, shifting, as if the stagehands hadn't been given clear instructions so they were trying several sets. One moment, they were in the Jedi temple, the next, in a dusty hovel in the middle of a dessert, and then they were on a volcanic planet, the lava mere inches from Anakin…
All of these places, and more, danced around like shadowplay while the thing standing in place of Obi-Wan, the only constant, looked into Anakin's eyes.
It had done a remarkable job impersonating Anakin's old master.
The face, the voice, even his signature in the Force…
Like a droid that had all its parts replaced with perfect replicas, the Obi-Wan before Anakin was indistinguishable from the real Obi-Wan. Certainly, Anakin knew that were anyone else to walk in on this tableau, they would not see what was so plain to Anakin.
This wasn't Obi-Wan Kenobi.
As one, they pulled out their lightsabers.
Anakin knew who the victor would be even before the deed was done.
In a swift motion, or perhaps not so swift but in a place like this there was no room for tedious detail, he sliced through Obi-Wan's neck.
Anakin's master's head rolled towards his feet, eyes wide and caught in surprise.
«I loved you,» Obi-Wan repeated, though his lips didn't move.
Anakin woke up with tears streaming down his face.
There was an unnatural occurrence in the Force.
Passing through its very fabric, pushing and cutting through the weavings of reality like a jungle, two beings clawed their way to a place they did not belong. One burned brightly with power and conviction, brighter than a star. The other was old and familiar, but dulled, like a rock in the desert that should have been ground to sand but persisted against all reason.
They were not of this time.
Their footprints in destiny stretched to the horizon, every possible outcome they could bring about spanning out before them, some clearer than others. Behind them, a single, steady, path of all the decisions made, each chosen at a particular time, sometimes with great care and other times with no thought at all. The closed paths represented all the choices not taken, every lost possibility, off to the side.
All of this, easily read and even easier to manipulate, but only to those who knew how to look.
It was so for all living things, and these two were no exception.
But the choice they had taken now was not supposed to be. The Force could see where their footprints had taken a course they shouldn't have, where they had forced a new path into existence, when they had already been provided with perfectly satisfactory lifelines.
It was foolhardy, arrogant, ignorant…
Of course, the vast majority of sentients were ignorant. Their time in physical form was spent concerned with the physical world. Only a select few ever turned their eyes away from the stage with its dazzling costumes and elaborate sets, to look behind the scenes… and even those never fully understood just what they were seeing. Oh, they could see the cogs turn and strange mechanisms at play, but their mortal coils held them back, limited their minds so they could never fully comprehend what the Force truly was.
(Well. With one potential exception. But he, too, would have to walk the right path.)
The brightest of these two souls was in the strangest middle place. He understood well enough that there was action behind the scenes ordinary audience members were unaware of, that the world was more than its material surfaces. He had power, too, extraordinary power. It would be child's play for him to go where others could not, understand the cosmos and his own place in them better than most physical beings could dream of.
But the way his mind was aligned, and his priorities organized, he never would.
No, here was a powerful beacon of raw power who loved the Force, idolized it, but did not seek to understand it.
This was why he had travelled through time.
He had the power to accomplish what others could not, but lacked the wisdom to refrain.
The other, though, the familiar shadow… he knew better. Yet, he had let old regrets overrule his better judgement.
Intriguing.
Destiny is a strange thing, a careful balance always nudged one way or the other by people, but never straying from where it's meant to go.
This time would be no different.
The Force let them pass.
On Dantooine, a bright flash appeared in the farmlands, showering the landscape in an unnatural white hue for the second it lasted. When it faded, there was a cloaked man standing in the epicenter. For a moment he seemed luminous, his brilliance in the Force visible even to those who couldn't touch it.
He breathed shakily as he looked around himself in disbelief.
«I did it,» he whispered.
The impression of an Obi-Wan Kenobi who had once been, and who still clung to himself rather than ease back into the Force as all life should, shimmered next to the man. He said nothing, taking in his surroundings as the cloaked man did the same.
Like most Obi-Wan Kenobis that had ever been and would ever be across the galaxy's many hypothetical realities, he had lived and died a Jedi, one of the last, surviving the fall of the Republic and the subsequent rise of the Sith. He had even, in a sense, defied natural death. His very soul clung to all its scattered pieces rather than allow themselves to subside fully into the Force. This was the type of unnatural use of the Force that the Jedi at times overlooked per their own convenience.
Moments before, in their own time, it had been harvest season on Dantooine, and the fields around them had been lush and green. Now they were stiff and yellow, the grass withered. Even the air seemed different, denser in a way the ghost couldn't quite place, but felt so very familiar.
It was the Force, he recognized.
It was heavy and shrouded to him, like it had been before the fall of the Jedi.
This was not to say that the Force itself had changed, or that it ever would. It was as it always was, a celestial constant expanding across all time and space, nowhere and everywhere at once.
And right now, at this point in time, the Force would keep its cards close to the chest.
The man threw his hood back and looked up at his companion with bright eyes. «Let's find out for sure,» he said breathlessly. Before the ghost could say anything in response, he sprinted towards a pair of farmers.
As he took off running, something in the joyous enthusiasm, that dauntless hope sparked recognition in the Force no matter how out of place and time the man happened to be. A name, Luke, fell into place. He shone almost impossibly brightly, in a way that only Anakin Skywalker was capable of. A bond stretched between the two of them, subconscious and weak but undeniably there. There was another connection, to a sister in the time he had come from, and her son.
All three of those people, Anakin, the sister, and the boy, were bright in Luke's mind as he approached the farmers.
They were not old, but they might as well have been. Their faces had turned to tanned leather under the Dantooine sun, and their spirits had long since resigned themselves to a lifetime of farming, with no ambition beyond serving their community.
The Force resided within them as it did every other living thing, but no more than that. The Force could sense them, but they would never sense the Force, and for the duration of their lives there would forever be an invisible wall keeping them at an arm's length. At best, they might sense a chill at the back of their neck when the air was thick with power, or they would sometimes sense a wrongness or a rightness: but they could never look further than that, never identify the feeling nor do anything about it.
«Hi there!» Luke called out.
Both men looked up at him from the tired-looking droid they'd been working on.
«Hi,» one of them said. The other just grunted, satisfied that his friend had taken care of pleasantries on his behalf.
«This might be a funny question,» Luke said, a smile lurking on his lips, «but which planet is this?»
«You don't know the planet?» the first farmer asked dubiously. In his mind, he was wondering whether he should even have bothered to reply to this fool.
The second farmer grunted sternly, not impressed by Luke's lack of geographical awareness.
Luke shrugged. «I have a terrible drinking problem, I never know where I'm gonna wake up.»
He smiled wildly at the two, positively radiating excitement. He didn't look the least bit inebriated.
«Well,» said the first farmer slowly, «You're in the outskirts of Mic Jena, in the Beoch region.» At Luke's blank stare, he continued, «Dantooine. Outer rim.» Each syllable was more punctuated than the last, the farmer's thinning patience showing.
Luke's smile kept growing. «And what do you think of the Clone Wars?»
Both farmers grunted tiredly, and exchanged a glance. «I can't see what the fuss is about,» the second one finally said. «That Dookie fellow wants out, fine, no need to tear this galaxy apart for it. Just hope we don't get invaded with those blasted droids.» His companion nodded empathetically.
Luke's very essence sparked with pure delight, so strong it even touched the farmers. They lit up, though they couldn't put their finger on what it was that made them feel so light all of a sudden. Luke spun back to Obi-Wan Kenobi's unfading footprint in the fabric of the universe. «I did it! Ben, I did it!» he exclaimed.
«Back up a moment,» Anakin Skywalker said. The air around him was clouded in incredulity. «He said he's travelled back in time? Time travel?»
(Here's something the Jedi do not fully understand about the Force: the Force exists in everything, and it is stronger in some things than in others. This extends to people as well.
Oh, the Force is in everything and everyone, and gives them all life, but it exists more in some people than in others.
And it exists in no one so much as Anakin Skywalker.
The Force congregates around him, revolves a part of itself around him, follows his every step and guides his next, and is always intimately aware of him. Where most sentients, even those sensitive to the Force, have their physical form imbued with the Force, the heavy and cloying matter obscuring the Force like leaves filter out the sunlight, Anakin's human body is like a transparent veil. There to give his indomitable power form to interact with the world, just enough to convince the material world and Anakin himself of his humanity, when in fact the power within shines so brightly that the body is only there to serve as a vessel.
Anakin shines brighter than any sentient ever has or ever will, brighter than any planet or artefact.
If the Force could love, it would love Anakin Skywalker.)
Currently, Anakin was staring at Mace Windu, his face stricken as he turned the news over in his head.
Time travel was impossible.
Those sensitive to the Force could get a taste of pasts and presents, real and hypothetical, but never more than that. Time propelled them mercilessly forwards, one moment passing into the next and leaving the last behind.
What Luke Skywalker had done should have been impossible, and Anakin knew this. His immediate thought was to doubt the mystery man's story, but…
The Force had let Sidious obscure it to most, but not all. Not to Anakin.
With a sinking feeling, Anakin felt the veracity in the time travel story, accompanied by a creeping sense of foreboding.
But Anakin did not say anything, as he had learned not to after Shmi's cruel passing, and the Jedi Council remained unaware of what the Force had imparted unto its favorite.
Windu nodded somberly. «That's not all, Skywalker.» His face was disapproving, as if whatever else the mysterious man apprehended on Dantooine had said was somehow Anakin's fault.
(And what a way to be apprehended, too.
In his own time, Luke was a hero of the galaxy, always using the Force for the most daunting of miracles and heroics. He brought this with him to this new era, and had with the power of his mind and an outstretched arm steadied a space shuttle that was headed towards a rough landing. He took control of its trajectory, and put it gently down so no one inside was hurt.
It was noble, but had attracted a lot of attention, in a time when the outer rim did not want Jedi nonsense in their business, and the Jedi did not want foreign Force users.
This suited Luke rather well, as meeting the Jedi had been his priority. Being shipped straight to their Coruscanti temple made things a whole lot easier for Luke.
«The Force is with us,» he'd said to his ghostly companion, and he had not been wrong.
The Force wanted Luke Skywalker in that temple.)
Obi-Wan Kenobi reached out from where he was sitting in his Council chair to his friend in the Force, a reassurance passed through the air, as palpable to the two sensitives as a squeeze of the hand. Anakin shot him a look. The fact that whatever Windu was about to say next was something that Kenobi felt Anakin needed reassurance for was the opposite of reassuring.
«The man introduced himself as Jedi Master Skywalker.»
Anakin blinked, his shock nearly tangible to the others in the room. «But I'm not a master,» he said lamely, as soon as it became clear that they were all waiting for him to say something.
They were silent.
The Force sensed Anakin's fleeting desire to claim this must be some other Skywalker, before he decided against it. There was no other Skywalker, the name as unique as its bearer, and Anakin knew this.
«So some guy is running around claiming he's a Jedi,» Anakin continued, «and he chose my name. Then he got his titles confused.»
«Why is that my problem?» went unsaid.
It was hardly the first time someone, usually a criminal, claimed to be a Jedi. It wasn't even the first time someone had borrowed Anakin Skywalker's irresistibly romantic name. Most times it was to seduce women, though. Anakin had yet to decide how he felt about that.
«Not quite,» Windu said slowly, watching Skywalker's face closely. «The man said he was your son.»
Anakin sputtered. «Son? As in- my son?» his face scrunched up as he worked through what Windu had said. «So, this guy's story is that at some point in the future, my son, because apparently I have a son in the future, becomes a Jedi master, and then he travels back to now?» He was getting redder and redder in the face as he thought it all through.
The Force sensed anxiety rise as his mind turned to Padme Amidala before it abruptly turned away from her again, as if he feared Windu would somehow pick her, along with the whole, sordid, tale of his secret marriage, out of his mind.
Windu nodded. «That is the gist of it, yes. Well, it was, he changed the story.»
Anakin's confusion rose along with his eyebrows. «Well, whose son is he now?»
Anakin was only half joking, but Windu was not amused. «He says he's a Sith apprentice,» he replied tersely.
Anakin's eyes went wide, and he was speechless for a moment. Finally, he said, «I promise I don't know anything about this, masters,» he looked around the room, at Windu's thunderous, yet impassive face, and Kenobi's gentle concern, «I want to be of help, if there's something I can do, I will, but-» he paused, and finally took a breath. «Do you already have a plan for me?»
Windu leaned forwards in his seat. «The man is on his way to Coruscant as we speak, he'll arrive tomorrow morning. We'll take a sample to see if he's a match for your genetics-»
«You believe that nonsense?» Anakin shouted.
«Temper, Skywalker,» Windu chided.
Anakin still didn't look appeased, but Kenobi cut in before he could say anything.
«We know you're not at fault for this,» the older Jedi said quickly. He shot a quick look at Windu in apology for taking the word. «But we don't know anything about this man, or where he's from, but of the entire Jedi order, he chose to use your name.»
Windu nodded. «There's no sign of the dark side in him. Master Shaak Ti is with him, and so far as she could tell the man is firmly with the light, and quite powerful at that. And he has received training in the ways of the Force.»
Anakin caught on. «You want me to talk to him,» he said.
Windu nodded. «He'll be put in a holding cell, but we want you to interrogate him. Master Shaak Ti has spoken with him already, and his belief that you are his father appears to be sincere.»
«You want me to pretend to be some insane guy's father?» Anakin shook his head. «Look, I-»
«Just talk to him, Skywalker.» Windu stated in a tone that brokered no argument.
Heavy discomfort lodged itself in Anakin's throat, making it difficult to breathe, let alone speak. After a moment of deliberation, and another look at Obi-Wan Kenobi, he gave a half-nod. «Alright,» he whispered. «I'll do my best.»