Wind howled incessantly, drowning out the city noise with crisp rain. Needle droplets poked at her uncovered face as her eyes scanned the street for the nearest doorway. She ducked into a nightclub and the howl of the wind was replaced with an undulating bassline and a chorus of lilting horns, while a synthetic sporadic drum beat kicked out cans of rhythm.
"You know what I'm talking about…" she stopped and glared at the elderly brown-skinned man in a purple shirt, who'd just spoken.
"You look ridiculous," she said.
The man turned from his conversation with friends to the red-haired woman standing hands on her hips beside him, a perpetual scowl etched into her face. "Mara, you say the sweetest things…"
"Zip up, Calrissian. Where's Skywalker?"
"I haven't… oh, he's right there," Lando said, pointing out to the distinguished elderly gentleman in heavy Jedi robes. A pit droid bobbled into his path, surprising him momentarily, yanking him out of complete grace in the force and sending him face first to the floor. His glass broke, and the liquid inside splashed out in all directions.
Luke jumped quickly to his feet, wiping alcohol from his robe. He turned a glancing glare at the pit droid, which fussed at him with little squeaky beeps, shaking its fist at him before storming off.
"You all right there, Luke?" Lando asked, chuckling.
Luke shook his head drunkenly. "Those drinks got right on top of me…"
"Looked like gravity got on top of you, kid!" Han said, eliciting a generous round of laughter from his friends at the table, except for Luke and Mara, who scowled at his aging face.
The ground shook, a rumbling quake, as a big green speeder crashed through the door, flying through patrons and knocking them to the ground at two hundred miles per hour. The breeze of the flying car brushed past Luke, Mara, Lando, Han, Chewbacca, and Wedge right before it smashed into the wall opposite the door.
"Ooh- tee-hee!" came a small voice at the broken door. It would have been cute, had they not all had encounters with jawas in the past.
Luke looked up at the jawa; it staggered awkwardly into a large dreadlocked wookiee behind it.
"Frirrh!" the wookiee called out, then chugged a can of carbonated booze and belched.
Luke ran, screaming out the door, followed closely by his wife and friends. Han paused and dropped five coins on the table.
The wookiee ran straight off the edge of the sidewalk and stepped smoothly over widespread molecules out into the night, the jawa close at his heels.
Luke stopped at the edge and stared after them, his lightsaber beaming and humming. He drew in a deep breath and charged out into traffic, willing himself in the force to stay afloat.
His foot did not make contact with invisible molecules. Instead he plummeted faceward to the ground, hundreds of stories below, a blazing mass of headlights and streetlights coursing like lava through the streets far below. He pumped his legs, charging himself faster to the ground furiously, calling for the force's aid. If Yoda could lift X-wings, Luke could surely lift himself, float away to safety…
He closed his eyes to the racing nightmare below, stripped away the sounds of rushing air and honking speeders that were annoyed at the plummeting pedestrian, the polluted smells of burnt fuel and manufacturing, the feeling of gravity's immense pressure shoving him to the ground, his aching muscles, once washed away there was nothing.
Silence.
He opened his eyes in the blazing binary afternoon of Tatooine, blinked to escape it, but it had already burned into his retinas. He turned his squinted gaze to the modest home dug into the sand behind him, stepped quietly down the stairs and into his aunt's kitchen.
Beru looked up at him from her chore of chopping vegetables and smiled warmly. Luke's heart stopped cold. He swallowed the lump in his throat, choked back the tears in his eyes.
"Aunt Beru…"
"Luke, you'd better get washed up for lunch."
"Where's Uncle Owen?"
"He went to find that new artoo unit and wipe its memory."
"No!" Luke shouted. "He can't do it!"
Luke sprinted upstairs to the surface just as Owen returned in the speeder, Threepio beside him staring blankly.
Owen hopped out and stalked over to his nephew, scowling. "Luke, I'm very disappointed. That artoo unit cost me a bundle. How could you let it go?"
"I didn't…"
"We've lost half a day's work already, and a damn sight more on that droid. There will be repercussions. Get this one started on the vaporators." Owen turned and indicated the lobotomized C-3PO with a nod of his head. "I'll think about your punishment over lunch."
As Owen stormed down the stairs a deep rumble picked up in the distance. Luke listened, frozen in stumbling bewilderment, until he found the source on the horizon. Blurring and spreading thin in the bent heat sunlight, a large gray mass began to rise, relocating dirt and scattering light on a whim, steadily becoming a large moon, and then the death star filled the sky, its looming laser eye staring down at Luke. His world would be destroyed in mere moments.
A wailing screech picked up in the distance, followed by quirky querulous binary chatter. A familiar brown figure sped inhumanly across the desert, closing the distance between the horizon and Luke, chased by a small white and blue astromech droid.
Luke tossed glances between the old Jedi and the large gray eye, watched in strobing slow motion the lasers, scattered mathematically around the rim of the concave planet-smashing weapon, light up and connect in the center of the amplifying dish, and then shoot out in one giant beam and cascade endlessly upon him.
Ben Kenobi whipped the saber from his belt, gripped it in both hands, turned it on and leapt supernaturally in front of Luke. With one mighty swing Jedi Master Kenobi batted the giant laser beam back to its source.
The sky exploded red, yellow supernova scorching the air, singeing towns and decimating existence on the surface beneath.
Luke stood breathless, staring at the final moments of his life, shrapnel and stormtrooper parts racing past at a thousand miles per instant, meteors of debris that shattered all they touched.
Vader's mask landed at Luke's feet, peering up at him, and he knelt to pick it up, empty shell of the once horrifying figure, now a random smattering of dust and oblivion. Luke closed his eyes and slipped on the mask.
A hissing, droning artificial breathing penetrated his ears, aided his fragile lungs in the oxidation of his force-filled cells. He pulled the saber from his belt, switched on its red-white blade and stared at if for several hours, until night fell and became the void of space, then artificial dim light inside the muted corridors of some massive floating structure.
He looked up at the advancing figure, robed in brown, beard gray and speckled white.
"You shouldn't have come here, Darth."
"Nothing is right with the universe," Luke said, but his voice boomed baritone, solid, much unlike his own. "Something needs to be done."
He reached out and clenched his gloved fist, shaking it for reasons he could not explain.
Kenobi lunged, striking for Luke in his estranged guise of perception. Luke blocked, parried, dodged, spun and struck for Kenobi's neck, but only met blue and a sinister smirk. The darkened hallways washed with blue, red, mingled-light purple and the delicately faint smell of smoldering air. The crackling barrage of glowing blades echoed languidly throughout the massive structure, drawing the attention of white-armored stormtroopers and lanky tope battle droids, all training their weapons on Luke Vader.
Kenobi smirked, a devious twinkle in his eye. Luke turned to the escaping figures of C-3PO, R2-D2, a bobbling orange frog-like bipedal creature blubbering unintelligibly behind, a man in brown robes and brown beard that could have been Kenobi twenty years before his death, a beautiful young woman in tight white pants and shirt chasing after, looking strangely similar to Leia in her facial features and physique, and a young man that looked identical to the Anakin Skywalker he'd seen in pictures. Anakin stopped and watched the old Jedi figures while the rest of them slipped into the Millennium Falcon.
In his momentary distraction Luke lost his life. Sliced in two at the chest, Luke fell wordlessly at his own feet, but still conscious he watched Anakin pull out his blue lightsaber.
"No!" the young man screamed, and swiped oncoming laser beams from the air, deflecting them back expertly to their sources until the small trooper unit became a crumpled collection of white armor on the ground. No more troopers rushed out to join them.
Kenobi advanced on the young Jedi knight menacingly, sneering and stepping ably between fallen troopers. Luke affected the force to project his voice into Anakin's mind, skipping the ears. He said, "Father please!"
Anakin looked around, searching for the voice of his old son and mentor. The froggy gungan poked out his head from the ship and shouted, "You'sa should run, Ani, run!"
Anakin turned and raced up the ramp, Kenobi close at his heels. He closed the hatch up and sank into the lounge chair beside R2 and 3PO, who challenged Queen Senator Padmé Amidala Naberrie Skywalker to a game at the checkerboard table.
"There was nothing you could have done, Luke, had you been there," Ben Kenobi said, and tossed a dead jawa to the deck floor as the ship raced out into space.
Luke's ghost form shimmered into view, startling Anakin, but unseen to the others, who continued their game. "You killed me, Ben," said the ghost. "I don't think I can forgive you for that."
"Then the empire has already won."
"No they didn't," Luke said. "We won."
"Luke, you're going to find that most of the truths we cling to…"
"I know that!" Luke hollered. "What's wrong with you?"
Kenobi plucked a helmet from the table beside him and approached Luke, gently placed it on his shimmering, bespectered head.
"Stretch out with your feelings," said the old man.
"But with the blast shield down I can't see! How am I supposed to fight?"
"You'sa eyes gonna be deceivin' you'sa," said a familiar throaty voice. "You'sa gonna trust you'sa eyes? Thassa bad omen. First you know nuttin feelings in the forcie, see only uh-llusions of grander! No way nuh-uh no how you gonna be a Jedi knight without…"
"Would you shut up?" Luke growled, yanking off his helmet.
Mara Jade loomed over him, hands on her hips, scowling, still beautiful in her twilight years. Luke picked himself up from the carpeted floor, rubbing at his suddenly throbbing eye.
"What happened?" Luke asked, his head swimming.
"I didn't hit you that hard, Skywalker," Mara said.
"You hit me?"
"I saw you with the twi'lek bimbo, Luke. You're lucky I didn't kill you."
"I don't know any twi'lek…"
Mara's fist contacted his other eye, rattling Luke's brain. He howled and shook his head to clear it, but then her foot connected with his entire face, knocking him cold before he could come to terms with the circumstances. He knew not where or when he would awake.
