As I stated before I started writing this before Episode III had actually come out. So it is not entirely coherent with it, but a lot of it is. Thanks for reading.
Fifty-seven Years into the Future
Fifteen-year-old Ben Skywalker froze as he felt the void in the Force, his eyes widening in sudden fear that was squashed by the need to remain calm and find his father. They had been living on the uncharted moon of Nadoran at the edge of the known galaxy. One of the few areas that the Yuuzhan Vong had not occupied completely and had yet to comb through the citizens looking for slaves to fill the coral-patches.
Ben's father, Luke Skywalker, believed that they were the only two Jedi left in the galaxy. The Force was a tranquil pool in which only their signatures disturbed the waves. His father had commented a number of times that it felt very much like his early days as a Jedi, the last of an Order that had once held thousands.
Working as farmers, Ben and Luke had been on Nadoran for just short of a season. There had been no need to separate, since the Force was a blight in the sight of the Vong and Ben had been grateful for his father's guiding presence in a frightening world. If it had not been for his father, Ben would have despaired long ago. He could not see a way past this disaster, yet his father clung to hope and was a tether for his son to hold to while the galaxy became a torrent of violence.
He burst into their quarters, where he had left his father to rest after a long day in the fields, not
surprised to find his father waiting for him. It was physical pain to see how old Luke had become. His father was strong in the Force, but age and war had gnarled away at him, causing him to appear older then his nearly sixty years. Ben knew with a tight twist of his stomach that if the Yuuzhan Vong were to discover them, his father would not survive the battle.
"The ship is preped," Luke said by way of greeting, grabbing his son's shoulder and leading him to the small docking port that housed their two man cruiser.
Ben nodded, gathering his thoughts, searching his mental star chart for the nearest, and safest,
system. "I wasn't able to get the supplies. They shut down the markets."
"Customary procedure when the Vong are in atmosphere," Luke assured him, though Ben was well aware of the Yuuzhan Vong's 'procedure'. His mother, Mara, had been swept away and killed in one of their slave hunts. "There'll be enough."
That stopped Ben in his tracks, forcing Luke to pause as well. "What are you talking about? We
have meager rations for one person let alone two."
Luke drew a steadying breath and gazed at his son intently. The younger Skywalker wanted to run away from that gaze. "I'm not going with you," he answered evenly.
"But..." and it was like all other capability to speak had been siphoned off, his throat constricting, his breath coming out in irregular gasps.
"Ben listen to me. iYou/i have to survive. I don't have the strength left to do what is necessary. iYou/i do," his father explained, grasping Ben's shoulders for emphasis.
Ben fought the urge to break away from his father's grip. He couldn't listen to this, he couldn't bear it What would he do without his father? Where would he go? "If this is about the supplies, I'll go into a hibernation trance, you can have the rations."
"This is exactly what I mean, Ben," Luke argued. "You will share with me everything you have and it will only spare me for a small time, while costing you. One of us has to survive and it can't be me."
Straightening his shoulders, Ben denied, "I can't do it without you."
"You must," Luke insisted.
"But you'll die," he argued, trying this last avenue. His father must see how young he still was, that his training was incomplete, that he couldn't possibly fulfill the plan that his father was concocting.
A fond smile deepened the age furrows in his father's features. "There is no death; only the Force. I will always be with you."
Ben gazed at the two men before him, each such an important part of his history, each gazing at him as though he'd gone mad. Obi-Wan, the man Ben had been named for, appeared more cautious, gazing at the lightsaber that had inexplicably been taken from him. No doubt wondering how a mere boy had managed to outsmart him. Anakin, his grandfather, blinked at him for several long heartbeats, before spinning towards his former mentor.
"This is some sort of trick. Another deception conceived by the Jedi to control me," Anakin blurted out accusingly towards Kenobi.
An indignant anger fell on Obi-Wan's features, but Ben leapt to answer before a fight between his grandfather and the man who was as good as could begin again. "If you think that, no wonder you turned to the Dark Side," he shot flippantly. It was better if Anakin's anger was turned to him and not the man who had raised him.
With a growl, Anakin launched himself at Ben. In the flutter of an eyelash, Ben ignited the
confiscated weapons and crossed them, inches away from Anakin's neck. He cocked an eyebrow. "I don't believe that would be a wise move, Grandfather." Turning to Kenobi before Anakin could answer, he asked without lowering his weapons. "Do either of you have a ship?"
"Who are you really? What is your purpose here?" Obi-Wan asked, his suspicion and wariness
hardly unreasonable but detrimental to Ben's cause.
"There will be time for explanations later. The longer we delay, the greater chance Palpatine will find us," Ben informed. He made unnecessary calculations to the sabers in his hands, reminding Anakin of his danger. "And I would not make any attempts to contact your new Master through the Force."
"There are no other Skywalkers," Anakin snapped. "You are a charlatan."
Squashing down the urge to just knock Anakin unconscious, Ben said with strained patience, "Reach out to the Force, Anakin. Feel the truth in my words."
Knowing how volatile Anakin was, Ben stilled himself for an attack. But he only felt a tainted
stirring in the Force wash over him, felt a small connection and for a moment, it was like having his father back. Anakin's eyes snapped open. "I don't believe it."
Now restraining tears, Ben forced himself to be stern. "Believe what you will, it is the truth
nonetheless." He shuttered, shaking away the memory of his father. "Obi-Wan a ship? Do we have one?"
"How do I know I can trust you?" Obi-Wan asked.
With a flick of his wrist, Ben deactivated one of the sabers and threw it at Obi-Wan. "Because if I wanted to kill you, I would have done so already."
"I knew it," Anakin gasped. "You're in league with him. I don't know how you changed the Force around you, but I will figure it out."
Ben resigned himself to the inevitable. He switched his grip on the lightsaber, thumbing it off and bringing the hilt of it to the back of his grandfather's head. Anakin crumbled to the ground it lump of fabric and muscle. "I had hoped this would be easier." He whipped at a pool a sweet under his nose and found that it was dotted with blood, quickly he rubbed it against his unisuit.
"Impossible," Obi-Wan muttered thoughtfully, looking between his fallen apprentice and Ben. "Yet your aura's..." he drew off unable to complete his thoughts.
Underneath their feet, the ground quake and Ben was made keenly aware of the precariousness of their situation. "Palpatine would have been monitoring this confrontation closely. I haven't picked up on any invasion into my mind, but that doesn't mean he hasn't sensed my arrival. It took a lot of Force energy to break through the fabrics of time." Leaning over, he hefted his larger grandfather into his arms. "Are you well enough to lead the way?"
Dazed, Obi-Wan nodded his affirmation. "Yes. If you are who you claim to be, then we best be on our way." Searching eyes raked over Anakin and Ben, Obi-Wan wanting to take the load of his fallen apprentice but hesitant to expose himself in such a way again.
"I have him," Ben assured the older Jedi.
Without another word, Obi-Wan started a determined gait towards the ship. It was slackened by the limp he must have sustained from the battle. While he followed, his father's future mentor, Ben reached out to the Force. He had time, it told him. A small amount of time, to fix years of mistakes. Not for the first time he thought it should have been his father to come backward in time, to stop the two men who had been an influence in his life. But it was Ben who had been dropped into the middle of foreign ground, expected by the Force to hasten the balance so that when the Vong infiltrated the galaxy, the Jedi would be ready for them. Where there had been a scant hundred, there would be thousands.
Of course, his plans consisted of turning his grandfather back to the good side and encouraging
Anakin to destroy Palpatine now, instead of twenty years in the future. A daunting task that had not diminished by his miraculous time-travel. It was made all the more difficult with the realization that he would have to convince whatever Jedi remained that if they did not change their present the repercussions of time would be dire. Not to mention they would all have to believe that he had come back through time fifty-nine years.
The ship Obi-Wan lead him to was kept in obvious care, despite the charred spots where the heat of this Force-forsaken world had burnished it. It was of a line and design that Ben was not familiar with, yet it's graceful curves and sculpted scope gave him reason to instantly admire it. He caught Obi-Wan watching him, but not in that same piercing manner he'd exhibited since Ben's arrival. There was something longing in his gaze, an opaque nostalgia.
"Anything that flies," Obi-Wan said in a hushed, pain-laced, tone before turning his attention to the keypad and initiating the loading ramp.
Ben didn't care to comment, putting together the older Jedi's meaning. Instead he followed Kenobi up the ramp and waited for the ramp to close before asking, "Is there somewhere secure to hold him?"
"Yes, this way."
It was a small cell, adequate enough for a ship of this size. "Not everyone believed I could bring him back to the light. Master Yoda insisted I bring this ship. I guess he was right to think Anakin would only be brought in as a prisoner."
That gave Ben pause. Had the aged Jedi Master known of his arrival? If so was this venture doomed before it even begun? Could he really change what would be? He had survived for the last two years with the hope that it could be done. Now he worried that his and his father's efforts had been all in vain.
He dropped Anakin to the small bunk and quietly stepped out of the cell. "There is still hope," he said, as much to himself as to Kenobi. "Where will we go now?"
"I guess I was waiting for you to tell me," Obi-Wan answered wryly. "To Master Yoda I suppose."
"On Dagobah?" Ben asked.
Surprised again flickered over those bearded features. "How did you...," he stopped, catching
himself in discovery. "Yes. He's on Dagobah." Azure eyes focused on him. "You really are his grandson aren't you?"
"I will be."