Author Note: I just wanted to say to those who liked The Last Jedi and are still reading this story that I am glad you enjoyed the movie. I mean, someone should, right? Disney paid all that money for the franchise and then went and (messed it up) did their thing, and they have that right. So yeah, if you liked it, I'm happy for you. And I'm enjoying lambasting it!

/

Luke's medbay

Theed Hospital

Naboo

The door slid open and Mara Jade Skywalker stepped through the door, her green eyes suspiciously bright.

"So did you miss me, Farmboy?"

Luke lurched to his feet and held out his arms; a moment later, his wife, still beautiful at 52, walked into his arms.

For a moment they just clutched one another, and then Luke leaned down and planted a long and impassioned kiss on Mara's mouth, which she returned with fervor.

When they came up for air, both felt a shock in the Force and turned to regard Rey, who was gazing at them with a mixture of surprise and embarrassment.

"Hey, just because we're old doesn't mean we don't love each other quite enthusiastically," Mara said with a sardonic lift of one eyebrow.

"Er, right. I mean, yes, I understand. Uh ..." Rey stuttered, her face turning rosy with embarrassment.

"You know, Rey, I think you could use some rest," Mara Jade Skywalker continued with an affectionate grin. "And Luke and I can have a discussion about how he forgot about me."

Luke paled just slightly and glanced at his nephew's wife, "Don't feel like I'm chasing you off, Rey."

"No, no, I'm out of here," Rey said, recovering her spirits and giving him a jaunty salute. "I am tired, and it is my honeymoon, so just let me know when you need relief and we'll show up, Master Mara."

"Aunt Mara, Rey, Aunt Mara!" the older woman exclaimed with an amused smirk. "You married Ben. Aunt Mara!"

Rey chuckled and nodded even as she headed out the door, "Ok. See you later, Aunt Mara."

The door slid behind her and Luke was left facing his wife, who was looking amused, "So Doctor Tico says you forgot you were married, huh?"

Luke swallowed and licked his lips nervously, "Uh, yes."

She glared at him for another moment, her Force shields high, before relaxing, smiling brilliantly, and bestowing another ardent kiss on his lips.

"It's Ok, Luke," she said with a chuckle, even as she sat down on the nearby couch and drew her rather shaky husband down to her side. "You had a major head injury and Doctor Tico is over the nebula about how well you are doing."

Luke sighed and wrapped a relieved arm around his beloved wife, even as he stared at her. Her hair was now streaked with white, and there were wrinkles in the corners of her eyes and around her mouth, but she would always be his beloved Mara.

"I'm sorry, Mara. I'm afraid I've been an enormous amount of trouble the last couple of months, getting slugged by a Gungan sleeper Sith agent like that."

"Sleeper Sith agent?" his wife asked, her brow furrowed. "Why do you think that Binks was a Sith agent?"

"Oh," Luke replied with a vague nod. "Yeah, I guess you didn't hear about that. My father and Obi-Wan showed up briefly and said Binks was a moronic Force Sensitive working under Palpatine. Since Palpatine died, he's just been bumbling along but somehow he got triggered to kill me and Leia. And obviously came pretty close to succeeding with me. It's pretty embarrassing."
Mara stared at him in surprise, even as she shook her head slowly, "You do know you saved about 60 lives, don't you?"

Her husband blinked at her, then shook his head, "I don't remember what happened at all, and Ben and Rey and the doctor have been busy discussing other stuff with me."

She chuckled softly, "There were explosions, and the pillars came down, and the roof came down on dozens of people, and you held up the incredibly heavy roof with the Force until Leia and her retinue was able to get almost everyone else out from under it. Then Binks threw himself at you with surprising ferocity for a timeworn Gungan and broke your focus, and the roof collapsed on you and him. He died, and ..."

Here her insouciant manner changed, and her eyes brightened, "... and Leia thought we'd lost you. You scared the twin suns out of her and all of us."

"You weren't there?" he asked quietly, placing his hand on hers.

She shook her head, her long hair rippling in a thoroughly beguiling manner, "No, I was on Corellia overseeing a trade summit when we got the news of the attack ..."

Mara lifted her chin and forced a smile, "You scared me to death, Farmboy. But you were, as usual, a hero. And if you ever get hurt like that again, I'll kill you myself. Got it?"

He laughed and leaned over to plant a kiss in her hair, "I got it. I guess it's nice to know I wasn't being totally incompetent."

She laughed and leaned up against him, "When have you ever been totally incompetent, Luke?"

Luke sighed, "Bespin?"

She pulled away and gazed at him thoughtfully, "So you remember Bespin."

Her husband groaned aloud, "Even 30 years later, yes, I remember every last moment of my encounter with my Sith Lord father on Bespin. Every second."

She gazed at him in concern, and then managed a slight smile, "That really is good, Luke, that you ... you remember the past. Besides, you weren't really that incompetent given your very minimal training at the time."

"My father thumped me," her husband growled irritably.

"But you escaped, Luke, you escaped! That was truly astonishing given that you had had all of a few weeks of training in your entire life. No, the really incompetent people were Kenobi and Yoda. To let you fly off on your crazy rescue mission without telling you the truth of your heritage was asinine, irresponsible, and downright stupid."

"Well, it's good to know your true opinion of me, Mara," a cultured voice spoke from the corner.

Both Skywalkers shot a surprised look at the corner, where Obi-Wan Kenobi had taken form, his visage faintly indignant.

"She's not wrong, you know," Anakin commented cheerfully, appearing in a supine position on Luke's bed with his long legs stretched out.

"I was not irresponsible," Kenobi said with a huff. "I thought there was nothing left of Anakin Skywalker in Darth Vader. It seemed extremely unlikely that Vader would even tell Luke the truth."

Anakin sat up now, his own face astonished and offended, "My own son. My own son! I was a total louse of a father and I freely acknowledge that, but how you could have imagined I wouldn't care about Luke beyond some disgusting quest for power ..."

"Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will!" Yoda stated firmly, appearing, oddly enough, on a nearby counter.

"That's Roba sausage and you know it," Anakin countered irritably, rolling to his ghostly feet. "I turned back 100% on the Death Star. If I hadn't promptly croaked ..."

Here he paused, his still youthful visage perturbed, and sighed, "I would have ended up in a New Republic prison or, more likely, executed. Which would have been entirely reasonable and appropriate. But I would have been executed as a Light Sider. I promise you, I completely turned back."

"I know you did, Anakin," Kenobi acknowledged. "There was much we thought was true about you which was wrong."

"Maybe you don't know everything about demented Sith Lords yet," his former padawan snapped back.

"So!" Mara said loudly enough to quiet the three ghosts, "Did you have some purpose in coming here besides interrupting my reunion with my now conscious husband?"

To their credit, the three dead Jedi all looked vaguely contrite, and Anakin spoke quickly, "Um, yes. So we've been doing some more work on the whole Jar Jar Binks thing. We've talked to a few dead people who might have some knowledge and we're making progress. It seems there was someone out there who triggered Binks, and it is likely he was on Naboo at the time of the attack, though he may have left the planet by now, of course."

"Or she was on Naboo," Mara said pointedly.

Kenobi nodded agreeably, "Or she. Though to my admittedly prejudiced ears, Snoke sounds like a male name."

Luke sat up in astonishment, "Snoke!?"

"Yes, Snoke," Anakin stated, his gaze focused on his son. "Do you know of him?"

Luke rubbed a hand across his beard (stupid beard!), "There was an individual named Snoke in my dream. But ... my dream wasn't real. So the Snoke in my dream couldn't be the real Snoke, I assume."

"But you know the name and none of us did," Mara pointed out. "So perhaps the Force has revealed something of importance to you."

"Or," her husband continued slowly, "perhaps I had some kind of Force link with Binks before he died? I don't remember."

"What did Snoke look like in your dream?" Anakin asked curiously.

Luke snorted, "Bad. Like really bad. Like worse than Darth Vader at his worst bad. Like worse than wrinkly old crabby Palpatine bad. Humanoid but not human, I think. Blue eyes. Little eyes. Mean eyes. Actual holes in his head and cheek. He'd been through the wars at some point, I guess. He was a Strong Force sensitive in my dream and ... and Ben's master, but he didn't have much of a personality as far as I could tell ..."

He trailed off now, his brow thoughtful, then shrugged, "But probably my image of him is based off of one of Rey's holodramas."

"Maybe," Mara replied. "Maybe. But we'll investigate this further. Force ghosts, keep up the good work. And get out of here. I want some private time with my husband."

Kenobi and Anakin both paled slightly (quite an accomplishment for ethereal Force ghosts) and vanished promptly. Yoda followed a few seconds later, grumbling in fractured Basic.

"Now," Mara said with a smile. "What would you like next? Food? A real water shower?"

Luke grinned at her in delight, "Yes to both, but first, if you'd be so kind, can you help me get rid of this lousy beard?"

An hour later, Luke was clean shaven, his hair was trimmed, he had bathed in genuine liquid water, and he was wearing real clothing as opposed to hospital garb.

The Force Afterlife couldn't be much better than this.

"So," he said carefully, even as he speared a shef'na fruit with his fork, "do we have any children?"

Mara swallowed her bite of bantha meat convulsively and stared incredulously at her husband, "You forgot we have kids!?"

He reddened slightly, "I'm sorry, but I forgot about you, so yes, I forgot about kids, plural. We have plural kids? In my dream, I was a bitter, solitary, hermit and I still kind of have that bizarre idea stuck in my brain."

She smiled a little sadly, "Yes, we have three children, Luke. Our identical twins, Beru and Padme, are 23 years old. Cassian is 21."

He looked at her, even as vague memories tentatively swirled in the conscious part of his brain.

"We were pretty tired, weren't we?" he asked with a slight grin.

She laughed now, "Exhausted, absolutely exhausted. 2 year old Force Sensitive twins followed by a newborn. Thankfully Leia had a lot of experience with Ben and Brehanna, so she was able to give us some tips on keeping them alive when they were little."

"Brehanna?" Luke asked boldly. He decided he might just as well be honest about his total lack of memory of all these random people.

Mara gazed at him with a gimlet eye, then nodded gamely, "Brehanna is our niece, Ben's twin sister."

Luke felt tears prick in his eyes, "That's wonderful. In my dream, Ben was a total mess and, I think, quite lonely. I'm glad he has a sister."

"And a brother," Mara said, reaching out towards a bag on the floor. A holopad leaped into her hand, and she quickly found the requisite image, of the Skywalker/Solo clan in front of a thoroughly lovely lake.

"This is all of us," she said with a smile, pointing at the various people in the holo. "Ben and Brehanna are 29, our Padme and Beru are 23, Cassian is 21, and Han and Leia's son Anakin is 19. Han and Leia wanted another child but it took a long time to conceive him, so he's the runt of the litter, so to speak."

Luke chuckled at the young man his wife pointed out. Ben was tall, but his younger brother was even taller.

"So," Luke said softly. "We destroyed the Emperor, brought my father back from the Dark Side, found each other, got married, have 3 kids, and are living happily ever after, huh?"

His wife smiled and placed a comforting arm on her husband's shoulder.

"Well, there were a few bumps on the way, but basically, yes."

She gazed into his face and then her face creased in concern, "Are you all right, Luke?"

He reached a shaky hand up to his face and was unsurprised to find it wet from tears.

"I'm very happy, Mara."