Small lounge

Naboo Hospital

Theed

Naboo

20 minutes later

"I am so sorry I wasn't here when you woke up, Luke," his twin said, her dark eyes serious. "If I'd known you were actually going to regain consciousness in a meaningful way, I would have stayed."

"That's entirely all right, Leia," Luke replied, placing his hands, one flesh, one prosthetic, on her own smaller ones. "Ben said you were doing something diplomatic on Tatooine? You deserve a medal for that, by the way. Tatooine. Really!"

"Tatooine is full of sand," Anakin stated irritably, his blueish form appearing suddenly on the chair next to his son, "which is coarse and rough and irritating!"

"I have often heard you said so, Anakin," Leia said with an amused smile. The years of hatred toward the former Darth Vader had given way to, if not friendship, at least peace.

The scar on her progenitor's face lifted with his eyebrows, "As your brother states, any deliberate trip to Tatooine is a noble endeavor."

"Right," Leia agreed, rather uncomfortably, only to be happily interrupted.

"Grandfather!" Ben Solo said exuberantly from his small table to the right. "Come on over and chat with me and my lovely wife! You need to tell me about Cato Neimoidia!"

Anakin rose to his spectral feet and sauntered over to join his grandson and Rey, "Indeed I do. That was quite a mission, let me tell you ..."

Luke and Leia exchanged amused glances, before the Jedi Master fixed an inquiring gaze on his sister, "Do I sense some prevarication about your trip to Tatooine, dear Leia?"

She looked down at the table, then back up, even as her own face split into a grin, "Ok, so maybe it wasn't an official diplomatic function, Luke. I ... I was attending Hutt Week."

Luke stared back, his expression more than normally blank, "Hutt Week?"

"Yes," she replied. "It's, er, an annual celebration in Mos Espa celebrating the death of Jabba the Hutt and the beginning of the end to the Hutt stranglehold in the Outer Rim planets. I've been invited before and never made the time, but you were just lying in bed all boring and unconscious, and Naboo is close to Tatooine, so yes, I went."

Her brother shook his weathered, face, "You've been invited to Hutt Week? Why haven't I? Or have I? I have forgotten much of what happened in the last 20 years, so maybe I've been there every year for decades? I don't know."

She chuckled aloud, "No, you haven't and indeed, I think no one would be foolish enough to invite you. Your distaste for Tatooine rivals Anakin's."

"So what did you do?" Luke asked curiously.

"I was the guest of honor," his sister said with a sly smile, "since I took out the old slug back in the day. There was a carnival with 'Strangle Jabba' games, genuine Tatooine food like dweezel sticks and blue milk pudding, and I could have purchased an odd creature which is a cross between a rancor and miniature dune lizard. It looks rather like a rancor but is way smaller, like a quarter of a meter in length, and it's an herbivore. I thought about getting one for you, for old times sake, but I decided against it."

Luke leaned back, his eyes wide with horror, only to relax as his sister's amusement broke through her Force shielding.

"Ok, fine, laugh at me," he grumbled. "You're not the one who had to deal with rancor slobber while it tried to eat me."

"So you do remember that," Leia replied, her face now serious.

He nodded and looked at the ceiling for a moment, "Yes, I seem to remember the first 25 years of my life quite well, but everything since then is scattered and confused. It's weird."

Leia smiled adoringly, "I'm just thankful you're alive and conscious, Luke. I haven't been that afraid for you ..."

She lowered her voice, even as she shot a glance at Anakin, who was still talking animatedly to her son, "Since you surrendered to Vader on Endor."

Luke sighed and patted his sister's hand, "I'm sorry I've been such a bother."

She rolled her eyes.

"Don't be absurd," she scolded. "You saved my life. The roof in that courtyard was crashing down on me and you held it up in a truly miraculous way. I wasn't hurt at all even though I should have been crushed like an escaped prisoner in a trash compactor."

He laughed, as she intended he would, and then nodded, "I'm ... I'm glad it worked out so well, Leia. And I'm so thankful that my horrible dream was just that, a nightmare."

Her eyes were serious now, "Ben told me a little about your nightmare. You were a crabby hermit, he was evil, Rey was kicking butt, and I was ...?"

Luke paused, and was embarrassed when his eyes filled with tears.

"You were alone."

She tilted her head, her brow furrowed, "Alone?"

He nodded, even as he brought his mechanical hand up to wipe his eyes, "I'm sorry. I'm not usually this emotional, especially about something that wasn't even real ..."

"Head injury," Leia said softly.

"Yeah, head injury," he agreed, running his hands down his face before allowing their gazes to meet. "So in my dream, Ben turned to the Dark Side and left you to serve this Snoke dude, Han ran off because of ... I don't know ... grief over Ben, and I ran off and disappeared completely because of anguish over Ben and the loss of the Jedi Order. So the three main men in your life disappeared, leaving you to carry on alone. You didn't have any other children so you were forced to carry on by yourself. I was such a jerk. We all were. You were, of course, brave and heroic though you did make Admiral Holdo your second-in-command and she was a disaster."

Leia laughed at this, "Admiral Holdo? I adore Amilyn and respect her political acuity, but she wouldn't be much of a military person."

"She wasn't," Luke grumbled, closing his eyes in disgust. "Total moron. Erghhh."

"So what was my role in all this mess?"

"You were the General in charge of the Resistance, which was like the Alliance to Restore the Republic."

Leia smiled again, her brown eyes bright with interest, "And why did I let Admiral Holdo run amuck?"

Luke's eyes glazed as the dreadful memory assaulted him.

"You ... you were in command central of the main Resistance ship, the Raddus, and one of the bad guys made a great shot and your cabin lost pressure and you were spewed out into space. It was horrible."

"Wow, a rotten way to die!" Leia stated worriedly, reaching out with the Force to comfort him.

"Uh, no, you didn't die," her brother replied, his eyes refocusing. "You, er, used the Force to fly through space like a, like a farlus hawk and back into the Raddus. Then you collapsed dramatically and lingered in a coma for enough time to let Admiral Holdo make a bunch of really stupid decisions that basically eviscerated the Resistance."

Leia blinked at her brother, "Flew through space? Like, the vacuum of space?"

"Yep."

"Is that ... is that possible? Is that some weird Force technique I've never heard of?"

Luke sighed and groaned, "No. Seems like it would kill anyone on the spot to be vomited out into the vacuum of space. But my dream was illogical on so many levels and I just went with it, in my nightmare I mean."

She smiled a little at him, "It's Ok. Nightmares are like that. So did you ... you and Han and Ben ever come back to me?"

He closed his eyes and shook his head, the false memories playing across his mind, "No we didn't. Well, Han came back briefly and you had a loving reunion and then he flew off on a mission and ... and Kylo Ren killed him."

Leia raised her eyebrows, "Kylo Ren?"

Her brother shot her son a quick look, and Leia's eyes widened, "Ben called himself Kylo Ren?"

Luke shrugged helplessly, "Yeah? I don't know, maybe part of the fine print of becoming a Dark Side user is taking on a new and bizarre name."

"And he killed Han?"

Her expression was horrified now, and Luke looked down at the table, ashamed.

"I'm sorry ..."

She stood up and threw her arms around him now.

"Don't be ridiculous, Luke," she said gently. "It's all just a bad dream and I'm fine because Han and Ben adore each other, and always will. You're the one whose brain is so screwed up you feel sad about something ridiculous that never happened!"

He smiled a little and brushed his eyes even as he tightened an arm around her, "I know this is stupid, Leia, but I just want to say that I love you, and I'm sorry for ... for leaving you for 9 weeks in a coma. I feel badly you were alone."

Her lips curved up, "Again, I haven't been alone, Luke. Han was here most of the time until he had to run off to get Brehanna moved, and Mara was here assiduously until a couple of weeks ago. Ben has been here, and Rey. I've not been alone."

"I'm glad," Luke said softly.

The Force chimed in their twinny heads and both looked at the door suddenly. A moment later, Mara came in with a broad smile wreathing her face.

"The baby is out of the intensive care unit!" she exclaimed happily.

Leia detached from Luke and threw her arms around her taller sister-in-law, "Oh Mara, that is wonderful news!"

Luke stood up as well, his eyes wide with bewilderment, "What baby?"

"Oh Luke," Mara said with an embarrassed grimace, "I'm sorry. I forgot that we didn't tell you about the granddaughter."

Her husband's eyebrows hiked even higher, "Granddaughter?"

She smiled now in a thoroughly besotted way, holding out a holoprojector, "Yes, our precious Beru was married to Trey Antilles a year ago and their baby Maria was born eight weeks early. That's why I rushed off to a hospital on Dalaya to help Beru until Padme was able to get there. So now our twins are together, the baby is doing well, and I'm so happy."

Luke Skywalker blinked at his wife, then at his twin sister, both of whom were gazing at a holo of a pink lump who was, who was...

"Granddaughter?" he repeated again in a dazed tone.

"Yes, Luke, granddaughter," Leia replied, her eyes crinkling with amusement. "Somehow, in spite of the fact that Han and I had our twins years before you did, you and Mara beat us in having a GRANDCHILD!"

Ben and Rey were on their feet now and Rey was blushing, whereas Ben was looking peeved.

"Not all of us find our true loves as early as Grandfather did," he pointed out.

"I knew your mother was my Angel when I was nine," Anakin stated, his misty eyes mistier than usual. "She was so beautiful. I wish ... I wish you could have met her ..."

There was an uncomfortable pause before Rey lurched forward to gaze at the holo more closely, "Oh Aunt Mara, she's beautiful!"

"Isn't she?" Mara exclaimed.

"I just love babies," Leia moaned in ecstasy.

Luke found himself on the outside of the female threesome next to his ghostly father and tall nephew.

"She looks like a bald pink sausage with arms and legs," Ben whispered.

"Babies are pretty boring when they are first born," Luke muttered back softly. "All they do is eat and sleep and cry and excrete. But she'll be more interesting soon."

A stray thought surfaced from the depths of his brain damaged mind. His wife had extremely keen hearing.

Mara's gaze shifted to his and he flinched slightly, only to be saved (mercifully) by Leia's com.

The last princess of Alderaan glanced at the caller identification, responded enthusiastically, retreated to the nearby window, muttered for a couple of minutes, then came back to the rest of the inhabitants of the room.

"That was Brehanna on Coruscant," she announced. "She's tracked down this Snoke person, Luke."

Author Note: Dudes and dudettes, this is a fun one to write and I'm enjoying the kind reviews and follows of those who are enjoying my lambasting of THE LAST JEDI. Thanks also to my fabulous husband for editing!