"No, you're coming with me. I'll not leave you here. I've got to save you!"

Anakin looked up at Luke with mingled pride and sorrow. "You already have, Luke. You—"

"Luke!" an unfamiliar voice shouted.

Luke looked back over his shoulder to see an old soldier in the green of a Rebel unit hurrying across the hangar bay toward them. Instinctively, he leaned over his father in a defensive attitude, reaching to his waist for a weapon that wasn't there.

"It's okay!" he told the soldier. "He won't hurt you!"

"I know, kid." The soldier clapped a reassuring hand to Luke's shoulder before turning to his father. "Another close one, eh, General?"

Something in Anakin's demeanor changed. He straightened, ever so slightly, and his expression turned almost alert as he squinted toward the soldier.

"Rex? How—"

"You'd best quit wasting air, sir. Luke, stop staring like a shiny and help me get this di'kut up the ramp. I'm not as strong as I used to be."

Together, they managed to half-carry, half-drag Anakin into the shuttle, despite his feeble protestations.

"You're not dying and leaving your kid here, General," the soldier—Rex?—scolded. "I am not keeping another generation of Skywalkers alive all on my own. Plus, the Commander would never forgive you."

"Commander? Who, me?" Luke was thoroughly confused by this point. For all that the soldier was the newcomer, he was the one who was out of the loop, and he didn't think it was all due to the Emperor's lightning. Rex knew his father, somehow (from the old days?), and he was ordering the former Sith around without so much as a trace of fear.

Rex dragged over a crate marked with a red cross.

"Med kit," he explained. "Regulation on military ships."

Luke should have thought of that. Maybe the lightning had affected him more than he realised. He watched, feeling rather useless, and gripped his father's remaining hand, as Rex fitted an oxygen mask over Anakin's face.

"I'll take care of your dad, kid. You just fly us out of here. And listen, I know it runs in the family, but try not to make any—er—interesting landings, okay?"

Anakin let out a faint, indignant noise behind the mask, but Rex only raised a skeptical eyebrow. "You think I don't know that your record hasn't exactly improved over the years?"

There was a story there, Luke thought, but he didn't waste time in asking—just replied, "Thanks, Rex. I'll be careful."

On impulse, he bent down and brushed the fingers of his flesh hand affectionately down the side of Anakin's face.

"Keep breathing for me," he said. "Father."

Do not think I don't recognise your manipulation tactics, reached him through the Force.

Oh, I'm sure you do, Luke replied. And I'm equally sure you won't resist, in spite of it.

Impudence.

Well, I wonder where I got that from.

Wry amusement batted metaphorically at his head as Anakin gave a faint smile.

Get us out of this thing before it explodes, little one.

Several weeks later, on one of the Alliance cruisers, Luke headed to the medbay. His father was healing well, and beginning to go a bit stir-crazy, but was forbidden to venture out of the medbay both by High Command (who had posted guards) and (more importantly) by the resident dragon of the medbay staff. Thus, Luke spent much of his free time therein, talking with his father. Today, when he reached through the Force to greet him, he felt a second, unfamiliar presence. Peering curiously into Anakin's room, he yelped.

"Father!"

A Togruta woman perched on his father's cot, pressed close to his side. She looked quite at home there, fingers intertwined with Anakin's, her other arm around his shoulders, while his forehead rested against her cheek. This was just weird. Luke had never considered that his father might— He looked back at Rex, who had come up behind him, feeling a blush heat his cheeks.

"I… um… I think he's already got company."

"Luke?" Anakin called.

Well, kriff. So much for avoiding any awkwardness. Luke shuffled into the room, trying not to stare openly at the Togruta, who watched him with curiosity.

"Luke, this is your aunt, Ah—"

"Aunt?" Luke blinked. It was kind of difficult to see how a Togruta could be his aunt, unless his mother hadn't been human, but he'd have thought someone would have mentioned that on one of the several occasions when he'd been sent to medbay. But, still. Aunt was an improvement over his first assumption. "So she's not… uh… she's not your... girlfriend?"

There was a moment of shocked silence, and then—

"No!" his father and the Togruta exclaimed in horrified unison. Waves of mixed amusement and revulsion rolled through the Force, and Rex tried (mostly failed) to disguise a laugh behind a spluttering cough.

"She's definitely not," he said, "Kid, meet Ahsoka Tano. She was my commander and your father's padawan back in the old days."

"Pada-what?" Luke asked, warily.

Anakin and Ahsoka exchanged glances of despair.

"Padawan," Anakin said. "Student. But mostly, she was my little sister."

Regret shot through the Force, and he tried to pull away from Ahsoka, but she refused to let go.

"I still am, Skyguy."

Skyguy? She had really just called the ex-Darth-Vader Skyguy.

Anakin, who appeared not to find the moniker the least bit strange, merely shook his head.

"Ahsoka, I tried to kill you."

Ahsoka… Luke's sort-of aunt. His father's little sister. Whom his father had also tried to kill. This family was so kriffed up.

"I know you did," Ahsoka said. "You almost managed it. But I'm here, and you came back, and I told you—I'm not leaving you. Not this time, and I mean that."

"I don't deserve it."

"You don't, but I just got my brother back, and I'm not going away just to soothe your conscience." Her lips quirked up in a small, self-satisfied smirk.

"She was really Father's student?" Luke asked Rex. It was a little hard to believe. If he'd acted this way with Yoda, he'd have received a sharp rap to the knees from the old Jedi's stick, like as not.

Rex chuckled. "She was. From what I gather, though, it was something of an unconventional relationship. There's only five years between them. The General was hardly more than a padawan himself when they started out."

"Rex, stop monopolizing our nephew. I want to meet him properly." Releasing Anakin's hand, Ahsoka beckoned Luke over. Beneath her world-weariness, there was just a scrap of girlish excitement, like a hint of the padawan she must once have been. She greeted him with a warm embrace, and he could feel her presence surround him in the Force, too, like a cocoon of soft morning light. And then a little piece of her light somehow got all mixed up with his own, and the two fused into a thread, or maybe a wire, connecting them in the Force. It was like a faint, diminutive version of the bond he shared with his father.

"What are you doing, Snips? You're making my son uneasy."

"Making a bond, apparently," Ahsoka replied. Then she laughed, and mirth sparkled along the nascent bond. "Looks like you're stuck with me, too, Luke."

"I don't think I mind, Aunt Ahsoka." As he spoke, Luke wrinkled his nose. "Aunt Ahsoka. It sounds so stuffy and formal."

"Try Aunt Snips," Anakin suggested, and Ahsoka grinned.

Luke raised his brows. "Aunt Snips?"

"Now, that's an old story," Rex said. "A long time ago, there was a young knight who didn't want a padawan, and a young padawan who was determined to prove that she could make it."

"My snippy little padawan."

Luke settled down with his father and his aunt, and Rex drifted over as well. There ensued an afternoon of stories and reminiscences, of smiles and also a few tears here and there. At one point, as Rex recounted the time his Jedi had flung him off a wall, Luke looked up to see a pale wash of blue near the door. He opened his mouth to utter a greeting, but the ghost of Obi-Wan Kenobi raised a finger to his lips.

Later, came through the Force. There will be time, later.

For now, they were all together and happy for the first time in far, far too long. Further reunions could wait. There would be time.