Parental Duties
By Rey
Chapter summary: Luke hunts for hunted children. Luke is hunted, in turn. But in-between those points, something is found out.
Chapter note: If you wished to retrace and refresh your mind regarding this POV, you might wish to check out Chapter 19.
23. Luke: The Owner
In the effort to reduce his headache and anxiousness, Luke decides to retreat to a decently private, reasonably safe place to meditate by himself and with the crystal of the strange lightsabre.
Of course, before he can do that, he has to begin the download of the most pertinent data to his ever-present datasticks, stash Moff Gideon in one of the cells and make sure the slippery lump cannot get out by any means, clean up the detritus of the battle and make sure that there are neither dangerous damages to the interior nor any pretending-to-be-dead battledroids nor any boobytraps, inform Leia that he will take his time returning to Hosnian Prime, recheck the readings of the cruiser just in case, and reassure R2 that everything is truly all right.
That said, it's truly a relief when he at long last can retreat to the aforementioned place, namely a nook at one end of the bridge that shares corners with the hatch leading to a bank of intact, well-maintained escape pods. Better yet, by this time, the datasticks have finished downloading all the most pertinent information they can contain, so he can bring them along with the sabre to his chosen spot. This way, if anything bad happened, he'd still have something that would help the New Republic hunt down more Imperial remnants like this if he's forced to abandon this cruiser and all within.
Meditating with the sabre is… not as it seems, though.
Not as he has hoped, too.
At first, the sabre is… just like other sabres that he has ever handled, including his own. More buzzy, perhaps. More… prickly, too. Like putting a bare, flesh hand carefully against a ray shield. However, when he slowly, cautiously, carefully, metaphysically slips closer towards its core….
It surges.
He flinches back, and yanks himself out of the meditation just as he dimly registers the pain on his back, also some clattering in front of him.
Well, apparently, the flinch is not only metaphysical.
`Damn you!`
His head throbs fiercer, now. His back that has just ardently kissed the bulkhead, too.
Through his swimming vision, he can see the sabre's oddly blocky, Force-resistant hilt lying oh so innocently a few feet away, with a suspiciously hilt-shaped indent on the opposite piece of bulkhead a few centimetres above the decking. He wishes that the sabre could have felt that.
But, in any case, its reaction to his probing is deeply worrying.
It doesn't seem to have been bled. It's not red and doesn't scream. But the attack….
`Can a kyber be hurt without bleeding? Or is black this kyber's reaction to someone bleeding it?`
He wishes that he could ask Ben or Master Yoda. None of the ghosts come, though, when he forces himself to meditate to call them to him.
Well, his father appears, but can't offer him any information about the weird sabre, so he doesn't count it as success, though he got tips about how to deal with Moff Gideon.
And, speaking of the moff, his cackling delight when Luke wrested the sabre off of his hand is just as worrysome as the sabre itself! So, resignedly, after Anakin Skywalker's departure, the beleaguered single Jedi once more gathers any last shred of will and calmness for a meditation.
He doesn't attack the crystal back. Not really. He just… projects displeasure at it. right away. With some grumpiness accidentally – inadvertently, really, if he'd be honest with himself – thrown in.
But, shockingly, it's the grumpiness that manages to soften the crystal.
`Why did you do that?` he grouses when it has subsided into the usual buzzy, prickly state but with something extra.
And there comes the second shock of all in what feels like just as many seconds: The crystal answers.
Sapiently.
`I thought you were that zabraki Sith, coming to try to break this crystal again.`
Luke gawps.
`this crystal?`
`Yes.`
`Are you… not the crystal?`
`No.`
`Who are you, then?`
`Who is asking?`
Luke scowls, now.
`You know I'm not a Sith.`
`Many are not Sith, despite the war. It does not mean that I would tell anybody my identity, just so.`
`Which war?`
`Were you that sheltered?`
Luke's scowl deepens.
`There have been many wars in the galaxy, from what I know, so please answer me.`
`How would I know, then? After that day, almost nobody interacted with me. Of those who did, one thought I was a halusination and the other was a would-be Sith lord.`
Oh, how bitter whoever the intangible person attached to this sabre is. And how lost. And how lonely.
Traumatised, broken and nearly giving up, too.
Still… `I am a Jedi. So far, I am the only Jedi alive in this galaxy. If there are more, they have been hiding extremely well and most likely don't want to get out of hiding ever. So,now, who are you?`
Well, unfortunately for Luke and his fraying nerves, his confession and reiterated question only nets him a stunned silence for a long while.
And then, he is positively drenched in shock-disbelief-grief-fury-fear-loss not of his own, which nonetheless triggers his own, and results in both soaking in misery for a very long while.
In fact, if not for the electric prod of his loyal, mouthy, jabby, willful astromech friend, he would have spent longer yet trapped in the vicious circle of negative emotions. Or died because of it, even, as the tingly sting from the electric prod wakes him up to the reality that the damned whole cruiser is crieking and cracking alarmingly all round him.
"Damn," he croaks. "Thanks, Artoo. Could you…" cough "…check for damages?"
His throat feels as raw as his mind and emotions, and his head throbs even fiercer than before.
Still, all soft and quiet in his head, a voice not of his own murmurs, `You might know me as Tarre Vizsla, then.`
It doesn't really answer him, though it's not wholely the other being's fault. He just hasn't found out much about the Jedi Order of old, and his teachers haven't taught him much about pieces of history older than fifty years ago. And, even that, it's usually his father telling him about personal history – as a slave child, as a padawan, as a knight with a secret marriage to a senator, as Darth Vader….
He sighs out his frustration-loss-grief-confusion-bitterness-curiosity-tiredness-anger-fear, inhales the recycled air of the cruiser, gives the other being who has apparently invited themself into his mind a mental hug in the next exhale, then gets up to help his friend check on the integrity of their appropriated transport.
And then he retreats to a less worrysome place, just in case he breaks down again.
With the strange sabre and its intangible… rider? Occupant? Haunter?
Sans a displeased R2-D2.
And continues their chat.
Well, then again, what else can he do while waiting to get to where the children have fled to? Who knows, maybe he will get more pieces of history from the source while at it?