Mace Windu panted, the Force fizzing through his veins, then focused his mind and will and brought everything about the fight together.

Inhaled, and felt all the tension and grief and loss, all the triumph and energy, that had fuelled the most intense fight of his life.

Exhaled, and let it go into the Force.

Any battle in Vapaad was a dance on the razor's edge, and this had been far more of that than normal.

"Thank you," he said, turning to the man in the office with him.

"My pleasure," Luke replied, with a respectful nod, and Mace took the opportunity to study the young man.

Really, study him, for what felt like the first time.

Luke had turned up months ago, true enough, and he'd been… an oddity. A peculiarity. He had the skills that he could have asked for the position of Master and probably been given it without question, at least as far as proficiency went, but that had manifested in a casual, unconscious control of the Force such that it had acted at his bidding without any need to force it.

He'd certainly turned out to be able to demonstrate some things that he disparagingly called 'little tricks', either not knowing or not caring that they were beyond most Knights, and yet other things had amazed him.

It had been a puzzle just for that, and there'd been whispers that he was a member of one of the minor Orders – a Jedi from out on the Outer Rim, trained in a completely different tradition than the one from the Coruscant temple.

Then there had been his attitude. He'd wandered almost aimlessly around the Jedi Temple helping people out, in between looking things up in the library and marvelling at how much knowledge there was to be had, and when the topic of serving in the Grand Army of the Republic had come up he'd politely but firmly declined.

It had been like a breath of fresh spring air, a balm, reminding the Order as a whole of a time before the war that had consumed so many Jedi – young and old alike – and so nobody had pushed too hard.

A pacifist Jedi had fit into the idea of a member of an order from a completely different tradition, after all… and his complete lack of regard for any sort of authority had done much the same.

His philosophy had come up, of course, and what had interested Mace and Yoda – then and when they'd talked about this unusual Jedi afterwards – was that it was… simplified.

It had none of the intricacies and careful thought put into it of the modern Jedi code. It also lacked the restrictions, and indeed Luke had been quite surprised when he heard about the restrictions on attachments, but Luke's philosophy was purified down to a simple, profound set of insights.

Mace had tried not to laugh the first time Luke had calmly, politely told him that humans weren't made of flesh at all, but were luminous beings of spirit and that the crude matter was just a temporary fixture that could be ignored if you knew it was all more illusion than reality. It had sounded like nonsense.

And yet, the more Mace had thought about it, the more it had sounded… not true, but like it was something important. Something deep. Something at the heart of the Jedi Order's teachings, in truth, just that that reality had been hidden under everything else.

It was just hard to recognize that from someone whose preferred form of meditation was to do a handstand, or who talked radical politics with Senator Organa with great delight, or who found endless amusement in something as simple as a shower.

So Mace had thought of Luke as… an odd person, but part of the great variations of the Force. And perhaps the kind of person the Jedi Order would need, once the war was over, to show them how to live in peace again.

Then had come the battle against the Chancellor. Chancellor Palpatine, the wily old politician, who had turned out to be a Sith Lord right at the cusp of a plan that must have been a thousand years in the making. Four Jedi Masters had come to his office to arrest him, and three of them had died in as many seconds, and alone Mace had been hard pressed.

Then Luke had come into the office, and he had fought like nothing Mace had ever seen before.

He didn't use one of the traditional forms. He didn't use anything so refined as a form at all, really. He just… moved his lightsaber to where his enemy was going to be, smooth as buttersilk, and he never did anything the same way twice.

"I have… questions," Mace added, and Luke smiled in a self-deprecating sort of way.

"I'm not surprised," the other Jedi said. "I know people have been wondering about me since I arrived…"

"You said you were from the Outer Rim," Mace noted.

"And that's true," Luke agreed. "But… not complete."

He spun his lightsaber around, and Mace's eyes tracked it. It was definitely handmade, he'd known that for a while, but this was the first time he'd felt the crystals while they were energized. And they were… artificial, he thought.

Something else unusual.

"What I didn't say is when I was born," Luke added. "I travelled in time to be here, and that's the truth."

It was. Mace could feel that without trying. The fact that Luke had spoken truth, without question, hung in the air between them as a silent verification of what the mysterious Jedi had told him.

"That explains a few things," Mace admitted. "So. From how far back?"

Luke stared at him for a moment, then burst out laughing.

Mace felt confused, and a little bit aggrieved.

"I'm sorry," Luke said, after a moment. "But you got the direction the wrong way around. I'm from the future, not the past."

"You are?" Mace replied, thinking.

It didn't seem impossible, as he turned it over in his head.

"How far?" he asked.

"About thirty years," Luke told him. "I actually came back to stop Palpatine… eventually."

"This must be because of Kenobi's student," Mace decided. "I knew that Skywalker boy would lead to a complete upheaval of the Jedi ranks, one way or another."

Luke inclined his head a little.

"Well," he said. "Yes, and also no…"

AN:

Prompted by a Tumblr concept about how weird Luke would look to the Old Jedi Order.