Yayyyy I'm glad we liked the R2 reunion.

This one's a relatively short one. I'm in the last few days of my holiday and am no longer camping so have lots of time (and electricity) for writing. I've got about 2500 words of the next chapter written already (too much to fit in here) so hopefully that comes up soon!

Chapter 55: Acceptance

It took Ariarne long weeks to learn to do handstands and longer weeks still to even begin to grasp why Master Yoda was so obsessed with gymnastics anyway. He drilled them in leaps and somersaults and handstand after blasted handstand over the murky waters and across the swamp, his croaking voice a constant spur at their heels, and his physical weight an intermittent burden upon their shoulders. Thankfully, he seemed to be more comfortable perched across Luke's broader back and Ariarne was mostly left to contend with her own bodyweight, which really was more than enough for her to grapple with in the early weeks of her training.

But it did begin to make sense, sort of, as drill after drill in pursuit of balance honed her awareness firstly of her own body, and then the ground beneath her hands, and then the rays of stifled sunlight upon her lifted ankles. Her consciousness spread slowly across the swamp and then more broadly still, as the distinction between her physical surroundings and those strange feelings she used to get when something bad was going to happen became blurred, as though they existed perhaps on the same wavelength, rather than the distinct planes of tangible and intangible, and she supposed that in the end the medium through which everything spoke to her was the Force. So she was learning, after all.

They might have been learning but Ariarne was surprised, still, when Master Yoda took them on an especially circuitous gymnastics route and brought them to an abandoned ship, half sunk in the swamp, more moss than metal, and advised them it would need to be restored. As the Force had come alive around her, as she had felt it course through her body and learned how to channel it to augment her strength and stability, the galaxy beyond Dagobah had become inversely smaller. Ariarne had been naggingly aware that she had stopped thinking about Alderaan, or her parents, or Korkie, or Ahsoka, and had perhaps been beginning on the long slow spiral to Master Yoda's sort of hermit-madness. The concept of leaving Dagobah was almost unsettling.

"A small trial, this shall be," the Jedi Master advised, as Luke appraised the ship, looking almost physically sickened by the state of it. "A greater trial awaits you, mhmm, when again the ship flies."

And it was, mercifully, only a small trial, although Ariarne could not help that think it might have been much greater had she not had a particularly mechanically-minded co-Padawan at her side.

"Do you think Master Yoda will agree that I've also passed this trial?" she asked Luke, as she observed his hands at work in the near-fully reconstructed engine bay. "Or will I have to stay back and read up on mechanics while you go on some adventure?"

"'Course you'll pass the trial," Luke muttered. "You're the one who found the other wreck to source the spare parts. Not to mention you kept the flying leaf-tails away."

Ariarne didn't suppose manipulating such primitive creatures really counted as a Jedi mind-trick.

"While you actually fixed the engine," she protested.

Luke waved a dismissive hand.

"Nothing wrong with teamwork. Besides, I wouldn't go without you even if Master Yoda told me to. You think I'm going to pass this 'greater trial' all by myself?"

Ariarne rocked back, hugging her knees to her chest, and tried not to be too pleased by his loyalty.

"I'm pretty sure Jedi Padawans weren't allowed to pass trials by teamwork. He'll test us individually, at some point."

Luke shrugged.

"Don't think they used to train Padawans in pairs either. But Korkie didn't give the gremlin much choice, did he?"

"Guess not."

Something clunked into place beneath Luke's hands.

"Go try the ignition."

Ariarne rose and flicked the necessary switches. There was a wheezing, a sputter, and silence. She looked to Luke with a grimace. Ariarne didn't have to be a mechanic to know that sounded bad. But her companion was grinning.

"Something's better than nothing!" he declared, and lifted himself from the engine bay, wiping grease upon his trousers. "We're on the right track. Engine's working right up until about…"

He waved an index finger across joints and pistons, settled on some sort of pipe.

"Here," he decided. "Keep the leaf-tails busy. I think we've got the part for this."

Luke sprang to action, gave her an encouraging clap on the shoulder on his way past her to the spare parts pile. His voice trailed over his shoulder, rose above the humming of the insects.

"We'll be on that big adventure before you know it."

Master Yoda strolled around the repaired ship, giving it the occasional tap with his gimer stick as though conducting some sort of meaningful inspection. Luke was pretty sure that the ancient Jedi's wisdom did not extend quite so far as the mechanics of small Corellian freighters made fifty-odd standard years ago but he held his tongue as Yoda completed his lap.

"Repaired attentively, the ship has been," he decided eventually, with almost a hint of commendation. "Understood, you have, that on a great journey, it will take you."

Luke looked to Ariarne in silence, spoke to her without words in the way that they were learning to do. It hadn't come so easily to Luke as it had with Leia and the cards. He'd known Leia his whole life, and they had a lot more in common than either of them was likely to admit. Ariarne felt entirely different in the Force to anyone else he'd known. She saw things that Luke didn't. Visions. Glimpses of the future. The feeling of her in the Force had alarmed Master Yoda, when they'd first arrived on Dagobah, after all the hundreds of Padawans he had trained. Had almost made him refuse to train them. And then, almost against his better judgement, Luke couldn't help but think it had been her ability which had convinced Master Yoda to keep them after all. Luke didn't know much about the Order of old, but got the feeling that Ariarne was a special sort of Jedi.

We finally get to leave the swamp!

Ariarne reflected a vague anxiety into his excitement.

He's not coming.

Luke's brows shot up and he returned his attention to the wizened Jedi.

"What journey, Master?"

Yoda harrumphed, aware of the communication flitting between them.

"Travel, you will, to Ilum, following the path of many Jedi Padawans before you."

Luke's eyes widened. He could not help the rather un-Jedi-like grin that broke out on his face.

"For kyber crystal, Master?"

"The Empire has ravaged Ilum, Master Yoda," Ariarne cut in. "Making the weapon that destroyed my homeworld. It will be unsafe. Do you intend to accompany us?"

The Grand Master's ears drooped as he shook his head.

"Too weak, too old, too foolish, I am, to leave this planet again."

His voice rasped and in that moment Master Yoda did look old. He'd had the childish idea that this octocentarian would live forever. But he saw a weary soldier before them now.

"We'll look after each other, Ariarne," Luke offered.

His companion gave an awkward shrug.

"Guess that's the best we can do."

"Trust, I have, in both of you," Yoda affirmed. "Learned a great deal you have, already. Learn more, you will, when you return to Dagobah with your crystals. My company on Ilum, you need not. Always guiding you, the Force is."

He turned to fix his gaze upon Ariarne.

"Visions, when they come to you, you must let go. As you have done here. More difficult, it will be, beyond this planet."

She sighed, gave a nod.

"Yes, Master."

Korkie had dragged his heels a whole extra day on Hoth in his determination to see Kawlan before his return to duty on Mandalore. His old friend – his oldest, besides Han – returned from Mako-Ta in the evening and found himself dragged promptly for a drink and dinner in a relatively quiet corner of the mess hall. He was grey now, of hair and beard, but brighter than ever.

"It's all going well," Kawlan informed him, between bites. "The space docks are going well. And Tanalorr is going very well. We've started getting a few young Jedi turning up here. Volunteering to leave the refuge and come help out at the end of their training. Different sorts of Jedi to Windu and Junda. But honourable, and good soldiers. Barriss spends most of her time teaching. Cal and Merrin can't quit with the odd jobs. Always chasing some mystery or another."

He took a sip of his drink.

"And you, Kawlan?"

"I'm good," his friend told him, earnestly.

His face cracked a grin, skin wrinkling by his eyes.

"Actually, I have news that will interest you."

"Go on."

"I'm dating again."

Korkie's jaw dropped.

"No. You're not. Kawlan, don't say that."

"I am!" Kawlan protested, with a chuckle. "Her name's Marise. Another rebel. Lost her husband years ago in the job to save King Lee-Char on Mon Cala. She's a wonderful woman. Gentle. Laughs a lot."

"Kawlan…" Korkie groaned.

He was supposed to be a supportive friend. He remedied his slouch and tried for graciousness.

"What I mean to say is that I'm happy for you."

Kawlan snickered.

"You don't sound very happy."

Korkie slumped again, caught out.

"It's just… I thought we had a truce."

Kawlan smirked.

"We had a deal," he corrected him.

Korkie could hear it as clear as day. His own idiotic voice, in conversation all those years ago.

I'll date again when you do.

"I didn't mean it like that," he tried.

Kawlan was unsoftened.

"I thought a politician like you would know better than to make deals he can't keep."

"Kawlan," Korkie gritted out. "I'm very happy for you. Truly. But I-"

Kawlan seemed to find the whole thing very funny, smirking still as he continued with his dinner.

"I'm only pestering you about it, Korkie, because I know for a fact that there are at least five people in this base who would-"

"That's not a fact."

"And yet I don't think you're interested in any of them."

Korkie nodded, relieved.

"I'm not."

But Kawlan still looked so kriffing pleased with himself.

"Mhmm."

"What?" Korkie snapped.

"No one at home?" Kawlan asked.

His voice was innocent but his Force signature was anything but. Korkie didn't know who he'd been speaking to, which was to say which of his loyal subjects had been gossiping about their Mand'alor, but he got the distinct impression that the question was a targeted one. Which was ridiculous because Korkie didn't have anyone at home. Wasn't even close to having anyone at home. There was a big difference between noticing a handsome face in the hallway and actually being interested in someone, and even if he was interested, hypothetically, it wasn't like he was going to pursue-

The whole thing was giving him a headache.

"Don't start me," Korkie warned.

Kawlan grinned.

"I'm right, then?"

"Shut up and finish your dinner."

But Kawlan seemed perfectly content to eat and talk.

"Even your niece is dating now," he pointed out.

Korkie groaned.

"Seriously, don't start me."

"And we thought Mahdi was too old for you!" Kawlan crowed.

At this, Korkie gave a good-natured sigh.

"It's my comeuppance for all my protests about how the age laws didn't apply to me," he acquiesced. "But I'm not really worried. Leia knows what she's doing. Far better than I did, certainly."

Kawlan shrugged, scraped the last of the food from his plate.

"You didn't know what you were doing. But you did alright. You loved hard."

Korkie nodded miserably.

"Too hard."

"It'd be a shame," Kawlan mused. "Not to try again."

Korkie ignored the bait; he'd argued the point as best he could already.

"Was it Sabine who put this bantha-shit idea in your head?" he challenged instead.

The list of rebels who travelled between Hoth and Mandalore was short enough that the suspects were few. Kawlan said nothing.

"It was Sabine," Korkie seethed. "I'll have her court-martialled."

Kawlan snorted.

"You will not. Despot Korkie. Can't picture it."

Korkie scowled.

"Why not? Why can't I be a heartless despot who never loves again?"

It was like the petulant plea of a child who wants to be frightening but is only endearing. Kawlan sat back in his chair, laughed harder still.

"Because you're so lovely, Korkie."

"I should have gone back to Mandalore this morning like I planned," Korkie grumbled. "Can't believe I waited around just for you to tease me."

Kawlan gave his forearm a tender squeeze.

"I'm very grateful that you did."

Ariarne supposed that the journey to Ilum could have gone a lot worse. Perhaps her anxiety had been misplaced. Something, certainly, felt wrong. But everything was more elusive in the Force now that she was away from Dagobah; she felt she'd regressed months in her training. She had no idea what she was anxious about. There were the minor inconveniences that were expected in the age of travelling under the Empire: a couple of requests for proof of identification at fuel-stops and space borders, an obstacle in their chosen route after hearing word that Darth Gelid was visiting the Metellos system. Ariarne was an adept shielder, whereas Luke had grown accustomed to relying on his father to do it for him. They chose not to test his new skills and took the detour. Their Alliance-issued fake identity cards got them through each checkpoint. Luke only forgot her alias name once. The attending officer, thankfully, didn't notice.

"The Force is on our side," Luke had murmured to her, as they'd walked away.

Ariarne had hummed her tight-lipped disagreement, and onwards they travelled.

Perhaps it was Ilum itself that she had feared. The planet was mournful in the Force, a jagged black scar across its equator where the enormous plates of ice had fissured from the intensity of Imperial mining. It was less swamped with Imperial ships than Ariarne had imagined – the intensity of the mining, she supposed, had lessened after the completion of the Death Star – but was by no means abandoned. Ilum was not the wild planet it had been for so many millennia, visited only by Jedi in their Master-Padawan dyads. This was Imperial occupied territory. Ariarne wondered whether they meant to build another superweapon.

"This is the place Obi Wan once took my father," Luke mused. "He spoke about it as such a special place. But now all I sense is pain."

Ariarne nodded soberly.

"The Empire's killing this place," Luke stressed, his voice scraping over the words. "More every day."

"I'm not sure how many more Jedi are going to find their crystals here," Ariarne muttered.

And would they find their own today? Master Yoda had asked them to. It was safer, Ariarne supposed, than Jedha. But not by much of a margin.

"Doesn't look like they're doing much towards the southern pole."

Luke grimaced, pointed out the planet's tilt.

"It'll be coldest down there."

"The whole thing's an ice-block, no?"

Luke folded his arms protectively across his chest as though he were somehow cold already.

"There's frozen and there's below-freezing."

Ariarne shrugged. They'd collected appropriate clothing at Ansion on their way through. She wouldn't mind treading on snow again, she thought. She'd never see another Alderaanian winter.

"I'd rather be cold than an Imperial captive again," she declared eventually, and reached over his shoulder to change their course.

Luke, who had never been an Imperial captive, lost the argument by default. They descended under cloaked signal. They had been rewarded on Dagobah for a focused spell of meditation with a series of maps from Master Yoda detailing the network of Ilum's Crystal Caves. They showed large-scale fissures only; the exploration of the finer network of caves was to be guided by the Force alone. There were some known veins of kyber towards the southern pole. The rest would be the will of the Force.

Warmth, somewhere, on this planet that seemed to suck the life from him. A faint promise of home. Not the scorching of Tatooine suns. But the gentle warmth that had filled Luke's chest, as a child reading the pages of the Family Book on the nights as the desert turned to freezing, when he had allowed himself the fairytale that his rightful home might have been on temperate Naboo.

Ilum was dying. He walked, encased in ice, in the last vestiges of her life. Was it cruel, to rob her of her last treasures?

But he would take only what he needed, Luke reminded himself. He would take only the crystal that called to him.

Something, out there, called to him.

His reflection was frightening in the panes of glistening ice. Taller than him. Stilted in its movement, like some grotesque puppet on strings. He saw a flash of black in the corner of his eye. There was no reason for the ice to distort the colours in such a way. He hurried onwards.

The blackness was growing. More a shadow than a reflection, now. He did not want to look at it. But looking ahead he had somehow lost his way. He scrambled for that distant warmth that was more distant, suddenly, than it had been only moments before. Luke turned, and the shadow reared before him. Separate now, from the ice.

The figure was styled in the manner of Darth Gelid: armoured and cloaked in black, face concealed by a mask. Red 'saber in hand. But this was not Darth Gelid. Luke knew without seeing behind that mask exactly who it was. They stood in mirrored posture, on guard. But Luke had no weapon in his hand with which to defeat his twisted self.

But he knew with strange certainty that this was not one of Ariarne's visions. This was not his future; his future was his own to make. This was a test. This was the Force.

Luke knelt, as the Sith would never do. He knelt and he closed his eyes and he reached for the core of this wounded, weeping planet.

Forgive me. Please. Forgive me. I only come to do good. To end the hurt.

He did not know for how long he knelt, breathing with the ancient spirit of that place. But when the Force finally granted him the courage to open his eyes the apparition was gone. And unsheathed from within the ice, a crystal of kyber hummed its welcome to him, falling warm into his outstretched hand.

Visions, when they come to you, you must let go. More difficult, it will be, beyond this planet.

It seemed the understatement of Master Yoda's long and brilliant life, from the moment Ariarne set foot on Ilum. They'd made light work of the sabotage of the nearest Imperial surveillance droids. Ariarne could not help but feel that it was the Force itself that was her more formidable enemy today.

An ability to glimpse the future, you have.

Great danger, such a pursuit holds.

But hadn't she spent months learning not to wrestle with the Force? Learning that it was neither her friend nor foe, that it was something much greater than any of this. That it was the galaxy around her, and she a tiny vessel of its powers.

Ariarne didn't expect this whole crystal finding business to be easy, was all.

Luke had been pulled in some other direction, walking with his fingers jammed inside opposite sleeves, an unwitting caricature of the Jedi of old. He'd been walking with purpose, like had already knew where to go. Ariarne hadn't the faintest idea where to start. What if the crystal meant for her was actually at the northern pole? What if it had already been plundered from the equator and used to blow up Alderaan? What if there had never been a crystal for her to begin with?

Perhaps this was all a scheme for Master Yoda to be rid of her. The student he had never wanted to take.

But these doubts were impostors. Figments from her mind, a sort of egotism. Not of the Force. Ariarne had learned this much on Dagobah. She stilled in her mindless ramble through the caves, touched a wall of ice with her gloved hands, lifted back her hood to rest her forehead against it. The cold lanced through her skull but all of this was only her body. Her tiny self. She stayed where she was and welcomed the Force.

Stillness. Breathing. And then-

The Force was not a nursemaid and there would be no gold star for meditation. She had opened herself, and now she saw.

Great danger, such a pursuit holds.

Ariarne saw what felt like the future of the whole galaxy. She saw betrayal and the firework explosions of ships over Mako-Ta. She saw blood on the snow of Hoth. She saw the Emperor, the face that he had hidden from them all, for the shame of a life so unnatural, so twisted in the Force. She heard him laugh at a tiny figure before him. Luke. She saw Luke, body broken, spirit flickering, at the Emperor's feet. A skyline full of star destroyers and Mandalore reduced to desert once more. Korkie lost with his mother, the end of the lineage Kryze. A new Death Star in the sky. She felt the Force in horrible imbalance, as the planet Ilum fractured and erupted from its bleeding core.

She saw, and she let it go.

Quiet.

And then Ariarne saw something she had never seen before. A vision of a type she had never seen before. She did not the see the future. She saw her parents. The parents she had never known, in living memory.

Their faces could have belonged to anyone. But she knew, somehow, that they belonged to her. They looked to her with ambivalence. Perhaps the faintest trace of disappointment. They did not reach for her. They dropped their heads, avoided her gaze.

The pain of it was lancing and Ariarne fell to her knees.

It was not real. It might have been real. Acceptance. Acceptance. It might have been real.

Her body convulsed with the pain of it. She gave herself, prostrate, to the ice. To the planet dying beneath her.

I have come to follow the Light. To leave all that Darkness behind.

When the visions subsided and she opened her eyes she felt foolish. She had not even begun her journey and she felt she had run for hours. But then, a faint singing, beneath her. Ariarne looked down and saw it.

She did not have to walk at all. The crystal was encased in ice beneath her, the distance between them lessening as the ice began to thaw. She had taken them here, to this precise place, the moment she'd set the coordinates.

"Are you-"

"Yeah. All done."

They walked in step with each other, each of them having discarded a glove. It felt right, Luke thought, to hold the kyber to his skin.

"Nothing too crazy?"

"No. Nothing too bad."

There seemed to be something Ariarne wasn't telling him. But wasn't there always? Luke didn't press the point. Master Yoda had always been firm in his counselling to let go of her visions and he supposed that sharing them was counterproductive.

"I wish we could drive the Empire from here. Leave the planet in peace."

Ariarne nodded mournfully.

"I think we'll have to destroy the Emperor, for that."

"Yeah. I think so too."

Luke thought of his father. The Chosen One. It had been easy to dismiss, earlier in his life. A simple mistake made by the Jedi Order – it wouldn't be the greatest miscalculation they had made in the last years of the Republic. But as he learned more of the Force he couldn't help but wonder. He thought often of the voice he had heard over the Death Star. Couldn't help the thoughts that surely were not mere vanity: could he have been chosen by the Force in his father's stead?

They climbed the ramp and into their ship, which still smelled faintly of Dagobah and the swamp in which it had sat for decades.

"Has yours changed colour?"

Ariarne hummed affirmatively.

"When I took it in my hand."

"Mine too."

Ariarne angled her wrist, allowed him to glimpse a flash of blue.

"Like my dad's!" Luke remarked. "And Obi Wan's. And Korkie's."

"Korkie's isn't really his," Ariarne reminded him.

Which was funny, really. Seeing as he still seemed to prefer it to his ancestral weapon.

"What about yours?"

Luke unfurled his fingers a fraction. Ariarne's eyes widened.

"Green? Like the lightsaber of the Grand Master of the Order?"

Luke shrugged.

"Why not?"

Ariarne grinned.

"So special," she tutted, in mock disapproval.

"I am the son of the Chosen One."

Ariarne rolled her eyes.

"I'm going to tell Leia you said that. Besides, Yoda says lineage isn't important. We're all connected."

"Whatever."

Luke cast himself into the pilot's seat. Ariarne was probably right. You probably couldn't inherit the position of Chosen One. And yet…

"I think the blue suits you," he offered.

Ariarne arched a brow, unimpressed.

"Why? Because I'm boring?"

"No!" Luke protested. "It just…"

Ah, kriff. Always the wrong thing. Something about her always made him say the wrong thing. Luke busied himself with their take-off as she strapped herself in beside him.

"…suits you," he finished lamely.

Ariarne reached over to turn down the ship's heating; she accused Luke often of missing Tatooine.

"You have such a way with words, farm boy."

"I wasn't raised with the benefit of your education, princess."

"You sound like Han."

The most damning rebuke she could have given him. Luke cringed.

"Urgh. Sorry. But in my defence, you, unlike my sister, are actually a princess."

"Of a planet that doesn't exist anymore, without any royal blood of my own."

"I think it still counts."

Ariarne shrugged. They lifted up and through Ilum's thin atmosphere.

"A successful mission, I suppose."

And the smile she gave him was weary but true. She rotated the kyber crystal pensively in her hand.

"The first of many, I hope."

I've neglected poor Luke and Ariarne for so long - they probably deserved a chapter mainly to themselves! Hope you enjoyed. Our awkwardly placed Korkie and Kawlan dinner make me laugh.

Next chapter, Korkie returns to Mandalore. I have some fun with a romance I never planned to write. And I do, maybe, advance the plot a bit (the promised trouble brewing on Mandalore didn't fit into this chapter, apologies).

xx - S.