luke-shywalker:
Luke and Uncle Owen never got to make up to one another after having their dinner table fight
*flies off into the distance*
You won’t get away that easily. *snags you by the hoodie*
At last, the stars he beheld were not the same as those he’d gazed at his entire life. New constellations sprawled across his sight, their siren call beckoning him more strongly than ever. Yet even as he’d lain in the sand staring up at them night after night in silence both wistful and awestruck, content in his brief, peaceful solitude, he’d never thought there would come a day when he would have to watch them alone.
“Looks like I’m going somewhere after all,” Luke whispered, eyes fixed upon the heavens above his cockpit canopy.
But I didn’t know it would be without you. Not like this.
His throat ached sharply and his gloved hand tightened around the control stick. If only he’d known that it was going to be their last meal, their last words. His dreams were coming true and he could not share them, or put them aside just for a day to realize what he already had, and what they had done for him. Medallions and kill markers and effusive praise couldn’t bring back his aunt’s warm smile and gentle encouragement, or his uncle’s sage advice and hard-earned approval that somehow felt so much less hollow.
Uncle Owen, Aunt Beru, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.
A concerned warble broke through the cloud of his sudden grief. “What?” Blinking hard, Luke glanced at the translation on his screen. “Oh, I’m…um, I was…just thinking. Sorry. We clear for takeoff?”
Behind him, R2 beeped an affirmative, but wasn’t satisfied. “I’m…” Luke breathed out slowly, letting himself soak in the piercing whine of snubfighter engines idling in the warm night air. An evacuation wasn’t the time to lose himself. “I’m not okay,” he finally admitted to the droid’s persistent questioning. “But I have to be. Maybe I’ll tell you later.” It was going to be a long, lonely flight anyway, his first through hyperspace on his own.
Corralling his mind back to the present, Luke activated the repulsors and eased the fighter forward as Commander Narra’s voice crackled across the comm, reminding their squadron of their flight orders. The night sky grew darker still as he climbed and the stars sharpened to razor-edged diamonds, glittering promise and drawing blood.
Aunt Beru had spoken many times of the bonds between spirit and flesh, woven of love, trust, and wisdom, not forged from the iron of slavery. The veil between the living and the dead, she had said, was far thinner than one would think. If the Force bound all living things, Luke wondered, perhaps there was a way.
If you can hear me, his heart cast out, please forgive me. I love you. And I will fight for you, until my last breath. If I see you again, I hope you’ll receive me with open arms.
With the touch of a lever, the brilliant maw of hyperspace erased the stars and consumed his ship.
