tatooine_doofus | Room 317 [after workshops]

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Room 317 [after workshops]

After his workshop with Mr. Winchester, Luke came back to his room to convince Artoo that Leia had gone home.

Artoo, still in the closet, remained unconvinced.

"I wouldn't lie to you about this," Luke told the door, rolling his eyes. "She came, she saw him, she had ice cream, she went home. Really."

Artoo let out a mournful whistle.

"Fine," Luke said, flouncing back to his bed. "I'll be over here, practicing levitation with Yoda who's a turtle again, thank the Force."

Yoda? Not thrilled by getting spun through the air again, but he couldn't talk any more, so no one cared.

The door was cracked open.

[OOC: Conversation between Luke & Rikku is locked to them and the topic is NFB, thanks!]

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"It doesn't mean it wasn't true," Luke said softly. "He'd been a Jedi, he chose the Dark Side, and the fall...was catastrophic. That's why Leia and I were separated, why she was hidden, why Ben let himself be killed...."

By his former best friend. Nicely done, Obi-Wan.

Words tumbled out as she tried to wrap her mind around it. "Your dad ... Professor Skywalker ... he w-was ... he ... the one who'd been ... trying to kill you and ... and he ..."

There was a long moment before she realized that whatever she was feeling had nothing to do with any of this, and she wrapped her arms around him again and squeezed, hard.

She didn't really have any words for that. Maybe she didn't need any.

Luke bit down on his lower lip as he clung to Rikku for a long moment. "He wasn't trying to kill me," he insisted softly. "Because he could've done it without really putting in much effort."

Rikku wasn't letting go any time soon. "That doesn't make it any better. Why was he ... all the Jedi, and ... your sister, would he have killed her!? Luke, that's ... how do you even ... why? You said he fell hard, but ... to go from the guy teaching flight to ... to someone evil ..."

"Technically, he went from being someone evil to the guy teaching flight," Luke said with a rueful little smile. "We get a happy ending. Well, sort of. We set new standards for bizarre."

Rikku pulled back just a little to get a better view of his face. "W-wait. He's ... I thought it was a timeline thing. He's ..."

She smiled, tentatively. "Whoa. He ... he stopped being evil? That's ... Luke, that's incredible."

Luke smiled more. "He was my father. I couldn't just leave him like that. Besides, Rory wouldn't let me."

"Hey, I'm not surprised that you did it. I'm just ... you know. Kinda shocked it worked." Rikku beamed. "Wait, so Rory ... she used to, uh. She used to go out with him, didn't she?! She knows he was ... whoa."

"They were very serious," Luke said. "It hasn't been an easy year for her."

Luke liked focusing on other people's emotions. It stopped him from examining his own.

"So I went home in November to get a new hand and he went back to explain to his Emperor that I'd said no--I've never asked him how that meeting went, but I'm guessing not great--and we were both back here for the next semester. And Rory spent every week in his office trying to bring him back." He shook his head. "I didn't want to get too close. I was still pretty angry."

"I don't think it's been an easy year for any of you," Rikku said, giving him a sympathetic smile. "And your hand, that's so ... that's why it has the weird machinery thing? ... Wait, your dad did that?! He cut it off!?"

She stared for a long time and then leaned in to squeeze Luke again. "I don't blame you," she said softly. "I mean, it's not just the hand, it's ... everything. Yeah? That's a lot to ask."

"Well, he blew up my sister's homeworld and dropped her boyfriend into liquid metal," Luke said. "I got off kinda easy."

"No," Rikku said softly. "You didn't."

Luke blew out a breath. "Yeah," he admitted.

"Anyway, back home the Emperor decided that rebuilding the Death Star was a fantastic idea. The Rebellion, you know, disagreed. A lot. We caught what we thought was a lucky break--we discovered where it was being constructed and believed that its weapons weren't operational. I went home to help. Vader went home for his own reasons."

Rikku nodded. "He ... he went to help set it up? For the Emperor. And why ... why was he so ... tied to him, anyway? The Emperor, I mean. Were they using each other or ..."

Luke nodded. "The Emperor was a Sith, too. I don't know if he was ever a Jedi, though. Records are, not surprisingly, really, nonexistent about him. He was the master. Vader was the apprentice."

He paused. "I don't really know a lot about how it worked. My father's not exactly an unencrypted data card on, well, anything."

"Have you tried asking him?" Rikku shrugged hesitantly. "He's ... it's different now, right? I mean. I bet he doesn't want to talk about it much, but ... if it's important ..."

Luke pressed his lips together. "He'll talk when he's ready," he decided.

Luke was always a little too forgiving.

"So I went home, saw the Death Star and decided that it was now or never in bringing him back. I surrendered to a regiment of stormtroopers on Endor and asked him to remember who he was."

Rikku stared. "Wait, you mean ... just like that? Hey, I let them arrest me, stop being evil, let's go home?"

"It worked when I was rescuing Han," he said quietly.

Well, sort of. If you squinted. And ignored the part where he was almost eaten twice.

"Okay," Rikku decided. "You don't get to be vice-president. Even I have better plans than that one."

Luke gave her a rueful smile. "Okay, so it could've used some tweaking. Leia thought I was out of my mind. And Vader took me up to the Death Star and turned me over to the Emperor, so...that could've gone better."

Gee, Luke, ya think?

Rikku closed her eyes and shook her head. "You're ... but that means ... Luke, you're lucky to be alive, do you know that? That's ... crazy."

"Yeah, that occurred to me when they took away my lightsaber," Luke said. "But I had faith in my father. He was just so...conflicted. He wouldn't have let me die."

That's...a hell of a lot of faith.

And he meant every word of it.

Rikku took a deep breath and tried to understand the magnitude of what he was saying.

Finally she just gave him a light squeeze and shook her head. "I'm ... really glad you were right."

"Me too," Luke said softly. "I wasn't sure I was going to be, towards the end. The Emperor was trying to get me angry--to lose control. He pulled out all the stops. It turned out that the Death Star was a trap--the entire fleet flew directly into a fully armed and operational space station that could blow entire ships out of the sky with one shot." His face went pale remembering. "Jedi can feel other beings' emotions--and that kind of fear, that magnitude of death--leaves a mark."

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