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Mace, like all Jedi, was a teacher at heart.
So while he’d sometimes been called on to serve in other ways, in other roles (because he knew how to play a role), helping the Rebellion in quiet ways...most of his time since the Republic fell, Mace dedicated to teaching. It was not that he did not want to be more active on the front lines in the Rebellion – he fiercely believed in the Republic, in its necessity, even decades after its fall – but he knew that his very presence, as Master of the Jedi Order, would attract more trouble than it would help. He could only aid them as much as he could while disguising his identity as a Jedi. His injuries, too, could be troublesome – he was not in the shape he used to be. And so he kept mostly to the background, lending his strength through knowledge to those who could someday take the fight to the front lines.
His own lineage, other survivors, or the scattered children who would have been called to be Jedi but had no one to guide them there – it didn’t matter. Mace would teach whoever he could reach, whoever wanted to learn. He would pass on what he could of their teachings and their memory even if they could not practice openly, wherever he could find students. They were not his padawans – he did not have that depth of mentorship with them – but they were students nonetheless.
Right now, that was the boy in front of him.
“Adjust your stance,” Mace said. “You’re overextending.”
Luke complied, shifting into a position that was...at least closer to where he should be.
Mace could not fault his inexperience. All of those he had come across had gaps in their educations – their mentors, if they had had them, had done their best, but it was inevitable under the circumstances they were living under. There were different priorities for survival, and less resources. Much had been lost. Mace knew that he alone couldn’t hope to replace it all. The things that he once would have turned to his peers for guidance, either he set it aside or he treaded the path, uncertain, and alone. He had to deal with the situation as it was, not as it once had been.
So he did not blame Obi-Wan or Yoda for Luke’s lacking form. The intricacies of swordplay understandably took a backseat to understanding oneself and one’s connection to the Force – and in fact, those were rather necessary basics for lightsaber combat, anyway. And Luke, with his great strength in the Force, likely did not strictly need advanced techniques against all but the most skilled opponents.
But it was those skilled opponents that Luke would have to face, and so Mace felt it was important to teach him how to better defend himself and others. Among other things, of course – reinforcing the lessons Luke had already been taught, and whatever else Mace could pass on.
But for right now, the subject was saber-work.
Luke had the talent for it, and the drive to learn, but he did not have years to practice. A time constraint that was a source of frustration for them both. Mace could let it go, but Luke struggled with it.
“You’re leaving yourself vulnerable,” Mace said. “An opponent could easily knock you off-balance.”
Luke groaned, and stubbornly shoved towards the correct position – and of course, in his frustration, overshot it.
It was easy to see his father in him, sometimes.
Fortunately, Mace had had plenty of experience in looking past superficial similarities. He was quick to catch any judgements that came from memories of a different boy, and deal with the one in front of him as he was.
Still, he did not look at Luke quite the way he knew Obi-Wan and Yoda did. He knew that they pinned all their hopes for the future – of the Order, of the galaxy – on Luke. And even knowing Luke for such a short time, Mace could see why – of all the scattered Jedi he had taught since the rise of the Empire, Luke was the only one with the strength in the Force to even have a chance at holding his own against the Emperor, if for no other reason than the Emperor would see potential in Luke as a fresh apprentice. That was not a value judgement (power was not what made a Jedi), simply a grim reality in a situation where the leader of the galaxy would destroy all that he could not control.
Even so, Mace was not one who believed that the galaxy would be saved through one man alone. Everyone had to play their part to destroy tyranny and restore the Republic. He would not lay that on a single pair of shoulders, no matter how willing they were to take that burden.
Maybe he was wrong for that. Maybe if he had put more stock in such things, and had acted from that belief, instead of seeing only a man in turmoil and acting to shield him from a confrontation that would only lead to more pain, things would have turned out better.
Or maybe Anakin Skywalker would merely have Fallen a few minutes earlier.
Mace mentally stepped back, acknowledging his thoughts for what they were – survivor’s guilt – and pulled himself back to the present. It was a routine he’d gone through many times over in the past two decades.
Here and now, he had a young man dealing with his own turmoil. Mace had his suspicions as to the cause.
“I sense a great deal of anger in you,” Mace said. “Perhaps we should continue this lesson another time, if you are unable to focus.”
Luke winced at the reprimand, nodding as he deactivated his saber. “It’s not because of the saber lessons. It’s…” he trailed off, but Mace understood. He pressed the controls on his chair forward to meet Luke where he stood. Since it was an old, run-down hover chair, it shuddered over, the jarring motion aggravating existing aches and pains. Mace could sense Luke’s concern, and cut him off before he could again offer to fix the chair for him. He would probably take that offer, eventually, but for now, training Luke – and helping him work through his turmoil – was the priority. So Mace cut right to the matter at hand.
“Anger towards Obi-Wan, for concealing the truth? Or towards your father, for not being the man you thought he was?”
“I...don’t know. Both, I suppose,” Luke answered, running his hand through his hair. “I just...why didn’t Ben tell me?”
“That is not a question I can answer. You can ask Obi-Wan, or yourself. Would you have been ready to hear it?”
“I don’t know that I ever would have been ready,” Luke admitted. “But they couldn’t have kept it from me forever.”
“Presumably not,” Mace said, neutrally. “But greater mastery over yourself could only have helped.”
Luke was quiet for a long moment, then asked, “How did it happen?”
And that was...a complicated question. Mace could cite the war, how it wore them down and broke many Jedi, of which Anakin Skywalker was just the last and most devastating, or he could talk about Anakin’s long relationship with the now-Emperor, the leverage the older Sith had held over him, or even speak of the man’s consistent inability to put duty first and unwillingness to examine his own feelings...but the truth was that only Vader knew exactly what went through his head when he chose the dark side. Even having been there, been the first victim of Anakin’s turn, having sensed the man’s great turmoil and heard Palpatine’s lies, even Mace could only make assumptions. So he spoke, instead, of the dark side and how it worked. That was more relevant to Luke, in any case.
“The dark side,” Mace said, “is a danger within every Jedi. At every crossroad we are faced with choices – sometimes difficult ones, with no clear path. The dark side is a false promise of an easy, singular choice, to stop choosing. It tempts you with a path with no crossroads, no sacrifices, no difficult choices - only the power to take and control what you want. This, of course, is a lie, and those in the depths of the dark side are never satisfied, no matter how deep they go. And so their path leads them to destruction.”
Luke was quiet for a moment.
“There’s still good in him,” he said, eventually.
“And?”
Luke blinked at Mace. “What do you mean, and? There’s good in him. I felt it.”
“And what,” Mace clarified, “is the worth of abstract good if it is never acted upon? What does it matter to the countless beings that suffer at his hands or die on his blade?”
“I only meant that...he could change. He could come back to the side of good. I could bring him back.”
“Vader has had,” Mace said gently, but firmly, “over twenty years to make that choice. Throughout those years he has chosen the Empire, the Dark Side, every single time. Perhaps tomorrow he could choose otherwise. Or the next day. Or the next. But the potential that someday he may choose the right path is weighed against the lives you must defend today, against the victims of the Empire’s cruelty that Vader continues to perpetuate. Are you willing to sacrifice those for the chance that one man may save himself?”
“No,” Luke answered, “that’s not my aim. I want to see the Empire stopped as much as anyone else in the Rebellion! But I can’t kill him – he’s my father.”
“That’s a dangerous commitment to make,” Mace said. “Especially if you are also committed to serving the Rebellion, and committed, as a Jedi, to defend the innocent. These goals will conflict when you face Vader again.”
“Even so,” Luke said, “I can’t do it. But I believe I can turn him back.”
“Your compassion is a strength,” Mace said. “I cannot fault you for wanting to find a way to avoid killing. But do not get so caught up in what you want to be that you overlook what is.”
He paused, and relented a little.
“I am not without sympathy for you, Luke. You face more difficult choices than most. And I would spare anyone from a confrontation with Vader were it within my power. By all means, offer him the choice – but do not expect him to take it.”
“I think he will,” Luke said, with confidence.
“Prepare yourself for the outcome that he won’t. The Emperor is perceptive and cunning – he will sense this in you, and manipulate you if you aren’t mindful of this. Recall what I told you about the Dark Side, and its false promises of removing the crossroads. Do not let yourself be led astray. I only ask that you are mindful of where these conflicting goals are taking you. A broken expectation can lead to anger, and a desire to retaliate.”
“I won’t be led astray,” Luke promised. “I know that...that the choice is his, in the end. But I have to have faith that something of my father still exists, and that he can remember how to be a Jedi again.”
Mace could not share that belief. But he did, at least, believe that Luke would be mindful of his own path – that he would not allow his convictions to destroy him if they turned false. That when he stumbled, he would refuse to succumb. Even though the boy had come late to training, later than even his father, he had a strength of commitment to the path, so unlike his father, that rivaled the most devoted of Temple-raised Jedi. And that was something that spoke to Mace, a recognition of this commonality between himself and the young not-yet-Jedi.
Luke, Mace thought, would have flourished at the Temple.
For a moment, he could almost see it, the briefest vision in the Force of what might have been. Luke, in traditional robes, handling a lightsaber with grace from the years of training he did not possess in this reality, and from the long braid tucked behind his ear, clearly a padawan.
Perhaps he was even Mace’s padawan.
But the vision only lasted a moment, and Mace let it fade.
There was nothing to be gained, after all, from dwelling on what-might-have-beens.