Chapter Text
Luminara has only been a knight for three years.
She is twenty-four, not quite a fresh adult for a species that ages so close to the galactic average, but young enough that people often don’t take her seriously. She is the kind of Jedi that people expect, in behavior and in bearing, even if her choice of clothing is based far more heavily in the culture of her birth than that of her upbringing. She is calm and controlled and compassionate, even if she sometimes has to hide how nervous these solo missions make her.
Sometimes, Luminara wishes she were a bit more of the kind of Jedi that people do not expect, a jedi like Quin or Obi, or even Depa. Maybe then, she’d have a better response to her ship being sabotaged, her communications blocked, and both of the factions she was meant to be negotiating a peace for turning to try and kill her instead.
Nothing brought sentients together like a common enemy.
--
Luminara is not ashamed to admit that she’s in hiding. She has no way off planet until she can steal a ship, or a comm unit. Given the current situation, she’s not sure she can get into the city long enough to manage that. All the tech is in a language she doesn’t recognize, so… it’s not exactly a quick in-and-out trip to a local interstellar payment comm station. She’d have to figure out how to even work it, couldn’t leave until she had, and that means a sure chance of getting shot at.
So she hides in the mountains, and tries to figure out where to go from here. She can survive indefinitely here. The plant life is familiar enough to forage, and there’s a cave she can take shelter in from the daily thunderstorms. It’s temperate, for all that the weather rages from dawn to early afternoon, so she can offset the problems her heavy, water-absorbent clothes cause her if she gets caught in the rain. It isn’t pleasant, but she can make it through.
Then the second ship crashes.
--
The wreck is miles away from her, but there’s a spark of life in it, like a star to her senses, and she knows that there is a Jedi aboard. Technically, it is not the only option; there are plenty of Force Sensitives across the galaxy. Something about this one is just… Jedi, though. Familiar.
She thinks the Order may have realized she’s in trouble, and sent back-up. She thinks the local government may have shot the second Jedi down, for much the same reasons they’d attacked her. She thinks that, if her fellow was injured in this crash, she cannot leave them to the mercy of people who hate them for reasons beyond her understanding.
Luminara sprints to the downed ship. She arrives before the locals do. She uses her saber to get through the hull, for the hatch is smoking, and ignores the unfamiliar circle symbol. It is not important in this moment. The person inside is.
The human inside is a Jedi, though not one she knows. They carry a saber, and the clothes they wear are in the fashion of Jedi classics. She pulls them from the ship, makes sure there are no spinal injuries to be careful of, and ducks out just as the first speeders land.
Luminara takes the human to her cave. She lays them out, and Luminara is not a healer, nor does she have any plans to be one, but she’s taken enough classes to almost qualify for many things. She knows just how painful those burns on his arms are, just how dangerous the already-infected wound on his leg. The man is feverish and unconscious, and she worries that there is a head injury to handle on top of the rest.
She gathers herbs from the nearest patches of forest, clean water—the Force has many uses, after all—and tears her own skirt for bandages to boil. She makes poultices, with half her hearing on the speeders that search the forest below, and applies them to human Jedi’s wounds. She hopes that her handmade, natural remedy will be as helpful as the Healing Hall’s readymade medicinal creams, but she is limited in what she can use. Half the plants are familiar, yes, but she doesn’t dare try those she doesn’t recognize.
The human sleeps on.
Oh, there are periods of almost-wakefulness. They speak, technically. They try to sit up, for all that they immediately fall.
They are unmoored and incognizant, muttering for people she knows and more that she doesn’t. They know Obi-Wan, apparently, but the rest are… well, she doesn’t know an Ahsoka, Rex, Fives, Kix, or most of the others that the Jedi calls out for. They recognize her, seemingly, call her ‘Master Unduli’ with confusion and only a shade less disorientation than the others. They ask her where Barriss is, which is as confusing a question as any, because the only person she knows by that name is a five-year-old in the crèche.
She tells the Jedi this. They may not register her answer at all, because they drift off again soon after.
She changes out the wet cloth on their forehead.
--
The fever breaks. The Jedi wakes.
“Careful,” Luminara warns, when they start moving. “Your stomach wound is nowhere near healed yet. Don’t sit up without help.”
They don’t. They stop struggling rather quickly, actually, which is gratifying. “Stomach wound?”
“Some sort of hook, or a serrated blade, I think,” she tells them. “I’ve packed it clean and have tried to speed the healing, but it’s not my specialty. Thank you for following instructions, now that you’re aware.”
“Been injured too many times to ignore the medics,” the Jedi mumbles. “Where…?”
“A little planet by the name of Reverenta. I was dispatched to broker some peace negotiations, but they quickly fell through and both parties turned on me. I had assumed the Order found out and sent you to help me get off the planet, but your ship was shot down.”
“Brokering…?” the human mumbles, brow furrowed in pain. They grimace. “No, I was in a dogfight with Grievous and some of his vulture droids. One of them got me in the port engine while I was distracted.”
“I do not know who that is,” Luminara admits, “but I hope that the situation is resolved soon. Was there anyone with you that may know to follow?”
The human stares at her. She thinks, perhaps, that the possible head injury is still affecting their cognition.
“Let me get you some water,” she offers. “You must be thirsty.”
The human continues to watch her. She tries not to take it personally. When she turns back from the pot she’s been using to keep and boil water, they are lightly feeling along the bandages she has on their abdomen. “Don’t fiddle with them.”
“Just mapping out,” the human tells her, eyes on the ceiling. They finish feeling at the edges, and drop their hand. Their head falls to the side, just looking at her. “I need a sanity check. What’s the date?”
“Third day, eighth month, six-nineteen,” she tells them. “You think you lost time to a head injury? I couldn’t tell if there was any damage, just that there wasn’t any cranial bleeding.”
“Something like that,” they mutter. She doesn’t ask further; they seem familiar enough with injury that they may have a private history with memory loss that she isn’t entitled to, even in their circumstances. “You’re… Luminara Unduli?”
“Yes,” she tells them. “You actually recognized me, while you were still in a fever, though you called me a Master. I am only a knight.”
“How old are you right now?” they ask. Their brow is furrowed again.
“Twenty-four,” she tells them. “I’m afraid I don’t have your name. You don’t wear a padawan braid, so I assume you’re a knight as well?”
“Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker,” they say, with a practiced, almost mocking lilt. “Twenty-one. I’m a ‘him,’ if that was your next question.”
“Not the next, but coming up,” she says. She shifts closer, and takes his hand. He stares in confusion until he realizes that she is taking his pulse. “How do you feel?”
“Like I just woke up with the worst hangover of my life, because my fighter ducked out of hyperspace while I was too out of it to fix the nav,” Skywalker mumbles. “Must’ve spent days in that thing without the… the… fuck, I can’t get the word.”
Luminara files this away. Infection needed time to set in, so it makes sense that Skywalker had a few days between suffering the injury and landing in her care.
“Drink something,” she tells him again, because she still has the water she’d been getting when he started questioning his memory. She does set it aside first, because Skywalker needs help to sit up, but it’s still only a few seconds before she’s pressing the cup to his lips and doing her best to keep from over-tilting it and spilling.
“Thank you,” he says, after. “Is it too early to know if I can eat?”
“I don’t want to risk anything heavy,” she says. “I can make a ground meal from some of the plants, though, or a broth if I catch something.”
“Sounds good,” Skywalker mutters.
Luminara looks at him for a few moments, judging, and nods. “You should sleep, I think. I’ll see what I can do about food.”
He doesn’t argue this. He simply closes his eyes and rests.
--
Luminara hears more names she can’t recognize, when the Skywalker sleeps. There are no more fever dreams, but he speaks in the night anyway, murmured entreaties to someone by the name of Padmé, and more references to the same names as before. Luminara wonders, really, but it’s not her business. She does not need more than to know that Skywalker has met friends of hers; Obi-Wan comes up again, as do Master Windu, and Koon, and Yoda.
This man is very talkative, even unconscious.
She helps him whenever he wakes, her worry increasing as the infection lingers with no sign of the Order coming to her aid. Skywalker asks things, whenever he’s awake enough to do so, and some of his questions make more sense than others.
He asks after her padawanship, her connections to Mirialan culture, her classes. He gets to know her.
He asks after the Trade Federation, the Banking Clans, the Order’s current contract of public service with the Senate. He gets to know the politics.
He asks after Obi-Wan, and Master Jinn, and Master Dooku. He calls a reputable master ‘Count.’ He gets to know less, because Luminara does not know what it is that worries her about this question.
He asks after Naboo. He is not from there, she learns, but is friendly with many who are. He’s very interested in the current status of the monarchal elections and the senator.
He is almost well, weeks into their companionship in the cave, when he asks her if she would consider a marriage nullified with one party’s loss of memory putting them in a position to not even remember their spouse, let alone their marriage.
“I don’t know,” Luminara tells him. She is suspicious, by now, by how much Skywalker has learned from her, and how little she has learned of him. She still does not know his relation to Obi-Wan. “Why do you ask?”
“Because I can’t go back to her, when she doesn’t remember me,” Skywalker tells her.
Jedi do not marry. She does not say this. Skywalker is looking at a wall, eyes wide and blank and glazed, as though he’d like to cry but cannot bring himself to do so.
She does not imagine that a perceived lecture on codes and regulations would be much help, with whatever grief he is experiencing.
“Tell me about her?” Luminara prompts. “Your… ex-wife, I suppose?”
“It’s been months since I’ve seen her,” Skywalker says. “I didn’t… I was supposed to see her again, talk and—and now I haven’t really gotten to say goodbye, have I?”
That is not the question Luminara asked. It only gives her more questions. How does his disappearance factor into the amnesia question? It only becomes more muddled and muddied as she tries to fit the pieces together.
“I am sorry for this situation being as it is,” Luminara tells him. She places her hand on his. “I can tell how much you loved her.”
He starts to say something. He does not actually do so.
Skywalker buries his face in his hands and breathes heavily.
“I know you’ve not had much else to do recently,” Luminara says, putting her hand on his and squeezing just enough to help ground him, or so she hopes, “but perhaps a shared meditation would help… not remove the feelings, but work through them.”
“I don’t want to not love her.”
“That is not what I am suggesting.” Luminara does not snap, as others may have, but she’s annoyed anyway. Skywalker is a knight. He should know this. “But just as stretching can help a sore muscle with a little initial pain, so too can meditation help us process and accept emotions that we cannot control or change the cause of. There is no solution to grief, but to work through it is to help live with it, rather than resigning oneself to the suffering.”
Grief can damage thinking, and they still don’t know if he had a head injury. Perhaps his cognition is still affected, and that is why he was so angry at her for saying meditation could help. She hopes so.
Skywalker falls back, barely cushioned at the site of injury, and it frustrates her to see him being careless.
He puts his hands on his face, and shudders, and she realizes that he is truly crying now.
Perhaps a hug is in order.
--
Luminara still does not know who Skywalker’s master was, his lineage, his classes or friends or even the name of his former wife. He still talks plenty, about mechanics and battle and soldiers she gathers may be Mandalorian, but he is careful to avoid naming planets or fellow Jedi, or even specific years. He mentions having accidentally acquired a Padawan at some point, but does not tell her the name. He clams up, changes the subject, looks heartbroken, and never, ever answers.
She wonders why the names of soldiers are fair game, but the Jedi that are his closest family are not.
She wonders why Skywalker had soldiers at all.
There are no answers. He simply tells her a story about pod racing instead.
Her anxiety builds. It’s been over a month, now, and she does not know why the Order isn’t here for her. She cannot get to a port of call, not even since she deemed Skywalker well enough for her to risk leaving him alone for an attempted infiltration. It just isn’t working, and she’s certain that her comm has been sliced and spoofed to convince the Order that everything is fine, actually. With Skywalker’s endless secrets atop that, everything in her winds tight.
“Tell me about your family,” she asks him, as they bed down one night.
“…my family?”
“Your wife. Your parents, should you remember them. Your lineage. Whatever comes to mind.” She does not meet his eyes. It’s too dark to see more than the barest glint of a reflection off them, at any rate. “I need a distraction, and meditation has not helped.”
Skywalker is silent for a few moments, and then he starts to speak.
He had a mother. He’d lived with her until he was nine, because he had not lived anywhere the Order frequented, but rather on Tatooine. His mother had been loving, and kind, and had taught him that it was his duty as a sentient to help others whenever he could, even if their resources were few and their freedoms still fewer. She is dead, and he is unsure if she would be proud of him now.
She hears what is unsaid. He was a slave. He has done something that brings him great shame, though she has no idea what. His mother was, once upon a time, the one and only thing he could trust in the galaxy.
“Tell me about your wife,” she prompts.
He does. She was from Naboo. Noble family, but dedicated to helping those less fortunate. Unaware of how dark the galaxy could be until she met him and realized that some things—slavery, Luminara hears past the glancing reference—were still alive and well. She was rich and blind because of that wealth, in some ways, but she tried. Oh, did she try.
“She lived a dangerous life?” Luminara asks.
“Very,” Skywalker tells her. “She almost got shot so many times. We ran into a mad scientist trying to recreate the Blue Shadow virus as an airborne strain, and I nearly lost her then.”
He wilts, because now he has lost her, in some way. He does not elaborate. He never does. All that he will say is that she will not remember him, cannot and never will again, and he is working to come to terms with that.
“Were there ever others?” she asks, on a whim.
“It was only ever her,” Skywalker tells her. “I tried to date, but… no. It was only ever Padmé.”
And now she does not know him.
It’s a picture perfect tragedy.
--
Luminara finds herself watching Skywalker go through forms with his saber unlit, practice without the risk of someone hunting down the sizzle of their blades by ear.
He knows all the forms but Vaapad, and he is good. He is competent, if rote and bored, at most of them. His Soresu is not favored, she thinks, but it is precise and particular in the way of someone whose master was insistent on it. Skywalker is… dedicated, maybe. He doesn’t love the form, and it does not entirely suit him, but he respects what it means and, perhaps, whom it represents.
And his Djem So is gorgeous.
Luminara is not a specialist in saberwork. She is proficient at a knight’s level in all forms, as was required for promotion without a waiver. She knows how to wield her weapon, and practices as any Jedi should, but it is not her calling. She is a diplomat and a teacher, not a warrior, and certainly not anything approaching a soldier.
There are Jedi who dedicate themselves to the art of the blade, masters of physical movement and the connection of meditation to dance and footwork. Anakin Skywalker, she thinks, is one of them. All Jedi dance with a blade, in one manner or another, but few do so as beautifully as Skywalker does, with as much joy and fervent, desperate immersion in the Force as him. She almost wants to watch him forever.
“I think I’m healed enough to help you steal a ship now,” Skywalker tells her, and the scar at his eye crinkles with the way he smirks. It is far more charming than it should be. “What do you say, doc?”
“You seem well, yes,” she agrees. She stands and dusts her skirts, suddenly unsure of what she should be doing. She is no longer needed, it seems. The shape of their dynamic has changed.
Are they friends? They’ve been living in the cave for over a month now. She thinks they are.
“Help me scout?” he asks.
“Of course,” she agrees.
--
With Skywalker well enough to help, stealing a ship is criminally easy.
“I was a mechanic,” he explains, elbow deep in wiring, with a subverted droid at his side. It’s a P4 astromech, she thinks, and it has decided that Skywalker is the best thing since engine oil. Something about a restraining bolt. “Hell, I could barely read Aurebesh when I was picked up by the Jedi—everything on Tatooine is in Huttese, so that’s the alphabet I grew up with—but I could build a protocol droid out of scrap at nine, and a winning pod from trash and the discard pile. Machines, I know.”
He pulls out of the ship’s innards with a hiss as something sparks. “And just like people, some machines are assholes. Pass me a wrench?”
“Is there anything you don’t know, Knight Skywalker?” Luminara asks. She hopes he can hear that she’s teasing. “Master mechanic, ace pilot, and a fighter to rival a seasoned guardian, you seem very… rounded.”
“Nah, I can’t do a thing about politics,” he immediately denies. “My master? Amazing at them, hates politicians. Me? Friends with politicians, sure, but like hell I can tell you a thing about the Senate that you couldn’t get from at ten-year-old. Not too great at Lit or history or poetry or… well, anything but swords and ships, actually.”
The droid beeps.
Skywalker nods to it. “And droids, yeah.”
“I see,” Luminara says. She almost regrets the tease. “I suppose it is a good thing, to be aware of one’s weaknesses, so one can seek to rectify them.”
“Or to find a person to cover bases you know you’ll never be able to take care of yourself,” Skywalker shoots back. She isn’t sure if it’s meant to be an argument or not. “I’m Outer Rim and I don’t see that ever really going away. People can always tell, and I’m not going to train myself into being something other than ‘Outer Rim trash’ just to get their respect, and that means diplomacy’s always going to be a little out of reach for me in most systems. Now, accompanying a Consular as backup? That, I can do.”
He grins at her, as if to emphasize that she herself is a Consular requiring backup.
She likes that smile.
Oh.
“Perhaps once we are back at the Temple, and the Healers have cleared you for such things, we could spar,” she suggests, before she can overthink it. “I need to sharpen those skills, and in return, I could help you with… ah, understanding the Senate at a level higher than your example of the ten-year-old.”
Skywalker snickers. It’s cute. Oh dear.
“Yeah, I might take you up on that,” he says, and he stands and wipes the grease off on his robes. “Need to figure out some stuff with… I dunno. Yoda, probably. Madame Nu? Force knows I have no idea how I got here.”
A broken nav system, Luminara had been told, but just the names he gives are enough to suggest it’s more complicated than that.
“Anyway,” he says, flicking a switch and thus dropping the ramp to enter the ship with a flourish. “You can stop hiding us if you’d like. We’re good to go. P4 is going to give us the access codes to get out the hangar and, if we’re lucky, off planet before anyone notices.”
“That will require quite a bit of luck,” Luminara warns, though she follows him in without a drop of hesitation.
“What is luck if not the will of the Force?” Skywalker asks.
Luminara laughs, gentle as anything. “Now I can see how you would be friends with Obi-Wan. You’d have learned that turn of phrase just to annoy him by mimicking his master.”
“Rude,” Skywalker accuses, and it’s almost, almost joking. So very close to lighthearted.
But the grief is there again, and she wants to wipe it off his face.
Luminara thinks she may like this young man far more than she should.
He is a widower, she tells herself. His wife may be amnesiac instead of dead, but he’s made it clear that she may as well be dead for all that he can expect to even interact with her, whatever the reason. He is grieving. He is not mine to court.
This does not stop her heart.
She sits down and buckles in. “Shall we?”
--
They make it back to the temple, and Skywalker is quiet. He’s spent the days in hyperspace erratic and distracted, modifying mouse droids in the middle of the night and futzing about in the kitchen during the day. Luminara tries to talk to him, stories to distract or shared meditation to calm, and nothing gets through. He gets irritable, avoids her, and she tries not to feel hurt.
“Don’t mention me to them first,” Anakin tells her. “They won’t… they won’t know me.”
“…you’ve spoken of Yoda and Obi-Wan, and even others, as if you know them personally.”
He doesn’t meet her eyes. “And I do. But they won’t… it’s complicated. I need to talk to Yoda in person, preferably alone, and then… I don’t know. I’ll figure something out from there.”
A new name, maybe. A new face. A faked death, if it’s been particularly dramatic.
It could be a transition, maybe, but she hadn’t seen any of the telltale scars at his chest when she was tending to his wounds, nor at the join of his legs when cleaning him before he was awake enough to do so himself. She doubts it’s that.
She informs the temple on approach that she has a guest, and that the guest has requested to speak directly with Yoda. This isn’t an uncommon request, but most of the time, the Jedi head it off before it can get too far. A large number of politicians have tried to get an audience with the grandmaster of the order, failing to recognize that they are not nearly as important as they think they are, and certainly not important enough to forgive their rudeness.
If a Jedi tells the temple that a guest needs to speak with Yoda, and phrases it correctly, the temple will know that it’s a real, necessary request.
And so it goes. Luminara lands. They exit. They are not given an escort, but make their way to the council’s room directly. Luminara watches Skywalker on their way, how his shoulders tighten and his eyes flick about, familiar but guarded. Nobody seems to recognize him, and that just ratchets the tension higher.
They reach the doors. She places a hand on his shoulder and smiles, and is gratified to get one in return. It’s weak, but it’s there. She squeezes his shoulder and enters the council chambers to present her report.
She gets to the arrival of Knight Anakin Skywalker. True to his warning, none of them recognize the name. She outlines his behavior and what he’s said of his background, what she’s managed to piece together that doesn’t violate the trust of privacy, and his request to speak with Master Yoda.
“There is more,” she finishes, thinking of his marriage, now null and void, “but I do not feel that it is my place to tell you, and would rather leave that for him to explain.”
“Understood,” Master Windu says. There’s a furrow in his brow that Luminara is certain relates to his famed shatterpoint ability. The Council, as a whole, are curious.
Skywalker is let in. He stands by Luminara’s side, tall and broad, the kind of wide stance that belays his anxiety. It is bravado.
“We don’t know you,” Master Windu says, leaning forward and letting his shoulders rise with how he rests his elbows on his knees. “According to Knight Unduli, you not only know us, but do so to the point of personal rapport.”
“It’s a complicated situation, Master Windu,” Skywalker says. He looks around the room, as if counting names, and frowns at Master Dyas.
“Is something the matter?” Master Dyas prompts. He looks unwell, though he hides it as ever.
“I know the others,” Skywalker admits freely. “Not you, though.”
Skywalker’s eyes flash with something Luminara can’t identify when the name is given. She cannot even begin to untangle it. Skywalker turns it into a stiff nod, and then goes back to looking at Master Yoda.
“Speak with you, I will,” Master Yoda decides. There is a side room for such purposes. Luminara wonders if she will be invited to stay for the rest of whatever this conversation becomes. “Call for Master Jinn and his apprentice, the Council will.”
Skywalker blinks rapidly. “Yes, thank you, I—what?”
“Mention a friendship with Padawan Kenobi, Knight Unduli did,” Master Yoda says. He’s already up and moving. Skywalker follows, oddly hesitant. “A rekindling, you wish?”
Again, the web of regret and grief and not a little hope. “Ah—maybe. Depends on whether you believe me.”
Master Yoda nods, and off they go.
Luminara waits. She is not dismissed.
Obi-Wan and Master Jinn arrive. Jinn floats to gossip with Master Windu, and Obi-Wan waits just enough to be polite before he breaks and comes to stand with Luminara.
She explains the basics. Skywalker knows Obi-Wan, but expects to not be known in return. Obi-Wan confirms that he has no idea who this knight is. She tells him as much as she did the council.
Master Yoda exits the side room. He asks for Masters Koon, Dyas, Ti, and Windu. They go into the side room again.
The tensions wind. Time passes. She and Obi-Wan talk about what’s been happening in the Temple while she was gone. It is absolutely gossip.
Master Windu exits and asks for someone to fetch Madame Nu. She arrives quickly—apparently she’d been warned it might happen when Jinn and Obi-Wan were called in—and Windu asks for her and Master Jinn to enter the side room.
More time passes. They all exit.
Skywalker’s eyes are not puffy with tears, but she can tell he’s been trying hard not to let them fall.
“Knight Unduli, I’m afraid we’re going to have to ask you to leave,” Master Windu tells her. “The full council needs to discuss what’s happened, and Jinn and Kenobi are personally involved to a degree, but beyond that… I’m afraid we cannot let certain details reach beyond, despite your involvement thus far.”
Luminara looks to Skywalker. He won’t meet her eyes, but she thinks he agrees.
She nods. “I understand. Shall I remain nearby in case you need to discuss my original mission?”
“That can be held off until tomorrow, I think,” Master Ti says. “Take the rest of the day to recover from the past few weeks.”
Luminara bows and takes her leave.
--
Obi-Wan comes to find her hours later in the refectory, after she’s had some time to clean up, change, and visit the medics. Sleep will wait until evening. Hyperlag is enough of a pain without enabling it.
“Hey, Lumi.”
Her mouth is full, so she holds up a hand in greeting. He joins her, sitting across the little table for two. He has a cup of tea, and a puriberry muffin.
She swallows. “So, how did your impressively secret meeting go?”
He grimaces, not even trying to hide it. “I can’t talk about the details, but things are weird. Also…”
“Hm?”
“I think you might be the only friend Knight Skywalker has right now,” he tells her. “I mean, I want to know him. He knows me. I should know him. But… I don’t. Nobody does. Except you.”
She’s been worried that might be the case. “And you can’t tell me why?”
“No.”
She hadn’t expected so. It is not a disappointment. “I see. Is this you asking me to be there for him? I’d have done so anyway. I spent over a month surviving with him.”
“You still referred to him by title and last name when we were talking in the council chambers,” Obi-Wan points out. “Which I know is just your default for people you don’t know where you stand with, but I think you can call him Anakin, or at least ask.”
She kicks him under the table. He rolls his eyes.
“Can you tell me what is planned for him?” she asks. “Or is that also classified?”
“Um, he’s doing a trip to Tatooine with Master Koon, but I can’t explain why,” he says. “You’ll find out soon anyway. Um… I think he’s with the Healers right now? He told you about the whole… war situation, right?”
“Not in so many words, but I gathered as much,” she says. “He wouldn’t tell me what or where or why, just that there was a war and he was involved in a leadership role. I’d have guessed based off of the armor, but I felt it was… polite to avoid pressing on the topic, given everything else that was going on, and his insistence on speaking with Master Yoda before anything else.”
Obi-Wan laughs in a way that is pained and carries only a touch of humor. “Yeah. Complicated. He wasn’t exactly happy about the requirement to get a full workup from the healers, but he’s complying. We don’t have a medical record, so.”
So. Yes.
“He did tell me he’s been injured too often to ignore a medic,” she says. “One of the many things that indicated a war record.”
“That tracks,” Obi-Wan mumbles. He looks at his tea instead of at her. “Just… hells, he’s really lost everything, Lu.”
She doesn’t know just how much she can ask. The council is involved in these secrets. It might be beyond her.
“You don’t need to ask me to be there for him,” she says. “I was planning on it anyway.”
Obi-Wan smiles weakly at her. “Yeah. Thanks.”
--
Luminara does not go to Tatooine, but she is there when Master Koon and Knight Skywalker return. The two of them pass through the refectory, presumably after visiting the council chamber and healers.
They have a young boy with them, who looks about with fear and wonder, and shines like a little sun when she takes a moment to focus that particular sense. Some of the hunched anxiety is gone from the set of Skywalker’s shoulders, when he isn’t paying attention. She wonders who the child is.
Skywalker meets her eyes. He tilts his head in question. She smiles back, and gestures for him to continue with what he is doing.
She returns to her conversation with Bant. She can wait for Skywalker to finish whatever duty this is. All things in good time.
Some five minutes later, there is a very small voice at her side.
“Um, hi? Are you Miss Unduli?”
Young. Outer Rim accent. This is the child Skywalker brought from Tatooine.
Luminara turns.
Blue eyes, familiar in shade and shape, blink back at her.
“Yes,” she says, just barely fast enough to not be rude. “You just flew in with Master Koon and Knight Skywalker, yes?”
The child nods. “You’re the one that saved my uncle, right?”
Uncle. A few pieces slot together. The eyes are a family resemblance. The Force ran in Skywalker’s family, and his nephew—or possibly niece, but her instinct is that the child is a boy, and instinct is rarely wrong, for a Jedi—was also Sensitive, and had been fetched to join the Order.
“I am,” she says. “I wasn’t aware that he had any family. May I know your name, youngling?”
The child grins. “Mom named me after him, so we’re both Anakin Skywalker!”
“That’s sure to be confusing in a few years,” Luminara notes. She hopes the child takes it as the joke it’s meant to be. “Is there a way I should refer to you to avoid people being confused about which Skywalker I mean?”
“You c’n call me Ani,” the younger Skywalker says. She rather wants to pinch his cheeks. She refrains. “That’s what my mom calls me, and Mister Plo was calling me that on the trip.”
“Little Ani, then,” she says, and fails to smother her smile when he puffs up with a child’s annoyance. “And you can call me Miss Luminara, if you’d like.”
Ani smiles brightly, and then darts in to hug her. She stiffens, because she’s not volunteered in the crèche for quite some time now, and rather forgot the impulsive speed of a youngling, but relaxes and lightly rests her arms on the boy’s back.
Bant is laughing at her.
“Thanks for helping my uncle,” Ani mumbles into the fabric at her shoulder. “I’m glad I got to meet him.”
There is a world of information in that. She does not try to tease it out. “It was my pleasure, little one.”