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He awakened the morning after the wedding to discover that they’d already gone. They’d left Endor for their honeymoon without even saying goodbye.
Luke Skywalker gazed up at the speckled sunlight filtering through the leaves of the Ewok village’s majestic trees and told himself he understood. He reminded himself that he was a Jedi Knight who knew better than to try to control the actions of others.
Yet part of himself remained a simple farm boy, still, a young man. He’d only recently lost the father he’d hardly known he possessed; he couldn’t help but feel hurt. Han and Leia were his best friends—so why couldn’t they be bothered to tell him they were going?
He supposed it was because they loved one another differently than they loved him. They were entirely within their rights to feel that way. He understood that.
Or perhaps they were just letting him sleep off last night’s celebration. Perhaps they would comm him later.
None of it stopped Luke from feeling lonely. Feeling alone. Feeling that, by becoming a Jedi, he would be destined for solitude, a life lived apart and at a distance, doomed to become a sad desert hermit like Ben Kenobi—
“You will never be alone. No one is ever really gone.”
Luke smiled at the perfectly-timed appearance of Obi-Wan’s Force spirit. “I know,” he said. And yes, he did know, even if he struggled at times to believe. “I was just thinking of you.”
An azure-limned arm settled around Luke’s shoulders. The comforting weight and warmth of it felt real. “I know,” Obi-Wan said.
Luke remembered the first time he met Ben Kenobi. He couldn’t have been older than six, and he’d snuck off into Anchorhead to avoid Aunt Beru’s unending list of chores.
He’d seen Ben, then, that strange, mad—yet strangely compelling—wizard in tattered, careworn robes. The man was being tormented by a posse of local bullies. They were calling him names, obscene things that even now Luke would blush to utter aloud, and trying to kick sand into his face as he made his innocent, inoffensive way through the open air market. Although the market was full of grown-ups, no one stepped in to intervene, not even after one of the bullies tripped Ben and he went sprawling onto the ground.
Luke had wanted to help, but he’d been afraid of the bullies. They were big, and he was small. They might have hurt him, too.
Now, he wondered if he’d caught a glimpse of his own pathetic, lonely future that long ago day. “I’m sorry I didn’t—” He paused, ashamed. No. It was too difficult, too near, to say aloud. “How did you stand it?” Luke asked instead. He knew Obi-Wan would understand what he meant.
“I had you, Luke,” Obi-Wan said simply.
And then Luke remembered something that, until now, he’d completely forgotten. He remembered how Ben had stayed down, refusing to be provoked, and how eventually the bullies had lost interest and left. He remembered how he’d gone over to help Ben to his feet and ask him if he was okay. He remembered how kindly Ben had thanked him, how afterward he’d felt brave enough to head home and face those hated chores after all.
“There. You see?” Obi-Wan’s eyes seemed to twinkle with goodnatured mischief, and when he leaned in to kiss Luke, mouth soft, beard ticklish, Luke welcomed that eldritch embrace.
He didn’t feel quite so alone anymore.