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His child had returned to him.
She looked older, wearier, and leaner than the last time Luke had seen her. That was to be expected, it had been nearly fifteen years. She had the same spark in her eyes though, and while there was still something blocking her full presence in the Force, he knew this was his Rey.
He had searched for her, tracking the First Order across the galaxy, but they had disappeared without a trace. Eventually he admitted defeat, and simply walked away from everyone in his grief. He had worked so hard to have her. Her disappearance or possible death, and the destruction of his Jedi Academy had sent him to a very dark place.
He wished he could stop thinking about that day. He had been offplanet, running a meaningless errand. The scar on his arm where the gene sample had been taken twinged, and then moments later a warning came screaming through the Force. By the time he returned to the Academy it was too late. He searched frantically for any survivors, begging the Force that he would not find his own child’s body among the dead.
He knew who had done this. It had to have been his nephew. He had tried to help that child, but Ben was deeply troubled, and Luke could never quite discern why. Then one day, he had disappeared. Luke felt Ben’s presence now, it was twisted and sick feeling, but it was him. Ben had been here. Ben had killed all of these people. Luke had failed. He had failed his students, he had failed his nephew, and he had failed his daughter. There was no trace of her besides her training lightsaber left in the mud near the bodies of two of his older students. It looked like they had been trying to help her escape when they were apprehended. There were burns from a lightsaber across their bodies, and Rey’s tiny boot prints were everywhere in the mud. There appeared to have been quite a struggle that abruptly ended as the little prints morphed into two troughs where she had likely been dragged a few meters. The prints disappeared completely then, and a large set of boot prints led back to the landing pad.
Someone had taken his daughter. She couldn’t be dead; he hadn’t felt her death in the Force, but he couldn’t locate her either. Someone was blocking her presence. Or they might have severed her connection to the Force entirely, he had read of that in some old Jedi documents he had found. The thought of Rey kidnapped and alone, with not even the Force to protect her sickened him. Despair and anger swelled within him, stronger than it had been even aboard the second Death Star. Luke broke down, falling to his knees and crying in the mud. There was nothing he could do to fix this. All of his students were dead, and it was very likely that his daughter would soon join them. This was all his fault. If only he’d done more to help Ben. If only he hadn’t left the academy unprotected. If only… if only he’d done anything else. But he hadn’t, and all of his students had paid the price for his failure.
Luke did his duty to his students first. He contacted those who had families, each holocall breaking him a little further. Those who had no family he laid to rest himself. That done, he began the search for his daughter. Luke had no real clues on where to look for her, but he couldn’t bring himself to give up yet. He wandered the galaxy aimlessly for months. Eventually he sent R2 back to Leia with a message explaining what had happened. He couldn’t face her himself, not after he had failed her so enormously. His search continued for another year, bearing nothing. That was all he felt now, absolutely nothing. He sent another message to Leia telling her he was going to look for ruins of an early Jedi temple for guidance, and cut himself off from the galaxy.
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Luke had always loved being around kids, but he had never thought much about having them himself. He had known since his early teenage years that romance, and sex for that matter, were not among his interests. Growing up he’d thought he might adopt one day. Tatooine did not have advanced reproductive technology, so the possibility of a child who was genetically his own had never crossed his mind. Things were different in the rest of the galaxy though. It was a delicate and expensive process, but it was possible. It would take him years to save enough credits. Being a Jedi didn’t exactly pay well, but that was alright. It would be years before his Jedi Academy was running well enough for him to consider focusing his time elsewhere anyway. Nearly a decade after Leia and Han had their child, he decided it was time.
Leia offered to carry the child once it was past the embryonic stage. Luke declined. She had enough problems while carrying Ben. Some had taken her perceived fragile state as a chance to attempt kidnappings and assassinations, he didn’t want to put her through that again. Besides, her relationship with Han had been rocky lately. He didn’t want to add a pregnancy to the list of her problems. Leia was also an entire system away, and he wanted to be near his child while it grew. Going to the Resistance base to be with her for nine months wasn’t an option. The Academy was running smoothly enough that he could think about raising a child, but things weren’t calm enough that he could leave it for that long.
No, his child was safer growing locked away in a medical facility that no one knew about. If Leia carried the child there would be questions, and holonet buzz, and just more than he wanted to deal with. Being a hero of the Rebellion brought an inane lack of privacy, and his orientation was one thing he had managed to keep out of the spotlight. There were rumors of course, but they were wildly off the mark, and he preferred to keep it that way. It was best for his child to germinate in secret. When the child fully entered the galaxy there would be questions, but it was safer now for their existence to remain unknown.
A genetic sample was taken from the bone marrow in his arm. He declined the bacta spray that would prevent the incision from scarring. He knew his child would one day walk the galaxy, he wanted to always have some piece of them with him. He had so many scars anyway, one of them might as well be from something he was fond of.
The bone marrow was then processed, and his genetic material was stripped out and recombined to create a viable embryo. The healer, an old Kaminoan woman, told him of another man who had once wanted a child as he did. This man had simply raised a clone as his son. Luke didn’t want that. He wanted his child to be different from him. He wasn’t even sure he wanted a son. He decided to let the Force, or at least genetics decide.
In those nine months Luke found it hard to keep his concentration on his duties to the Academy. He slipped away several times a day to check in on his child. He watched it grow from an embryo to a fetus, safely sealed behind glass, and cocooned in a warm bath of fluids. Only his most trusted students at the Academy knew of this, he thought it was safer that way. There had been multiple attempts to kidnap Ben from Leia and Han when he was an infant, those same people would most likely come after his child if they knew it existed.
Back at the Academy, he often found his thoughts drifting back to this small room. He had taken to pressing his forehead against the glass, and brushing against the child’s mind with the Force. At first there was no response, just a bright presence. Finally after several months, there was the smallest twinge in the Force when he reached out. He was giddy with that small response, and had immediately commed Leia to tell her. She laughed, and began to tell him stories of her interactions through the Force with Ben while he was still in the womb. Luke had heard these stories before, but they were good to hear again, especially now that he had a child of his own.
Leia asked him if he had any names in mind. He had been thinking about this, but hadn’t really settled on anything. They had a similar conversation once before. When Leia was pregnant, she had asked him permission to use the name Ben for her own child, citing that if he ever planned on having children of his own, she would save that name for him to use. Ben Kenobi had been important to all of their lives, but she knew he meant the most to Luke. At the time he’d gladly agreed with her use of it. He had no desire or plans for a partner or marriage, and it hadn’t really occurred to him yet that he could have a child of his own without that.
He eventually settled on the name Rey. It was a Tatooinian name meaning beloved, or miracle child. It was often used by couples who had many failed attempts at bearing children. Medical technology on Tatooine was centuries behind more developed parts of the galaxy, and couples who had difficulties had little more than folk medicine to assist them. The traditional methods worked for some, but it was still a miracle when a healthy baby was born to one of these couples. Infertility wasn’t a problem for Luke, that he was aware of anyways, but it still felt like his circumstances were close enough to warrant use of the name.
He didn’t bother picking another name, he knew the child was a girl. Not only because he could see her forming, but in the last few months their interactions via the Force had become more coherent. Her mind had a distinctly feminine presence.
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Leia, Han, Chewie, and Ben came to visit when she was born, but only Leia went with Luke to the medcenter to watch her decanting. The fluid was slowly drained from the chamber, and Rey Skywalker was born. She squirmed and cried as the medical droid poked and prodded at her, ensuring she was fully healthy. Satisfied, the droid wrapped her tiny form in a blanket and handed her to Luke.
Large brown eyes looked up at him, and his heart melted. She was absolutely perfect. Leia hovered by his side, saying something, but he wasn’t really listening. Rey looked up at him, blinking and cooing. Shifting her slightly in his arms, he brought one of his hands down to touch her face. She wrapped her own hand around his pinky finger, still staring at him. He reached out to her with the Force, and her presence rushed forward to meet him, latching on, just as she had to his finger. Looking down at her he didn’t think he had ever been happier.
Leia stayed for a few weeks helping him acclimate to being a parent. She helped him through many sleepless nights and exhausting days. She helped out at the Academy as well. He hadn’t planned well for taking a paternity leave, but she kept things running smoothly.
Shortly before she left, Leia gave him the shoulder sling she had used when Ben was an infant to carry him with her as she went about her duties in the Republic government. It worked out very well, and Rey spent much of her infancy nestled by his chest as he went about his business at the Academy. Rey rarely fussed, and when she did, Luke was relived to find that his students were very understanding. His older students quickly picked up his lessons when he needed to leave abruptly to do something for Rey, and they didn’t tease him too badly when she interrupted meditation sessions with a serenade of infant noises.
Rey grew quickly, and soon moved from being cradled at his chest to toddling along with him through the Academy. She was incredibly outgoing, making friends with everyone she encountered. His students at the Academy were graciously patient with her, and he received many offers for childcare if he needed it.
A few families lived at the Academy, and it didn’t take long for Rey to realize that most families had two parents. When she asked Luke about it, he explained to her as well as he could that he was her only parent, and that she had come from cells in the bone of his arm. He showed her the scar where the bone marrow was extracted, and she was delighted by this news. She became stuck on this concept for several months, and would tell anyone who would listen that she’d come out of her father’s arm. If he was within reach of her, she would shove up his tunic sleeve to show them too. He found it amusing, and found himself caring less about keeping such matters secret.
Leia sent Ben to him when Rey was three. Ben hadn’t seen much of his cousin before this, but he seemed to take a liking to her. He was a troubled boy, but he always had a kind word and gentle voice for Rey. Sometimes Luke thought she was doing more good for Ben than he was.
Rey had been distraught when Ben left. She didn’t understand, and Luke couldn’t really explain to her the conflict that was within Ben. She had never seen his darkness, Ben had always shielded her from that. All she understood was that her cousin, her favorite playmate, had abandoned her, and now everyone at the Academy was whispering about him when they thought she couldn’t hear.
Luke hoped that Ben’s relationship with Rey had kept him from harming her during his attack on the Academy. If there was still any good within Ben, Luke hoped it was enough to keep Rey safe. In his solitude, some irrational part of him always hoped to find her again. She was lost in a big galaxy, and cut off from their bond in the Force, but he’d always thought that maybe, just maybe they would find each other again someday.
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Shaking himself from his memories he looked at the girl before him now, his miracle child. He had missed so much of her life, but here she was, holding his old lightsaber out to him. He smiled.
“Hello Rey.”