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Luke Skywalker loved being the head of the new Jedi Order - really, he did. But some days, he felt like maybe the Force and the Force ghosts of his past masters were playing some grand and elaborate joke on him.
Today was quickly shaping up to be one of those days - he had needed to explain to three separate groups of younglings that it was highly inappropriate to use the Force to trip, throw dirt at, or give a wedgie to one’s friends; he had to point out to a soon-to-be knight some of the many reasons why a trident lightsaber was a poor choice for her potential weapon design; and to top it off, he had a chunk of his carefully-styled hair singed off in a duel with an overzealous knight.
All this and it wasn’t even past midday yet - he hoped that Yoda and Ben Kenobi were getting a good laugh out of all of this, wherever their Force-ghostly forms were watching from.
He wishes, not for the first time, that he had some peers among the Jedi at the Yavin IV praxeum. Being the only Jedi over forty is taxing sometimes - and as he approaches his mid-fifties, he grudgingly admits he’s starting to feel old . Teaching at the academy is a double-edged saber; sometimes he’s invigorated by the seemingly bottomless energy of his young students, and sometimes he’s completely exhausted by it and has to face the harsh reality that his body can’t bounce back and keep up like it used to. Thankfully, he doesn’t have to do everything around the academy on his own anymore - there are several knights now in their upper twenties or thirties that share many of the duties for teaching and training, but it doesn’t quite make up for the lack of companionship with older adults like himself.
One of the largest differences between his academy and the old Jedi Order is his approach to taking in very young students - based on the information he’s uncovered, it seems the previous Order was often in the practice of taking in Force-sensitive children while they were toddlers or even infants. Luke doesn’t have the resources for or the interest in raising Jedi from the cradle, although many of the students are still quite young, including a handful of children a few months shy of their fifth or sixth birthday. When possible, Luke strongly encourages the potential padawans he finds to stay with their families until they’re at least eight or nine. True, they would miss a few years of early training, but he had found that the family attachment helped to emotionally stabilize students. And, quite frankly, his desire was to run a Jedi academy, not a Jedi nursery school.
Currently, the oldest Jedi besides Luke himself is a Twi’lek knight, who had sought out the master for training at the age of thirty-four - something that would have been all but unheard of in the old Jedi Order. Luke has never had the luxury of being too choosy though, so he hadn’t turned him away and the older student had risen from padawan to knight within a few short years. Because of his background in politics, however, his talents have always been best suited for diplomatic missions - which often leaves Luke with his nephew as the oldest (but certainly not the most mature) student on Yavin IV.
The purge that occurred after the Empire’s rise to power all but wiped out a whole generation of Force-users, leaving Luke without other Jedi his age or older. Even now, many of the older Force-sensitive beings in the galaxy remain afraid or ignorant of their abilities and refuse to undergo any Jedi training for fear of being hunted down by the First Order - so as a result, the average age of those at the praxeum is about sixteen. Luke considers himself to be fairly young at heart, but keeping up (and dealing with) with an academy full of teenagers is a little much even for him.
It will help when Ben passes his trials, so Luke doesn’t have the weight of being the Jedi Master on his shoulders and can instead share much of that responsibility with the younger man. He has very high hopes for his nephew, but he knows that being a master will be a challenge for Ben. The young Solo is an interesting case, really - he is often highly emotional and very passionate, can be either extremely respectful or very snarky depending on his mood, and his current romantic involvement with the Padawan Rey gives Luke a headache more often than not.
He’s happy for his nephew, without a doubt, but the younger man has developed a tendency to get starry-eyed and distracted whenever the girl is around or even mentioned in his presence. Although Ben would go to great lengths to hide the fact that he’s essentially a giant lovesick puppy, his uncle is much more observant than the younger man gave him credit for. But really, anyone with eyes can see how smitten the two of them are for each other - Luke doesn’t think Force-sensitivity would be necessary to pick up on that .
Objectively, Master Skywalker can understand why the old Jedi Order had banned romantic relationships and generally discouraged attachments - case in point: Ben Solo’s miraculous transformation from capable knight to bumbling teenager tripping over his own feet when Rey was present. However, Luke is confident that Ben can (and does) shift focus from his lover to his Order when he truly needs to; and a little distraction was nothing compared to what could have happened if Ben had been forced to bottle up his feelings and attraction for Rey or keep their relationship a secret. Luke thought Ben took after his grandfather Anakin very strongly, and this included a proclivity towards anger and temptations to the Dark side - and Luke was not looking to create a repeat of his father and mother’s relationship, where secrecy and fear had caused the downfall of the entire Jedi Order. Giving sex talks to his students was a small price to pay for an unbroken Order, even if it could be as awkward as hell sometimes.
Thankfully, Rey and Ben had taken Luke’s lecture about privacy very seriously and that little problem had been mostly solved, allowing the master to focus on more important things. He had several Jedi holocrons to research from, a slew of underground Jedi missions for the Resistance to oversee and organize alongside General Organa, and various lessons and exercises to go over with students on a daily basis, just to name a few examples. Today’s agenda, if he ever got around to it, included technique and form drills with a class of younglings, a history lesson with some of the younger padawans and a holocall with his sister to discuss possible upcoming missions. And a nap, definitely a nap.
Luke is heading from the training grounds where he had been running the mid-level younglings through a series of drills with practice sabers when he comes across something he thought he had seen the last of. He stops dead and sighs at the sight just off the path in front of him. As seemed to be the usual these days, his students were set on proving him wrong whenever he thought something had been properly dealt with.
Ben and Rey are entangled with each other, mouths locked as the tall man holds the padawan up with his hands under her thighs, her legs wrapped around his waist as he pins her back against the transparisteel wall of the temple village’s greenhouse. This wasn’t the most public place these two had been stumbled upon necking, Luke knew, and if he hadn’t taken the roundabout way from the training field to the temple entrance he wouldn’t have ever come across them - but Force , couldn’t the two of them find somewhere at least a little more out of the way for these kinds of things? A thought crosses his mind that perhaps he should count himself lucky that at least they were fully dressed this time around, but then he remembers that he shouldn’t have to deal with witnessing this type of situation at all and he shakes his head.
If they hadn’t had a discussion about this not three weeks prior, Luke most likely would have just moved on and let the two be, tried to burn the image out of his memory and continue on with his day as though it had never happened. Then, he would have pulled one or both of them aside later for a gentle chiding or reminder that they were surrounded by innocent children and it wasn’t appropriate to rut against your training partner where anyone might walk by and see.
Today isn’t the kind of day that’s put him in a gentle or forgiving mood, unfortunately for the two young people still blissfully unaware of their master’s presence. So as it is, he clears his throat loudly, stance shifting as he stands with his arms crossed over his chest and his stoniest no-nonsense-Master-Skywalker expression on his face. Ben and Rey jump apart as though he’d delivered a jolt of Force lightning to them, Ben dropping the padawan to the ground in his surprise. She lands on her bottom with an omph and shoots a murderous look at her partner as she scrambles to her feet to face their master.
For his part, Ben Solo stands dumbstruck, eyes wide and one arm held awkwardly in front of himself to cover something that Luke does not and will not ever think about in association with his nephew. All-too predictably, the padawan recovers more quickly than the knight and hastily moves to stand in front of Ben and spare him some measure of mortification, although Luke is surprised she thinks he deserves it after he’d literally dropped her on her ass not half a minute ago. She turns and throws dark-haired man another sharp glare behind her shoulder, and even if he can’t overhear what must be transpiring between them through their bond, the scowl that passes over her face makes it pretty clear - you owe me one for this.
“Master Skywalker! Sorry, we were just --” Rey starts and she turns back to Luke, cheeks colored with embarrassment as her gaze flits from his eyes to the ground.
“-- just fooling around in plain sight of the walking path after we’ve already had a discussion about keeping those kinds of activities to the privacy of one of your quarters?” Luke cuts in sharply, tone leaving no room for argument. He hates having to be this harsh with his nephew and star padawan, but it wasn’t like this was their first transgression and Ben at least was more than old enough to know better. For Forcesakes, the man was nearly in his thirties and should be past the point of sneaking around like a hormone-struck handsy teenager.
In reality though, Luke couldn’t ever truly get that angry with the two of them, because it wasn’t like they were hurting anyone (except for his eyes, but he could let that one slide). If he had to make them squirm a bit and play the role of the furious and intimidating Jedi Master in order to drive the lesson home, though, he would gladly do so.
Under the weight of Luke’s gaze, Ben clears his throat and pushes his hair back nervously with one hand, revealing the burning-red tip of one oversized ear as he does so. “Well, we hadn’t seen each other since last week because of the errand you sent me on and --” he stops himself and shakes his head with a grimace, as though suddenly realizing he was explaining just why they couldn’t keep it in their pants to his uncle and was now wisely thinking better of continuing. “I promise it won’t happen again,” he mumbles, face flushing an even deeper shade of crimson as Luke raises an eyebrow skeptically at his words.
“For one, I don’t need to hear about any circumstances leading to or details about... whatever it was going on there, but I would think that if you had waited a week then surely you could have waited the few extra minutes it would have taken to walk to your quarters and spare the eyes of anyone that might happen to be walking in this public space ,” Luke says, giving Ben a pointed look. It was so typical of the boy to think he could try and twist his way into blaming this partially on the master for making them spend a week apart from each other. “For another, I’ve heard ‘it won’t happen again’ so many times now that I’m beginning to wonder if you even understand what that means.”
Ben gets an indignant look on his face at that, his brow furrowing as his mouth opens to retort something back at his uncle. Before the knight can put his foot in his mouth more than he already has, Luke continues, “sooner or later I might have to enforce some serious consequences for the two of you and this repeated inappropriate behavior. Like it or not, you are role models for the younger students here and it’s not befitting of your ranks to act this way, especially considering your upcoming trials.”
“It really won’t happen again, Master, and we sincerely apologize for behaving inappropriately. Don’t we, Ben?” Rey says, speaking the last few words through clenched teeth and looking at her partner expectantly.
Ben grumbles and trains his eyes on the ground, shuffling his feet like the sulky kid Luke sometimes forgets he isn’t, what with the way he acts sometimes. And maybe, sometimes, he might forget about Ben’s age on purpose because thinking about it too much makes Luke feel old, but that’s another matter entirely.
Rey huffs at the dark-haired man when he doesn’t respond right away and nudges him with her elbow none-too-gently until the knight’s eyes meet Luke’s reluctantly. He sighs out an unenthusiastic, yes, we’re very sorry, Master, and to the younger man’s credit he does meet Luke’s eyes and gives him an apologetic grimace as he does so.
“Very well. As long as I don’t have to see it again, it won’t be an issue,” Luke says with an air of finality, thankful the discussion is over and he can try to move on with his day. He nods to them in dismissal, and the two take off in the direction Luke had been coming from, presumably going to train or spar or meditate. Force, he hoped that’s what they were going to do, anyway.
He turns around himself, making it a few steps before he hears an undignified squeal followed by a burst of laughter and a loud shush . Luke whips around at the racket, and sees Ben and Rey have only made it a few paces, and the padawan has a handful of what appears to be her training partner’s ass though the fabric of his robes. Luke blanches and turns away quickly, swiftly and firmly deciding he’s going to just let this one dissolve right out of his brain and pretend he never saw a thing. They’ve probably had enough scolding for one day, anyway. He starts to walk away again, resolved to keep moving forward no matter what kind of sounds he hears behind him as he sighs and shakes his head, not even resisting the urge to rub at his temples this time around.
Master Skywalker knows his history lessons aren’t exciting - hell, sometimes they almost put him to sleep - but it’s crucial that the new generation of Jedi be knowledgeable about the successes and shortcomings of those that came before them. Learning from the past’s mistakes so they aren’t repeated is one of Luke’s chief goals for this new Order, so putting his pupils (and himself) through the drudgery of these lectures is an unfortunate necessity.
“...and does anyone remember why the High Council and Senate passed the Ruusan Reformation in the first place?” the master says, eyes scanning the temple classroom and finding a sea of mildly disinterested faces. He sighs and raises an eyebrow, waiting for a response and letting the group of padawans squirm under the pressure of his gaze and the silence until one finally breaks.
A Zabrak boy sitting towards the front of the room raises his hand hesitantly, and Luke jumps on the chance for student participation quickly. “Ah yes, thank you, Jarrak,” he says, smiling at the horned boy expectantly
“Well, master -- I actually have a question,” Jarrak says sheepishly, but Luke nods and gestures for him to continue. “If the Jedi wanted to keep their army so badly but the Senate was against it, why couldn’t they have, like - combined their strength to do a huge Jedi mind trick on the Senate to convince them?”
Master Skywalker is dumbstruck for a moment by the question. He lets out a sigh under his breath and resists the urge to pinch at the bridge of his nose. This was why he didn’t even teach about mind tricks until students were preparing for knighthood, unless they were more mature or showing great potential. There was always a gross misunderstanding about what they were and what they did, and now his whole history lesson would be derailed in order to satisfy the rabid curiosity of the young padawans.
He turns his eyes back on the boy and tries to think of how he can put this nicely. “Well, that’s an -- ah, interesting point, Jarrak. But don’t you think using a Force technique to trick politicians might go against the Jedi code?”
The boy looks at Master Luke blankly, and the older man can’t quite contain this particular sigh as he resigns himself to what’s likely to be a very long lecture on the nature of Jedi mind tricks and why they are reserved for emergencies only and not to be used on your friends, family, or fellow Jedi students.
It’s nearly sundown by the time Master Skywalker finally makes it back to his quarters for his holocall with General Organa.
They’re intending on hashing out some plans for an upcoming mission, one that would benefit from a handful of Jedi Knights working alongside Resistance troops. Officially, the Jedi Order is loyal to the Republic and fundamentally opposed to the First Order, with their open affiliation with dark side Force users and blatant specism. However, the Jedi’s involvement with the Resistance is generally kept under wraps because of the Resistance’s dubious reputation. The galaxy’s political situation is a turbulent one at the moment, and although traditionally the Jedi are tasked with being galactic peacekeepers, right now their number one priority is survival - seeking out and training Force-sensitive beings before a dark side organization gets their hands on them and keeping the Jedi from nearly fading into extinction yet again.
Luke himself is passionate about the goals of the Resistance, but he is hesitant to thrust his students into the fray due to the risks that came with it. As a result, all Jedi Knights were given the choice to either be involved with the underground organization or remain neutral, and the master didn’t begrudge anyone their own choice. An overwhelming majority of knights chose to fight under General Organa’s rebellion group, though, and Master Skywalker was proud of each and every one. Since he couldn’t exactly leave the temple to go fight with the Resistance, sending some of his most capable Jedi was really the next best thing.
He shuffles into his small kitchenette to make himself a cup of tea, running through a brief meditative exercise as the drink brews. His quarters are spartan, but functional, but mostly he’s glad he has some sort of space to himself after a day like today. Once his tea is ready, he moves back into the sitting room, glancing at the chronometer and realizing his conversation with Leia is due to start in three standard minutes. The Jedi settles into one of the room’s plain armchairs, then switches on the holojector and links it up to his long-range comm unit. He dials in the commands in order to contact his twin, and waits patiently for their comms to connect and Leia to pick up on her end.
After only a few moments, his sister picks up the call. A transparent blue image of the General pops up in front of Luke, and he sits up in his chair and shifts so that he’s facing the camera attached to the holojector. “Luke, good to hear from you as always,” Leia says, a small smile of greeting crossing her face.
“Likewise,” he responds with a nod and smile of his own. “I have a few promising candidates for the mission we’ve discussed. They’re very skilled with detecting and discerning different life signatures in the Force so they should be ideal for rooting out that First Order spy cell on Bespin.”
Leia nods, writing something down on a notepad that Luke can’t see over the holojector. “Wonderful, they should be exactly what we need to accompany the five operatives we’ll be sending in two weeks from now. I’ll get you more details about when and where the rendezvous point will be for your people to meet with mine once I find out a few more things from my mole.”
Their discourse continues for a half hour or so, the twins going over the First Order’s recent movements and any new intelligence they’ve gleaned from their inside sources. Neither can be sure, but they’ve received some disturbing reports about the possible expansion of the mysterious dark side organization that works in tandem with the First Order. They move on to discuss other Resistance and Order business, Leia reporting with pride the large numbers of new recruits to the organization within the last few months.
There’s a lull in the conversation after they go over the current safety of various hyperspace travel routes, and Luke’s twin looks back up at him through the holojector, one corner of her mouth turned up in a small grin. “I hate to change the subject -- I know it’s important to have these tactical discussions,” his sister starts, “but I was actually wondering if this could be a bit of a personal call as well.”
“Of course. I was getting a little bored with all the technical talk anyway,” the Jedi Master responds with a full grin. “Is everything going well with you? With Han?”
“We’re doing well. Running an underground movement is tiring work and I’m not as young as I used to be, but I’m sure you can understand that,” she chuckles. “What I’m really wondering about is my son. How is Ben doing?”
Luke schools his expression to one of content neutrality. He had a feeling the conversation might go this way, and he really isn’t feeling up to divulging Ben’s relationship status to Leia at the moment. Especially not after what he'd witnessed and had to give yet another scolding about with her son and his partner just a few hours ago. “You haven’t heard from him lately?” Luke asks, attempting to divert or at least postpone what he hopes isn’t an inevitable conversation.
“You know Ben doesn’t call his mother nearly enough,” Leia shakes her head. “Although, he’ll be thirty in a few years and I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised he isn’t calling me from the temple to share every little achievement like he did when he was still a padawan.” She lets out a little huff of laughter at the memory. Luke can remember how his nephew had indeed wanted to call Han and Leia after every little sparring victory or new skill learned, overflowing with his desire to show his parents that he was capable of being a Jedi.
“He’s been doing very well. I know this is sort of his news to share, but since you haven’t heard yet -- he’s going to be undertaking the trials to become a master in a month’s time,” Luke says, hoping that this announcement will distract her from any questions regarding whether Ben had met a nice girl at the academy yet. Leia (and more often, Han) were perpetually asking Luke if Ben had any love interests - the master could understand, essentially being a second father to his nephew. His parents just wanted the best for their son, the chance for him to have a companion or a partner. Luke just wished Ben would be the one to have these conversations with Leia and Han so that he didn’t have to - especially now that there was actually something to discuss.
“That’s wonderful news, Luke! It’s about time, too,” Leia says, giving her brother a pointed look. Luke lets out a snort - his sister has always been very opinionated (in a good-natured way, of course) about how he should run the praxeum and handle his students. Interesting, considering that she had turned down his offer to train her as a Jedi, choosing instead to focus on politics, diplomacy, and her family. “That might explain the difference I’ve felt in his Force signature lately. It just feels like he’s much -- happier, a little more balanced, and generally more... content .”
“Certainly, he is very proud of the accomplishment and has every reason to be.”
Leia’s brow creases and a little frown of concentration crosses her face. “I think, though, that it could be from something else. As proud as he might be, I don’t know that the possibility of being risen to a master would have such a strong effect that I would be able to feel it all the way from D’Qar.” Luke swallows audibly, already wanting to put his head in his hands at the thought of the conversation he can feel is coming.
“I’m not sure what you mean, Leia --” Even over a commlink and holojector image, his sister still has the power to stop his words with a look. She’s scary good at that kind of thing, something she must have inherited from their mother.
“Alright Luke, time to spill. Who’s the girl?”
Days like this gave Luke Skywalker a massive headache. Thankfully, a little meditation usually does the trick for the headache - but it never seems to make the issues that caused the pain go away, sadly. After he finishes the holocall with his sister, Luke just sits for a while, pinching at the bridge of his nose and taking some cleansing breaths.
Ben will not be happy when he learns his uncle let the metaphorical manka cat out of the bag. It wasn’t like his and Rey’s relationship was a secret - well, they certainly didn’t act like they wanted it to be one, anyway. You’d have to be blind, deaf, and probably without a pulse to miss the fact that they were involved if you came across the two of them together. But if the knight hadn’t told his parents about his relationship with Rey, there must be a reason. More than likely it was just because he hadn’t gotten around to it or didn’t want to face Han’s embarrassingly probing questions - and Luke certainly didn’t blame the boy for that. If he had some other reason for keeping Han and Leia in the dark about it and Luke had just unknowingly undermined his nephew, it wouldn’t be pretty.
In any case, it hadn’t been Luke’s news to share - but, Jedi Master or not, he was just as powerless as any other mortal being to resist the mind trick-like persuasion of General Organa. He could already envision Ben’s sulky anger when he found out - no, no -- if he found out, Luke tells himself. Maybe, by the grace of the Force, his nephew wouldn’t discover who had given his mother the information. Luke just really did not want to have to deal with a sullen and pouty Ben - that boy could hold a grudge for an astounding amount of time.
Although, if pouty was the worst Luke had to deal with from his nephew, he’d count himself lucky. The last time Ben had been gotten in a mood at Luke, he’d had to replace half the furniture in the boy’s quarters and have a lengthy discussion about controlling one’s emotions and not resorting to property damage to deal with one’s feelings. He had been a surly teenager then, but still - Master Skywalker thought in some ways he hadn’t quite moved past that stage and replacing furnishings was costly and troublesome.
The Grandmaster of the Jedi Order shakes his head, resolving to meditate for an hour or so to re-center himself before turning in for the night. He’s just about to get up from his chair when he hears an urgent knock at the door. Letting out a long-suffering sigh, he gets up to answer.
It’s one of the younglings, face still chubby with residual baby fat. As soon as he’s opened the door fully, the girl is pointing off in the direction of the praxeum’s mess hall. “Master Skywalker, come quickly!” the girl says in an urgent tone.
Luke approaches the squat wooden building with apprehension, but he doesn’t sense anything very worrisome or dangerous through the Force. When he and the youngling are within earshot, the master hears raised voices - raucous laughter and incomprehensible shouting.
He knows what he’s likely to see before he even gets the door open, but the scene in front of him as he steps inside the mess hall with the girl still manages to leave him dumbstruck for a moment.
A Force-assisted food fight. Just the thing he needed at the end of this too-long, too-busy, too-fucking-stressful day. Luke’s not a big cusser, and he likes to think he’s in very good control of his emotions, but after the day he’s had he can’t help the well, fuck me that slips out under his breath. He takes a deep breath through his nose and raises his fingers to his lips to let out a piercing whistle and stop the room full of laughing and screaming Jedi-in-training.
Luke Skywalker, really and truly, might be getting too damn old for this shit.