Chapter Text
Luke should’ve known better.
Following Obi-wan into the forest when the man was already lost was just a good way to get himself lost.
And here he was, stumbling through the rain with little more than his oil slicked cloak to keep the chill off him.
But Luke could admit, if only quietly to himself, he longed for the adventure, the chance to leave his same old life after 20 years.
Especially with the new interest the mayor of their town had been paying him.
Gideon was an older man, who set the price of foods, governed trade, and pretended to be a hunter when they all knew he’d never pick up his own gun. Recently he’d begun “accidentally bumping into” Luke at the market, or even at his shared home with Obi wan.
And the last time they met, the man had said that Luke should watch his big mouth and blabbing and settle down as a trophy spouse instead.
So maybe Luke decided to chase after a lost mentor rather than be left alone in the town. If word had gotten to Gideon that Obi-wan didn’t seem to be getting back, well he might’ve started to try and convince the young man that he needed someone to take care of him, and he couldn’t afford the home without Obi-wan’s pension.
But now it was dark, cold, and rainy and Luke couldn’t tell if he was still walking in a straight line or turning in going in large circles. Even if he found Obi-wan out here, or even the old man’s body, he might as well curl up next to his mentor and die rather than attempt to lead them home.
The trees seemed to be thinning out around him as he continued pushing on though, and when lightning flashed ahead, he saw a clearing. An overgrown lane with brambles and broken walls, leading to a large metal hewn gate, and beyond it a castle.
A sliver of hope filled Luke’s aching chest, and he quickened his pace as best he could without slipping on slicked rock.
The castle seemed dark, without any obvious fires burning through the windows, but if Luke lived in a place like this on such a dreary night, he certainly would’ve shut the curtains and retreated to an internal chamber that was warm and dry.
Daydreams accompanied him to the giant wooden doors, with strange gargoyle knockers that were icey within his fist as he slammed them against the dark wood.
Their bangs echoed through the front hall. And Luke stood dripping on the front step, lip trembling as shivers began to pass through his bones.
Eventually the door creaked open, and Luke stepped forward eagerly,
“Greetings, good sirs, I am in search of an old man who–” no one was there. The door opened wide into a dark foyer, devoid of any sign of life.
Luke’s feet dragged him inside in his confusion, running from the wind and rain.
“Um, h-hello? I don’t mean to intrude.” As Luke had gotten about a foot into the room, with a great rumble and swoosh of air, the door shut behind him with a boom. Luke flinched, but with the outside now firmly closed out, warmth seemed to be trying to fill him from the ambient temperature of the room, and he couldn’t help relaxing.
While the front hall of the castle seemed just as dark as the world outside, as his eyes adjusted, Luke could swear he saw a warm glow down the hall, the faint orange flicker of a fire. He followed it, trying to not think about the way his boots squished into the dusty carpet beneath his feet.
In fact, the building seemed in some disarray, the smell of must and mildew lingering in the air, dust motes floating about and kicked up by his steps. Perhaps a quite old lord lived here with limited staff, and they avoided using most of the rooms.
Surely though a happily crackling fire would be attended to by someone.
Strange whispered voices reached his ears, and he made sure his boots fell with heavy thuds so as to be heard. But when he entered the hall with great sweeping ceilings, the pair of maroon velveted chairs in front of a roaring fire were vacant.
The young man was drawn to the promising warmth of the fire, reveling in the glow as it ate away the cold from his skin.
After a deep breath, he started casting his eyes about the dim, hoping to catch some evidence of life. And as his eyes drifted over one open doorway to a sloping hall, he swore he saw the flicker of a torch at the end.
Swallowing back any fear that remained, Luke moved towards the eerie opening, glancing down the gray stone walls that gaped like a dragon's maw.
“Hello? I’m looking for my uncle.” Was that tapping from deep inside the castle? Or just the sounds of woods creaking in the wind.
“Come on Skywalker, no knight would suffer this anxious agony,” he muttered to himself, before plunging back the entrance away from the beckoning fire behind.
Only the occasional flash of lightning captured in high slits on the walls illuminated the trek. But surely the glow at the end of the corridor was remaining in place, drawing his steps onward.
The reason the glow had seemed so dim became clear at the end of the hall, steps descending into a dungeon, cold air sending a frigid chill back up Luke’s spine.
The bottom of the steps flicker in golden light, and the young man can only tiptoe down. The bottom sole of his boots clicked against the rock just slightly.
The very stillness of the air encouraged his silence in a way that also had Luke holding his breath.
At the bottom, a long bare hall lined with rusted iron gates leading into austere and frozen cells.
A sputtering torch hangs on the wall half way down, and past it a ghostly white hand hung out from a cage.
“Ben?!” Luke couldn’t stop the anxious pitch of his voice, and his steps were no longer silent and he hastened to snatch the torch and race down to the stall.
“Luke? What are you doing here?” Obi-wan Kenobi’s voice was hoarse and raw. And the fingers that reached out to grasp Luke’s hand were stiff with chill.
“Who did this to you?” Luke tried to question at the same time his Uncle release his hand to push his back,
“You must get away from here, leave this place and me! There is a monster!” Confusion and disbelief has Luke stepping close again to grasp at the weak hands.
“What are you talking about?”
A rumble echoes from the end of the hall. It had seemed as loud as an earthquake and yet below the ability of human’s ear to truly pick up on it.
The hairs on the back of Luke’s neck stand on end at the sound. His body reacting to an innate sense of danger, turning on his knees to look into the darkness, Ben continues to whimper out warnings for Luke to run.
“WHO DARES?!” Luke falls on his ass with the roar that seems to funnel with all its horrific energy from the end of the dungeons. When lightning flashes across the windows, it lights up a mass that seems to be trembling with rage.
“WHO DARES TO TRESPASS?!”
“You’ve imprisoned an old man for no reason! You’ll kill him in this cold!” Luke brushes off Obi-wan’s desperate reach and shushing voice and stands to his full height.
“HE TRESPASSED AND SO HAVE YOU! YOU SHOULD BE THROWN INTO A PEN WITH HIM!” Luke grits his teeth against the tremble that wants to rack his jaw. There were heavy thuds of foot fall and scraping of something against the stone floor.
“No, please! Spare him!” Obi-wan cried out in concern, clinging to the iron bars with desperation. Luke looked closely at his gaunt eyes, the purple beneath his eyes.
Obi-wan would not live if he stayed here.
“No. Spare my uncle, take me in his stead.”
The footsteps paused. And silence seemed to reign. Besides a quiet plea from Obi-wan to rethink things.
“You… would do that for him?” Without the shout, the voice had a rich tone, thick as if the creature struggled to speak or didn’t quite know how to use its mouth for proper speech.
“Of course I would. He’s done everything in his life to care for me, if I can spare him some suffering I will.” A slow scrape of movement grew closer, a low rumble again filling the space.
The dark cold dungeon stretched behind Luke still, and yet he felt utterly cornered, like a mouse facing down a lion.
“Fine.”
The gate creaks open, as if it had never been locked at all.
Luke turns his back on whatever threat approached, placing the torch in a bracket to grasp instead at Obi-wan, pulling the man into a hug.
“Don’t do this Luke, please, I don’t think my old heart can handle this.” Luke’s laugh is a little wet as he buries his nose into Ben’s throat, like he always had as a young child.
“Enough!” The gruff voice calls, and it’s right beside them.
“You have made your choice to stay here, and he must leave!” Luke turns, picking up the torch again, but the hulking shadow stays just out of the glow, the shine of eyes barely visible, unnaturally shaped feet scraping at the stone floor.
A rumbling growl started up as both men stayed in place, frozen to the spot.
“Wait!” Luke interrupted, glad when it did silence the seeming roiling anger.
“Let me see you, come into the light… please.” He couldn’t explain why it was what he wanted, but the way Ben had keyed Luke into the fact that there must be something terrible awaiting him.
And maybe he wanted to face the first shock of terror with his Uncle one final time.
After a moment's pause, the hulking form stepped into the warm flame’s glow in Luke’s hand, just as a lightning strike boomed outside the window with a flash of white.
Horns curled from a furrowed in anger forehead, glinting silver. Heavy brows turned down over burning dark eyes above a snarling scowl with long canines that jutted up from beneath the bottom lip.
Clenched fists that looked as rough and gray as stone ended in razor sharp claws, and thick legs had an extra bend at a lengthened ankle, like the predators that ran in the woods outside this castle.
A black tail speckled with silver hung deadly still.
Luke couldn’t withhold his gasp of fear and awe. He felt the awe like the church has always preached, the silence that took hold of the soul and made it sit and stare.
The growl that rumbled past sharp teeth broke Luke from the trance, backing away from the danger.
“So? Do you still agree to stay here in his place? Forever?” Obi-wan’s hand felt frail as it clutched Luke’s arm, far too cold for his age.
The answer was obvious.
“Yes. You have my word.”