revivalproject | A homecoming of sorts

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A homecoming of sorts

WHO: Ezra, Luke, and anyone else around
WHERE: Temba Jedi Temple
WHAT: Ezra bringing Luke to the temple complex/mingle with residents and visitors
WHEN: Soon after Luke's arrival
WARNINGS: Discussion of canon levels of violence, maybe? Others added as needed

"We're pretty sure this used to be a museum," Ezra rambles as he leads Luke to the complex of bulidings Obi-wan had chosen to designate as the Jedi temple. "We packed up all the artifacts. And we're still working on actually making it, you know, nice. Obi-wan and I live here."

He pauses, debating his phrasing, but lands on going with how he'd describe the other Temple residents to anyone else.

"So does Padme and her twins, who are Force sensitive. Cal - he was a padawan at the end of the Clone Wars - has been here in Temba by far the longest, and he's pretty settled in his workshop, but he comes by to train and visit. Grogu's developmentally pretty young, so while Master Kenobi's taken him as a padawan - in front of the Council when we were on Coruscant and everything - he lives with his adoptive father."

***
Open Mingle

It felt good, bringing Luke here, but also really, really weird. They should be age mates, but they aren't, and besides, Ezra's gotten used to sharing living space with the infant version of Luke and Leia.

Still, he's glad that this version of Luke, who had talked about being alone, has a chance to meet more Jedi. To spend more time with some of his family, both of the Jedi variety and not. He's curious they'll all have to say to each other, but he resolves not to hover and eavesdrop.

Although as the afternoon goes on, he does try to make sure there's tea and snacks on hand.

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Ezra flashes a grin, thinking of the infant version of Leia. Well, baby Luke is certainly the fussier of the two, so he can't say Luke is wrong.

"I only spoke to Palpatine once, via holo. I knew what he was, but I couldn't really sense him. Although he was able to reach through the Force somehow to undo the cuffs I was in, from wherever he was. Which I don't think is so much a Dark Side thing as a similar sort of mastery that let Yoda speak to me."

Luke shrugs helplessly. He has no idea. "I don't think that was Dark side necessarily, no. Just... a very old and very powerful Force user. He was very good at smothering down his presence until he wanted you to feel it."

His chest aches with the memory and he forces himself not to reach up and rub at it. He knows it's in his mind.

"...enough about grim things," Ezra decides.

He gestures towards his garden patch. "It's not much, and it's mostly for variety of food stuffs. I also work some on the greenhouse near the center of town and help take care of the...we call them glownies, but they're wooly herd beasts. And their wool glows, even for a while after you brush or shear them."

"Growing food stuff is a good garden." Tatooine has specific ideas about gardens and growing plants. They have a use or they don't get grown. Nice and simple.

"That sounds amazing. Are they friendly? Are they actually domesticated?"

"They're pretty friendly and they easy to coax into letting themselves be corralled. Which I'd say is a point towards being descended from domesticated herds, but the herd we tend did get spooked when Cobb killed one of them for meat. I dunno. Maybe the Agrii only kept them for milk and wool."

He cocks his head thoughtfully. "Did Obi-wan or Yoda teach you about reaching out to animals with the Force?"

"Most animals get spooked when you kill one if you don't separate them far enough off." Even he knows that. "Master Yoda taught me a bit. Mostly to stop the swamp creatures from eating me, I think. Not much point in having a last great hope to finish off Vader and have him eaten by a giant lizard before you finish training him."

That first part makes sense. He hadn't been directly involved in the slaughter for meat at all. He's not morally opposed, he just finds the idea a little personally distressing and yes, potentially disruptive to his relationship to the herd as a caretaker.

He stares a little at Luke's commentary on Yoda's teaching methods. "That's -" He frowns a little.

"Sounds a lot like training a soldier," he says, cautiously, his emotions a complicated swirl.

Luke shrugs a little awkwardly. The simple truth is... he was trained as a soldier. He was trained as a Jedi Knight for the front line of Vader. "There wasn't much time," he finally says. "Yoda knew he was dying. Ben was dead. And Vader had stepped up his hunt for me. He'd nearly caught me several times and while I'd improved my lightsaber combat, I wasn't going to be able to survive more than a minute or two when I first found Master Yoda. He had to get me to a point where I could survive the next encounter."

He squeezes his hands, clutched in front of him to keep them still and not fidgeting. "If I survived, I'd be alive to learn what I didn't know and try and work it out."

He lifts a hand defensively. "I'm not criticizing, exactly. My training was combat heavy, too, and I lasted a total of about ten seconds both times I faced off against Vader. If I hadn't had someone better trained with me both times, I'd be dead."

Even with years more training, dueling is not where his strengths lie. He's increasingly sure that even with Master Kenobi's instruction, he'll be mediocre compared to anyone who has real talent in wielding a lightsaber.

"We just had...really different interactions with Master Yoda, I guess. Different circumstances, right? The first time, he pushed me to articulate why I wanted to be a Jedi, and he didn't seem satisfied until I gave him an answer that was less, well, soldier..ly."

Whereas Luke has inherited a lot of his father's talents. Machines, piloting, lightsaber combat and telekinesis. "The first thing Ben ever taught me was to sense danger in the Force and use it to deflect incoming shots. I had a few non-Jedi teachers along the way, people who remembered Jedi, had studied with them, then Yoda taught me."

Did Yoda teach him in general, or with the specific thought that he'd be fighting Vader? Luke will never be sure.

"Technically, I faced Vader three times. The first time, I don't think he knew who I was, to him or to the rebellion. He was going to kill me and I couldn't have put up much resistance. But my friends distracted him by stepping on him in an AT-AT they'd stolen. It wasn't so much a face off as random rebel pilot was nearly killed by Vader with no resistance. The second..." He looks at his right hand. "Well. And the third time I bested him and refused to kill him. Killing him would've been an evil action. He was beaten."

"You survived. And you didn't give into the Dark Side. You're right, those are the most important parts."

He'd told Obi-wan much the same thing about Mustafar, once, after Obi-wan had called his own not killing Anakin out right, then and there, a weakness.

"Things can be pretty weird and not entirely great here on Agra-10. But it's not - no offense - Tatooine levels of survival difficulty. And it's not, as far as we know, part of a galactic war. As long as you're here, you have time for some of that learning and working things out."

"No offence taken. Tatooine sucks. It's hot, it's dry, everything hates everything else and there's very little redeeming about the place. It's so awful that even the sarlacc that lives there is stunted."

The sarlacc survived mostly on Jabba's cruelty. With Jabba gone, it would be getting much less regular feedings. But they were also nigh on unkillable.

"I suspect I have a lot to learn. A lot. I know how to fight to survive but I never really thought past that."

Ezra grins as Luke's description of Tatooine. Well, he certainly hadn't lasted long in the wastes, on his own, and he knows it.

"Well, didn't tell the Jedi in the distant past relative to us on Coruscant a lot of details, but they accepted that we were an enclave of Jedi who couldn't stay long and that Master Kenobi needed resources for training. So we have copies of a lot of the texts that were used at the time to teach initiates and padawans. Studying that way isn't my favorite way to learn, but I'm trying to do some of it alongside the training and practice and discussion."

"... what's the difference between an initiate and a padawan?" He thought padawans were students, but what were initiates? Didn't they start training when they were young? That was the impression he was getting from everyone here.

"I've read enough to know this has varied over the thousands and thousands of years of the history of the Jedi - but for the last thousand or so before the empire - padawans are paired together with a specific master as their primary teacher. Usually starting as a young adolescent. One of the things that was neat to see the Coruscant Temple was all the different ways to be a Jedi. Healers, teachers, scholars, pilots, diplomats-"

He makes an 'and so forth' gesture. "So the impression I've gotten is when there was an entire Order and time and space for it, a lot of being a padawan was figuring out your specific path as a Jedi, alongside your master. Initiates were the even younger kids. Taught general education and foundational skills in the ways of the Force."

And Ezra and Luke were denied that. By the Emperor and Vader. Luke wouldn't swap his family for anything, but he never knew there was options outside of being a warrior.

".. how much did we miss out?" He doesn't really expect Ezra to answer.

Ezra rubs the back of his neck awkwardly. No, he doesn't have any sort of simple or direct answer.

"I mean - skills can be caught up on, I think. Cultural stuff? Growing up knowing the sorts of things we could learn to do and being around other Force sensitive people? That's a whole other matter and...a trade off I guess, that practice of bringing kids to the temple so young."

He bites his bottom lip and continues. "Obi-wan doesn't really remember his birth family. Or, well. There's a weird thing that happened here I can tell you about, but the point is until that thing happened he never thought of that as something he missed out on. Me, I had my birth parents until the Empire arrested them when I was 7 and I hated that they were taken away, of course. And I have chosen family, including Kanan and Obi-wan; I wouldn't ever trade one for the other. So I can see both sides to it. But also I wonder if there's other balances to the trade off."

"I meant, history and skills and knowledge. I guess culture to a degree, but I wouldn't change my upbringing. My aunt and uncle loved me and they did everything they could for me. I know Ben wanted to start training me when I was eight or so, but Owen was really clear that that wasn't happening. That I'd have a chance at a normal life. Normal for Tatooine."

He knows growing up in the Temple would have been vastly different. Even growing up like Leia had. He felt, in a way, Owen and Beru gave him something incredibly precious. Normality.

Ezra eyes Luke with open curiosity.

"You never felt out step or like people were put off by strange luck or hunches? When I found out about the Force it was like 'oh. That's what that is.' A relief to have a name for it. I do...kinda wish I'd gotten that much earlier."

Luke thinks about it. Was he different? Sure. But he never felt isolated by that. "Honestly? No. Being lucky on Tatooine is a good thing. I knew I was different in some ways, but I was also the only orphan I knew, being raised by other family. I guess my aunt and uncle probably protected me if there was anything like that. I was the odd one out for a lot of reasons that made perfect sense. I was the youngest in our group, the smallest, the one interested in weird things but the guy who could fly anything and fix anything, and those things buy a lot of acceptance out in the settlements."

He grew up sheltered, is what he's really saying. Protected.

Ezra shrugs.

"Then...I'm glad you had that. I didn't really have acceptance or protection after my parents were taken away, until Kanan found me. I mean, it wasn't just him. There were six of us on the Ghost, and extended family of sorts, with some of the other Rebels."

"... that sucks. It must have been hard." Luke has always found it easy to get along with people. It might be subtle use of the Force, or a naturally sunny disposition. "Found family is just as real as any other kind. Family's in the heart, not the blood."

Ezra breaks into a full sunny beam; he also has his moments.

"I know," he says, warmly. "My birth parents will always be part of me. And I've been so lucky with all the family I've found. Including people here. I don't know how long we'll have together. But, then, no one ever really does," he says, simply.

He does worry for some of the people he sees as family, particularly if they do end up going back to when and where they came from. But he knows it'll almost certainly be completely out of his hands, too.

Here and now, he reminds himself.

Two beams of sunshine, busy being happy at one another. "Exactly. Life is change, and we only ever have as long as we get." He had wanted longer with Ben than he got, and might be getting another chance here.

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A homecoming of sorts

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