Saga - OT Comback Kid - An "Ahsoka Trains Luke" AU

Title: Comeback Kid
Author(s): mysterycultist
Timeframe: pre-ANH
Characters: Luke, Ahsoka, Vader, Obi-Wan, Beru & Owen
Genre: AU
Summary: Luke finds Ahsoka bleeding out in the desert. Like, of course he rescues her.
Notes: First time posting a story here, a little nervous!


“Yeah, Uncle Owen, I finished scraping the condenser vats, and Aunt Beru says there isn’t enough washing up for two people. Can I please get going? They’re gonna close soon!”

“Alright, boy. Be back before sundown.”

Luke rolls his eyes—but only once Uncle Owen’s back is turned. What does he think he is, suicidal? “I promise, it’ll only take a sec.”

Luke’s leg is bouncing the whole time Owen’s inside, and when he finally emerges, cred card in hand, Luke sprints to grab it.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you, I promise I’ll be safe and I’ll slow down for bumps so I don’t put too much stress on the shock absorbers.” Even though that’s what they’re for! Luke wraps his arms around his Uncle’s thick middle and plants sloppy kiss after sloppy kiss on his grizzled old mug, Owen grumbling all the while until he finally barks, “Alright, Alright! Get going!”

Don’t need to tell me twice!

He’s halfway out to Tosche Station, speeder purring beautifully, like a krayt with a full gizzard, when something breaks the clean line of sand dunes on the horizon.

Luke knows every landmark and its place from his Uncle’s farm clear out to Mos Esley, and there’s no mistaking something not right. He pulls his speed back as he approaches—the back end of a swoop bike rises from its burial in the sand, exhaust still kicking enough to blow a steady whirlwind of dust up behind it. It’s when he swerves to see around the other side of the dune—That’s when he sees it, a bright spot of orange, white—and red, in the sand.

Luke closes the distance, kills his engine and vaults off his speeder. The sand’s so loose here, out in no-man’s-land, he has to high-step his way over to her.

“Oh, jeez. Excuse me! Ma’am?”

Her head rolls, just a little. Oh, jeez. She’s real torn up, sand sticking all over the open cuts and getting festering in the sun.

Luke lands down on his knees by her, and the first thing he does is help her roll over face-up. The Togruta woman has a grimace on, and she lifts her arm to cover her eyes.

“Don’t worry, ma’am, I’m gonna help you. Who did this?”

She opens her mouth and lets out a long groan. Luke’s about given up on a verbal response when she rumbles, “Hutts.”

Okay, that makes sense. Luke knows what to do, at least.

Except—and it’s really not charitable of him—he can’t help but think... he’s never gonna get those power converters.

—-

“You don’t have to bring me to your home. I could be putting you in danger.”

Luke cuts the engine and gives her a smile. “Don’t worry. You aren’t the first runaway we’ve helped out.”

She gives him a long look that he doesn’t exactly understand—and she gets off the speeder. That kicks him back into gear, because he has to rush to help her when she stumbles the landing and falls to her knees.

“Uncle Owen! Aunt Beru!”

Luke’s aunt comes rushing out with her datapad still in her hands, instantly ducks back in to set it down and comes charging forward to take the woman’s other side.

They lay her down in Owen’s armchair, seeing as it’s the most comfortable, but all the same when he comes running in, heaving breath as he clutches the doorway, he gives them a look of betrayal.

“Owen,” Beru says breathlessly. “Get water.”

Recognition flashes over his face, and he goes for the kitchen.

Ahsoka—that's her name, she tells them—Her wounds aren’t deep, and their scanner (Kept in a lockbox under his aunt and uncle’s bed, not discussed and reverently handled the few times Luke’s seen it taken out; it’s one of those things kept around, like him, in honor of Luke’s grandmother) makes short work of the obedience chip in her neck, which looks fresh. The fact that it’s still there is scarier than anything, because that—and the shallow wounds—means she’s valuable enough to the Hutts that they’d rather hunt her down than blow her up.

Luke’s only seen this operation twice, both times on locals whose owners didn’t even realize their slaves were running away. He gets a bowl of dilute disinfectant for his aunt and realizes, jeez, his hands are shaking.

Once the chip is out and the bandage is stuck on, the immediate danger becomes dust fever. She isn’t from here—Luke used to get dust fever bad, but Aunt Beru says it’s because his mother was offworld when she carried him. He hasn’t had symptoms bad enough to get out of chores since he was at least twelve. Ahsoka has zero immunity, and it hits her hard. They slather her wounds in bacta and Beru sits by her bed holding a cup of water to her lips, but mostly all they can do is wait it out. It’s three days before Luke’s allowed into the sick room to visit.

He spends most of the time loitering in the hall, when he can sneak away from work, drawing in the dust under the rug and otherwise twiddling his thumbs. He gets a few snippets out of Beru—Like, this Ahsoka person is a mechanic, which is probably why the Hutts didn’t explode her, and she works on ships for a living, which is how she ended up here.

And that’s just amazing because it’s just like Luke’s grandmother. The getting stuck here part, not the mechanic part—That is just like Luke’s father, a little fact Uncle Owen let slip out a couple years ago when Luke got a send-away course on how to build your own droid and Owen said he was shaping up just like his father, which, obviously, Luke dogged him about until he explained.

Anyway, it must’ve been destiny. Luke can’t sleep at night, thinking—This is my chance. This is that chance I’ve been waiting for. When Beru walks into the kitchen during breakfast, washes her hands, and says that their guest could use a little company, Luke runs from his cereal.

He skids to a stop at the guestroom door, straightens his tunic out, and takes a deep breath. Then, he goes in.

She’s sitting up in bed with a cup of broth in her hands, and she smiles when she sees him. “Hello, hero,” she says.

Luke kicks his feet and smiles back.

It turns out Ahsoka’s seen just about everywhere in the galaxy. She’s spent the last few years in space, but before that she spent time on Coruscant, Kashyyyk, even Mandalore, and a thousand other planets Luke didn’t even know the names of till now. Beru said not to bother her too much, but Luke asks as many questions as he has lungs for—What, where, why, how?

Did you fight in the Clone Wars?

I was there, she says. It was hard not to get tangled up in a skirmish or two.

Do Mandalorians really never take off their masks? Are there really frogmen on Naboo? Did you ever meet a Jedi?

She met a few, and yes, they really were just as amazing as they are in the stories.

“Okay, Luke. You’ve asked a lot about me. Now I want to know about my hero. Who are you? What do you do, what do you want to do, and what brought you out to the desert to save my life?”

Luke sits back at his chair and casts his eyes up toward the stucco on the ceiling, trying to figure out the right balance between honesty and not sounding like a loser.

“Well... I’m fifteen, and I’m training to be a pilot someday. What I mean is, I’m teaching myself. My uncle won’t let me join the Academy or anything, but I’m fixing up an old fighter we bought off the Jawas, I’ve got it out back. I’m really good at engines and tech and all—Maybe you could show me a few things?” He tried not to sound too needy, and he kept the before you go silent.

“Sure thing, Luke,” Ahsoka says, and that’s all the encouragement he needs.

“I’m not like you, I was born here, but between you and me, I’d do anything before I laid down and decided to run the moisture farm my whole life. If it were up to me, I’d sell this place outright, buy a good ship, and take my Aunt and Uncle somewhere alive, you know what I mean? I mean, they’ve never been off this rathole, and if they’d just get their heads out of the sand, they’d realize there’s nothing here worth staying for! That’s what my father did—he got on a ship and left, I mean. He was a spicerunner for years, and my uncle has this huge grudge against him, but listen—Wouldn’t you do anything to get off Tatooine?”

Ahsoka looks at him for a long minute that makes him keenly nervous—like he’s stepped in it, somehow—but then she smiles brightly, shrugs. “I don’t know, I’ve seen worse places. Where’s your father now?”

It takes Luke another second to shake off the shock of that statement—She’s seen worse places? And she should know—It’s enough to rock his whole world. “He died a long time ago,” Luke says, numbly. “I never met him.” Then, something occurs to him—

But before he can ask, Ahsoka cocks her head and asks him, “Was his name Anakin Skywalker?”

Luke leans forward on his knees. “Yes, that was his name. Did you know him?”

He is drinking in every detail of her face now—Laid back on the pillows, her great white & blue lekku frame her face, still flaking from sunburn. She would’ve been a lot younger, at least fifteen years younger when she knew Luke’s father—So, a kid? If Togruta age like humans. As she lets out a long, long breath, the light in her full-moon eyes flashes, then goes out, and her face goes gray.

“Yes, I knew him,” she says.

She reaches out for his hand, and he startles at her touch—her hands are cold, but there’s something about it so warm that Luke has to smile. She squeezes his fingers.

“Listen, Luke. I’m really tired. It came on me all of a sudden. I’m going to need to rest now, but we’ll talk later, okay?”

Luke nods. He tells himself: let go of her hand. Let go.

He lets go, and he gets up, but Ahsoka grabs at his hand again and he stops.

“We’ll talk,” Ahsoka says, gripping fiercely. “I promise.”

 

Me likey so far.

 

Me too!

Teenage Luke is adorable and acts very much like a slightly younger, even more idealistic and excitable (and occasionally whiny ) version of how he is at the beginning of ANH. And the details of life at the Lars farm are really well-done and intriguing. I love that Owen and Beru keep that scanner and help runaway slaves in honor of Shmi! Don't think I've ever seen that before in fanfic, and it's so beautiful and makes so much sense.

And yay, the conversation with Ahsoka! They're both connecting the dots and Luke is about to (perhaps) find out some very interesting things indeed about his past.

Oh wow, just... the innocent questions and how much is attached to them for Ahsoka.

And welcome to fanfic, by the way!

 

Pre-ANH Luke is just ADORBS <3 <3 Meeting Ahsoka who knows everything there is to know about Anakin will lead to many answers and grand adventures.

 

Luke slogs through his chores in a kind of medicated haze. Scrape the condenser vats, check over the droids, feed the bantha. Whatever. If Uncle Owen wants to ask him something, he has to ask three times. Luke’s a thousand places other than here.

He sits down to dinner in the kitchen, elbows on the table and chin inches over his empty plate. He has no appetite. Don’t you want the mash, Luke? Oh, sure. He’ll plop a scoop onto his plate. He’ll stir it around.

The truth is he can’t look at his aunt and uncle, because he either feels like he’s lying to them or they’re lying to him. That just feels so bad.

And then, all of their eyes, all three pairs, float over to the doorway.

Ahsoka, dressed in one of Aunt Beru’s billowy housedresses, crosses her arms behind her back and smiles at them. “Can I join?”

The Lars homestead doesn’t actually get guests much besides Luke’s friends, which these days are deemed no-goods and relegated to the garage where Luke keeps his projects and works on the droids. He’s pretty sure his family is not totally on the outside of society, but they like their privacy. When they meet with people, they’re going out. What all this means is that, when Beru assures Ahsoka there’s a place for her at the table, all three of them put on highest-class manners and feel extremely uncomfortable.

All the same, Luke is practically vibrating.

She twirls her spoon n’ fork around the mash before lifting a little bite up to her teeth, gazing over the sink out the window, where the sun’s setting over the courtyard. “Those twins suns really make an exit,” she says. Beru smiles beatifically, laughs, and fails to say anything. Instead, she takes a big bite of roast.

Luke gives her an encouraging little nudge. He can’t help it. Onward, brave soldier.

Uncle Owen is sitting against the back of his chair, eating steadily, but now he takes a pause to look at their guest. “Where were you headed to, out there?” he asks.

Beru gives him a big look, but Owen keeps all eyes focused on Ahsoka. Ahsoka, for her part, is really good about acting casual, taking a bite and shaking her head.

“I was thinking I’d get to Mos Esley and leave port, but that’s when I thought I knew my way through the desert. What’s that sound?”

She’s talking about the ool-a-roo echoing over from the canyon.

“Oh,” Luke pipes up. “That’s just Old Ben Kenobi. He’s scaring off the Tuskans—that's the noise the krayts make when they’re hunting.”

Uncle Owen clears his throat, then turns into his elbow to cough. Aunt Beru’s knife clinks as she cuts another tiny bite from her steak.

“Huh. ‘Old Ben Kenobi.’ Sounds like a character,” Ahsoka says, taking a drink of milk.

“Oh, you bet. He lives alone out there in the canyon, and no one knows what he does to stay alive or make his money. Once, I saw him take a gaffa stick and—“

“Luke,” Beru says sharply. Her eyes are downcast severely on her fork and knife, and Luke bites his tongue.

“He’s a no-good, Old Ben,” Owen says, in his deep, dark grumble. “I tell the boy to keep clear of him, and you’d be wise to do the same.”

Ahsoka gives him a nod and the OK signal. “Loud and clear. Thanks for letting me know.”

Owen gives a little nod back. Luke slumps back in his chair.

“I want to thank you all again,” Ahsoka says. “For helping me. I know I wouldn’t have made it otherwise. I’m still recovering, but I feel a thousand times better than I did—I'm thinking I should leave tomorrow.”

Luke swallows wrong and covers his mouth to cough—then twists and bends over to the side, gagging. Beru stands, and Uncle Owen leans over to beat on his back with his fist—”Get it out, boy, get it out.”

“I’m sorry,” Luke says, when his food finally wiggles its way down his esophagus. “Tomorrow?”

He wipes at his eyes while Beru rubs between his shoulders, giving him a sad look. He hates it and turns all his attention away from her, toward Ahsoka. She’s leaning over the table, concerned and brows knitted, but as Luke resumes breathing she sits back.

“Yeah,” she says, with this upset kind of tone. “Tomorrow. It just isn’t safe—”

“You’re right,” Owen says. She and he lock eyes. They exchange nods again, and Owen pushes back his chair, stretches, and gets up. “I’m gonna take my meal out in the garage, Beru. There’s things to prepare for morning.”

“Wait a minute,” Luke says. His heart is racing. “You’re still healing! You don’t know this place, there’s a thousand ways to die just getting to town, not to mention once you’re there—and you don’t even know if you’ll be able to find a ship! You can hide in the cellar if someone comes looking—right?”

He looks up to his aunt, who always takes his side, and he’s overtaken by her sad eyes looking down on him. She wrings her hands and goes to the sink.

Oh, stars. She’s really leaving.

“I have to go, Luke. It isn’t safe for any of us.” Ahsoka reaches over the table and sets her hand on his knuckles. Luke is speechless. His head’s all fuzz.

Ahsoka looks to Owen, and she says, “Can you help me get to Mos Esley?”

“Of course,” Owen grumbles. Before the words are out of his mouth Luke is half-out of his chair, clinging to his uncle’s sleeve.

“Please let me come with, let me come. I can help.”

“You’re coming with,” Uncle Owen assures him, and he fusses Luke’s hair hard enough that it hurts. “You’ll see this through to the end, boy.”

And Luke’s gotta hold onto that.

----

He can’t sleep. He’s flat on his back, tossing a ball up and catching it. Up. Catch. Up. Catch.

Lights off.

He’s trying to do the mental math ahead of time so he can economize on conversation tomorrow. He knows that this woman, Ahsoka, knew his father Anakin Skywalker sometime between fifteen and twenty-five years ago, roughly, if she’s in her early thirties. Either way, that means she was a kid or awful close.

There’s this one thought dogging at him—If Ahsoka was a kid when she knew Luke’s father, does that mean some spicerunners took their kids to space with them?

Luke throws too hard and the ball hits the ceiling, and he’s a beat too late on the catch and gets hit bam in the face. He flings it off him and sits up—Rubbing his face, it’s just the whirr of the fans and a gentle bounce, bounce on the floor.

Okay. He’s gonna get a big glass of warm milk.

Luke flips on the kitchen light and at the table, Ahsoka turns around. He freezes in place, but she quickly winks and lifts her glass at him in a little salute.

“Couldn’t sleep. Hope it’s alright I helped myself.”

Luke’s hospitality training takes over, thank stars—He's all nodding and saying, Sure, sure, of course! What’s ours is yours! Grabbing whatever off the counter—A buttered cracker packet, ugh—and sliding over to sit down across from her. The plastic crinkles as he twists it in his fingers, and eyes glued to the still-shadowy form of the Togruta woman, leaned forward on elbows, Luke has a thousand things on the tip of his tongue but he can’t work out how to say any of them.

She sits back against her chair, hand clasped around her cup. She squints her eyes. She raises her fingers off the table, then taps them down. Tap-tap-tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap-tap.

Luke’s hands still on the cracker packet. His eyes go wider.

Ahsoka cocks her head at him.

“...Do you want me to get you more milk?”

“I’m wondering when you’re gonna ask me what you want to ask.”

“Oh!” Luke sits up, twisting his hands together. Okay, that’s permission, right? This should be easy now.

Yeah. Totally.

He clears his throat. “So, was my dad, um, nice?”

Ahsoka lifts her eyebrow. “Yeah,” she says.

“Oh! Well, that’s good.”

He looks down at his lap and feels her eyes stay on him another, like, ten seconds. Then, he’s startled by a—She snorts and starts—laughing?

He looks up, betrayed, and she leans over the table to touch his hand. “I’m sorry,” she says, still laughing. “You’re a good kid, you know?”

Luke’s guard had gone up—Nobody likes being laughed at, you know—but the way she looks at him and the way her hand feels on his, he knows she doesn’t mean anything by it. He rolls his eyes, says, “Maybe I’m too good.”

“No such thing. You just have to learn how to make it your strength, alright?” Ahsoka sits back, swirls her glass and doesn’t drink. “Listen, now that Uncle and Aunt aren’t around, tell me straight: what’s the deal with this Kenobi guy? You ever met him?”

“Oh, well...” Not as such. He’s seen Old Ben at a distance. Nobody really knows him, or talks to him, but he has a herd of Banthas and every so often you see him and them at range, and he buys flour and liquor off the Darklighters sometimes. They get their grain wholesale and process it themselves; the Lars’s buy theirs from them, too. Flour, that is. Aunt Beru and Uncle Owen don’t drink.

“Huh,” Ahsoka says.

“Why do you ask?”

“It’s just... that’s a sad life.”

“My aunt and uncle...” Luke shifts a little. “It’s not that they’re judgmental, exactly. It’s just that they hold everybody else to the same standards they hold themselves to. And those are... really high. I don’t think Old Ben’s so bad.”

He’s really earnest about that, and he’s not sure why. He’s not sure why, but he thinks Ahsoka cares about it more than she’s showing, and he wants to reassure her.

She’s looking off to the side, and her mouth quirks up. “You feel like going on an adventure?”

-----


It’s kind of a windy night.

Luke wraps his scarf tighter around himself and checks the nav one more time. On track, about ten minutes to arrival. It’s rough, ‘cause if you want to go into the canyon you’ve really gotta hoof it, because a speeder’s not gonna make the turns on a night like this and you can’t park partway if you ever want to see your machine again. So they’ve been out for a good two hours now.

Luke brought a load-bearing astromech along just in case Ahsoka couldn’t walk the whole way, but she’s holding up really well. She’s telling him this story about the first time she visited Tatooine with his father, it’s amazing. They were fighting for the Republic in the Clone Wars—trying to rescue Jabba the Hutt’s huttlet, which she says grated on Luke’s father like he wouldn’t believe. Luke’s having a hard time processing the whole thing—he finds himself laughing and nodding along more than anything.

He didn’t know his father fought in the Clone Wars. Apparently Ahsoka was some kind of a trainee? She makes it sound like Luke’s father was someone important—but Luke’s aunt and uncle have never led Luke to believe something like that. Like, at all.

“I thought we were done for then—at least I’ll go out with a bang, I thought. Better than the Agricorps, anyway. But your mom, of all people, calls Jabba, and she’s got proof the uncle did it.”

“My mother?”

Ahsoka stalls, resting her hand on the flat of the canyon wall. The wind blows the headscarf and sand around her face and shoulders as she gives Luke an appreciative look, and nods. “Yeah. She was your mother. Padme Naberrie.”

Luke runs his hand back into his hair, still squinting out into the sandy dark. “Wow.”

“She was a Queen once, you know.”

“Wow.”

She barks out a laugh and Luke barely catches himself from stumbling when she slaps him on the back.

“You think I’m full of beans.”

“No!” He shakes his head violently. “No, I believe you. I—I can’t say why, but I trust what you tell me.” He whirls around at the crunching sound of sand in the gears, faintly behind him through the wind howl, and crouches to bang the grav-canisters. “Over there—“ He points forward, where a crevice cuts into the canyon wall and leads to a walkway. “Old Ben’s place is right up that way.”

“The truth is, Luke,” Ahsoka starts—and stops. She’s taking step after step forward, hand scraping along the canyon wall, thousand-yard staring at the walkway and the little house above.

Luke’s inching forward at a crawl along with the astromech. He says –heart-stopped—“What?”

She shakes her head, and whatever came over her seems to go away. He was almost worried about her fainting—but her step picks up, and she says, “The truth is, I don’t know how to talk to you. Your father was—he was my best friend. I’m sorry I wasn’t around,” she says, suddenly turning and looking Luke in the eye—with so much sadness.

He tip-toes forward frantically, still at a crouch, and he’s saying, “No, no way! I mean, how were you supposed to know?”

That’s kind of a real question. The truth is, Luke really doesn’t know what to do about sad girls. He knows that maybe he could be getting played—Biggs has gotten on his case about that, not in the far too distant past—But he wants whatever explanation there is, whatever the story is, he wants Ahsoka to come out clean. Clean enough.

Maybe his father will, too.

Ahsoka shakes her head at him, walking backwards to face him. “Listen. I—I’ll know more about—what I need to tell you, after we see Kenobi. He was a friend—a friend of your father’s. Okay?”

There’s a note of desperation in her voice that makes Luke nod slowly. Okay.

Okay.

Luke takes the lead when they get up the path, marches up and knocks on Old Ben’s door.

The droid whirrs. An eopie howls in the distance.

Luke flicks his eyes back to Ahsoka—she’s crossing her arms, eyes darkening under her headscarf. Luke takes a bracing breath and bangs his fist on the durasteel.

“Hey! Ben! It’s me, Luke Skywalker!”

Kreetle song.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

“Open up, you old bastard! Or I’ll—I’ll—“

Luke trips forward on his momentum when the door swings open, just barely catching himself before he falls face-first into weird old man.

“Or you’ll what?” Old Ben asks. “Eviscerate me with language? Hello, Ahsoka.”

He nods at her. Behind him, Luke hears her release a long exhale.

Before Luke can even catch his bearings, the old man’s eyes are laser-focused back on him. “I suppose she’s told you everything? And you’re here for your revenge?”

Luke startles back. “Revenge for what?”

“I didn’t tell him anything,” Ahsoka says, while Ben speaks over her—

“For leading your father down the path to ruin. Whereas she would’ve given him salvation, and a happy life for his family, if only he’d listened to her. Or so she believes.”

Luke blinks. There’s a hand on his shoulder—Gently, Ahsoka tries to draw him back.

“Come on, Luke, he doesn’t have anything to tell us. I’m sorry I brought you here.”

“You said he was my father’s friend.”

“I was your father’s teacher, Luke, just as he was hers. And I was his friend.”

Luke can see the old man’s eyes glistening.

He wedges himself into the doorway. Just in case.

“I want to know the truth.”

He looks back at Ahsoka, daring her to tell him no. She just gives him a sad little smile that makes him feel like crusty fertilizer.

“Well, come in, then,” Kenobi says, already halfway into the other room. Luke hears a pot clink on conductor metal. “Both of you, unless you’d like to take in the weather some more.”

 

The plot thickens...