White Rabbits (Star Wars, 5/?)
Jul. 3rd, 2005 04:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
butterflyGetting into a new fandom is always so exhilarating. The sheer giddy joy of integrating a new love into the old ones, of enfolding this new beloved world is... well, both giddy and joyful, as one might imagine.
The more I get into Star Wars (and, boy, if you think that I've been focused here, you are not around to see just how much I've been getting into it, just ask ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
jic, the more I like how its world slides right into place among the others, as if there were always a space for it, waiting, and I just didn't know it yet. The motifs of redemption and love and kinship simply fit among my other loves. It exists along that same fantastical continuum where you find Buffy or Lord of the Rings or Moulin Rouge. Where it's not at all about being naturalistic, but completely about being truthful (to steal Baz Lurhmann's words). Where we see things not as they are, but as they feel.
Title: White Rabbits
Chapter: 5/?
Author: Diana Michelle (butterfly)
Warnings: Spoilers for Revenge of the Sith.
Pairing: Eventual Anakin/Obi-Wan.
Rating: PG/PG-13-ish.
Summary: Luke had often wished that he could have spent more time with Ben. This isn't what he'd had in mind.
Disclaimer: Not Lucas, don't own a thing, not making any money.
Chapter Index
Chapter Five -- Gleaming Golden
It was hard to believe that this was the same man who’d taught Luke about ‘a certain point of view’. Obi-Wan was so damn certain that he knew the truth about who Anakin Skywalker really was.
Maybe that’s why he spent twenty years alone on Tatooine after Anakin turned, because he’d been so very wrong. If old Ben ever decided to show up again, which would be helpful right about now, Luke would have to ask him.
“So, what do we do?” Leia asked.
“I don’t know,” Luke said.
“He really has faith in his friend,” Leia said softly.
And now that Luke thought about it, Ben never had seemed to blame Anakin for anything. He’d said that Vader had been seduced by the dark side, that he’d been betrayed and murdered by the evil inside himself. When talking about Anakin Skywalker, even after Luke had known the truth, Ben had been insistent that Anakin had been a good man.
When Luke had seen them, after Anakin’s death, Ben and Yoda had been standing right next to his father. As if he had never been Darth Vader, as if he’d never turned.
More and more, Luke wanted to know just what had happened all those years ago. What made Ben so willing to forgive? And how had Anakin become Darth Vader?
Luke stepped toward Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan’s gaze snapped up to lock onto Luke’s, and his eyes were calm and certain.
“Why can’t Jedi have children?” Luke asked.
“Attachment is… discouraged,” Obi-Wan said, after a moment. “Affection and love can blind us from seeing the will of the Force.”
“The way your affection is blinding you,” Leia said sharply.
Obi-Wan inclined his head slightly in acknowledgment.
“It’s possible,” Obi-Wan said. “But as I’ve known Anakin for over twelve years and the two of you for under an hour, I suspect that placing my faith in Anakin is the wiser course to take.”
“I can understand why you might not trust us,” Luke said, ignoring Leia’s indignant snort. “It’s a lot to expect anyone to believe. But we can prove it.”
“How?” Obi-Wan asked.
“We can take you to the xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" /
“They just razed it and then left it there, as an example,” Leia said. “When I became a Senator, I was required to walk through the building, to see what the Empire does to traitors.”
“You’re a politician?” Obi-Wan asked, raising an eyebrow.
“All my life,” Leia said. “I always wanted to make a difference. Try to, anyway.”
Obi-Wan studied Leia thoughtfully, his hand reached up to pull at his beard. Luke still hadn’t fully adjusted that there was color in this Obi-Wan’s hair. And Obi-Wan looked incredibly young, though, objectively, Luke would place him around Han’s age.
All at once, Obi-Wan pushed away from the wall, his expansive cloak swirling a little from the force of his movement. “Right, let’s see this
“Han’s waiting out by the central landing port,” Leia said, as they walked out of the room, Obi-Wan a few paces behind them. “I told him that I’d just be a few minutes, even if I had to drag you out by your hair.”
“Han’s here?” Luke asked, glancing back every so often at Obi-Wan, who didn’t seem to be paying any attention at all to their conversation. He was probably trying to decide if they were talking in code. “I thought he wanted to look up some old contacts in the lower city.”
“He can do that any time,” Leia said, shrugging a shoulder.
“Yeah, any time you’re willing to release that tractor beam you’ve got locked on him,” Luke teased, enjoying Leia’s subtle blush. “Have you ever thought of just chaining him to the Falcon?”
They turned the corner and the Falcon was dead ahead. Threepio was standing on the ramp, looking a little dingy. Due for an oil bath, Luke suspected.
“Master Luke, it’s good to see you!” Threepio said, with his customary enthusiasm.
“It’s good to-“
“That’s impossible,” Obi-Wan said abruptly. Luke turned and saw Obi-Wan looking more shaken than he’d been at any point previous.
“What is it?” Leia asked, reaching out to touch Obi-Wan’s arm.
“C-3PO,” Obi-Wan said, faintly. Threepio opened his mouth, but Obi-Wan beat him to it. “Human-cyborg relations.”
“You’ve met him before?” Luke asked.
“On many occasions,” Obi-Wan said, looking slightly pale. “I’m curious – is there another droid around? An astromech, perhaps?”
“You mean Artoo,” Luke said. Well, it made sense that Obi-Wan had known Artoo, since Artoo had known just how to find him. “If it hadn’t been for him, I wouldn’t have gotten the chance to be a Jedi.”
"R2-D2," Obi-Wan confirmed. "Anakin has been borrowing him from a friend."
Luke reached for Obi-Wan’s right arm, Leia having firmly wrapped her hand around Obi-Wan’s left arm. And the fact that Obi-Wan hadn’t pushed them away spoke volumes.
“I don’t understand what’s going on at all,” Threepio said mournfully. “Master Luke, I’ve never seen this man before in my life.”
“The galaxy is full of protocol droids,” Leia said to Obi-Wan.
“Not like that one,” Obi-Wan said, distantly. “In all my travels, I have never encountered another droid with C-3PO’s rather unique mannerisms and his peculiar brand of neurotic fatalism."
“That definitely sounds like Threepio," Luke said.
“If, by some horrible chance, it turns out that you are telling me the truth, young Luke,” Obi-Wan said, his gaze still fixed on Threepio. “Then I believe I know who your mother was.”
“Oh, I do wish that someone would explain all this to me,” Threepio said, his voice easily carrying over… well, everything else, including the speeder traffic.
“You do? What's her name?” Leia asked, apparently forgetting that she hadn’t been forthcoming with the ‘sibling’ card earlier. But Obi-Wan seemed to be too distracted to notice that she cared more than she should about who Luke’s mother was.
“Senator Amidala,” Obi-Wan said, looking like he wanted to sit down. Luke wondered if they should maybe get him into the ship before he collapsed. “She and Anakin met as children and she’s always been fond of him.”
“Amidala,” Luke said, but the word didn’t resonate at all.
“Anakin calls her Padmé,” Obi-Wan said softly, and… that name meant something to Luke, touched a tender place inside that he hadn’t known about before.
“Padmé,” Leia said, and her voice was full of the same wonder that Luke felt. They’d talked it all out, a few months ago, so Luke knew that this was as much a revelation for her as it was for him – Bail Organa had always told her that her birth mother’s name was too dangerous for her to know.
She’d told him that when she found out that Vader was her father, she’d finally understood just why that was so.
And by the time the danger had passed, no one that Leia had spoken to had known the truth. It was another question that Luke would have loved to ask his father or Ben about, but they hadn’t appeared to him since the celebration on Endor and he was starting to think that there was a good chance that he’d never see them again.
Then, Luke felt Obi-Wan shiver against him, and he realized that all this wasn’t a reaction to seeing Threepio, after all.
It was happening again.
~end chapter five~
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2005-07-03 11:52 pm (UTC)Threepio is PERfect.
Love the teasing about Han.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-07-05 07:01 am (UTC)Yay! Thank you!
Threepio is PERfect.
Thank you! I'm very fond of him.
Love the teasing about Han.
Oh, there is more teasing Han to come.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-07-04 01:41 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-07-05 07:02 am (UTC)Thank you!
(no subject)
Date: 2005-07-04 06:35 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-07-05 07:04 am (UTC)Thank you!
And yeah, Obi-Wan and Anakin have quite a lot to talk about.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-07-04 07:49 am (UTC)Leia's reaction to hearing the name of her mother was superb. Am more a fan than ever!
(no subject)
Date: 2005-07-05 07:06 am (UTC)Thank you! I love Threepio, so I had to bring him in. Plus, it was an excellent way to clue Obi-Wan in, but not anywhere near as helpful as Artoo might have been.
Leia's reaction to hearing the name of her mother was superb. Am more a fan than ever!
Yay! I really want to make sure that the ghost of Padme is in the story, because she leaves this big but almost completely unspoken shadow in the Imperial Trilogy.
re: White Rabbits (Star Wars, 5: Gleaming Golden
Date: 2006-03-13 07:26 am (UTC)Luke wanting to know how Anakin had fallen, and why Ben still cared for his old friend, is not surprising at all. I always thought that Luke would want to know what had happened for real.
“He really has faith in his friend,” Leia said softly.
Carrie's voice came through so clearly to me on that line!
I'm also amused by Obi-Wan's reaction to Leia being a politican; afterall, this is the man who told his Padawan not to trust them! :)
And then Obi-Wan letting Luke and Leia know who he thinks their mother might be is so sad yet so wonderful. *gets teary again*
Re: White Rabbits (Star Wars, 5: Gleaming Golden
Date: 2006-03-13 07:31 am (UTC)“In all my travels, I have never encountered another droid with C-3PO’s rather unique mannerisms and his peculiar brand of neurotic fatalism. Anakin never would stop fiddling around with it. Though it's not as if he could leave anything mechanical alone.”
Obi-Wan has captured 3PO in a nutshell--kudos to you, the writer!
And Anakin as a tinkerer, yes, that fits in rather well with my view of him. :)
Re: White Rabbits (Star Wars, 5: Gleaming Golden
Date: 2006-03-13 07:37 am (UTC)The more I get into Star Wars (and, boy, if you think that I've been focused here, you are not around to see just how much I've been getting into it, just ask jic), the more I like how its world slides right into place among the others, as if there were always a space for it, waiting, and I just didn't know it yet. The motifs of redemption and love and kinship simply fit among my other loves. It exists along that same fantastical continuum where you find Buffy or Lord of the Rings or Moulin Rouge. Where it's not at all about being naturalistic, but completely about being truthful (to steal Baz Lurhmann's words). Where we see things not as they are, but as they feel.
Word!
Re: White Rabbits (Star Wars, 5: Gleaming Golden
Date: 2006-04-04 10:35 pm (UTC)Re: White Rabbits (Star Wars, 5: Gleaming Golden
Date: 2006-04-04 10:34 pm (UTC)Thanks! I'm very fond of 3P0 and all of his fussiness, but he does not have quite the same effect on Obi-Wan.
And Anakin as a tinkerer, yes, that fits in rather well with my view of him. :)
I'm glad. It's a big part of how I see him in general -- he wants to fix things, make them better.
Re: White Rabbits (Star Wars, 5: Gleaming Golden
Date: 2006-04-04 10:32 pm (UTC)Thank you.
Luke wanting to know how Anakin had fallen, and why Ben still cared for his old friend, is not surprising at all. I always thought that Luke would want to know what had happened for real.
*nods* Yes, definitely. Luke cares about the truth of his father.
“He really has faith in his friend,” Leia said softly.
Carrie's voice came through so clearly to me on that line!
That's great to read, thank you.
I'm also amused by Obi-Wan's reaction to Leia being a politican; afterall, this is the man who told his Padawan not to trust them! :)
Yes, totally. This, to me, is part of why Older Obi-Wan doesn't seem to think of Leia as a second 'only hope' -- she's a politican!
And then Obi-Wan letting Luke and Leia know who he thinks their mother might be is so sad yet so wonderful. *gets teary again*
Aw, thank you.