Definitions of Destiny: Chapter 18
Title: Definitions of Destiny
Author: Caryn B
Fandom: Star Wars (film canon only - see notes)
Timeline: 6 months after RotJ
Pairing: Luke/Han, slash
Rating: NC-17 overall; this chapter PG-13
Warnings: None
The list of chapters is here
Chapter 18
Alone at last, Luke kicked off his boots and lay down on the bed. There was something uniquely exhausting about diplomacy. Maintaining a polite front hadn't been particularly difficult - the Polis Massans were welcoming and friendly, with a reserve that came from over two decades of isolation, and not from suspicion or dislike of outsiders. Even so, it'd still felt like being on public show, and that would've been hard enough in normal circumstances. But he'd made discoveries, which directly impacted on the convoluted issues dominating his life, right in full view of the watching community. He had a precarious hold on his emotions at the best of times, and the effort of remaining composed throughout the ensuing meetings, ritual drinks party and formal dinner had been immense. It was as though something had drained all his reserves of energy, and his brain now threatened to go into shut-down if he didn't regain some control over his thoughts. He didn't know where to begin in sorting through the implications of everything he'd learned today.
"Hell, Artoo. This is crazy."
Artoo beeped at him apprehensively, and Luke rolled over to face him. "I wish I knew what was bothering you. We're not gonna come to any harm here." At least, not harm in the traditional sense. What the place was doing to his sanity was another matter.
So he'd been born here. On the surface it made no sense. No records existed to confirm it and, according to the Polis Massan medical files, no human babies had ever been born on the asteroid. Nor had they ever admitted any human females to the Medical Center. But the evidence of the matching cell signatures was indisputable. Sheni-dain had shown him the base data from which the conclusions were drawn. There was no possibility of a mistake.
She'd also explained how the Polis Massans took routine registration samples of every being born here. And such a sample, taken when he could only have been a newborn baby, matched his own cell signature precisely.
It left just one logical explanation. Someone had deliberately erased all records of his and Leia's births. The reasons for that hardly needed stating. Yet somehow, somebody had overlooked the cell sample itself. It had stayed, recorded but anonymous, for 25 years when, just by chance, Luke set in motion its retrieval.
If what he'd learned was true, it should've felt like some momentous discovery. Instead, it had left him confused and out of step with all that constituted his old life. For as long as he could remember, Tatooine had been his home. It still was, in the way he felt that deep-rooted and ever-present sense of belonging. It had been there throughout his desire to get away and still remained despite his uneasiness over ever returning. Yet he'd never known for certain if his roots lay elsewhere. Aunt Beru had always claimed to have no knowledge of either the circumstances of his birth or the identity of his mother, and Luke had never probed deeply into his father's past.
"They were... settlers," Aunt Beru had once told him. "Your grandmother came to Tatooine when your father was very young."
But his Aunt had never told Luke where they came from. It hadn't mattered to Luke at the time, but now he wondered if Aunt Beru had even known.
"Did my grandmother ever know my mother?" Luke had asked.
Aunt Beru had shaken her head. "She wasn't from here. Your father met her when he was traveling. He never got the chance to bring her home."
Maybe there were some answers in those long-ago words of his Aunt's, but derived from what she'd not said, rather than the little she'd given away. Because she hadn't said that Luke's grandmother had died well before his father had met his mother. It gave the notion that there might have been a more established, longer-term relationship between them - an intimation that Luke hadn't been the result of some one-off, empty encounter. And it was impossible not to speculate on all the varied interpretations there were as to why Anakin had never been able to take Luke's mother home.
Home. The word had many connotations, but what had it meant to Anakin Skywalker? He'd come as a child from some other place, with no mention ever made of a father - at least, never in Luke's presence. And maybe he'd left as a child too - ready to train as Obi-Wan's apprentice. But even if his father had spent little time on Tatooine, it must've had some meaning for him. For one thing, Luke's grandmother had chosen to remain there.
But as for his father not taking his mother home - how could he have done? He'd been a Jedi. The relationship, if there'd been one, would've gone against the Jedi code, according to Senator Danu. Luke wondered if the same rules applied to different types of relationships, such as those between a mother and her son. But even if he'd thought to press Aunt Beru further, he may not have received any answers to the questions that troubled him now. Such as when did his father leave Tatooine? How often had he returned to visit his mother? When was the last time Aunt Beru had seen his father?
Like Leia, he'd felt safe and secure in his understanding of his upbringing. Both of them had always known their real parents had died, but their emotional investments had been in those who'd brought them up. As far as Luke had been concerned, his father had died by some never-explained means, and Luke had stayed in the care of his Aunt and Uncle. It had never occurred to him, in all the years of his childhood, to question how he'd got there. He'd always imagined that his father had brought him to Tatooine after the death of Luke's mother, and that he'd left Luke with his Aunt and Uncle when he went off working. Luke had pictured him, adventurous and confident, running the difficult and dangerous spice routes that Luke had glamorized in his imagination.
The reality - the little of it he knew - was so radically different that it was almost impossible to relate to. Born anonymously somewhere even more inhospitable and out-of-the-way than Tatooine, and secreted away to be hidden from the Emperor and his own father. Obi-Wan had told him, shortly before Luke had left Dagobah for the last time, that he'd been the one who'd taken Luke to Tatooine. Luke had nodded, still too astounded by the discovery of a sister to challenge the logic in that. To hide him in the midst of his father's family, on a world his father had once belonged to must've held dangers that Obi-Wan would've been fully aware of. Yet he'd entrusted Luke's upbringing to his Aunt and Uncle, despite the enormous risks involved. He must've told them at least part of the truth, if only to ensure they kept certain facts from Luke.
And he must've had a very good reason for wanting Luke to go to Tatooine. Possibly, a reason that had its roots not just in the sentimental wish to keep family together, but in something much more complex. Something that led all the way back to the visions of the Eellayin and their depiction of a world with twin suns. And a Jedi who held in his hands the representation of new life.
"...it can't mean birth in the literal sense..." Perek-tain's conclusion, drawn from both her own assumption and Luke's confirmation that the figure was a Jedi, was the obvious one to make in view of her knowledge of Jedi practices. But in those two ornately-decorated and incised halves held aloft by Vader, Luke had seen something else besides abstract symbolism. Two parts of one whole - separated but perfectly interlocking, waiting for the right circumstances to reunite. It was a birth - of that he was certain. The birth of twins.
All these thoughts felt close to collision, and Luke was sure that his head would simply implode if he couldn't straighten out the facts from the coincidences. Because what were the odds of the Polis Massans taking a second cell sample from him? And if he hadn't lost his hand, then he'd never have had the compatibility test. And he'd lost his hand because Vader had forced him to see a premonition of the future that had motivated his rush to Bespin. And of course, the loss of his hand had ultimately shown him a shocking parallel between himself and Vader - one that was inextricably linked to his refusal to accept the fate the Emperor had lined up for him.
Was everything part of some huge, interconnected web, or was it all just coincidence? Palpatine had made it clear that events on Endor had been things he'd foreseen, yet his insight hadn't been infallible. He'd failed to predict his own death, and he'd been too blinkered to sense the latent good in Vader.
Luke's thoughts went back to that final panel in the cave once again. If the Emperor had known of the Eellayin caves, what conclusions had he drawn from the carving? If he'd even suspected that the panel depicted his own death, had he assumed that Anakin's turn to the Dark Side would have prevented it from happening? Could it have given Palpatine an additional reason to control Anakin in order to subvert the course of the future?
And what kind of coincidence foresaw Luke's own birth thousands of years before it happened, in the very place where he'd be born? If the final panel was depicting that. And if it was, why did everything end right there? Nobody, it seemed, had surmised his future beyond his birth with any degree of accuracy. Ben had believed he would one day kill Vader. Vader had believed he'd join him. The Emperor had believed he'd take Vader's place.
And Yoda? "Will he finish what he begins?" But what exactly had Yoda meant by that? His training? The destruction of Vader and the Emperor? Ensuring the future of the Jedi? Fulfilling his destiny, whatever that was? That didn't appear in any vision of the future - at least not one that he could recognize, and the question he had to ask himself, was why?
Luke rubbed a hand across his face, feeling the painful build-up of tension behind his eyes. Artoo was still by the bed, making soft, plaintive beeps for attention.
"Sorry Artoo. I'm just slowly going crazy, but don't worry about it," Luke told him. Artoo whirred back at him, more decisive this time.
"The Medical Center? Why would I wanna go back there? Unless you're thinking that wiring me up again to several thousand volts of electricity might be a cure."
Artoo began circling insistently and Luke sat up, frowning. "You're serious about it aren't you? But there's nothing there. Sheni-dain checked all the records. Besides, I can't just wander around there uninvited."
But Artoo didn't give up, and Luke found himself pulling his boots back on and trudging back down the corridor towards the repulsorcar halt. He wasn't alone in wandering the corridors of Polis Massa late at night. There was a constant stream of returning workers, weariness radiating from them with every step they took, and others, lively and refreshed, making their way to the mines.
They boarded a transport and Luke leaned his head against the transparisteel viewport. He'd just about had enough of circling around the incessant corridors, but Artoo had indulged whims of his in the past, so the least he could do was to follow this through.
The Center was almost as busy as it had been earlier on in the day. Luke felt conspicuous, aware of the curious stares of the Polis Massans. Human visitors were a rarity, and it was even more unusual to find one unaccompanied, other than by a droid. Heading back towards the laboratories seemed to be the obvious route, despite the fact they had no chance of getting through the security doors by themselves. Artoo, however, had an alternative plan and immediately trundled off down the opposite corridor, leaving Luke to double back, bemusedly catching him up.
"I don't think we can really go off down here by ourselves," Luke warned.
Artoo took no notice, so Luke shrugged and followed him. The corridor led past suites of rooms full of patients. Electronic holoboards directing visitors to various units flickered at every junction, but Luke could read none of them. The Polis Massans used their native script, and there were none of the translations into Basic that were ubiquitous in more central worlds.
"I hope you know where you're going," Luke said, "because I certainly don't."
Artoo gave a couple of confident whistles, and extended his pincer arm to activate the mechanism of a closed door. It shut behind them with an almost imperceptible hiss. Beyond it, the Center was quiet and there was no obvious presence of any medical staff or droids. Luke glanced around him with some disquiet. Senator Danu would be unlikely to be pleased if Luke managed to blow their chances of cooperation by infringing the bounds of hospitality. The Administrator had urged them to feel free to explore the colony, but if this was a private unit then he was surely overstepping the mark.
Despite his misgivings, Luke continued down the corridor, amused by the way Artoo kept constantly swiveling his head around to check that Luke was following. The atmosphere of this particular section seemed more relaxed. Gone was the harshness of the daylight simulators, replaced by glowpanels that emitted a softer light. There was very little noise - just the tap of his boots against the tiled floor and the electronic humming of Artoo.
He'd gone just a couple of steps further when he heard the new sound. It was faint, as though coming from a partially soundproofed room. It was high pitched, mewling, repetitive and persistent - a little like an animal in distress. Luke slowed his progress, listening. The knowledge of what it was hit him in the same instant that Artoo stopped ahead of him, and it sent a trickle of something like amazement through his veins.
It was the cry of a newborn infant. The sound was dissimilar enough to a human baby's cry not to be instantly recognizable, but there was now no mistaking what it was. And the strangest of thoughts had entered Luke's head. He'd assumed Artoo was taking him to the administrative heart of the Medcenter, where there might've been a chance for the droid to search for missing data. But for Artoo to have brought him to a birthing unit...
He stared at Artoo with growing bewilderment. "How did you know where to come?"
Artoo made no reply, but had started to make the odd, anxious circling movements that he'd made in Sheni-dain's laboratory. It was another answer of sorts.
"In the cloning lab - you knew didn't you? You knew what Sheni-dain was going to tell me?" Luke shook his head, mystified. "But... how?"
Artoo chittered back at him with sounds that Luke couldn't interpret. Luke moved up to him, finally noticing what it was that Artoo had stopped beside.
It was a large synthglass viewing window. The chamber inside was empty but for a steel-framed operating table and banks of dormant monitoring equipment. Artoo had ceased his circling, and was rocking backwards and forwards instead.
"I need to go in," Luke said quietly.
The droid backed away from him. It seemed like a form of distress - having brought him here, Artoo was clearly having second thoughts, and Luke wondered why. He crouched down and laid a hand on the droid's dome.
"Whatever it is you're finding difficult, we can work through it. I'm finding it hard too, but things have gone too far for me to back away now. If we go in there together, it'll make it easier."
Artoo's dome swiveled round and he made several small noises of unease. But as Luke stood up, the droid moved across to the console at the side of the window, extending his arm to reach for the access controls. After the door had slid open, Artoo rolled inside with a renewed decisiveness. Luke followed him.
It didn't happen straight away, but crept up on him slowly as he wandered around the room. It was a kind of recognition. A sense of some buried connection that started as a subtle ripple in the Force, but gained in strength as he moved towards the center. The feeling didn't emanate from the objects within the room - the Polis Massans would've undoubtedly updated and changed those over the course of 25 years. It came from the room itself, as though it held some distant memory that had permeated the air and filtered into every structural fiber. He touched a hand to the table, mainly to steady himself against a growing sensation of vertigo. But the instant his fingers gripped the cold steel he felt a shift beneath his feet, like the violent tilting of a ship mid battle. The rushed, dizzying feel of a fall made him close his eyes in protest and he sank to the floor in an attempt to halt it. And suddenly there was no balance, and no light, and nothing to stop the visions that flooded his mind and closed around him...
Pain. Relentless, insistent spasms that crushed the breath from his lungs. But there was emotional pain too, and that was harder to bear because there seemed no end to it. False promises and platitudes merely softened the edges, but there was no true solace.
Images colliding. Different worlds and different times, but joined by a common thread of encroaching darkness that overrode the small touches of joy and happiness. Knowledge and ignorance were interchangeable, and doubt and certainty merged into a chaos of confusion.
Snatched voices and meaningless words. Obi-Wan sobbing in the night, his words choked with anguish - "How can you still believe it?". Yoda, his confident directives falling onto oblivious ears - "Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose."
Hot desert sands, both familiar and strange. Shadows cast in the suns by those united in mourning. His Aunt and Uncle, young and confused, facing the unknown. Other faces, obscure and shadowy, suffering and dying. And everywhere there was fear. Fear of death and fear of change. Fear of dreams and fear of the future.
And then, without warning, the overwhelming distress vanished, replaced by something that grew and encompassed all the suffering and uncertainty. A building light that chased shadows from dark corners and brought warmth, hope and conviction. But more than that, the light showed both life and death, irrevocably linked but devoid of fear and inevitability. And maybe once there'd been a choice to make, but all that remained was acceptance...
Luke opened his eyes, taken aback to find that the room around him looked exactly the same as moments before. Because everything else had changed.
Here, in the center of a birthing room, as he'd tried to shelter from the storm of emotion, he'd seen all he needed to see. And everything had become so simple. The indecision that had accompanied him to Polis Massa had disappeared, replaced by a new conviction that was astounding in its obviousness.
He knew now why Yoda and Obi-Wan had told him nothing. Knew why his future held no predestined certainties. And he knew just what he needed to do.
He pulled himself up from the floor and moved to reassure Artoo. The droid, acutely agitated, calmed at Luke's touch.
"It's alright Artoo. Everything's okay now."
Luke glanced around the room for a final time. "Let's go back and get some sleep. Tomorrow we can start making plans."
chapter 19
Author: Caryn B
Fandom: Star Wars (film canon only - see notes)
Timeline: 6 months after RotJ
Pairing: Luke/Han, slash
Rating: NC-17 overall; this chapter PG-13
Warnings: None
The list of chapters is here
Chapter 18
Alone at last, Luke kicked off his boots and lay down on the bed. There was something uniquely exhausting about diplomacy. Maintaining a polite front hadn't been particularly difficult - the Polis Massans were welcoming and friendly, with a reserve that came from over two decades of isolation, and not from suspicion or dislike of outsiders. Even so, it'd still felt like being on public show, and that would've been hard enough in normal circumstances. But he'd made discoveries, which directly impacted on the convoluted issues dominating his life, right in full view of the watching community. He had a precarious hold on his emotions at the best of times, and the effort of remaining composed throughout the ensuing meetings, ritual drinks party and formal dinner had been immense. It was as though something had drained all his reserves of energy, and his brain now threatened to go into shut-down if he didn't regain some control over his thoughts. He didn't know where to begin in sorting through the implications of everything he'd learned today.
"Hell, Artoo. This is crazy."
Artoo beeped at him apprehensively, and Luke rolled over to face him. "I wish I knew what was bothering you. We're not gonna come to any harm here." At least, not harm in the traditional sense. What the place was doing to his sanity was another matter.
So he'd been born here. On the surface it made no sense. No records existed to confirm it and, according to the Polis Massan medical files, no human babies had ever been born on the asteroid. Nor had they ever admitted any human females to the Medical Center. But the evidence of the matching cell signatures was indisputable. Sheni-dain had shown him the base data from which the conclusions were drawn. There was no possibility of a mistake.
She'd also explained how the Polis Massans took routine registration samples of every being born here. And such a sample, taken when he could only have been a newborn baby, matched his own cell signature precisely.
It left just one logical explanation. Someone had deliberately erased all records of his and Leia's births. The reasons for that hardly needed stating. Yet somehow, somebody had overlooked the cell sample itself. It had stayed, recorded but anonymous, for 25 years when, just by chance, Luke set in motion its retrieval.
If what he'd learned was true, it should've felt like some momentous discovery. Instead, it had left him confused and out of step with all that constituted his old life. For as long as he could remember, Tatooine had been his home. It still was, in the way he felt that deep-rooted and ever-present sense of belonging. It had been there throughout his desire to get away and still remained despite his uneasiness over ever returning. Yet he'd never known for certain if his roots lay elsewhere. Aunt Beru had always claimed to have no knowledge of either the circumstances of his birth or the identity of his mother, and Luke had never probed deeply into his father's past.
"They were... settlers," Aunt Beru had once told him. "Your grandmother came to Tatooine when your father was very young."
But his Aunt had never told Luke where they came from. It hadn't mattered to Luke at the time, but now he wondered if Aunt Beru had even known.
"Did my grandmother ever know my mother?" Luke had asked.
Aunt Beru had shaken her head. "She wasn't from here. Your father met her when he was traveling. He never got the chance to bring her home."
Maybe there were some answers in those long-ago words of his Aunt's, but derived from what she'd not said, rather than the little she'd given away. Because she hadn't said that Luke's grandmother had died well before his father had met his mother. It gave the notion that there might have been a more established, longer-term relationship between them - an intimation that Luke hadn't been the result of some one-off, empty encounter. And it was impossible not to speculate on all the varied interpretations there were as to why Anakin had never been able to take Luke's mother home.
Home. The word had many connotations, but what had it meant to Anakin Skywalker? He'd come as a child from some other place, with no mention ever made of a father - at least, never in Luke's presence. And maybe he'd left as a child too - ready to train as Obi-Wan's apprentice. But even if his father had spent little time on Tatooine, it must've had some meaning for him. For one thing, Luke's grandmother had chosen to remain there.
But as for his father not taking his mother home - how could he have done? He'd been a Jedi. The relationship, if there'd been one, would've gone against the Jedi code, according to Senator Danu. Luke wondered if the same rules applied to different types of relationships, such as those between a mother and her son. But even if he'd thought to press Aunt Beru further, he may not have received any answers to the questions that troubled him now. Such as when did his father leave Tatooine? How often had he returned to visit his mother? When was the last time Aunt Beru had seen his father?
Like Leia, he'd felt safe and secure in his understanding of his upbringing. Both of them had always known their real parents had died, but their emotional investments had been in those who'd brought them up. As far as Luke had been concerned, his father had died by some never-explained means, and Luke had stayed in the care of his Aunt and Uncle. It had never occurred to him, in all the years of his childhood, to question how he'd got there. He'd always imagined that his father had brought him to Tatooine after the death of Luke's mother, and that he'd left Luke with his Aunt and Uncle when he went off working. Luke had pictured him, adventurous and confident, running the difficult and dangerous spice routes that Luke had glamorized in his imagination.
The reality - the little of it he knew - was so radically different that it was almost impossible to relate to. Born anonymously somewhere even more inhospitable and out-of-the-way than Tatooine, and secreted away to be hidden from the Emperor and his own father. Obi-Wan had told him, shortly before Luke had left Dagobah for the last time, that he'd been the one who'd taken Luke to Tatooine. Luke had nodded, still too astounded by the discovery of a sister to challenge the logic in that. To hide him in the midst of his father's family, on a world his father had once belonged to must've held dangers that Obi-Wan would've been fully aware of. Yet he'd entrusted Luke's upbringing to his Aunt and Uncle, despite the enormous risks involved. He must've told them at least part of the truth, if only to ensure they kept certain facts from Luke.
And he must've had a very good reason for wanting Luke to go to Tatooine. Possibly, a reason that had its roots not just in the sentimental wish to keep family together, but in something much more complex. Something that led all the way back to the visions of the Eellayin and their depiction of a world with twin suns. And a Jedi who held in his hands the representation of new life.
"...it can't mean birth in the literal sense..." Perek-tain's conclusion, drawn from both her own assumption and Luke's confirmation that the figure was a Jedi, was the obvious one to make in view of her knowledge of Jedi practices. But in those two ornately-decorated and incised halves held aloft by Vader, Luke had seen something else besides abstract symbolism. Two parts of one whole - separated but perfectly interlocking, waiting for the right circumstances to reunite. It was a birth - of that he was certain. The birth of twins.
All these thoughts felt close to collision, and Luke was sure that his head would simply implode if he couldn't straighten out the facts from the coincidences. Because what were the odds of the Polis Massans taking a second cell sample from him? And if he hadn't lost his hand, then he'd never have had the compatibility test. And he'd lost his hand because Vader had forced him to see a premonition of the future that had motivated his rush to Bespin. And of course, the loss of his hand had ultimately shown him a shocking parallel between himself and Vader - one that was inextricably linked to his refusal to accept the fate the Emperor had lined up for him.
Was everything part of some huge, interconnected web, or was it all just coincidence? Palpatine had made it clear that events on Endor had been things he'd foreseen, yet his insight hadn't been infallible. He'd failed to predict his own death, and he'd been too blinkered to sense the latent good in Vader.
Luke's thoughts went back to that final panel in the cave once again. If the Emperor had known of the Eellayin caves, what conclusions had he drawn from the carving? If he'd even suspected that the panel depicted his own death, had he assumed that Anakin's turn to the Dark Side would have prevented it from happening? Could it have given Palpatine an additional reason to control Anakin in order to subvert the course of the future?
And what kind of coincidence foresaw Luke's own birth thousands of years before it happened, in the very place where he'd be born? If the final panel was depicting that. And if it was, why did everything end right there? Nobody, it seemed, had surmised his future beyond his birth with any degree of accuracy. Ben had believed he would one day kill Vader. Vader had believed he'd join him. The Emperor had believed he'd take Vader's place.
And Yoda? "Will he finish what he begins?" But what exactly had Yoda meant by that? His training? The destruction of Vader and the Emperor? Ensuring the future of the Jedi? Fulfilling his destiny, whatever that was? That didn't appear in any vision of the future - at least not one that he could recognize, and the question he had to ask himself, was why?
Luke rubbed a hand across his face, feeling the painful build-up of tension behind his eyes. Artoo was still by the bed, making soft, plaintive beeps for attention.
"Sorry Artoo. I'm just slowly going crazy, but don't worry about it," Luke told him. Artoo whirred back at him, more decisive this time.
"The Medical Center? Why would I wanna go back there? Unless you're thinking that wiring me up again to several thousand volts of electricity might be a cure."
Artoo began circling insistently and Luke sat up, frowning. "You're serious about it aren't you? But there's nothing there. Sheni-dain checked all the records. Besides, I can't just wander around there uninvited."
But Artoo didn't give up, and Luke found himself pulling his boots back on and trudging back down the corridor towards the repulsorcar halt. He wasn't alone in wandering the corridors of Polis Massa late at night. There was a constant stream of returning workers, weariness radiating from them with every step they took, and others, lively and refreshed, making their way to the mines.
They boarded a transport and Luke leaned his head against the transparisteel viewport. He'd just about had enough of circling around the incessant corridors, but Artoo had indulged whims of his in the past, so the least he could do was to follow this through.
The Center was almost as busy as it had been earlier on in the day. Luke felt conspicuous, aware of the curious stares of the Polis Massans. Human visitors were a rarity, and it was even more unusual to find one unaccompanied, other than by a droid. Heading back towards the laboratories seemed to be the obvious route, despite the fact they had no chance of getting through the security doors by themselves. Artoo, however, had an alternative plan and immediately trundled off down the opposite corridor, leaving Luke to double back, bemusedly catching him up.
"I don't think we can really go off down here by ourselves," Luke warned.
Artoo took no notice, so Luke shrugged and followed him. The corridor led past suites of rooms full of patients. Electronic holoboards directing visitors to various units flickered at every junction, but Luke could read none of them. The Polis Massans used their native script, and there were none of the translations into Basic that were ubiquitous in more central worlds.
"I hope you know where you're going," Luke said, "because I certainly don't."
Artoo gave a couple of confident whistles, and extended his pincer arm to activate the mechanism of a closed door. It shut behind them with an almost imperceptible hiss. Beyond it, the Center was quiet and there was no obvious presence of any medical staff or droids. Luke glanced around him with some disquiet. Senator Danu would be unlikely to be pleased if Luke managed to blow their chances of cooperation by infringing the bounds of hospitality. The Administrator had urged them to feel free to explore the colony, but if this was a private unit then he was surely overstepping the mark.
Despite his misgivings, Luke continued down the corridor, amused by the way Artoo kept constantly swiveling his head around to check that Luke was following. The atmosphere of this particular section seemed more relaxed. Gone was the harshness of the daylight simulators, replaced by glowpanels that emitted a softer light. There was very little noise - just the tap of his boots against the tiled floor and the electronic humming of Artoo.
He'd gone just a couple of steps further when he heard the new sound. It was faint, as though coming from a partially soundproofed room. It was high pitched, mewling, repetitive and persistent - a little like an animal in distress. Luke slowed his progress, listening. The knowledge of what it was hit him in the same instant that Artoo stopped ahead of him, and it sent a trickle of something like amazement through his veins.
It was the cry of a newborn infant. The sound was dissimilar enough to a human baby's cry not to be instantly recognizable, but there was now no mistaking what it was. And the strangest of thoughts had entered Luke's head. He'd assumed Artoo was taking him to the administrative heart of the Medcenter, where there might've been a chance for the droid to search for missing data. But for Artoo to have brought him to a birthing unit...
He stared at Artoo with growing bewilderment. "How did you know where to come?"
Artoo made no reply, but had started to make the odd, anxious circling movements that he'd made in Sheni-dain's laboratory. It was another answer of sorts.
"In the cloning lab - you knew didn't you? You knew what Sheni-dain was going to tell me?" Luke shook his head, mystified. "But... how?"
Artoo chittered back at him with sounds that Luke couldn't interpret. Luke moved up to him, finally noticing what it was that Artoo had stopped beside.
It was a large synthglass viewing window. The chamber inside was empty but for a steel-framed operating table and banks of dormant monitoring equipment. Artoo had ceased his circling, and was rocking backwards and forwards instead.
"I need to go in," Luke said quietly.
The droid backed away from him. It seemed like a form of distress - having brought him here, Artoo was clearly having second thoughts, and Luke wondered why. He crouched down and laid a hand on the droid's dome.
"Whatever it is you're finding difficult, we can work through it. I'm finding it hard too, but things have gone too far for me to back away now. If we go in there together, it'll make it easier."
Artoo's dome swiveled round and he made several small noises of unease. But as Luke stood up, the droid moved across to the console at the side of the window, extending his arm to reach for the access controls. After the door had slid open, Artoo rolled inside with a renewed decisiveness. Luke followed him.
It didn't happen straight away, but crept up on him slowly as he wandered around the room. It was a kind of recognition. A sense of some buried connection that started as a subtle ripple in the Force, but gained in strength as he moved towards the center. The feeling didn't emanate from the objects within the room - the Polis Massans would've undoubtedly updated and changed those over the course of 25 years. It came from the room itself, as though it held some distant memory that had permeated the air and filtered into every structural fiber. He touched a hand to the table, mainly to steady himself against a growing sensation of vertigo. But the instant his fingers gripped the cold steel he felt a shift beneath his feet, like the violent tilting of a ship mid battle. The rushed, dizzying feel of a fall made him close his eyes in protest and he sank to the floor in an attempt to halt it. And suddenly there was no balance, and no light, and nothing to stop the visions that flooded his mind and closed around him...
Pain. Relentless, insistent spasms that crushed the breath from his lungs. But there was emotional pain too, and that was harder to bear because there seemed no end to it. False promises and platitudes merely softened the edges, but there was no true solace.
Images colliding. Different worlds and different times, but joined by a common thread of encroaching darkness that overrode the small touches of joy and happiness. Knowledge and ignorance were interchangeable, and doubt and certainty merged into a chaos of confusion.
Snatched voices and meaningless words. Obi-Wan sobbing in the night, his words choked with anguish - "How can you still believe it?". Yoda, his confident directives falling onto oblivious ears - "Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose."
Hot desert sands, both familiar and strange. Shadows cast in the suns by those united in mourning. His Aunt and Uncle, young and confused, facing the unknown. Other faces, obscure and shadowy, suffering and dying. And everywhere there was fear. Fear of death and fear of change. Fear of dreams and fear of the future.
And then, without warning, the overwhelming distress vanished, replaced by something that grew and encompassed all the suffering and uncertainty. A building light that chased shadows from dark corners and brought warmth, hope and conviction. But more than that, the light showed both life and death, irrevocably linked but devoid of fear and inevitability. And maybe once there'd been a choice to make, but all that remained was acceptance...
Luke opened his eyes, taken aback to find that the room around him looked exactly the same as moments before. Because everything else had changed.
Here, in the center of a birthing room, as he'd tried to shelter from the storm of emotion, he'd seen all he needed to see. And everything had become so simple. The indecision that had accompanied him to Polis Massa had disappeared, replaced by a new conviction that was astounding in its obviousness.
He knew now why Yoda and Obi-Wan had told him nothing. Knew why his future held no predestined certainties. And he knew just what he needed to do.
He pulled himself up from the floor and moved to reassure Artoo. The droid, acutely agitated, calmed at Luke's touch.
"It's alright Artoo. Everything's okay now."
Luke glanced around the room for a final time. "Let's go back and get some sleep. Tomorrow we can start making plans."
chapter 19